The Diary of Samuel Pepys

As the year begins, Pepys’s wife is “troubled” at his friendship with Mrs. Pierce and Mrs. Knepp, and she makes him promise not to see them anymore. Elizabeth’s suspicions of her husband’s relationships with other women will color the remainder of the book.

On New Year’s Pepys goes with Mr. Brisband to visit a gaming house and is dismayed at the “prophane, mad entertainment” (452) and the desperate behavior of the gamblers. Although “pressed hard” by Brisbane, he feels no temptation to gamble. Despite his love for food, music, and women, gambling holds no attraction for Pepys, perhaps because of the influence of the Puritan work ethic and his liking for frugality.

On January 21, Pepys’s cousin Kate Joyce’s husband, an innkeeper, is dying after having attempted suicide by drowning. Everyone thinks his reason for doing so was despair at his “great loss by the fire” (453). This incident shows a notable personal fallout from the Great Fire and has a notable economic consequence, detailed on Page 454: The innkeeper’s relatives fear that, if his death is judged to be suicide, then his property will fall to the king. However, Pepys intervenes with the king himself, who assures Pepys that the death will not count as suicide and estate will go to the innkeeper’s widow and children. This incident bears witness to Pepys’s desire to intervene to help friends and family.

On March 2 Pepys learns his sister Pall has married Mr. Jackson, “a plain young man, handsome enough for Pall” (456). Pepys is content that his troublesome sister is married off at last.

Pepys’s address to Parliament on March 5 serves as something of a climax for the Diary as a whole and a summit of his professional career. Pepys is tasked with giving a defense of the activities of his office against an attack by the Committee of Miscarriages. He approaches the day with misgivings and fortifies himself beforehand with some alcoholic drink. Pepys’s long speech is accounted a triumph of persuasion, and Pepys himself is called “another Cicero” by members of Parliament (463). Pepys prays God that this triumph may not go to his head and that he may do nothing to ruin it (463).

In June, Pepys and his wife set out on a tour through the countryside around Brampton, the Pepys family’s village. During the journey, they bathe in the famous curative waters at Bath.

Back home in London, Pepys’s wife cries because she has heard of her husband’s accompanying other women to the theater and going on outings with them.

Pepys’s eyesight has worsened to the point where he can barely stand to read a short letter. He consults with Dr. Turberville, an eye specialist, who decides to consider Pepys’s case carefully before prescribing anything.

On Sunday, October 25, the domestic tensions in the Pepys household come to a head when Elizabeth discovers her husband embracing and kissing Deb Willet. Elizabeth is shocked and angry. For Pepys, the incident constitutes “the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world” (495), and he is sorry both for his wife and for the harm he may have caused Deb’s good name. Pepys promises his wife “my true love to her” while “owning some indiscretions in what I did” (496) and returns to work troubled and distracted. On Elizabeth’s insistence, he agrees to release Deb from her service. To save Deb’s reputation, Pepys instructs her to deny that Pepys ever kissed her.

Deb leaves the Pepys’s employ, but Pepys, in addition to his remorse for what he did, still feels love for Deb. Pepys secretly goes to meet her in a coach, kisses her, and tells her “to have a care of her honour, and to fear God” (502). Back home, he tells Elizabeth a lie about where he has been.

The next day Elizabeth accuses her husband of having gone to Deb. Pepys confesses that he did, whereupon Elizabeth threatens to leave him or to reveal the affair between Pepys and Deb to the public. With Will Hewer acting as a go-between, Pepys, full of “sorrow and shame” (503), mollifies Elizabeth by promising never to see Deb again. He also promises Elizabeth, who announces that she has become a Catholic, to fall on his knees in prayer to God every night before bed.

By the beginning of December, Pepys is “mightily more at ease” and “more at peace,” though he still thinks “now and then of Deb” (505). On December 21 Pepys and Elizabeth go to see Macbeth at the Duke’s playhouse, where the king and court are present. Pepys notes that Elizabeth is as pretty as any of the other women present, and the king and the Duke of York agree. This scene rounds out the year and marks the reconciliation of Pepys and his wife.