<|entry|>
28 February 1661.
Early to wait on my Lord, and after a little talk with him I took boat at Whitehall for Redriffe, but in my way overtook Captain Cuttance and Teddiman in a boat and so ashore with them at Queenhithe, and so to a tavern with them to a barrel of oysters, and so away. Capt. Cuttance and I walked from Redriffe to Deptford, where I found both Sir Williams and Sir G. Carteret at Mr. Uthwayt’s, and there we dined, and notwithstanding my resolution, yet for want of other victualls, I did eat flesh this Lent, but am resolved to eat as little as I can. After dinner we went to Captain Bodilaw’s, and there made sale of many old stores by the candle, and good sport it was to see how from a small matter bid at first they would come to double and treble the price of things. After that Sir W. Pen and I and my Lady Batten and her daughter by land to Redriffe, staying a little at halfway house, and when we came to take boat, found Sir George, &c., to have staid with the barge a great while for us, which troubled us. Home and to bed. This month ends with two great secrets under dispute but yet known to very few: first, Who the King will marry; and What the meaning of this fleet is which we are now sheathing to set out for the southward. Most think against Algier against the Turk, or to the East Indys against the Dutch who, we hear, are setting out a great fleet thither.

March 1st. All the morning at the office. Dined at home only upon fish, and Mr. Shepley and Tom Hater with me. After dinner Mr. Shepley and I in private talking about my Lord’s intentions to go speedily into the country, but to what end we know not. We fear he is to go to sea with this fleet now preparing. But we wish that he could get his L4000 per annum settled before he do go. Then he and I walked into London, he to the Wardrobe and I to Whitefryars, and saw “The Bondman” acted; an excellent play and well done. But above all that ever I saw, Betterton do the Bond man the best. Then to my father’s and found my mother ill. After staying a while with them, I went home and sat up late, spending my thoughts how to get money to bear me out in my great expense at the Coronacion, against which all provide, and scaffolds setting up in every street. I had many designs in my head to get some, but know not which will take. To bed.

2d. Early with Mr. Moore about Sir Paul Neale’s’ business with my uncle and other things all the morning. Dined with him at Mr. Crew’s, and after dinner I went to the Theatre, where I found so few people (which is strange, and the reason I did not know) that I went out again, and so to Salsbury Court, where the house as full as could be; and it seems it was a new play, “The Queen’s Maske,” wherein there are some good humours: among others, a good jeer to the old story of the Siege of Troy, making it to be a common country tale. But above all it was strange to see so little a boy as that was to act Cupid, which is one of the greatest parts in it. Then home and to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
3 March 1661.
(Lord’s day): Mr. Woodcocke preached at our church a very good sermon upon the imaginacions of the thoughts of man’s heart being only evil. So home, where being told that my Lord had sent for me I went, and got there to dine with my Lord, who is to go into the country tomorrow. I did give up the mortgage made to me by Sir R. Parkhurst for L2,000. In the Abby all the afternoon. Then at Mr. Pierces the surgeon, where Shepley and I supped. So to my Lord’s, who comes in late and tells us how news is come to-day of Mazarin’s being dead, which is very great news and of great consequence.----I lay tonight with Mr. Shepley here, because of my Lord’s going to-morrow.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
8 March 1661.
All the morning at the office. At noon Sir W. Batten, Col. Slingsby and I by coach to the Tower, to Sir John Robinson’s, to dinner; where great good cheer. High company; among others the Duchess of Albemarle, who is ever a plain homely dowdy. After dinner, to drink all the afternoon. Towards night the Duchess and ladies went away. Then we set to it again till it was very late. And at last came in Sir William Wale, almost fuddled; and because I was set between him and another, only to keep them from talking and spoiling the company (as we did to others), he fell out with the Lieutenant of the Tower; but with much ado we made him under stand his error, and then all quiet. And so he carried Sir William Batten and I home again in his coach, and so I almost overcome with drink went to bed. I was much contented to ride in such state into the Tower, and be received among such high company, while Mr. Mount, my Lady Duchess’s gentleman usher, stood waiting at table, whom I ever thought a man so much above me in all respects; also to hear the discourse of so many high Cavaliers of things past. It was a great content and joy to me.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
16 March 1661.
Early at Sir Wm. Pen’s, and there before Mr. Turner did reconcile the business of the purveyance between us two. Then to Whitehall to my Lord’s, and dined with him, and so to Whitefriars and saw “The Spanish Curate,” in which I had no great content. So home, and was very much troubled that Will. staid out late, and went to bed early, intending not to let him come in, but by and by he comes and I did let him in, and he did tell me that he was at Guildhall helping to pay off the seamen, and cast the books late. Which since I found to be true. So to sleep, being in bed when he came.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
21 January 1914.
1 am in the sitting-room downstairs. The wind howls outside, but here it is so warm and pleasant. It looks like a real room where real people live. My sewing-basket is on the table: under the bookcase are poked J.'s old house shoes. The black chair, half in shadow, looks as if a happy person had sprawled there. We had roast mutton and onion sauce and baked rice for dinner. It sounds right. I have run the ribbons through my underclothes with a hair-pin in the good home way. But my anxious heart is eating up my body, eating up my nerves, eating up my London brain. I feel this poison slowly filling my veins — every particle becoming slowly tainted. ... I am never, never calm, never for an instant. I remember years ago saying I wished I were one of those happy people who can suffer so far and then collapse or become exhausted. But I am just the opposite. The more I suffer, the more of fiery energy I feel to bear it.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|mansfield|>
22 January 1914.
Weather worse than ever. At tea-time I surprised myself by breaking down. I simply felt for a moment overcome with anguish and came upstairs and put my head on the black cushion. My longing for cities engrosses me.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
9 February 1914.
It is difficult for me to attempt a critical valuation of Katherine Mansfield's work. All my life I was involved in it. I believed in it, published it, and for one brief moment even printed it with my own hands. And now, and always, it is and will be impossible for me to be wholly detached from it. I can only say that her work seems to me to be of a finer and purer kind than that of her contemporaries. It is more spontaneous, more vivid, more delicate and more beautiful. Katherine Mansfield responded more completely to life than any writer I have known, and the effect of that more complete response is in her work.

Her affinities are rather with the English poets than the English prose-writers. There is no English prose-writer to whom she can be related. The revolution which she made in the art of short-story in England was altogether personal. Many writers have attempted to carry on her work; not one has come within a measurable distance of success. Her secret died with her. And of the many critics who have tried to define the quality in her work which makes it so inimitable, every one has been compelled to give up the attempt in despair. It is noticeable, however, that the most wholehearted admiration her work has received comes preeminently from the most distinguished short-story writers we have in England — H. G. Wells, John Galsworthy, Walter de la Mare, H. M. Tomlinson, Stacy Aumonier, Barry Pain, Ethel Colburn Mayne. These practitioners of the art, with one voice, salute her as
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
[Prompt: What are you working on, and how does it go?]
27 June 1661.
To my father’s, and with him to Mr. Starling’s to drink our morning draft, and there I told him how I would have him speak to my uncle Robert, when he comes thither, concerning my buying of land, that I could pay ready money L600 and the rest by L150 per annum, to make up as much as will buy L50 per annum, which I do, though I not worth above L500 ready money, that he may think me to be a greater saver than I am. Here I took my leave of my father, who is going this morning to my uncle upon my aunt’s letter this week that he is not well and so needs my father’s help. At noon home, and then with my Lady Batten, Mrs. Rebecca Allen, Mrs. Thompson, &c., two coaches of us, we went and saw “Bartholomew Fayre” acted very well, and so home again and staid at Sir W. Batten’s late, and so home to bed. This day Mr. Holden sent me a bever, which cost me L4 5s.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
22 July 1661.
Up by three, and going by four on my way to London; but the day proves very cold, so that having put on no stockings but thread ones under my boots, I was fain at Bigglesworth to buy a pair of coarse woollen ones, and put them on. So by degrees till I come to Hatfield before twelve o’clock, where I had a very good dinner with my hostess, at my Lord of Salisbury’s Inn, and after dinner though weary I walked all alone to the Vineyard, which is now a very beautiful place again; and coming back I met with Mr. Looker, my Lord’s gardener (a friend of Mr. Eglin’s), who showed me the house, the chappell with brave pictures, and, above all, the gardens, such as I never saw in all my life; nor so good flowers, nor so great gooseberrys, as big as nutmegs. Back to the inn, and drank with him, and so to horse again, and with much ado got to London, and set him up at Smithfield; so called at my uncle Fenner’s, my mother’s, my Lady’s, and so home, in all which I found all things as well as I could expect. So weary and to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
25 July 1661.
This morning came my box of papers from Brampton of all my uncle’s papers, which will now set me at work enough. At noon I went to the Exchange, where I met my uncle Wight, and found him so discontented about my father (whether that he takes it ill that he has not been acquainted with things, or whether he takes it ill that he has nothing left him, I cannot tell), for which I am much troubled, and so staid not long to talk with him. Thence to my mother’s, where I found my wife and my aunt Bell and Mrs. Ramsey, and great store of tattle there was between the old women and my mother, who thinks that there is, God knows what fallen to her, which makes me mad, but it was not a proper time to speak to her of it, and so I went away with Mr. Moore, and he and I to the Theatre, and saw “The Jovial Crew,” the first time I saw it, and indeed it is as merry and the most innocent play that ever I saw, and well performed. From thence home, and wrote to my father and so to bed. Full of thoughts to think of the trouble that we shall go through before we come to see what will remain to us of all our expectations.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
7 August 1661.
Called up at three o’clock, and was a-horseback by four; and as I was eating my breakfast I saw a man riding by that rode a little way upon the road with me last night; and he being going with venison in his pan-yards to London, I called him in and did give him his breakfast with me, and so we went together all the way. At Hatfield we bayted and walked into the great house through all the courts; and I would fain have stolen a pretty dog that followed me, but I could not, which troubled me. To horse again, and by degrees with much ado got to London, where I found all well at home and at my father’s and my Lady’s, but no news yet from my Lord where he is. At my Lady’s (whither I went with Dean Fuller, who came to my house to see me just as I was come home) I met with Mr. Moore, who told me at what a loss he was for me, for to-morrow is a Seal day at the Privy Seal, and it being my month, I am to wait upon my Lord Roberts, Lord Privy Seal, at the Seal. Home and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
24 July 1662.
Up early this morning sending the things to the carrier’s, and my boy, who goes to-day, though his mistress do not till next Monday. All the morning at the office, Sir W. Batten being come to town last night. I hear, to my great content, that my Lord Sandwich is safe landed in France. Dined at our chamber, where W. Bowyer with us, and after much simple talk with him, I left him, and to my office, where all the afternoon busy till 9 at night, among other things improving my late experiment at Woolwich about hemp. So home and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
9 February 1883.
My brother-in-law is at present holding an exhibition of Claude Monet’s work--ten pictures painted at Antibes between February and May. It appears that it is extraordinarily beautiful. Have you ever read the life of Luther? It is necessary to do this in order to be able to understand Cranach, Holbein and Dürer. He and his powerful personality are the high light of the Renaissance. If ever we happened to be in the Louvre together I should very much like to see the Primitives with you. At the Louvre my greatest love is, of course, the Dutch school, Rembrandt above all, whom I studied so much in the past. Then Potter. Upon a surface from about four to six metres he gives you a white stallion, neighing passionately and desperately, with a dark and stormy sky above it, and the animal sadly isolated upon a pale green infinity of moist meadow land. Altogether there are glories to be found in these Dutchmen, which can be compared with nothing else.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
[Prompt: What are you working on, and how does it go?]
1 October 1886.
MORE LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER

