Implement

Up, but in some pain of the collique. I have of late taken too much cold by washing my feet and going in a thin silke waistcoate, without any other coate over it, and open-breasted, but I hope it will go over.
I did this morning (my father being to go away to-morrow) give my father some money to buy him a horse, and for other things to himself and my mother and sister, among them 20l., besides undertaking to pay for other things for them to about 3l., which the poor man takes with infinite kindnesse, and I do not thinke I can bestow it better. Thence by coach to St. James’s as usual to wait on the Duke of York, after having discoursed with Collonell Fitzgerald, whom I met in my way and he returned with me to Westminster, about paying him a sum of 700 and odd pounds, and he bids me defalk 25l. for myself, which is a very good thing; having done with the Duke I to the Exchequer and there after much ado do get my business quite over of the difficulty of breaking a great tally into little ones and so shall have it done tomorrow.
Thence to the Hall and with Mrs. Martin home and staid with her a while, and then away to the Swan and sent for a bit of meat and dined there, and thence to Faythorne, the picture-seller’s, and there chose two or three good Cutts to try to varnish, and so to Hales’s to see my father’s picture, which is now near finished and is very good, and here I staid and took a nap of an hour, thinking my father and wife would have come, but they did not; so I away home as fast as I could, fearing lest my father this day going abroad to see Mr. Honiwood at Major Russell’s might meet with any trouble, and so in great pain home; but to spite me, in Cheapside I met Mrs. Williams in a coach, and she called me, so I must needs ‘light and go along with her and poor Knipp (who is so big as she can tumble and looks-every day to lie down) as far as Paternoster Row, which I did do and there staid in Bennett’s shop with them, and was fearfull lest the people of the shop, knowing me, should aske after my father and give Mrs. Williams any knowledge of me to my disgrace.
Having seen them done there and accompanied them to Ludgate I ‘light and into my owne coach and home, where I find my father and wife had had no intent of coming at all to Hales’s. So I at home all the evening doing business, and at night in the garden (it having been these three or four days mighty hot weather) singing in the evening, and then home to supper and to bed.

some pain I have taken
to my breast
for infinite ink
a thorn of poor light


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 20 June 1666.

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