Drinking Alone

Office, and thence with Sir William Batten and Sir William Pen to the parish church to find out a place where to build a seat or a gallery to sit in, and did find one which is to be done speedily. Hence with them to dinner at a tavern in Thames Street, where they were invited to a roasted haunch of venison and other very good victuals and company
Hence to Whitehall to the Privy Seal, but nothing to do. At night by land to my father’s, where I found my mother not very well. I did give her a pint of sack. My father came in, and Dr. T. Pepys, who talked with me in French about looking out for a place for him. But I found him a weak man, and speaks the worst French that ever I heard of one that had been so long beyond sea. Hence into Paul’s Churchyard and bought Barkley’s Argenis in Latin, and so home and to bed. I found at home that Captain Bun had sent me 4 dozen bottles of wine today. The King came back to Whitehall to-night.

Where to find good company?
My father’s a pint of sack
and I a weak sea.
I bark in Latin
at a dozen bottles of wine.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 24 August 1660.