During the journey I thought just as often of you as of the new country through which I was travelling, and I said to myself, that later on you would perhaps come here frequently. It seems to me almost impossible to work in Paris, if one has not got at least a haven of refuge, where one can rest and recover one’s calm and one’s self-reliance. Otherwise one must become quite stupefied.

Before I reached Tarascon I saw a beautiful landscape: mighty yellow rocks with remarkably complicated lines and imposing forms; in the narrow coves between them there were a number of small round trees standing in rows, and to judge from their grey-green foliage they must have been lemon trees.

Here in Arles the ground is a magnificent red colour and is planted with vineyards. The background of the hills is of a delicate mauve, and many a stretch of the country lying under the snow, together with the white peaks, against a sky as luminous as the snow itself, looked like the winter landscape of the Japanese.

For the present I do not find living as inexpensive here as I hoped it would be; but--I have finished three studies--a feat which would probably have been impossible in Paris just now.

As for the Impressionists, I should think it right and proper if they were introduced into England if not directly through you, at least through your agent.

It seems to me as if my blood were beginning to circulate a little more actively. As this was not the case during the latter part of my time in Paris, I literally could not hold out any longer.

I was hoping to be able to paint a beautiful blue, and I do not yet despair of doing so; for in Marseilles one ought surely to be able to obtain the raw materials first hand. I should like to procure the sort of blue that Ziem paints, which is stronger and more decided than that of other painters.

The studies I now have are: “An Old Woman of Arles,” “A Snow Landscape,” “A Piece of the Street with a Pork-Butcher’s Shop.” The women here are really beautiful. I say this in all sincerity. On the other hand, the Arles Museum is appalling, and it is such a piece of humbug that it would be much more at home in Tarascon. I have also seen a museum of antiquities--the latter were genuine.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
27 September 1666.
A very furious blowing night all the night; and my mind still mightily perplexed with dreams, and burning the rest of the town, and waking in much pain for the fleete. Up, and with my wife by coach as far as the Temple, and there she to the mercer’s again, and I to look out Penny, my tailor, to speak for a cloak and cassock for my brother, who is coming to town; and I will have him in a canonical dress, that he may be the fitter to go abroad with me. I then to the Exchequer, and there, among other things, spoke to Mr. Falconbridge about his girle I heard sing at Nonsuch, and took him and some other ‘Chequer men to the Sun Taverne, and there spent 2s. 6d. upon them, and he sent for the girle, and she hath a pretty way of singing, but hath almost forgot for want of practice. She is poor in clothes, and not bred to any carriage, but will be soon taught all, and if Mercer do not come again, I think we may have her upon better terms, and breed her to what we please. Thence to Sir W. Coventry’s, and there dined with him and Sir W. Batten, the Lieutenant of the Tower, and Mr. Thin, a pretty gentleman, going to Gottenburgh. Having dined, Sir W. Coventry, Sir W. Batten, and I walked into his closet to consider of some things more to be done in a list to be given to the Parliament of all our ships, and time of entry and discharge. Sir W. Coventry seems to think they will soon be weary of the business, and fall quietly into the giving the King what is fit. This he hopes. Thence I by coach home to the office, and there intending a meeting, but nobody being there but myself and Sir J. Minnes, who is worse than nothing, I did not answer any body, but kept to my business in the office till night, and then Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen to me, and thence to Sir W. Batten’s, and eat a barrel of oysters I did give them, and so home, and to bed. I have this evening discoursed with W. Hewer about Mercer, I having a mind to have her again; and I am vexed to hear him say that she hath no mind to come again, though her mother hath. No newes of the fleete yet, but that they went by Dover on the 25th towards the Gunfleete, but whether the Dutch be yet abroad, or no, we hear not. De Ruyter is not dead, but like to do well. Most think that the gross of the French fleete are gone home again.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
11 October 1921.
I keep walking and walking round this letter, treading on my toes and with my tail in the air; I don't know where to settle. There's so much to say and the day is so fine. Well, here goes, darling.

The journey to Geneva took no time. My watch seemed to be racing the train. We arrived some time after one, and I went and sat on a green velvet chair while L.M. saw to things. I suppose we had a long

wait there; it did not seem long. Ever since early morning those mountains that I remembered from last time had been there — huge, glittering, with snow like silver light on their tops. It was absolutely windless, and though the air was cold, it was cold like spring. In fact (perhaps you realise I am putting a terrific curb on myself) it was delicious. Only to breathe was enough. Then we got into an omnibus train, and it waddled slowly round the lake, stopping at every tiny station. Germans were in the carriage; in fact, I was embedded in Germans, huge ones — Vater und die Mama und Hanse. Every time we saw a lilac-bush, they all cried Schon! This was very oldworld. There was also a notice in the carriage to say that the company had thoughtfully provided a cabinet. This they read aloud — first, Vater, then die Mama and then little Hanse.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
16 November 1921.
We arrived at Clarens just as the station clock (which was a cuckoo clock: that seems to me awfully touching, doesn't it to you?) struck seven, and a motor-car, like a coffee-mill, flew round and round the fields to Baugy. Oh dear, you realize I'm just telling you facts. The embroidery I'll have to leave for now. The hotel is simply admirable so far. Too clean. Spick is not the word, nor is span. Even the sprays of white lilac in my room were fresh from the laundry. I have two rooms and a huge balcony. And so many mountains that I haven't even begun to climb them yet. They are superb. The views from the windows, Betsy, over fields, little mushroom-like chalets, lake, trees,

