A bit of the other

David Nokes

THE OTHER PEPYS by Vincent Brome Weidenfeld & Nicolson, f2D, pp. 343 PEPYS by Richard 011ard Sinclair Stevenson, f25, pp. 411 Considering his fondness for so many other furtive pleasures, it is ironic that Pepys should have believed it was keeping a diary that might make him go blind. His decision to abandon this debilitating habit at the age of 37 is not only a sad loss to literature; it also poses a tricky problem for his biographers. For ten years every Intimate detail of his life is chronicled in irresistible narcissistic detail. The Diary is a constant delight, with its unique blend of Pooterish posturing, domestic comedy, sexual confessions and ad hoc commentary on grand public events. But then, just as Pepys rises to public prominence, his private life disappears from view.

It might be hoped a book entitled The Other Pepys would concentrate on the later, lesser-known career of a man whose naval reforms almost succeeded in preventing the Protestant revolution of 1688. But Vincent Brome's aim is more modest. He offers us the familiar portrait, though with more warts and fewer frills. 'Most chroniclers of Pepys are partisan', he complains, and his book-jacket promises us a fearless exposure of 'the darker side' of Pepys's character. This is a considerable exaggeration. Brome does his best to pillory Pepys as a corrupt, time-serving hypocrite, sexual bully and wife-beater, but really his heart isn't in it. He is seduced, as all others have been, by the irrepressible zest, the self-mocking humour of even Pepys's most outrageously cavalier acts. On the same page where Brome castigates Pepys for treating his wife as `a second-class citizen' and for indulging in 'sordid' sexual encounters, he admits: 'It is impossible not to share his innocent glee'. He tries hard to condemn Pepys as a hypocrite, only to praise him a few pages later as 'the ever-honest Pepys'. He makes vain attempts to deny the power of Pepys's descriptions but is helpless to prevent his own narrative style catching something of Pepys's infectious delight in bizarre and intimate details. The coronation of Charles II, Brome asserts,

might have produced a flowering of Pepys's talent as a writer . . . but he retreated into relatively commonplace language.

In fact it is the absence of flowery writing which gives the Diary its enduring fascina- tion: Brome's inclusion of Pepys's aside that he felt 'so great a list to piss' that he was forced to leave the coronation ceremo- ny, acknowledges the constant comic delight produced by the insistent intrusion of private commonplaces into grand public events.

Victorian prejudices against Pepys's casual sexual adventures reappear in this biography translated into the language of modern political correctness.

David Galler

Lines for the Atomic Era

It's not so simple anymore.

There used to be one path into the wood, Although we understood Each generation paid the cost To make a different one than heretofore By which its children could get lost.

But in my day there have been so Many intersecting paths the wood Is almost gone for good, And children sulk incensed that they Must follow such a complex route to go A short distance through fiery day.

It was the exploitative element which made Pepys's behaviour unpleasant. He reserved his lust for lower-class women.

Yet even this class-conscious criticism is not original. In his 1991 biography of Pepys, Richard 011ard observes:

Servants, shopgirls, barmaids, prostitutes; there is a chilling prudence about the choice.

Indeed, reading 011ard's book, recently re-issued in a handsomely illustrated edi- tion, one is forced to question the 'other- ness' of The Other Pepys. Not only Brome's sentiments but his phrasing have similari- ties with 011ard's book, which Brome describes as too 'partisan' towards Pepys. Here is Brome, castigating Pepys's corrup- tion in office:

Incapable of freeing himself completely from his Puritan upbringing, his conscience struggled to discriminate between different shades of corruption. He was young, avid, ambitious, and the taste of easy money was not merely tempting, it became irresistible . . . Accepting money for goods which had never existed, or payment for seamen whose names were pure invention was for him the unacceptable face of Navy practice. However, forty gold pieces slipped under the counter in a glove did not outrage Pepys if the gift accompanied the supply of better and cheaper ships' rigging.

Here, for comparison, is 011ard:

His conscience, well developed by his Puritan upbringing, swelled within him . . . but there were inhibitions. Bribes, presents, call them what you will, are pleasant things to an impecunious young man with an appetite for enjoyment. Deliberate dishonesty such as charging for goods that had never been supplied or claiming pay and allowances for people who had never existed was one thing. But when . . a merchant had tendered for better quality masts beneath the going rate, should the King be denied the advantage of a contract with him just because the generous fellow had presented the Clerk of the Acts with forty gold pieces in a glove?

These are both splendid books (it would take a special dedication to dullness to produce a bad biography of Pepys) but the differences between them are slight. Despite Brome's best endeavours, The Other Pepys turns out to be very much the same Pepys as before. Readers of the Diary, though, may regret the inevitable exclusion of many wonderful details. One sad omission is the hilarious and revealing episode when Pepys buys a dirty book, L'Ecole des Filles, in plain binding for bed- time reading. I to my chamber, where I did read through L'Ecole des Files; a lewd book, but what doth me no wrong to read for information sake (but it did hazer my prick para stand all the while, and una vez to decharger); and after I had done ft, I burned it, that it might not be among my books to my shame. Though the book was consigned to the flames, Pepys's furtively pleasurable shame is scrupulously recorded in the Diary as glorious testimony to the chameleon instincts of this ever-honest hypocrite.