(Lord’s day). In the morning to church, and my wife not being well, I went with Sir W. Batten home to dinner, my Lady being out of town, where there was Sir W. Pen, Captain Allen and his daughter Rebecca, and Mr. Hempson and his wife. After dinner to church all of us and had a very good sermon of a stranger, and so I and the young company to walk first to Graye’s Inn Walks, where great store of gallants, but above all the ladies that I there saw, or ever did see, Mrs. Frances Butler (Monsieur L’Impertinent’s sister) is the greatest beauty. Then we went to Islington, where at the great house I entertained them as well as I could, and so home with them, and so to my own home and to bed. Pall, who went this day to a child’s christening of Kate Joyce’s, staid out all night at my father’s, she not being well.
church after church
a stranger you
gray on her own
christening night
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 23 June 1661.