Up, and my wife still every day as ill as she is all night, will rise to see me out doors, telling me plainly that she dares not let me see the girle, and so I out to the office, where all the morning, and so home to dinner, where I found my wife mightily troubled again, more than ever, and she tells me that it is from her examining the girle and getting a confession now from her of all, even to the very tocando su thing with my hand — which do mightily trouble me, as not being able to foresee the consequences of it, as to our future peace together. So my wife would not go down to dinner, but I would dine in her chamber with her, and there after mollifying her as much as I could we were pretty quiet and eat, and by and by comes Mr. Hollier, and dines there by himself after we had dined, and he being gone, we to talk again, and she to be troubled, reproaching me with my unkindness and perjury, I having denied my ever kissing her. As also with all her old kindnesses to me, and my ill-using of her from the beginning, and the many temptations she hath refused out of faithfulness to me, whereof several she was particular in, and especially from my Lord Sandwich, by the sollicitation of Captain Ferrers, and then afterward the courtship of my Lord Hinchingbrooke, even to the trouble of his lady. All which I did acknowledge and was troubled for, and wept, and at last pretty good friends again, and so I to my office, and there late, and so home to supper with her, and so to bed, where after half-an-hour’s slumber she wakes me and cries out that she should never sleep more, and so kept raving till past midnight, that made me cry and weep heartily all the while for her, and troubled for what she reproached me with as before, and at last with new vows, and particularly that I would myself bid the girle be gone, and shew my dislike to her, which I will endeavour to perform, but with much trouble, and so this appeasing her, we to sleep as well as we could till morning.
doors confess all
to my hand
one of the many
temptations of faith
to and fro I lumber
and never go to sleep
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 10 November 1668.