Sympathetic exposure for the misunderstood doyen of diarists

Samuel Pepys: A Life By Stephen Coote(Hodder & Stoughton, #20) Reviewed by James Scott

PEPYS is to diarists what Shakespeare is to dramatists and Boswell is to biographers; the standard against whom all others must be measured. That said, he was no paragon. "To my mind Pepys is a mean little man," wrote Harold Nicolson, one of his 20th century successors. "Salacious in a grubby way; even in his peculations there was no magnificence. But he did stick to his office during the Plague which is more than most men did. It is some relief to reflect that to be a good diarist one must have a little snouty, sneaky mind."

Nicolson - who also possessed such a mind - had been reading the first volume of Sir Arthur Bryant's three-part biography of Pepys, published in 1947. The most recent biography is Richard Ollard's which appeared in 1974. That there has been little of significance in the intervening period is astonishing. Consequently, Pepys is woefully under-studied and misunderstood. Stephen Coote's breezy and unfussy book should send curious readers back to the diary, currently being reissued in 10 paperback volumes by HarperCollins.

Pepys was born in 1633 and died in 1703, thus witnessing a tumultuous era. He started his diary in 1660 and closed it in May, 1669, convinced he was going blind. His fear proved baseless but though he did start keeping a diary again it was never the same. The original diary was begun at a time when England was on the cusp of great change, political, social and religious, and Pepys was well- placed to observe it all. When he started the diary he was 26 years old, married with a maid and a house in London. He was "esteemed" rich but, in fact, was "very poor", with uncertain prospects. He diligently charts his rise in the world as Charles II returns from exile on the Continent after the demise of Cromwell. By the time he believes his eyes are beginning to fail, he considers himself a man of wealth and substance.

Throughout the diary, says Stephen Coote, runs the theme of Pepys's "growing sense that his identity as a man was firmly rooted in the means by which he earned his money". Like most men of the time who managed to survive and thrive, Pepys was adept at lining his pockets. As clerk of the acts to the Navy Board he was in a pivotal position to bestow patronage and profit from it.

He was not, though, a venal or a greedy man. Suffused with puritan guilt, his self interest had its limits. His genius was as a bureaucrat who was always on top of his brief. He was well- organised, intelligent, articulate, loyal to the King and hardworking. Having climbed the greasy pole the last thing he intended was to slide back down it with nothing to show for his labours.

Without the diary, however, Pepys would merit only a footnote in the history of the 17th century. But its discovery and publication in the 1820s in his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cambridge, made him its most vivid commentator. To read his accounts of the Plague and the Great Fire of London is to bring an age alive in all its muck and glaur. Writing in shorthand, he could capture scenes in a few memorable sentences. This, combined with a lack of self- consciousness, is what gives the diary its piquancy and constant freshness. Pepys may have written in code but given the care he took to preserve his work it's clear he knew that some day it would be unearthed and made public.

Coote is a sympathetic biographer but not uncensorious, which is how it should be. As a man typical of his age, Pepys had his unsavoury side, particularly in regard to women. Having married his wife Elizabeth when she was just 15, he soon tired of her and went in search of novel sexual experiences, the wincingly-painful removal of a kidney stone having rendered him infertile but not impotent. While his wife pined at home, he pressed himself on almost anyone in a skirt, including his domestic servants. True to form, he did not shirk from recounting these incidents but took the precaution of writing them down in a hilarious polyglot language which is easily translated. When, inevitably, his wife discovered his infidelity, her anger was molten. Once he awoke in the early hours of the morning to find her hovering over him brandishing red hot tongs. As ever, he managed somehow to talk her round, the mark of a charming man who led a charmed existence.

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