THE DIARY OF JOHN EVELYN
Edited by E. S. de Beer
Everyman’s Library, £14.99
Does anyone still resolve to keep a diary at new year? If not, posterity will be the poorer. From Samuel Pepys to Anne Frank or Tony Benn’s audiotapes, those who record their ordinary days leave a truer history because of the smaller perspective.
John Evelyn (1620-1706) was the son of a long-established Surrey family and expected to live in the old way. But in 1649 Charles I was executed and Evelyn — a Royalist — knew that everything had changed. In voluntary exile, he corresponded with the future Charles II and learned about political manipulation.
Evelyn tried to live privately for his family and for art. After the death of Richard — his five-year-old first-born — he began to think about education. For the rest of his life, his concerns as a writer had to do with public issues, crossed with the personal, the philosophical and the artistic. In 1659 he produced A Character of England; in 1661 he wrote about air pollution; in 1662 his subject was modern engraving; in 1664 the planting of forests for shipbuilding, and, in Pomona, the making of cider. After the Fire of London in 1666 he held forth on the rebuilding of the City, on navigation, on vineyards and commerce.
Evelyn started to make diary notes in 1637 and took to writing in earnest in 1660. This diary is not risqué. Unlike that kept by his friend Pepys, this was for public consumption. Until 1684, Evelyn wrote about people in the news, factions, policies. After that he wrote on day-by-day things. But by then he was the order of the day.
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Evelyn’s life was mostly calm. He collected honours. He saw his grandchildren. But, in life, he was more than that, and more than his diary tells. In September 1665 the lascivious Pepys and the staid Evelyn attended the same dinner in town . . . where, according to Pepys, Evelyn “. . . did make us all die almost from laughing”.
What secrets did he tell then? And what did he withhold from his own famous diary?