out of pride have seemed to contemn ill reports when they have found they could not avoid them, but none out of strength of reason, though many have pretended to it. No, not my Lady Newcastle with all her philosophy, therefore you must not expect it from me. I shall never be ashamed to own that I have a particular value for you above any other, but ’tis not the greatest merit of person will excuse a want of fortune; in some degree I think it will, at least with the most rational part of the world, and, as far as that will read, I desire it should. I would not have the world believe I married out of interest and to please my friends; I had much rather they should know I chose the person, and took his fortune, because ’twas necessary, and that I prefer a competency with one I esteem infinitely before a vast estate in other hands. ‘Tis much easier, sure, to get a good fortune than a good husband; but whosoever marries without any consideration of fortune shall never be allowed to do it, but of so reasonable an apprehension the whole world (without any reserve) shall pronounce they did it merely to satisfy their giddy humour.
Besides, though you imagine ’twere a great argument of my kindness to consider nothing but you, in earnest I believe ‘twould be an injury to you. I do not see that it puts any value upon men when women marry them for love (as they term it); ’tis not their merit, but our folly that is always presumed to cause it; and would it be any advantage to you to have your wife thought an indiscreet person? All this I can say to you; but when my brother disputes it with me I have other arguments for him, and I drove him up so close t’other night that for want of a better gap to get out at he was fain to say that he feared as much your having a fortune as your having none, for he saw you held my Lord L’t’s [? Lieutenant’s] principles. That religion and honour were things you did not consider at all, and that he was confident you would take any engagement, serve in employment, or do anything to advance yourself. I had no patience for this. To say you were a beggar, your father not worth L4000 in the whole world, was nothing in comparison of having no religion nor no honour. I forgot all my disguise, and we talked ourselves weary; he renounced me, and I defied him, but both in as civil language as it would permit, and parted in great anger with the usual ceremony of a leg and a courtesy, that you would have died with laughing to have seen us.
The next day I, not being at dinner, saw him not till night; then he came into my chamber, where I supped but he did not. Afterwards Mr. Gibson and he and I talked of indifferent things till all but we two went to bed. Then he sat half-an-hour and said not one word, nor I to him. At last, in a pitiful tone, “Sister,” says he, “I have heard you say that when anything troubles you, of all things you apprehend going to bed, because there it increases upon you, and you lie at the mercy of all your sad thought, which the silence and darkness of the night adds a horror to; I am at that pass now. I vow to God I would not endure another night like the last to gain a crown.” I, who resolved to take no notice what ailed him, said ’twas a knowledge I had raised from my spleen only, and so fell into a discourse of melancholy and the causes, and from that (I know not how) into religion; and we talked so long of it, and so devoutly, that it laid all our anger. We grew to a calm and peace with all the world. Two hermits conversing in a cell they equally inhabit, ne’er expressed more humble, charitable kindness, one towards another, than we. He asked my pardon and I his, and he has promised me never to speak of it to me whilst he lives, but leave the event to God Almighty; until he sees it done, he will always be the same to me that he is; then he shall leave me, he says, not out of want of kindness to me, but because he cannot see the ruin of a person that he loves so passionately, and in whose happiness he has laid up all his. These are the terms we are at, and I am confident he will keep his word with me, so that you have no reason to fear him in any respect; for though he should break his promise, he should never make me break mine. No, let me assure you this rival, nor any other, shall ever alter me, therefore spare your jealousy, or turn it all into kindness.
I will write every week, and no miss of letters shall give us any doubts of one another. Time nor accidents shall not prevail upon our hearts, and, if God Almighty please to bless us, we will meet the same we are, or happier. I will do all you bid me. I will pray, and wish, and hope, but you must do so too, then, and be so careful of yourself that I may have nothing to reproach you with when you come back.
That vile wench lets you see all my scribbles, I believe; how do you know I took care your hair should not be spoiled? ‘Tis more than e’er you did, I think, you are so negligent on’t, and keep it so ill, ’tis pity you should have it. May you have better luck in the cutting it than I had with mine. I cut it two or three years agone, and it never grew since. Look to it; if I keep the lock you give me better than you do all the rest, I shall not spare you; expect to be soundly chidden. What do you mean to do with all my letters? Leave them behind you? If you do, it must be in safe hands, some of them concern you, and me, and other people besides us very much, and they will almost load a horse to carry.
Does not my cousin at Moor Park mistrust us a little? I have a great belief they do. I am sure Robin C—- told my brother of it since I was last in town. Of all things, I admire my cousin Molle has not got it by the end, he that frequents that family so much, and is at this instant at Kimbolton. If he has, and conceals it, he is very discreet; I could never discern by anything that he knew it. I shall endeavour to accustom myself to the noise on’t, and make it as easy to me as I can, though I had much rather it were not talked of till there were an absolute necessity of discovering it, and you can oblige me in nothing more than in concealing it. I take it very kindly that you promise to use all your interest in your father to persuade him to endeavour our happiness, and he appears so confident of his power that it gives me great hopes.
Dear! shall we ever be so happy, think you? Ah! I dare not hope it. Yet ’tis not want of love gives me these fears. No, in earnest, I think (nay, I’m sure) I love you more than ever, and ’tis that only gives me these despairing thoughts; when I consider how small a proportion of happiness is allowed in this world, and how great mine would be in a person for whom I have a passionate kindness, and who has the same for me. As it is infinitely above what I can deserve, and more than God Almighty usually allots to the best people, I can find nothing in reason but seems to be against me; and, methinks, ’tis as vain in me to expect it as ‘twould be to hope I might be a queen (if that were really as desirable a thing as ’tis thought to be); and it is just it should be so.
We complain of this world, and the variety of crosses and afflictions it abounds in, and yet for all this who is weary on’t (more than in discourse), who thinks with pleasure of leaving it, or preparing for the next? We see old folks, who have outlived all the comforts of life, desire to continue in it, and nothing can wean us from the folly of preferring a mortal being, subject to great infirmity and unavoidable decays, before an immortal one, and all the glories that are promised with it. Is this not very like preaching? Well, ’tis too good for you; you shall have no more on’t. I am afraid you are not mortified enough for such discourse to work upon (though I am not of my brother’s opinion, neither, that you have no religion in you). In earnest, I never took anything he ever said half so ill, as nothing, sure, is so great an injury. It must suppose one to be a devil in human shape. Oh, me! now I am speaking of religion, let me ask you is not his name Bagshawe that you say rails on love and women? Because I heard one t’other day speaking of him, and commending his wit, but withal, said he was a perfect atheist. If so, I can allow him to hate us, and love, which, sure, has something of divine in it, since God requires it of us. I am coming into my preaching vein again. What think you, were it not a good way of preferment as the times are? If you’ll advise me to it I’ll venture. The woman at Somerset House was cried up mightily. Think on’t.
Dear, I am yours.
_Letter 54._–Temple has really started on his journey, and is now past Brickhill, far away in the north of England. The journey to Ireland was made _via_ Holyhead in those days as it is now. It was a four days’ journey to Chester, and no good road after. The great route through Wales to Holyhead was in such a state that in 1685 the Viceroy going to Ireland was five hours in travelling the fourteen miles from St. Asaph to Conway; between Conway and Beaumaris he walked; and his lady was carried in a litter. A carriage was often taken to pieces at Conway, and carried to the Menai Straits on the peasants’ shoulders round the dangerous cliff of Penmaenmawr. Mr. B. and Mr. D. remain mysterious symbolic initials of gossip and scandalmongering. St. Gregory’s near St. Paul’s, was a church entirely destroyed by the great fire.
Sir John Tufton of “The Mote,” near Maidstone, married Mary, the third daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Lord Wotton.
For your Master [seal with coat-of-arms], when your Mistress pleases.
SIR,–You bid me write every week, and I am doing it without considering how it will come to you. Let Nan look to that, with whom, I suppose, you have left the orders of conveyance. I have your last letter; but Jane, to whom you refer me, is not yet come down. On Tuesday I expect her; and if she be not engaged, I shall give her no cause hereafter to believe that she is a burden to me, though I have no employment for her but that of talking to me when I am in the humour of saying nothing. Your dog is come too, and I have received him with all the kindness that is due to anything you send. I have defended him from the envy and malice of a troop of greyhounds that used to be in favour with me; and he is so sensible of my care over him, that he is pleased with nobody else, and follows me as if we had been of long acquaintance. ‘Tis well you are gone past my recovery. My heart has failed me twenty times since you went, and, had you been within my call, I had brought you back as often, though I know thirty miles’ distance and three hundred are the same thing. You will be so kind, I am sure, as to write back by the coach and tell me what the success of your journey so far has been. After that, I expect no more (unless you stay for a wind) till you arrive at Dublin. I pity your sister in earnest; a sea voyage is welcome to no lady; but you are beaten to it, and ’twill become you, now you are a conductor, to show your valour and keep your company in heart. When do you think of coming back again? I am asking that before you are at your journey’s end. You will not take it ill that I desire it should be soon. In the meantime, I’ll practise all the rules you give me. Who told you I go to bed late? In earnest, they do me wrong: I have been faulty in that point heretofore, I confess, but ’tis a good while since I gave it over with my reading o’ nights; but in the daytime I cannot live without it, and ’tis all my diversion, and infinitely more pleasing to me than any company but yours. And yet I am not given to it in any excess now; I have been very much more. ‘Tis Jane, I know, tells all these tales of me. I shall be even with her some time or other, but for the present I long for her with some impatience, that she may tell me all you have told her.
Never trust me if I had not a suspicion from the first that ’twas that ill-looked fellow B—- who made that story Mr. D—- told you. That which gave me the first inclination to that belief was the circumstance you told me of their seeing me at St. Gregory’s. For I remembered to have seen B—- there, and had occasion to look up into the gallery where he sat, to answer a very civil salute given me from thence by Mr. Freeman, and saw B—- in a great whisper with another that sat next him, and pointing to me. If Mr. D—- had not been so nice in discovering his name, you would quickly have been cured of your jealousy. Never believe I have a servant that I do not tell you of as soon as I know it myself. As, for example, my brother Peyton has sent to me, for a countryman of his, Sir John Tufton,–he married one of my Lady Wotton’s heirs, who is lately dead,–and to invite me to think of it. Besides his person and his fortune, without exception, he tells me what an excellent husband he was to this lady that’s dead, who was but a crooked, ill-favoured woman, only she brought him L1500 a year. I tell him I believe, Sir John Tufton could be content, I were so too upon the same terms. But his loving his first wife can be no argument to persuade me; for if he had loved her as he ought to do, I cannot hope he should love another so well as I expect anybody should that has me; and if he did not love her, I have less to expect he should me. I do not care for a divided heart; I must have all or none, at least the first place in it. Poor James, I have broke his. He says ‘twould pity you to hear what sad complaints he makes; and, but that he has not the heart to hang himself, he would be very well contented to be out of the world.
