Fulmination

Up, and with them to the Lords at White Hall, where they do single me out to speake to and to hear, much to my content, and received their commands, particularly in several businesses. Thence by their order to the Attorney General’s about a new warrant for Captain Taylor which I shall carry for him to be Commissioner in spite of Sir W. Batten, and yet indeed it is not I, but the ability of the man, that makes the Duke and Mr. Coventry stand by their choice.
I to the ‘Change and there staid long doing business, and this day for certain newes is come that Teddiman hath brought in eighteen or twenty Dutchmen, merchants, their Bourdeaux fleete, and two men of warr to Portsmouth. And I had letters this afternoon, that three are brought into the Downes and Dover; so that the warr is begun: God give a good end to it!
After dinner at home all the afternoon busy, and at night with Sir W. Batten and Sir J. Minnes looking over the business of stating the accounts of the navy charge to my Lord Treasurer, where Sir J. Minnes’s paper served us in no stead almost, but was all false, and after I had done it with great pains, he being by, I am confident he understands not one word in it. At it till 10 at night almost.
Thence by coach to Sir Philip Warwicke’s, by his desire to have conferred with him, but he being in bed, I to White Hall to the Secretaries, and there wrote to Mr. Coventry, and so home by coach again, a fine clear moonshine night, but very cold.
Home to my office awhile, it being past 12 at night; and so to supper and to bed.

the received spit
of news in the mouth
War Moon


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 21 November 1664.

3 Replies to “Fulmination”

    1. Sure. The meaning hasn’t changed, and in any case, since he wrote in a version of shorthand, there was a certain arbitrariness in how much to modernize his spellings in the diary transcription. That said, every erasure poet makes his/her own rules, and mine are stricter than most. I generally won’t select scattered letters from nearby words to make a new word, for example, except in the case of compounds such as in+to, just because once you go down that road, it becomes too easy, and you lose most of the challenge of it in my opinion.

Leave a Reply to German N Dominguez (@GermanEneDe) Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.