Montana

and then mountains, are overwhelming. So is the green velvet and flesh-pink satin suite in the salon, with copper jugs for ornaments and a picture on the wall called Jugendidyll. More of this later.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
25 October 1662.
Up and to the office, and there with Mr. Coventry sat all the morning, only we two, the rest being absent or sick. Dined at home with my wife upon a good dish of neats’ feet and mustard, of which I made a good meal. All the afternoon alone at my office and among my workmen, who (I mean the joyners) have even ended my dining room, and will be very handsome and to my full content. In the evening at my office about one business or another, and so home and to bed, with my mind every day more and more quiet since I come to follow my business, and shall be very happy indeed when the trouble of my house is over.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
26 July 1665.
Up, and after doing a little business, down to Deptford with Sir W. Batten, and there left him, and I to Greenwich to the Park, where I hear the King and Duke are come by water this morn from Hampton Court. They asked me several questions. The King mightily pleased with his new buildings there. I followed them to Castle’s ship in building, and there, met Sir W. Batten, and thence to Sir G. Carteret’s, where all the morning with them; they not having any but the Duke of Monmouth, and Sir W. Killigrew, and one gentleman, and a page more. Great variety of talk, and was often led to speak to the King and Duke. By and by they to dinner, and all to dinner and sat down to the King saving myself, which, though I could not in modesty expect, yet, God forgive my pride! I was sorry I was there, that Sir W. Batten should say that he could sit down where I could not, though he had twenty times more reason than I, but this was my pride and folly. I down and walked with Mr. Castle, who told me the design of Ford and Rider to oppose and do all the hurt they can to Captain Taylor in his new ship “The London,” and how it comes, and that they are a couple of false persons, which I believe, and withal that he himself is a knave too. He and I by and by to dinner mighty nobly, and the King having dined, he come down, and I went in the barge with him, I sitting at the door. Down to Woolwich (and there I just saw and kissed my wife, and saw some of her painting, which is very curious; and away again to the King) and back again with him in the barge, hearing him and the Duke talk, and seeing and observing their manner of discourse. And God forgive me! though I admire them with all the duty possible, yet the more a man considers and observes them, the less he finds of difference between them and other men, though (blessed be God!) they are both princes of great nobleness and spirits. The barge put me into another boat that come to our side, Mr. Holder with a bag of gold to the Duke, and so they away and I home to the office. The Duke of Monmouth is the most skittish leaping gallant that ever I saw, always in action, vaulting or leaping, or clambering. Thence mighty full of the honour of this day, I took coach and to Kate Joyce’s, but she not within, but spoke with Anthony, who tells me he likes well of my proposal for Pall to Harman, but I fear that less than L500 will not be taken, and that I shall not be able to give, though I did not say so to him. After a little other discourse and the sad news of the death of so many in the parish of the plague, forty last night, the bell always going, I back to the Exchange, where I went up and sat talking with my beauty, Mrs. Batelier, a great while, who is indeed one of the finest women I ever saw in my life. After buying some small matter, I home, and there to the office and saw Sir J. Minnes now come from Portsmouth, I home to set my Journall for these four days in order, they being four days of as great content and honour and pleasure to me as ever I hope to live or desire, or think any body else can live. For methinks if a man would but reflect upon this, and think that all these things are ordered by God Almighty to make me contented, and even this very marriage now on foot is one of the things intended to find me content in, in my life and matter of mirth, methinks it should make one mightily more satisfied in the world than he is. This day poor Robin Shaw at Backewell’s died, and Backewell himself now in Flanders. The King himself asked about Shaw, and being told he was dead, said he was very sorry for it. The sicknesse is got into our parish this week, and is got, indeed, every where; so that I begin to think of setting things in order, which I pray God enable me to put both as to soul and body.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
8 June 1660.
Out early, took horses at Deale. I troubled much with the King’s gittar, and Fairbrother, the rogue that I intrusted with the carrying of it on foot, whom I thought I had lost. Col. Dixwell’s horse taken by a soldier and delivered to my Lord, and by him to me to carry to London. Came to Canterbury, dined there. I saw the minster and the remains of Becket’s tomb. To Sittiligborne and Rochester. At Chatham and Rochester the ships and bridge. Mr. Hetly’s mistake about dinner. Come to Gravesend. A good handsome wench I kissed, the first that I have seen a great while. Supped with my Lord, drank late below with Penrose, the Captain. To bed late, having first laid out all my things against to-morrow to put myself in a walking garb. Weary and hot to bed to Mr. Moore.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
17 June 1660.
(Lord’s day). Lay long abed. To Mr. Mossum’s; a good sermon. This day the organs did begin to play at White Hall before the King.----Dined at my father’s. After dinner to Mr. Mossum’s again, and so in the garden, and heard Chippell’s father preach, that was Page to the Protector, and just by the window that I stood at sat Mrs. Butler, the great beauty. After sermon to my Lord. Mr. Edward and I into Gray’s Inn walks, and saw many beauties. So to my father’s, where Mr. Cook, W. Bowyer, and my coz Roger Wharton supped and to bed.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
13 July 1660.
Up early, the first day that I put on my black camlett coat with silver buttons. To Mr. Spong, whom I found in his night-down writing of my patent, and he had done as far as he could “for that &c.” by 8 o’clock. It being done, we carried it to Worcester House to the Chancellor, where Mr. Kipps (a strange providence that he should now be in a condition to do me a kindness, which I never thought him capable of doing for me), got me the Chancellor’s recepi to my bill; and so carried it to Mr. Beale for a dockett; but he was very angry, and unwilling to do it, because he said it was ill writ (because I had got it writ by another hand, and not by him); but by much importunity I got Mr. Spong to go to his office and make an end of my patent; and in the mean time Mr. Beale to be preparing my dockett, which being done, I did give him two pieces, after which it was strange how civil and tractable he was to me. From thence I went to the Navy office, where we despatched much business, and resolved of the houses for the Officers and Commissioners, which I was glad of, and I got leave to have a door made me into the leads. From thence, much troubled in mind about my patent, I went to Mr. Beale again, who had now finished my patent and made it ready for the Seal, about an hour after I went to meet him at the Chancellor’s. So I went away towards Westminster, and in my way met with Mr. Spong, and went with him to Mr. Lilly and ate some bread and cheese, and drank with him, who still would be giving me council of getting my patent out, for fear of another change, and my Lord Montagu’s fall. After that to Worcester House, where by Mr. Kipps’s means, and my pressing in General Montagu’s name to the Chancellor, I did, beyond all expectation, get my seal passed; and while it was doing in one room, I was forced to keep Sir G. Carteret (who by chance met me there, ignorant of my business) in talk, while it was a doing. Went home and brought my wife with me into London, and some money, with which I paid Mr. Beale L9 in all, and took my patent of him and went to my wife again, whom I had left in a coach at the door of Hinde Court, and presented her with my patent at which she was overjoyed; so to the Navy office, and showed her my house, and were both mightily pleased at all things there, and so to my business. So home with her, leaving her at her mother’s door. I to my Lord’s, where I dispatched an order for a ship to fetch Sir R. Honywood home, for which I got two pieces of my Lady Honywood by young Mr. Powell. Late writing letters; and great doings of music at the next house, which was Whally’s; the King and Dukes there with Madame Palmer,

a pretty woman that they have a fancy to, to make her husband a cuckold. Here at the old door that did go into his lodgings, my Lord, I, and W. Howe, did stand listening a great while to the music. After that home to bed. This day I should have been at Guildhall to have borne witness for my brother Hawly against Black Collar, but I could not, at which I was troubled. To bed with the greatest quiet of mind that I have had a great while, having ate nothing but a bit of bread and cheese at Lilly’s to-day, and a bit of bread and butter after I was a-bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
[Prompt: Write until something true appears.]
15 March 1666.
Lay till it was full time to rise, it being eight o’clock, and so to the office and there sat till almost three o’clock and then to dinner, and after dinner (my wife and Mercer and Mrs. Barbary being gone to Hales’s before), I and my cozen Anthony Joyce, who come on purpose to dinner with me, and he and I to discourse of our proposition of marriage between Pall and Harman, and upon discourse he and I to Harman’s house and took him to a taverne hard by, and we to discourse of our business, and I offered L500, and he declares most ingenuously that his trade is not to be trusted on, that he however needs no money, but would have her money bestowed on her, which I like well, he saying that he would adventure 2 or L300 with her. I like him as a most good-natured, and discreet man, and, I believe, very cunning. We come to this conclusion for us to meete one another the next weeke, and then we hope to come to some end, for I did declare myself well satisfied with the match. Thence to Hales’s, where I met my wife and people; and do find the picture, above all things, a most pretty picture, and mighty like my wife; and I asked him his price: he says L14, and the truth is, I think he do deserve it. Thence toward London and home, and I to the office, where I did much, and betimes to bed, having had of late so little sleep, and there slept
<|/entry|><|entry|>
16 March 1666.
Till 7 this morning. Up and all the morning about the Victualler’s business, passing his account. At noon to the ‘Change, and did several businesses, and thence to the Crowne behind the ‘Change and dined with my Lord Bruncker and Captain Cocke and Fenn, and Madam Williams, who without question must be my Lord’s wife, and else she could not follow him wherever he goes and kisse and use him publiquely as she do. Thence to the office, where Sir W. Pen and I made an end of the Victualler’s business, and thence abroad about several businesses, and so in the evening back again, and anon called on by Mr. Povy, and he and I staid together in my chamber till 12 at night ending our reckonings and giving him tallys for all I was to pay him and so parted, and I to make good my Journall for two or three days, and begun it till I come to the other side, where I have scratched so much, for, for want of sleep, I begun to write idle and from the purpose. So forced to breake off, and to bed.--
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|maclane|>
8 January 1917.
A crucible of my own making
It is the edge of a somber July night in this Butte-Montana.

The sky is overcast. The nearer mountains are gray-melancholy.

And at this point I meet Me face to face.

I am Mary MacLane: of no importance to the wide bright world and dearly and damnably important to Me.

Face to face I look at Me with some hatred, with despair and with great intentness.

I put Me in a crucible of my own making and set it in the flaming trivial Inferno of my mind. And I assay thus:

I am rare--I am in some ways exquisite.

I am pagan within and without.

I am vain and shallow and false.

I am a specialized being, deeply myself.

I am of woman-sex and most things that go with that, with some other pointes.

I am dynamic but devasted, laid waste in spirit.

I’m like a leopard and I’m like a poet and I’m like a religieuse and I’m like an outlaw.

I have a potent weird sense of humor--a saving and a demoralizing grace.

I have brain, cerebration--not powerful but fine and of a remarkable quality.

I am scornful-tempered and I am brave.

I am slender in body and someway fragile and firm-fleshed and sweet.

I am oddly a fool and a strange complex liar and a spiritual vagabond.

I am strong, individual in my falseness: wavering, faint, fanciful in my truth.

I am eternally self-conscious but sincere in it.

I am ultra-modern, very old-fashioned: savagely incongruous.

I am young, but not very young.

I am wistful--I am infamous.

In brief, I am a human being.

I am presciently and analytically egotistic, with some arresting dead-feeling genius.

And were I not so tensely tiredly sane I would say that I am mad.

So assayed I begin to write this book of myself, to show to myself in detail the woman who is inside me. It may or it mayn’t show also a type, a universal Eve-old woman. If it is so it is not my purport. I sing only the Ego and the individual.

So does in secret each man and woman and child who breathes, but is afraid to sing it aloud. And mostly none knows it is that he does sing. But it is the only strength of each. A bishop serving truly and tirelessly the poor of his diocese serves a strong vanity and ideal of the Ego in himself. A starving sculptor who lives in and for his own dreams is an Egotist equally with the bishop. And both are Egotists equally with me.

Egotist, not egoist, is my word: it and not the idealized one is the ‘winged word.’

It is made of glow and gleam and splendor, that Ego. I would be its votary.

So I write me this book of Me--my Soul, my Heart, my sentient Body, my magic Mind: their potentialities and contradictions.

--there is a Self in each human one which lives and has its sweet vain someway-frightful being not in depths and not in surfaces but Just Beneath The Skin. It is the Self one keeps for oneself alone. It is the Essence of soul and bones. It is the slyest subtlest thing in human scope. It is the loneliest: tragically lonely. It is long, long isolation--beautiful, terrifying, barbarous, shameful, trivial to points of madness, ever-present, infinitely intriguing to oneself, passionately hidden: hidden forever and forever--

It is my aim to write out that in the pages of this Me-book: no depths save as they come up and touch that, no surfaces save as they sink skin-deep. Only the flat unglowing bloody Self Just Beneath My Skin.

I shall fail in it, partly because my writing skill is unequal to some nicenesses in the task, but mostly because I am not very honest even with myself.

