Sartorial

(Lord’s day). This morning I put on my best black cloth suit, trimmed with scarlett ribbon, very neat, with my cloake lined with velvett, and a new beaver, which altogether is very noble, with my black silk knit canons I bought a month ago.
I to church alone, my wife not going, and there I found my Lady Batten in a velvet gown, which vexed me that she should be in it before my wife, or that I am able to put her into one, but what cannot be, cannot be. However, when I came home I told my wife of it, and to see my weaknesse, I could on the sudden have found my heart to have offered her one, but second thoughts put it by, and indeed it would undo me to think of doing as Sir W. Batten and his Lady do, who has a good estate besides his office. A good dinner we had of boeuf a la mode, but not roasted so well as my wife used to do it. So after dinner I to the French Church, but that being too far begun I came back to St. Dunstan’s by six and heard a good sermon, and so home and to my office all the evening making up my accounts of this month, and blessed be God I have got up my crumb again to 770l., the most that ever I had yet, and good clothes a great many besides, which is a great mercy of God to me.
So home to supper and to bed.

I put on my best black
trimmed with black
silk on velvet gown

but O if I could have found my heart
that blessed crumb


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 29 November 1663.

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