THE END OF PEPYS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3196, 26 September 1881, Page 4

THE END OF PEPYS.

Tho man who has smoked his pipe for half a century in a powder magazine finds himself at last the author and tho victim of a hideous disaster.' So with our pleasant minded Pepys and his peccadillos. All of a sudden, as he still trips dexterously enough among tbe dangers of a double-faced career, thinking no great evil, humming to himself the trillo, Fate takes the further conduct of that matter from his hands and brings him face to face with the consequences of his actß. For a man still, after so many years, the lover, although not the constant lover, of his wife —for a man, besides, who was so greatly careful of appearances —the revelations of his infidelities was a crushing blow. The tears that he shed, the indignities that ha endured, are not to be measured. A vulgar woman, and now justly incensed, Mrs Pepys saved him no detail of suffering. She was violent, threatening him with the tongs j she was careless of his honor, driving him to insult the mistress whom she had driven him to betray and discard ; worst of all, she was hopelessly inconsequent, in word and thought and deed, now lulling him with reconcilations, and anon flaming forth again with original inger. Pepys had not u«_ his wife well; he had wearied her with "jeftlousi ~ even while himself unfaithful ; '.;:■. '. .■ i her clothes and {.',(:■:• ■:'..'.*■".-<. -.v.:l-_ L-vUhiiiw both upon hinii. if ; ht biici iilnued iier in words ; lie lind b. :-h:*-. f'st at her in anger; he at once bir.oli" . her eyo ; and it is one of the oddest •particulars in fchut odd diary of his that, while the injury is referred to once in passing, there is no hint as to the occasion or the manner of the blow. But now, when he is now in the wrong, nothing can exceed the long-suffering affection of this impatient husband. While he was still sinning and still undiscovered, he seems not to have known a touch of penitence stronger than what might lead him to take his wife to the theatre, or for an airing, or to give her a new dress by way of compensation. Once found out, however, and he seems to himself to have lost all claim to decent usage. It is perhaps the strongest instance of his externality. His wife may do what she pleases, and though ho may groan, it wi)l never occur to him to blame her ; lie has no weapon left but tears and the most abject snbmission. We should perhaps have respected him more had he not given way so utterly above all, had he refused to write, under his life's dictation, an insulting letter to bis unhappy fellow-culprit, Miss Willett; but somehow I believe we like him better as _ was. The death of his wife, following so shortly after, must have stamped the impression of this episode upon his mind. For the remaining years of his long life wo have no diary to help us, and wo have seen already how little stress is to he laid upon the tenor of his correspondence; but what with the recollection of the catastrophe of his married life, what with tho natural influence of his advancing years and reputation, it seems not unlikely that the period of gallantry was at an end for Pepys; and it is beyond a doubt that he sat down at last to an honoured and agreeable old age among his books and music, the correspondent of Sir Isaac Newton, and, in one instance at least the poetical counsellor of Dryden. Through all this period that diary which contained the seciet memoirs of his life, with all its inconsistencies and escapades, bad been religiously preserved; nor, when he came to die, dose he appear to have provided for its destruction. So we may conceive him faithful to the end to all his dear and early memories j still mindful of Mrs Hely in the woods at Epsom ; still lighting at Islington for a cup of kindness to the dead j still, if he heard again that air that once bo much disturbed him, thrilling at the recollection of the love that bound him to hiawife. —Cornhill Magazine.