I’ll come someway near it.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
3 May 1669.
Up, and by coach to my Lord Brouncker’s, where Sir G. Carteret did meet Sir J. Minnes and me, to discourse upon Mr. Deering’s business, who was directed, in the time of the war, to provide provisions at Hamburgh, by Sir G. Carteret’s direction; and now G. Carteret is afeard to own it, it being done without written order. But by our meeting we do all begin to recollect enough to preserve Mr. Deering, I think, which, poor silly man! I shall be glad of, it being too much he should suffer for endeavouring to serve us. Thence to St. James’s, where the Duke of York was playing in the Pell Mell; and so he called me to him most part of the time that he played, which was an hour, and talked alone to me; and, among other things, tells me how the King will not yet be got to name anybody in the room of Pen, but puts it off for three or four days; from whence he do collect that they are brewing something for the Navy, but what he knows not; but I perceive is vexed that things should go so, and he hath reason; for he told me that it is likely they will do in this as in other things--resolve first, and consider it and the fitness of it afterward. Thence to White Hall, and met with Creed, and I took him to the Harp and Balls, and there drank a cup of ale, he and I alone, and discoursed of matters; and I perceive by him that he makes no doubt but that all will turn to the old religion, for these people cannot hold things in their hands, nor prevent its coming to that; and by his discourse fits himself for it, and would have my Lord Sandwich do so, too, and me. After a little talk with him, and particularly about the ruinous condition of Tangier, which I have a great mind to lay before the Duke of York, before it be too late, but dare not, because of his great kindness to Lord Middleton, we parted, and I homeward; but called at Povy’s, and there he stopped me to dinner, there being Mr. Williamson, the Lieutenant of the Tower, Mr. Childe, and several others. And after dinner, Povy and I together to talk of Tangier; and he would have me move the Duke of York in it, for it concerns him particularly, more than any, as being the head of us; and I do think to do it. Thence home, and at the office busy all the afternoon, and so to supper and to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
[Prompt: What are you afraid of right now?]
15 January 1662.
This morning Mr. Berkenshaw came again, and after he had examined me and taught me something in my work, he and I went to breakfast in my chamber upon a collar of brawn, and after we had eaten, asked me whether we had not committed a fault in eating to-day; telling me that it is a fast day ordered by the Parliament, to pray for more seasonable weather; it having hitherto been summer weather, that it is, both as to warmth and every other thing, just as if it were the middle of May or June, which do threaten a plague (as all men think) to follow, for so it was almost the last winter; and the whole year after hath been a very sickly time to this day. I did not stir out of my house all day, but conned my musique, and at night after supper to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
23 March 1901.
My philosophy, I find after very little analysis, approaches precariously near to sensualism.

It is wonderful how many sides there can be to just one character.

Nature, with all those suns, and all those hilltops, and all those rivers, and all those stars, is inscrutable--intangible--maddening. It affects one with unutterable joy and anguish, but no one can ever begin to understand what it means.

Human nature is yet more inscrutable--and nothing appears on the surface. One can have no idea of the things buried in the minds of one’s acquaintances. And mostly they are fools and have no idea themselves of what germs are in themselves--of what they are capable. And in most minds it is true the dormant devils never awaken and never are known.

It is another sign of my analytical genius, that I, aged nineteen, recognize the devils in my character. I have not the slightest wish, since things are as they are with me, to rid myself of them. There is in me much more of evil than of good. Genius like mine must needs have with it manifold bad. “I have in me the germ of every crime.” I have no desire to destroy these germs. I should be glad indeed to have them develop into a ravaging disease. Something in this dreadful confusion would then give way. My wooden heart and my soul would cry out in the darkness less heavily, less bitterly.

They want something--they know not what.

I give them poison.

They snatch it and eat it hungrily.

Then they are not so hungry. They become quieter.

The ravaging disease soothes them to sleep--it descends on them like rain in the autumn.

When I hurry over my sand and barrenness my vivid passions come to me--or when I sit and look at the horizon. When I walk slowly I consider calmly the question of how much evil I should need to kill off my finer feelings, to poison thoroughly this soul of unrest and this wooden heart so that they would never more be conscious of too-brilliant lights, and to make myself over into a quite different creature.

A little evil would do--a little of a fine, good quality.

I should like a man to come (it is always a man, have you ever noticed?--whatever one contemplates when one is of womankind and young). I should like a man to come, I said calmly to myself to-day as I walked slowly over my barrenness--a perfect villain to come and fascinate me and lead me with strong, gentle allurements to what would be technically termed my ruin. And as the world views such things it would be my ruin. But as I view such things it would not be ruin. It would be a new lease on life.

Yes, I should like a man to come--any man so that he is strong and thoroughly a villain, and so that he fascinates me. Particularly he must fascinate me. There must be no falling in love about it. I doubt if I could fascinate him, but I should ask him quite humbly to lead me to my ruin.

I have never yet seen the man who would not readily respond to such an appeal.

This villain would be no exception.

I would then jerk my life out of this Nothingness by the roots. Farewell, a long farewell, I would say. Then I would go forth with the man to my ruin. The man would be bad to his heart’s core. And after living but a short time with him my shy, sensitive soul would be irretrievably poisoned and polluted. The defilement of so sacred and beautiful a thing as marriage is surely the darkest evil that can come to a life. And so everything within me that had turned toward that too-bright light would then drink deep of the lees of death.

The thirst of this incessant unrest and longing, this weariness of self, would be quenched completely.

My life would be like fertile soil planted thickly with rank wild mustard. On every square inch of soil there would be a dozen sprouts of wild mustard. There would be no room--no room at all--for an anemone to grow. If one should start up, instantly it would be choked and overrun with wild mustard. But no anemone would start up.

My life now is a life of pain and revolt.

My life darkened and partly killed would be more than content to drift along with the current.

Oh, it would be a rest!

The Christians sing, there is rest for the weary, on the other side of Jordan, where the tree of life is blooming. But that rest, of course, is for the Christians. My rest will have to come on this side of Jordan. Let the impress of a thoroughly evil and strong man be stamped upon my inner life, and I am convinced there would come a wonderful settled quiet over it. Its spirit would be broken. It would rest. Why not? I have no virtue-sense. Nothing to me is of any consequence except to be rid of this unrest and pain. Yes, surely I might rest.

The coming of the man-devil would bring rest. But I am fool enough to think that marriage--the real marriage--is possible for me!

This other thing is within the reach of every one--of fools and geniuses alike--and of all that come between.

And so I want a fascinating wicked man to come and make me positively, rather than negatively, wicked. I feel a terrific wave of utter weariness. My life lies fallow. I am tired of sitting here. The sand and barrenness is gray with age. And I am gray with age.

Happiness--the red of the sunset sky--is the intensest desire of my life.

But I will grasp eagerly anything else that is offered me--anything.

The poisoning of my soul--the passing of my unrest--would rouse my mental power. My genius would receive a wonderful impetus from it. You would marvel, good world, at the things I should write. Not that they would be exalted--not that they would surge upward. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? But they would be marvels of fire and intensity. I should no longer exhaust much of my energy in grinding, grinding within. The things that would come of the thorns and thistles would excite your astonishment and admiration, though they be not grapes and figs.

And as for me--the real me--the creature imbued with a spirit of intense femininity, with a spirit of an intense sense of Love--with a spirit like that of the Magdalene who loved too much, with the very soul of unrest and Nothingness--this thing would vanish swiftly into oblivion, and I should go down a dark world and feel not.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
25 March 1901.
One of the remarkable points about my life is that it is so completely, hopelessly alone--a lonely, lonely life. This book of mine contains but one character--myself.

There is also the Devil--as a possibility.

And there is also the anemone lady--my dearest beloved--as a memory.

I have read books that were written to portray but one character, and there were various people brought in to help in the portraying. But my one friend is gone, and there is no person who enters into my inner life in the very least. I am always alone. I might mingle with people intimately every hour of my life--still I should be alone.

Always alone--alone.

Not even a God to worship.

How do I bear this? How do I get through the days and days?

And, oh, when it all comes over me, what frightful rage--what long agony of my breaking heart--what utter woe!

When the stars shine down upon me with cold hatred; when miles and miles of barrenness stretch out around me and envelop me in their weary, weary Nothingness; when the wind blows over me like the breath of a vicious giant; when the ugly, ugly sun radiates centuries of hard, heavy bitterness around me from its stinging rays; when the sky maddens me with its cold, careless blue; when the rivers that are flowing over the earth send echoes to me of their hateful voices; when I hear wild geese honking in bitter wailing melody; when bristling edges of jagged rocks cut sharply into my tired life; when drops of rain fall on me and pierce me like steel points; when the voices in the air shriek little-minded malice in my ears; when the green of Nature is the green of spitefulness and cruelty; when the red, red of the setting sun burns and consumes me with its horrid feverish effervescence; when I feel the all-hatred of the Universe for its poor little earth-bugs: then it is that I approach nearest to Rest.

The softnesses are my Unrest.

I do not want those bitter things.

But I must have them if I would rest.

I want the softnesses and I want Rest!

Oh, dear faint soul, it is hard--hard for us.

We are sick with loneliness.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
26 March 1901.
Now and again I have torturing glimpses of a Paradise. And I feel my soul in its pain every moment of my life. Otherwise, how gladly would I deny the existence of a soul and a life to come!

For my soul is beset with Nothingness, and the Paradise that shows itself is not for me.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
28 March 1901.
Hatred, after all, is the easiest thing of all to bear.

If you have been forgotten by the one who must have made you, and if you have been left alone of human beings all your life--all your nineteen years--then, when at last you see some one looking toward you with beautiful eyes, and extending to you a beautiful hand, and showing you a beautiful heart wherein is just a little of beautiful sympathy for you--for you--oh, that is harder than anything to bear. Harder than the loneliness and the bitterness--and the tears are nearer and nearer.

But one would be hurt often, often for the sake of the beautiful things. Yes, one would gladly be hurt long and often.

