There is only one shadow on his felicity: music is costly. Completing the description of one of these enchanted evenings, he says:
Only the musique did not please me, they not being contented with less than 30s.[1]
Pepys does not like paying out money; in which particular he resembles many wealthy music-lovers of his time and our own. Nothing distresses him so much as giving money to an artist, as he ingenuously confesses:
Long with Mr. Berkenshaw in the morning at my musique practice, finishing my song of "Gaze not on Swans," in two parts, which pleases me well, and I did give him £5 for this month or five weeks that he hath taught me, which is a great deal of money and troubled me to part with it.[2]
So he contrives to quarrel with his teacher (in such a fashion that the quarrel seems to be the other's fault) so soon as he thinks that he has obtained from him all that he wanted.[3] And when Mr. Berkenshaw has fallen into the snare and broken off his relations with Pepys the latter delights in playing the airs which he has gently wormed out of Mr. Berkenshaw during his lessons:
I find them most incomparable songs as he has set them, of which I am not a little proud, because I am sure none in the world has them but myself, not so much as he himself that set them.[4]
When there is a question of defending his purse against an artist he has all the wisdom of the serpent. A performer on the viol comes to his house and plays for him "some very fine thing of his own." Pepys is careful not to compliment him too warmly:
