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."