VMrs. Pepys
Elizabeth Saint-Michel.Born 1640.Married Samuel Pepys December 1, 1655.Died November 10, 1669.
Mrs. Pepys as St. Katharine
Mrs. Pepys as St. Katharine
Mrs. Pepys as St. Katharine
The psychographer is apt to be hampered in his study of women by lack of material. Men of energy and vigor make themselves felt in the world at large. Even if they write little, they have a vast acquaintance, come into close contact with those who can write, and all their doings and sayings of importance are narrowly watched and minutely chronicled. In making their portraits one is more often embarrassed by the excess of material than by the lack of it.
With women this is not the case. Those who have public careers, historical figures, artists, writers especially, are approachable enough. And there is a great temptation to portray such mainly, if not exclusively. Yet so far from being all of the sex, they are not fairly representative of it, perhaps one may even say they are not normally representative. It is the quiet lives that count, the humble lives, the simple lives, lives perhaps of great achievement and of great influence, but of great influence through others, not direct. The richest and fullest and most fruitful of these lives often pass without leaving any written record, without a single trace that can be seized and followed to good purpose by the curious student. No doubt such women would prefer to be left in shadow, as they lived. But the loss to humanity in the study of their nobility and usefulnessis very great. Above all, in portraying women of another type we should not forget these fugitive and silent figures who ought to be occupying the very first place in the history of their sex.
No one will maintain that Elizabeth, wife of Samuel Pepys, was an especially noble or heroic personage, or that her influence in the world, direct or indirect, was of a character to deserve any particular celebration. She appears, however, to have been thoroughly feminine and she is exceptional and interesting in this one point, at least, that she has not left posterity a single written line, yet she is known to us, from the Diary of her husband, with an intimacy and an accuracy of detail which we can hope to acquire with few characters who lived so long ago. George Sand remarked justly of Rousseau’s “Confessions,” that while he was without doubt at liberty to expose his own frailty, he had no right, in doing so, to expose the frailty of others. Right or wrong, Pepys certainly exposed his wife, in all her humanity, to the curious gaze of those who care to read. If we had a full volume of her letters, we could probably add something to certain phases of her experience, and more than anything else we should be glad to have her frank and daily comment on her husband. But, as it is, we know her as we know few of our living acquaintances and not all of our intimate friends.
When she first appears to us, she was twenty years old. Pepys married her at the early age of fifteen. It was a pure love match. He was poor and she was poor. Her father was a French Protestant. He was unsuccessful and unthrifty and Pepys helped the wholefamily, so far as he could. Of Elizabeth’s early life we know little, except that her Catholic friends tried to convert her. Of her married life before the Diary begins, in 1660, we know nothing.
She was eminently beautiful. Pepys assures us of that, and he was a connoisseur. Nor was this a lover’s illusion on his part. Years after his marriage, when too much friction had set in between them, he reiterates his opinion and notes with pride that she is not outdone by the greatest beauties of the time: “My wife, by my troth, appeared as pretty as any of them; I never thought so much before; and so did Talbot and W. Hewer, as they said, I heard, to one another.” The admiring husband does not attempt details, and perhaps it is as well. In the likenesses that have come down to us we do not discern any singular charm: a forehead rather full and prominent, eyebrows gracefully arched, a strongly marked nose, the mouth somewhat heavy, with lips, especially the upper, protruding.
That dress occupied a large place in Mrs. Pepys’s thoughts, as well as in her husband’s finances, goes without saying. He wishes her at all times to look well, but is not always eager about paying the bills. She follows the fashion, but not, it would seem, too curiously. Black patches, pendant curls, enhance, or disfigure, her natural charm. She cuts her dresses low in the neck, considerably to Pepys’s disgust, “out of a belief, but without reason, that it is the fashion.” When worldly prospects are favorable, she gets gifts,—for example, a new silk petticoat, “a very fine rich one, the best I did see there, and much better than she desiresor expects.” On the other hand, if a speculation—or a dinner—goes awry, her adornments are viewed less amiably. The purchase of a costly pair of earrings “did vex me and brought both me and her to very high and very foule words from her to me.”
