Wheatley Henry Benjamin
Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In
CHAPTER XI.
MANNERS
“The king’s most faithful subjects we,
In’s service are not dull,
We drink to show our loyalty,
And make his coffers full.
Would all his subjects drink like us,
We’d make him richer far,
More powerful and more prosperous
Than all the Eastern monarchs are.”
Shadwell’s The Woman Captain.
NO passages in the “Diary” are more valuable than those from which we can gather some idea of the manners of the time in which Pepys lived. It is chiefly, in fact, on account of the pictures of the mode of life among the men and women of the middle classes portrayed in those passages that the book has attained its immense popularity. History instructs, while gossip charms, so that for hundreds who desire to learn the chronicle of events, thousands long to hear how their ordinary fellow creatures lived, what they ate, what they wore, and what they did.
Pepys liked good living, and he was careful to set down what he ate, so that we are able to judge of his taste. This is what he calls a “pretty dinner”—“a brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens and a jowl of salmon hot, for the first course; a tanzy and two neats’ tongues, and cheese the second.”310 A good calf’s head boiled with dumplings he thought an excellent dinner,311 and he was very proud of a dinner he gave to some friends, which consisted of “fricasee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of a lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts and all things mighty noble and to my great content.”312 He was very indignant when Sir W. Hickes gave him and his fellows “the meanest dinner (of beef, shoulder and umbles of venison, which he takes away from the keeper of the forest, and a few pigeons, and all in the meanest manner) that ever I did see, to the basest degree.”313 Pepys liked all kinds of pies, whether they contained fish or swan, but there was one pie in particular that was filled with such a pleasant variety of good things that he never tasted the like in all his life.314 On two several occasions he records his appreciation of a joint which sounds strange to modern ears—viz., boiled haunch of venison.315 At special seasons he was in the habit of partaking of the diet appropriate to the festival: thus on Shrove Tuesday he ate fritters,316 and at Christmas mince pies317 or plum porridge,318 plum pudding not having been at that time invented. The meat taken with these sweets was sometimes the orthodox beef, but it was more often something else, as on Christmas day, 1660, when it consisted of shoulder of mutton and chicken.
Breakfast was not formerly made an ordinary meal, but radishes were frequently taken with the morning draught. On May 2nd, 1660, Pepys had his breakfast of radishes in the Purser’s cabin of the “Naseby,” in accordance with the rule laid down by Muffet in his “Health’s Improvement” (1655), that they “procure appetite and help digestion;” which is still acted upon in Italy.
Ale-houses, mum-houses, and wine-houses abounded in all parts of London, and much money must have been spent in them. The charges seem to have been high, for Pepys relates how on one occasion the officers of the navy met the Commissioners of the Ordnance at the Dolphin Tavern, when the cost of their dinner was 34s. a man.319 We are not told how much Sir W. Batten, Sir W. Penn, and Pepys had to pay when they ordered their dinner at the Queen’s Head at Bow, and took their own meat with them from London.320
There is abundant evidence in the “Diary” of the prevalent habits of deep drinking, and Pepys himself evidently often took more than was good for him. Men were very generally unfit for much business after their early dinners; thus Pepys tells of his great speech at the bar of the House of Commons that it lasted so long that many of the members went out to dinner, and when they came back they were half drunk.321 Sir William Penn told an excellent story which exhibits well the habits of the time. Some gentlemen (?) drinking at a tavern blindfolded the drawer, and told him that the one he caught would pay the reckoning. All, however, managed to escape, and when the master of the house came up to see what was the matter, his man caught hold of him, thinking he was one of the gentlemen, and cried out that he must pay the reckoning.322 Various drinks are mentioned in the “Diary,” such as mum (an ale brewed with wheat), buttered ale (a mixture of beer, sugar, cinnamon, and butter), and lamb’s wool (a mixture of ale with sugar, nutmeg, and the pulp of roasted apples), among other doctored liquors. Such stuff as this does not indicate a refined taste, and the same may be said when we find that wine was also made up for vitiated palates. On June 10th, 1663, Pepys goes with three friends to the Half Moon Tavern, and buys some sugar on the way to mix with the wine. We read of Muscadel, and various kinds of sack, as Malago sack, raspberry sack, and sack posset, of Florence wine, and of Navarre wine. Rhine wines must have been popular at this time, if we may judge from the numerous Rhenish wine-houses spread about the town. Amongst Pepys’s papers was found a memorandum on the dangers England might experience in the event of a war with France. Lord Dartmouth proposed that we might ruin the French by forbidding their wines, “but that he considers, will never be observed with all our heat against France. We see that, rather than not drink their wine, we forget our interest against it, and play all the villanies and perjuries in the world to bring it in, because people will drink it, if it be to be had, at any rate.”323 What Lord Dartmouth thought to be impossible was practically effected by the Methuen treaty in 1703, after the signing of which French wines were driven out of the English market for many years by Spanish wines, and it was long thought patriotic to drink port.
