Samuel Pepys: A Life, by Stephen Coote,

This particular book has an intriguing origin, in that its author originally came across the figure of Samuel Pepys while doing research for a book on the cynical English Restoration monarch King Charles II, only to find out so much information about the less familiar Samuel Pepys to make him worthy of further investigation and research. The same sort of interest appears to have led the historian David McCullough to write 1776 after having done a great deal of research on John Adams for his biography on that neglected president. While this particular book does appear to have a few cliches, which all authors (I suppose) are bound to engage in every now and then, such as the oft-repeated phrase that something was “not without its compensations.” Despite some use of cliche, though, which is probably unavoidable, this is a book that is easy to read and full of intriguing and not-well-understood details about the life of an important but often obscure character.

So, why should one care about Samuel Pepys anyway? The worth of Samuel Pepys extends into a wide variety of areas, and which one is most important to the reader will depend on their own interests. One claim to fame for this man is his origin as the son of a tailor whose ambition and education led to a great rise in position throughout the course of his life–he is a quintessential ambitious commoner, a man not too unlike myself. He also, in another similarity with me, was a nearly obsessive writer whose diary and elegant letters are among the best sources for an impossibly exciting life as an active man of letters in the mid-to-late 1600’s, whose range of acquaintances and friends includes just about every worthy naval figure, bureaucrat, political figure, and royal personage of his time. Pepys’ pivotal role in such diverse events as the establishment of British naval might, the Royal Society, and British restoration drama, as well as the Papist’s plot, the Stuart Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, and the Great Fire of London makes him a character in the most important incidents of his time. For those whose interests are a bit more dark, this particular book includes a lot of quoted references (perhaps too many) from his diary about his excessive womanizing, which jeopardized his marriage with a vastly younger woman (he then, apparently, made a secret second marriage with another “dear child” after his first wife died), as well as commentary about his corrupt dealings which helped him reach a position of great wealth and influence before he “went straight” as a self-righteously priggish royal bureaucrat in the mold of Turenne and other royalist servants of absolutist monarchs.

Whether one has an interest in military history or imperialism (which would be gratified by a look at the Anglo-Dutch Wars of Pepys’ time as well as the difficulties of the English presence in Tangier), has an interest in science or literature, or political history, or of Pepys as a man of his time, an elegant and sometimes corrupt man also deeply and sincerely devoted to order and public service, this book provides a rich glimpse of a fascinating and complicated person. If my own complications help me to appreciate him and his life’s work more than most would, there is enough in this book that would interest a wide variety of readers, as long as they are willing to take the time to examine the life of a man not very familiar to most modern readers. Given the importance of his life, those who appreciate English history in the late 1600’s would find much to ponder and muse on, with the hope (or fear) that perhaps their own lives may eventually be written about with the skill and canny eye of Stephen Coote. At least Samuel Pepys, for all his sins, does not come off nearly as badly as the bigoted Whigs who sought over and over to discredit him and his efforts to improve the British navy and serve the Stuart monarchs through highly dishonest and disreputable means. Defenders of the Whig Anglican order of English history are probably the only readers of this work who would find nothing to appeal to them, even if not all aspects of Pepys’ life were appealing themselves.