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Part 2 out of 4
SIR,--That you may be sure it was a dream that I writ that part of my
letter in, I do not now remember what it was I writ, but seems it was
very kind, and possibly you owe the discovery on't to my being asleep.
But I do not repent it, for I should not love you if I did not think you
discreet enough to be trusted with the knowledge of all my kindness.
Therefore 'tis not that I desire to hide it from you, but that I do not
love to tell it; and perhaps if you could read my heart, I should make
less scruple of your seeing on't there than in my letters.
I can easily guess who the pretty young lady is, for there are but two
in England of that fortune, and they are sisters, but I am to seek who
the gallant should be. If it be no secret, you may tell me. However, I
shall wish him all good success if he be your friend, as I suppose he is
by his confidence in you. If it be neither of the Spencers, I wish it
were; I have not seen two young men that looked as if they deserved
better fortunes so much as those brothers.
But, bless me, what will become of us all now? Is not this a strange
turn? What does my Lord Lisle? Sure this will at least defer your
journey? Tell me what I must think on't; whether it be better or worse,
or whether you are at all concern'd in't? For if you are not I am not,
only if I had been so wise as to have taken hold of the offer was made
me by Henry Cromwell, I might have been in a fair way of preferment,
for, sure, they will be greater now than ever. Is it true that Algernon
Sydney was so unwilling to leave the House, that the General was fain to
take the pains to turn him out himself? Well, 'tis a pleasant world
this. If Mr. Pim were alive again, I wonder what he would think of these
proceedings, and whether this would appear so great a breach of the
Privilege of Parliament as the demanding the 5 members? But I shall talk
treason by and by if I do not look to myself. 'Tis safer talking of the
orange-flower water you sent me. The carrier has given me a great charge
to tell you that it came safe, and that I must do him right. As you say,
'tis not the best I have seen, nor the worst.
I shall expect your Diary next week, though this will be but a short
letter: you may allow me to make excuses too sometimes; but, seriously,
my father is now so continuously ill, that I have hardly time for
anything. 'Tis but an ague that he has, but yet I am much afraid that is
more than his age and weakness will be able to bear; he keeps his bed,
and never rises but to have it made, and most times faints with that.
You ought in charity to write as much as you can, for, in earnest, my
life here since my father's sickness is so sad that, to another humour
than mine, it would be unsupportable; but I have been so used to
misfortunes, that I cannot be much surprised with them, though perhaps I
am as sensible of them as another. I'll leave you, for I find these
thoughts begin to put me in ill humour; farewell, may you be ever happy.
If I am so at all, it is in being
_Letter 15._--What Temple had written about Mr. Arbry's prophecy and
"the falling down of the form," we cannot know. Mr. Arbry was probably
William Erbury, vicar of St. Mary's, Cardiff, a noted schismatic. He is
said to have been a "holy, harmless man," but incurred both the hate and
ridicule of his opponents. Many of his tracts are still extant, and they
contain extravagant prophecies couched in the peculiar phraseology of
the day.
The celebrated Sir Samuel Luke was a near neighbour of the Osbornes, and
Mr. Luke was one of his numerous family. Sir Samuel was Lord of the
Manor of Hawnes, and in the Hawnes parish register there are notices of
the christenings of his sons and daughters. Sir Samuel was not only a
colonel in the Parliament Army, but Scout-Master-General in the counties
of Bedford and Surrey. Samuel Butler, the author of _Hudibras_, lived
with Sir Samuel Luke as his secretary, at some date prior to the
Restoration; and Dr. Grey, his learned editor, believes that he wrote
_Hudibras_ about that time, "because he had then the opportunity to
converse with those living characters of rebellion, nonsense, and
hypocrisy which he so lively and pathetically exposes throughout the
whole work." Sir Samuel is said himself to be the original "Hudibras;"
and if Dr. Grey's conjecture on this matter is a right one, we have
already in our minds a very complete portrait of Dorothy's neighbour.
The old ballad that Dorothy encloses to her lover has not been preserved
with her letter. If it is older than the ballad of "The Lord of Lorne,"
it must have been composed before Henry VIII.'s reign; for Edward
Guilpin, in his _Skialethia_ [1598], speaks of
Th' olde ballad of the Lord of Lorne,
Whose last line in King Harrie's day was borne.
"The Lord of Learne" (this was the old spelling) may be found in Bishop
Percy's well-known collection of Ballads and Romances.
SIR,--You must pardon me, I could not burn your other letter for my
life; I was so pleased to see I had so much to read, and so sorry I had
done so soon, that I resolved to begin them again, and had like to have
lost my dinner by it. I know not what humour you were in when you writ
it; but Mr. Arbry's prophecy and the falling down of the form did a
little discompose my gravity. But I quickly recovered myself with
thinking that you deserved to be chid for going where you knew you must
of necessity lose your time. In earnest, I had a little scruple when I
went with you thither, and but that I was assured it was too late to go
any whither else, and believed it better to hear an ill sermon than
none, I think I should have missed his _Belles remarques_. You had
repented you, I hope, of that and all other your faults before you
thought of dying.
What a satisfaction you had found out to make me for the injuries you
say you have done me! And yet I cannot tell neither (though 'tis not the
remedy I should choose) whether that were not a certain one for all my
misfortunes; for, sure, I should have nothing then to persuade me to
stay longer where they grow, and I should quickly take a resolution of
leaving them and the world at once. I agree with you, too, that I do not
see any great likelihood of the change of our fortunes, and that we have
much more to wish than to hope for; but 'tis so common a calamity that I
dare not murmur at it; better people have endured it, and I can give no
reason why (almost) all are denied the satisfaction of disposing
themselves to their own desires, but that it is a happiness too great
for this world, and might endanger one's forgetting the next; whereas if
we are crossed in that which only can make the world pleasing to us, we
are quickly tired with the length of our journey and the disquiet of our
inns, and long to be at home. One would think it were I who had heard
the three sermons and were trying to make a fourth; these are truths
that might become a pulpit better than Mr. Arbry's predictions. But lest
you should think I have as many worms in my head as he, I'll give over
in time, and tell you how far Mr. Luke and I are acquainted. He lives
within three or four miles of me, and one day that I had been to visit a
lady that is nearer him than me, as I came back I met a coach with some
company in't that I knew, and thought myself obliged to salute. We all
lighted and met, and I found more than I looked for by two damsels and
their squires. I was afterwards told they were of the Lukes, and
possibly this man might be there, or else I never saw him; for since
these times we have had no commerce with that family, but have kept at
great distance, as having on several occasions been disobliged by them.
But of late, I know not how, Sir Sam has grown so kind as to send to me
for some things he desired out of this garden, and withal made the offer
of what was in his, which I had reason to take for a high favour, for he
is a nice florist; and since this we are insensibly come to as good
degrees of civility for one another as can be expected from people that
never meet.
Who those demoiselles should be that were at Heamses I cannot imagine,
and I know so few that are concerned in me or my name that I admire you
should meet with so many that seem to be acquainted with it. Sure, if
you had liked them you would not have been so sullen, and a less
occasion would have served to make you entertain their discourse if they
had been handsome. And yet I know no reason I have to believe that
beauty is any argument to make you like people; unless I had more on't
myself. But be it what it will that displeased you, I am glad they did
not fright you away before you had the orange-flower water, for it is
very good, and I am so sweet with it a days that I despise roses. When I
have given you humble thanks for it, I mean to look over your other
letter and take the heads, and to treat of them in order as my time and
your patience shall give me leave.
And first for my Sheriff, let me desire you to believe he has more
courage than to die upon a denial. No (thanks be to God!), none of my
servants are given to that; I hear of many every day that do marry, but
of none that do worse. My brother sent me word this week that my
fighting servant is married too, and with the news this ballad, which
was to be sung in the grave that you dreamt of, I think; but because you
tell me I shall not want company then, you may dispose of this piece of
poetry as you please when you have sufficiently admired with me where he
found it out, for 'tis much older than that of my "Lord of Lorne." You
are altogether in the right that my brother will never be at quiet till
he sees me disposed of, but he does not mean to lose me by it; he knows
that if I were married at this present, I should not be persuaded to
leave my father as long as he lives; and when this house breaks up, he
is resolved to follow me if he can, which he thinks he might better do
to a house where I had some power than where I am but upon courtesy
myself. Besides that, he thinks it would be to my advantage to be well
bestowed, and by that he understands richly. He is much of your sister's
humour, and many times wishes me a husband that loved me as well as he
does (though he seems to doubt the possibility on't), but never desires
that I should love that husband with any passion, and plainly tells me
so. He says it would not be so well for him, nor perhaps for me, that I
should; for he is of opinion that all passions have more of trouble than
satisfaction in them, and therefore they are happiest that have least of
them. You think him kind from a letter that you met with of his; sure,
there was very little of anything in that, or else I should not have
employed it to wrap a book up. But, seriously, I many times receive
letters from him, that were they seen without an address to me or his
name, nobody would believe they were from a brother; and I cannot but
tell him sometimes that, sure, he mistakes and sends me letters that
were meant to his mistress, till he swears to me that he has none.
Next week my persecution begins again; he comes down, and my cousin
Molle is already cured of his imaginary dropsy, and means to meet here.
I shall be baited most sweetly, but sure they will not easily make me
consent to make my life unhappy to satisfy their importunity. I was born
to be very happy or very miserable, I know not which, but I am very
certain that you will never read half this letter 'tis so scribbled; but
'tis no matter, 'tis not much worth it.
Your most faithful friend and servant.
_Letter 16._--The trial of Lord Chandos for killing Mr. Compton in a
duel was, just at this moment, exciting the fickle attention of the
town, which had probably said its say on the subject of Cromwell's _coup
d'etat_, and was only too ready for another subject of conversation. The
trial is not reported among the State Trials, but our observant friend
the Earl of Leicester has again taken note of the matter in his journal,
and can give us at least his own ideas of the trial and its political
and social importance. Under date May 1653, he writes:--"Towards the end
of Easter Term, the Lord Chandos, for killing in duel Mr. Compton the
year before," that is to say, in March; the new year begins on March
25th, "and the Lord Arundel of Wardour, one of his seconds, were brought
to their trial for their lives at the Upper Bench in Westminster
Hall, when it was found manslaughter only, as by a jury at
Kingston-upon-Thames it had been found formerly. The Lords might have
had the privilege of peerage (Justice Rolles being Lord Chief Justice),
but they declined it by the advice of Mr. Maynard and the rest of their
counsel, least by that means the matter might have been brought about
again, therefore they went upon the former verdict of manslaughter, and
so were acquitted; yet to be burned in the hand, which was done to them
both a day or two after, but very favourably." These were the first
peers that had been burned in the hand, and the democratic Earl of
Leicester expresses at the event some satisfaction, and derives from the
whole circumstances of the trial comfortable assurance of the power and
stability of the Government. The Earl, however, misleads us in one
particular. Lord Arundel was Henry Compton's second. He had married
Cecily Compton, and naturally enough acted as his brother-in-law's
second. It is also interesting to remember that Lord Chandos was known
to the world as something other than a duelist. He was an eminent
loyalist, among the first of those nobles who left Westminster, and at
Newbury fight had his three horses killed under him. Lady Carey was
Mary, natural daughter of Lord Scrope, who married Henry Carey, commonly
called Lord Leppington. Lady Leppington (or Carey) lost her husband in
1649, and her son died May 24, 1653. This helps us to date the letter.
Of her "kindness to Compton," of which Dorothy writes in her next
letter, nothing is known, but she married Charles Paulet, Lord St. John,
afterwards the Duke of Bolton, early in 1654.
The jealous Sir T---- here mentioned may be Sir Thomas Osborne, who, we
may suppose, was not well pleased at the refusal of his offer.
Sir Peter Lely did paint a portrait of Lady Diana Rich some months
after this date. It is somewhat curious that he should remain in England
during the Civil Wars; but his business was to paint all men's
portraits. He had painted Charles I.; now he was painting Cromwell. It
was to him Cromwell is said to have shouted: "Paint the warts! paint the
warts!" when the courtly Sir Peter would have made a presentable picture
even of the Lord General himself. Cromwell was a sound critic in this,
and had detected the main fault of Sir Peter's portraits, whose value to
us is greatly lessened by the artist's constant habit of flattery.
SIR,--If it were the carrier's fault that you stayed so long for your
letters, you are revenged, for I have chid him most unreasonably. But I
must confess 'twas not for that, for I did not know it then, but going
to meet him (as I usually do), when he gave me your letter I found the
upper seal broken open, and underneath where it uses to be only closed
with a little wax, there was a seal, which though it were an anchor and
a heart, methought it did not look like yours, but less, and much worse
cut. This suspicion was so strong upon me, that I chid till the poor
fellow was ready to cry, and swore to me that it had never been touched
since he had it, and that he was careful of it, as he never put it with
his other letters, but by itself, and that now it come amongst his
money, which perhaps might break the seal; and lest I should think it
was his curiosity, he told me very ingenuously he could not read, and so
we parted for the present. But since, he has been with a neighbour of
mine whom he sometimes delivers my letters to, and begged her that she
would go to me and desire my worship to write to your worship to know
how the letter was sealed, for it has so grieved him that he has neither
eat nor slept (to do him any good) since he came home, and in grace of
God this shall be a warning to him as long as he lives. He takes it so
heavily that I think I must be friends with him again; but pray
hereafter seal your letters, so that the difficulty of opening them may
dishearten anybody from attempting it.
It was but my guess that the ladies at Heams' were unhandsome; but since
you tell me they were remarkably so, sure I know them by it; they are
two sisters, and might have been mine if the Fates had so pleased. They
have a brother that is not like them, and is a baronet besides. 'Tis
strange that you tell me of my Lords Shandoys [Chandos] and Arundel; but
what becomes of young Compton's estate? Sure my Lady Carey cannot
neither in honour nor conscience keep it; besides that, she needs it
less now than ever, her son (being, as I hear) dead.
Sir T., I suppose, avoids you as a friend of mine. My brother tells me
they meet sometimes, and have the most ado to pull off their hats to one
another that can be, and never speak. If I were in town I'll undertake
he would venture the being choked for want of air rather than stir out
of doors for fear of meeting me. But did you not say in your last that
you took something very ill from me? If 'twas my humble thanks, well,
you shall have no more of them then, nor no more servants. I think that
they are not necessary among friends.
I take it very kindly that your father asked for me, and that you were
not pleased with the question he made of the continuance of my
friendship. I can pardon it him, because he does not know me, but I
should never forgive you if you could doubt it. Were my face in no more
danger of changing than my mind, I should be worth the seeing at
threescore; and that which is but very ordinary now, would then be
counted handsome for an old woman; but, alas! I am more likely to look
old before my time with grief. Never anybody had such luck with
servants; what with marrying and what with dying, they all leave me.
Just now I have news brought me of the death of an old rich knight that
has promised me this seven years to marry me whensoever his wife died,
and now he's dead before her, and has left her such a widow, it makes me
mad to think on't, L1200 a year jointure and L20,000 in money and
personal estate, and all this I might have had if Mr. Death had been
pleased to have taken her instead of him. Well, who can help these
things? But since I cannot have him, would you had her! What say you?
Shall I speak a good word for you? She will marry for certain, and
perhaps, though my brother may expect I should serve him in it, yet if
you give me commission I'll say I was engaged beforehand for a friend,
and leave him to shift for himself. You would be my neighbour if you had
her, and I should see you often. Think on't, and let me know what you
resolve? My lady has writ me word that she intends very shortly to sit
at Lely's for her picture for me; I give you notice on't, that you may
have the pleasure of seeing it sometimes whilst 'tis there. I imagine
'twill be so to you, for I am sure it would be a great one to me, and we
do not use to differ in our inclinations, though I cannot agree with you
that my brother's kindness to me has anything of trouble in't; no, sure,
I may be just to you and him both, and to be a kind sister will take
nothing from my being a perfect friend.
_Letter 17._--Lady Newcastle was Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. "The
thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical and
original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle," as Elia describes her.
She was the youngest daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and was born at
Colchester towards the end of the reign of James I. Her mother appears
to have been remarkably careful of her education in all such lighter
matters as dancing, music, and the learning of the French tongue; but
she does not seem to have made any deep study of the classics. In 1643
she joined the Court at Oxford, and was made one of the Maids of Honour
to Henrietta Maria, whom she afterwards attended in exile. At Paris she
met the Marquis of Newcastle, who married her in that city in 1645. From
Paris they went to Rotterdam, she leaving the Queen to follow her
husband's fortunes; and after stopping at Rotterdam and Brabant for
short periods, they settled at Antwerp.
At the Restoration she returned to England with her husband, and
employed her time in writing letters, plays, poems, philosophical
discourses, and orations. There is a long catalogue of her works in
Ballard's _Memoirs_, but all published at a date subsequent to 1653.
However, from Anthony Wood and other sources one gathers somewhat
different details of her life and writings; and the book to which
Dorothy refers here and in Letter 21, is probably the _Poems and
Fancies_, an edition of which was published, I believe, in this year
[1653]. Many of her verses are more strangely incomprehensible than
anything even in the poetry of to-day. Take, for instance, a poem of
four lines, from the _Poems and Fancies_, entitled--
Several figur'd Atoms well agreeing
When joined, do give another figure being.
For as those figures joined several ways
The fabrick of each several creature raise.
This seems to be a rhyming statement of the Atomic theory, but whether
it is a poem or a fancy we should find it hard to decide. It is not,
however, an unfair example of Lady Newcastle's fantastic style. Lady
Newcastle died in 1673, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,--"A wise,
witty, and learned Lady, which her many books do well testify."
SIR,--I received your letter to-day, when I thought it almost impossible
that I should be sensible of anything but my father's sickness and my
own affliction in it. Indeed, he was then so dangerously ill that we
could not reasonably hope he should outlive this day; yet he is now, I
thank God, much better, and I am come so much to myself with it, as to
undertake a long letter to you whilst I watch by him. Towards the latter
end it will be excellent stuff, I believe; but, alas! you may allow me
to dream sometimes. I have had so little sleep since my father was sick
that I am never thoroughly awake. Lord, how I have wished for you! Here
do I sit all night by a poor moped fellow that serves my father, and
have much ado to keep him awake and myself too. If you heard the wise
discourse that is between us, you would swear we wanted sleep; but I
shall leave him to-night to entertain himself, and try if I can write as
wisely as I talk. I am glad all is well again. In earnest, it would have
lain upon my conscience if I had been the occasion of making your poor
boy lose a service, that if he has the wit to know how to value it, he
would never have forgiven me while he had lived.
But while I remember it, let me ask you if you did not send my letter
and _Cleopatre_ where I directed you for my lady? I received one from
her to-day full of the kindest reproaches, that she has not heard from
me this three weeks. I have writ constantly to her, but I do not so much
wonder that the rest are lost, as that she seems not to have received
that which I sent to you nor the books. I do not understand it, but I
know there is no fault of yours in't. But, mark you! if you think to
'scape with sending me such bits of letters, you are mistaken. You say
you are often interrupted, and I believe it; but you must use then to
begin to write before you receive mine, and whensoever you have any
spare time allow me some of it. Can you doubt that anything can make
your letters cheap? In earnest, 'twas unkindly said, and if I could be
angry with you it should be for that. No, certainly they are, and ever
will be, dear to me as that which I receive a huge contentment by. How
shall I long when you are gone your journey to hear from you! how shall
I apprehend a thousand accidents that are not likely nor will ever
happen, I hope! Oh, if you do not send me long letters, then you are the
cruellest person that can be! If you love me you will; and if you do
not, I shall never love myself. You need not fear such a command as you
mention. Alas! I am too much concerned that you should love me ever to
forbid it you; 'tis all that I propose of happiness to myself in the
world. The burning of my paper has waked me; all this while I was in a
dream. But 'tis no matter, I am content you should know they are of you,
and that when my thoughts are left most at liberty they are the kindest.
I swear my eyes are so heavy that I hardly see what I write, nor do I
think you will be able to read it when I have done; the best on't is
'twill be no great loss to you if you do not, for, sure, the greatest
part on't is not sense, and yet on my conscience I shall go on with it.
'Tis like people that talk in their sleep, nothing interrupts them but
talking to them again, and that you are not like to do at this distance;
besides that, at this instant you are, I believe, more asleep than I,
and do not so much as dream that I am writing to you. My fellow-watchers
have been asleep too, till just now they begin to stretch and yawn; they
are going to try if eating and drinking can keep them awake, and I am
kindly invited to be of their company; and my father's man has got one
of the maids to talk nonsense to to-night, and they have got between
them a bottle of ale. I shall lose my share if I do not take them at
their first offer. Your patience till I have drunk, and then I'll for
you again.
And now on the strength of this ale, I believe I shall be able to fill
up this paper that's left with something or other; and first let me ask
you if you have seen a book of poems newly come out, made by my Lady
Newcastle? For God's sake if you meet with it send it to me; they say
'tis ten times more extravagant than her dress. Sure, the poor woman is
a little distracted, she could never be so ridiculous else as to venture
at writing books, and in verse too. If I should not sleep this fortnight
I should not come to that. My eyes grow a little dim though, for all the
ale, and I believe if I could see it this is most strangely scribbled.
Sure, I shall not find fault with your writing in haste, for anything
but the shortness of your letter; and 'twould be very unjust in me to
tie you to a ceremony that I do not observe myself. No, for God's sake
let there be no such thing between us; a real kindness is so far beyond
all compliment, that it never appears more than when there is least of
t'other mingled with it. If, then, you would have me believe yours to be
perfect, confirm it to me by a kind freedom. Tell me if there be
anything that I can serve you in, employ me as you would do that sister
that you say you love so well. Chide me when I do anything that is not
well, but then make haste to tell me that you have forgiven me, and that
you are what I shall ever be, a faithful friend.
_Letter 18._--I cannot pass by this letter without saying that the first
part of it is, to my thinking, the most dainty and pleasing piece of
writing that Dorothy has left us. The account of her life, one day and
every day, is like a gust of fresh country air clearing away the mist of
time and enabling one to see Dorothy at Chicksands quite clearly. It is
fashionable to deny Macaulay everything but memory; but he had the good
taste and discernment to admire this letter, and quote from it in his
Essay on Sir William Temple,--a quotation for which I shall always
remain very grateful to him.
Sir Thomas Peyton, "Brother Peyton," was born in 1619, being, I believe,
the second baronet of that name; his seat was at Knowlton, in the county
of Kent. Early in the reign of Charles I. we find him as Member of
Parliament for Sandwich, figuring in a Committee side by side with the
two Sir Harry Vanes; the Committee having been sent into Kent to prevent
the dispersal of rumours to the scandal of Parliament,--no light task,
one would think. In 1643 he is in prison, charged among other things
with being a malignant. An unjust charge, as he thinks; for he writes to
his brother, "If to wish on earth peace, goodwill towards men, be a
malignant, none is greater than your affectionate brother, Thomas
Peyton." But in spite of these peaceful thoughts in prison, in May 1648
he is heading a loyalist rising in Kent. The other counties not joining
in at the right moment, in accordance with the general procedure at
Royalist risings, it is defeated by Fairfax. Sir Thomas's house is
ransacked, he himself is taken prisoner near Bury St. Edmunds, brought
to the House of Commons, and committed to the Tower. A right worthy
son-in-law of good Sir Peter. We are glad to find him at large again in
1653, his head safe on his shoulders, and do not grudge him his grant of
duties on sea-coal, dated 1660; nor are we sorry that he should once
again grace the House of Commons with his presence as one of the members
for loyal Kent in the good days when the King enjoyed his own again.
SIR,--I have been reckoning up how many faults you lay to my charge in
your last letter, and I find I am severe, unjust, unmerciful, and
unkind. Oh me, how should one do to mend all these! 'Tis work for an
age, and 'tis to be feared I shall be so old before I am good, that
'twill not be considerable to anybody but myself whether I am so or not.
I say nothing of the pretty humour you fancied me in, in your dream,
because 'twas but a dream. Sure, if it had been anything else, I should
have remembered that my Lord L. loves to have his chamber and his bed to
himself. But seriously, now, I wonder at your patience. How could you
hear me talk so senselessly, though 'twere but in your sleep, and not be
ready to beat me? What nice mistaken points of honour I pretended to,
and yet could allow him room in the same bed with me! Well, dreams are
pleasant things to people whose humours are so; but to have the spleen,
and to dream upon't, is a punishment I would not wish my greatest enemy.
I seldom dream, or never remember them, unless they have been so sad as
to put me into such disorder as I can hardly recover when I am awake,
and some of those I am confident I shall never forget.