That house of your cousin R—- is fatal to physicians. Dr. Smith that took it is dead already; but maybe this was before you went, and so is no news to you. I shall be sending you all I hear; which, though it cannot be much, living as I do, yet it may be more than ventures into Ireland. I would have you diverted, whilst you are there, as much as possible; but not enough to tempt you to stay one minute longer than your father and your business obliges you. Alas! I have already repented all my share in your journey, and begin to find I am not half so valiant as I sometimes take myself to be. The knowledge that our interests are the same, and that I shall be happy or unfortunate in your person as much or more than in my own, does not give me that confidence you speak of. It rather increases my doubts, and I durst trust your fortune alone, rather than now that mine is joined with it. Yet I will hope yours may be so good as to overcome the ill of mine, and shall endeavour to mend my own all I can by striving to deserve it, maybe, better. My dearest, will you pardon me that I am forced to leave you so soon? The next shall be longer, though I can never be more than I am
Yours.
_Letter 55._–This sad letter, fully dated 18th March 1654, was written after Sir Peter Osborne was buried in Campton Church. Even as Dorothy wrote this, the stone-mason might be slowly carving words that may be read to this day: “The maintainer of divine exercises, the friend to the poor.” Her father is no longer living, and she is now even more lonely than before. To depend upon kindred that are not friends, to be under the protection of a brother who is her lover’s avowed enemy, this is her lot in life, unless Temple can release her from it. Alas! poor Dorothy, who will now forbear to pity you?
_March the 18th, 1654._
How true it is that a misfortune never comes single; we live in expectation of some one happiness that we propose to ourselves, an age almost, and perhaps miss it at the last; but sad accidents have wings to overtake us, and come in flocks like ill-boding ravens. You were no sooner gone but (as if that had not been enough) I lost the best father in the world; and though, as to himself, it was an infinite mercy in God Almighty to take him out of a world that can be pleasing to none, and was made more uneasy to him by many infirmities that were upon him, yet to me it is an affliction much greater than people judge it. Besides all that is due to nature and the memory of many (more than ordinary) kindnesses received from him, besides what he was to all that knew him, and what he was to me in particular, I am left by his death in the condition (which of all others) is the most unsupportable to my nature, to depend upon kindred that are not friends, and that, though I pay as much as I should do to a stranger, yet think they do me a courtesy. I expect my eldest brother to-day; if he comes, I shall be able to tell you before I seal this up where you are likely to find me. If he offers me to stay here, this hole will be more agreeable to my humour than any place that is more in the world. I take it kindly that you used art to conceal our story and satisfy my nice apprehensions, but I’ll not impose that constraint upon you any longer, for I find my kind brother publishes it with more earnestness than ever I strove to conceal it; and with more disadvantage than anybody else would. Now he has tried all ways to do what he desires, and finds it is in vain, he resolves to revenge himself upon me, by representing this action in such colours as will amaze all people that know me, and do not know him enough to discern his malice to me; he is not able to forbear showing it now, when my condition deserves pity from all the world, I think, and that he himself has newly lost a father, as well as I; but takes this time to torment me, which appears (at least to me) so barbarous a cruelty, that though I thank God I have charity enough perfectly to forgive all the injury he can do me, yet I am afraid I shall never look upon him as a brother more. And now do you judge whether I am not very unhappy, and whether that sadness in my face you used to complain of was not suited to my fortune. You must confess it; and that my kindness for you is beyond example, all these troubles are persecutions that make me weary of the world before my time, and lessen the concernment I have for you, and instead of being persuaded as they would have me by their malicious stories, methinks I am obliged to love you more in recompense of all the injuries they have done you upon my score. I shall need nothing but my own heart to fortify me in this resolution, and desire nothing in return of it but that your care of yourself may answer to that which I shall always have for your interests.
I received your letter of the 10th of this month; and I hope this will find you at your journey’s end. In earnest, I have pitied your sister extremely, and can easily apprehend how troublesome this voyage must needs be to her, by knowing what others have been to me; yet, pray assure her I would not scruple at undertaking it myself to gain such an acquaintance, and would go much farther than where (I hope) she now is to serve her. I am afraid she will not think me a fit person to choose for a friend, that cannot agree with my own brother; but I must trust you to tell my story for me, and will hope for a better character from you than he gives me; who, lest I should complain, resolves to prevent me, and possess my friends first that he is the injured party. I never magnified my patience to you, but I begin to have a good opinion on’t since this trial; yet, perhaps, I have no reason, and it may be as well a want of sense in me as of passion; however, you will not be displeased to know that I can endure all that he or anybody else can say, and that setting aside my father’s death and your absence, I make nothing an affliction to me, though I am sorry, I confess, to see myself forc’d to keep such distances with one of his relations, because religion and nature and the custom of world teaches otherwise. I see I shall not be able to satisfy you in this how I shall dispose of myself, for my brother is not come; the next will certainly tell you. In the meantime, I expect with great impatience to hear of your safe arrival. ‘Twas a disappointment that you missed those fair winds. I pleased myself extremely with a belief that they had made your voyage rather a diversion than a trouble, either to you or your company, but I hope your passage was as happy, if not as sudden, as you expected it; let me hear often from you, and long letters. I do not count this so. Have no apprehensions from me, but all the care of yourself that you please. My melancholy has no anger in it; and I believe the accidents of my life would work more upon any other than they do upon me, whose humour is always more prepared for them than that of gayer persons. I hear nothing that is worth your knowing; when I do, you shall know it. Tell me if there’s anything I can do for you, and assure yourself I am perfectly
Yours.
_Letter 56._–Temple has reached Dublin at last, and begins to write from there. This letter also is dated, and from this time forth there is less trouble in arranging the letters in order of date, as many of them have, at least, the day of the month, if nothing more.
The Marquis of Hertford was the Duke of Somerset’s great-grandson. He married Lady Arabella Stuart, daughter of Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, uncle of King James I, for which matrimonial adventure he was imprisoned in the Tower. His second wife was Frances, daughter of Robert, Earl of Essex, and sister to the great general of the Parliamentary Army. She was the mother of young Lord Beauchamp, whose death Dorothy deplores. He was twenty-eight years of age when he died. He married Mary, daughter of Lord Capel of Hadham, who afterwards married the Duke of Beaufort.
Baptist Noel, Viscount Camden, was a noted loyalist. After the Restoration we find him appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Rutland. Of his duel with Mr. Stafford there seems to be no account. It did not carry him into the King’s Bench Court, like Lord Chandos’ duel, so history is silent about it.
_April the 2nd, 1654._
SIR,–There was never any lady more surprised than I was with your last. I read it so coldly, and was so troubled to find that you were so forward on your journey; but when I came to the last, and saw Dublin at the date, I could scarce believe my eyes. In earnest, it transported me so that I could not forbear expressing my joy in such a manner as had anybody been by to have observed me they would have suspected me no very sober person.
You are safe arrived, you say, and pleased with the place already, only because you meet with a letter of mine there. In your next I expect some other commendation on’t, or else I shall hardly make such haste to it as people here believe I will.
All the servants have been to take their leaves on me, and say how sorry they are to hear I am going out of the land; some beggar at the door has made so ill a report of Ireland to them that they pity me extremely, but you are pleased, I hope, to hear I am coming to you; the next fair wind expect me. ‘Tis not to be imagined the ridiculous stories they have made, nor how J.B. cries out on me for refusing him and choosing his chamber-fellow; yet he pities me too, and swears I am condemned to be the miserablest person upon earth. With all his quarrel to me, he does not wish me so ill as to be married to the proudest, imperious, insulting, ill-natured man that ever was; one that before he has had me a week shall use me with contempt, and believe that the favour was of his side. Is not this very comfortable? But, pray, make it no quarrel; I make it none, I assure you. And though he knew you before I did, I do not think he knows you so well; besides that, his testimony is not of much value.
I am to spend this next week in taking leave of this country, and all the company in’t, perhaps never to see it more. From hence I must go into Northamptonshire to my Lady Ruthin, and so to London, where I shall find my aunt and my brother Peyton, betwixt whom I think to divide this summer.
Nothing has happened since you went worth your knowledge. My Lord Marquis Hertford has lost his son, my Lord Beauchamp, who has left a fine young widow. In earnest, ’tis great pity; at the rate of our young nobility he was an extraordinary person, and remarkable for an excellent husband. My Lord Cambden, too, has fought with Mr. Stafford, but there’s no harm done. You may discern the haste I’m in by my writing. There will come a time for a long letter again, but there will never come any wherein I shall not be
Yours.
[Sealed with black wax, and directed] For Mr. William Temple,
at Sir John Temple’s home
in Damask Street,
Dublin.
Thus Dorothy leaves Chicksands, her last words from her old home to Temple breathing her love and affection for him. It is no great sorrow at the moment to leave Chicksands, for its latest memories are scenes of sickness, grief, and death. And now the only home on earth for Dorothy lies in the future; it is not a particular spot on earth, but to be by his side, wherever that may be.
CHAPTER VI
VISITING. SUMMER 1654
This chapter opens with a portion of a letter written by Sir William Temple to his mistress, dated Ireland, May 18, 1654. It is the only letter, or rather scrap of letter which we have of his, and by some good chance it has survived with the rest of Dorothy’s letters. It will, I think, throw great light on his character as a lover, showing him to have been ardent and ecstatic in his suit, making quite clear Dorothy’s wisdom in insisting, as she often does, on the necessity of some more material marriage portion than mere love and hope. His reference to the “unhappy differences” strengthens my view that the letters of the former chapter belong all to one date.
_Letter 57._–Letter of Sir William Temple.
_May 18th, 1654._
… I am called upon for my letter, but must have leave first to remember you of yours. For God’s sake write constantly while I am here, or I am undone past all recovery. I have lived upon them ever since I came, but had thrived much better had they been longer. Unless you use to give me better measure, I shall not be in case to undertake a journey to England. The despair I was in at not hearing from you last week, and the belief that all my letters had miscarried (by some treachery among my good friends who, I am sorry, have the name of yours), made me press my father by all means imaginable to give me leave to go presently if I heard not from you this post. But he would never yield to that, because, he said, upon your silence he should suspect all was not likely to be well between us, and then he was sure I should not be in condition to be alone. He remembered too well the letters I writ upon our last unhappy differences, and would not trust me from him in such another occasion. But, withal, he told me he would never give me occasion of any discontent which he could remedy; that if you desired my coming over, and I could not be content without, he would not hinder me, though he very much desired my company a month or two longer, and that in that time ’twas very likely I might have his as well.
