Claire Tomalin - Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

Claire Tomalin has worked in publishing and journalism all her life. She was literary editor first of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times, which she left in 1986. She is the author of The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, which won the Whitbread First Book Prize for 1974; Shelley and His World (reissued by Penguin in 1992); Katherine Mansfield: A Secret Life (1988), a biography of the modernist writer on whom she also based her 1991 play The Winter Wife; the highly acclaimed The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Teman and Charles Dickens, which won the 1990 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the NCR Book Award in 1991, as well as the Hawthornden Prize; Mrs Jordans Profession (1995), a study of the Regency actress; Jane Austen: A Life (1998); a collection of her literary journalism entitled Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decades (1999); and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, which won the Whitbread Biography Award and which went on to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for 2002. All her books are published by Penguin.

My first thanks go to the master and fellows of Magdalene College, Cambridge, for their hospitality and for allowing me the privilege of working in the Pepys Library. Richard Luckett, Pepys librarian, encouraged me from the start. Mrs Aude Fitzsimons, assistant librarian, has borne with my many prolonged visits and given me every sort of assistance; I have profited greatly by her kindness, and by the good advice and help of Dr Charles S. Knighton, deputy editor of the Pepys Library Catalogue.

Thanks to the Earl and Countess of Sandwich for support, help and encouragement; and to Brian Crichton for his generosity.

I am grateful to Robin Harcourt Williams, archivist at Hatfield House, for sparing a day to give me his advice and taking me on an instructive and enjoyable tour of the Woodhall area; also to Mrs Sally Timson of the Cottage, Woodhall Farm, Hatfield, for showing me her house; and to Mr H. W. Gray for answering my queries about St Etheldredas, Hatfield.

Lady McAlpine was good enough to allow me to visit the present house at Durdans, where Ray Rudman went to considerable trouble to give me information about the history of the place and previous houses there.

Hoares Bank kindly allowed me to examine and photocopy their records of Pepyss account with them.

Thanks to John Cronin, curator of Hinchingbrooke School, Huntingdon, for taking me over the building and the grounds, and to Mr and Mrs Julian Curtis for showing me the Pepys house at Brampton. Also to J. H. L. Puxley for showing me his family portraits and allowing them to be photographed.

Thanks to Sir Oliver Millar, GCVO, FBA, FSA, for help in tracking down portraits; to Dr Frances Harris for general guidance and especially for talking to me about John Evelyn; to Simon May, archivist at St Pauls School, for his help; to Nicolas Barker; to Mrs Rhona Mitchell, archivist of Christs Hospital; to Julian Mitchell,who sent me his paper on John Creeds brother Richard; to Robin Hyman for checking my account of the publishing history of the Diary, and for allowing plates from his Braybrooke edition to be photographed; to David Wickham, archivist of the Clothworkers Company; to Canon Graham Corneck of St Nicholas, Deptford; to Revd John Cowling of St Olave, Hart Street; to Nicholas Monck for making a new translation of Daniel Skinners Latin letter to Pepys; to Sheila Russell for information about Impington Manor; to Mrs Dagtoglou for sending me G. R. Balleines account of Sir George Carteret; to Robin Gibson for lending me his copy of the catalogue to the National Portrait Gallerys Pepys exhibition of 1970; to Ruth Eldridge and Ron Vernon at Chiddingstone Castle for their kind help in checking the details of the manuscript of Pepyss IOU to James II; and to Andrew Howard for showing me over 12 Buckingham Street.

Also to Professor Gordon Campbell, to Dr Timothy Graham, to Professor R. I. Page, to Christopher de Hamel and to Professor B. S. Capp, all of whom gave me advice and suggestions for further reading; and to Professor John Bossy for his elucidation of the topography of Salisbury Court.

On medical questions I have been advised by Dr Patrick French, FRCP, consultant in genito-urinary medicine, Mortimer Market Centre, London; also by Milo Keynes, who sent me his paper on Pepyss health; R. Goodwin, MA, Msc, FRCS, and H. N. Whitfield; and by the Real Tennis Club of Cambridge, where I was given the dimensions of the real tennis ball, which the stone removed from Pepys equalled in size.

I am grateful to the staff of the following libraries for their assistance: the Wellcome Library of Medical History, the Library of the Royal Society of London, the British Library, the London Library, the Bodleian Library, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the Public Record Office, the Guildhall Library, the National Portrait Gallery archives, the Liddle Hart archives held at Kings College, the London National Meteorological Library and in particular Ian MacGregor, library and archives services manager, who sent me Gordon Manleys weather charts for the seventeenth century; the Huntingdon County Record Office and Public Library, and the Hertfordshire Record Office.

As always, particular thanks to Tony Lacey, Charles Elliot and Donna Poppy for their questions, suggestions and help; also to Keith Taylor, Dinah Drazin, and to Diana Lecore, who made the index.

And finally to my husband, who first went to Huntingdon and Brampton with me, who has walked from Bermondsey to Greenwich and from Fleet Street to the Tower and back with me on a number of occasions, and who put up with my virtual disappearance into the seventeenth century for several years with patience and good humour.

The publisher would like to thank the following photographers, organizations and collections for their kind permission to reproduce the copyright material in this book:

Extracts from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews (copyright The Master, Fellows and Scholars of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Robert Latham and the Estate of William Matthews, 1983), are reproduced by permission of Peters Fraser and Dunlop on behalf of the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Magdalene College, Cambridge, the Estate of Robert Latham and the Estate of Lois Emery Matthews.

. View of St Pauls and the City from rural Islington, by Hollar, 1665. Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

. Detail of Milford Stairs, by Hollar, 1640s. Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

. Durdans House, Epsom, oil painting by Jacob Knyff, 1673. Berkeley Castle Will Trust. Photo: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art.

. Destruction of Cheapside Cross, 1643. Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

. The north-east view of Hinchingbrooke House, 1730. From The Victoria County History of Huntingdonshire, vol. II.

. Jemima Montagu, c. 1646. Earl of Sandwich 1943 Settlement.

. The young Edward Montagu, oil painting by Peter Lely, c. 1646. Earl of Sandwich 1943 Settlement. Photo: Roderick Field.

. Pepys House, Brampton. From The Victoria County History of Huntingdonshire, vol.III.

. Execution of the earl of Strafford on Tower Hill, 12 May 1641, by Hollar. Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

. Oliver Cromwell. Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.

. Execution of Charles I at Whitehall, 30 January 1649. Private collection. Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library.

. New Palace Yard looking towards Whitehall Palace, 1664. Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge.