The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54. Dorothy Osborne
1654, when, as we read in Dorothy's letters, he and his son go over to Ireland. He resumed his office of Master of the Rolls, and in August of that year was elected to the Irish Parliament as one of the members for Leitrim, Sligo, and Roscommon.
Temple's mother was a sister of Dr. Hammond, to whom one Dr. John Collop, a poetaster unknown in these days even by name, begins an ode—
"Seraphic Doctor, bright evangelist."
The "seraphic Doctor" was rector of Penshurst, near Tunbridge Wells, the seat of the Sydneys. From Hammond, who was a zealous adherent of Charles I., Temple received much of his early education. When the Parliament drove Dr. Hammond from his living, Temple was sent to school at Bishop-Stortford; and the rest of his early life, with an account of his meeting with Dorothy, has been already set down for us by Macaulay.
Anno Domini sixteen hundred and fifty-three;—let us look round through historic mist for landmarks, so that we may know our whereabouts. The narrow streets of Worcester had been but lately stained by the blood of heaped corpses. Cromwell was meditating an abolition of the Parliament, and a practical coronation of himself. The world had ceased to wonder at English democracy giving laws to their quondam rulers, and the democracy was beginning to be a little tired of itself, to disbelieve in its own irksome discipline, and to sigh for the flesh-pots of a modified Presbyterian monarchy. Cromwell, indeed, was at the height of his glory, his honours lie thick upon him, and now, if ever, he is the regal Cromwell that Victor Hugo has portrayed, the uncrowned King of England, trampling under foot that sacred liberty, the baseless ideal for which so many had fought and bled. He is soon to be Lord Protector. He is second to none upon earth. England is again at peace with herself, and takes her position as one of the great Powers of Europe; Cromwell is England's king. So much for our rulers and politics. Now let us remember our friends, those whom we love on account of the work they have done for us and bequeathed to us, through which we have learned to know them. One of the best beloved and gentlest of these, who by the satire of heaven was born into England in these troublous times, was now wandering by brook and stream, scarcely annoyed by the uproar and confusion of the factions around him. And what he knew of England in these days he has left in perhaps the gentlest and most peaceful volume the world has ever read. I speak of Master Izaak Walton, who in this year, 1653, published the first edition of his Compleat Angler, and left a comrade for the idle hours of all future ages. Other friends we have, then living, but none so intimate or well beloved. Mr. Waller, whom Dorothy may have known, Mr. Cowley, Sir Peter Lely—who painted our heroine's portrait—and Dr. Jeremy Taylor; very courtly and superior persons are some of these, and far removed from our world. Milton is too sublime to be called our friend, but he was Cromwell's friend at this time. Evelyn, too, is already making notes in his journal at Paris and elsewhere; but little prattling Pepys has not yet begun diary-making. Other names will come to the mind of every reader, but many of these are "people we know by name," as the phrase runs, mere acquaintances—not friends. Nevertheless even these leave us some indirect description of their time, from which we can look back through the mind's eye to this year of grace 1653, in which Dorothy was living and writing. Yes, if we cannot actually visualize the past, these letters will at least convince us that the past did exist, a past not wholly unlike the present; and if we would realize the significance of it, we have the word of one of our historians, that there is no lamp by which to study the history of this period that gives a brighter and more searching light than contemporary letters. Thus he recommends their study, and we may apply his words to the letters before us: "A man intent to force for himself some path through that gloomy chaos called History of the Seventeenth Century, and to look face to face upon the same, may perhaps try it by this method as hopefully as by another. Here is an irregular row of beacon fires, once all luminous as suns; and with a certain inextinguishable crubescence still, in the abysses of the dead deep Night. Let us look here. In shadowy outlines, in dimmer and dimmer crowding forms, the very figure of the old dead Time itself may perhaps be faintly discernible here."
With this, I feel that I may cast off some of the forms and solemnities necessary to an editorial introduction, and, assuming a simpler and more personal pronoun, ask the reader, who shall feel the full charm of Dorothy's bright wit and tender womanly sympathy, to remember the thanks due to my fellow-servant, whose patient, single-hearted toil has placed these letters within our reach. And when the reader shall close this volume, let it not be without a feeling of gratitude to the unknown, whose modesty alone prevents me from changing the title of fellow-servant to that of fellow-editor.
CHAPTER II
EARLY LETTERS. WINTER AND SPRING 1652–53
This first chapter begins with a long letter, dated from Chicksands some time in the autumn of 1652, when Temple has returned to England after a long absence. It takes us up to March 1653, about the end of which time Dorothy went to London and met Temple again. The engagement she mentions must have been one that her parents were forcing upon her, and it was not until the London visit, I fancy, that her friendship progressed beyond its original limits; but in this matter the reader of Dorothy's letters will be as well able to judge as myself.
Letter I.—Goring House, where Dorothy and Temple had last parted, was in 1646 appointed by the House of Commons for the reception of the French Ambassador. In 1665 it was the town house of Mr. Secretary Bennet, afterwards Lord Arlington. Its grounds stood much in the position of the present Arlington Street, and Evelyn speaks of it as an ill-built house, but capable of being made a pretty villa.
Dorothy mentions, among other things, that she has been "drinking the waters," though she does not say at what place. It would be either at Barnet, Epsom, or Tunbridge, all of which places are mentioned by contemporary letter-writers as health resorts. At Barnet there was a calcareous spring with a small portion of sea salt in it, which, as we may gather from a later letter, had been but recently discovered. This spring was afterwards, in the year 1677, endowed by one John Owen, who left the sum of £1 to keep the well in repair "as long as it should be of service to the parish." Towards the end of last century, Lyson mentions that the well was in decay and little used. One wonders what has become of John Owen's legacy. The Epsom spring had been discovered earlier in the century. It was the first of its kind found in England. The town was already a place of fashionable resort on account of its mineral waters; they are mentioned as of European celebrity; and as early as 1609 a ball-room was erected, avenues were planted, and neither Bath nor Tunbridge could rival Epsom in the splendour of their appointments. Towards the beginning of the last century, however, the waters gradually lost their reputation. Tunbridge Wells, the last of the three watering-places that Dorothy may have visited, is still flourishing and fashionable. Its springs are said to have been discovered by Lord North in 1606; and the fortunes of the place were firmly established by a visit paid to the springs by Queen Henrietta Maria, acting under medical advice, in 1630, shortly after the birth of Prince Charles. At this date there was no adequate accommodation for the royal party, and Her Majesty had to live in tents on the banks of the spring. An interesting account of the early legends and gradual growth of Tunbridge Wells is to be found in a guide-book of 1768, edited by one Mr. J. Sprange.
The elderly man who proposed to Dorothy was Sir Justinian Isham, Bart., of Lamport in Northamptonshire. He himself was about forty-two years of age at this time, and had lost his first wife (by whom he had four daughters) in 1638. The Rev. W. Betham, with that optimism which is characteristic of compilers of peerages, thinks "that he was esteemed one of the most accomplished persons of the time, being a gentleman, not only of fine learning, but famed for his piety and exemplary life." Dorothy thinks otherwise, and writes of him as "the vainest, impertinent, self-conceited, learned coxcomb that ever yet I saw." Peerages in Dorothy's style would perhaps be unprofitable writing. The "Emperor," as Dorothy calls him in writing to Temple, may feel thankful that his epitaph was in others hands than hers. He appears to have proposed to her more than once, and evidently had her brother's good offices, which I fear were