Pepys liked to be in the fashion, and to wear a newly-introduced costume, although he was displeased when Lady Wright talked about the great happiness of “being in the fashion, and in variety of fashions in scorn of others that are not so, as citizens’ wives and country gentlewomen.”324 The Diary is full of references to new clothes, and Pepys never seems so happy as when priding himself upon his appearance and describing the beauties of velvet cloaks, silk coats, and gold buttons. In 1663, he found that his expenses had been somewhat too large, and that the increase had chiefly arisen from expenditure on clothes for himself and wife, although, as already remarked, it appears that Mrs. Pepys’s share was only £12, against her husband’s £55.325 In fact, our Diarist was at one time rather mean in regard to the money he allowed his wife, although afterwards he was more generous, and even gave £80 for a necklace of pearls which he presented to her.
One of the strangest attempts to fix a fashion was made by Charles the Second, who soon, however, tired of his own scheme. In 1661, John Evelyn advocated a particular kind of costume in a little book entitled “Tyrannus, or the Mode.” Whether the King took his idea from this book, or whether it originated in his own mind we cannot tell, but at all events, on the 17th of October, 1666, he declared to the Privy Council his “resolution of setting a fashion for clothes which he will never alter.” Pepys describes the costume in which Charles appeared on the 15th of October in the following words:—“A long cassock close to the body, of black cloth and pinked with white silk under it, and a coat over it, and the legs ruffled with black rib and like a pigeon’s leg, … a very fine and handsome garment.” Several of the courtiers offered heavy bets that Charles would not persist in his resolution of never altering this costume, and they were right, for very shortly afterwards it was abandoned. The object aimed at was to abolish the French fashion, which had caused great expense, but in order to thwart his brother of England’s purpose, the King of France ordered all his footmen to put on the English vests.326 This impertinence on the part of Louis XIV., which appears to have given Steele a hint for his story of Brunetta and Phillis in the “Spectator,” caused the discontinuance of the so-called Persian habit at the English Court.
There are occasional allusions in the “Diary” to female dress. Thus, on October 15th, 1666, Lady Carteret tells Pepys that the ladies are about to adopt a new fashion, and “wear short coats above their ancles,” in place of the long trains, which both the gossips thought “mighty graceful.” At another time Pepys was pleased to see “the young, pretty ladies dressed like men, in velvet coats, caps with ribands, and with laced bands, just like men.”327 Vizards or black masks appear to have come into general use, or rather were revived by the ladies about 1663. By wearing them women were able to sit out the most licentious play with unblushing face. We read that Pepys and his wife went to the Theatre Royal on June 12th of that year:—“Here I saw my Lord Falconbridge and his Lady, my Lady Mary Cromwell, who looks as well as I have known her, and well clad; but when the House began to fill she put on her vizard, and so kept it on all the play; which of late is become a great fashion among the ladies, which hides their whole face.” After the play Pepys and Mrs. Pepys went off to the Exchange to buy a vizard, so that the latter might appear in the fashion.
