Wednesday 8 February 1659/60
A little practice on my flageolet, and afterwards walking in my yard to see my stock of pigeons, which begin now with the spring to breed very fast. I was called on by Mr. Fossan, my fellow pupil at Cambridge, and I took him to the Swan in the Palace yard, and drank together our morning draft. Thence to my office, where I received money, and afterwards Mr. Carter, my old friend at Cambridge, meeting me as I was going out of my office I took him to the Swan, and in the way I met with Captain Lidcott, and so we three went together and drank there, the Captain talking as high as ever he did, and more because of the fall of his brother Thurlow. Hence I went to Captain Stone, who told me how Squib had been with him, and that he could do nothing with him, so I returned to Mr. Carter and with him to Will’s, where I spent upon him and Monsieur L’Impertinent, alias Mr. Butler, who I took thither with me, and thence to a Rhenish wine house, and in our way met with Mr. Hoole, where I paid for my cozen Roger Pepys his wine, and after drinking we parted. So I home, in my way delivering a letter which among the rest I had from my Lord to-day to Sir N. Wheeler. At home my wife’s brother brought her a pretty black dog which I liked very well, and went away again. Hence sending a porter with the hamper of bottles to the Temple I called in my way upon Mrs. Jem, who was much frighted till I came to tell her that her mother was well. So to the Temple, where I delivered the wine and received the money of my cos. Roger that I laid out, and thence to my father’s, where he shewed me a base angry letter that he had newly received from my uncle Robert about my brother John, at which my father was very sad, but I comforted him and wrote an answer. My brother John has an exhibition granted him from the school. My father and I went down to his kitchen, and there we eat and drank, and about 9 o’clock I went away homewards, and in Fleet Street, received a great jostle from a man that had a mind to take the wall, which I could not help?1 I came home and to bed. Went to bed with my head not well by my too much drinking to-day, and I had a boil under my chin which troubled me cruelly.
- This was a constant trouble to the pedestrian until the rule of passing to the right of the person met was generally accepted. Gay commences his “Trivia” with an allusion to this—
“When to assert the wall, and when resign—”
and the epigram on the haughty courtier and the scholar is well known.