This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar in lieu of one which Sir W. Batten had stopped up, and going down into my cellar to look I stepped into a great heap of turds by which I found that Mr. Turner’s house of office is full and comes into my cellar, which do trouble me, but I shall have it helped.
To my Lord’s by land, calling at several places about business, where I dined with my Lord and Lady; when he was very merry, and did talk very high how he would have a French cook, and a master of his horse, and his lady and child to wear black patches; which methought was strange, but he is become a perfect courtier; and, among other things, my Lady saying that she would have a good merchant for her daughter Jem., he answered, that he would rather see her with a pedlar’s pack at her back, so she married a gentleman, than she should marry a citizen.
This afternoon, going through London, and calling at Crowe’s the upholster’s, in Saint Bartholomew’s, I saw the limbs of some of our new traitors set upon Aldersgate, which was a sad sight to see; and a bloody week this and the last have been, there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered. Home, and after writing a letter to my uncle by the post, I went to bed.
I make a window into my cellar.
My cellar is full, a land where I have
a French cook and a horse—
black, but a perfect courtier.
My daughter would rather marry a crow.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 20 October 1660.