As this shows, she was in many ways a child; and what else should she have been? Married at fifteen, after a wandering and uncertain youth, how could she have attained solid training or any staid capacity? When she came to Pepys, she had apparently little education, but it is clear that she had a quick mother wit, so that with the passage of years she probably acquired as much as might decently justify the eulogy of her delightful epitaph, “forma, artibus, linguis cultissima.” Her husband was vexed by her false spelling, which must, therefore, have been indeed atrocious. But in his leisure hours he taught her arithmetic, geography, astronomy, and declares, in his patronizing way, that she made good profit.
She was a considerable reader, perhaps not of very solid literature, but at any rate of the poets and novelists. When obliged to remain at home, with a new Easter bonnet, on account of Pepys’s indisposition, she consoles him, if not herself, by reading Fuller’s “Worthies.” On other similar occasions she reads Du Bartas or Ovid. Her erudition at times even produces a great effect on her husband, as when she assures him that the plot of a popular play is taken from a novel, goes home and puts the passage before him, also when she laboriously copies out a letter on jealousy from the “Arcadia” and submits it to him for his edification.The romances that she loved she knew by heart, for her mentor finds occasion to check her for “her long stories out of Grand Cyrus, which she would tell, though nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner.”
When she was married, she had not many accomplishments. But Pepys wanted a wife who would do him credit and took pains to teach her. Also, it must be added that music was one of the greatest pleasures of his life and he tried hard to share it with her. Sometimes he is encouraged. She really has quite a voice, if it were not that she has no ear. And even if she has no voice, she is so deft with her fingers that he is sure she will play the flageolet charmingly. Then it ends too often in the wail of the musical temperament over the temperament that is not musical and never can be. With drawing it is somewhat better. The lady makes progress; she decidedly outdoes Peg Penn, which is gratifying, and in one case, at least, her husband defers abjectly to her esthetic judgment. I “did choose two pictures to hang up in my house, which my wife did not like when I came home, and so I sent the picture of Paris back again.”
Mrs. Pepys’s enthusiasm for her artistic pursuits was so great as occasionally to bring reproach upon her for neglect of her household duties. But in general we may conclude that she was a faithful, a devoted, and an interested housekeeper. In a girl of twenty some slips were surely to be expected. “Finding my wife’s clothes lie carelessly laid up, I was angry with her, which I was troubled for.” The record, however, usually indicates both intelligence and energy. “My poor wife, whoworks all day at home like a horse,” remarks the not always appreciative husband. There are spurts of cleanliness, when the lady and her maids rise early and labor late, with a grim determination to rid their belongings of dirt, that monster of the world. Every woman will sympathize and will resent the unkindly comment of the observing cynic: “She now pretends to a resolution of being hereafter very clean. How long it will hold I can guess.”
Washing seems to have been done with a thoroughness which makes up for its rarity. Washing day upsets the whole household and with it Mr. Pepys’s temper, because he had invited friends to dinner and did not see how preparations could possibly be made to receive them. Nevertheless, I imagine the guests were received, and had no suspicions. A good housewife can work those miracles. At another time he goes to bed late and leaves mistress and maids still washing, washing.
The lady was a cook, too, and no doubt a good one. Many a dinner of her getting is minutely detailed and many more of her supervising. As has happened to others, her new oven bakes too quickly and burns her tarts and pies, but she “knows how to do better another time.” And this is a little touch of character, is it not?
But the sweetest picture of Mrs. Pepys at work is drawn by her husband’s memory, as he looks back from growing fortune on cottage days and simple love. “Talking with pleasure with my poor wife, how she used to make coal fires, and wash my foul clothes withher own hand for me, poor wretch! in our little room at my Lord Sandwich’s; for which I ought for ever to love and admire her, and do; and persuade myself she would do the same thing again, if God should reduce us to it.”
