Lost archive

Up betimes, and with Sir W. Pen in his coach to Westminster to Sir G. Downing’s, but missed of him, and so we parted, I by water home, where busy all the morning, at noon dined at home, and after Book of Bai Zedinner to my office, where busy till come to by Lovett and his wife, who have brought me some sheets of paper varnished on one side, which lies very white and smooth and, I think, will do our business most exactly, and will come up to the use that I intended them for, and I am apt to believe will be an invention that will take in the world. I have made up a little book of it to give Sir W. Coventry to-morrow, and am very well pleased with it.
Home with them, and there find my aunt Wight with my wife come to take her leave of her, being going for the summer into the country; and there was also Mrs. Mary Batelier and her sister, newly come out of France, a black, very black woman, but mighty good-natured people both, as ever I saw. Here I made the black one sing a French song, which she did mighty innocently; and then Mrs. Lovett play on the lute, which she do very well; and then Mercer and I sang; and so, with great pleasure, I left them, having shewed them my chamber, and 1000l. in gold, which they wondered at, and given them sweetmeats, and shewn my aunt Wight my father’s picture, which she admires.
So I left them and to the office, where Mr. Moore come to me and talking of my Lord’s family business tells me that Mr. Sheply is ignorantly, we all believe, mistaken in his accounts above 700l. more than he can discharge himself of, which is a mighty misfortune, poor man, and may undo him, and yet every body believes that he do it most honestly. I am troubled for him very much.
He gone, I hard at the office till night, then home to supper and to bed.

I miss home
where the sheets lie white and smooth
in the little book
of my bed


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 9 July 1666.

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