Double take

All the morning at the office. At noon with my wife and Pall to my father’s to dinner, where Dr. Thos. Pepys and my coz Snow and Joyce Norton. After dinner came The. Turner, and so I home with her to her mother, good woman, whom I had not seen through my great neglect this half year, but she would not be angry with me. Here I staid all the afternoon talking of the King’s being married, which is now the town talk, but I believe false.
In the evening Mrs. The. and Joyce took us all into the coach home, calling in Bishopsgate Street, thinking to have seen a new Harpsicon that she had a making there, but it was not done, and so we did not see it. Then to my home, where I made very much of her, and then she went home. Then my wife to Sir W. Batten’s, and there sat a while; he having yesterday sent my wife half-a-dozen pairs of gloves, and a pair of silk stockings and garters, for her Valentine’s gift.
Then home and to bed.

O my fat snow,
turn my great neglect to joy.
I have seen that I did not see
the home I made and the home I sat in,
a pair of gloves and a pair of stockings,
an art, her gift…


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 22 February 1660/61.

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