You ask me how I pass my time here. I can give you a perfect account not
only of what I do for the present, but of what I am likely to do this
seven years if I stay here so long. I rise in the morning reasonably
early, and before I am ready I go round the house till I am weary of
that, and then into the garden till it grows too hot for me. About ten
o'clock I think of making me ready, and when that's done I go into my
father's chamber, from whence to dinner, where my cousin Molle and I sit
in great state in a room, and at a table that would hold a great many
more. After dinner we sit and talk till Mr. B. comes in question, and
then I am gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and
about six or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by
the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and sit
in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare their voices
and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find
a vast difference there; but, trust me, I think these are as innocent as
those could be. I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them
the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so.
Most commonly, when we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks
about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they
all run as if they had wings at their heels. I, that am not so nimble,
stay behind; and when I see them driving home their cattle, I think 'tis
time for me to return too. When I have supped, I go into the garden, and
so to the side of a small river that runs by it, when I sit down and
wish you were with me (you had best say this is not kind neither). In
earnest, 'tis a pleasant place, and would be much more so to me if I had
your company. I sit there sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and
were it not for some cruel thoughts of the crossness of our fortunes
that will not let me sleep there, I should forget that there were such a
thing to be done as going to bed.
Since I writ this my company is increased by two, my brother Harry and a
fair niece, the eldest of my brother Peyton's children. She is so much a
woman that I am almost ashamed to say I am her aunt; and so pretty,
that, if I had any design to gain of servants, I should not like her
company; but I have none, and therefore shall endeavour to keep her here
as long as I can persuade her father to spare her, for she will easily
consent to it, having so much of my humour (though it be the worst thing
in her) as to like a melancholy place and little company. My brother
John is not come down again, nor am I certain when he will be here. He
went from London into Gloucestershire to my sister who was very ill, and
his youngest girl, of which he was very fond, is since dead. But I
believe by that time his wife has a little recovered her sickness and
loss of her child, he will be coming this way. My father is reasonably
well, but keeps his chamber still, and will hardly, I am afraid, ever be
so perfectly recovered as to come abroad again.
I am sorry for poor Walker, but you need not doubt of what he has of
yours in his hands, for it seems he does not use to do his work himself.
I speak seriously, he keeps a Frenchman that sets all his seals and
rings. If what you say of my Lady Leppington be of your own knowledge, I
shall believe you, but otherwise I can assure you I have heard from
people that pretend to know her very well, that her kindness to Compton
was very moderate, and that she never liked him so well as when he died
and gave her his estate. But they might be deceived, and 'tis not so
strange as that you should imagine a coldness and an indifference in my
letters when I so little meant it; but I am not displeased you should
desire my kindness enough to apprehend the loss of it when it is safest.
Only I would not have you apprehend it so far as to believe it
possible,--that were an injury to all the assurances I have given you,
and if you love me you cannot think me unworthy. I should think myself
so, if I found you grew indifferent to me, that I have had so long and
so particular a friendship for; but, sure, this is more than I need to
say. You are enough in my heart to know all my thoughts, and if so, you
know better than I can tell you how much I am
_Letter 19._--Lady Ruthin is Susan, daughter and heiress of Charles
Longueville Lord Grey de Ruthin. She married Sir Harry Yelverton, a
match of which Dorothy thoroughly approved. We hear more of Dorothy's
beautiful friend at the time when the treaty with Sir Harry Yelverton
is going forward. Of Mr. Talbot I find nothing; we must rest contented
in knowing him to be a fellow-servant.
R. Spencer is Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, Lady Sunderland's
brother-in-law. He was afterwards one of the inner council of four in
Temple's Scheme of Government. "In him," says Macaulay, in a somewhat
highly-coloured character-sketch, "the political immortality of his age
was personified in the most lively manner. Nature had given him a keen
understanding, a restless and mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an
abject spirit. His mind had undergone a training by which all his vices
had been nursed up to the rankest maturity."
Lady Lexington was Mary, daughter of Sir Anthony Leger; she was the
third wife of Robert Sutton, Earl of Lexington. I cannot find that her
daughter married one of the Spencers.
SIR,--If to know I wish you with me pleases you, 'tis a satisfaction you
may always have, for I do it perpetually; but were it really in my power
to make you happy, I could not miss being so myself, for I know nothing
else I want towards it. You are admitted to all my entertainments; and
'twould be a pleasing surprise to me to see you amongst my
shepherdesses. I meet some there sometimes that look very like gentlemen
(for 'tis a road), and when they are in good humour they give us a
compliment as they go by; but you would be so courteous as to stay, I
hope, if we entreated you; 'tis in your way to this place, and just
before the house. 'Tis our Hyde Park, and every fine evening, anybody
that wanted a mistress might be sure to find one there. I have wondered
often to meet my fair Lady Ruthin there alone; methinks it should be
dangerous for an heir. I could find in my heart to steal her away
myself, but it should be rather for her person than her fortune. My
brother says not a word of you, nor your service, nor do I expect he
should; if I could forget you, he would not help my memory. You would
laugh, sure, if I could tell you how many servants he has offered me
since he came down; but one above all the rest I think he is in love
with himself, and may marry him too if he pleases, I shall not hinder
him. 'Tis one Talbot, the finest gentleman he has seen this seven years;
but the mischief on't is he has not above fifteen or sixteen hundred
pound a year, though he swears he begins to think one might bate L500 a
year for such a husband. I tell him I am glad to hear it; and if I was
as much taken (as he) with Mr. Talbot, I should not be less gallant; but
I doubted the first extremely. I have spleen enough to carry me to Epsom
this summer; but yet I think I shall not go. If I make one journey, I
must make more, for then I have no excuse. Rather than be obliged to
that, I'll make none. You have so often reproached me with the loss of
your liberty, that to make you some amends I am contented to be your
prisoner this summer; but you shall do one favour for me into the
bargain. When your father goes into Ireland, lay your commands upon some
of his servants to get you an Irish greyhound. I have one that was the
General's; but 'tis a bitch, and those are always much less than the
dogs. I got it in the time of my favour there, and it was all they had.
Henry Cromwell undertook to write to his brother Fleetwood for another
for me; but I have lost my hopes there. Whomsoever it is that you
employ, he will need no other instructions but to get the biggest he can
meet with; 'tis all the beauty of those dogs, or of any kind, I think. A
masty [mastif] is handsomer to me than the most exact little dog that
ever lady played withal. You will not offer to take it ill that I employ
you in such a commission, since I have told you that the General's son
did not refuse it; but I shall take it ill if you do not take the same
freedom with me whensoever I am capable of serving you. The town must
needs be unpleasant now, and, methinks, you might contrive some way of
having your letters sent to you without giving yourself the trouble of
coming to town for them when you have no other business; you must pardon
me if I think they cannot be worth it.
I am told that R. Spencer is a servant to a lady of my acquaintance, a
daughter of my Lady Lexington's. Is it true? And if it be, what is
become of the L2500 lady? Would you think it, that I have an ambassador
from the Emperor Justinian, that comes to renew the treaty? In earnest,
'tis true, and I want your counsel extremely, what to do in it. You told
me once that of all my servants you liked him the best. If I could do so
too, there were no dispute in't. Well, I'll think on't, and if it
succeed I will be as good as my word; you shall take your choice of my
four daughters. Am not I beholding to him, think you? He says that he
has made addresses, 'tis true, in several places since we parted, but
could not fix anywhere; and, in his opinion, he sees nobody that would
make so fit a wife for him as I. He has often inquired after me to hear
if I were marrying, and somebody told him I had an ague, and he
presently fell sick of one too, so natural a sympathy there is between
us; and yet for all this, on my conscience, we shall never marry. He
desires to know whether I am at liberty or not. What shall I tell him?
Or shall I send him to you to know? I think that will be best. I'll say
that you are much my friend, and that I have resolved not to dispose of
myself but with your consent and approbation, and therefore he must make
all his court to you; and when he can bring me a certificate under your
hand, that you think him a fit husband for me, 'tis very likely I may
have him. Till then I am his humble servant and your faithful friend.
_Letter 20._--In this letter the journey into Sweden is given up
finally, and Temple is once more without employment or the hope of
employment. This was probably brought about by the alteration of the
Government plans; and as Lord Lisle was not to go to Sweden, there was
no chance of Temple's being attached to the Embassy.
SIR,--I am sorry my last letter frighted you so; 'twas no part of my
intention it should; but I am more sorry to see by your first chapter
that your humour is not always so good as I could wish it. 'Twas the
only thing I ever desired we might differ in, and therefore I think it
is denied me. Whilst I read the description on't, I could not believe
but that I had writ it myself, it was so much my own. I pity you in
earnest much more than I do myself; and yet I may deserve yours when I
shall have told you, that besides all that you speak of, I have gotten
an ague that with two fits has made me so very weak, that I doubted
extremely yesterday whether I should be able to sit up to-day to write
to you. But you must not be troubled at this; that's the way to kill me
indeed. Besides, it is impossible I should keep it long, for here is my
eldest brother, and my cousin Molle, and two or three more that have
great understanding in agues, as people that have been long acquainted
with them, and they do so tutor and govern me, that I am neither to eat,
drink, nor sleep without their leave; and, sure, my obedience deserves
they should cure me, or else they are great tyrants to very little
purpose. You cannot imagine how cruel they are to me, and yet will
persuade me 'tis for my good. I know they mean it so, and therefore say
nothing on't, I admit, and sigh to think those are not here that would
be kinder to me. But you were cruel yourself when you seemed to
apprehend I might oblige you to make good your last offer. Alack! if I
could purchase the empire of the world at that rate, I should think it
much too dear; and though, perhaps, I am too unhappy myself ever to make
anybody else happy, yet, sure, I shall take heed that my misfortunes may
not prove infectious to my friends. You ask counsel of a person that is
very little able to give it. I cannot imagine whither you should go,
since this journey is broke. You must e'en be content to stay at home, I
think, and see what will become of us, though I expect nothing of good;
and, sure, you never made a truer remark in your life than that all
changes are for the worse. Will it not stay your father's journey too?
Methinks it should. For God's sake write me all that you hear or can
think of, that I may have something to entertain myself withal. I have a
scurvy head that will not let me write longer.
I am your.
For Mrs. Paynter, at her house
in Bedford Street, next ye Goate,
In Covent Garden.
_Letter 21._--Sir Thomas Osborne is Dorothy's "Cousin Osborne" here
mentioned. He was, you remember, a suitor for Dorothy's hand, but has
now married Lady Bridget Lindsay.
The "squire that is as good as a knight," is, in all probability,
Richard Bennet. Thomas Bennet, his father, an alderman of the city of
London, had bought a seat near Cambridge, called Babraham or Babram,
that had belonged to Sir Toby Palavicini. The alderman appears to have
been a loyal citizen, as he was created baronet in 1660. His two sons,
Sir Richard and Sir Thomas, married daughters of Sir Lavinius Munck;--so
we need not accuse Dorothy of irretrievably breaking hearts by her
various refusals.
When Dorothy says she will "sit like the lady of the lobster, and give
audience at Babram," she simply means that she will sit among
magnificent surroundings unsuited to her modest disposition. The "lady"
of a lobster is a curious-shaped substance in the head of that fish,
bearing some distant resemblance to the figure of a woman. The
expression is still known to fishmongers and others, who also refer to
the "Adam and Eve" in a shrimp, a kindred formation. Curiously enough,
this very phrase has completely puzzled Dr. Grosart, the learned editor
of Herrick, who confesses that he can make nothing of the allusion in
the following passage from _The Fairie Temple_:--
"The saint to which the most he prayes,
And offers Incense Nights and Dayes,
The Lady of the Lobster is
Whose foot-pace he doth stroak and kiss."
Swift, too, uses the phrase in his _Battle of the Books_ in describing
the encounter between Virgil and Dryden, where he says, "The helmet was
nine times too large for the head, which appeared situate far in the
hinder part, even like the lady in a lobster, or a mouse under a canopy
of state, or like a shrivelled beau from within the penthouse of a
modern periwig."
