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 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.
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.