Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne — 15 - Letters 72-80

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 tourmentés de tel façon 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 habillée voire ce qu'il est posible de faire pour vostre sattisfaction, après je viendre vous rendre conte de nos affairs et quoy qu'il en sera vous ne scaurois jamais doubté 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.