Lay long, and very busy all the morning, at noon to the ‘Change, and thence to dinner to Sir G. Carteret’s, to talk upon the business of insuring our goods upon the Hambrough [ships]. Here a very fine, neat French dinner, without much cost, we being all alone with my Lady and one of the house with her.
Thence home and wrote letters, and then in the evening, by coach, with my wife and mother and Mercer, our usual tour by coach, and eat at the old house at Islington; but, Lord! to see how my mother found herself talk upon every object to think of old stories. Here I met with one that tells me that Jack Cole, my old schoolefellow, is dead and buried lately of a consumption, who was a great crony of mine.
So back again home, and there to my closet to write letters. Hear to my great trouble that our Hambrough ships, valued of the King’s goods and the merchants’ (though but little of the former) to 200,000l. [are lost]. By and by, about 11 at night, called into the garden by my Lady Pen and daughter, and there walked with them and my wife till almost twelve, and so in and closed my letters, and home to bed.
I am all alone with her letters
in the evening
her old talk upon every object
dead letters that call to my pen
so close
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 30 May 1665.