Now, in very good earnest, do you think ’tis time for me to come or no? Would you be very glad to see me there, and could you do it in less disorder, and with less surprise, than you did at Chicksands?
I ask you these questions very seriously; but yet how willingly would I venture all to be with you. I know you love me still; you promised me, and that’s all the security I can have in this world. ‘Tis that which makes all things else seem nothing to it, so high it sets me; and so high, indeed, that should I ever fall ‘twould dash me all to pieces. Methinks your very charity should make you love me more now than ever, by seeing me so much more unhappy than I used, by being so much farther from you, for that is all the measure can be taken of my good or ill condition. Justice, I am sure, will oblige you to it, since you have no other means left in the world of rewarding such a passion as mine, which, sure, is of a much richer value than anything in the world besides. Should you save my life again, should you make me absolute master of your fortune and your person too, I should accept none of all this in any part of payment, but look upon you as one behindhand with me still. ‘Tis no vanity this, but a true sense of how pure and how refined a nature my passion is, which none can ever know except my own heart, unless you find it out by being there.
How hard it is to think of ending when I am writing to you; but it must be so, and I must ever be subject to other people’s occasions, and so never, I think, master of my own. This is too true, both in respect of this fellow’s post that is bawling at me for my letter, and of my father’s delays. They kill me; but patience,–would anybody but I were here! Yet you may command me ever at one minute’s warning. Had I not heard from you by this last, in earnest I had resolved to have gone with this, and given my father the slip for all his caution. He tells me still of a little time; but, alas! who knows not what mischances and how great changes have often happened in a little time?
For God’s sake let me hear of all your motions, when and where I may hope to see you. Let us but hope this cloud, this absence that has overcast all my contentment, may pass away, and I am confident there’s a clear sky attends us. My dearest dear, adieu.
Yours.
Pray, where is your lodging? Have a care of all the despatch and security that can be in our intelligence. Remember my fellow-servant; sure, by the next I shall write some learned epistle to her, I have been so long about it.
_Letter 58._–Dorothy is now in London, staying probably with that aunt whom she mentioned before as one who was always ready to find her a husband other than Temple. Of the plot against the Protector in which my Lord of Dorchester is said to be engaged, an account is given in connection with _Letter 59_; that is, presuming it to be the same plot, and that Lord Dorchester is one of the many persons arrested under suspicion of being concerned in it. I cannot find anything which identifies him with a special plot.
Lady Sandis [Sandys], who seems so fond of race meetings and other less harmless amusements, was the wife of William Lord Sandys, and daughter of the Earl of Salisbury. Lord Sandys’ country house was Motesfont or Mottisfont Priory, in Hampshire, “which the King had given him in exchange for Chelsea, in Westminster.” So says Leland, the antiquary and scholar, in his _Itinerary_; but it is a little puzzling to the modern mind with preconceived notions of Chelsea, to hear it spoken of as a seat or estate in Westminster. Colonel Tom Paunton is to me merely a name; and J. Morton is nothing more, unless we may believe him to be Sir John Morton, Bart. of Milbourne, St. Andrew, in Nottinghamshire. This addition of a local habitation and a name gives us no further knowledge, however, of the scandal to which Dorothy alludes.
Mistress Stanley and Mistress Witherington have left no trace of their identity that I can find, but Mistress Philadelphia Carey is not wholly unknown. She was the second daughter of Thomas Carey, one of the Earl of Monmouth’s sons, and readers may be pleased to know that she did marry Sir Henry Littleton.
Of the scandal concerning Lord Rich I am not sorry to know nothing.
_May 25th_ [1654].
This world is composed of nothing but contrarieties and sudden accidents, only the proportions are not at all equal; for to a great measure of trouble it allows so small a quantity of joy, that one may see ’tis merely intended to keep us alive withal. This is a formal preface, and looks as if there were something of very useful to follow; but I would not wish you to expect it. I was only considering my own ill-humour last night, I had not heard from you in a week or more, my brother had been with me and we had talked ourselves both out of breath and patience too, I was not very well, and rose this morning only because I was weary of lying in bed. When I had dined I took a coach and went to see whether there was ever a letter for me, and was this once so lucky as to find one. I am not partial to myself I know, and am contented that the pleasure I have received with this, shall serve to sweeten many sad thoughts that have interposed since your last, and more that I may reasonably expect before I have another; and I think I may (without vanity) say, that nobody is more sensible of the least good fortune nor murmurs less at an ill than I do, since I owe it merely to custom and not to any constancy in my humour, or something that is better. No, in earnest, anything of good comes to me like the sun to the inhabitants of Greenland, it raises them to life when they see it, and when they miss it, it is not strange they expect a night of half a year long.
You cannot imagine how kindly I take it that you forgive my brother, and let me assure you I shall never press you to anything unreasonable. I will not oblige you to court a person that has injured you. I only beg that whatsoever he does in that kind may be excused by his relation to me, and that whenever you are moved to think he does you wrong, you will at the same time remember that his sister loves you passionately and nobly; that if he values nothing but fortune, she despises it, and could love you as much a beggar as she could do a prince; and shall without question love you eternally, but whether with any satisfaction to herself or you is a sad doubt. I am not apt to hope, and whether it be the better or the worse I know not. All sorts of differences are natural to me, and that which (if your kindness would give you leave) you would term a weakness in me is nothing but a reasonable distrust of my own judgment, which makes me desire the approbation of my friends. I never had the confidence in my life to presume anything well done that I had nobody’s opinion in but my own; and as you very well observe, there are so many that think themselves wise when nothing equals their folly but their pride, that I dread nothing so much as discovering such a thought in myself because of the consequences of it.
Whenever you come you must not doubt your welcome, but I can promise you nothing for the manner on’t. I am afraid my surprise and disorder will be more than ever. I have good reason to think so, and none that you can take ill. But I would not have you attempt it till your father is ready for the journey too. No, really he deserves that all your occasions should wait for his; and if you have not much more than an ordinary obedience for him, I shall never believe you have more than an ordinary kindness for me; since (if you will pardon me the comparison) I believe we both merit it from you upon the same score, he as a very indulgent father, and I as a very kind mistress. Don’t laugh at me for commending myself, you will never do it for me, and so I am forced to it.
I am still here in town, but had no hand, I can assure you, in the new discovered plot against the Protector. But my Lord of Dorchester, they say, has, and so might I have had if I were as rich as he, and then you might have been sure of me at the Tower;–now a worse lodging must serve my turn. ‘Tis over against Salisbury House where I have the honour of seeing my Lady M. Sandis every day unless some race or other carry her out of town. The last week she went to one as far as Winchester with Col. Paunton (if you know such a one), and there her husband met her, and because he did so (though it ’twere by accident) thought himself obliged to invite her to his house but seven miles off, and very modestly said no more for it, but that he thought it better than an Inn, or at least a crowded one as all in the town were now because of the race. But she was so good a companion that she would not forsake her company. So he invited them too, but could prevail with neither. Only my Lady grew kind at parting and said, indeed if Tom Paunton and J. Morton and the rest would have gone she could have been contented to have taken his offer. Thus much for the married people, now for those that are towards it.
There is Mr. Stanley and Mrs. Witherington; Sir H. Littleton and Mrs. Philadelphia Carey, who in earnest is a fine woman, such a one as will make an excellent wife; and some say my Lord Rich and my Lady Betty Howard, but others that pretend to know more say his court to her is but to countenance a more serious one to Mrs. Howard, her sister-in-law, he not having courage to pretend so openly (as some do) to another’s wife. Oh, but your old acquaintance, poor Mr. Heningham, has no luck! He was so near (as he thought at least) marrying Mrs. Gerherd that anybody might have got his whole estate in wagers upon’t that would have ventured but a reasonable proportion of their own. And now he looks more like an ass than ever he did. She has cast him off most unhandsomely, that’s the truth on’t, and would have tied him to such conditions as he might have been her slave withal, but could never be her husband. Is not this a great deal of news for me that never stir abroad? Nay, I had brought me to-day more than all this: that I am marrying myself! And the pleasantness on’t is that it should be to my Lord St. John. Would he look on me, think you, that had pretty Mrs. Fretcheville? My comfort is, I have not seen him since he was a widower, and never spoke to him in my life. I found myself so innocent that I never blushed when they told it me. What would I give I could avoid it when people speak of you? In earnest, I do prepare myself all that is possible to hear it spoken of, yet for my life I cannot hear your name without discovering that I am more than ordinarily concerned in’t. A blush is the foolishest thing that can be, and betrays one more than a red nose does a drunkard; and yet I would not so wholly have lost them as some women that I know has, as much injury as they do me. I can assure you now that I shall be here a fortnight longer (they tell me no lodger, upon pain of his Highness’s displeasure, must remove sooner); but when I have his leave I go into Suffolk for a month, and then come hither again to go into Kent, where I intend to bury myself alive again as I did in Bedfordshire, unless you call me out and tell me I may be happy. Alas! how fain I would hope it, but I cannot, and should it ever happen, ‘twould be long before I should believe ’twas meant for me in earnest, or that ’twas other than a dream. To say truth, I do not love to think on’t, I find so many things to fear and so few to hope.
‘Tis better telling you that I will send my letters where you direct, that they shall be as long ones as possibly my time will permit, and when at any time you miss of one, I give you leave to imagine as many kind things as you please, and to believe I mean them all to you.
Farewell.
_Letter 59._–It is a little astonishing to read, as one does in this and the last letter, of race meetings, and Dorothy, habited in a mask, disporting herself at New Spring Gardens or in the Park. It opens one’s eyes to the exaggerated gloom that has been thrown over England during the Puritan reign by those historians who have derived their information solely from State papers and proclamations. It is one thing to proclaim amusements, another to abolish them. The first was undoubtedly done, but we doubt if there was ever any long-continued effort to do the last; and in the latter part of Cromwell’s reign the gloom, and the strait-laced regulations that caused it, must have almost entirely disappeared.
