Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self – Claire Tomalin

There is no doubt as to Claire Tomalin’s flair for biography. I read and enjoyed her book on Jane Austen while I was doing my degree and picked up her Pepys biography with a similar sense of relish. However, I came away from it with a much greater sense of ambivalence – not for Tomalin as a biographer – I also have her work on Hardy and am looking forward to it – but for her subject. Tomalin’s flair for biographical detail is on display, as is her gift for vividly depicting the personalities she tells us about and the times they lived in. She is clear-sighted and sceptical enough about her subject not to be so dazzled by the myth that she doesn’t see the person and that was my problem. An honest depiction of the ladylike, civilized Jane Austen is one thing, but Samuel Pepys was horribly flawed and Tomalin’s vision makes him often impossible to like. The Pepys she shows us is a misogynistic backstabber who complains about the nepotism, corruption and Machiavellian politicking of those around him while having no scruples about using those arts himself. However the fact that we know so much about what he was like is down to his honesty about himself – Claire Tomalin is no more critical of Samuel Pepys than Pepys is. He doesn’t try to explain, apologise or expiate and it is clear that very often, the person who is most hurt by his misdemeanours is Pepys himself.

When it came to women, Pepys was very much a man of his time, better than most, though much worse than some. Silly women annoyed him, a forgivable trait in an intelligent, educated man, but he couldn’t countenance their gender as his intellectual equals. His relationship with Jemima Montagu (Lady Sandwich) who he both loved and respected suggested that this was a matter of choice. Perhaps he treated her as his equal because she was one of the few women he didn’t try to coax into bed. He couldn’t engage with her on that level, so was forced to rely on a more equal interaction – mentally and emotionally.

Tomalin concentrates much of her attention on Pepys’ wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Pepys (nee St Michel,) was one of the most important people in Samuel Pepys’s life. They married when she was fourteen to his twenty-one and stayed mostly together, in spite of a difficult relationship till her early death in 1669. She does not have a direct voice in the diary – Pepys paraphrased her – but her depiction through it is vivid nonetheless. She was a strong-minded, intelligent young woman who bridled at the double standards of her time and went out of her way to show that she would not tolerate a husband who kept her at home while reserving the right to philander all over London with his doxies. Much of Pepys’s womanising was more in hope than the act itself – he was not a particularly successful seducer – but Elizabeth could have been humiliated by it. Instead, she went out of her way to enjoy herself, including engaging in some little flirtations of her own. When they argued, which they frequently did, she showed herself well able to give as good as she got, even in the face of physical violence.

Not all of Pepys’s energies went on his amorous adventures. In addition to keeping the diary, which eventually ran to six volumes, he was heavily involved for most of his career, with the administration of the navy and put much time and effort into trying to improve the education of officers, the feeding of sailors and the way the navy as a whole was funded. Tomalin gives a lot of time and attention to this part of Pepys’s life and paints a vivid picture of the problems that beset any conscientious civil servant during the reign of Charles II. Although Cromwell had made himself very unpopular towards the end of his life, the restoration was an enormous disappointment to many people, including Pepys. It quickly became apparent that the king was not interested in devoting serious attention to the needs of his country. The navy suffered from his neglect, along with many other issues and in spite of an increasingly combative Holland. Material that could have been very dry in the hands of a lesser biographer becomes fresh and interesting in Tomalin’s as she focuses her view through that of her subject. Pepys’s perspective always stays central to her as it does in the diary itself.

Getting anything done in such a fervid political atmosphere meant running risks with one’s career and one’s head and Pepys had a spell in the Tower of London, on accusations of Papacy. The constant sense of being on a tight-rope does much to provide a context for the corruption around Pepys and which he was undoubtedly a part of. Tomalin is particularly strong in her chapter on Work which shows her subject as a dangerous man to cross – cunning, venal and more than capable of stabbing someone in the back in order to get what he wanted. His treatment of Thomas Povey, for example was outrageous, but very much part of the political culture of the times.

Political and marital problems were not Pepys’s only difficulties. He was also plagued by his health, in particular, a kidney stone, which was horrifyingly painful and could only be removed by a procedure which was possibly worse. Tomalin goes into some detail about this along with an illustration of an operation for stone removal. Those who are squeamish may prefer to skim this chapter, along with the description of Elizabeth’s Bartholin cyst and Pepy’s eventual autopsy. They do not make pretty reading, but they do enhance our admiration for these people and their contemporaries; in spite of their problems and the lack of effective remedies for dealing with them they led full lives. Pepys’s stoicism in the face of terrible physical misery doesn’t wipe out his many flaws, but he could not be accused of whining or self-pity.

In addition to the problems particular to her subject as an individual, Tomalin offers a view of what life was like for most people in the seventeenth century. The plague gets its due attention and she is careful to put the outbreak of 1665 in the context of previous epidemics. What many historians call the Great Plague of that year was nothing new, but it was bigger than most and slower to burn itself out. She also spends some time on the fire of 1666, its impact and its political ramifications – a variety of conspiracy theories swirled around it and for those who don’t know much about that, this is fascinating reading. It also gives a seventeenth century slant to what we tend to think of as a twenty-first century problem. Paranoia, Tomalin reminds us, is not the property of modern, hyper-connected people.

In addition to his political work and his career as a naval administrator, Pepys was active in the Royal Society and had many charitable interests, especially connected with the education of boys. He was also an active participant in family life – his own and Elizabeth’s families relied on him for money, support and contacts. They had no children of their own, but their house was often full of other people’s and Pepys seems to have derived a rich portion of paternal pleasure – and pain – from his young relatives.

The biography isn’t a particularly easy read. Pepys moved in very wide circles, and knew and was related to a vast number of people, so readers will be grateful for Tomalin’s list of principal characters, as well as the Pepys family tree. I kept losing track of who people were, so had to refer to both of them constantly. Readers might also have problems with the subject himself, whose behaviour and personality is often repulsive. However, Tomalin’s depiction is that of a complex man with a rich, full life, who was interested in everything and everybody around him. His diary places himself at the centre of it all – what diarist doesn’t? – and in doing so, he becomes a microcosm of his wider society in a world that was in a state of constant change.

Penguin, London, 2003. ISBN-10: 0140282343. 544pp.