Beachhead

Up pretty betimes, and after a little at my viall to my office, where we sat all the morning, and I got my bill among others for my carved work (which I expected to have paid for myself) signed at the table, and hope to get the money back again, though if the rest had not got it paid by the King, I never intended nor did desire to have him pay for my vanity. At noon to the Exchange, where among many merchants abut provisions for the navy; and so home to dinner, where I met Mr. Hunt, his wife and child, and dined with us very merry. And after dinner I to my office with Captain Hickes, who brought my wife some shells, very pretty. He gives me great informacion against the officers and men at Deptford; I find him a talking fellow, but believe much of what he says is true.
In the evening my brother John coming to me to complain that my wife seems to be discontented at his being here, and shows him great disrespect; so I took and walked with him in the garden, and discoursed long with him about my affairs, and how imprudent it is for my father and mother and him to take exceptions without great cause at my wife, considering how much it concerns them to keep her their friend and for my peace; not that I would ever be led by her to forget or desert them in the main, but yet she deserves to be pleased and complied with a little, considering the manner of life that I keep her to, and how convenient it were for me to have Brampton for her to be sent to when I have a mind or occasion to go abroad to Portsmouth or elsewhere about pleasure or business, when it will not be safe for me to leave her alone. So directed him how to behave himself to her, and gave him other counsel; and so to my office, where late.

the navy captain
brought some shells
to be with him in the desert

he deserves a little ring of life

and how convenient to have
a road to elsewhere leave him here


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 1 September 1663.

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