Spring Gardens seems at one time to have had no very good reputation. Lady Alice Halkett, writing in 1644, tells us that “so scrupulous was I of giving any occasion to speak of me as I know they did of others, that though I loved well to see plays, and to walk in the Spring Gardens sometimes (before it grew something scandalous by the abuses of some), yet I cannot remember three times that ever I went with any man besides my brother.” However, fashions change in ten years, and Spring Gardens is, doubtless, now quite demure and respectable, or we should not find Dorothy there. Spring Gardens was enclosed and laid out towards the end of the reign of James I. The clump of houses which still bears its name is supposed to indicate its position with tolerable exactness. Evelyn tells us that Cromwell shut up the Spring Gardens in 1600, and Knight thinks they were closed until the Restoration, in which small matter we may allow Dorothy to correct him. The fact of the old gardens having been closed may account for Dorothy referring to the place as “New Spring Gardens.” Knight also quotes at second hand from an account of Spring Gardens, complaining that the author is unknown to him. This quotation is, however, from one of Somers’ Tracts entitled “A Character of England as it was lately represented in a Letter to a Nobleman of France, 1659.” The Frenchman by whom the letter is written–probably an English satirist in disguise–gives us such a graphic account of the Parks before the Restoration, that as the matter is fresh and bears upon the subject, I have no hesitation in quoting it at length:–
“I did frequently in the spring accompany my Lord N. into a field near the town which they call Hyde Park,–the place not unpleasant, and which they use as our ‘_Course_,’ but with nothing that order, equipage, and splendour; being such an assembly of wretched jades and hackney coaches, as, next to a regiment of car-men, there is nothing approaches the resemblance. The Park was, it seems, used by the late King and nobility for the freshness of the air and the goodly prospect, but it is that which now (besides all other exercises) they pay for here in England, though it be free in all the world beside; every coach and horse which enters buying his mouthful and permission of the publican who has purchased it, for which the entrance is guarded with porters and long staves.
“The manner is, as the company returns, to stop at the Spring Gardens so called, in order to the Park as our _Thuilleries_ is to the _Course_; the inclosure not disagreeable for the solemnness of the groves, the warbling of the birds, and as it opens into the spacious walks of St. James. But the company walk in it at such a rate as you would think all the ladies were so many Atalantas contending with their wooers, and, my Lord, there was no appearance that I should prove the Hippomenes, who could with very much ado keep pace with them. But, as fast as they run, they stay there so long, as if they wanted not to finish the race, for it is usual here to find some of the young company till midnight, and the thickets of the garden seem to be contrived to all the advantages of gallantry after they have refreshed with the collation, which is here seldom omitted, at a certain cabaret in the middle of this paradise, where the forbidden fruits are certain trifling tarts, neats’ tongues, salacious meats, and bad Rhenish, for which the gallants pay sauce, as indeed they do at all such houses throughout England; for they think it a piece of frugality beneath them to bargain or account for what they eat in any place, however unreasonably imposed upon.”
Dorothy is quite right in her correction concerning Will Spencer. He was the first Earl of Sunderland, and married Elizabeth, daughter of Lord Gerard.
_June the 6th, 1654._
I see you know how to punish me. In earnest, I was so frightened with your short letter as you cannot imagine, and as much troubled at the cause on’t. What is it your father ails, and how long has he been ill? If my prayers are heard, he will not be so long. Why do you say I failed you? Indeed, I did not. Jane is my witness. She carried my letter to the White Hart, by St. James’s, and ’twas a very long one too. I carried one thither since, myself, and the woman of the house was so very angry, because I desired her to have a care on’t, that I made the coachman drive away with all possible speed, lest she should have beaten me. To say truth, I pressed her too much, considering how little the letter deserved it. ‘Twas writ in such disorder, the company prating about me, and some of them so bent on doing me little mischiefs, that I know not what I did, and believe it was the most senseless, disjointed thing that ever was read.
I remember now that I writ Robin Spencer instead of Will. ‘Tis he that has married Mrs. Gerherd, and I admire their courage. She will have eight hundred pounds a year, ’tis true, after her mother’s death; but how they will live till then I cannot imagine. I shall be even with you for your short letter. I’ll swear they will not allow me time for anything, and to show how absolutely I am governed I need but tell you that I am every night in the Park and at New Spring Gardens, where, though I come with a mask, I cannot escape being known, nor my conversion being admired. Are you not in some fear what will become on me? These are dangerous courses. I do not find, though, that they have altered me yet. I am much the same person at heart I was in being
Yours.
_Letter 60._
_June 13th_ [1654].
You have satisfied me very much with this last long letter, and made some amends for the short one I received before. I am convinced, too, happiness is much such a kind of thing as you describe, or rather such a nothing. For there is no one thing can properly be called so, but every one is left to create it to themselves in something which they either have or would have; and so far it’s well enough. But I do not like that one’s happiness should depend upon a persuasion that this is happiness, because nobody knows how long they shall continue in a belief built upon no grounds, only to bring it to what you say, and to make it absolutely of the same nature with faith. We must conclude that nobody can either create or continue such a belief in themselves; but where it is there is happiness. And for my part at this present, I verily believe I could find it in the long walk at Dublin.
You say nothing of your father’s sickness, therefore I hope he is well again; for though I have a quarrel to him, it does not extend so far as to wish him ill. But he made no good return for the counsel I gave you, to say that there might come a time when my kindness might fail. Do not believe him, I charge you, unless you doubt yourself that you may give me occasion to change; and when he tells you so again, engage what you please upon’t, and put it upon my account. I shall go out of town this week, and so cannot possibly get a picture drawn for you till I come up again, which will be within these six weeks, but not to make any stay at all. I should be glad to find you here then. I would have had one drawn since I came, and consulted my glass every morning when to begin; and to speak freely to you that are my friend, I could never find my face in a condition to admit on’t, and when I was not satisfied with it myself, I had no reason to hope that anybody else should. But I am afraid, as you say, that time will not mend it, and therefore you shall have it as it is as soon as Mr. Cooper will vouchsafe to take the pains to draw it for you.
I am in great trouble to think how I shall write out of Suffolk to you, or receive yours. However, do not fail to write, though they lie awhile. I shall have them at last, and they will not be the less welcome; and, though you should miss of some of mine, let it not trouble you; but if it be by my fault, I’ll give you leave to demand satisfaction for it when you come. Jane kisses your hands, and says she will be ready in all places to do you service; but I’ll prevent her, now you have put me into a jealous humour. I’ll keep her in chains before she shall quit scores with me. Do not believe, sir, I beseech you, that the young heirs are for you; content yourself with your old mistress. You are not so handsome as Will Spencer, nor I have not so much courage nor wealth as his mistress, nor she has not so much as her aunt says by all the money. I shall not have called her his mistress now they have been married almost this fortnight.
I’ll write again before I leave the town, and should have writ more now, but company is come in. Adieu, my dearest.
_Letter 61._–Lady Talmash was the eldest daughter of Mr. Murray, Charles I.’s page and whipping boy. She married Sir Lionel Talmash of Suffolk, a gentleman of noble family. After her father’s death, she took the title of Countess of Dysart, although there was some dispute about the right of her father to any title. Bishop Burnet says: “She was a woman of great beauty, but of far greater parts. She had a wonderful quickness of apprehension, and an amazing vivacity in conversation. She had studied not only divinity and history, but mathematics and philosophy. She was violent in everything she set about,–a violent friend, but a much more violent enemy. She had a restless ambition, lived at a vast expense, and was ravenously covetous; and would have stuck at nothing by which she might compass her ends. She had been early in a correspondence with Lord Lauderdale, that had given occasion to censure. When he was a prisoner after Worcester fight, she made him believe he was in great danger of his life, and that she saved it by her intrigues with Cromwell, which was not a little taken notice of. Cromwell was certainly fond of her, and she took care to entertain him in it; till he, finding what was said upon it, broke it off. Upon the King’s Restoration she thought that Lord Lauderdale made not those returns she expected. They lived for some years at a distance. But upon her husband’s death she made up all quarrels; so that Lord Lauderdale and she lived so much together that his Lady was offended at it and went to Paris, where she died about three years after.” This was in 1672, and soon afterwards Lady Dysart and Lord Lauderdale were married. She had great power over him, and employed it in trafficking with such State patronage as was in Lord Lauderdale’s power to bestow.
Cousin Hammond, who was going to take Ludlow’s place in Ireland, would be the Colonel Robert Hammond who commanded Carisbrooke when the King was imprisoned there. He was one of a new council formed in August and sent into Ireland about the end of that month.
Lady Vavasour was Ursula, daughter of Walter Gifford of Chillington, Staffordshire. Her husband was Sir Thomas Vavasour, Bart. The Vavasours were a Roman Catholic family, and claimed descent from those who held the ancient office of King’s Valvasour; and we need not therefore be surprised to find Lady Vavasour engaged in one of the numerous plots that surrounded and endangered the Protector’s power. The plot itself seems to have created intense excitement in the capital, and resulted in three persons being tried for high treason, and two executed,–John Gerard, gentleman, Peter Vowel, schoolmaster of Islington, and one Summerset Fox, who pleaded guilty, and whose life was spared. “Some wise men,” writes one Thomas Gower in a contemporary letter (still unprinted), “believe that a couple of coy-ducks drew in the rest, then revealed all, and were employed to that purpose that the execution of a few mean persons might deter wiser and more considerable persons.” This seems not improbable. On June 6th the official _Mercurius Politicus_ speaks of this plot as follows:–“The traitorous conspiracy mentioned heretofore it appears every day more desperate and bloody. It is discovered that their design was to have destroyed his Highness’s person, and all others at the helm of Government that they could have laid hands on. Immediately upon the villainous assassination, they intended to have proclaimed Charles Stuart by the assistance of a tumult,” etc. etc. This with constant accounts of further arrests troubles the public mind at this time.
The passage of Cowley which Dorothy refers to is in the second book of Cowley’s _Davideis_. It opens with a description of the friendship between David and Jonathan, and, upon that occasion, a digression concerning the nature of love. The poem was written by Cowley when a young man at Cambridge. One can picture Dorothy reading and musing over lines like these with sympathy and admiration:
What art thou, love, thou great mysterious thing? From what hid stock does thy strange nature spring? ‘Tis thou that mov’st the world through ev’ry part, And hold’st the vast frame close that nothing start From the due place and office first ordained, By thee were all things made and are sustained. Sometimes we see thee fully and can say From hence thou took’st thy rise and went’st that way, But oft’ner the short beams of reason’s eye See only there thou art, not how, nor why.
His lines on love, though overcharged with quaint conceits, are often noble and true, and end at least with one fine couplet:
Thus dost thou sit (like men e’er sin had framed A guilty blush), naked but not ashamed.
