according to the old style.]--This afternoon my wife had a visit from my
Lady Jeminah and Mr. Ferrers.

12th. Up and my office, there conning my measuring Ruler, which I shall
grow a master of in a very little time. At noon to the Exchange and so
home to dinner, and abroad with my wife by water to the Royall Theatre;
and there saw "The Committee," a merry but indifferent play, only Lacey's
part, an Irish footman, is beyond imagination. Here I saw my Lord
Falconbridge, and his Lady, my Lady Mary Cromwell, who looks as well as I
have known her, and well clad; but when the House began to fill she put on
her vizard,

[Masks were commonly used by ladies in the reign of Elizabeth, and
when their use was revived at the Restoration for respectable women
attending the theatre, they became general. They soon, however,
became the mark of loose women, and their use was discontinued by
women of repute. On June 1st, 1704, a song was sung at the theatre
in Lincoln's Inn Fields called "The Misses' Lamentation for want of
their Vizard Masques at the Theatre." Mr. R. W. Lowe gives several
references to the use of vizard masks at the theatre in his
interesting biography, "Thomas Betterton."]

and so kept it on all the play; which of late is become a great fashion
among the ladies, which hides their whole face. So to the Exchange, to
buy things with my wife; among others, a vizard for herself. And so by
water home and to my office to do a little business, and so to see Sir W.
Pen, but being going to bed and not well I could not see him. So home and
to supper and bed, being mightily troubled all night and next morning with
the palate of my mouth being down from some cold I took to-day sitting
sweating in the playhouse, and the wind blowing through the windows upon