Claire Tomalin: Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (Groot-Brittannië, 2002): 378 blz: Uitgeverij Alfred A. Knopf
Samuel
Pepys (1633-1703) wordt in Brits marinekringen herdacht als een man die
in zijn tijd (ongeveer 1665-1690) een belangrijke functie had bij de
marine en verschillende hervormingen heeft doorgevoerd. Maar bij het
grote publiek is Pepys vooral bekend als de schrijver van een omvangrijk
dagboek dat hij dagelijks heeft bijgehouden van 1 januari 1660 tot 31 mei 1669.
Het
dagboek staat bekend om zijn openhartigheid en vertelt ons veel over de
werkzaamheden van Pepys, maar ook over zijn huiselijk leven met zijn
vrouw Elizabeth en over zijn vele affaires met tal van vrouwen, waar
Elizabeth niets van wist.
Ik
heb ooit een driedelige versie van de dagboeken gekocht in Oxford en de
eerste 2 jaren uit het dagboek gelezen. Ook heb ik in het Nederlands
een uitgave met fragmenten uit het dagboek gelezen die is verschenen in
de serie Privé-domein.
Ik
vond de dagboeken niet bijster interessant, maar om meer te weten te
komen over het leven van Pepys heb ik het boek van Claire Tomalin
gelezen. Deze biografie is natuurlijk vooral gebaseerd op de dagboeken,
maar ook op tal van andere bronnen. Ik vind de biografie erg
onderhoudend en uitstekend leesbaar. Zeer geschikt als alternatief voor
of als complement bij de dagboeken van Pepys!
- Pepys was a good scholar, able to read Latin for pleasure all his life; and that very skill may have helped to leave his English free and uncluttered for the Diary, the language of life as opposed to the elaborately constructed formulations of the classroom and study.
Over het verwijderen van zijn niersteen:
-
The surgeon got to work. First he inserted a thin silver instrument,
the itinerarium, through the penis into the bladder to help position the
stone. Then he made the incision, about three inches long and a
finger's breadth from the line running between scrotum and anus, and
into the neck of the bladder, or just below it. The patient's face was
sponged as the incision was made. The stone was sought, found and
grasped with pincers; the more speedily it could be got out the better.
Once out, the wound was not stitched - it was thought best to let it
drain and cicatrize itself - but simply washed and covered with a
dressing, or even kept open at first with a small roll of soft cloth
known as a tent, dipped in egg white. A plaster of egg yolk, rose
vinegar and anointing oils was then applied.
- Hollier could be proud of his work, especially considering the size of Pepys's stone, described as "very great" by his medical colleagues; it was as big as a tennis ball, according to Evelyn, who saw it later.
Over het dagboek:
- It is clear that Pepys made up his mind from the start that each day was to have its entry. He kept to this plan, and when he was not able to write on the day he would catch up, as he often explains he is doing in the text, occasionally expressing his pleasure in the process.
- Pepys's Diary is from its first pages doing so many things at once that it can be daunting. It lists places visited and people encountered, without explaining where or who they are. It chronicles contemporary history: Londoners building bonfires to proclaim good riddance to a detested patliament, the ecstatic festivities accompanying the coronation of the restored king. It provides the first full and direct account ever of a man starting uncertainly on a professional career and finding to his own surprise, that work is one of the major pleasures of life. It supplies much of the detail of his working practice, and also of his daily domestic experience. It is full of music, theatre, sermons, paintings, books and scientific devices. It is a tale of ambition and acquisition, and money is one of its obsessive themes: how it is made, how borrowed and lent, how spent, how saved, how hidden. Money in all its forms runs through the pages, as pieces of gold and bags of silver, shiploads of spices and silks, bribes, wages, debts, loans, payments, inheritances, Exchequer tallies (hazelwood sticks on which the amount of every loan to the government was notched) and the first paper promissory notes. When the Diary starts, Pepys has hardly 25 pounds to his name; when it ends less that ten years later he has a fortune of 10,000 pounds.
- Sandwich had to explain to Pepys that it was not the salary that made a man rich, but the "opportunities of getting money while he is in the place". He appreciated the point as gold pieces, silver tankards, barrels of oysters and presents for Elizabeth came in.
- "My business is a delight to me," he wrote; and it "has taken me of from all my former delights." Again, "I find that two days' neglect of business doth give me more discontent in mind than ten times the pleasure thereof can repair again, be it what it will."
Een verslag van de pestuitbraak in het dagboek:
-
I having stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week, and of
them above 6000 of the plague, and little noise heard day nor night but
tolling of bells; till I could walk Lombard Street and not meet twenty
persons from one end to the other, and not fifty upon the Exchange; till
whole families (ten and twelve together) have been swept away; till my
very physican, Dr. Burnet, who undertook to secure me against any
infection ... died himself of the plague; till the nights (though much
lengthened) are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that
died the day before, people thereby constrained to borrow daylight for
that service; lastly, till I could find neither meat nor drink safe, the
butcheries being everywhere visited, my brewer's house shut up, and my
baker with his whole family dead of the plague. Yet, Madam, through
God's blessing and the good humours begot in my attendance upon our late
Amours [he means the recent wedding] your poor servant is in a perfect
state of health.
Naar aanleiding van de oorlog met de Nederlanders:
- Batten, much as he disliked him, sometimes pleased him with his seadog's turn of phrase: ""By God," says he, "I think the Devil shits Dutchmen.""
- While Elizabeth was alive, Pepys entertainments had been the theatre, shopping and making improvements to the house; the Royal Society meetings; walks and excursions on the river; reading and music, whether listening or making it himself: he had written in the Diary on a cheerless day that "music is the thing of the world that I love most, and all the pleasure almost that I can now take," and this remained true for him through good and bad times. There was also dining with friends and inviting them to the house, gossiping and pursuing women.
- Many of Pepys's virtues appear in these notes - his openmindedness, for instance, as he insists of the superiority of the diet of the Turkish navy, almost meatless and rich in water, oil, olives and rice, over the beef-and-beer-obsessed English. We see the genesis of what became the Navy List as he jots down the idea of a list of all captains, to be drawn up: he saw that proper list-making was an essential adjunct to discipline. He was also insistent on the importance of captains keeping proper journals of all voyages, which many simply did not bother to do. He broods on the education of officers ...
