Fanny Burney, Madame D'Arblay After Portrait by E. F. Burney Elizabeth Pepys 1640-1669 "So home to dinner with my wife, very pleasant and pleased with one another's company, and in our general enjoyment one of another, better we think than most other couples do." Elizabeth St. Michel, daughter of a French Huguenot, was fifteen when Pepys married her. She was only twenty-nine when she died. Pepys himself at their marriage was twenty-two. It is the skirmishing of young folk that he describes when he reports such animated scenes as the occasion when his wife threatened him with the red-hot tongs. They had their brisk encounters and their affectionate interludes as well, when "very merry we were with our pasty, well-baked, and a good dish of roasted chickens; pease, lobsters, strawberries." In odd moments, Pepys applied himself to his wife's education. Dismissing her dancing-master by reason of jealousy, he began instead a course in Arithmetic. He himself taught her Addition, Subtraction, and the Multiplication Tables; but, says he, "I purpose not to trouble her yet with Division, but to begin with the Globes to her now." At her early death he mourned sincerely, and erected a memorial celebrating the accomplished charms of Elizabeth, his wife,-- "Forma, Artibus, Linguis Cultissima." Mrs Pepys as St. Katharine I The Diurnal of Mrs. Elizabeth Pepys 2d May.--Sam'l now in great honour at the Navy Office, whereat my heart do rejoice, and the less for the havings, which do daily increase, than that I would willingly see him worshipfully received, the which indeede his hard work do plentifully deserve, he sparing himselfe in nothing for the advancing of his busyness. And I do reason with myselfe that though he have faults many and great (which God knowes is true) yet he do come up in the world and our gettings are very good and do daily increase. How they go I know not, for that little and grudging is spent on my clothes, and though Sam'l goes very noble still it is not possible but much is
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