The Diary of Samuel Pepys

The final year is brief, partly on account of Pepys’s worsening eyesight, which forces him to bring the diary to a close in May.

The year begins in concord between Pepys and Elizabeth with a new allowance for her, one that is “more than ever she asked or expected” (509). There are still aftereffects from the Deb Willet affair, however. After Pepys goes “abroad” on business one morning, Elizabeth suspects that he was with Deb or another woman. That night, she comes to her husband’s bedside with hot tongs from the fireplace and threatens to pinch him with them. She soon softens, however, and the couple are at peace again. Pepys realizes that he should not go out without telling his wife where he is going. To that purpose, he agrees to take Will Hewer with him from now on as a guardian.

In a cabinet meeting at Whitehall, Pepys is pleased that the board seem to rely on him more than any other official for such things as granting ships and victualling (arranging for food provisions). 

Bab and Betty, two young relatives, come to stay with the Pepys’s for a while, during which time they attend plays and sightsee. On March 9 Pepys tries an unusual new drink: orange juice. On May Day, Pepys and his wife take a tour in the park in a fancy coach amid disappointingly rainy weather.

Pepys ends his diary quite abruptly on May 31 because his eyesight is failing him. He fears that keeping the diary as well as doing office work by candlelight has contributed to his eye strain. In the future he may have his servants write down diary entries for him in longhand, but in that case he will be able to put down “no more than is fit for them and all the world to know” (536). Pepys acknowledges that, in any case, his “amours to Deb. are past” and that his eye trouble hinders him “in almost all other pleasures” (536). Fully expecting to go blind, Pepys asks God for help in his predicament.

Pepys in fact never kept a private diary of this nature or length again, though he did compose several other diaries for official purposes. His eyes did recover to some degree, and he did not go blind as he had feared. (See: Key Figures for more information on Pepys’s later life.)