Riches diminish some cares and swell others. In the little room at Lord Sandwich’s the servant problem was not serious. Afterwards it became so. A procession of sweet old English names, Nells and Janes and Nans and Debs, gleams and dances through the Diary, sometimes in tears, sometimes in laughter, sometimes trim, dainty, and coquettish, sometimes red-armed and tousle-headed. Some please master and mistress both, some please only the mistress, some, alas!—not the red arms and tousled heads—please only the master and fill that quaint and ancient Pepysian domesticity with tragedy and woe. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not even her children, tests a woman’s character so much as do her servants. From all that we read, it seems safe to assume that Mrs. Pepys showed judgment, common sense, and balance in the treatment of hers. If she flew out occasionally, we must remember that she was very young and that she lived with servants in very close intimacy. I fancy that her voice had deserved weight in the pretty little scene which took place in the garden and the moonlight. “Then it being fine moonshine with my wife an houre in the garden, talking of her clothes against Easter and about her mayds, Jane being to be gone, and the great dispute whether Besse, whom we both love, should be raised to be chamber-mayde or no. We have both a mind to it, but know not whether we should venture the makingher proud and so make a bad chamber-mayde of a good-natured and sufficient cook-mayde.”
Probably the greatest wrecker of domestic peace is and always has been money. Was Mrs. Pepys a good economist? She was woman enough, human enough, to take delight in comfort and luxury. A new hanging, a new picture, a new bit of furniture enchanted her, as did a frock or a jewel. The purchase of the family coach was a matter of manifest rejoicing. Also, she was not perfect in her accounts, and when called to a stern audit by her source of supply, was forced to admit that she sometimes juggled with the figures, a confession truly horrible to one whose Philistine morality strained at a commercial gnat and swallowed a sexual camel. It “madded me and do still trouble me, for I fear she will forget by degrees the way of living cheap and under sense of want.” Nevertheless, her management is usually approved. After all, she costs less than other wives, a good many, and occasions of expense for her are not so frequent, all things considered. Even, in one felicitous instance, she receives praise, of that moderate sort which must often content the starved susceptibilities of matrimony. “She continuing with the same care and thrift and innocence, so long as I keep her from occasions of being otherwise, as ever she was in her life.”
One question that occurs frequently in regard to Mrs. Pepys is, had she friends? Apparently she had none. Perhaps her vague and troubled youth had kept her from contracting any of the rapturous intimacies of girlhood. If she had done so, they did not survive marriage.For Pepys was not the man to let his wife’s close companions pass without comment. He would have hated them—or loved them, and in either case made his house not over-pleasant to them. Perhaps he had done so before the Diary begins. At any rate, while Mrs. Pepys had many acquaintances, we do not see that she had one real confidante to whom she entrusted the many secrets that she obviously had to entrust. And in consequence she was lonely. The Diary shows it in touching fashion. Pepys recognizes it, but, with a certain cold-bloodedness, prefers having her lonely at home to having her dissipated abroad. So she is left to gossip and bicker with her maids, to pet her dogs and birds, and to quarrel with her husband. Even of her own family she sees little. Pepys did not seek their company, because they always wanted something. And they did not seek his, because they did not always get what they wanted, though with them, as with others, he was usually just and often generous.
