White fragility

Up by five o’clock, and while my man Will was getting himself ready to come up to me I took and played upon my lute a little.
So to dress myself, and to my office to prepare things against we meet this morning.
We sat long to-day, and had a great private business before us about contracting with Sir W. Rider, Mr. Cutler, and Captain Cocke, for 500 ton of hemp, which we went through, and I am to draw up the conditions.
Home to dinner, where I found Mr. Moore, and he and I cast up our accounts together and evened them, and then with the last chest of crusados to Alderman Backwell’s, by the same token his lady going to take coach stood in the shop, and having a gilded glassfull of perfumed comfits given her by Don Duarte de Silva, the Portugall merchant, that is come over with the Queen, I did offer at a taste, and so she poured some out into my hand, and, though good, yet pleased me the better coming from a pretty lady.
So home and at the office preparing papers and things, and indeed my head has not been so full of business a great while, and with so much pleasure, for I begin to see the pleasure it gives. God give me health. So to bed.

I ready myself for
a ride in rough conditions
with a chest of glass,
my hand leased
from a pretty lady
and a paper head so full of sin
I begin to see God.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 19 June 1662.

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