SIR,--I do not know that anybody has frighted me, or beaten me, or put
me into more passion than what I usually carry about me, but yesterday I
missed my fit, and am not without hope I shall hear no more on't. My
father has lost his too, and my eldest brother, but we all look like
people risen from the dead. Only my cousin Molle keeps his still; and,
in earnest, I am not certain whether he would lose it or not, for it
gives him a lawful occasion of being nice and cautious about himself, to
which he in his own humour is so much inclined that 'twere not easy for
him to forbear it. You need not send me my Lady Newcastle's book at all,
for I have seen it, and am satisfied that there are many soberer people
in Bedlam. I'll swear her friends are much to blame to let her go
But I am hugely pleased that you have seen my Lady. I knew you could not
choose but like her; but yet, let me tell you, you have seen but the
worst of her. Her conversation has more charms than can be in mere
beauty, and her humour and disposition would make a deformed person
appear lovely. You had strange luck to meet my brother so soon. He went
up but last Tuesday. I heard from him on Thursday, but he did not tell
me he had seen you; perhaps he did not think it convenient to put me in
mind of you; besides, he thought he told me enough in telling me my
cousin Osborne was married. Why did you not send me that news and a
garland? Well, the best on't is I have a squire now that is as good as a
knight. He was coming as fast as a coach and six horses could carry him,
but I desired him to stay till my ague was gone, and give me a little
time to recover my good looks; for I protest if he saw me now he would
never deign to see me again. Oh, me! I can but think how I shall sit
like the lady of the lobster, and give audience at Babram. You have been
there, I am sure. Nobody that is at Cambridge 'scapes it. But you were
never so welcome thither as you shall be when I am mistress on't. In the
meantime, I have sent you the first tome of _Cyrus_ to read; when you
have done with it, leave it at Mr. Hollingsworth's, and I'll send you
another. I have had ladies with me all the afternoon that are for London
to-morrow, and now I have as many letters to write as my Lord General's
Secretary. Forgive me that this is no longer, for
I am your.
For Mrs. Paynter, at her house in
Bedford Street, next ye Goate,
In Covent Garden.
_Letter 22._--Mr. Fish and Mr. Freeman were probably neighbours of
Dorothy. There is a Mr. Ralph Freeman of Aspedon Hall, in Hertfordshire,
mentioned in contemporary chronicles; he died in 1714, aged 88, and was
therefore about 37 years of age at this time. His father seems to have
been an ideal country gentleman, "who," says Sir Henry Chauncy, "made
his house neat, his gardens pleasant, his groves delicious, his children
cheerful, his servants easy, and kept excellent order in his family."
SIR,--You are more in my debt than you imagine. I never deserved a long
letter so much as now, when you sent me a short one. I could tell you
such a story ('tis too long to be written) as would make you see (what I
never discover'd in myself before) that I am a valiant lady. In earnest,
we have had such a skirmish, and upon so foolish an occasion, as I
cannot tell which is strangest. The Emperor and his proposals began it;
I talked merrily on't till I saw my brother put on his sober face, and
could hardly then believe he was in earnest. It seems he was, for when I
had spoke freely my meaning, it wrought so with him as to fetch up all
that lay on his stomach. All the people that I had ever in my life
refused were brought again upon the stage, like Richard the III.'s
ghosts, to reproach me withal; and all the kindness his discoveries
could make I had for you was laid to my charge. My best qualities (if I
have any that are good) served but for aggravations of my fault, and I
was allowed to have wit and understanding and discretion in other
things, that it might appear I had none in this. Well, 'twas a pretty
lecture, and I grew warm with it after a while; in short, we came so
near an absolute falling out, that 'twas time to give over, and we said
so much then that we have hardly spoken a word together since. But 'tis
wonderful to see what curtseys and legs pass between us; and as before
we were thought the kindest brother and sister, we are certainly the
most complimental couple in England. 'Tis a strange change, and I am
very sorry for it, but I'll swear I know not how to help it. I look
upon't as one of my great misfortunes, and I must bear it, as that which
is not my first nor likely to be my last. 'Tis but reasonable (as you
say) that you should see me, and yet I know not now how it can well be.
I am not for disguises, it looks like guilt, and I would not do a thing
I durst not own. I cannot tell whether (if there were a necessity of
your coming) I should not choose to have it when he is at home, and
rather expose him to the trouble of entertaining a person whose company
(here) would not be pleasing to him, and perhaps an opinion that I did
it purposely to cross him, than that your coming in his absence should
be thought a concealment. 'Twas one reason more than I told you why I
resolv'd not to go to Epsom this summer, because I knew he would imagine
it an agreement between us, and that something besides my spleen carried
me thither; but whether you see me or not you may be satisfied I am safe
enough, and you are in no danger to lose your prisoner, since so great a
violence as this has not broke her chains. You will have nothing to
thank me for after this; my whole life will not yield such another
occasion to let you see at what rate I value your friendship, and I have
been much better than my word in doing but what I promised you, since I
have found it a much harder thing not to yield to the power of a near
relation, and a greater kindness than I could then imagine it.
To let you see I did not repent me of the last commission, I'll give you
another. Here is a seal that Walker set for me, and 'tis dropt out; pray
give it him to mend. If anything could be wonder'd at in this age, I
should very much how you came by your informations. 'Tis more than I
know if Mr. Freeman be my servant. I saw him not long since, and he told
me no such thing. Do you know him? In earnest, he's a pretty gentleman,
and has a great deal of good nature, I think, which may oblige him
perhaps to speak well of his acquaintances without design. Mr. Fish is
the Squire of Dames, and has so many mistresses that anybody may pretend
a share in him and be believed; but though I have the honour to be his
near neighbour, to speak freely, I cannot brag much that he makes any
court to me; and I know no young woman in the country that he does not
visit often.
I have sent you another tome of _Cyrus_, pray send the first to Mr.
Hollingsworth for my Lady. My cousin Molle went from hence to Cambridge
on Thursday, and there's an end of Mr. Bennet. I have no company now but
my niece Peyton, and my brother will be shortly for the term, but will
make no long stay in town. I think my youngest brother comes down with
him. Remember that you owe me a long letter and something for forgiving
your last. I have no room for more than
_Letter 23._
SIR,--I will tell you no more of my servants. I can no sooner give you
some little hints whereabouts they live, but you know them presently,
and I meant you should be beholding to me for your acquaintance. But it
seems this gentleman is not so easy access, but you may acknowledge
something due to me, if I incline him to look graciously upon you, and
therefore there is not much harm done. What has kept him from marrying
all this time, or how the humour comes so furiously upon him now, I know
not; but if he may be believed, he is resolved to be a most romance
squire, and go in quest of some enchanted damsel, whom if he likes, as
to her person (for fortune is a thing below him),--and we do not read in
history that any knight or squire was ever so discourteous as to inquire
what portions their ladies had,--then he comes with the power of the
county to demand her, (which for the present he may dispose of, being
Sheriff), so I do not see who is able to resist him. All that is to be
hoped is, that since he may reduce whomsoever he pleases to his
obedience, he will be very curious in his choice, and then I am secure.
It may be I dreamt it that you had met my brother, or else it was one of
the reveries of my ague; if so, I hope I shall fall into no more of
them. I have missed four fits, and had but five, and have recovered so
much strength as made me venture to meet your letter on Wednesday, a
mile from home. Yet my recovery will be nothing towards my leaving this
place, where many reasons will oblige me to stay at least all this
summer, unless some great alteration should happen in this family; that
which I most own is my father's ill-health, which, though it be not in
that extremity it has been, yet keeps him still a prisoner in his
chamber, and for the most part to his bed, which is reason enough. But,
besides, I can give you others. I am here much more out of people's way
than in town, where my aunt and such as pretend an interest in me, and a
power over me, do so persecute me with their good nature, and take it so
ill that they are not accepted, as I would live in a hollow tree to
avoid them. Here I have nobody but my brother to torment me, whom I can
take the liberty to dispute with, and whom I have prevailed with
hitherto to bring none of his pretenders to this place, because of the
noise all such people make in a country, and the tittle-tattle it breeds
among neighbours that have nothing to do but to inquire who marries and
who makes love. If I can but keep him still in that humour Mr. Bennet
and I are likely to preserve our state and treat at distance like
princes; but we have not sent one another our pictures yet, though my
cousin Molle, who was his agent here, begged mine very earnestly. But, I
thank God, an imagination took him one morning that he was falling into
a dropsy, and made him in such haste to go back to Cambridge to his
doctor, that he never remembers anything he has to ask of me, but the
coach to carry him away. I lent it most willingly, and gone he is. My
eldest brother goes up to town on Monday too; perhaps you may see him,
but I cannot direct you where to find him, for he is not yet resolved
himself where to lie; only 'tis likely Nan may tell you when he is
there. He will make no stay, I believe. You will think him altered (and,
if it be possible) more melancholy than he was. If marriage agrees no
better with other people than it does with him, I shall pray that all my
friends may 'scape it. Yet if I were my cousin, H. Danvers, my Lady
Diana should not, if I could help it, as well as I love her: I would try
if ten thousand pound a year with a husband that doted on her, as I
should do, could not keep her from being unhappy. Well, in earnest, if I
were a prince, that lady should be my mistress, but I can give no rule
to any one else, and perhaps those that are in no danger of losing their
hearts to her may be infinitely taken with one I should not value at
all; for (so says the Justinian) wise Providence has ordained it that by
their different humours everybody might find something to please
themselves withal, without envying their neighbours. And now I have
begun to talk gravely and wisely, I'll try if I can go a little further
without being out. No, I cannot, for I have forgot already what 'twas I
would have said; but 'tis no matter, for, as I remember, it was not much
to the purpose, and, besides, I have paper little enough left to chide
you for asking so unkind a question as whether you were still the same
in my thoughts. Have you deserved to be otherwise; that is, am I no more
in yours? For till that be, it's impossible the other should; but that
will never be, and I shall always be the same I am. My heart tells me
so, and I believe it; for were it otherwise, Fortune would not persecute
me thus. Oh, me! she's cruel, and how far her power may reach I know
not, only I am sure, she cannot call back time that is past, and it is
long since we resolved to be for ever
Most faithful friends.
_Letter 24._--Tom Cheeke is Sir Thomas Cheeke, Knight, of Purgo, in the
county of Essex, or more probably his son, from the way Dorothy speaks
of him; but it is difficult to discriminate among constant generations
of Toms after a lapse of two hundred years. We find Sir Thomas's
daughter was at this time the third wife of Lord Manchester; and it
appears that Dorothy's great-grandfather married Catherine Cheeke,
daughter of the then Sir Thomas. This will assist us to the connection
between Dorothy, Tom Cheeke, and Lord Manchester. Sir Richard Franklin,
Knight, married a daughter of Sir Thomas Cheeke. He purchased Moor Park,
Hertfordshire, about this time. The park and the mansion he bought in
1652 from the Earl of Monmouth, and the manor in 1655 from Sir Charles
Harbord. The gardens had been laid out by the Countess of Bedford, who
had sold the place in 1626 to the Earl of Pembroke. The house was well
known to Temple, who describes the gardens in his Essay on Gardening;
and when he retired in later years to an estate near Farnham in Surrey,
he gave to it the name of Moor Park.
Lord Manchester was Edward Montagu, second Earl of Manchester. He was
educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and sat for
Huntingdonshire in the first two Parliaments of Charles I. He was called
to the Upper House as Lord Kimbolton in 1626, and succeeded his father
in 1642. His name is well known in history as that of the leader of the
Puritans in the House of Lords, and as the only peer joined with the
five members impeached by the King. He raised a regiment and fought
under Essex at Edgehill, reconquered Lincolnshire, and took part in the
battle of Marston Moor. At this time Cromwell was his subordinate, and
to his directions Lord Manchester's successes are in all probability
due. At the second battle of Newbury, Lord Manchester showed some
hesitation in following up his success, and Cromwell accused him of
lukewarmness in the cause from his place in the House of Commons. An
inquiry was instituted, but the Committee never carried out their
investigations, and in parliamentary language the matter then dropped.
He afterwards held, among other offices, that of Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge, and inducted a visitation and reform of that
University. He resisted the trial of the King and the foundation of the
Commonwealth, refused to sit in Cromwell's new House of Lords, and was
among those Presbyterians who helped to bring about the Restoration.
Cooper and Hoskins were famous miniature painters of the day. Samuel
Cooper was a nephew of John Hoskins, who instructed him in the art of
miniature painting, in which he soon out-rivalled his master. Cooper,
who is styled by contemporary eulogists the "prince of limners," gave a
strength and freedom to the art which it had not formerly possessed; but
where he attempted to express more of the figure than the head, his
drawing is defective. His painting was famous for the beauty of his
carnation tints, and the loose flowing lines in which he described the
hair of his model. He was a friend of the famous Samuel Butler. Hoskins,
though a painter of less merit, had had the honour of painting His
Majesty King Charles I., his Queen, and many members of the Court; and
had passed through the varying fortunes of a fashionable
portrait-painter, whose position, leaning as it does on the fickle
approbation of the connoisseurs, is always liable to be wrested from him
by a younger rival.
It is noticeable that this is the first letter in which we have
intimation of the world's gossip about Dorothy's love affairs. We may,
perhaps not unfairly, trace the growth of Dorothy's affection for Temple
by the actions of others. First her brother raises his objections, and
then her relations begin to gossip; meanwhile the letters do not grow
less kind.
