He was fond of music, could prick down a few notes for himself, and when his portrait was painted by Hales, was drawn holding in his hand the music which he had composed for a favourite passage in the Siege of Rhodes.[1] He was known to many of the players, and often asked them to dinner,—now and then not much to the satisfaction, as he tells us, of his wife. Mrs. Knep, of the King's House, and Joseph Harris of the Duke's (to both of whom I have already introduced the reader) were two of his especial favourites. The gossip and scandal of the green-room of Drury Lane and Lincoln's-Inn-Fields were in this way known to him, and what he failed to obtain behind the scenes he would learn from the orange-women at both houses.
Nell was in her sixteenth, and Mr. Pepys in his thirty-fourth year, when, on Monday, the 3rd of
- ↑ This hitherto unengraved portrait was bought by me at the sale, in 1848, of the pictures, &c., of the family of Pepys Cockerell. It was called by the auctioneer "portrait of a Musician," but is unquestionably the picture referred to by Pepys in the following passages of his Diary:—
"1666, March 17. To Hales's, and paid him £14 for the picture, and £1 5s. for the frame. This day I began to sit, and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture. He promises it shall be as good as my wife's, and I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.
"March 30. To Hales's, and there sat till almost quite dark upon working my gowne, which I hired to be drawn in; an Indian gowne.
"April 11. To Hales's, where there was nothing found to be done more to my picture, but the musique, which now pleases me mightily, it being painted true."
See also The Athenæum for 1848. Lord Braybrooke (Pepys, vol. iii. p. 178) doubts the likeness, but admits that the portrait answers the description.
