Chamber music
George Gale
The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Volume IX. Transcribed and edited by Robert Latham and William Mathews (G. Bell and Sons E8.50)
This is the last volume of text of this academically majestic edition of Pepys's diary ; the remaining tenth and eleventh volumes are a commentary and an index. Here, therefore, we have the last year and a half, 1668-9, of this record of a decade of a man's life, and of England's also. The transcribing and editing of the Pepys manuscript have already received the highest praise; and although it is sad that Professor Mathews died before the final publication of his work, it is happy that his co-transcriber and editor. Mr Robert Latham, Pepys Librarian at Magdalene, survives to see the completion of their joint task. It would be both foolish and presumptuous for any journalist, and for most academics, to attempt to criticise their transcribing and editing, and I have no intention of doing so.
But the quality of the editing does stand in the way of popular enjoyment. To pick a volume and to leaf through it is to be directed, whenever eyes fall to the footnotes or questions arise in the mind, to previous volumes, to the 'Methods of the Commentary' contained in the first volume, and to the Select Glossary at the end of each volume. There are two separate sets of footnotes, one referring to the text itself, the other being designed to help the reader to understand what is happening. Both sets appear to be immaculate. They also slow up the reader and, as far as the textual apparatus is concerned, to no purpose. The informative notes are, however, very full and useful, except when they direct us to other volumes.
Pepys wrote his diary in shorthand which, for the most part, is capable of direct rendering. Since the shorthand excluded spelling, and eschewed punctuation, the text we are given is in modern English. The shorthand was phonetic; and whenever Pepys came to record his more intimate sexual and other activities he went off into a private language —being a kind of dog's Latin, French and Spanish combined. This stuff, which is by no means the least interesting, is transcribed as the editors presumed it sounded. Put crudely, this means that whenever we get to the interesting bits, the text wanders off into Pepys's own private gibberish. Given the amount of footnotes we have, I think it might have been a charitable gesture, on the part of the editors, to have had a third set, putting into English what they understand Pepys to have been on about. It is not that the general drift is obscure, nor that the average intelligent reader will find much difficulty guessing what Pepys meant and did; but it would be nice to know rather than to guess, and much easier besides.
Apart from everything else, what we have here completed is the marvellous base for a popular edition of this masterpiece, the text made wholly explicit and the footnotes restricted to those which explain who is who and what is what. Were, however, this to be done, the resulting text, if more clear and easy to read, would be much less funny. Whenever Pepys jumps into his private language, the effect is undeniably comic:
. . I to my chamber, where I did read through L'eseholle des Filles; a lewd book, but what done 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 it, I burned it, so that it might not be among my books to my shame'-nor, indeed, is it to be found in the Pepys library at Magdalene.
Reading Pepys one is constantly reminded that the more things change, the more they remain the same. I find myself thinking how
modern he is, when he is not being modern at all, but rather universal. This is doubtless an exaggeration: the ancient Greeks would not have recognised Pepys as one of their own. But I think that any post-medieval marl or woman of European origins will find in Samuel Pepys someone of their own kind: and this is universal enough for me. We' nowadays, are on about the same sort of things that he was on about; his concerns are ours; his desires and devices also; he and we would have no difficulty understanding each other, if we should bump into eaell other in Whitehall, Fleet Street or Cheap' side: 'Up, and to the office, and there with W. Griffin talking about getting a place to build a coach-house or to hire one, which do now resolve to have, and do now declare it ; for it is plainly for my benefit for saving money.'
Pepys the diarist is a young man; (wentY" seven when he begins his diary, and thirtY. six when his weakening eyesight comPels him to end it. Although the present volunle' which records his failing eyesight, at titres reads like the concluding of a life, his mosi distinguished career lies ahead, with twt),, periods as secretary to the Admiralty allu, also, in 1684, the presidency of the RoYal Society. During the period of the Diary is an eager young man on the make, taking full advantage of the patronage of his rehr tive the Earl of Sandwich, fiddling a bit °Ati the side but no more than was expected, any in fact behaving with regard to the NOY with the greatest of efficiency. He is con' tinually at the office, with his clerks, check,' ing the accounts, concerned with the conch' tion of the ships, the admirals, the officers and the men of the fleet. He is continualhi' too, at the theatre and at the booksellers' and at Parliament and at the Court: intrigir ing, gossiping, speechifying, drinking, eat, ing, and generally (as he would put it) at it' 'Dined at home,' he tells us, of the last day recorded in the diary, 'and in the afternol by water to White-hall, calling by the We Michell's, where I have not been many a 0,, till just the other day; and now I met he' mother there and knew her husband to het out of town. And here yo did besar ella, htlit have not had opportunity para hazer wit, her as I would have offered if yo had had a' And thence another meeting with the Dull of York at White-hall with the Duke 0Y o( on yesterday's work.' It is a great misfortune that we known°, more, in such detail, of Pepys's life after 31, 1669. He lived until 1703, and his Mat',
or+ career lies ahead. But, equally, it is our go „ fortune that he wrote what he did, and tool; care that it should be preserved. Pepys is iS as interesting a character as Boswell, nor ,
his diary of as high a literary quality as 131°5.5 well's memorials; but its historical value far greater, its accuracy is remarkable, atif there is no other decade in our historY which one man has given us a clearer pictOree than the 1660s. What we are given, in edition of Pepys, is as near as we will ever ite to knowing how it was, in London the exactly.
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