SIR,--You amaze me with your story of Tom Cheeke. I am certain he could
not have had it where you imagine, and 'tis a miracle to me that he
remember that there is such a one in the world as his cousin D.O. I am
sure he has not seen her this six year, and I think but once in his
life. If he has spread his opinion in that family, I shall quickly hear
on't, for my cousin Molle is now gone to Kimbolton to my Lord
Manchester, and from there he goes to Moor Park to my cousin Franklin's,
and in one, or both, he will be sure to meet with it. The matter is not
great, for I confess I do naturally hate the noise and talk of the
world, and should be best pleased never to be known in't upon any
occasion whatsoever; yet, since it can never be wholly avoided, one must
satisfy oneself by doing nothing that one need care who knows. I do not
think _a propos_ to tell anybody that you and I are very good friends,
and it were better, sure, if nobody knew it but we ourselves. But if, in
spite of all our caution, it be discovered, 'tis no treason nor anything
else that's ill; and if anybody should tell me that I have had a greater
kindness and esteem for you than for any one besides, I do not think I
should deny it; howsoever you do, oblige me by not owning any such
thing, for as you say, I have no reason to take it ill that you
endeavour to preserve me a liberty, though I'm never likely to make use
on't. Besides that, I agree with you too that certainly 'tis much better
you should owe my kindness to nothing but your own merit and my
inclination, than that there should lie any other necessity upon me of
making good my words to you.
For God's sake do not complain so that you do not see me; I believe I do
not suffer less in't than you, but 'tis not to be helped. If I had a
picture that were fit for you, you should have it. I have but one that's
anything like, and that's a great one, but I will send it some time or
other to Cooper or Hoskins, and have a little one drawn by it, if I
cannot be in town to sit myself. You undo me by but dreaming how happy
we might have been, when I consider how far we are from it in reality.
Alas! how can you talk of defying fortune; nobody lives without it, and
therefore why should you imagine you could? I know not how my brother
comes to be so well informed as you say, but I am certain he knows the
utmost of the injuries you have received from her. 'Tis not possible she
should have used you worse than he says. We have had another debate, but
much more calmly. 'Twas just upon his going up to town, and perhaps he
thought it not fit to part in anger. Not to wrong him, he never said to
me (whate'er he thought) a word in prejudice of you in your own person,
and I never heard him accuse any but your fortune and my indiscretion.
And whereas I did expect that (at least in compliment to me) he should
have said we had been a couple of fools well met, he says by his troth
he does not blame you, but bids me not deceive myself to think you have
any great passion for me.
If you have done with the first part of _Cyrus_, I should be glad Mr.
Hollingsworth had it, because I mentioned some such thing in my last to
my Lady; but there is no haste of restoring the other unless she should
send to me for it, which I believe she will not. I have a third tome
here against you have done with that second; and to encourage you, let
me assure you that the more you read of them you will like them still
better. Oh, me! whilst I think on't, let me ask you one question
seriously, and pray resolve me truly;--do I look so stately as people
apprehend? I vow to you I made nothing on't when Sir Emperor said so,
because I had no great opinion of his judgment, but Mr. Freeman makes me
mistrust myself extremely, not that I am sorry I did appear so to him
(since it kept me from the displeasure of refusing an offer which I do
not perhaps deserve), but that it is a scurvy quality in itself, and I
am afraid I have it in great measure if I showed any of it to him, for
whom I have so much respect and esteem. If it be so you must needs know
it; for though my kindness will not let me look so upon you, you can see
what I do to other people. And, besides, there was a time when we
ourselves were indifferent to one another;--did I do so then, or have I
learned it since? For God's sake tell me, that I may try to mend it. I
could wish, too, that you would lay your commands on me to forbear
fruit: here is enough to kill 1000 such as I am, and so extremely good,
that nothing but your power can secure me; therefore forbid it me, that
I may live to be
_Letter 25._--Dorothy's dissertations on love and marriage are always
amusing in their demureness. Who Cousin Peters was we cannot now say,
but she was evidently a relation and a gossip. The episode concerning
Mistress Harrison and the Queen is explained by the following quotation
from the autobiography of the Countess of Warwick.
She is writing of Mr. Charles Rich, and says: "He was then in love with
a Maid of Honour to the Queen, one Mrs. Hareson, that had been
chamber-fellow to my sister-in-law whilst she lived at Court, and that
brought on the acquaintance between him and my sister. He continued to
be much with us for about five or six months, till my brother Broghill
then (afterwards Earl of Orrery) grew also to be passionately in love
with the same Mrs. Hareson. My brother then having a quarrel with Mr.
Thomas Howard, second son to the Earl of Berkshire, about Mrs. Hareson
(with whom he also was in love), Mr. Rich brought my brother a challenge
from Mr. Howard, and was second to him against my brother when they
fought, which they did without any great hurt of any side, being parted.
This action made Mr. Rich judge it not civil to come to our house, and
so for some time forbore doing it; but at last my brother's match with
Mrs. Hareson being unhandsomely (on her side) broken off, when they
were so near being married as the wedding clothes were to be made, and
she after married Mr. Thomas Howard (to my father's great satisfaction),
who always was averse to it, though, to comply with my brother's
passion, he consented to it." There is a reference to the duel in a
letter of Lord Cork, which fixes the date as 1639-40, but Mr. Nevile's
name is nowhere mentioned.
Lord Broghill is well known to the history of that time, both literary
and political. He was Roger Boyle, afterwards Earl of Orrery, the fifth
son of the "great Earl of Cork." He acted for the Parliament against the
Catholics in Ireland, but was still thought to retain some partiality
for the King's party. Cromwell, however, considered himself secure in
Lord Broghill's attachment; and, indeed, he continued to serve not only
Cromwell during his lifetime, but his son Richard, after his father's
death, with great fidelity. Lord Broghill was active in forwarding the
Restoration in Ireland, and in reward of his services was made Earl of
Orrery. He died in 1679.
SIR,--You have furnished me now with arguments to convince my brother,
if he should ever enter on the dispute again. In earnest, I believed all
this before, but 'twas something an ignorant kind of faith in me. I was
satisfied myself, but could not tell how to persuade another of the
truth on't; and to speak indifferently, there are such multitudes that
abuse the names of love and friendship, and so very few that either
understand or practise it in reality, that it may raise great doubts
whether there is any such thing in the world or not, and such as do not
find it in themselves will hardly believe 'tis anywhere. But it will
easily be granted, that most people make haste to be miserable; that
they put on their fetters as inconsiderately as a woodcock runs into a
noose, and are carried by the weakest considerations imaginable to do a
thing of the greatest consequence of anything that concerns this world.
I was told by one (who pretends to know him very well) that nothing
tempted my cousin Osborne to marry his lady (so much) as that she was an
Earl's daughter; which methought was the prettiest fancy, and had the
least of sense in it, of any I had heard on, considering that it was no
addition to her person, that he had honour enough before for his
fortune, and how little it is esteemed in this age,--if it be anything
in a better,--which for my part I am not well satisfied in. Beside that,
in this particular it does not sound handsomely. My Lady Bridget Osborne
makes a worse name a great deal, methinks, than plain my Lady Osborne
would do.
I have been studying how Tom Cheeke might come by his intelligence, and
I verily believe he has it from my cousin Peters. She lives near them in
Essex, and in all likelihood, for want of other discourse to entertain
him withal, she has come out with all she knows. The last time I saw her
she asked me for you before she had spoke six words to me; and I, who of
all things do not love to make secrets of trifles, told her I had seen
you that day. She said no more, nor I neither; but perhaps it worked in
her little brain. The best on't is, the matter is not great, for though
I confess I had rather nobody knew it, yet 'tis that I shall never be
ashamed to own.
How kindly do I take these civilities of your father's; in earnest, you
cannot imagine how his letter pleased me. I used to respect him merely
as he was your father, but I begin now to owe it to himself; all that he
says is so kind and so obliging, so natural and so easy, that one may
see 'tis perfectly his disposition, and has nothing to disguise in it.
'Tis long since that I knew how well he writ, perhaps you have forgot
that you showed me a letter of his (to a French Marquis, I think, or
some such man of his acquaintance) when I first knew you; I remember it
very well, and that I thought it as handsome a letter as I had seen; but
I have not skill it seems, for I like yours too.
I can pardon all my cousin Franklin's little plots of discovery, if she
believed herself when she said she was confident our humours would agree
extremely well. In earnest, I think they do; for I mark that I am always
of your opinion, unless it be when you will not allow that you write
well, for there I am too much concerned. Jane told me t'other day very
soberly that we write very much alike. I think she said it with an
intent to please me, and did not fail in't; but if you write ill, 'twas
no great compliment to me. _A propos de_ Jane, she bids me tell you
that, if you liked your marmalade of quince, she would send you more,
and she thinks better, that has been made since.
'Twas a strange caprice, as you say, of Mrs. Harrison, but there is fate
as well as love in those things. The Queen took the greatest pains to
persuade her from it that could be; and (as somebody says, I know not
who) "Majesty is no ill orator;" but all would not do. When she had
nothing to say for herself, she told her she had rather beg with Mr.
Howard than live in the greatest plenty that could be with either my
Lord Broghill, Charles Rich, or Mr. Nevile,--for all these were dying
for her then. I am afraid she has altered her opinion since 'twas too
late, for I do not take Mr. Howard to be a person that can deserve one
should neglect all the world for him. And where there is no reason to
uphold a passion, it will sink of itself; but where there is, it may
last eternally.--I am yours.
_Letter 26._
SIR,--The day I should have received your letter I was invited to dine
at a rich widow's (whom I think I once told you of, and offered my
service in case you thought fit to make addresses there); and she was so
kind, and in so good humour, that if I had had any commission I should
have thought it a very fit time to speak. We had a huge dinner, though
the company was only of her own kindred that are in the house with her
and what I brought; but she is broke loose from an old miserable husband
that lived so long, she thinks if she does not make haste she shall not
have time to spend what he left. She is old and was never handsome, and
yet is courted a thousand times more than the greatest beauty in the
world would be that had not a fortune. We could not eat in quiet for the
letters and presents that came in from people that would not have looked
upon her when they had met her if she had been left poor. I could not
but laugh to myself at the meanness of their humour, and was merry
enough all day, for the company was very good; and besides, I expected
to find when I came home a letter from you that would be more a feast
and company to me than all that was there. But never anybody was so
defeated as I was to find none. I could not imagine the reason, only I
assured myself it was no fault of yours, but perhaps a just punishment
upon me for having been too much pleased in a company where you were
After supper my brother and I fell into dispute about riches, and the
great advantages of it; he instanced in the widow that it made one
respected in the world. I said 'twas true, but that was a respect I
should not at all value when I owed it only to my fortune. And we
debated it so long till we had both talked ourselves weary enough to go
to bed. Yet I did not sleep so well but that I chid my maid for waking
me in the morning, till she stopped my mouth with saying she had letters
for me. I had not patience to stay till I could rise, but made her tie
up all the curtains to let in light; and among some others I found my
dear letter that was first to be read, and which made all the rest not
worth the reading. I could not but wonder to find in it that my cousin
Franklin should want a true friend when 'tis thought she has the best
husband in the world; he was so passionate for her before he had her,
and so pleased with her since, that, in earnest, I did not think it
possible she could have anything left to wish for that she had not
already in such a husband with such a fortune. But she can best tell
whether she is happy or not; only if she be not, I do not see how
anybody else can hope it. I know her the least of all the sisters, and
perhaps 'tis to my advantage that she knows me no more, since she speaks
so obligingly of me. But do you think it was altogether without design
she spoke it to you? When I remember she is Tom Cheeke's sister, I am
apt to think she might have heard his news, and meant to try whether
there was anything of truth in't. My cousin Molle, I think, means to end
the summer there. They say, indeed, 'tis a very fine seat, but if I did
not mistake Sir Thomas Cheeke, he told me there was never a good room in
the house. I was wondering how you came by an acquaintance there,
because I had never heard you speak that you knew them. I never saw him
in my life, but he is famous for a kind husband. Only 'twas found fault
with that he could not forbear kissing his wife before company, a
foolish trick that young married men are apt to; he has left it long
since, I suppose. But, seriously, 'tis as ill a sight as one would wish
to see, and appears very rude, methinks, to the company.
