Up, and by water to White Hall, and there, with the Board, attended the Duke of York, and Sir Thomas Allen with us (who come to town yesterday); and it is resolved another fleete shall go to the Streights forthwith, and he command it. But his coming home is mighty hardly talked on by the merchants, for leaving their ships there to the mercy of the Turks: but of this more in my White-Booke. Thence out, and slipped out by water to Westminster Hall and there thought to have spoke with Mrs. Martin, but she was not there, nor at home. So back again, and with W. Hewer by coach home and to dinner, and then to the office, and out again with W. Hewer to the Excise-Office, and to several places; among others, to Mr. Faythorne’s, to have seen an instrument which he was said to have, for drawing perspectives, but he had it not: but here I did see his work-house, and the best things of his doing he had by him, and so to other places among others to Westminster Hall, and I took occasion to make a step to Mrs. Martin’s, the first time I have been with her since her husband went last to sea, which is I think a year since; but yo did now hazer con ella what I would, though she had ellos upon her, but yo did algo. But, Lord! to hear how sillily she tells the story of her sister Doll’s being a widow and lately brought to bed; and her husband, one Rowland Powell, drowned, that was at sea with her husband, but by chance dead at sea, cast away — when, God knows, she hath played the whore, and is sillily forced at this time, after she was brought to bed, to forge this story.
Thence calling at several places by the home, and there to the office, and then home to supper and to bed.
who shall go into
my book of thorns
which wing is best
to make the first and last
what land drowned at sea
is calling me home
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 9 April 1669.