Part 6

These letters of Dorothy Osborne were, at one time, lying at Coddenham Vicarage, Suffolk. Forty-two of them has Courtenay transferred to an appendix, without arrangement or any form of editing, as he candidly confesses, but not without misgivings as to how they will be received by a people thirsting to read the details of the negotiations which took place in connection with the Triple Alliance. Poor Courtenay! Did he live to learn that the world had other things to do than pore over dull excerpts from inhuman state papers? For the lighting of fires, for the rag-bag, or, if of stout paper or parchment, for the due covering of preserves and pickles, much of these Temple correspondences and treaties would be eminently fitted, but for the making of books they are all but useless; book-making of such material is not to be achieved by Courtenay, nay, nor by the cunningest publisher’s devil in Grub Street. Here, beneath poor blind Courtenay’s eye, were papers and negotiations, not about a triple alliance between states, but concerning a dual alliance between souls. Here, even for the dull historian, were chat, gossip, the witty portrayal of neighbours, the customs, manners, thoughts, the very life itself, of English human beings of that time, set out by the living pen of Dorothy Osborne. Surely it was within his power at least to edit carefully for us those letters? Alas, no! All that he can do is to produce a book in two unreadable octavo volumes, and to set down in an appendix, not without misgivings but forty-two of these charming letters.

But I will dare to put it to the touch to gain or lose it all. I cannot, I know, make her glorious by _my_ pen, but I can let her own pen have free play, and try to draw from her letters, and what other data there are at hand, some living presentment of a beautiful woman, pure in dissolute days, passing a quiet domestic existence among her own family; a loyalist, leading, in Cromwell’s days, a home-life of which those who draw their history from the pleasant pages of Sir Walter’s historical novels can have little idea. To confirmed novel readers it will be, I think, an awakening to learn that there was ever cessation of the “clashing of rapiers” and “heavy tramp of cavalry” in the middle of the seventeenth century.

Dorothy Osborne, born in 1627, was the daughter of Sir Peter Osborne, Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer (an inherited office) and Governor of Guernsey in the days of James I. and Charles his son. She was the only daughter now (1650) unmarried, and had been named after her mother, Dorothy, without further addition. Much more could be collected of this sort from the lumber in Baronetages and Herald’s manuals; but to what purpose? William Temple was born in 1628.

It was in 1648, when the King was imprisoned at Carisbrook, in Colonel Hammond’s charge, that Dorothy first met her constant lover. They met in the Isle of Wight. She and her brother were on their way to St. Malo. Temple was starting on his travels. A little incident, almost a Waverley incident, took place here, worth reciting, perhaps. The Osbornes and Temple were loyalists. Young Osborne, more loyal than intelligent, remained behind at an inn where they had halted, that he might write on a window pane with a diamond “And Haman was hanged upon the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.” This attack on Colonel Hammond, and the audacity of a cavalier daring to apply the Scriptures after the Puritanical method, caused the whole party to be arrested by the Roundheads, and a very pretty adventure was spoilt by the ready wit of our Dorothy taking the offence upon herself, when, through the gallantry of the Roundhead officer, the whole party was suffered to depart. “This incident,” says Courtenay, on good authority, “was not lost upon Temple.” Indeed, I think with Courtenay; but would add that much else besides was not lost upon him. Travelling with her and her brother, staying with her at St. Malo, is it to be wondered that Temple was attracted by the bright wit, clear faith and honesty of Dorothy; or that the brilliant parts and seriousness of Temple—a great contrast to many of the bibulous, rowdy cavaliers whom she must have met with—made her find in him one worthy of her friendship and her love? That Temple at this time openly declared his love I doubt. Love grew between them unknown to either. Years afterwards Dorothy writes:—

“For God’s sake, when we meet let us design one day to remember old stories in, to ask one another by what degrees our friendship grew to this height ’tis at. In earnest I am at a loss sometimes in thinking on’t; and though I can never repent of the share you have in my heart, I know not whether I gave it you willingly or not at first. No; to speak ingenuously, I think you got an interest there a good while before I thought you had any, and it grew so insensibly, and yet so fast, that all the traverses it has met with since, have served rather to discover it to me than at all to hinder it.”

The further circumstances necessary to the understanding of Dorothy’s letters, are shortly, these: Dorothy lived at Chicksands Priory, where her father was in ill-health, and there she received suitors at her parent’s commands. The Osbornes, it seemed, disliked Temple, and objected to him on the score of want of means; whilst Temple’s father had planned for his son an advantageous match in another quarter. Alas! for the frowardness of young couples! They held their course, and waited successfully.