I promised in my last to write again before I went out of town, and now I’ll be as good as my word. They are all gone this morning, and have left me much more at liberty than I have been of late, therefore I believe this will be a long letter; perhaps too long, at least if my letters are as little entertaining as my company is. I was carried yesterday abroad to a dinner that was designed for mirth, but it seems one ill-humoured person in the company is enough to put all the rest out of tune; for I never saw people perform what they intended worse, and could not forbear telling them so: but to excuse themselves and silence my reproaches, they all agreed to say that I spoiled their jollity by wearing the most unreasonable looks that could be put on for such an occasion. I told them I knew no remedy but leaving me behind next time, and could have told them that my looks were suitable to my fortune, though not to a feast. Fye! I am got into my complaining humour that tires myself as well as everybody else, and which (as you observe) helps not at all. Would it would leave me, and then I could believe I shall not always have occasion for it. But that’s in nobody’s power, and my Lady Talmash, that says she can do whatsoever she will, cannot believe whatsoever she pleases. ‘Tis not unpleasant, methinks, to hear her talk, how at such a time she was sick and the physicians told her she would have the small-pox, and showed her where they were coming out upon her; but she bethought herself that it was not at all convenient for her to have them at that time; some business she had that required her going abroad, and so she resolved she would not be sick; nor was not. Twenty such stories as these she tells; and then falls into discoveries of strength of reason and the power of philosophy, till she confounds herself and all that hear her. You have no such ladies in Ireland?
Oh me, but I heard to-day your cousin Hammond is going thither to be in Ludlow’s place. Is it true? You tell me nothing what is done there, but ’tis no matter. The less one knows of State affairs I find it is the better. My poor Lady Vavasour is carried to the Tower, and her great belly could not excuse her, because she was acquainted by somebody that there was a plot against the Protector, and did not discover it. She has told now all that was told her, but vows she will never say from whence she had it: we shall see whether her resolutions are as unalterable as those of my Lady Talmash. I wonder how she behaved herself when she was married. I never saw any one yet that did not look simply and out of countenance, nor ever knew a wedding well designed but one; and that was of two persons who had time enough I confess to contrive it, and nobody to please in’t but themselves. He came down into the country where she was upon a visit, and one morning married her. As soon as they came out of the church they took coach and came for the town, dined at an inn by the way, and at night came into lodgings that were provided for them where nobody knew them, and where they passed for married people of seven years’ standing.
The truth is I could not endure to be Mrs. Bride in a public wedding, to be made the happiest person on earth. Do not take it ill, for I would endure it if I could, rather than fail; but in earnest I do not think it were possible for me. You cannot apprehend the formalities of a treaty more than I do, nor so much the success on’t. Yet in earnest, your father will not find my brother Peyton wanting in civility (though he is not a man of much compliment, unless it be in his letters to me), nor an unreasonable person in anything, so he will allow him out of his kindness to his wife to set a higher value upon her sister than she deserves. I know not how he may be prejudiced as to the business, but he is not deaf to reason when ’tis civilly delivered, and is as easily gained with compliance and good usage as anybody I know, but by no other way. When he is roughly dealt with, he is like me, ten times the worse for’t.
I make it a case of conscience to discover my faults to you as fast as I know them, that you may consider what you have to do. My aunt told me no longer agone than yesterday that I was the most wilful woman that ever she knew, and had an obstinacy of spirit nothing could overcome. Take heed! you see I give you fair warning.
I have missed a letter this Monday: What is the reason? By the next, I shall be gone into Kent, and my other journey is laid aside, which I am not displeased at, because it would have broken our intercourse very much.
Here are some verses of Cowley’s. Tell me how you like them. ‘Tis only a piece taken out of a new thing of his; the whole is very long, and is a description of, or rather a paraphrase upon the friendship of David and Jonathan. ‘Tis, I think, the best I have seen of his, and I like the subject because ’tis that I would be perfect in. Adieu.
_Je suis vostre._
_Letter 62._
_June the 26th_ [1654].
I told you in my last that my Suffolk journey was laid aside, and that into Kent hastened. I am beginning it to-day; and have chosen to go as far as Gravesend by water, though it be very gloomy weather. If I drown by the way, this will be my last letter; and, like a will, I bequeath all my kindness to you in it, with a charge never to bestow it all upon another mistress, lest my ghost rise again and haunt you. I am in such haste that I can say little else to you now. When you are come over, we’l’ think where to meet, for at this distance I can design nothing; only I should be as little pleased with the constraint of my brother’s house as you. Pray let me know whether your man leaves you, and how you stand inclined to him I offer you. Indeed, I like him extremely, and he is commended to me, by people that know him very well and are able to judge, for a most excellent servant, and faithful as possible. I’ll keep him unengaged till I hear from you. Adieu.
My next shall make amends for this short one.
[_P.S._]–I received your last of June 22nd since I sealed up my letter, and I durst not but make an excuse for another short one, after you have chid me so for those you have received already; indeed, I could not help it, nor cannot now, but if that will satisfy I can assure you I shall make a much better wife than I do a husband, if I ever am one. _Pardon, mon Cher Coeur, on m’attend. Adieu, mon Ame. Je vous souhait tout ce que vous desire._
_Letter 63._
_July the 4th_ [1654].
Because you find fault with my other letters, this is like to be shorter than they; I did not intend it so though, I can assure you. But last night my brother told me he did not send his till ten o’clock this morning, and now he calls for mine at seven, before I am up; and I can only be allowed time to tell you that I am in Kent, and in a house so strangely crowded with company that I am weary as a dog already, though I have been here but three or four days; that all their mirth has not mended my humour, and that I am here the same I was in other places; that I hope, merely because you bid me, and lose that hope as often as I consider anything but yours. Would I were easy of belief! they say one is so to all that one desires. I do not find it, though I am told I was so extremely when I believed you loved me. That I would not find, and you have only power to make me think it. But I am called upon. How fain I would say more; yet ’tis all but the saying with more circumstance than I am
Yours.
[Directed.] For your master.
_Letter 64._
I see you can chide when you please, and with authority; but I deserve it, I confess, and all I can say for myself is, that my fault proceeded from a very good principle in me. I am apt to speak what I think; and to you have so accustomed myself to discover all my heart that I do not believe it will ever be in my power to conceal a thought from you. Therefore I am afraid you must resolve to be vexed with all my senseless apprehensions as my brother Peyton is with some of his wife’s, who is thought a very good woman, but the most troublesome one in a coach that ever was. We dare not let our tongues lie more on one side of our mouths than t’other for fear of overturning it. You are satisfied, I hope, ere this that I ‘scaped drowning. However, ’tis not amiss that my will made you know now how to dispose of all my wealth whensoever I die. But I am troubled much you should make so ill a journey to so little purpose; indeed, I writ by the first post after my arrival here, and cannot imagine how you came to miss of my letters. Is your father returned yet, and do you think of coming over immediately? How welcome you will be. But, alas! I cannot talk on’t at the rate that you do. I am sensible that such an absence is misfortune enough, but I dare not promise myself that it will conclude ours; and ’tis more my belief that you yourself speak it rather to encourage me, and to your wishes than your hopes.
My humour is so ill at present, that I dare say no more lest you chide me again. I find myself fit for nothing but to converse with a lady below, that is fallen out with all the world because her husband and she cannot agree. ‘Tis the pleasantest thing that can be to hear us discourse. She takes great pains to dissuade me from ever marrying, and says I am the veriest fool that ever lived if I do not take her counsel. Now we do not absolutely agree in that point, but I promise her never to marry unless I can find such a husband as I describe to her, and she believes is never to be found; so that, upon the matter, we differ very little. Whensoever she is accused of maintaining opinions very destructive of society, and absolutely prejudicial to all the young people of both sexes that live in the house, she calls out me to be her second, and by it has lost me the favour of all our young gallants, who have got a custom of expressing anything that is nowhere but in fiction by the name of “Mrs. O—-‘s husband.” For my life I cannot beat into their heads a passion that must be subject to no decay, an even perfect kindness that must last perpetually, without the least intermission. They laugh to hear me say that one unkind word would destroy all the satisfaction of my life, and that I should expect our kindness should increase every day, if it were possible, but never lessen. All this is perfect nonsense in their opinion; but I should not doubt the convincing them if I could hope to be so happy as to be
Yours.
_Letter 65._–Of William Lilly, a noted and extraordinary character of that day, the following account is taken from his own _Life and Times_, a lively book, full of amusing lies and astrological gossip, in which the author describes himself as a student of the Black Art. He was born in 1602 at Diseworth, an obscure town in the north of Leicestershire. His family appear to have been yeomen in this town for many generations. Passing over the measles of his infancy, and other trivial details of childhood, which he describes minutely, we find him as a boy at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, where he is the pupil of one Mr. John Brinsley. Here he learned Latin and Greek, and began to study Hebrew. In the sixteenth year of his age he was greatly troubled with dreams concerning his damnation or salvation; and at the age of eighteen he returned to his father’s house, and there kept a school in great penury. He then appears to have come up to London, leaving his father in a debtor’s prison, and proceeded in pursuit of fortune with a new suit of clothes and seven shillings and sixpence in his pocket. In London he entered the service of one Gilbert Wright, an independent citizen of small means and smaller education. To him Lilly was both man-servant and secretary. The second Mrs. Wright seems to have had a taste for astrology, and consulted some of the quacks who then preyed on the silly women of the city. She was very fond of young Lilly, who attended her in her last illness, and, in return for his care and attention, she bequeathed to him several “sigils” or talismanic seals. Probably it was the foolishness of this poor woman that first suggested to Lilly the advantages to be gained from the profession of astrology. Mr. Wright married a third wife, and soon afterwards died, leaving his widow comfortably off. She fell in love with Lilly, who married her in 1627, and for five years, until her death, they lived happily together. Lilly was now a man of means, and was enabled to study that science which he afterwards practised with so much success. There were a good many professors of the black art at this date, and Lilly studied under one Evans, a scoundrelly ex-parson from Wales, until, according to Lilly’s own account, he discovered Evans to be the cheat he undoubtedly was. Lilly, when he set up for himself, wrote many astrological works, which seem to have been very successful. He was known and visited by all the great men of the day, and probably had brains enough only to prophesy when he knew. His description of his political creed is beautifully characteristic of the man: “I was more Cavalier than Round-head, and so taken notice of; but afterwards I engaged body and soul in the cause of the Parliament, but still with much affection to his Majesty’s person and unto Monarchy, which I ever loved and approved beyond any government whatsoever.” Lilly was, in a word, a self-seeking but successful knave. People who had been robbed, women in love, men in debt, all in trouble and doubt, from the King downwards, sought his aid. He pretended to be a man of science, not a man gifted with supernatural powers. Whether he succeeded in believing in astrology and deceiving himself, it is impossible to say; he was probably too clever for that, but he deceived others admirably, and was one of the noted and most successful of the old astrologers.
