A story through the diary · The man
Elizabeth
Nine years of a marriage in his own words: tenderness and quarrels, her loneliness, his jealousy and his violence, her reproaches, and the night she found him embracing Deb Willet.
286 days across 10 years, 1660–1669 · 25 steps in its story
Pepys married Elizabeth St Michel in December 1655, when she was fifteen, Wheatley says, and had no dowry. Her father was a French Huguenot who had lost his family's fortune, and as a girl in France she was placed for twelve days in a convent of Ursuline nuns until he took her out. She depended on Pepys for money, clothes, company and leave to go out; she believed all he did was meant to keep her at home from her pleasures, and he owned it was true in great degree.
She is in more than half the diary's entries, mostly as his company at home, at table and at plays; this thread follows the days the marriage is under strain, and the tender days among them. It shows her as his companion, learning arithmetic, drawing and music, and it shows her loneliness, his jealousy, his temper and his blows. He records striking her, pulling her nose and calling her a whore. He also records her answers: her letter of complaint, her reproaches, her anger, and her suspicions of him with Mrs Pierce and with Mrs Knepp, whom, he owned, she had more reason to suspect than he had Pembleton.
In October 1668 she found him embracing her companion, Deb Willet; our text is cut at that point. Deb had joined the household in the autumn of 1667. The last months of the diary are full of her grief and anger, his promises and his lies. Deb Willet's thread tells that story from Deb's side, and Other women tells of his conduct with women outside the house. After a journey with him to France and Holland, Elizabeth fell ill with a fever and died on 10 November 1669, aged twenty-nine, five months after the diary ends.
The story in 25 steps
Step 1 · Tuesday 6 November 1660
At bedtime they fall out over his wish to shut the dog in the cellar for fouling the house. He insists on having his way, they lie all night in a quarrel, and he dreams that she is dead.
I would have my will, and so we went to bed and lay all night in a quarrel
6 Nov 1660Step 2 · Thursday 19 December 1661
On the way home from her sitting for a portrait, he picks a quarrel over her mismatched ribbons, and in high words calls her a whore. He is sorry afterwards, he writes, but sets her down at home and goes out to dinner.
like a passionate fool, I did call her whore, for which I was afterwards sorry
19 Dec 1661Step 3 · Friday 9 January 1663
She reads him a copy of her letter on her lonely life, which he had burnt unread. Fearing others may see it, he forces it from her and tears it, with his old love letters and his will, she crying and asking him not to.
so piquant, and wrote in English, and most of it true, of the retiredness of her life, and how unpleasant it was
9 Jan 1663Step 4 · Friday 15 May 1663
Coming home, he finds her alone upstairs with her dancing master, Pembleton, talking, not dancing. Too jealous to work or sleep, he spies on whether she wears drawers, which he is ashamed of, and finds no true cause.
Now so deadly full of jealousy I am that my heart and head did so cast about and fret that I could not do any business possibly
15 May 1663Wheatley cut part of this entry.
Step 5 · Thursday 21 May 1663
He forbids her the word “devil” at supper, and she takes him up scornfully before her companion, Ashwell. Less, he writes, would once have made him strike her. He fears losing his command over her, and blames the dancing.
for less than that would have made me strike her
21 May 1663Step 6 · Wednesday 27 May 1663
He wakes her before dawn, and she asks what ails him. When he taxes her over Pembleton, she tells him it is his old jealousy. He decides her freedom with Pembleton is too great but innocent; they part seeming friends, she crying.
she quickly told me my own, knowing well enough that it was my old disease of jealousy
27 May 1663Step 7 · Tuesday 1 September 1663
His brother John complains that she slights him. Pepys tells him to keep her friendly: she deserves to be pleased a little, he writes, given the life he keeps her to, and he would like to send her to his parents at Brampton when travelling.
she deserves to be pleased and complied with a little, considering the manner of life that I keep her to
1 Sep 1663Step 8 · Saturday 5 December 1663
Over arithmetic lessons at home, he writes that he now lives with her in great content, free of the jealousy for which he asks God's forgiveness.
with whom now-a-days I live with great content, out of all trouble of mind by jealousy (for which God forgive me)
5 Dec 1663Step 9 · Monday 14 March 1664
He refuses to have her gown laced, though he would spend as much on a plain new one. She follows him in a rage: she will buy a new gown, lace it, make him pay, and let him burn it. They are soon friends.
she would go buy a new one and lace it and make me pay for it, and then let me burn it if I would after she had done it
14 Mar 1664Step 10 · Tuesday 5 April 1664
Finding her dressed as if she had been out, and disliking her answer, he pulls her by the nose on purpose to offend her, then denies he meant it. She cries a long while in pain before he makes friends with her.