Hardly can we do better that you may picture Dorothy and her mode of life clearly to yourself, than copy this important letter for you at length:

“You ask me how I pass my time here. I can give you a perfect account, not only of what I do for the present, but of what I am likely to do this seven years if I stay here so long. I rise in the morning reasonably early, and before I am ready I go round the house till I am weary of that, and then in the garden till it grows too hot for me. About ten o’clock I think of making me ready; and when that’s done I go into my father’s chamber; from thence to dinner, where my cousin Molle and I sit in great state in a room and at a table that would hold a great many more. After dinner we sit and talk till Mr. B. comes in question, and then I am gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o’clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit in the shade singing of ballads; I go to them, and compare their voices and beauty to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there; but, trust me, I think these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find _they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so_. Most commonly, while we are in the middle of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings at their heels. I, that am not so nimble, stay behind, and when I see them driving home their cattle I think ’tis time for me to retire too. When I have supped I go into the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by it, where I sit down and wish you with me (you had best say this is not kind, neither). In earnest, ’tis a pleasant place, and would be more so to me if I had your company. I sit there sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some cruel thought of the crossness of our fortune, that will not let me sleep there, I should forget there were such a thing to be done as going to bed.”

Truly a quiet country life, in a quiet country house; poor lonely Dorothy!

Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, is a low-built sacro-secular edifice, well fitted for its former service Its priestly denizens were turned out in Henry VIII’s monk-hunting reign (1538). To the joy or sorrow of the neighbourhood: who knows now? Granted then to one, Richard Snow, of whom the records are silent; by him sold, in Elizabeth’s reign, to Sir John Osborne, Knt. (Dorothy’s brother was first baronet); thus it becomes the ancestral home of our Dorothy. There is a crisp etching of the house in Fisher’s Collections of Bedfordshire. The very exterior of it is Catholic, unpuritanical, no methodism about the square windows set here and there, at undecided intervals, wheresoever they may be wanted. Six attic windows jut out from the low-tiled roof. At the corner of the house a high pinnacled buttress rising the full height of the wall; five buttresses flank the side wall, built so that they shade the lower windows from the morning sun, in one place reaching to the sill of an upper window. Perhaps Mrs. Dorothy’s window; how tempting to scale and see. What a spot for the happier realisation of Romeo and Juliet, or of Sigismonde and Guichard, if this were romance. In one end of the wall are two Gothic windows, claustral remnants, lighting now, perhaps, the dining-hall, where cousin Molle and Dorothy sat in state; or the saloon, where the latter received her servants. There are old cloisters attached to the house; at the other side of it may be. Yes! a sleepy country house, the warm earth and her shrubs creeping close up to the very sills of the lower windows, sending in morning fragrance, I doubt not, when Dorothy thrust back the lattice after breakfast. A quiet place, “slow” is the accurate modern epithet for it, “awfully slow.” But to Dorothy, a quite suitable home at which she never repines.

This etching of Thomas Fisher, of December 26th, 1816, is a godsend to me, hearing as I do that Chicksands Priory no longer remains to us, having suffered martyrdom at the bloody hands of the restorer. For through this, partly, we have attained to a knowledge of Dorothy’s surroundings, and may now safely let Dorothy herself tell us of the servants visiting her at Chicksands during those long seven years through which she remains constant to Temple. See what she expects in a lover! Have we not here some local squires hit off to the life? Could George Eliot have done more for us in like space?

“There are a great many ingredients must go to the making me happy in a husband. First, as my Cousin Franklin says our humours must agree, and to do that he must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used that kind of company. That is, he must not be so much a country gentleman as to understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than of his wife; nor of the next sort of them, whose aim reaches no farther than to be Justice of Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff, who reads no books but statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a speech interlarded with Latin, that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them rather than persuade them into quietness. He must not be a thing that began the world in a free school, was sent from thence to the university, and is at his furthest when he reaches the Inns of Court, has no acquaintance but those of his form in those places, speaks the French he has picked out of old laws, and admires nothing but the stories he has heard of the revels that were kept there before his time. He must not be a town gallant neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary, that cannot imagine how an hour should be spent without company unless it be in sleeping, that makes court to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is laughed at equally. Nor a travelled Monsieur, whose head is feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but of dances and duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes, when everybody else dies with cold to see him. He must not be a fool of no sort, nor peevish, nor ill-natured, nor proud, nor courteous; and to all this must be added, that he must love me, and I him, as much as we are capable of loving. Without all this his fortune, though never so great, would not satisfy me; and with it a very moderate one would keep me from ever repenting my disposal.”