How long this letter will be I cannot tell. You shall have all the time that is allowed me, but upon condition that you shall not examine the sense on’t too strictly, for you must know I want sleep extremely. The sun was up an hour before I went to bed to-day, and this is not the first time I have done this since I came hither. ‘Twill not be for your advantage that I should stay here long; for, in earnest, I shall be good for nothing if I do. We go abroad all day and play all night, and say our prayers when we have time. Well, in sober earnest now, I would not live thus a twelvemonth to gain all that the King has lost, unless it were to give it him again. ‘Tis a miracle to me how my brother endures it. ‘Tis as contrary to his humour as darkness is to light, and only shows the power he lets his wife have over him. Will you be so good-natured? He has certainly as great a kindness for her as can be, and, to say truth, not without reason; but all the people that ever I saw, I do not like his carriage towards her. He is perpetually wrangling and finding fault, and to a person that did not know him would appear the worst husband and the most imperious in the world. He is so amongst his children too, though he loves them passionately. He has one son, and ’tis the finest boy that e’er you saw, and has a noble spirit, but yet stands in that awe of his father that one word from him is as much as twenty whippings.
You must give me leave to entertain you thus with discourses of the family, for I can tell you nothing else from hence. Yet, now I remember. I have another story for you. You little think I have been with Lilly, and, in earnest, I was, the day before I came out of town; and what do you think I went for? Not to know when you would come home, I can assure you, nor for any other occasion of my own; but with a cousin of mine that had long designed to make herself sport with him, and did not miss of her aim. I confess I always thought him an impostor, but I could never have imagined him so simple a one as we found him. In my life I never heard so ridiculous a discourse as he made us, and no old woman who passes for a witch could have been more puzzled to seek what to say to reasonable people than he was. He asked us more questions than we did him, and caught at everything we said without discerning that we abused him and said things purposely to confound him; which we did so perfectly that we made him contradict himself the strangest that ever you saw. Ever since this adventure, I have had so great a belief in all things of this nature, that I could not forbear laying a peas-cod with nine peas in’t under my door yesterday, and was informed by it that my husband’s name should be Thomas. How do you like that? But what Thomas, I cannot imagine, for all the servants I have got since I came hither I know none of that name.
Here is a new song,–I do not send it to you but to your sister; the tune is not worth the sending so far. If she pleases to put any to it, I am sure it will be a better than it has here. Adieu.
_Letter 66._–“The Lost Lady” is a tragi-comedy by Sir William Berkely, and is advertised to be sold at the shop of the Holy Lamb in the year 1639, which we may take as the probable date of its publication. Dorothy would play Hermione, the heroine. We can imagine her speaking with sympathetic accent lines such as these:
With what harsh fate does Heaven afflict me That all the blessings which make others happy, Must be my ruin?
The five Portugals to whom Dorothy refers as being hanged were the Portuguese ambassador’s brother, Don Pantaleon Sa, and four of his men. The _Mercurius Politicus_ of November 1653 gives the following account of the matters that led to the execution; and as it is illustrative of the manners of the day, the account is here quoted at length:–
“NEW EXCHANGE IN THE STRAND. _November 21._–In the evening there happened a quarrel between the Portugal ambassador’s brother and two or three others of that nation with one Mr. Gerard, an English gentleman, whom they all fell upon; but he being rescued out of their hands by one Mr. Anstruther, they retired home, and within an hour after returned with about twelve more of their nation, armed with breastplates and headpieces; but after two or three hours taken there, not finding Anstruther, they went home again for that night.
“_November 22._–At night the ambassador’s brother and the rest returned again, and walking the upper Exchange, they met with one Col. Mayo, who, being a proper man, they supposed him to have been the same Anstruther that repelled them the night before; and so shooting off a pistol (which was as the watchword), the rest of the Portugals (supposed about fifty) came in with drawn swords, and leaving a sufficient number to keep the stairs, the rest went up with the ambassador’s brother, and there they fell upon Col. Mayo, who, very gallantly defending himself, received seven dangerous wounds, and lies in a mortal condition. They fell also upon one Mr. Greenway, of Lincoln’s Inn, as he was walking with his sister in one hand and his mistress in the other (to whom, as I am informed, he was to have been married on Tuesday next), and pistoled him in the head, whereof he died immediately. They brought with them several earthen jars stuffed with gunpowder, stopped with wax, and fitted with matches, intending, it seems, to have done some mischief to the Exchange that they might complete their revenge, but they were prevented.”
There is an account of their trial in the _State Trials_, of some interest to lawyers; it resulted in the execution of Don Pantaleon Sa and four of his servants. By one of those curious fateful coincidences, with which fact often outbids fiction, Mr. Gerard, who was the first Englishman attacked by the Portuguese, suffers on the same scaffold as his would-be murderers, his offence being high treason. Vowel, the other plotter, is also executed, but the third saves himself, as we know, by confession.
_July 20th_ [1654 in pencil].
I am very sorry I spoke too late, for I am confident this was an excellent servant. He was in the same house where I lay, and I had taken a great fancy to him, upon what was told me of him and what I saw. The poor fellow, too, was so pleased that I undertook to inquire out a place for him, that, though mine was, as I told him, uncertain, yet upon the bare hopes on’t he refused two or three good conditions; but I shall set him now at liberty, and not think at all the worse of him for his good-nature. Sure you go a little too far in your condemnation on’t. I know it may be abused, as the best things are most subject to be, but in itself ’tis so absolutely necessary that where it is wanting nothing can recompense the miss on’t. The most contemptible person in the world, if he has that, cannot be justly hated, and the most considerable without it cannot deserve to be loved. Would to God I had all that good-nature you complain you have too much of, I could find ways enough to dispose on’t amongst myself and my friends; but ’tis well where it is, and I should sooner wish you more on’t than less.
I wonder with what confidence you can complain of my short letters that are so guilty yourself in the same kind. I have not seen a letter this month which has been above half a sheet. Never trust me if I write more than you that live in a desolated country where you might finish a romance of ten tomes before anybody interrupted you–I that live in a house the most filled of any since the Ark, and where, I can assure [you], one has hardly time for the most necessary occasions. Well, there was never any one thing so much desired and apprehended at the same time as your return is by me; it will certainly, I think, conclude me a very happy or a most unfortunate person. Sometimes, methinks, I would fain know my doom whatever it be; and at others, I dread it so extremely, that I am confident the five Portugals and the three plotters which were t’other day condemned by the High Court of Justice had not half my fears upon them. I leave you to judge the constraint I live in, what alarms my thoughts give me, and yet how unconcerned this company requires I should be; they will have me at my part in a play, “The Lost Lady” it is, and I am she. Pray God it be not an ill omen!
I shall lose my eyes and you this letter if I make it longer. Farewell.
I am, yours.
_Letter 67._–Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, was the daughter of James I. She married the Elector Frederick, who was driven from his throne owing to his own misconduct and folly, when his wife was forced to return and live as a pensioner in her native country. She is said to have been gifted in a superlative degree with all that is considered most lovely in a woman’s character. On her husband’s death in 1632 she went to live at the Hague, where she remained until the Restoration. There is a report that she married William, Earl of Craven, but there is no proof of this. He was, however, her friend and adviser through her years of widowhood, and it was to his house in Drury Lane that she returned to live in 1661. She is said to have been a lover of literature, and Francis Quarles and Sir Henry Wotton were her intimate friends. The latter has written some quaint and elegant verses to his mistress; the last verse, in which he apostrophizes her as the sun, is peculiarly graceful. It runs thus:
You meaner beauties of the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes,
More by your number than your light,– You common people of the skies,
What are you when the sun shall rise?
But the sun is set, and the beautiful Queen’s sad, romantic story almost forgotten.
Sir John Grenvile was a son of the valiant and loyal cavalier, Sir Bevil Grenvile, of Kelkhampton, Cornwall. He served the King successfully in the west of England, and was dangerously wounded at Newbury. He was entrusted by Charles II. to negotiate with General Monk. Monk’s brother was vicar of Kelkhampton, so that Grenvile and Monk would in all probability be well acquainted before the time of the negotiation. We may remember, too, that Dorothy’s younger brother was on intimate terms with General Monk’s relations in Cornwall.
There must be letters missing here, for we cannot believe more than a month passed without Dorothy writing a single letter.
I wonder you did not come before your last letter. ‘Twas dated the 24th of August, but I received it not till the 1st of September. Would to God your journey were over! Every little storm of wind frights me so, that I pass here for the greatest coward that ever was born, though, in earnest, I think I am as little so as most women, yet I may be deceived, too, for now I remember me you have often told me I was one, and, sure, you know what kind of heart mine is better than anybody else.
I am glad you are pleased with that description I made you of my humour, for, though you had disliked it, I am afraid ’tis past my power to help. You need not make excuses neither for yours; no other would please me half so well. That gaiety which you say is only esteemed would be insupportable to me, and I can as little endure a tongue that’s always in motion as I could the click of a mill. Of all the company this place is stored with, there is but two persons whose conversation is at all easy; one is my eldest niece, who, sure, was sent into the world to show ’tis possible for a woman to be silent; the other, a gentleman whose mistress died just when they should have married; and though ’tis many years since, one may read it in his face still. His humour was very good, I believe, before that accident, for he will yet say things pleasant enough, but ’tis so seldom that he speaks at all, and when he does ’tis with so sober a look, that one may see he is not moved at all himself when he diverts the company most. You will not be jealous though I say I like him very much. If you were not secure in me, you might be so in him. He would expect his mistress should rise again to reproach his inconstancy if he made court to anything but her memory. Methinks we three (that is, my niece, and he and I) do become this house the worst that can be, unless I should take into the number my brother Peyton himself too; for to say truth his, for another sort of melancholy, is not less than ours. What can you imagine we did this last week, when to our constant company there was added a colonel and his lady, a son of his and two daughters, a maid of honour to the Queen of Bohemia, and another colonel or a major, I know not which, besides all the tongue they brought with them; the men the greatest drinkers that ever I saw, which did not at all agree with my brother, who would not be drawn to it to save a kingdom if it lay at stake and no other way to redeem it? But, in earnest, there was one more to be pitied besides us, and that was Colonel Thornhill’s wife, as pretty a young woman as I have seen. She is Sir John Greenvil’s sister, and has all his good-nature, with a great deal of beauty and modesty, and wit enough. This innocent creature is sacrificed to the veriest beast that ever was. The first day she came hither he intended, it seems, to have come with her, but by the way called in to see an old acquaintance, and bid her go on, he would overtake her, but did not come till next night, and then so drunk he was led immediately to bed, whither she was to follow him when she had supped. I blest myself at her patience, as you may do that I could find anything to fill up this paper withal. Adieu.
