The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 Part 15

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 wors.h.i.+p 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. Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sing 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 p.r.o.nounces 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d.

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 pa.s.sage. '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 circ.u.mstance 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 amba.s.sadress 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 pet.i.tion 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 n.o.body 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:--