These negative needs doubtless excluded many of the neighbours who were ready to throw themselves at her feet. But, from far and near, came many suitors, Cromwell’s son, Henry, among others; who will be “as acceptable to her,” she thinks, “as anybody else.” He seems almost worthy of her, if we believe most accounts of him, and allow for the Presbyterian animosity of good Mrs. Hutchinson. However, Henry Cromwell disappears from the scene, marrying elsewhere; whereby English history is possibly considerably modified. Temple is ordered to get her a dog, an Irish greyhound. “Henry Cromwell undertook to write to his brother Fleetwood, for another for me; but I have lost my hopes there; whomsoever it is that you employ, he will need no other instruction, but to get the biggest he can meet with. ’Tis all the beauty of those dogs, or of any, indeed, I think. A mastiff is handsomer to me than the most exact little dog that ever lady played withal.” Temple, no doubt, procured the biggest dog in Ireland, not the less joyfully that “she has lost her hopes of Henry Cromwell.”

There is another lover worthy of special mention—a widower—Sir Justinian Isham, of Lamport, Northamptonshire, pragmatical enough in his love suit, causing Mrs. Dorothy much amusement. She writes of him to Temple under the nickname “The Emperor.” This is the character she gives him: “He was the vainest, impertinent, self-conceited, learned coxcomb that ever yet I saw.” Hard words these!

The Emperor, it appears, caused further disagreement between Dorothy and her brother. Like the kettle in the _Cricket on the Hearth_, the Emperor began it. “The Emperor and his proposals began it; I talked merrily on’t till I saw my brother put on his sober face, and could hardly then believe he was in earnest. It seems he was; for when I had spoke freely my meaning, it wrought so with him, as to fetch up all that lay upon his stomach. All the people that I had ever in my life refused were brought again upon the stage, like Richard the III’s ghosts to reproach me withal, and all the kindness his discoveries could make I had for you was laid to my charge. My best qualities, if I have any that are good, served but for aggravations of my fault, and I was allowed to have wit, and understanding, and discretions, in all other things, that it might appear I had none in this. Well, ’twas a pretty lecture, and I grew warm with it after a while. In short, we came so near to an absolute falling out that ’twas time to give over, and we said so much then that we have hardly spoken a word together since. But ’tis wonderful to see what curtseys and legs pass between us, and as before we were thought the kindest brother and sister, we are certainly now the most complimental couple in England. ’Tis a strange change, and I am very sorry for it, but I’ll swear I know not how to help it.”

It is doubtless unpleasant to be pestered by an unwelcome suitor; however Dorothy has this compensation, that the Emperor’s proposals and letters give her mighty amusement.

“In my opinion, these great scholars are not the best writers (of letters I mean, of books perhaps they are); I never had, I think, but one letter from Sir Jus, but ’twas worth twenty of anybody’s else to make me sport. It was the most sublime nonsense that in my life I ever read, and yet I believe he descended as low as he could to come near my weak understanding. ’Twill be no compliment after this to say I like your letters in themselves, not as they come from one that is not indifferent to me, but seriously I do. All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one’s discourse; not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm. ’Tis an admirable thing to see how some people will labour to find out terms that may obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I know, who would never say ‘the weather grew cold,’ but that ‘winter began to salute us.’ I have no patience at such coxcombs, and cannot blame an old uncle of mine that threw the standish at his man’s head, because he writ a letter for him, where, instead of saying (as his master bid him) ‘that he would have writ himself but that he had gout in his hand,’ he said, ‘that the gout in his hand would not permit him to put pen to paper.’”

The Emperor, it seems, this much to his credit, is much enamoured of Mrs. Dorothy; and does not take a refusal quietly. Or is she playing the coquette with him?

“Would you think it, that I have an ambassador from the Emperor Justinian, that comes to renew the treaty? In earnest ’tis true, and I want your counsel extremely what to do in it. You told me once that of all my servants you liked him the best. If I could so too, there were no dispute in’t. Well, I’ll think on’t, and if it succeed I will be as good as my word: you shall take your choice of my four daughters. Am not I beholding to him, think you? He says he has made addresses, ’tis true, in several places since we parted, but could not fix anywhere, and in his opinion he sees nobody that would make so fit a wife for himself as I. He has often inquired after me to know if I were not marrying: and somebody told him I had an ague, and he presently fell sick of one too, so natural a sympathy there is between us, and yet for all this, on my conscience we shall never marry. He desires to know whether I am at liberty or not. What shall I tell him, or shall I send him to you to know? I think that will be best. I’ll say that you are much my friend, and that I am resolved not to dispose of myself but with your consent and approbation; and therefore he must make all his court to you, and when he can bring me a certificate under your hand that you think him a fit husband for me, ’tis very likely I may have him; till then I am his humble servant, and your faithful friend.”