_Letter 68._–In this scrap of writing we find that Temple is again in England with certain proposals from his father, and ready to discuss the “treaty,” as Dorothy calls it, with her brother Peyton. The few remaining letters deal with the treaty. Temple would probably return to London when he left Ireland, and letters would pass frequently between them. There seems to have been some hitch as to who should appear in the treaty. Dorothy’s brother had spoken of and behaved to Temple with all disrespect, but, now that he is reconciled to the marriage, Dorothy would have him appear, at least formally, in the negotiations. The last letter of this chapter, which is dated October 2nd, calls on Temple to come down to Kent, to Peyton’s house; and it is reasonable to suppose that at this interview all was practically settled to the satisfaction of those two who were most deeply concerned in the negotiation.
I did so promise myself a letter on Friday that I am very angry I had it not, though I know you were not come to town when it should have been writ. But did not you tell me you should not stay above a day or two? What is it that has kept you longer? I am pleased, though, that you are out of the power of so uncertain things as the winds and the sea, which I never feared for myself, but did extremely apprehend for you. You will find a packet of letters to read, and maybe have met with them already. If you have, you are so tired that ’tis but reasonable I should spare you in this. For, [to] say truth, I have not time to make this longer; besides that if I had, my pen is so very good that it writes an invisible hand, I think; I am sure I cannot read it myself. If your eyes are better, you will find that I intended to assure you I am
Yours.
_Letter 69._
I am but newly waked out of an unquiet sleep, and I find it so late that if I write at all it must be now. Some company that was here last night kept us up till three o’clock, and then we lay three in a bed, which was all the same to me as if we had not gone to bed at all. Since dinner they are all gone, and our company with them part of the way, and with much ado I got to be excused, that I might recover a little sleep, but am so moped yet that, sure, this letter will be nonsense.
I would fain tell you, though, that your father is mistaken, and that you are not, if you believe that I have all the kindness and tenderness for you my heart is capable of. Let me assure you (whatever your father thinks) that had you L20,000 a year I could love you no more than I do, and should be far from showing it so much lest it should look like a desire of your fortune, which, as to myself, I value as little as anybody in the world, and in this age of changes; but certainly I know what an estate is. I have seen my father’s reduced, better than L4000, to not L400 a year, and I thank God I never felt the change in anything that I thought necessary. I never wanted, nor am confident I never shall. But yet, I would not be thought so inconsiderate a person as not to remember that it is expected from all people that have sense that they should act with reason, that to all persons some proportion of fortune is necessary, according to their several qualities, and though it is not required that one should tie oneself to just so much, and something is left for one’s inclination, and the difference in the persons to make, yet still within such a compass,–and such as lay more upon these considerations than they will bear, shall infallibly be condemned by all sober persons. If any accident out of my power should bring me to necessity though never so great, I should not doubt with God’s assistance but to bear it as well as anybody, and I should never be ashamed on’t if He pleased to send it me; but if by my own folly I had put it upon myself, the case would be extremely altered. If ever this comes to a treaty, I shall declare that in my own choice I prefer you much before any other person in the world, and all that this inclination in me (in the judgment of any persons of honour and discretion) will bear, I shall desire may be laid upon it to the uttermost of what they can allow. And if your father please to make up the rest, I know nothing that is like to hinder me from being yours. But if your father, out of humour, shall refuse to treat with such friends as I have, let them be what they will, it must end here; for though I was content, for your sake, to lose them, and all the respect they had for me, yet, now I have done that, I’ll never let them see that I have so little interest in you and yours as not to prevail that my brother may be admitted to treat for me. Sure, when a thing of course and so much reason as that (unless I did disclose to all the world he were my enemy), it must be expected whensoever I dispose of myself he should be made no stranger to it. When that shall be refused me, I may be justly reproached that I deceived myself when I expected to be at all valued in a family that I am a stranger to, or that I should be considered with any respect because I had a kindness for you, that made me not value my own interests.
I doubt much whether all this be sense or not; I find my head so heavy. But that which I would say is, in short, this: if I did say once that my brother should have nothing to do in’t, ’twas when his carriage towards me gave me such an occasion as could justify the keeping that distance with him; but now it would look extremely unhandsome in me, and, sure, I hope your father would not require it of me. If he does, I must conclude he has no value for me, and, sure, I never disobliged him to my knowledge, and should, with all the willingness imaginable, serve him if it lay in my power.
Good God! what an unhappy person am I. All the world is so almost. Just now they are telling me of a gentleman near us that is the most wretched creature made (by the loss of a wife that he passionately loved) that can be. If your father would but in some measure satisfy my friends that I might but do it in any justifiable manner, you should dispose me as you pleased, carry me whither you would, all places of the world would be alike to me where you were, and I should not despair of carrying myself so towards him as might deserve a better opinion from him.
I am yours.
_Letter 70._
My doubts and fears were not at all increased by that which gives you so many, nor did I apprehend that your father might not have been prevailed with to have allowed my brother’s being seen in the treaty; for as to the thing itself, whether he appears in’t or not, ’twill be the same. He cannot but conclude my brother Peyton would not do anything in it without the others’ consent.
I do not pretend to any share in your father’s kindness, as having nothing in me to merit it; but as much a stranger as I am to him, I should have taken it very ill if I had desired it of him, and he had refused it me. I do not believe my brother has said anything to his prejudice, unless it were in his persuasions to me, and there it did not injure him at all. If he takes it ill that my brother appears so very averse to the match, I may do so too, that he was the same; and nothing less than my kindness for you could have made me take so patiently as I did his saying to some that knew me at York that he was forced to bring you thither and afterwards to send you over lest you should have married me. This was not much to my advantage, nor hardly civil, I think, to any woman; yet I never so much as took the least notice on’t, nor had not now, but for this occasion; yet, sure, it concerns me to be at least as nice as he in point of honour. I think ’tis best for me to end here lest my anger should make me lose that respect I would always have for your father, and ’twere not amiss, I think, that I devoted it all towards you for being so idle as to run out of your bed to catch such a cold.
If you come hither you must expect to be chidden so much that you will wish that you had stayed till we came up, when perhaps I might have almost forgot half my quarrel to you. At this present I can assure you I am pleased with nobody but your sister, and her I love extremely, and will call her pretty; say what you will, I know she must be so, though I never saw more of her than what her letters show. She shall have two “spots” [carriage dogs] if she please (for I had just such another given me after you were gone), or anything else that is in the power of
Yours.
_Letter 71._
_Monday, October the 2nd_ [1654].
After a long debate with myself how to satisfy you and remove that rock (as you call it), which in your apprehensions is of so great danger, I am at last resolved to let you see that I value your affections for me at as high a rate as you yourself can set it, and that you cannot have more of tenderness for me and my interests than I shall ever have for yours. The particulars how I intend to make this good you shall know when I see you; which since I find them here more irresolute in point of time (though not as to the journey itself) than I hoped they would have been, notwithstanding your quarrel to me, and the apprehension you would make me believe you had that I do not care to see you, pray come hither and try whether you shall be welcome or not! In sober earnest now I must speak with you; and to that end if your occasions will [serve] come down to Canterbury. Send some one when you are there, and you shall have further directions.
You must be contented not to stay here above two or three hours. I shall tell you my reason when you come. And pray inform yourself of all that your father will do on this occasion, that you may tell it me only; therefore let it be plainly and sincerely what he intends and all.
I will not hinder your coming away so much as the making this letter a little longer might take away from your time in reading it. ‘Tis enough to tell you I am ever
Yours.
CHAPTER VII
THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME
This short series of notes was written, I think, during a visit to London after the formal betrothal and before the marriage. These notes were evidently written upon the trivial occasions of the day, more perhaps for the sake of writing something than for any more serious reason. The note in French is somewhat of a curiosity on account of its quaint orthography, which is purposely left uncorrected. Was Dorothy in London to purchase her _trousseau_? Where did she and Jane spend their days, if that was the case, when Regent Street was green fields? These questions cannot be satisfactorily answered; but the notes themselves, without any history or explanation, are so full of interest, so fresh and vivacious, even for Dorothy, that they place themselves from the freedom and joy of their style and manner at the end of the third volume.
You are like to have an excellent housewife of me; I am abed still, and slept so soundly, nothing but your letter could have waked me. You shall hear from me as soon as we have dined. Farewell; can you endure that word? No, out upon’t. I’ll see you anon.
Fye upon’t I shall grow too good now, I am taking care to know how your worship slept to-night; better I hope than you did the last. Send me word how you do, and don’t put me off with a bit of a note now; you could write me a fine long letter when I did not deserve it half so well.
You are mistaken if you think I am in debt for both these days. Saturday I confess was devoted to my Lady; but yesterday, though I ris with good intentions of going to church, my cold would not suffer me, but kept me prisoner all the day. I went to your lodging to tell you that visiting the sick was part of the work of the day, but you were gone, and so I went to bed again, where your letter found me this morning. But now I will rise and despatch some visits that I owe, that to-morrow may be entirely yours.
I find my conscience a little troubled till I have asked your pardon for my ill-humour last night. Will you forgive it me; in earnest, I could not help it, but I met with a cure for it; my brother kept me up to hear his learned lecture till after two o’clock, and I spent all my ill-humour upon him, and yet we parted very quietly, and look’d as if a little good fortune might make us good friends; but your special friend, my elder brother, I have a story to tell you of him. Will my cousin F. come, think you? Send me word, it maybe ’twas a compliment; if I can see you this morning I will, but I dare not promise it.
SIR,–This is to tell you that you will be expected to-morrow morning about nine o’clock at a lodging over against the place where Charinge Crosse stood, and two doors above Ye Goate Taverne; if with these directions you can find it out, you will there find one that is very much
Your servant.
Now I have got the trick of breaking my word, I shall do it every day. I must go to Roehampton to-day, but ’tis all one, you do not care much for seeing me. Well, my master, remember last night you swaggered like a young lord. I’ll make your stomach come down; rise quickly, you had better, and come hither that I may give you a lesson this morning before I go.
Je n’ay guere plus dormie que vous et mes songes n’ont pas estres moins confuse, au rest une bande de violons que sont venu jouer sous ma fennestre, m’out tourmentes de tel facon que je doubt fort si je pourrois jamais les souffrire encore, je ne suis pourtant pas en fort mauvaise humeur et je m’en-voy ausi tost que je serai habillee voire ce qu’il est posible de faire pour vostre sattisfaction, apres je viendre vous rendre conte de nos affairs et quoy qu’il en sera vous ne scaurois jamais doubte que je ne vous ayme plus que toutes les choses du monde.
