To the Paynter’s and sat and had more of my picture done; but it do not please me, for I fear it will not be like me. At noon from thence to the Wardrobe, where dinner not being ready Mr. Moore and I to the Temple about my little business at Mr. Turner’s, and so back again, and dinner being half done I went in to my Lady, where my Lady Wright was at dinner with her, and all our talk about the great happiness that my Lady Wright says there is in being in the fashion and in variety of fashions, in scorn of others that are not so, as citizens’ wives and country gentlewomen, which though it did displease me enough, yet I said nothing to it. Thence by water to the office through bridge, being carried by him in oars that the other day rowed in a scull faster than my oars to the Towre, and I did give him 6d. At the office all the afternoon, and at night home to read in “Mare Clausum” till bedtime, and so to bed, but had a very bad night by dreams of my wife’s riding with me and her horse throwing her and breaking her leg, and then I dreamt that I had one of my testicles swelled, and I in such pain that I waked with it, and had a great deal of pain there a very great while till I fell asleep again, and such apprehension I had of it that when I rose and trussed up myself thinking that it had been no dream. Till in the daytime I found myself very well at ease, and remembered that I did dream so, and that Mr. Creed was with me, and that I did complain to him of it, and he said he had the same pain in his left that I had in my right testicle which pleased me much to remember.
Like noon in a temple,
our happiness is
a fashion, in scorn of others
that are not us.
I dream of a wing breaking,
dream of a rose
trussed up in
my left testicle.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 3 December 1661.