I shall never forget how it was with me when I first saw the beautiful eyes of my dearest anemone lady when they were looking gently--at me--and the beautiful hand, and the beautiful heart.

The awakening of my racked soul is hardly more heavily laden with passion and pain. I shall never forget.

Though I feel away from her also, she is the only one out of all to look gently at me.

Let me writhe and falter with pain; let me go mad--but oh, worldful of people--for the love of your God--give me out of this seething darkness only one beautiful human hand to touch mine with love, one beautiful human heart to know the aching sad loneliness of mine, one beautiful, human soul to mingle with mine in long, long Rest.

Oh, for a human being, my soul wails--a human being to love me!

Oh, to know--just once--what it is to be loved!

Nineteen years without one faint shadow of love is mouldy, crumbling age--is gray with the dust of centuries.

How long have I lived?

How long must I live?

I am shrieking at you, cold, stupid world.

Oh, the long, long waiting!

The millions of human beings!

I am a human being and there is no one--no one--no one.

Who can know this that has not felt it? You do not know--you can not know.

Surely I do not ask too much. But whether or not it is too much I can not go through the years without it--oh, I can not!

You have lived your nineteen years, fine world, and you have lived through some after years.

But in your nineteen years there was some one to love you.

It is that that counts.

Since you have had that some one, in your nineteen years, can you understand what life is to me--me--in my loneliness?

My wailing, waiting soul burns with but one desire: to be loved--oh, to be loved.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
19 May 1919.
6 p.m. I wish I had some idea of how old this note book is. The writing is very faint and far away. Now it is May 1919. Six o'clock. I am sitting in my own room thinking of Mother : I want to cry. But my thoughts are beautiful and full of gaiety. I think of our house, our garden, us children — the lawn, the gate, and Mother coming in. "Children! Children!" I really only ask for time to write it all — time to write my books. Then I don't mind dying. I live to write. The lovely world (God, how lovely the external world is!) is there and I bathe in it and am refreshed. But I feel as though I had a duty, someone has set me a task which I am bound to finish. Let me finish it : let me finish it without hurrying — leaving all as fair as I can. . . .

My little Mother, my star, my courage, my own. I seem to dwell in her now. We live in the same world. Not quite this world, not quite another. I do not care for people : and the idea of fame, of being a success,— that's nothing, less than nothing. I love my family and a few others dearly, and I love, in the old — in the ancient way, through and through, my husband.

Not a soul knows where she is. She goes slowly, thinking it all over, wondering how she can express it as she wants to — asking for time and for peace.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
26 March 1662.
Up early. This being, by God’s great blessing, the fourth solemn day of my cutting for the stone this day four years, and am by God’s mercy in very good health, and like to do well, the Lord’s name be praised for it. To the office and Sir G. Carteret’s all the morning about business. At noon come my good guests, Madame Turner, The., and Cozen Norton, and a gentleman, one Mr. Lewin of the King’s Life-Guard; by the same token he told us of one of his fellows killed this morning in a duel. I had a pretty dinner for them, viz., a brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tanzy

and two neats’ tongues, and cheese the second; and were very merry all the afternoon, talking and singing and piping upon the flageolette. In the evening they went with great pleasure away, and I with great content and my wife walked half an hour in the garden, and so home to supper and to bed. We had a man-cook to dress dinner to-day, and sent for Jane to help us, and my wife and she agreed at L3 a year (she would not serve under) till both could be better provided, and so she stays with us, and I hope we shall do well if poor Sarah were but rid of her ague.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|pepys|>
31 March 1662.
This morning Mr. Coventry and all our company met at the office about some business of the victualling, which being dispatched we parted. I to my Lord Crew’s to dinner (in my way calling upon my brother Tom, with whom I staid a good while and talked, and find him a man like to do well, which contents me much), where used with much respect, and talking with him about my Lord’s debts, and whether we should make use of an offer of Sir G. Carteret’s to lend my Lady 4 or L500, he told me by no means, we must not oblige my Lord to him, and by the by he made a question whether it was not my Lord’s interest a little to appear to the King in debt, and for people to clamor against him as well as others for their money, that by that means the King and the world may see that he do lay out for the King’s honour upon his own main stock, which many he tells me do, that in fine if there be occasion he and I will be bound for it. Thence to Sir Thomas Crew’s lodgings. He hath been ill, and continues so, under fits of apoplexy. Among other things, he and I did discourse much of Mr. Montagu’s base doings, and the dishonour that he will do my Lord, as well as cheating him of 2 or L3,000, which is too true. Thence to the play, where coming late, and meeting with Sir W. Pen, who had got room for my wife and his daughter in the pit, he and I into one of the boxes, and there we sat and heard “The Little Thiefe,” a pretty play and well done. Thence home, and walked in the garden with them, and then to the house to supper and sat late talking, and so to bed.

April 1st. Within all the morning and at the office. At noon my wife and I (having paid our maid Nell her whole wages, who has been with me half a year, and now goes away for altogether) to the Wardrobe, where my Lady and company had almost dined. We sat down and dined. Here was Mr. Herbert, son to Sir Charles Herbert, that lately came with letters from my Lord Sandwich to the King. After some discourse we remembered one another to have been together at the tavern when Mr. Fanshaw took his leave of me at his going to Portugall with Sir Richard. After dinner he and I and the two young ladies and my wife to the playhouse, the Opera, and saw “The Mayde in the Mill,” a pretty good play. In the middle of the play my Lady Paulina, who had taken physique this morning, had need to go forth, and so I took the poor lady out and carried her to the Grange, and there sent the maid of the house into a room to her, and she did what she had a mind to, and so back again to the play; and that being done, in their coach I took them to Islington, and then, after a walk in the fields, I took them to the great cheese-cake house and entertained them, and so home, and after an hour’s stay with my Lady, their coach carried us home, and so weary to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
[Prompt: Set down the truth of this day.]
1 July 1883.
I have had another very busy day to-day. I wonder what you would say about my present work? In any case you would seek in it in vain for Cézanne’s conscientious and almost timid brush stroke. As, however, I am painting the same stretch of country, La Crau and La Camargue, although from a somewhat different standpoint, you might after all find some of my colouring reminiscent of his work. How do I know? At times I have thought involuntarily of Cézanne, when I happened to recall his clumsy brush-strokes (excuse the word “clumsy”) in many a study which, probably, he painted in a strong north wind. As half the time I have to contend with the same difficulties, I can understand how it is that Cézanne’s brush-stroke is sometimes firm and steady, and at other times clumsy--his easel shook. Once or twice I have worked at a mad speed; if it is wrong to do so, I cannot help it. For instance, I painted “The Summer Evening,” on a canvas about 35 in. by 35 in.[27] at one sitting. Could I work on it again?--Impossible! Why should I spoil it?--more particularly as I set out to paint it in the midst of a strong north wind. Are we not much more keenly in search of strength of conception than of sober brush-work, and, after all, is it always possible to work in a quiet and perfectly regular manner when painting a study which is a first impression, on the spot itself, and from nature?

’Pon my soul, this would seem to me just as impossible as in fencing.{Q}

If only painters could unite in order to collaborate in the production of great things! The art of the future might then give us examples of their work. For the execution of their pictures, painters would then have to collaborate, in order to be able to bear the material difficulties. Unfortunately, however, we are not so far advanced, things do not go so fast with the fine arts as with literature. To-day, like yesterday, I am writing to you in great haste, and quite exhausted with work. For the moment I do not feel equal to making any drawings, my morning in the fields has worn me out completely. How this southern sun fatigues one! I am quite incapable of judging my own work; I cannot see whether my studies are good or bad. I have painted seven studies of corn; unfortunately, quite against my will, they are only landscapes. They are all of a yellow tone, and were executed at a frantic speed, just as the reaper works silently in the sweltering sun, with only one thought in his mind--to cut down as much as possible.

I can well understand that you were a trifle surprised to hear how little I liked the Bible, although I have often tried to study it more thoroughly. Only its kernel--Christ--seems to me, from an artistic point of view, to stand higher than, or at any rate to be somewhat different from Greek, Indian, Egyptian, and Persian antiquities, although these also stood on a very high plane. But, I repeat, this Christ is more of an artist than all artists--he worked in living spirits and bodies--he made men instead of statues. When I think of this I feel a regular beast in the field; for am I not a painter? And I admire the bull, the eagle, and man with such an intense adoration, that it will certainly prevent me from ever becoming an ambitious person.

I grow ever more and more convinced that cooking has something to do with our capacity for thinking and for painting pictures. I know, for instance, that if my digestion is upset, my work does not by any means improve. In the south the powers of the senses are intensified; one’s hand is more nimble, one’s eyes are more acute, and one’s brain is clearer. All this, of course, on condition that no dysentery or any other indisposition arises to spoil everything and to pull one down. On this account, I venture to declare, that he who would fain devote himself to artistic work will find his capacities increase in the South.

Art is long and life is fleeting, and one must try with patience to sell one’s life as dearly as possible. I should like to be your age, and, with all I know, to go to Africa to serve as a soldier there. In order to work well, one must be well lodged, well fed, and able to smoke one’s pipe and drink one’s coffee in peace. I do not wish to imply that there are not many other good things; let everyone do as he pleases; but my system seems to me better than many others.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
12 February 1661.
To my Lord’s, and there with him all the morning, and then (he going out to dinner) I and Mr. Pickering, Creed, and Captain Ferrers to the Leg in the Palace to dinner, where strange Pickering’s impertinences. Thence the two others and I after a great dispute whither to go, we went by water to Salsbury Court play-house, where not liking to sit, we went out again, and by coach to the Theatre, and there saw “The Scornfull Lady,” now done by a woman, which makes the play appear much better than ever it did to me. Then Creed and I (the other being lost in the crowd) to drink a cup of ale at Temple Bar, and there we parted, and I (seeing my father and mother by the way) went home.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|pepys|>
19 September 1666.
Up, and with Sir W. Pen by coach to St. James’s, and there did our usual business before the Duke of Yorke; which signified little, our business being only complaints of lack of money. Here I saw a bastard of the late King of Sweden’s come to kiss his hands; a mighty modish French-like gentleman. Thence to White Hall, with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen, to Wilkes’s; and there did hear the many profane stories of Sir Henry Wood damning the parsons for so much spending the wine at the sacrament, cursing that ever they took the cup to themselves, and then another story that he valued not all the world’s curses, for two pence he shall get at any time the prayers of some poor body that is worth a 1000 of all their curses; Lord Norwich drawing a tooth at a health. Another time, he and Pinchbacke and Dr. Goffe, now a religious man, Pinchbacke did begin a frolick to drink out of a glass with a toad in it that he had taken up going out to shit, he did it without harm. Goffe, who knew sacke would kill the toad, called for sacke; and when he saw it dead, says he, “I will have a quick toad, and will not drink from a dead toad.”