The poor wretch took it mighty ill, and I believe besides wringing her nose she did feel pain, and so cried a great while
5 Apr 1664Step 11 · Monday 19 December 1664
Before dawn he finds fault with her for not commanding her servants; when she answers crossly, he strikes her over the left eye so hard she cries out. She tries to bite and scratch him. He is sorry at heart. Her eye is blackened.
she was forced to lay a poultice or something to her eye all day, and is black, and the people of the house observed it
19 Dec 1664Step 12 · Tuesday 28 February 1665
Finding 7s. missing from her kitchen accounts, he calls her beggar and reproaches her relations. She answers back about his, justly, he admits. He owns his suspicion makes her worse, yet thinks a little difference now and then does no harm.
my being over-solicitous and jealous and froward and ready to reproach her do make her worse
28 Feb 1665Step 13 · Monday 21 August 1665
He walks to Woolwich in the dark, where she is lodging in the plague summer, and arrives near eleven. He looks first at her latest drawing, done in the week since he saw her, and it pleases him beyond anything in the world.
having first viewed her last piece of drawing since I saw her, which is seven or eight days, which pleases me beyond any thing in the world
21 Aug 1665Step 14 · Monday 6 August 1666
When Mrs Knepp and Mrs Pierce visit, she is displeased by his kindness to both. Checked by him before them, she quarrels with Mrs Pierce over gossip about herself, and will not go out with them. Later she calls them wenches.
she not being pleased with my kindnesse to either of them
6 Aug 1666Step 15 · Monday 25 February 1667
Lying late in bed, they talk of how she used to make the coal fires and wash his clothes with her own hands in their little room at his patron Sandwich's. He ought to love and admire her for ever, he writes, and does.
for which I ought for ever to love and admire her, and do
25 Feb 1667Step 16 · Friday 1 March 1667
Her flageolet lessons begin. Making her sing, he grows angry at what he calls her bad ear until she cries. She wants to learn only to please him, he writes, and he owns he is unjust to discourage her.
she hath a great mind to learn, only to please me; and, therefore, I am mighty unjust to her in discouraging her so much
1 Mar 1667Step 17 · Saturday 11 May 1667
Angry to see her in fair locks (his “white locks”), he will not speak to her. Going home, swearing by God several times and clenching his fist, he tells her he will not endure it. She is taken by surprise and makes no answer.
swearing by God, several times, which I pray God forgive me for, and bending my fist, that I would not endure it
11 May 1667Step 18 · Friday 12 July 1667
Finding her sullen because he did not come home to dine, he pulls her nose and speaks ill words, blaming something she said. She follows him to the office, and he gets her into the garden, out of hearing, before calming her.
with much ado I got her into the garden out of hearing, to prevent shame
12 Jul 1667Step 19 · Friday 2 August 1667
She reproaches him for his arm about Mrs Knepp's waist. She tells him she has her period; having not slept with her for half a year, he gathers she thinks he suspects her of another man's child. That never entered his head, he writes.
she took notice that I had not lain with her this half-year
2 Aug 1667Step 20 · Sunday 25 October 1668
As her companion, Deb Willet, combs his hair, Elizabeth comes upon him embracing the girl; Wheatley cut the words that follow. She is struck mute, then angry. Waking him in tears, she confides she is a Roman Catholic, then reproaches him; he denies any harm.
reproaching me with inconstancy and preferring a sorry girl before her
25 Oct 1668Wheatley cut part of this entry.
Step 21 · Tuesday 10 November 1668
Having got a confession from Deb (cut by Wheatley), she reproaches him with his lie about kissing Deb, his ill-usage of her from the start, and the men she refused: his patron Sandwich, through Captain Ferrers, and Lord Hinchingbrooke. He acknowledges it all, and weeps.
my ill-using of her from the beginning, and the many temptations she hath refused out of faithfulness to me
10 Nov 1668Wheatley cut part of this entry.
Step 22 · Thursday 19 November 1668
Learning he was with Deb the day before, she calls him every false, rotten-hearted rogue. He denies it, then confesses all. She threatens to slit Deb's nose and leave him. Their servant Will Hewer, crying, wins peace on his written promise never to see Deb.
she begun to call me all the false, rotten-hearted rogues in the world, letting me understand that I was with Deb. yesterday
19 Nov 1668Step 23 · Friday 20 November 1668
In a fresh rage she strikes him and pulls his hair. She will trust him only if he writes calling Deb a whore; he does, in hedged words. She dares not trust him out alone, so Hewer goes everywhere with him.
could not refrain to strike me and pull my hair, which I resolved to bear with, and had good reason to bear it
20 Nov 1668Step 24 · Sunday 31 January 1669
Ending January, he notes days of sadness and of mirth: she cannot forget his unkindness with Deb, and her grief returns with passion whenever something reminds her. That night they are kind.
she not being able to forget it, but now and then hath her passionate remembrance of it as often as prompted to it by any occasion
31 Jan 1669Step 25 · Saturday 1 May 1669
May Day in their coach, she in her flowered tabby gown, newly laced. Both are out of humour; he is sullen all day with Sheres, whose leaving for Tangier troubles her. That night she cannot rest, and, though vexed at her, he hugs her.
to take her and hug her to put her to rest
1 May 1669
See all 286 days on the mood grid
Related stories
- Deb Willet Elizabeth's young companion: his sexual advances in his own house, the discovery, her dismissal, and how he went on pursuing her.
- Other women The women he made sexual advances to over nine years, many of them dependent on him for a husband's post, a widow's pay or a place in his house.
- The household Servants hired and dismissed, boys and maids beaten, and Will Hewer, the clerk who stayed.
- The family A tailor's family, an uncle's estate at Brampton, and the eldest son who ran them both.
- Music Singing in parts, the viol and the flageolet, songs of his own: from the diary's first month to its last week.
Sources: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Introduction (Henry B. Wheatley) (opens in a new tab)