It must not, however, be supposed that Mrs. Pepys was a Cinderella, or that the maids in the kitchen were her sole society. Pepys was proud of her, proud of his house, proud of his hospitality, which enlarged as riches came. He took her about with him often to the houses of his friends. Now and again they made a journey together with great peace of mind and curious content. Also, few weeks passed that he did not bring some one home with him, for dancing, or music, or general merriment, and in all these doings Mrs. Pepys’s share was greater or less. I think we can easily surmise her hand in that royal and triumphant festivity, themere narrative of which breeds joy as well as laughter in any well-tempered disposition. “We fell to dancing, and continued, only with intermission for a good supper, till two in the morning, the music being Greeting, and another most excellent violin, and theorbo, the best in town. And so with mighty mirth, and pleased with their dancing of jigs afterwards several of them, and among others, Betty Turner, who did it mighty prettily; and, lastly, W. Batelier’s ‘Blackmore and Blackmore Mad’; and then to a country-dance again, and so broke up with extraordinary pleasure, as being one of the days and nights of my life spent with the greatest content; and that which I can but hope to repeat again a few times in my whole life. This done, we parted, the strangers home, and I did lodge my cozen Pepys and his wife in our blue chamber. My cozen Turner, her sister, and The., in our best chamber; Bab., Betty, and Betty Turner in our own chamber; and myself and my wife in the maid’s bed, which is very good. Our maids in the coachman’s bed; the coachman with the boy in his settle-bed, and Tom where he uses to lie. And so I did, to my great content, lodge at once in my house, with the greatest ease, fifteen, and eight of them strangers of quality.” And surely Mrs. Pepys was the queen of the feast, even though her name is but once mentioned.
Moreover, she had the social instinct, and gave her husband advice as to his conduct in the world, which he himself recognizes as excellent, and resolves to follow it. “I told all this day’s passages, and she to give me very good and rational advice how to behave myselfto my Lord and his family, by slighting everybody but my Lord and Lady, and not to seem to have the least society or fellowship with them, which I am resolved to do, knowing that it is my high carriage that must do me good there, and to appear in good clothes and garbe.”
In one of Pepys’s diversions, which meant more to him than any except, perhaps, music, Mrs. Pepys was allowed to share to a considerable extent, and that was theatre-going. It would seem that she entered into it almost as heartily as did her husband and with quite as intelligent criticism. In one of his delightful spells of conscience-ache, he reproaches himself for going to a play alone, after swearing to his wife that he would go no more without her. But he sometimes permits her to go alone and very often enjoys her company and her enthusiasm. Occasionally she differs from him without shaking his judgment. But they agree entirely in their delight in Massinger’s “Bondman” and as entirely in their contempt for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
When one considers the frailties that resulted from Pepys’s social relations, one is tempted to ask how Mrs. Pepys was affected in this regard. So far as we can judge, it was not an age of very nice morality, at any rate among the upper classes. Wives as fair and as respectable as Pepys’s seem to have entertained the addresses of lovers more or less numerous. But I think we may assume that the lady we are concerned with was all that a wife should be. Pepys himself was undoubtedly of that opinion and he was an acute and a by no means partial judge. He does, indeed, have tempestuous bursts of jealousy. There was a certain dancing master,Pembleton by name, who caused a great deal of uneasiness. It is pretty evident that Mrs. Pepys coquetted with him, perhaps intentionally, and drove her husband at times to the verge of frenzy, perhaps intentionally. It “do so trouble me that I know not at this very minute that I now write this almost what either I write or am doing.” But it blows over with the clear admission that the parties had been nothing more than indiscreet.
Also, I divine a little malice in that pleasant incident of later date, when Mrs. Pepys appears with a couple of fine lace pinners, at first causing infinite disquiet by the suspicion that they were a present and then dispelling this disagreeable state of mind by another hardly less disagreeable. “On the contrary, I find she hath bought them for me to pay for them, without my knowledge.”
Under other aspects of morality, Mrs. Pepys perhaps impresses us less favorably. She would seem to have had faults of temper, faults of tongue, to be at times inclined to deception, at times to violence. Here again her age must be remembered, her age and her training. I imagine that in some moral points she was more practical than her husband, less inclined to hair-splitting nicety. I would give a good deal to know what she thought of his precious business of vows, his fine distinctions as to indulgence and abstinence, his forfeits, his pretexts and subterfuges. When he made up for a vow broken in an extra visit to the theatre by getting her to substitute one of her visits which she could not use, I can see her soothing agreement, “Oh, yes, Sam, of course, why not?” And I can see also thefine smile twitching the corners of her pretty mouth as she watched the departing Phariseeism of those sturdy English shoulders.