The custom of wearing the hat indoors is more than once alluded to in the “Diary,”328 and on one occasion Pepys was evidently much elated by the circumstance that he was in a position to wear his hat—“Here it was mighty strange to find myself sit here in Committee with my hat on, while Mr. Sherwin stood bare as a clerk, with his hat off to his Lord Ashly and the rest, but I thank God I think myself never a whit the better man for all that.”329 This practice, which still exists in the House of Commons, was once universal, and in the statutes of the Royal Society the right of addressing the meeting with his hat on was reserved to the president, the other members being expected to uncover on rising to speak. A few years after the above committee meeting, it became the fashion of the young “blades” to wear their hats cocked at the back of their heads.330 This obtained the name of the “Monmouth cock,” after the popular Duke of Monmouth, and according to the “Spectator,” it still lingered in the west of England among the country squires as late as 1711. “During our progress through the most western parts of the kingdom, we fancied ourselves in King Charles the Second’s reign, the people having made little variations in their dress since that time. The smartest of the country squires appear still in the Monmouth cock.”331
Gloves were then, as now, looked upon as an appropriate present to a lady, and Pepys often bought them for this purpose. On October 27th, 1666, he gave away several pairs of jessimy or jessemin gloves, as Autolycus says, “gloves as sweet as damask roses;” and on January 25th, 1668–69, he was vexed when his wife wanted him to buy two or three dozen perfumed gloves for her. Those who did not wear these useful coverings laid themselves open to remark, as we read of Wallington, a little fellow who sang an excellent bass, that he was “a poor fellow, a working goldsmith, that goes without gloves to his hands.”332 The use of muffs by men became common after the Restoration, and continued till Horace Walpole’s day, and even later. November, 1662, was a very cold month, and Pepys was glad to wear his wife’s last year’s muff, and to buy her a new one. The long hair worn by the cavaliers was superseded soon after the Restoration by the use of wigs. Pepys went on the 29th of August, 1663, to his barber’s to be trimmed, when he returned a periwig which had been sent for his approval, as he had not quite made up his mind to wear one, and “put it off for a while.” Very soon afterwards, however, he ordered one to be made for him;333 and then he had his hair cut off, which went against his inclination. The new wig cost three pounds, and the old hair was used to make another.334 This last only cost twenty-one shillings and sixpence to make up, and the peruque-maker promised that the two would last for two years.335 The Duke of York very soon followed the fashion set by his subordinate, and put on a wig for the first time on February 15th, 1663–4. These magnificent ornaments, which look so grand in the portraits, were very apt to get out of order, and on one occasion Pepys had to send his wig back to the barber’s to be cleansed of its nits. No wonder he was vexed at having had it sent to him in such a state.336 On May 30th, 1668, he came to an agreement with his barber to keep his wigs in good order for twenty shillings a year. It is remarkable that people did not return to the sensible fashion of wearing their own hair after the plague, when there must have been great dread of infection from this source. Pepys bought a wig at Westminster during the sickness, and was long afraid to wear it. He adds, “it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done, as to periwigs, for nobody will dare to buy any hair, for fear of the infection, that it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.”337
Before passing on to consider some other customs, a word should be said on the practice of wearing mourning. When the Duke of Gloucester died, it is related that the King wore purple, which was used as royal mourning. At the same time Mrs. Pepys spent £15 on mourning clothes for herself and husband.338 We are told how the whole family went into black on the death of the elder Mrs. Pepys,339 and we have very full and curious particulars of the funeral of Thomas Pepys. For this occasion Samuel had the soles of his shoes blacked, which seems a rather odd kind of mourning!340
The engagement between Philip Carteret and Lady Jemimah Montagu gave the Diarist considerable employment, and from the long account he has written on it we gather that he was very proud of such assistance as he was able to give. Carteret was a shy young man, and needed much instruction, as to how he should take the lady’s hand, and what he should do. The whole description is very droll, but too long to quote here. Pepys made the best of the affair, but he evidently thought his protégé a very insipid lover. The wedding took place on July 31st, 1665, the bride and bridegroom being in their old clothes, but Pepys was resplendent in a “new coloured suit and coat trimmed with gold buttons, and gold broad lace round his hands, very rich and fine.” This is the account of what occurred after supper:—“All of us to prayers as usual, and the young bride and bridegroom too; and so after prayers soberly to bed; only I got into the bridegroom’s chamber while he undressed himself, and there was very merry till he was called to the bride’s chamber, and into bed they went. I kissed the bride in bed, and so the curtains drawn with the greatest gravity that could be, and so good night. But the modesty and gravity of this business was so decent that it was to me, indeed, ten times more delightful than if it had been twenty times more merry and jovial.”
