Water water

Sir W. Pen and I early to St. James’s by water, where Mr. Coventry, finding the Duke in bed, and not very well, we did not stay to speak with him, but to White Hall, and there took boat and down to Woolwich we went. In our way Mr. Coventry telling us how of late upon enquiry into the miscarriages of the Duke’s family, Mr. Biggs, his steward, is found very faulty, and is turned out of his employment. Then we fell to reading of a book which I saw the other day at my Lord Sandwich’s, intended for the late King, finely bound up, a treatise concerning the benefit the Hollanders make of our fishing, but whereas I expected great matters from it, I find it a very impertinent, and though some things good, yet so full of tautologies, that we were weary of it.
At Woolwich we mustered the yard, and then to the Hart to dinner, and then to the Rope-yard, where I did vex Sir W. Pen I know to appear so well acquainted, I thought better than he, in the business of hemp; thence to Deptford, and there looked over several businesses, and wakened the officers there; so walked to Redriffe, and thence, landing Sir W. Pen at the Tower, I to White Hall with Mr. Coventry, and so to my Lord Sandwich’s lodgings, but my Lord was not within, being at a ball this night with the King at my Lady Castlemaine’s at next door. But here to my trouble I hear that Mr. Moore is gone very sick to the Wardrobe this afternoon, which troubles me much both for his own sake and for mine, because of my law business that he does for me and also for my Lord’s matters. So hence by water, late as it was, to the Wardrobe, and there found him in a high fever, in bed, and much cast down by his being ill. So thought it not convenient to stay, but left him and walked home, and there weary went to supper, and then the barber came to me, and after he had done, to my office to set down my journall of this day, and so home and to bed.

water is a book
full of tautologies
weary to the ear

I wake in the night
on my waterbed
weary journal


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 6 October 1662.

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