The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652 54 by Edward Abbott Parry

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THE LOVE LETTERS OF DOROTHY OSBORNE
TO SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, 1652-54

Edited by Edward Abbott Parry

New York, 1901

TO
MY DAUGHTER
HELEN
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
EXEMPLI GRATIA

Editorial Note

It having been noted in the _Athenaeum_, June 9, 1888, that rumours were
afloat doubting the authenticity of these letters, and that these
rumours would sink to rest if the history of the originals were
published, I hasten to adopt my reviewer's suggestion, and give an
outline of their story. They are at present in the hands of the Rev.
Robert Longe at Coddenham Vicarage, Suffolk, where they have been for
the last hundred years. At Sir William Temple's death in 1698, he left
no other descendants than two grand-daughters--Elizabeth and Dorothy.
Elizabeth died without issue in 1772; Dorothy married Nicholas Bacon,
Esq. of Shrubland Hall in the parish of Coddenham. Dorothy left a son,
the Rev. Nicholas Bacon, who was vicar of Coddenham. This traces the
letters to Coddenham Vicarage. The Rev. Nicholas Bacon dying without
issue, bequeathed Coddenham Vicarage, with the pictures and papers
therein, to the Rev. John Longe, who had married his wife's sister. The
Rev. John Longe, who died in 1835, was the father of the present owner.
This satisfactorily accounts for the letters being in their present
hands, and these stated facts will, I trust, set at rest the fears or
hopes of sceptics.

EDWARD ABBOTT PARRY.

MANCHESTER, October 1888.

Contents

I. INTRODUCTION

II. EARLY LETTERS. Winter and Spring 1652-53

III. LIFE AT CHICKSANDS. 1653

IV. DESPONDENCY. Christmas 1653

V. THE LAST OF CHICKSANDS. February and March 1654

VI. VISITING. Summer 1654

VII. THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME

APPENDIX--LADY TEMPLE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

"An editor," says Dr. Johnson, is "he that revises or prepares any work
for publication;" and this definition of an editor's duty seems wholly
right and satisfactory. But now that the revision of these letters is
apparently complete, the reader has some right to expect a formal
introduction to a lady whose name he has, in all probability, never
heard; and one may not be overstepping the modest and Johnsonian limits
of an editor's office, when the writing of a short introduction is
included among the duties of preparation.

Dorothy Osborne was the wife of the famous Sir William Temple, and
apology for her biography will be found in her own letters, here for the
first time published. Some of them have indeed been printed in a _Life
of Sir William Temple_ by the Right Honourable Thomas Peregrine
Courtenay, a man better known to the Tory politician of fifty years ago
than to any world of letters in that day or this. Forty-two extracts
from these letters did Courtenay transfer to an Appendix, without
arrangement or any form of editing, as he candidly confesses; but not
without misgivings as to how they would be received by a people
thirsting to read the details of the negotiations which took place in
connection with the Triple Alliance. If Courtenay lived to learn that
the world had other things to do than pore over dull excerpts from
inhuman State papers, we may pity his awakening; but we can never quite
forgive the apologetic paragraph with which he relegates Dorothy
Osborne's letters to the mouldy obscurity of an Appendix.

When Macaulay was reviewing Courtenay's book in the _Edinburgh Review_,
he took occasion to write a short but living sketch of the early history
of Sir William Temple and Dorothy Osborne. And with this account so
admirably written, ready at hand, it becomes the clear duty of the
Editor to quote rather than to rewrite; which he does with the greater
pleasure, remembering that it was this very passage that first led him
to read the letters of Dorothy Osborne.

"William Temple, Sir John's eldest son, was born in London in the year
1628. He received his early education under his maternal uncle, was
subsequently sent to school at Bishop-Stortford, and, at seventeen,
began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated
Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The
Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling-greens of
Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and discipline
of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot
at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from
Bishop-Stortford, and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance which
would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact, that
fifty years later he was so absurd as to set up his own authority
against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He
made no proficiency, either in the old philosophy which still lingered
in the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord
Bacon was the founder. But to the end of his life he continued to speak
of the former with ignorant admiration, and of the latter with equally
ignorant contempt.

"After residing at Cambridge two years, he departed without taking a
degree, and set out upon his travels. He seems to have been then a
lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not by any means deeply read,
but versed in all the superficial accomplishments of a gentleman, and
acceptable in all polite societies. In politics he professed himself a
Royalist. His opinions on religious subjects seem to have been such as
might be expected from a young man of quick parts, who had received a
rambling education, who had not thought deeply, who had been disgusted
by the morose austerity of the Puritans, and who, surrounded from
childhood by the hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to feel
an impartial contempt for them all.

