Friday 28 January 2011

Pepys

 Old St Pauls, destroyed by the Fire of London, by Thomas Wyck c 1673

I've been reading The Shorter Pepys for years - it sits beside my bed and I read it a month at at time, with gaps where something else takes my fancy. The diaries begin in 1660, just as Charles II comes to the throne after Cromwell's rule - frightening times, where anyone in public life would have good reason to tread carefully. Yet Pepys rarely alludes to the underlying tensions directly, instead describing the daily life of a hard working public servant whose main task is to provision the navy as it fights the Dutch. He never seems secure, and his life is a non-stop circuit of meetings and machinations in Whitehall, at his office, in Greenwich and Deptford, in people's houses and in coaches between the meetings: I long ago forgot who is who and have no idea whom he trusts and whom he doesn't.

Not that it matters - I love him for his unabashed desire to make money - you never know what might be round the corner - and to be well-regarded at court, and for his constant pleasure in friends, good food, music, books and the theatre.

Anyway, I've finally reached 1666. The plague has been running through London for months, ebbing and flowing, sometimes worrying Pepys, sometimes going unmentioned. So I knew the Great Fire must be on its way, but when? Finally, this week:


September
2 Lords Day. Some of our maids sitting up late last night to get things ready against our feast today. Jane called up, about 3 in the morning, to tell us of a great fire they saw in the City...

It's here! And Pepys gives a wonderful first hand account of the disorder, the fear, the speed of the spread of the flames:

... walked along Watling Street as well I could, every creature coming away laden with goods to save - and here and there sick people carried away in beds. Extraordinary good goods carried in carts and on backs. At last met my Lord Mayor in Canning Streete, like a man spent, with a handkerchief about his neck. To the King's message, he cried like a fainting woman, "Lord. what can I do? I am spent! People will not obey me. I have been pulling down  houses. But the fire overtakes us faster then we can do it."

He goes out in a boat on the Thames to see the fire better, and notes that among the boats carrying people's possessions, one in three has a virginall or two in it. He believes at first that his house - which he is the the middle of doing up, thoroughly modern man that he is - is safe, but then realises how far and fast the fire is spreading. So he moves most of his furniture to a friend's house away from the fire, and then - best touch of all, returns to bury in the garden his wine, his papers, and his parmesan.

Wonderful stuff!

For a quick daily Pepys fix try http://www.pepysdiary.com/

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