There are several allusions in the “Diary” to the custom of scrambling for ribbons and garters at weddings, and Pepys expresses himself as not pleased when favours were sent to others after Lord Hinchingbroke’s wedding, and he was overlooked.341 At this time wedding rings were not the plain and inelegant things they are now, but were frequently ornamented with precious stones, and almost invariably had a motto engraved upon them. Pepys’s aunt Wight was “mighty proud” of her wedding ring, which cost her twelve pounds, and had been lately set with diamonds.342
It is not necessary to remark that there was a considerable laxity of manners during the period with which we are now dealing, as this is pretty well known, but one or two passages in the “Diary” may, perhaps, be alluded to here. On one occasion Mrs. Turner, the wife of a serjeant-at-law, while dressing herself in her room by the fire, took occasion to show Pepys her leg, which she was very proud of, and which he affirms was the finest he had ever seen.343 At another time, Pepys went to Lady Batten’s, when he found her and several friends very merry in her chamber; Lady Penn flung him down upon the bed, and then herself and the others came down one after another upon him. He might well add, “and very merry we were.”344
This laxity of manners is invariably laid to the demoralizing effect of the Restoration, but it is evident from this portion of the “Diary,” which was written before that event, that it was as usual for men to visit ladies in their bedrooms before Charles II. “returned to take possession of his birthright,” as it was afterwards. Thus we read that on February 24th, 1659–60, Pepys took horse at Scotland Yard, and rode to Mr. Pierce, “who rose, and in a quarter of an hour, leaving his wife in bed (with whom Mr. Lucy, methought, was very free as she lay in bed); we both mounted and so set forth about seven of the clock.” This remark probably offended Lord Braybrooke’s modesty, for it appears for the first time in Mr. Mynors Bright’s edition.
There are several passages in the “Diary” which are of interest, as showing how our ancestors travelled. Although travelling by coach was a very slow operation, much ground could be got over in a short space of time on horseback. On the 6th of July, 1661, Pepys set out for Brampton about noon, and arrived there at nine o’clock at night; having ridden at the rate of about nine miles an hour, with allowance for stoppages for refreshment.
The first great improvement in coach-building was made soon after the Restoration, when glass-coaches were introduced. The Comte de Grammont did not approve of the coach made for the King, and therefore ordered from Paris an elegant and magnificent calash, which was greatly admired, and cost him two thousand louis.
There were some who did not appreciate the improved carriages, and were alive to the evils that were caused by the change. “Another pretty thing was my Lady Ashly’s speaking of the bad qualities of glass-coaches, among others the flying open of the doors upon any great shake; but another was that my Lady Peterborough being in her glass-coach with the glass up, and seeing a lady pass by in a coach whom she would salute, the glass was so clear that she thought it had been open, and so ran her head through the glass!”345
It is a curious instance of the survival of terms in popular language that certain carriages were styled glass-coaches even within living memory.
Although the hours kept by “society” in Charles II.’s reign were considerably earlier than those now adopted, and Pepys often went to bed by daylight,346 yet people did sit up very late sometimes. On the 9th of May, 1668, the House of Commons sat till five o’clock in the morning to discuss a difference that had arisen between them and the House of Lords. One night Pepys stayed at the office so late that it was nearly two o’clock before he got to bed,347 and at another time the servant got up at the same hour to do the week’s washing.348 The watchman perambulated the streets with his bell and called out the hours, so that when Pepys was sitting up to fill up the entries in the “Diary,” he often heard the cry “Past one of the clock, and a cold, frosty, windy morning,”349 or some similar information.
