Up and was angry with my maid Hannah for keeping the house no better, it being more dirty now-a-days than ever it was while my whole family was together.
So to my office, whither Mr. Coventry came and Sir William Pen, and we sat all the morning. This day Mr. Coventry borrowed of me my manuscript of the Navy.
At noon I to the ‘Change, and meeting with Sir W. Warren, to a coffee-house, and there finished a contract with him for the office, and so parted, and I to my cozen Mary Joyce’s at a gossiping, where much company and good cheer. There was the King’s Falconer, that lives by Paul’s, and his wife, an ugly pusse, but brought him money. He speaking of the strength of hawkes, which will strike a fowle to the ground with that force that shall make the fowle rebound a great way from ground, which no force of man or art can do, but it was very pleasant to hear what reasons he and another, one Ballard, a rich man of the same Company of Leathersellers of which the Joyces are, did give for this. Ballard’s wife, a pretty and a very well-bred woman, I took occasion to kiss several times, and she to carve, drink, and show me great respect. After dinner to talk and laugh. I drank no wine, but sent for some water; the beer not being good. A fiddler was sent for, and there one Mrs. Lurkin, a neighbour, a good, and merry poor woman, but a very tall woman, did dance and show such tricks that made us all merry, but above all a daughter of Mr. Brumfield’s, black, but well-shaped and modest, did dance very well, which pleased me mightily. I begun the Duchess with her, but could not do it; but, however, I came off well enough, and made mighty much of her, kissing and leading her home, with her cozen Anthony and Kate Joyce (Kate being very handsome and well, that is, handsomely dressed to-day, and I grew mighty kind and familiar with her, and kissed her soundly, which she takes very well) to their house, and there I left them, having in our way, though nine o’clock at night, carried them into a puppet play in Lincolnes Inn Fields, where there was the story of Holofernes, and other clockwork, well done.
There was at this house today Mr. Lawrence, who did give the name, it seems, to my cozen Joyce’s child, Samuel, who is a very civil gentleman, and his wife a pretty woman, who, with Kate Joyce, were stewards of the feast to-day, and a double share cost for a man and a woman came to 16s., which I also would pay, though they would not by any means have had me do so. I walked home very well contented with this afternoon’s work, I thinking it convenient to keep in with the Joyces against a bad day, if I should have occasion to make use of them. So I walked home, and after a letter to my wife by the post and my father, I home to supper, and after a little talk with my brother to bed.
the cheer of hawks
a great way off
that familiar sound
in the east as I walk home
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 6 August 1663.