Keeping up appearances

Up, and W. Batelier’s Frenchman, a perriwigg maker, comes and brings me a new one, which I liked and paid him for: a mighty genteel fellow. So to the office, where sat all the morning, and at noon home to dinner, and thence with wife and Deb. to Crow’s, and there did see some more beds; and we shall, I think, pitch upon a camlott one, when all is done. Thence sent them home, and I to Arundell House, where the first time we have met since the vacation, and not much company: but here much good discourse, and afterwards my Lord and others and I to the Devil tavern, and there eat and drank, and so late, with Mr. Colwell, home by coach; and at home took him with me, and there found my uncle Wight and aunt, and Woolly and his wife, and there supped, and mighty merry. And anon they gone, and Mrs. Turner staid, who was there also to talk of her husband’s business; and the truth is, I was the less pleased to talk with her, for that she hath not yet owned, in any fit manner of thanks, my late and principal service to her husband about his place, which I alone ought to have the thanks for, if they know as much as I do; but let it go: if they do not own it, I shall have it in my hand to teach them to do it. So to bed. This day word come for all the Principal Officers to bring them their patents, which I did in the afternoon, by leaving it at their office, but am troubled at what should be their design therein.

wig like a genteel crow
to eat with her husband

his let-go hand
his patent on ice

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 22 October 1668.

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