What religion she had back of her morals—or immorals—we do not know. Although, in the enthusiasm of first love, she announced that she had a husband who would help her out of popery, she doubtless soon found that there was not much spiritual comfort to be had from one who in good fortune boasted of sharing the utter irreligion of Lord Sandwich and, when things went wrong, dreaded abjectly that the Lord God would punish him for his sins. Curious depths of inward experience suggest themselves from the fact that Mrs. Pepys became a Catholic and received the sacrament, without a single suspicion on the part of her watchful inquisitor. Yet, after all, there may have been little spiritual experience, but merely a deft confessor and an unresponsive world.
So it is hard to find out whether Mrs. Pepys loved God and it is equally hard to find out what we are even more eager to know, whether she loved her husband. In considering the point, we must remember first that the world saw him quite other than we see him in the Diary. We see the lining of his soul, somewhat spotted and patched and threadbare. The world at large saw the outer tissue which was really imposing and magnificent. Not only was he a useful, prosperous, successful public servant and man of business, but he had more than the respect, the esteem and admiration, of the best men of his time, as a scholar and a gentleman. Here, therefore, was a husband to be proud of.
Pride does not make love, however. And we know well that folly and even vice often hold a woman’s heart closer and longer than well-laundered respectability. It would appear that Mr. Pepys might have combined all the desired qualifications with peculiar success. Yet as to the result, I repeat, we do not know. And it is strange that we do not. Every shade of the husband’s varying feelings is revealed to us, but what the wife felt he does not record, because, alas, he does not greatly care. Or, rather, may we say that he assumed that she worshiped him? And may we not go further and conclude that he was right in so assuming and that for one word of real affection she was ready to lay all her whims and errors and vagaries at his feet? Is not this attitude quite compatible with understanding him completely?
His family she did not love, nor they her. The case is not unprecedented. Very likely she tried her best. Very likely they tried their best. But she was young and fashionable and quick-witted. They were old, some of them, and all of them antique. Then they adored Sam, who was making the family. Well, so did she. But she knew Sam and did not care to have his Sunday attitudes and platitudes thrust upon her perpetually.
If they had only had children, how different it might all have been! Pepys as a father would have furnished one more delight to the civilized world. Mrs. Pepys as a mother would have come in for some bad half hours, but she would have been more cherished and even more interesting. There is little evidence that Pepysregretted his childless state, or that his wife did. But we can guess how it was with her.
I have said that Pepys’s feelings towards his wife can be seen in minute detail all through the Diary. The study of them is profoundly curious. That he was an ardent lover before marriage is manifest from many casual observations, notably from one of the most high-wrought and passionate entries in the entire record. “But that which did please me beyond anything in the whole world was the wind-musique when the angel comes down, which is so sweet that it ravished me, and indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife.”
The calm daylight of matrimonial domesticity paled these raptures to a very considerable extent. It has done so in other cases. The dull wear of duns and debts, the friction of household management, an ill-cooked dinner, an ill-dusted study—these things may not shatter the foundations of love, but they do a little tarnish its fresh trim and new felicity. Yet, though the husband is no longer made “almost sick” by the lover’s rapturous longing, there are plenty of instances of a solid habit of affection, growing firmer and more enduring with the passage of years. When she is away on a visit, his heart is heavy for the absence of his dear wife, all things seem melancholy without her, and he is filled with satisfaction at her return. When she is ill, suddenly and violently ill, his anxiety and distress prove to him his great love for her, though, when the crisis is past, his incomparable candor adds, “God forgive me!I did find that I was most desirous to take my rest than to ease her, but there was nothing I could do to do her any good with.” When the world goes wrong and life seems nothing but toil and trouble, he turns to her and gets her to comfort him.
