Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne — 13 - Letters 61-65

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.