Steerage

Early to walk with Mr. Creed up and down the town, and it was in his and some others’ thoughts to have got me made free of the town, but the Mayor, it seems, unwilling, and so they could not do it.
Then to the payhouse, and there paid off the ship, and so to a short dinner, and then took coach, leaving Mrs. Hater there to stay with her husband’s friends, and we to Petersfield, having nothing more of trouble in all my journey, but the exceeding unmannerly and most epicure-like palate of Mr. Creed.
Here my wife and I lay in the room the Queen lately lay at her going into France.

Early to walk
up and down the ship—
here with nothing but the most
epicure-like going.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 3 May 1661.

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