(Lord’s day). This morning I went to Sir W. Batten’s about going to Deptford to-morrow, and so eating some hog’s pudding of my Lady’s making, of the hog that I saw a fattening the other day at her house, he and I went to Church into our new gallery, the first time it was used, and it not being yet quite finished, there came after us Sir W. Pen, Mr. Davis, and his eldest son. There being no woman this day, we sat in the foremost pew, and behind us our servants, and I hope it will not always be so, it not being handsome for our servants to sit so equal with us.
This day also did Mr. Mills begin to read all the Common Prayer, which I was glad of.
Home to dinner, and then walked to Whitehall, it being very cold and foul and rainy weather. I found my Lord at home, and after giving him an account of some business, I returned and went to my father’s where I found my wife, and there we supped, and Dr. Thomas Pepys, who my wife told me after I was come home, that he had told my brother Thomas that he loved my wife so well that if she had a child he would never marry, but leave all that he had to my child, and after supper we walked home, my little boy carrying a link, and Will leading my wife.
So home and to prayers and to bed.
I should have said that before I got to my Lord’s this day I went to Mr. Fox’s at Whitehall, when I first saw his lady, formerly Mrs. Elizabeth Whittle, whom I had formerly a great opinion of, and did make an anagram or two upon her name when I was a boy. She proves a very fine lady, and mother to fine children.
To-day I agreed with Mr. Fox about my taking of the 4000l. of him that the King had given my Lord.
The hog, fattening, is
our common weather.
I found a home after
giving my wife
a child, a child.
And after supper, my ink
is a mother to greed.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 11 November 1660.