It is true that that relentless Diary has scenes as painful as they are curious, scenes in which the estimable naval secretary and friend of Newton and Evelyn comports himself after a fashion that would be disgraceful in any station of life. There are outbursts of jealousy and fits of temper, kickings of furniture and trinkets smashed in spite, abuse, blows, and nose and ear pullings of intolerable indignity. The fault is confessed and temporarily forgotten, “Last night I was very angry, and do think I did give her as much cause to be angry with me.” Then, some wretched trifle, an ill-timed visit, a shilling mis-spent, a foolish fashion followed, sets all awry again. I do not know where in literature to find a fiercer or more cutting scene of domestic infelicity than that of the tearing of the old love letters. Mrs. Pepys had written a remonstrance as to some phases of ill-treatment. “She now read it, and it was so piquant, and wrote in English, and most of it true, of the retiredness of her life, and how unpleasant it was; that being wrote in English, and so in danger of being met with and read by others, I was vexed at it, and desired her and then commanded her to tear it: when she desired to be excused, I forced it from her, and tore it, and withal took her other bundle of papers from her.... I pulled them out one by one and tore them all before her face, though it went against myheart to do it, she crying and desiring me not to do it, but such was my passion and trouble to see the letters of my love to her ... to be joyned with a paper of so much disgrace to me and dishonour, if it should have been found by anybody.”
Things like this, one would say, could never be forgotten. Yet they are. “After winter comes summer,” says the “Imitation,” “after the night the day, and after a storm a great calm.” Great calms came in the Pepys family also. “I home, and to writing, and heare my boy play on the lute, and a turne with my wife pleasantly in the garden by moonshine, my heart being in great peace, and so home to supper and to bed.” Truly, life is made up of delightful—and pitiful—contrasts.
The worst domestic troubles of the Pepyses were caused by the husband’s extreme susceptibility to feminine charm. “A strange slavery that I stand in to beauty,” he remarks, with that pleased amazement at himself which makes him so attractive.
The detail of these infatuations—how they were mildly resisted at first, and how they grew and developed to an extent hardly possible for such a man in a less scandalous age, how they were indulged, and then repented, and again indulged, and again repented—belongs to the history of Mr. Pepys—and of human nature. Mrs. Pepys knew little of them, though she divined much.
What does concern her is the very instructive fashion in which she gradually gained power over her husband by his infidelities themselves. She knew well that heloved her at heart. At any rate, she knew that he was tied to her by bonds of habit and circumstance which a man of his temperament could never shake off. Therefore, by the aid of jealousy and tears and scenes she learned that she could in time mould him to almost anything she wished. This experience begins with outsiders, with Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Knipp. A little well-placed anger—certainly not feigned—was found to accomplish wonders. “Which is pretty to see how my wife is come to convention with me, that whatever I do give to anybody else, I shall give her as much, which I am not much displeased with.” By the time the crisis of the maid, Deb Willett, had arrived, Mrs. Pepys had become past-mistress in the art of working on her husband’s sensibilities. Note that I do not mean that this was a coldly deliberate process; simply, that all the instinct of her outraged affection concentrated itself on energetic means of overcoming this foolish and recalcitrant male, and triumphed magnificently. Deb is wooed and forsaken and wooed again and banished. The man’s will is bent, and bent, and bent, till he comes right square down upon his knees: “Therefore I do, by the grace of God, promise never to offend her more, and did this night begin to pray to God upon my knees alone in my chamber, which God knows I cannot yet do heartily; but I hope God will give me the grace more and more every day to fear Him, and to be true to my poor wife.”
Even after this the symptoms recur, but milder, and in that pathetic blank stop which ends the Diary because of failing sight, the phrase “my amours to Debare past,” seems to leave the wife victorious, we hope permanently.
So, after we have known her for nine years in the closest intimacy, she steps out from us into great night. A few months later, still a young woman, she died; but she dies for us with the last line of her husband’s imperishable record. In that record it may be said, in a certain sense, that she is shown at the greatest possible disadvantage, as we may in part realize, if we consider what a similar record would have been, kept by herself. Yet even seen as her husband reports her, we feel that she had, with much of a woman’s weakness, much also of a woman’s charm.