By that means, no other being to be found, he escaped the health. Thence home, and dined, and to Deptford and got all my pictures put into wherries, and my other fine things, and landed them all very well, and brought them home, and got Sympson to set them all up to-night; and he gone, I and the boy to finish and set up my books, and everything else in my house, till two o’clock; in the morning, and then to bed; but mightily troubled, and even in my sleep, at my missing four or five of my biggest books. Speed’s Chronicle and Maps, and the two parts of Waggoner, and a book of cards, which I suppose I have put up with too much care, that I have forgot where they are; for sure they are not stole. Two little pictures of sea and ships and a little gilt frame belonging to my plate of the River, I want; but my books do heartily trouble me. Most of my gilt frames are hurt, which also troubles me, but most my books. This day I put on two shirts, the first time this year, and do grow well upon it; so that my disease is nothing but wind.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
[Prompt: Confess something.]
28 July 1888.
I have been thinking of Gauguin and have come to the following conclusion: if he cares to come here, it will only cost him his journey and the two beds or two mattresses which we shall be compelled to buy. But, as G. is a seaman, we might perhaps be able to cook our food ourselves, and live together for the same sum as that which it costs me to live alone. You know that I have always thought it exceedingly foolish for painters to live alone; one always loses when one is quite isolated. You cannot manage to send him the wherewithal to live in Brittany, and me all that I need in Provence; but you might think it a good plan for us to share a common lot, and then you might fix a certain sum (let us say 250 francs per month) for which, in addition to my work, you would receive a Gauguin once a month.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
29 March 1669.
Up, and by water to White Hall; and there to the Duke of York, to shew myself, after my journey to Chatham, but did no business to-day with him: only after gone from him, I to Sir T. Clifford’s; and there, after an hour’s waiting, he being alone in his closet, I did speak with him, and give him the account he gave me to draw up, and he did like it very well: and then fell to talk of the business of the Navy and giving me good words, did fall foul of the constitution , and did then discover his thoughts, that Sir J. Minnes was too old, and so was Colonel Middleton, and that my Lord Brouncker did mind his mathematics too much. I did not give much encouragement to that of finding fault with my fellow-officers; but did stand up for the constitution, and did say that what faults there were in our Office would be found not to arise from the constitution, but from the failures of the officers in whose hands it was. This he did seem to give good ear to; but did give me of myself very good words, which pleased me well, though I shall not build upon them any thing. Thence home; and after dinner by water with Tom down to Greenwich, he reading to me all the way, coming and going, my collections out of the Duke of York’s old manuscript of the Navy, which I have bound up, and do please me mightily. At Greenwich I come to Captain Cocke’s, where the house full of company, at the burial of James Temple, who, it seems, hath been dead these five days here I had a very good ring, which I did give my wife as soon as I come home. I spent my time there walking in the garden, talking with James Pierce, who tells me that he is certain that the Duke of Buckingham had been with his wenches all the time that he was absent, which was all the last week, nobody knowing where he was. The great talk is of the King’s being hot of late against Conventicles, and to see whether the Duke of Buckingham’s being returned will turn the King, which will make him very popular: and some think it is his plot to make the King thus, to shew his power in the making him change his mind. But Pierce did tell me that the King did certainly say, that he that took one stone from the Church, did take two from his Crown. By and by the corpse come out; and I, with Sir Richard Browne and Mr. Evelyn, in their coach to the church, where Mr. Plume preached. But I, in the midst of the sermon, did go out, and walked all alone, round to Deptford, thinking para have seen the wife of Bagwell, which I did at her door, but I could not conveniently go into her house, and so lost my labour: and so to the King’s Yard, and there my boat by order met me; and home, where I made my boy to finish the my manuscript, and so to supper and to bed my new chamber-maid, that comes in the room of Jane; is come, Jane and Tom lying at their own lodging this night: the new maid’s name is Matt, a proper and very comely maid... This day also our cook-maid Bridget went away, which I was sorry for; but, just at her going she was found to be a thief, and so I was the less trouble for it; but now our whole house will, in a manner, be new which, since Jane is gone, I am not at all sorry for, for that my late differences with my wife about poor Deb. will not be remembered. So to bed after supper, and to sleep with great content.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
19 April 1921.
The Clown — "a shrewd knave and an unhappy"

— comes to tell the Countess of the arrival of Bertram and his soldiers.

* Faith, there's a dozen of 'em, with delicate fine hats and most courteous feathers, that bow and nod the head at every man."

In that phrase there is all the charm of soldiers on prancing, jingling, dancing horses. It is a veritable little pageant. With what an air the haughty (and intolerable) Bertram wears his two-pile velvet patch — with what disdain his hand in the white laced French glove tightens upon the tight rein of his silver charger. Wonderfully sunny, with a little breeze. And the Clown, of course, sees the humour of this conceit. . . .

Parolles is a lovable creature, a brave little cocksparrow of a ruffian.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
16 May 1921.
... * I am now sir, muddied in Fortune's mood, and smell somewhat strong of her strong displeasure.'

I must say Helena is a terrifying female. Her virtue, her persistence, her pegging away after the odious Bertram (and disguised as a pilgrim — so typical!)

and then telling the whole story to that good widowwoman! And that tame fish Diana. As to lying in Diana's bed and enjoying the embraces meant for Diana — well, I know nothing more sickening. It would take a respectable woman to do such a thing. The worst of it is I can so well imagine . . . for instance acting in precisely that way, and giving Diana a present afterwards. What a cup of tea the widow and D. must have enjoyed while it was taking place, or did D. at the last moment want to cry off the bargain? But to forgive such a woman ! Yet Bertram would. There's an espece de mothers-boyisme in him which makes him stupid enough for anything.
<|/entry|><|entry|>
23 October 1921.
The Old King is a queer old card — he seems to have a mania for bestowing husbands. As if the one fiasco were not enough, Diana has no sooner explained herself than he begins :

" If thou be'st yet a fresh uncropped flower Choose thou thy husband, and I'll pay thy dower."

I think Shakespeare must have seen the humour of that. It just — at the very last moment of the play, puts breath into the old fool.

Hamlet

Coleridge on Hamlet. ' He plays that subtle trick of pretending to act only when he is very near being what he acts.'

... So do we all begin by acting and the nearer we are to what we would be the more perfect our disguise.

Hamlet

Finally there comes the moment when we are no longer acting; it may even catch us by surprise. We may look in amazement at our no longer borrowed plumage. The two have merged; that which we put on has joined that which was; acting has become action. The soul has accepted this livery for its own after a time of trying on and approving.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|maclane|>
[Prompt: What small thing mattered today?]
4 February 1901.
Always I wonder, when I die will there be any one to remember me with love?

I know I am not lovable.

That I want it so much only makes me less lovable, it seems. But--who knows?--it may be there will be some one.

My anemone lady does not love me. How can she--since she does not understand me? But she allows me to love her--and that carries me a long way. There are many--oh, a great many--who will not allow you to love them if you would.

There is no one to love me now.

Always I wonder how it will be after some long years when I find myself about to die.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|maclane|>
7 February 1901.
In this house where I drag out my accursed, devilish, weary existence, upstairs in the bathroom, on the little ledge at the top of the wainscoting, there are six tooth-brushes: an ordinary white bone-handled one that is my younger brother’s; a white twisted-handled one that is my sister’s; a flat-handled one that is my older brother’s; a celluloid-handled one that is my stepfather’s; a silver-handled one that is mine; and another ordinary one that is my mother’s. The sight of these tooth-brushes day after day, week after week, and always, is one of the most crushingly maddening circumstances in my fool’s life.

Every Friday I wash up the bathroom. Usually I like to do this. I like the feeling of the water squeezing through my fingers, and always it leaves my nails beautifully neat. But the obviousness of those six tooth-brushes signifying me and the five other members of this family and the aimless emptiness of my existence here--Friday after Friday--makes my soul weary and my heart sick.

Never does the pitiable, barren, contemptible, damnable, narrow Nothingness of my life in this house come upon me with so intense a force as when my eyes happen upon those six tooth-brushes.

Among the horrors of the Inquisition, a minute refinement of cruelty was reached when the victim’s head was placed beneath a never-ceasing falling of water, drop by drop.

A convict sentenced to solitary confinement, spending his endless days staring at four blank walls, feels that had he committed every known crime he could not possibly deserve his punishment.

I am not undergoing an Inquisition, nor am I a convict in solitary confinement. But I live in a house with people who affect me mostly through their tooth-brushes--and those I should like, above all things, to gather up and pitch out of the bathroom window--and oh, damn them, damn them!

You who read this, can you understand the depth of bitterness and hatred that is contained in this for me? Perhaps you can a little if you are a woman and have felt yourself alone.

When I look at the six tooth-brushes a fierce, lurid storm of rage and passion comes over me. Two heavy leaden hands lay hold of my life and press, press, press. They strike the sick, sick weariness to my inmost soul.

Oh, to leave this house and these people, and this intense Nothingness--oh, to pass out from them, forever! But where can I go, what can I do? I feel with mad fury that I am helpless. The grasp of the stepfather and the mother is contemptible and absurd--but with the persistence and tenacity of narrow minds. It is like the two heavy leaden hands. It is not seen--it is not tangible. It is felt.