What a strange fellow this goldsmith is, he has a head fit for nothing
but horns. I chid him once for a seal he set me just of this fashion and
the same colours. If he were to make twenty they should be all so, his
invention can stretch no further than blue and red. It makes me think of
the fellow that could paint nothing but a flower-de-luce, who, when he
met with one that was so firmly resolved to have a lion for his sign
that there was no persuading him out on't, "Well," says the painter,
"let it be a lion then, but it shall be as like a flower-de-luce as e'er
you saw." So, because you would have it a dolphin, he consented to it,
but it is like an ill-favoured knot of ribbon. I did not say anything of
my father's being ill of late; I think I told you before, he kept his
chamber ever since his last sickness, and so he does still. Yet I cannot
say that he is at all sick, but has so general a weakness upon him that
I am much afraid their opinion of him has too much of truth in it, and
do extremely apprehend how the winter may work upon him. Will you pardon
this strange scribbled letter, and the disorderliness on't? I know you
would, though I should not tell you that I am not so much at leisure as
I used to be. You can forgive your friends anything, and when I am not
the faithfullest of those, never forgive me. You may direct your letters
how you please, here will be nobody to receive it but
_Letter 27._--Althorp, in Northamptonshire, was the seat of Lady
Sunderland's first husband, Robert Lord Spencer.
SIR,--Your last came safe, and I shall follow your direction for the
address of this, though, as you say, I cannot imagine what should tempt
anybody to so severe a search for them, unless it be that he is not yet
fully satisfied to what degree our friendship is grown, and thinks he
may best inform himself from them. In earnest, 'twould not be unpleasant
to hear our discourse. He forms his with so much art and design, and is
so pleased with the hopes of making some discovery, and I [who] know him
as well as he does himself, cannot but give myself the recreation
sometimes of confounding him and destroying all that his busy head had
been working on since the last conference. He gives me some trouble with
his suspicions; yet, on my conscience, he is a greater to himself, and I
deal with so much _franchise_ as to tell him so; and yet he has no more
the heart to ask me directly what he would so fain know, than a jealous
man has to ask (one that might tell him) whether he were a cuckold or
not, for fear of being resolved of that which is yet a doubt to him. My
eldest brother is not so inquisitive; he satisfies himself with
persuading me earnestly to marry, and takes no notice of anything that
may hinder me, but a carelessness of my fortune, or perhaps an aversion
to a kind of life that appears to have less of freedom in't than that
which at present I enjoy. But, sure, he gives himself another reason,
for 'tis not very long since he took occasion to inquire for you very
kindly of me; and though I could then give but little account of you, he
smiled as if he did not altogether believe me, and afterwards
maliciously said he wondered you did not marry. And I seemed to do so
too, and said, if I knew any woman that had a great fortune, and were a
person worthy of you, I should wish her you with all my heart. "But,
sister," says he, "would you have him love her?" "Do you doubt it?" did
I say; "he were not happy in't else." He laughed, and said my humour was
pleasant; but he made some question whether it was natural or not. He
cannot be so unjust as to let me lose him, sure, I was kind to him
though I had some reason not to take it very well when he made that a
secret to me which was known to so many that did not know him; but we
shall never fall out, I believe, we are not apt to it, neither of us.
If you are come back from Epsom, I may ask you how you like drinking
water? I have wished it might agree as well with you as it did with me;
and if it were as certain that the same thing would do us good as 'tis
that the same thing would please us, I should not need to doubt it.
Otherwise my wishes do not signify much, but I am forbid complaints, or
to express my fears. And be it so, only you must pardon me if I cannot
agree to give you false hopes; I must be deceived myself before I can
deceive you, and I have so accustomed myself to tell you all that I
think, that I must either say nothing, or that which I believe to be
I cannot say but that I have wanted Jane; but it has been rather to have
somebody to talk with of you, than that I needed anybody to put me in
mind of you, and with all her diligence I should have often prevented
her in that discourse. Were you at Althorp when you saw my Lady
Sunderland and Mr. Smith, or are they in town? I have heard, indeed,
that they are very happy; but withal that, as she is a very
extraordinary person herself, so she aimed at doing extraordinary
things, and when she had married Mr. Smith (because some people were so
bold as to think she did it because she loved him) she undertook to
convince the world that what she had done was in mere pity to his
sufferings, and that she could not go a step lower to meet anybody than
that led her, though when she thought there were no eyes on her, she was
more gracious to him. But perhaps this might not be true, or it may be
she is now grown weary of that constraint she put upon herself. I should
have been sadder than you if I had been their neighbour to have seen
them so kind; as I must have been if I had married the Emperor. He used
to brag to me always of a great acquaintance he had there, what an
esteem my lady had for him, and had the vanity (not to call it
impudence) to talk sometimes as if he would have had me believe he might
have had her, and would not; I'll swear I blushed for him when I saw he
did not. He told me too, that though he had carried his addresses to me
with all the privacy that was possible, because he saw I liked it best,
and that 'twas partly his own humour too, yet she had discovered it, and
could tell that there had been such a thing, and that it was broke off
again, she knew not why; which certainly was a lie, as well as the
other, for I do not think she ever heard there was such a one in the
world as
Your faithful friend.
_Letter 28._--Dorothy's allusion to the "Seven Sleepers" refers to a
story which occurs in the _Golden Legend_ and other places, of seven
noble youths of Ephesus, who fled from persecution to a cave in Mount
Celion. After two hundred and thirty years they awoke, but only to die
soon afterwards. The fable is said to have arisen from a
misinterpretation of the text, "They fell asleep in the Lord."
SIR,--I did not lay it as a fault to your charge that you were not good
at disguise; if it be one, I am too guilty on't myself to accuse
another. And though I have been told it shows an unpractisedness in the
world, and betrays to all that understand it better, yet since it is a
quality I was not born with, nor ever like to get, I have always thought
good to maintain that 'twas better not to need it than to have it.
I give you many thanks for your care of my Irish dog, but I am extremely
out of countenance your father should be troubled with it. Sure, he will
think I have a most extravagant fancy; but do me the right as to let him
know I am not so possessed with it as to consent he should be employed
in such a commission.
Your opinion of my eldest brother is, I think, very just, and when I
said maliciously, I meant a French malice, which you know does not
signify the same with an English one. I know not whether I told it you
or not, but I concluded (from what you said of your indisposition) that
it was very like the spleen; but perhaps I foresaw you would not be
willing to own a disease that the severe part of the world holds to be
merely imaginary and affected, and therefore proper only to women.
However, I cannot but wish you had stayed longer at Epsom and drunk the
waters with more order though in a less proportion. But did you drink
them immediately from the well? I remember I was forbid it, and
methought with a great deal of reason, for (especially at this time of
year) the well is so low, and there is such a multitude to be served out
on't, that you can hardly get any but what is thick and troubled; and I
have marked that when it stood all night (for that was my direction) the
bottom of the vessel it stood in would be covered an inch thick with a
white clay, which, sure, has no great virtue in't, and is not very
pleasant to drink.
What a character of a young couple you give me! Would you would ask some
one who knew him, whether he be not much more of an ass since his
marriage than he was before. I have some reason to doubt that it alters
people strangely. I made a visit t'other day to welcome a lady into this
country whom her husband had newly brought down, and because I knew him,
though not her, and she was a stranger here, 'twas a civility I owed
them. But you cannot imagine how I was surprised to see a man that I had
known so handsome, so capable of being made a pretty gentleman (for
though he was no proud philosopher, as the Frenchmen say, he was that
which good company and a little knowledge of the world would have made
equal to many that think themselves very well, and are thought so),
transformed into the direct shape of a great boy newly come from school.
To see him wholly taken up with running on errands for his wife, and
teaching her little dog tricks! And this was the best of him; for when
he was at leisure to talk, he would suffer no one else to do it, and
what he said, and the noise he made, if you had heard it, you would have
concluded him drunk with joy that he had a wife and a pack of hounds. I
was so weary on't that I made haste home, and could not but think of the
change all the way till my brother (who was with me) thought me sad, and
so, to put me in better humour, said he believed I repented me I had not
this gentleman, now I saw how absolutely his wife governed him. But I
assured him, that though I thought it very fit such as he should be
governed, yet I should not like the employment by no means. It becomes
no woman, and did so ill with this lady that in my opinion it spoiled a
good face and a very fine gown. Yet the woman you met upon the way
governed her husband and did it handsomely. It was, as you say, a great
example of friendship, and much for the credit of our sex.
You are too severe to Walker. I'll undertake he would set me twenty
seals for nothing rather than undergo your wrath. I am in no haste for
it, and so he does it well we will not fall out; perhaps he is not in
the humour of keeping his word at present, and nobody can blame him if
he be often in an ill one. But though I am merciful to him, as to one
that has suffered enough already, I cannot excuse you that profess to be
my friend and yet are content to let me live in such ignorance, write to
me every week, and yet never send me any of the new phrases of the town.
I could tell you, without abandoning the truth, that it is part of your
_devoyre_ to correct the imperfections you find under my hand, and that
my trouble resembles my wonder you can let me be dissatisfied. I should
never have learnt any of these fine things from you; and, to say truth,
I know not whether I shall from anybody else, if to learn them be to
understand them. Pray what is meant by _wellness_ and _unwellness_; and
why is _to some extreme_ better than _to some extremity_? I believe I
shall live here till there is quite a new language spoke where you are,
and shall come out like one of the Seven Sleepers, a creature of another
age. But 'tis no matter so you understand me, though nobody else do,
when I say how much I am
Your faithful.
_Letter 29._
SIR,--I can give you leave to doubt anything but my kindness, though I
can assure you I spake as I meant when I said I had not the vanity to
believe I deserv'd yours, for I am not certain whether 'tis possible for
anybody to deserve that another should love them above themselves,
though I am certain many may deserve it more than me. But not to dispute
this with you, let me tell you that I am thus far of your opinion, that
upon some natures nothing is so powerful as kindness, and that I should
give that to yours which all the merit in the world besides would not
draw from me. I spake as if I had not done so already; but you may
choose whether you will believe me or not, for, to say truth, I do not
much believe myself in that point. No, all the kindness I have or ever
had is yours; nor shall I ever repent it so, unless you shall ever
repent yours. Without telling you what the inconveniences of your coming
hither are, you may believe they are considerable, or else I should not
deny you or myself the happiness of seeing one another; and if you dare
trust me where I am equally concerned with you, I shall take hold of the
first opportunity that may either admit you here or bring me nearer you.
Sure you took somebody else for my cousin Peters? I can never believe
her beauty able to smite anybody. I saw her when I was last in town, but
she appear'd wholly the same to me, she was at St. Malo, with all her
innocent good nature too, and asked for you so kindly, that I am sure
she cannot have forgot you; nor do I think she had so much address as to
do it merely in compliment to me. No, you are mistaken certainly; what
should she do amongst all that company, unless she be towards a wedding?
She has been kept at home, poor soul, and suffered so much of purgatory
in this world that she needs not fear it in the next; and yet she is as
merry as ever she was, which perhaps might make her look young, but that
she laughs a little too much, and that will bring wrinkles, they say.
Oh, me! now I talk of laughing, it makes me think of poor Jane. I had a
letter from her the other day; she desired me to present her humble
service to her master,--she did mean you, sure, for she named everybody
else that she owes any service to,--and bid me say that she would keep
her word with him. God knows what you have agreed on together. She tells
me she shall stay long enough there to hear from me once more, and then
she is resolved to come away.
Here is a seal, which pray give Walker to set for me very handsomely,
and not of any of those fashions he made my others, but of something
that may differ from the rest. 'Tis a plain head, but not ill cut, I
think. My eldest brother is now here, and we expect my youngest shortly,
and then we shall be altogether, which I do not think we ever were twice
in our lives. My niece is still with me, but her father threatens to
fetch her away. If I can keep her to Michaelmas I may perhaps bring her
up to town myself, and take that occasion of seeing you; but I have no
other business that is worth my taking a journey, for I have had another
summons from my aunt, and I protest I am afraid I shall be in rebellion
there; but 'tis not to be helped. The widow writes me word, too, that I
must expect her here about a month hence; and I find that I shall want
no company, but only that which I would have, and for which I could
willingly spare all the rest. Will it be ever thus? I am afraid it will.
There has been complaints made on me already to my eldest brother (only
in general, or at least he takes notice of no more), what offers I
refuse, and what a strange humour has possessed me of being deaf to the
advice of all my friends. I find I am to be baited by them all by turns.