"On his road to France he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter
Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people
were, like their father, warm for the Royal cause. At an inn where they
stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with inscribing
on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this instance of
malignancy the whole party were arrested, and brought before the
Governor. The sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even in those
troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to show
where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was
immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.

"This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was
only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been
handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample
share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex.
Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she
returned his regard. But difficulties, as great as ever expanded a novel
to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced,
the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of
the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King Charles. Even when the
war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the
prospects of the lovers were scarcely less gloomy. Sir John Temple had a
more advantageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in
the meantime besieged by as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the
fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell.
Destitute of the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his
illustrious father, destitute also of the meek and placid virtues of his
elder brother, this young man was perhaps a more formidable rival in
love than either of them would have been. Mrs. Hutchinson, speaking the
sentiments of the grave and aged, describes him as an 'insolent foole,'
and a 'debauched ungodly cavalier.' These expressions probably mean that
he was one who, among young and dissipated people, would pass for a fine
gentleman. Dorothy was fond of dogs, of larger and more formidable breed
than those which lie on modern hearthrugs; and Henry Cromwell promised
that the highest functionaries at Dublin should be set to work to
procure her a fine Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his
attentions as very flattering, though his father was then only Lord
General, and not yet Protector. Love, however, triumphed over ambition,
and the young lady appears never to have regretted her decision; though,
in a letter written just at the time when all England was ringing with
the news of the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament, she could
not refrain from reminding Temple with pardonable vanity, 'how great she
might have been, if she had been so wise as to have taken hold of the
offer of H.C.'

"Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The
relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, and spoke
of him as an unprincipled adventurer, without honour or religion, ready
to render service to any party for the sake of preferment. This is,
indeed, a very distorted view of Temple's character. Yet a character,
even in the most distorted view taken of it by the most angry and
prejudiced minds, generally retains something of its outline. No
caricaturist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a
skeleton; nor did any libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or
profusion to Marlborough. It must be allowed that the turn of mind which
the eulogists of Temple have dignified with the appellation of
philosophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in an
old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful appearance in
youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who were ready to fight
or to suffer martyrdom for their exiled King and their persecuted
Church. The poor girl was exceedingly hurt and irritated by these
imputations on her lover, defended him warmly behind his back, and
addressed to himself some very tender and anxious admonitions, mingled
with assurances of her confidence in his honour and virtue. On one
occasion she was most highly provoked by the way in which one of her
brothers spoke of Temple. 'We talked ourselves weary,' she says; 'he
renounced me, and I defied him.'

"Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue. We are not
accurately informed respecting Temple's movements during that time. But
he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent,
sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in London. He made himself master of the
French and Spanish languages, and amused himself by writing essays and
romances, an employment which at least served the purpose of forming his
style. The specimen which Mr. Courtenay has preserved of these early
compositions is by no means contemptible: indeed, there is one passage
on Like and Dislike, which could have been produced only by a mind
habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds
us of the best things in Montaigne.

"Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his
mistress. His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many
of them appear in these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt
whether his readers will think him justified in inserting so large a
number of these epistles. We only wish that there were twice as many.
Very little indeed of the diplomatic correspondence of that generation
is so well worth reading."

Here Macaulay indulges in an eloquent but lengthy philippic against that
"vile phrase" the "dignity of history," which we may omit,--taking up
the thread of his discourse where he recurs to the affairs of our two
lovers. "Thinking thus,"--concerning the "dignity of history,"--"we are
glad to learn so much, and would willingly learn more about the loves of
Sir William and his mistress. In the seventeenth century, to be sure,
Louis the Fourteenth was a much more important person than Temple's
sweetheart. But death and time equalize all things. Neither the great
King nor the beauty of Bedfordshire, neither the gorgeous paradise of
Marli nor Mistress Osborne's favourite walk 'in the common that lay hard
by the house, where a great many young wenches used to keep sheep and
cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads,' is anything to us. Louis
and Dorothy are alike dust. A cotton-mill stands on the ruins of Marli;
and the Osbornes have ceased to dwell under the ancient roof of
Chicksands. But of that information, for the sake of which alone it is
worth while to study remote events, we find so much in the love letters
which Mr. Courtenay has published, that we would gladly purchase equally
interesting billets with ten times their weight in State papers taken at
random. To us surely it is as useful to know how the young ladies of
England employed themselves a hundred and eighty years ago, how far
their minds were cultivated, what were their favourite studies, what
degree of liberty was allowed to them, what use they made of that
liberty, what accomplishments they most valued in men, and what proofs
of tenderness delicacy permitted them to give to favoured suitors, as to
know all about the seizure of Franche-Comte and the Treaty of Nimeguen.
The mutual relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at least as
important as the mutual relations of any two Governments in the world;
and a series of letters written by a virtuous, amiable, and sensible
girl, and intended for the eye of her lover alone, can scarcely fail to
throw some light on the relations of the sexes; whereas it is perfectly
possible, as all who have made any historical researches can attest, to
read bale after bale of despatches and protocols, without catching one
glimpse of light about the relations of Governments.