Once I took away my own silver-handled tooth-brush from the bathroom ledge, and kept it in my bedroom for a day or two. I thought to lessen the effect of the six.

I put it back in the bathroom.

The absence of one accentuated the significant damnation of the others. There was something more forcibly maddening in the five than in the six tooth-brushes. The damnation was not worse, but it developed my feeling about them more vividly.

And so I put my tooth-brush back in the bathroom.

This house is comfortably furnished. My mother spends her life in the adornment of it. The small square rooms are distinctly pretty.

But when I look at them seeingly I think of the proverb about the dinner of stalled ox.

Yet there is no hatred here, except mine and my bitterness. I am the only one of them whose bitter spirit cries out against things.

But there is that which is subtler and strikes deeper. There is the lack of sympathy--the lack of everything that counts: there is the great, deep Nothing.

How much better were there hatred here than Nothing!

I long hopelessly for will-power, resolution to take my life into my own hands, to walk away from this house some day and never return. I have nowhere to go--no money, and I know the world quite too well to put the slightest faith in its voluntary kindness of heart. But how much better and wider, less damned, less maddening, to go out into it and be beaten and cheated and fooled with, than this!--this thing that gathers itself easily into a circle made of six tooth-brushes with a sufficiency of surplus damnation.

I have read about a woman who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves. Perhaps she had a house at Jerusalem with six tooth-brushes and Nothingness. In that case she might have rushed gladly into the arms of thieves.

I think of crimes that strike horror and revulsion to my maid-senses. And I think of my Nothingness, and I ask myself were it not better to walk the earth an outcast, a solitary woman, and meet and face even these, than that each and every one of my woman-senses should wear slowly, painfully to shreds, and strain and break--in this unnameable Nothing?

Oh, the dreariness--the hopelessness of Nothing!

There are no words to tell it. And things are always hardest to bear when there are no words for them.

However great one’s gift of language may be, there is always something that one can not tell.

I am weary of self--always self. But it must be so.

My life is filled with self.

If my soul could awaken fully perhaps I might be lifted out of myself--surely I should be. But my soul is not awake. It is awakening, trying to open its eyes; and it is crying out blindly after something, but it can not know. I have a dreadful feeling that it will stay always like this.

Oh, I feel everything--everything! I feel what might be. And there is Nothing. There are six tooth-brushes.

Would I stop for a few fine distinctions, a theory, a natural law even, to escape from this into Happiness--or into something greatly less?

Misery--misery! If only I could feel it less!

Oh, the weariness, the weariness--as I await the Devil’s coming.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
[Prompt: What is the weather inside you?]
19 February 1663.
Up and to my office, where abundance of business all the morning. Dined by my wife’s bedside, she not being yet well. We fell out almost upon my discourse of delaying the having of Ashwell, where my wife believing that I have a mind to have Pall, which I have not, though I could wish she did deserve to be had. So to my office, where by and by we sat, this afternoon being the first we have met upon a great while, our times being changed because of the parliament sitting. Being rose, I to my office till twelve at night, drawing out copies of the overcharge of the Navy, one to send to Mr. Coventry early to-morrow. So home and to bed, being weary, sleepy, and my eyes begin to fail me, looking so long by candlelight upon white paper. This day I read the King’s speech to the Parliament yesterday; which is very short, and not very obliging; but only telling them his desire to have a power of indulging tender consciences, not that he will yield to have any mixture in the uniformity of the Church’s discipline; and says the same for the Papists, but declares against their ever being admitted to have any offices or places of trust in the kingdom; but, God knows, too many have.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|vangogh|>
16 September 1890.
People are better off in this place than in the north, even when they are quite hard up. For the weather is always fine, and the Mistral itself makes no difference to it. That glorious sun, in the rays of which Voltaire used to bask while sipping coffee, continues to shine notwithstanding. In all directions one is reminded quite involuntarily of Zola and Voltaire. There is such an abundance of vital energy everywhere. It is like Jan Steen and Ostade’s work. The conditions for the formation of a school of painting are certainly to be found here. You will reply, however, that nature is beautiful everywhere, if only one enters sufficiently deeply into her spirit.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
28 December 1914.
The curious thing is that I could not concentrate on the end of the journey. I simply felt so happy that I leaned out of the window with my arms along the brass rail and my feet crossed and basked in the sunlight and the wonderful country unfolding. At Chateaudun where we had to change I went to the Buffet to drink. A big pale green room with a large stove jutting out and a buffet with coloured bottles. Two women, their arms folded, leaned against the counter. A little boy, very pale, swung from table to table, taking the orders. It was full of soldiers sitting back in their chairs and swinging their legs and eating. The men shouted through the windows.

The little boy favoured me with a glass of horrible black coffee. He served the soldiers with a kind of dreary contempt. In the porch an old man carried a pail of brown spotted fish — large fish, like the fish one sees in glass cases swimming through forests of beautiful pressed seaweed. The soldiers laughed and slapped each other. They tramped about in their heavy boots. The women looked after them, and the old man stood humbly waiting for someone to attend to him, his cap in his hands, as if he knew that the life he represented in his torn jacket, with his basket of fish — his peaceful occupation — did not exist any more and had no right to thrust itself in here.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|maclane|>
9 March 1901.
It is astonishing to me how very many contemptible, petty vanities are lodged in the crevices of my genius. My genius itself is one grand good vanity--but it is not contemptible. And even those little vanities--though they are contemptible, I do not hold them in contempt by any means. I smile involuntarily at their absurdness sometimes, but I know well that they have their function.

They are peculiarly of my mind, my humanness, and they are useful therein. When this mind stretches out its hand for things and finds only wilderness and Nothingness all about it, and draws the hand back empty, then it can only turn back--like my soul--to itself. And it finds these innumerable little vanities to quiet it and help it. My soul has no vanity, and it has nothing, nothing to quiet it. My soul is wearing itself out, eating itself away. These vanities are a miserable substitute for the rose-colored treasures that it sees a great way off and even imagines in its folly that it may have, if it continues to reach after them. Yet the vanities are something. They prevent my erratic, analytical mind from finding a great Nothing when it turns back upon itself.

If I were not so unceasingly engrossed with my sense of misery and loneliness my mind would produce beautiful, wonderful logic. I am a genius--a genius--a genius. Even after all this you may not realize that I am a genius. It is a hard thing to show. But, for myself, I feel it. It is enough for me that I feel it.

I am not a genius because I am foreign to everything in the world, nor because I am intense, nor because I suffer. One may be all of these and yet not have this marvelous perceptive sense. My genius is because of nothing. It was born in me as germs of evil were born in me. And mine is a genius that has been given to no one else. The genius itself enables me to be thoroughly convinced of this.

It is hopeless, never-ending loneliness!

My ancestors in their Highlands--some of them--were endowed with second sight. My genius is not in the least like second sight. That savors of the supernatural, the mysterious. My genius is a sound, sure, earthly sense, with no suggestion of mystery or occultism. It is an inner sense that enables me to feel and know things that I could not possibly put into thought, much less into words. It makes me know and analyze with deadly minuteness every keen, tiny damnation in my terrible lonely life. It is a mirror that shows me myself and something in myself in a merciless brilliant light, and the sight at once sickens and maddens me and fills me with an unnamed woe. It is something unspeakably dreadful. The sight for the time deadens all thought in my mind. It freezes my reason and intellect. Logic can not come to my aid. I can only feel and know the thing and it analyzes itself before my eyes.

I am alone with this--alone, alone, alone! There is no pitiful hand extended from the heights--there is no human being--ah, there is Nothing.

How can I bear it! Oh, I ask you--how can I bear it!
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
25 April 1915.
"Well sit down, Mansfield, and reposezvous," said F., " and I'll get on with my dressing."

So he went into his bedroom and shut the door between, and I sat on the end of the sofa. The sun came full through the two windows, dividing the studio into four — two quarters of light and two of shadow, but all those things which the light touched seemed to float in it, to bathe and to sparkle in it as if they belonged not to land, but to water ; they even seemed, in some strange way, to be moving.

When you lean over the edge of the rock and see something lovely and brilliant flashing at the bottom of the sea it is only the clear, trembling water that dances — but — can you be quite sure ? . . . No, not quite sure, and that little Chinese group on the writing table may or may not have shaken itself awake for just one hundredth of a second out of hundreds of years of sleep.

Paris, April 1918
Repose

Very beautiful, O God ! is a blue tea-pot with two white cups attending; a red apple among oranges addeth fire to flame — in the white bookcases the books fly up and down in scales of colour, with pink and lilac notes recurring, until nothing remains but them, sounding over and over.

There are a number of frames, some painted and some plain, leaning against the wall, and the picture of a naked woman with her arms raised, languid, as though her heavy flowering beauty were almost too great to bear. There are two sticks and an umbrella in one corner, and in the fireplace, a kettle, curiously like a bird.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
9 June 1920.
— not gazebos and mazes. And I have never yet met the cultivated mind that has not had its shrubbery. I loathe and detest shrubberies.

Let me remember when I write about that fiddle how it runs up lightly and swings down sorrowful; how it searches —

In the white lace, the spreading veil and the pearls she looked like a gull. But a quick hungry gull with an absolutely insatiable appetite for bread. "Come feed me! Feed me!" said that quick glare. It was as though all her vitality, her cries, her movements, her wheelings depended upon the person on the bridge who carried the loaf.

The Voyage of "The Bugle"

No, no, said Miss P., that really isn't fair. I love

serious books. Why, I don't know when I've enjoyed
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|vangogh|>
[Prompt: Make an account of yourself.]
23 March 1884.
Is it not true that Daumier is hung in the Beaux-Arts and Gavarni as well? Bravo to Daumier, but by no means to the Beaux-Arts!