They weary themselves, and me too, to very little purpose, for to my
thinking they talk the most impertinently that ever people did; and I
believe they are not in my debt, but think the same of me. Sometimes I
tell them I will not marry, and then they laugh at me; sometimes I say,
"Not yet," and they laugh more, and would make me believe I shall be old
within this twelvemonth. I tell them I shall be wiser then. They say
'twill be to no purpose. Sometimes we are in earnest and sometimes in
jest, but always saying something since my brother Henry found his
tongue again. If you were with me I could make sport of all this; but
"patience is my penance" is somebody's motto, and I think it must be
I am your.
_Letter 30._--Here is Lord Lisle's embassage discussed again! We know
that in the end it comes to nothing; Whitelocke going, but without
Temple. The statute commanding the marriage ceremony to be conducted
before Justices of the Peace was passed in August 1653; it is to some
extent by such references as these that the letters have been dated and
grouped. The Marriage Act of 1653, with the other statutes of this
period, have been erased from the Statute Book; but a draft of it in
Somers' Tracts remains to us for reference. It contained provisions for
the names of those who intended being joined together in holy matrimony
to be posted, with certain other particulars, upon the door of the
common meeting-house, commonly called the parish church or chapel; and
after the space of three weeks the parties, with two witnesses, might go
before a magistrate, who, having satisfied himself, by means of
examining witnesses on oath or otherwise, that all the preliminaries
commanded by the Act had been properly fulfilled, further superintended
the proceedings to perfect the said intended marriage as follows:--The
man taking the woman by the hand pronounced these words, "I, A.B., do
hereby in the presence of God take thee C.D. to be my wedded wife, and
do also in the presence of God, and before these witnesses, promise to
be unto thee a loving and faithful husband." Then the woman in similar
formula promises to be a "loving, faithful, and obedient wife," and the
magistrate pronounced the parties to be man and wife. This ceremony, and
this only, was to be a legal marriage. It is probable that parties
might and did add a voluntary religious rite to this compulsory civil
ceremony, as is done at this day in many foreign countries.
SIR,--You cannot imagine how I was surpris'd to find a letter that began
"Dear brother;" I thought sure it could not belong at all to me, and was
afraid I had lost one by it; that you intended me another, and in your
haste had mistook this for that. Therefore, till I found the permission
you gave me, I had laid it by with a resolution not to read it, but to
send it again. If I had done so, I had missed a great deal of
satisfaction which I received from it. In earnest, I cannot tell you how
kindly I take all the obliging things you say in it of me; nor how
pleased I should be (for your sake) if I were able to make good the
character you give me to your brother, and that I did not owe a great
part of it wholly to your friendship for me. I dare call nothing on't my
own but faithfulness; that I may boast of with truth and modesty, since
'tis but a simple virtue; and though some are without it, yet 'tis so
absolutely necessary, that nobody wanting it can be worthy of any
esteem. I see you speak well of me to other people, though you complain
always to me. I know not how to believe I should misuse your heart as
you pretend; I never had any quarrel to it, and since our friendship it
has been dear to me as my own. 'Tis rather, sure, that you have a mind
to try another, than that any dislike of yours makes you turn it over to
me; but be it as it will, I am contented to stand to the loss, and
perhaps when you have changed you will find so little difference that
you'll be calling for your own again. Do but assure me that I shall find
you almost as merry as my Lady Anne Wentworth is always, and nothing
shall fright me from my purpose of seeing you as soon as I can with any
conveniency. I would not have you insensible of our misfortunes, but I
would not either that you should revenge them on yourself; no, that
shows a want of constancy (which you will hardly yield to be your
fault); but 'tis certain that there was never anything more mistaken
than the Roman courage, when they killed themselves to avoid misfortunes
that were infinitely worse than death. You confess 'tis an age since our
story began, as is not fit for me to own. Is it not likely, then, that
if my face had ever been good, it might be altered since then; or is it
as unfit for me to own the change as the time that makes it? Be it as
you please, I am not enough concerned in't to dispute it with you; for,
trust me, if you would not have my face better, I am satisfied it should
be as it is; since if ever I wished it otherwise, 'twas for your sake.
I know not how I stumbled upon a news-book this week, and, for want of
something else to do read it; it mentions my Lord Lisle's embassage
again. Is there any such thing towards? I met with somebody else too
in't that may concern anybody that has a mind to marry; 'tis a new form
for it, that, sure, will fright the country people extremely, for they
apprehend nothing like going before a Justice; they say no other
marriage shall stand good in law. In conscience, I believe the old one
is the better; and for my part I am resolved to stay till that comes in
fashion again.
Can your father have so perfectly forgiven already the injury I did him
(since you will not allow it to be any to you), in hindering you of Mrs.
Chambers, as to remember me with kindness? 'Tis most certain that I am
obliged to him, and, in earnest, if I could hope it might ever be in my
power to serve him I would promise something for myself. But is it not
true, too, that you have represented me to him rather as you imagine me
than as I am; and have you not given him an expectation that I shall
never be able to satisfy? If you have, I can forgive you, because I know
you meant well in't; but I have known some women that have commended
others merely out of spite, and if I were malicious enough to envy
anybody's beauty, I would cry it up to all that had not seen them;
there's no such way to make anybody appear less handsome than they are.
You must not forget that you are some letters in my debt, besides the
answer to this. If there were not conveniences of sending, I should
persecute you strangely. And yet you cannot wonder at it; the constant
desire I have to hear from you, and the satisfaction your letters give
me, would oblige one that has less time to write often. But yet I know
what 'tis to be in the town. I could never write a letter from thence in
my life of above a dozen lines; and though I see as little company as
anybody that comes there, yet I always met with something or other that
kept me idle. Therefore I can excuse it, though you do not exactly pay
all that you owe, upon condition you shall tell me when I see you all
that you should have writ if you had had time, and all that you can
imagine to say to a person that is
Your faithful friend.
_Letter 31._--Dorothy is in mourning for her youngest brother, Robert,
who died about this time. As she does not mention his death to Temple,
we may take it that he was, though her brother, practically a stranger
to her, living away from Chicksands, and rarely visiting her.
General Monk's brother, to whom Dorothy refers, was Mr. Nicholas Monk,
vicar of Kelkhampton, in Cornwall. General Monk's misfortune is no less
a calamity than his marriage. The following extract from Guizot's _Life
of Monk_ will fully explain the allusion: "The return of the new admiral
[Monk] was marked by a domestic event which was not without its
influence on his public conduct and reputation. Unrefined tastes, and
that need of repose in his private life which usually accompanies
activity in public affairs, had consigned him to the dominion of a woman
of low character, destitute even of the charms which seduce, and whose
manners did not belie the rumour which gave her for extraction a market
stall, or even, according to some, a much less respectable profession.
She had lived for some time past with Monk, and united to the influence
of habit an impetuosity of will and words difficult to be resisted by
the tranquil apathy of her lover. It is asserted that she had managed,
as long since as 1649, to force him to a marriage; but this marriage was
most certainly not declared until 1653." M. Guizot then quotes a letter,
dated September 19, 1653, announcing the news of General Monk's
marriage, and this would about correspond with the presumed date of
Dorothy's letter. Greenwich Palace was probably occupied by Monk at this
time, and Dorothy meant to say that Ann Clarges would be as much at home
in Greenwich Palace as, say, the Lord Protector's wife at Whitehall.
SIR,--It was, sure, a less fault in me to make a scruple of reading your
letter to your brother, which in all likelihood I could not be concerned
in, than for you to condemn the freedom you take of giving me directions
in a thing where we are equally concerned. Therefore, if I forgive you
this, you may justly forgive me t'other; and upon these terms we are
friends again, are we not? No, stay! I have another fault to chide you
for. You doubted whether you had not writ too much, and whether I could
have the patience to read it or not. Why do you dissemble so abominably;
you cannot think these things? How I should love that plain-heartedness
you speak of, if you would use it; nothing is civil but that amongst
friends. Your kind sister ought to chide you, too, for not writing to
her, unless you have been with her to excuse it. I hope you have; and
pray take some time to make her one visit from me, and carry my humble
service with you, and tell her that 'tis not my fault that you are no
better. I do not think I shall see the town before Michaelmas, therefore
you may make what sallies you please. I am tied here to expect my
brother Peyton, and then possibly we may go up together, for I should be
at home again before the term. Then I may show you my niece; and you may
confess that I am a kind aunt to desire her company, since the
disadvantage of our being together will lie wholly upon me. But I must
make it my bargain, that if I come you will not be frighted to see me;
you think, I'll warrant, you have courage enough to endure a worse
sight. You may be deceived, you never saw me in mourning yet; nobody
that has will e'er desire to do it again, for their own sakes as well as
mine. Oh, 'tis a most dismal dress,--I have not dared to look in the
glass since I wore it; and certainly if it did so ill with other people
as it does with me, it would never be worn.
You told me of writing to your father, but you did not say whether you
had heard from him, or how he did. May not I ask it? Is it possible that
he saw me? Where were my eyes that I did not see him, for I believe I
should have guessed at least that 'twas he if I had? They say you are
very like him; but 'tis no wonder neither that I did not see him, for I
saw not you when I met you there. 'Tis a place I look upon nobody in;
and it was reproached to me by a kinsman, but a little before you came
to me, that he had followed me to half a dozen shops to see when I would
take notice of him, and was at last going away with a belief 'twas not
I, because I did not seem to know him. Other people make it so much
their business to gape, that I'll swear they put me so out of
countenance I dare not look up for my life.
I am sorry for General Monk's misfortunes, because you say he is your
friend; but otherwise she will suit well enough with the rest of the
great ladies of the times, and become Greenwich as well as some others
do the rest of the King's houses. If I am not mistaken, that Monk has a
brother lives in Cornwall; an honest gentleman, I have heard, and one
that was a great acquaintance of a brother of mine who was killed there
during the war, and so much his friend that upon his death he put
himself and his family into mourning for him, which is not usual, I
think, where there is no relation of kindred.
I will take order that my letters shall be left with Jones, and yours
called for there. As long as your last was, I read it over thrice in
less than an hour, though, to say truth, I had skipped some on't the
last time. I could not read my own confession so often. Love is a
terrible word, and I should blush to death if anything but a letter
accused me on't. Pray be merciful, and let it run friendship in my next
charge. My Lady sends me word she has received those parts of _Cyrus_ I
lent you. Here is another for you which, when you have read, you know
how to dispose. There are four pretty stories in it, "_L'Amant Absente_,"
"_L'Amant non Aime_," "_L'Amant Jaloux_," _et_ "_L'Amant dont La Maitresse
est mort_." Tell me which you have most compassion for when you have
read what every one says for himself. Perhaps you will not think it so
easy to decide which is the most unhappy, as you may think by the titles
their stories bear. Only let me desire you not to pity the jealous one,
for I remember I could do nothing but laugh at him as one that sought
his own vexation. This, and the little journeys (you say) you are to
make, will entertain you till I come; which, sure, will be as soon as
possible I can, since 'tis equally desired by you and your faithful.
_Letter 32._--Things being more settled in that part of the world, Sir
John Temple is returning to Ireland, where he intends taking his seat as
Master of the Rolls once again. Temple joins his father soon after this,
and stays in Ireland a few months.
Lady Ormond was the wife of the first Duke of Ormond. She had obtained
her pass to go over to Ireland on August 24th, 1653. The Ormonds had
indeed been in great straits for want of money, and in August 1652 Lady
Ormond had come over from Caen, where they were then living, to
endeavour to claim Cromwell's promise of reserving to her that portion
of their estate which had been her inheritance. After great delays she
obtained L500, and a grant of L2000 per annum out of their Irish lands
"lying most conveniently to Dunmore House." It must have been this
matter that Dorothy had heard of when she questions "whether she will
get it when she comes there."
Francis Annesley, Lord Valentia, belonged to an ancient Nottinghamshire
family, though he himself was born in Newport, Buckinghamshire. Of his
daughter's marriage I can find nothing. Lord Valentia was at this time
Secretary of State at Dublin.
Sir Justinian has at length found a second wife. Her name is Vere, and
she is the daughter of Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh. Thus do Dorothy's
suitors, one by one, recover and cease to lament her obduracy. When she
declares that she would rather have chosen _a chain to lead her apes in_
than marry Sir Justinian, she refers to an old superstition as to the
ultimate fate of spinsters--
Women, dying maids, lead apes in hell,
runs the verse of an old play, and that is the whole superstition, the
origin of which seems somewhat inexplicable. The phrase is thrice used
by Shakespeare, and constantly occurs in the old burlesques and
comedies; in one instance, in a comedy entitled "Love's Convert" (1651),
it is altered to "lead an ape in _heaven_." Many will remember the fate
of "The young Mary Anne" in the famous Ingoldsby legend, "Bloudie
So they say she is now leading apes--
Bloudie Jack,
And mends bachelors' smallclothes below.