"Mr. Courtenay proclaims that he is one of Dorothy Osborne's devoted
servants, and expresses a hope that the publication of her letters will
add to the number. We must declare ourselves his rivals. She really
seems to have been a very charming young woman, modest, generous,
affectionate, intelligent, and sprightly; a Royalist, as was to be
expected from her connections, without any of that political asperity
which is as unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and occasionally
gliding into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not too
good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the
melancholy rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous
sermon from a divine who was thought to be one of the great lights of
the Assembly at Westminster; with a little turn for coquetry, which was
yet perfectly compatible with warm and disinterested attachment, and a
little turn for satire, which yet seldom passed the bounds of good
nature. She loved reading; but her studies were not those of Queen
Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. She read the verses of Cowley and Lord
Broghill, French Memoirs recommended by her lover, and the Travels of
Fernando Mendez Pinto. But her favourite books were those ponderous
French romances which modern readers know chiefly from the pleasant
satire of Charlotte Lennox. She could not, however, help laughing at the
vile English into which they were translated. Her own style is very
agreeable; nor are her letters at all the worse for some passages in
which raillery and tenderness are mixed in a very engaging namby-pamby.

"When at last the constancy of the lovers had triumphed over all the
obstacles which kinsmen and rivals could oppose to their union, a yet
more serious calamity befell them. Poor Mistress Osborne fell ill of
the small-pox, and, though she escaped with life, lost all her beauty.
To this most severe trial the affection and honour of the lovers of that
age was not unfrequently subjected. Our readers probably remember what
Mrs. Hutchinson tells us of herself. The lofty Cornelia-like spirit of
the aged matron seems to melt into a long forgotten softness when she
relates how her beloved Colonel 'married her as soon as she was able to
quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were affrighted
to look on her. But God,' she adds, with a not ungraceful vanity,
'recompensed his justice and constancy by restoring her as well as
before.' Temple showed on this occasion the same justice and constancy
which did so much honour to Colonel Hutchinson. The date of the marriage
is not exactly known, but Mr. Courtenay supposes it to have taken place
about the end of the year 1654. From this time we lose sight of Dorothy,
and are reduced to form our opinion of the terms on which she and her
husband were from very slight indications which may easily mislead us."

When an editor is in the pleasant position of being able to retain an
historian of the eminence of Macaulay to write a large portion of his
introduction, it would ill become him to alter and correct his
statements wherever there was a petty inaccuracy; still it is necessary
to say, once for all, that there are occasional errors in the
passage,--as where Macaulay mentions that Chicksands is no longer the
property of the Osbornes,--though happily not one of these errors is in
itself important. To our thinking, too, in the character that he draws
of our heroine, Macaulay hardly appears to be sufficiently aware of the
sympathetic womanly nature of Dorothy, and the dignity of her
disposition; so that he is persuaded to speak of her too constantly from
the position of a man of the world praising with patronizing emphasis
the pretty qualities of a school-girl. But we must remember, that in
forming our estimate of her character, we have an extended series of
letters before us; and from these the reader can draw his own
conclusions as to the accuracy of Macaulay's description, and the
importance of Dorothy's character.

It was this passage from Macaulay that led the Editor to Courtenay's
Appendix, and it was the literary and human charm of the letters
themselves that suggested the idea of stringing them together into a
connected story or sketch of the love affairs of Dorothy Osborne. This
was published in April 1886 in the _English Illustrated Magazine_, and
happened, by good luck, to fall into the hands of an admirer of Dorothy,
who, having had access to the original letters, had made faithful and
loving copies of each one,--accurate even to the old-world spelling.
These labours had been followed up by much patient research, the fruits
of which were now to be generously offered to the present Editor on
condition that he would prepare the letters for the press. The owner of
the letters having courteously expressed his acquiescence, nothing
remained but to give to the task that patient care that it is easy to
give to a labour of love.