It is not easy to settle with any great accuracy the respective values of money at that time and at present, as many things were considerably cheaper, but others were dearer. Bab May said that £300 per annum was an ample income for a country gentlemen; a remark that was repeated by Marvell, and increased by him to £500. The gentry did not like this criticism, but it shows at least that money had a much greater purchasing power then than now. In the winter of 1666–67 the farmers were very unfortunate, and many were forced to become bankrupts, so that property previously bringing in £1,000350 suddenly became worth only £500. The wages of a cookmaid were £4 a year, which Pepys thought high,351 and a coach cost £53,352 but a beaver hat was charged as high as £4 5s.353 Twenty-five pounds was paid for a painted portrait, and £30 for a miniature, and £80 for a necklace of pearls. Cherries were sold at two shillings a pound,354 oranges at six shillings a dozen, and dinners at an ordinary varied from seven shillings to a guinea.
There are so many little items in the “Diary” which are of interest as illustrating old customs, some of which still exist, and others which have died out, that it would be quite impossible to allude here even to a fraction of them. One or two instances, therefore, gathered at random, must be sufficient. Pepys on several occasions mentions the custom of “beating the bounds” in the various parishes on Ascension Day or Holy Thursday, when a boy was in some cases beaten, or, as in Dorsetshire, tossed into a stream, in order to impress very forcibly upon his memory the locality of the parish boundaries. At one time he writes, “This day was kept a holy-day through the town; and it pleased me to see the little boys walk up and down in procession with their broomstaffs in their hands, as I had myself long ago gone,”355 and at another, “They talked with Mr. Mills about the meaning of this day, and the good uses of it; and how heretofore, and yet in several places, they do whip a boy at each place they stop at in their procession.”356 Allusion has already been made to the mixed motives that drew Pepys to church, and how he often attended more to the pretty faces in the congregation than to the words of the preacher. He had high authority for his conduct in the demeanour of the court, and he himself tells us how, while Bishop Morley (of Winchester) was preaching on the song of the angels, and reprehending the mistaken jollity of the court, the courtiers “all laugh in the chapel when he reflected on their ill actions and courses.”357
There is comparatively little in the “Diary” about the Nonconformists, although in the early part of his career Pepys was more favourable to their claims than to those of the conforming clergy. He was once induced to give five shillings to a parson among the fanatics, who said a long grace like a prayer, and was in great want, although he would willingly have done otherwise. His aunt James, “a poor, religious, well-meaning, good soul,” told him that the minister’s prayers had helped to cure him when he was cut for the stone.358
We have a curious peep into a rustic church which Pepys and his cousin Roger attended on the 4th of August, 1662: “At our coming in, the country people all rose with so much reverence; and when the parson begins, he begins ‘Right worshipful and dearly beloved,’ to us.”
There are several allusions in the “Diary” to various punishments in vogue at the time. In 1663, the parish of St. Olave’s was supplied with a new pair of stocks “very handsome,” and one Sunday, a poor boy who had been found in a drunken state by the constable, was led off “to handsel them.”359 It was formerly the custom to punish offenders on the spot where their crimes had been committed; thus, on February 18th, 1659–60, two soldiers were hanged in the Strand for their mutiny at Somerset House. The bodies of the criminals were frequently allowed to hang in some conspicuous spot until they rotted away; and on April 11th, 1661, Pepys and “Mrs. Anne” “rode under the man that hangs upon Shooter’s Hill, and a filthy sight it is to see how his flesh is shrunk to his bones.” London must have exhibited a ghastly appearance when the heads of traitors were stuck up on the city gates, on Temple Bar, Westminster Hall, and other public places. The heads and the limbs were covered with pitch, and remained in their elevated position for years, until in many cases they were blown down by the wind. Pepys once found the head of a traitor at the top of one of the turrets of Westminster Abbey.360 Some of Charles I.’s judges received an easier punishment. William Monson, the “degraded” Earl of Castlemaine, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Robert Wallop were sentenced to imprisonment for life, and to be drawn on sledges with ropes round their necks from the Tower to Tyburn and back, on the anniversary of the late King’s execution. Pepys met the three sledges on Tower Hill on the 27th of January, 1661–62.
If called upon in the character of a judge to sum up the case against the people of England in respect to their manners after the Restoration, I think it would be but fair to say that these were better than those of their rulers. It was not until after the Revolution, when the vices of Charles’s court had had time to pollute the children of the men who brought him back, that the lowest depths of immorality were reached.