I grow ever more and more doubtful about the legend concerning Monticelli, who is said to have drunk such great quantities of absinthe. With his life-work before one, it seems to me impossible that a man enervated by drink could possibly have produced such work.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|vangogh|>
26 September 1884.
In a day or two you will receive a call from the Danish painter who has been staying here. He wishes to see the Salon and then to go back home, perhaps with the view of coming South again next year. His three last studies were better and more full of colour than anything he has done hitherto. I do not know whether he will ever do anything great, but he is a nice fellow, and I am sorry he is going. I told him that a Dutch painter is staying with you, and if K. would only conduct him up to the Butte Montmartre, he would probably make a few studies. I have told him a good deal about the Impressionists, all of whom he knew by name, and he was also acquainted with some of their pictures. The question interested him immensely. He has a letter of introduction to R. He recovered his health here and now feels uncommonly well. It will last for two years, and then he will be wise to come back here for the same reasons of health.

What is the new book like, about Daumier, the Artist and his Work?

According to what you say, I hope that I will shortly come to Paris. In the circumstances which you have mentioned, it would be a real stroke of luck, now that everything is going to the dogs, and they are not doing well.

Possibly it would be easier to bring a few picture-dealers and amateurs to an understanding with the object of buying impressionist pictures, than to get the painters to divide among themselves the proceeds of the pictures sold. And yet the artists could not do better than to stick together, hand their pictures over to the association and share the proceeds of the sales, if only for the reason that the society guarantees the means of work and existence to its members. Degas, Claude Monet, Renoir, Sisley, C. Pissaro should take the initiative and say: Each of us five will give ten pictures (or better still, each of us will contribute works to the value of 10,000 francs, which value must be decided by experts--for instance, by T. and you--whom the society would appoint. And these experts would also have to invest in pictures). In addition to that we undertake to make a yearly contribution to the value of so much. And we invite you all, Seurat, Gauguin and Guillaumin to join us, and the value of your pictures will be assessed by the same jury.

By this means the great Impressionists of the Grand Boulevard would preserve their prestige, and the others would not be able to reproach them with enjoying alone the advantages of a reputation for which there can be no doubt they are indebted, in the first place, to their personal efforts and their individual genius--but which in the second place is also increased, consolidated and maintained by a regiment of artists who up to the present have been in constant straits for money. It is only to be hoped that something will come of it all, and that T. and you will be chosen as experts (together with Portier perhaps). You, too, must surely be of the opinion that if T. and you join together you could persuade both Boussod and Valadon to grant credit for the necessary purchases. But the matter is pressing, otherwise other dealers will cut the grass from under your feet.
<|/entry|><|entry|><|vangogh|>
23 May 1884.
There are several themes here which have exactly the same character as in Holland: the only difference lies in the colour. Everywhere a cadmium yellow, produced by the burning sun, and in addition a green and blue of such extraordinary intensity! I must say that the few landscapes by Cézanne which I happen to have seen, give an excellent idea of it; but it is a pity I have not seen more of them.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|><|mansfield|>
26 March 1916.
It is so strange! I am suddenly back again, coming into my room and desiring to write, Knock, goes Miss Chapman at the door. A man has come to clean the windows. I might have known it! And so death claims us. I am sure that just at that
final moment a knock will come and Somebody Else will come to 'clean the windows.'
B. has given me his fountain pen. The room is full of smoke to-night, the gas bubbles as if the pipes were full of water. It's very quiet. I have rather a cold, but I feel absolutely alive after my experience of this afternoon.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
[Prompt: What small thing mattered today?]
2 April 1901.
How can any one bring a child into the world and not wrap it round with a certain wondrous tenderness that will stay with it always!

There are persons whose souls have never entered into them.

My mother has some fondness for me--for my body because it came of hers. That is nothing--nothing.

A hen loves its egg.

A hen!
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
7 October 1665.
Up and to the office along with Mr. Childe, whom I sent for to discourse about the victualling business, who will not come into partnership (no more will Captain Beckford ), but I do find him a mighty understanding man, and one I will keep a knowledge of. Did business, though not much, at the office; because of the horrible crowd and lamentable moan of the poor seamen that lie starving in the streets for lack of money. Which do trouble and perplex me to the heart; and more at noon when we were to go through them, for then a whole hundred of them followed us; some cursing, some swearing, and some praying to us. And that that made me more troubled was a letter come this afternoon from the Duke of Albemarle, signifying the Dutch to be in sight, with 80 sayle, yesterday morning, off of Solebay, coming right into the bay. God knows what they will and may do to us, we having no force abroad able to oppose them, but to be sacrificed to them. Here come Sir W. Rider to me, whom I sent for about the victualling business also, but he neither will not come into partnership, but desires to be of the Commission if there be one. Thence back the back way to my office, where very late, very busy. But most of all when at night come two waggons from Rochester with more goods from Captain Cocke; and in houseing them at Mr. Tooker’s lodgings come two of the Custome-house to seize them, and did seize them but I showed them my ‘Transire’. However, after some hot and angry words, we locked them up, and sealed up the key, and did give it to the constable to keep till Monday, and so parted. But, Lord! to think how the poor constable come to me in the dark going home; “Sir,” says he, “I have the key, and if you would have me do any service for you, send for me betimes to-morrow morning, and I will do what you would have me.” Whether the fellow do this out of kindness or knavery, I cannot tell; but it is pretty to observe. Talking with him in the high way, come close by the bearers with a dead corpse of the plague; but, Lord! to see what custom is, that I am come almost to think nothing of it. So to my lodging, and there, with Mr. Hater and Will, ending a business of the state of the last six months’ charge of the Navy, which we bring to L1,000,000 and above, and I think we do not enlarge much in it if anything. So to bed.
<|/entry|>


<|entry|>
23 January 1667.
Up, and with Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen to White Hall, and there to the Duke of York, and did our usual business. Having done there, I to St. James’s, to see the organ Mrs. Turner told me of the other night, of my late Lord Aubigney’s; and I took my Lord Bruncker with me, he being acquainted with my present Lord Almoner, Mr. Howard, brother to the Duke of Norfolke; so he and I thither and did see the organ, but I do not like it, it being but a bauble, with a virginal! joining to it: so I shall not meddle with it. Here we sat and talked with him a good while, and he seems a good-natured gentleman: here I observed the deske which he hath, to remove, and is fastened to one of the armes of his chayre. I do also observe the counterfeit windows there was, in the form of doors with looking-glasses instead of windows, which makes the room seem both bigger and lighter, I think; and I have some thoughts to have the like in one of my rooms. He discoursed much of the goodness of the musique in Rome, but could not tell me how long musique had been in any perfection in that church, which I would be glad to know. He speaks much of the great buildings that this Pope,

whom, in mirth to us, he calls Antichrist, hath done in his time. Having done with the discourse, we away, and my Lord and I walking into the Park back again, I did observe the new buildings: and my Lord, seeing I had a desire to see them, they being the place for the priests and fryers, he took me back to my Lord Almoner; and he took us quite through the whole house and chapel, and the new monastery, showing me most excellent pieces in wax-worke: a crucifix given by a Pope to Mary Queen of Scotts, where a piece of the Cross is;

two bits set in the manner of a cross in the foot of the crucifix: several fine pictures, but especially very good prints of holy pictures. I saw the dortoire----and the cells of the priests, and we went into one; a very pretty little room, very clean, hung with pictures, set with books. The Priest was in his cell, with his hair clothes to his skin, bare-legged, with a sandal! only on, and his little bed without sheets, and no feather bed; but yet, I thought, soft enough. His cord about his middle; but in so good company, living with ease, I thought it a very good life. A pretty library they have. And I was in the refectoire, where every man his napkin, knife, cup of earth, and basin of the same; and a place for one to sit and read while the rest are at meals. And into the kitchen I went, where a good neck of mutton at the fire, and other victuals boiling. I do not think they fared very hard. Their windows all looking into a fine garden and the Park; and mighty pretty rooms all. I wished myself one of the Capuchins. Having seen what we could here, and all with mighty pleasure, so away with the Almoner in his coach, talking merrily about the difference in our religions, to White Hall, and there we left him. I in my Lord Bruncker’s coach, he carried me to the Savoy, and there we parted. I to the Castle Tavern, where was and did come all our company, Sir W. Batten, W. Pen, R. Ford, and our Counsel Sir Ellis Layton, Walt Walker, Dr. Budd, Mr. Holder, and several others, and here we had a bad dinner of our preparing, and did discourse something of our business of our prizes, which was the work of the day. I staid till dinner was over, and there being no use of me I away after dinner without taking leave, and to the New Exchange, there to take up my wife and Mercer, and to Temple Bar to the Ordinary, and had a dish of meat for them, they having not dined, and thence to the King’s house, and there saw “The Numerous Lieutenant,” a silly play, I think; only the Spirit in it that grows very tall, and then sinks again to nothing, having two heads breeding upon one, and then Knipp’s singing, did please us. Here, in a box above, we spied Mrs. Pierce; and, going out, they called us, and so we staid for them; and Knipp took us all in, and brought to us Nelly; a most pretty woman, who acted the great part of Coelia to-day very fine, and did it pretty well: I kissed her, and so did my wife; and a mighty pretty soul she is. We also saw Mrs. Halls which is my little Roman-nose black girl, that is mighty pretty: she is usually called Betty. Knipp made us stay in a box and see the dancing preparatory to to-morrow for “The Goblins,” a play of Suckling’s, not acted these twenty-five years; which was pretty; and so away thence, pleased with this sight also, and specially kissing of Nell. We away, Mr. Pierce and I, on foot to his house, the women by coach. In our way we find the Guards of horse in the street, and hear the occasion to be news that the seamen are in a mutiny, which put me into a great fright; so away with my wife and Mercer home preparing against to-morrow night to have Mrs. Pierce and Knipp and a great deal more company to dance; and, when I come home, hear of no disturbance there of the seamen, but that one of them, being arrested to-day, others do go and rescue him. So to the office a little, and then home to supper, and to my chamber awhile, and then to bed.
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