A few words of explanation as to the arrangement of the letters.
Although few of them were dated, it was found possible, by minute
analysis of their contents, to place them in approximately correct
order; and if one could not date each letter, one could at least assign
groups of letters to specific months or seasons of the year. The fact
that New Year's day was at this period March 25--a fact sometimes
ignored by antiquarians of high repute--adds greatly to the difficulty
of ascertaining exact dates, and as an instance of this we find in
different chronicles of authority Sir Peter Osborne's death correctly,
yet differently, given as happening in March 1653 and March 1654.
Throughout this volume the ordinary New Year's day has been retained.
The further revision and preparation that the letters have undergone is
shortly this. The spelling has been modernized, the letters punctuated
and arranged in paragraphs, and names indicated by initials have been,
wherever it was possible, written in full. A note has been prefixed to
each letter, printed in a more condensed form than the letter itself,
and dealing with all the allusions contained in it. This system is very
fit to be applied to Dorothy's letters, because, by its use, Dorothy is
left to tell her own story without the constant and irritating
references to footnotes or Appendix notes that other arrangements
necessitate. The Editor has a holy horror of the footnote, and would
have it relegated to those "_biblia a-biblia_" from which class he is
sure Elia would cheerfully except Dorothy's letters. In the notes
themselves the endeavour has been to obtain, where it was possible,
parallel references to letters, diaries, or memoirs, and the Editor can
only regret that his researches, through both MSS. and printed records,
have been so little successful. In the case of well-known men like
Algernon Sydney, Lord Manchester, Edmund Waller, etc., no attempt has
been made to write a complete note,--their lives and works being
sufficiently well known; but in the case of more obscure persons,--as,
for instance, Dorothy's brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Peyton,--all the
known details of their history have been carefully collected. Yet in
spite of patience, toil, and the kindness of learned friends, the Editor
is bound to acknowledge that some names remain mere words to him, and
but too many allusions are mysteriously dim.

The division of the letters into chapters, at first sight an arbitrary
arrangement, really follows their natural grouping. The letters were
written in the years 1653 and 1654, and form a clear and connected story
of the love affairs of the young couple during that time. The most
important group of letters, both from the number of letters contained in
it and the contents of the letters themselves, is that entitled "Life at
Chicksands, 1653." The Editor regards this group as the very mainland of
the epistolary archipelago that we are exploring. For it is in this
chapter that a clear idea of the domestic social life of these troublous
times is obtainable, none the less valuable in that it does not tally
altogether with our preconceived and too romantic notions. Here, too, we
find what Macaulay longed for--those social domestic trivialities which
the historians have at length begun to value rightly. Here are, indeed,
many things of no value to Dryasdust and his friends, but of moment to
us, who look for and find true details of life and character in nearly
every line. And above all things, here is a living presentment of a
beautiful woman, pure in dissolute days, passing quiet hours of domestic
life amongst her own family, where we may all visit her and hear her
voice, even in the very tones in which she spoke to her lover.

And now the Editor feels he must augment Macaulay's sketch of Dorothy
Osborne with some account of the Osborne family, of whom it consisted,
what part it took in the struggle of the day, and what was the past
position of Dorothy's ancestors. All that can be promised is, that such
account shall be as concise as may be consistent with clearness and
accuracy, and that it shall contain nothing but ascertained facts.

There were Osbornes--before there were Osbornes of Chicksands--who,
coming out of the north, settled at Purleigh in Essex, where we find
them in the year 1442. From this date, passing lightly over a hundred
troubled years, we find Peter Osborne, Dorothy's great-grandfather, born
in 1521. He was Keeper of the Purse to Edward VI., and was twice
married, his second wife being Alice, sister of Sir John Cheke, a family
we read of in Dorothy's letters. One of his daughters, named
Catharine,--he had a well-balanced family of eleven sons and eleven
daughters,--afterwards married Sir Thomas Cheke. Peter Osborne died in
1592; and Sir John Osborne, Peter's son and Dorothy's grandfather, was
the first Osborne of Chicksands. It was he who settled at Chicksands, in
Bedfordshire, and purchased the neighbouring rectory at Hawnes, to
restore it to that Church of which he and his family were in truth
militant members; and having generously built and furnished a parsonage
house, he presented it in the first place to the celebrated preacher
Thomas Brightman, who died there in 1607. It is this rectory that in
1653-54 is in the hands of the Rev. Edward Gibson, who appears from time
to time in Dorothy's letters, and who was on occasions the medium
through which Temple's letters reached their destination, and avoided
falling into the hands of Dorothy's jealous brother. Sir John Osborne
married Dorothy Barlee, granddaughter of Richard Lord Rich, Lord
Chancellor of England in the reign of Henry VIII. Sir John was
Treasurer's Remembrancer in the Exchequer for many years during the
reign of James I., and was also a Commissioner of the Navy. He died
November 2, 1628, and was buried in Campton Church,--Chicksands lies
between the village of Hawnes and Campton,--where a tablet to his memory
still exists.

Sir John had five sons: Peter, the eldest, Dorothy's father, who
succeeded him in his hereditary office of Treasurer's Remembrancer;
Christopher, Thomas, Richard, and Francis,--Francis Osborne may be
mentioned as having taken the side of the Parliament in the Civil Wars.
He was Master of the Horse to the Earl of Pembroke, and is noticeable to
us as the only known relation of Dorothy who published a book. He was
the author of an _Advice to his Son_, in two parts, and some tracts
published in 1722, of course long after his death.

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