No learned editor that I am acquainted with has been able to suggest an
explanation of this curious expression.
SIR,--All my quarrels to you are kind ones, for, sure, 'tis alike
impossible for me to be angry as for you to give me the occasion;
therefore, when I chide (unless it be that you are not careful enough of
yourself, and hazard too much a health that I am more concerned in than
my own), you need not study much for excuses, I can easily forgive you
anything but want of kindness. The judgment you have made of the four
lovers I recommended to you does so perfectly agree with what I think of
them, that I hope it will not alter when you have read their stories.
_L'Amant Absente_ has (in my opinion) a mistress so much beyond any of
the rest, that to be in danger of losing her is more than to have lost
the others; _L'Amant non Aime_ was an ass, under favour (notwithstanding
the _Princesse Cleobuline's_ letter); his mistress had caprices that
would have suited better with our _Amant Jaloux_ than with anybody else;
and the _Prince Artibie_ was much to blame that he outlived his _belle
Leontine_. But if you have met with the beginning of the story of
_Amestris and Aglatides_, you will find the rest of it in this part I
send you now; and 'tis, to me, one of the prettiest I have read, and the
most natural. They say the gentleman that writes this romance has a
sister that lives with him, a maid, and she furnishes him with all the
little stories that come between, so that he only contrives the main
design; and when he wants something to entertain his company withal, he
calls to her for it. She has an excellent fancy, sure, and a great wit;
but, I am sorry to tell it you, they say 'tis the most ill-favoured
creature that ever was born. And 'tis often so; how seldom do we see a
person excellent in anything but they have some great defect with it
that pulls them low enough to make them equal with other people; and
there is justice in't. Those that have fortunes have nothing else, and
those that want it deserve to have it. That's but small comfort, though,
you'll say; 'tis confessed, but there is no such thing as perfect
happiness in this world, those that have come the nearest it had many
things to wish; and,--bless me, whither am I going? Sure, 'tis the
death's head I see stand before me puts me into this grave discourse
(pray do not think I meant that for a conceit neither); how idly have I
spent two sides of my paper, and am afraid, besides, I shall not have
time to write two more. Therefore I'll make haste to tell you that my
friendship for you makes me concerned in all your relations; that I have
a great respect for Sir John, merely as he is your father, and that 'tis
much increased by his kindness to you; that he has all my prayers and
wishes for his safety; and that you will oblige me in letting me know
when you hear any good news from him. He has met with a great deal of
good company, I believe. My Lady Ormond, I am told, is waiting for a
passage, and divers others; but this wind (if I am not mistaken) is not
good for them. In earnest, 'tis a most sad thing that a person of her
quality should be reduced to such a fortune as she has lived upon these
late years, and that she should lose that which she brought, as well as
that which was her husband's. Yet, I hear, she has now got some of her
own land in Ireland granted her; but whether she will get it when she
comes there is, I think, a question.
We have a lady new come into this country that I pity, too, extremely.
She is one of my Lord of Valentia's daughters, and has married an old
fellow that is some threescore and ten, who has a house that is fitter
for the hogs than for her, and a fortune that will not at all recompense
the least of these inconveniences. Ah! 'tis most certain I should have
chosen a handsome chain to lead my apes in before such a husband; but
marrying and hanging go by destiny, they say. It was not mine, it seems,
to have an emperor; the spiteful man, merely to vex me, has gone and
married my countrywoman, my Lord Lee's daughter. What a multitude of
willow garlands I shall weave before I die; I think I had best make them
into faggots this cold weather, the flame they would make in a chimney
would be of more use to me than that which was in the hearts of all
those that gave them me, and would last as long. I did not think I
should have got thus far. I have been so persecuted with visits all this
week I have had no time to despatch anything of business, so that now I
have done this I have forty letters more to write; how much rather would
I have them all to you than to anybody else; or, rather, how much better
would it be if there needed none to you, and that I could tell you
without writing how much I am
_Letter 33._--Sir Thomas Peyton, we must remember, had married Dorothy's
eldest sister; she died many years ago, and Sir Thomas married again, in
1648, one Dame Cicely Swan, a widow, whose character Dorothy gives us.
Lord Monmouth was the eldest son of the Earl of Monmouth, and was born
in 1596. He was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. His literary work
was, at least, copious, and included some historical writing, as well as
the translations mentioned by Dorothy. He published, among other things,
_An Historical Relation of the United Provinces_, a _History of the Wars
in Flanders_, and a _History of Venice_.
Sir John Suckling, in the following doggerel, hails our noble author
with a flunkey's enthusiasm,--
It is so rare and new a thing to see
Aught that belongs to young nobility
In print, but their own clothes, that we must praise
You, as we would do those first show the ways
To arts or to new worlds.
In such strain writes the author of _Why so pale and wan, fond lover?_
and both the circumstance and the doggerel should be very instructive to
the snobologist.
The literary work of Lord Broghill is not unknown to fame, and Mr.
Waller's verse is still read by us; but I have never seen a history of
the Civil Wars from Mr. Waller's pen, and cannot find that he ever
published one.
_Prazimene_ and _Polexander_ are two romances translated from the
French,--the former, a neat little duodecimo; the latter, a huge folio
of more than three hundred and fifty closely-printed pages. The
title-page of _Prazimene_, a very good example of its kind, runs as
follows:--"Two delightful Novels, or the Unlucky Fair One; being the
Amours of Milistrate and Prazimene, Illustrated with variety of Chance
and Fortune. Translated from the French by a Person of Quality, London.
Sold by Eben Tracy, at the Three Bibles on London Bridge." _Polexander_
was "done into English by William Browne, Gent.," for the benefit and
behoof of the Earl of Pembroke.
William Fiennes, Lord Say and Sele, was one of the chiefs of the
Independent party, a Republican, and one of the first to bear arms
against the King. He had, for that day, extravagant notions of civil
liberty, and on the disappointment of his hopes, he appears to have
retired to the Isle of Lundy, on the coast of Devon, and continued a
voluntary prisoner there until Cromwell's death. After the Restoration
he was made Lord Chamberlain of the Household, and Lord Privy Seal. He
published some political tracts, none of which are now in existence; and
Anthony Wood mentions having seen other things of his, among which,
maybe, was the romance that Dorothy had heard of, but which is lost to
SIR,--Pray, let not the apprehension that others say fine things to me
make your letters at all the shorter; for, if it were so, I should not
think they did, and so long you are safe. My brother Peyton does,
indeed, sometimes send me letters that may be excellent for aught I
know, and the more likely because I do not understand them; but I may
say to you (as to a friend) I do not like them, and have wondered that
my sister (who, I may tell you too, and you will not think it vanity in
me, had a great deal of wit, and was thought to write as well as most
women in England) never persuaded him to alter his style, and make it a
little more intelligible. He is an honest gentleman, in earnest, has
understanding enough, and was an excellent husband to two very different
wives, as two good ones could be. My sister was a melancholy, retired
woman, and, besides the company of her husband and her books, never
sought any, but could have spent a life much longer than hers was in
looking to her house and her children. This lady is of a free, jolly
humour, loves cards and company, and is never more pleased than when she
sees a great many others that are so too. Now, with both these he so
perfectly complied that 'tis hard to judge which humour he is more
inclined to in himself; perhaps to neither, which makes it so much the
more strange. His kindness to his first wife may give him an esteem for
her sister; but he was too much smitten with this lady to think of
marrying anybody else, and, seriously, I could not blame him, for she
had, and has yet, great loveliness in her; she was very handsome, and is
very good (one may read it in her face at first sight). A woman that is
hugely civil to all people, and takes as generally as anybody that I
know, but not more than my cousin Molle's letters do, but which, yet,
you do not like, you say, nor I neither, I'll swear; and if it be
ignorance in us both we'll forgive it one another. In my opinion these
great scholars are not the best writers (of letters, I mean); of books,
perhaps they are. I never had, I think, but one letter from Sir
Justinian, but 'twas worth twenty of anybody's else to make me sport. It
was the most sublime nonsense that in my life I ever read; and yet, I
believe, he descended as low as he could to come near my weak
understanding. 'Twill be no compliment after this to say I like your
letters in themselves; not as they come from one that is not indifferent
to me, but, seriously, I do. All letters, methinks, should be free and
easy as one's discourse; not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard
words like a charm. 'Tis an admirable thing to see how some people will
labour to find out terms that may obscure a plain sense. Like a
gentleman I know, who would never say "the weather grew cold," but that
"winter began to salute us." I have no patience for such coxcombs, and
cannot blame an old uncle of mine that threw the standish at his man's
head because he writ a letter for him where, instead of saying (as his
master bid him), "that he would have writ himself, but he had the gout
in his hand," he said, "that the gout in his hand would not permit him
to put pen to paper." The fellow thought he had mended it mightily, and
that putting pen to paper was much better than plain writing.
I have no patience neither for these translations of romances. I met
with _Polexander_ and _L'illustre Bassa_ both so disguised that I, who
am their old acquaintance, hardly know them; besides that, they were
still so much French in words and phrases that 'twas impossible for one
that understands not French to make anything of them. If poor
_Prazimene_ be in the same dress, I would not see her for the world. She
has suffered enough besides. I never saw but four tomes of her, and was
told the gentleman that writ her story died when those were finished. I
was very sorry for it, I remember, for I liked so far as I had seen of
it extremely. Is it not my good Lord of Monmouth, or some such
honourable personage, that presents her to the English ladies? I have
heard many people wonder how he spends his estate. I believe he undoes
himself with printing his translations. Nobody else will undergo the
charge, because they never hope to sell enough of them to pay themselves
withal. I was looking t'other day in a book of his where he translates
_Pipero_ as piper, and twenty words more that are as false as this.
My Lord Broghill, sure, will give us something worth the reading. My
Lord Saye, I am told, has writ a romance since his retirement in the
Isle of Lundy, and Mr. Waller, they say, is making one of our wars,
which, if he does not mingle with a great deal of pleasing fiction,
cannot be very diverting, sure, the subject is so sad.
But all this is nothing to my coming to town, you'll say. 'Tis confest;
and that I was willing as long as I could to avoid saying anything when
I had nothing to say worth your knowing. I am still obliged to wait my
brother Peyton and his lady coming. I had a letter from him this week,
which I will send you, that you may see what hopes he gives. As little
room as I have left, too, I must tell you what a present I had made me
to-day. Two of the finest young Irish greyhounds that e'er I saw; a
gentleman that serves the General sent them me. They are newly come
over, and sent for by Henry Cromwell, he tells me, but not how he got
them for me. However, I am glad I have them, and much the more because
it dispenses with a very unfit employment that your father, out of his
kindness to you and his civility to me, was content to take upon him.
_Letter 34._
SIR,--Jane was so unlucky as to come out of town before your return, but
she tells me she left my letter with Nan Stacy for you. I was in hope
she would have brought me one from you; and because she did not I was
resolv'd to punish her, and kept her up till one o'clock telling me all
her stories. Sure, if there be any truth in the old observation, your
cheeks glowed notably; and 'tis most certain that if I were with you, I
should chide notably. What do you mean to be so melancholy? By her
report your humour is grown insupportable. I can allow it not to be
altogether what she says, and yet it may be very ill too; but if you
loved me you would not give yourself over to that which will infallibly
kill you, if it continue. I know too well that our fortunes have given
us occasion enough to complain and to be weary of her tyranny; but,
alas! would it be better if I had lost you or you me; unless we were
sure to die both together, 'twould but increase our misery, and add to
that which is more already than we can well tell how to bear. You are
more cruel than she regarding a life that's dearer to me than that of
the whole world besides, and which makes all the happiness I have or
ever shall be capable of. Therefore, by all our friendship I conjure you
and, by the power you have given me, command you, to preserve yourself
with the same care that you would have me live. 'Tis all the obedience I
require of you, and will be the greatest testimony you can give me of
your faith. When you have promised me this, 'tis not impossible that I
may promise you shall see me shortly; though my brother Peyton (who says
he will come down to fetch his daughter) hinders me from making the
journey in compliment to her. Yet I shall perhaps find business enough
to carry me up to town. 'Tis all the service I expect from two girls
whose friends have given me leave to provide for, that some order I must
take for the disposal of them may serve for my pretence to see you; but
then I must find you pleased and in good humour, merry as you were wont
to be when we first met, if you will not have me show that I am nothing
akin to my cousin Osborne's lady.