I have slept as little as you, and may be allowed to talk as unreasonably, yet I find I am not quite senseless; I have a heart still that cannot resolve to refuse you anything within its power to grant. But, Lord, when shall I see you? People will think me mad if I go abroad this morning after having seen me in the condition I was in last night, and they will think it strange to see you here. Could you not stay till they are all gone to Roehampton? they go this morning. I do but ask, though do what you please, only believe you do a great injustice if you think me false. I never resolv’d to give you an eternal farewell, but I resolv’d at the same time to part with all the comfort of my life, and whether I told it you or not I shall die yours.
Tell me what you will have me do.
Here comes the note again to tell you I cannot call on you to-night; I cannot help it, and you must take it as patiently as you can, but I am engaged to-night at the Three Rings to sup and play. Poor man, I am sorry for you; in earnest, I shall be quite spoiled. I see no remedy; think whether it were not best to leave me and begin a new adventure.
And now we have finished. Dorothy Osborne is passing away, will soon be translated into Dorothy Temple; with the romance of her life all past history, and fast becoming as much a romance to herself, as it seems to us, looking back at it after more than two centuries. Something it is becoming to her over which she can muse and dream and weave into tales for the children who will gather round her. Something the reality of which will grow doubtful to her, if she find idle hours for dreaming and doubting in her new name. Her last lover’s letter is written. We are ready for the marriage ceremony, and listen for the wedding march and happy jingle of village bells; or if we may not have these in Puritan days, at least we may hear the pompous magistrate pronounce the blessing of the State over its two happy subjects. But no! There is yet a moment of suspense, a last trial to the lover’s constancy. The bride is taken dangerously ill, so dangerously ill that the doctors rejoice when the disease pronounces itself to be small-pox. Alas! who shall now say what are the inmost thoughts of our Dorothy? Does she not need all her faith in her lover, in herself, ay, and in God, to uphold her in this new affliction? She rises from her bed, her beauty of face destroyed; her fair looks living only on the painter’s canvas, unless we may believe that they were etched in deeply bitten lines on Temple’s heart. But the skin beauty is not the firmest hold she has on Temple’s affections; this was not the beauty that had attracted her lover and held him enchained in her service for seven years of waiting and suspense; this was not the only light leading him through dark days of doubt, almost of despair, constant, unwavering in his troth to her. Other beauty not outward, of which we, too, may have seen something, mirrowed darkly in these letters; which we, too, as well as Temple, may know existed in Dorothy. For it is not beauty of face and form, but of what men call the soul, that made Dorothy to Temple, in fact as she was in name,–the gift of God.
Appendix
LADY TEMPLE
Of Lady Temple there is very little to be known, and what there is can be best understood by following the career of her husband, which has been written at some length, and with laboured care, by Mr. Courtenay. After her marriage, which took place in London, January 31st, 1655, they lived for a year at the home of a friend in the country. They then removed to Ireland, where they lived for five years with Temple’s father; Lady Giffard, Temple’s widowed sister, joining them. In 1663 they were living in England. Lady Giffard continued to live with them through the rest of their lives, and survived them both. In 1665 Temple was sent to Brussels as English representative, and his family joined him in the following year. In 1668 he was removed from Brussels to the Hague, where the successful negotiations which led to the Triple Alliance took place, and these have given him an honourable place in history. There is a letter of Lady Temple’s, written to her husband in 1670, which shows how interested she was in the part he took in political life, and how he must have consulted her in all State matters. It is taken from Courtenay’s _Life of Sir William Temple_, vol. i. p. 345. He quotes it as the only letter written after Lady Temple’s marriage which has come into his hands.
THE HAGUE, _October 31st, 1670_.
My Dearest Heart,–I received yours from Yarmouth, and was very glad you made so happy a passage. ‘Tis a comfortable thing, when one is on this side, to know that such a thing can be done in spite of contrary winds. I have a letter from P., who says in character that you may take it from him that the Duke of Buckingham has begun a negotiation there, but what success in England he may have he knows not; that it were to be wished our politicians at home would consider well that there is no trust to be put in alliances with ambitious kings, especially such as make it their fundamental maxim to be base. These are bold words, but they are his own. Besides this, there is nothing but that the French King grows very thrifty, that all his buildings, except fortifications, are ceased, and that his payments are not so regular as they used to be. The people here are of another mind; they will not spare their money, but are resolved–at least the States of Holland–if the rest will consent, to raise fourteen regiments of foot and six of horse; that all the companies, both old and new, shall be of 120 men that used to be of 50, and every troop 80 that used to be of 45. Nothing is talked of but these new levies, and the young men are much pleased. Downton says they have strong suspicions here you will come back no more, and that they shall be left in the lurch; that something is striking up with France, and that you are sent away because you are too well inclined to these countries; and my cousin Temple, he says, told him that a nephew of Sir Robert Long’s, who is lately come to Utrecht, told my cousin Temple, three weeks since, you were not to stay long here, because you were too great a friend to these people, and that he had it from Mr. Williamson, who knew very well what he said. My cousin Temple says he told it to Major Scott as soon as he heard it, and so ’tis like you knew it before; but there is such a want of something to say that I catch at everything. I am my best dear’s most affectionate
D.T.
In the summer of 1671 there occurred an incident that reminds us considerably of the Dorothy Osborne of former days. The Triple Alliance had lost some of its freshness, and was not so much in vogue as heretofore. Charles II. had been coquetting with the French King, and at length the Government, throwing off its mask, formally displaced Temple from his post in Holland. “The critical position of affairs,” says Courtenay, “induced the Dutch to keep a fleet at sea, and the English Government hoped to draw from that circumstance an occasion of quarrel. A yacht was sent for Lady Temple; the captain had orders to sail through the Dutch fleet if he should meet it, and to fire into the nearest ships until they should either strike sail to the flag which he bore, or return his shot so as to make a quarrel!
“He saw nothing of the Dutch Fleet in going over, but on his return he fell in with it, and fired, without warning and ceremony, into the ships that were next him.
“The Dutch admiral, Van Ghent, was puzzled; he seemed not to know, and probably did not know, what the English captain meant; he therefore sent a boat, thinking it possible that the yacht might be in distress; when the captain told his orders, mentioning also that he had the ambassadress on board. Van Ghent himself then came on board, with a handsome compliment to Lady Temple, and, making his personal inquiries of the captain, received the same answer as before. The Dutchman said he had no orders upon the point, which he rightly believed to be still unsettled, and could not believe that the fleet, commanded by an admiral, was to strike to the King’s pleasure-boat.
“When the Admiral returned to his ship, the captain also, ‘perplexed enough,’ applied to Lady Temple, who soon saw that he desired to get out of his difficulty by her help; but the wife of Sir William Temple called forth the spirit of Dorothy Osborne. ‘He knew,’ she told the captain, ‘his orders best, and what he was to do upon them, which she left to him to follow as he thought fit, without any regard to her or her children.’ The Dutch and English commanders then proceeded each upon his own course, and Lady Temple was safely landed in England.”
There is an account of this incident in a letter of Sir Charles Lyttelton to Viscount Hatton, in the Hatton Correspondence. He tells us that the poor captain, Captain Crow of _The Monmouth_, “found himself in the Tower about it;” but he does not add any further information as to the part which Dorothy played in the matter.
After their retirement to Sheen and Moor Park, Surrey, we know nothing distinctively of Lady Temple, and little is known of their family life. They had only two children living, having lost as many as seven in their infancy. In 1684 one of these children, their only daughter, died of small-pox; she was buried in Westminster Abbey. There is a letter of hers written to her father which shows some signs of her mother’s affectionate teaching, and which we cannot forbear to quote. It is copied from Courtenay, vol. ii. p. 113.
SIR,–I deferred writing to you till I could tell you that I had received all my fine things, which I have just now done; but I thought never to have done giving you thanks for them. They have made me so very happy in my new clothes, and everybody that comes does admire them above all things, but yet not so much as I think they deserve; and now, if papa was near, I should think myself a perfect pope, though I hope I should not be burned as there was one at Nell Gwyn’s door the 5th of November, who was set in a great chair, with a red nose half a yard long, with some hundreds of boys throwing squibs at it. Monsieur Gore and I agree mighty well, and he makes me believe I shall come to something at last; that is if he stays, which I don’t doubt but he will, because all the fine ladies will petition for him. We are got rid of the workmen now, and our house is ready to entertain you. Come when you please, and you will meet nobody more glad to see you than your most obedient and dutiful daughter,
D. TEMPLE.
Temple’s son, John Temple, married in 1685 a rich heiress in France, the daughter of Monsieur Duplessis Rambouillet, a French Protestant; he brought his wife to live at his father’s house at Sheen. After King William and Queen Mary were actually placed on the throne, Sir William Temple, in 1689, permitted his son to accept the office of Secretary at War. For reasons now obscure and unknowable, he drowned himself in the Thames within a week of his acceptance of office, leaving this writing behind him:–
“My folly in undertaking what I was not able to perform has done the King and kingdom a great deal of prejudice. I wish him all happiness and abler servants than John Temple.”
The following letter was written on that occasion by Lady Temple to her nephew, Sir John Osborne. The original of it is at Chicksands:–
_To Sir John Osborne, thanking him for his consolation on the death of her son._
SHEEN, _May 6th, 1689_.
Dear Nephew,–I give you many thanks for your kind letter and the sense you have of my affliction, which truly is very great. But since it is laid upon me by the hand of an Almighty and Gracious God, that always proportions His punishments to the support He gives with them, I may hope to bear it as a Christian ought to do, and more especially one that is conscious to herself of having many ways deserved it. The strange revolution we have seen might well have taught me what this world is, yet it seems it was necessary that I should have a near example of the uncertainty of all human blessings, that so having no tie to the world I may the better prepare myself to leave it; and that this correction may suffice to teach me my duty must be the prayer of your affectionate aunt and humble servant,
D. TEMPLE.
During the remaining years of her life, Lady Temple was honoured, to use the conventional phrase, by the friendship of Queen Mary, and there is said to have been a continuous correspondence between them, though I can find on inquiry no trace of its existence at the present day.
Early in the year 1695, after forty years of married life, and in the sixty-seventh year of her age, she died. She lies, with her husband and children, on the north side of the nave of Westminster Abbey, close to the little door that leads to the organ gallery.
Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument, And her immortal part with angels lives.