PEPYS'S WARR DIARY.* NEARLY every parodist begins with " Tell
me not, in mournful numbers, Dinner is an empty dream, While one still can get cucumbers, Salmon, strawberries and cream ; " " I drove a golf ball into the air, And I conclude its still up there ; For neither Jones nor Smith nor Brown, Nor I, observed it coming down."
Then he goes on to the Rubaiyat and inevitably " has a dash at old Pepys." The present ingenious compounder of Pepysian simplicities with shrewd satire of his countrymen during the Great War is now having his third " dash " ; this volume covers the eighteen months which ended with the year 1918, and it is dedicated appropriately to Sir Douglas Haig.
The anonymous fabricator has so soaked himself in Pepys that one can fancy him knocking off a chapter with the assured speed of an experienced " leader "-writer, or of Mr. Charles Garviee, dictating two novels at once to two typists chosen for their abnormal concentration of mind. But easy writing, in the case of Saml. Pepys, Junr., does not " make damned hard reading "—except the inevitable summarized war news, which we have skipped with great satisfaction. We quote, without special selection :
" Up, and to meet a shamef all advertisement of the price of gals, how they will this qr. encrease it upon us by so much as 6d. the 1,000 ft. So it is a plain matter that the rogues care not if our victual be cooked, or our bodies washed, so they make their profit. Nor any help do I see for the nacion ; our governors indifferent and the whole left to ruin. . . . Speaking of the fall of Jerusalem on the fone, with Sir M. Levison, he allows it to be a good thing for us and for all the Jews ; but makes him, he says, to be a bigger fool than he had thought himself ; that he did, but five years since, refuse to join with his cosen Benjamin for building in Jerusalem a great now inn like Ritz's, Benjamin buying a bit of land for it by the Mount of Olives ; but he thought no money to be in it, and now curses himself. However, hearing these news, he do wire to Benjamin about the bit of land. So if anything come of it, he will put me into it on the same floor with them ; to my good content."
Pepys has his roving and piercing eye on Land Girls ; we see him, an Admiralty official, circumventing the " over-tax " by spreading " the £1,000 I had of Lane last year out of books " over three years—" which is a thing I had never thought of, I believe, but for my going to church : and I thank God for giving me such a thought, as I believe He did." Pepys quarrels with his wife, who
" did this morning wake me with calling Sammy ' ; and I going to her, says I am an old silly to suspect her with Major Marshall, he not a man fit that a woman should think of him beside a Pepys : only I must forgive her about Mistress Cripps. So I did and we kissed each other about it."
Samuel has a dismal day after his Armistice " binge "—he knew the process and the mood, though not the word. " Yesterday [November 12th] I went not abroad, having a naughty onsett of the sciatique, with some colick ; so lay till 2 post meridiem,
my wife beside me, and her head to swim she says."
Pretty Miss Walters tells Samuel the story of the shy young man who, in a general pause at a dinner-party, asks the Bishop's lady : Pray ma'am, did you ever try cooking in a camisole " '' the best, jest of it is the man not knowing what they laugh at."This book is capital light reading, and will be heartily enjoyed even by those who find the original Pepys a bore. It is even possible that some casual readers of this amusing and racy confection may be drawn by it to make the acquaintance of the real Samuel Pure.
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