But, at length Sir Justinian marries some other fair neighbour, and vanishes from these pages; leaving, however, other lovers in the field seeking Dorothy’s hand. “I have a squire now,” she writes, “that is as good as a knight. He was coming as fast as a coach and six horses could bring him, but I desired him to stay till my ague was gone, and give me a little time to recover my good looks, for I protest if he saw me now he would never desire to see me again. Oh, me! I cannot think how I shall sit like the lady of the lobster, and give audience at Babram; you have been there, I am sure, nobody at Cambridge ’scapes it, but you were never so welcome thither as you shall be when I am mistress of it.” Also there comes to woo her “a modest, melancholy, reserved man, whose head is so taken up with little philosophical studies, that I admire how I found a room there.” A new servant is offered to her: “who had £2000 a year in present, with £2000 more to come. I had not the curiosity to ask who he was, which they took so ill that I think I shall hear no more of it.” Thus in one way or another, she gets rid of them all. But they are very importunate, these “servants,” as they style themselves, requiring wit and determination to send them about their business. Dorothy is determined to marry where she loves. “Surely,” she says, “the whole world could never persuade me (unless a parent commanded it) to marry one that I had no esteem for.” It is doubtful if a parent’s command would suffice, did Dorothy come face to face with such.

Here is a sharp refusal dramatically given to one importunate servant, Mr. James Fish by name (fancy Dorothy Osborne as Mrs. Fish), who would fain have become master. “I cannot forbear telling you the other day he made me a visit; and I, to prevent his making discourses to me, made Mrs. Goldsmith and Jane sit by all the while. But he came better provided than I could have imagined. He brought a letter with him, and gave it me as one that he had met with, directed to me; he thought it came out of Northamptonshire. I was upon my guard, and suspecting all he said, examined him so strictly where he had it, before I would open it, that he was hugely confounded, and I confirmed that ’twas his. I laid it by, and wished then that they would have left us, that I might have taken notice on’t to him. But I had forbid it them so strictly before, that they offered not to stir further than to look out of window, as not thinking there was any necessity of giving us their eyes as well as their ears; but he, that thought himself discovered, took that time to confess to me (in a whispering voice that I could hardly hear myself), that the letter (as my Lord Broghill says) was of great concern to him, and begged I would read it, and give him my answer. I took it up presently, as if I had meant it, but threw it sealed as it was into the fire, and told him (as softly as he had spoke to me) I thought that the quickest and best way of answering it. He sat awhile in great disorder without speaking a word, and so rose and took his leave. Now what think you; shall I ever hear of him more?” We think not, decidedly. He, like the others, recovers, doubtless to marry elsewhere.

But Temple’s father, Dorothy’s brother, and her solicitous servants, are not the only obstacles these lovers meet with. There are long separations at great distances when the lovers can hear but little of each other. Few meetings, and these at long intervals, break the monotony of Dorothy’s life of love.

’Tis not the loss of love’s assurance, It is not doubting what thou art, But ’tis the too, too long endurance Of absence, that afflicts my heart.

Thus would Dorothy have written, perhaps, had she rhymed her thoughts in these days.

Now and again, indeed, Mrs. Dorothy is in London, “engaged to play and sup at the Three Kings,” or at Spring Gardens, Foxhall; enjoying for the time, as gay a life as is possible, in these Puritan days. But this is not the life for our Dorothy. “We go abroad all day,” she writes, “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 was to give it him again_.” No! Dorothy’s life is at Chicksands tending her father, writing to her lover, reading romances sent to her by him, and crying real tears over the miseries of their poor pasteboard heroines. In those days Fielding was not, and the glories of fiction were unknown and quite unconceivable. Mr. Cowley’s verses reach her (in MS. Courtenay thinks), and occasional news of political matters. Here, set down in this dull priory house, she lives a calm domestic life without repining, without sympathy in her troubles. Is not this difficult; impossible to most, and worthy of a heroine? But, though her life is at Chicksands, her heart is far away with Temple; though her eyes are brimming with tears for the sorrows of Almanzar, it is because they mirror her troubles in their own weak fashion; and, whilst her soul is longing to commune with her lover, is it marvellous that by some mesmeric culture, she, quite untrained in literary skill, so portrays her thoughts that not only were they clearly uttered for Temple, but remain to us, clothed in the power of clear intention, honesty of expression, and kindly wit?