Read My Heart: Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, A Love Story in the Age of Revolution

As a young woman, Dorothy Osborne was intrigued by the duchess’s celebrity, a little in awe of her courage even, for Dorothy too had a love and talent for writing, owned strong opinions and was acutely perceptive of human character. Eager as she was to read the newly published poems (this was the first book of English poems to be deliberately published by a woman under her own name), Dorothy recoiled from the exposure to scorn and ridicule that such behaviour in a woman attracted. And she joined the general chorus of disapproval: ‘there are many soberer People in Bedlam,’

(#litres_trial_promo) she declared. Perhaps the harshness of this comment had something to do with the subconscious desire of an avid reader and natural writer who could not even allow herself to dream that she could share her talents with an audience of more than one?

Writing in the next generation, Anne Finch, who did publish her poems late in her life, knew full well the way such presumption was viewed:

Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,

Such an intruder on the rights of men,

Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem’d,

The fault, can by no vertue be redeem’d.

They tell us, we mistake our sex and way;

Good breeding, fassion, dancing, dressing, play

Are the accomplishments we shou’d desire;

To write, or read, or think, or to enquire

Wou’d cloud our beauty, and exaust our time;

And interrupt the Conquests of our prime;

Whilst the dull mannage, of a servile house

Is held by some, our utmost art, and use.

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Secluded in the countryside, Dorothy cared for her ailing father, endured the social rituals of her neighbours and read volume upon volume of French romances. The highlight of her days and the only, but fundamental, defiance of her fate was her secret correspondence with William Temple. In this Dorothy engaged in the creative project of her life, one that absorbed her thoughts and called forth every emotion. Through their letters they created a subversive world in which they could explore each other’s ideas and feelings, indulge in dreams of a future together and exorcise their fears. Dorothy’s pleasure in the exercise of her art is evident, and she had no more important goal than to keep William faithful to her and determine her own destiny through the charm and brilliance of her letters.

William and Dorothy started writing to each other from the time they were first parted in the later months of 1648 when they were both in France. Martha, William’s younger sister, wrote that he spent two years in Paris and then exploring the rest of the country, by the end of which time he was completely fluent in French. His days drifted by pleasantly enough, playing tennis, visiting other exiles, looking at chateaux and gardens, reading Montaigne’s essays, practising his own writing style and thinking of love. He returned to England for a short while, when Dorothy and her family were also once more resident on the family estate at Chicksands, possibly managing a quick meeting with her then, before he ‘made another Journey into Holland, Germany, & Flanders, where he grew as perfect a Master of Spanish’.

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The surviving letters date from Christmas Eve 1652. It is from this moment that Dorothy’s emphatic and individual voice is suddenly heard. The distant whisperings, speculation and snatches of commentary on their thoughts and lives become clear stereophonic sound as Dorothy, and the echo of William in response, speaks with startling frankness and clarity. The three and a half centuries that separate them from their readers dissolve in the reading, so recognisable and unchanging are the human feelings and perceptions she described. This is the voice even her contemporaries recognised as remarkable, the voice Macaulay fell in love with, of which Virginia Woolf longed to hear more: the voice that has earned its modest writer an unassailable eminence in seventeenth-century literature.

Only the last two years of their correspondence survived, one letter of his and the rest all on Dorothy’s side, but her letters are so responsive to his unseen replies that the ebb and flow of their conversation is clear and present as we read. As William’s sister recognised, the reversals of fortune, much of it detailed in these letters, made their courtship a riveting drama in itself. In order for their love to defy the world and finally triumph, they endured years of subterfuge, secret communication, reliance on go-betweens, stand-up arguments against familial authority, subtle evasions and downright refusals of alternative suitors. The progress of their relationship is revealed in this extraordinary collection of love letters.

As artefacts they are remarkable enough, beautifully preserved by Dorothy’s family over the years and now cared for by the manuscript department at the British Library. Most of the letters are written on paper about A4 size folded in two and with every margin, any spare inch, covered by Dorothy’s elegant, looping script. But it is what they contain that makes them exceptional: frank and conversational in style, the writer’s character and spirit are clear in the confiding voice that ranges widely over daily life and desires, social expectations, and a cavalcade of lovers, family and friends. Sharp, intelligent, full of humour, it is as if Dorothy sits talking beside us. This was exactly the effect she sought to have on William, for these letters were the only way that she could communicate with him through their years of separation, keeping him bound to her and believing in their shared dream.

Dorothy’s first extant letter is a reply to one by William, written on his return to England and after a lengthy gap in their communication. He had previously wagered £10 that she would marry someone other than him and had written, claiming his prize in an attempt to discover obliquely if she remained unattached, even still harbouring warm feelings for him. This was an early indication of his exuberant gambling nature for his bet, at the equivalent of more than £1,000, was significant for a young man who had only just finished his student days. He referred to himself as her ‘Old Servant’, ‘servant’ being the term she and her friends used to refer to anyone actively courting another, or being themselves courted. This was a fishing letter that could not have made his romantic intent more clear.

This was all Dorothy had been waiting for. William had been silent for so long, she had feared he had forgotten her. In her lonely fastness in the country, tending to her father and fending off the suitors pressed on her by her family, his longed-for letter arrived unannounced, revealing clearly his continued interest. All her unexpressed intelligence and pent-up feelings suddenly had a focus again. The brilliance and intensity of her letters expressed this force of emotion and her longing for a soulmate to whom she could talk of the things that really mattered. Later, once she was married, William and others complained that Dorothy’s letters lacked the passion and energy of these written during her courtship. How could they not? These letters were most importantly her means of enchantment, the only recourse she had to seduce his heart and keep him faithful through the long years of enforced separation.

At first her response was careful and controlled. Her handwriting is at its most elegantly formal and constrained. None of her subsequent letters, when she was confident of his feelings, was quite so neatly and carefully written. A great deal of thought has gone into her reply and Dorothy’s answer is masterly in its covert disclosure of her pleasure in hearing from him again, her delight that he still seems to care, the constancy of her feelings and her continuing unmarried state. Despite the fundamental frankness and honesty, her style is full of subtle charm and flirtatious teasing. His revelation of his interest in her had restored her power. She started as she meant to continue, with the upper hand:

Sir

You may please to Lett my Old Servant (as you call him) know, that I confesse I owe much to his merritts, and the many Obligations his kindenesse and Civility’s has layde upon mee. But for the ten poundes hee claims, it is not yett due, and I think you may do well (as a freind) to perswade him to putt it in the Number of his desperate debts, for ’tis a very uncertaine one [she is unlikely to claim it, i.e. marry]. In all things else pray as I am his Servant.

And now Sir let mee tell you that I am extreamly glad (whoesoever gave you the Occasion) to heare from you, since (without complement [without being merely courteous]) there are very few Person’s in the world I am more concer’d in. To finde that you have overcome your longe Journy that you are well, and in a place where it is posible for mee to see you, is a sattisfaction, as I whoe have not bin used to many, may bee allowed to doubt of. Yet I will hope my Ey’s doe not deceive mee, and that I have not forgott to reade. But if you please to Confirme it to mee by another, you know how to dirrect it, for I am where I was, still the same, and alwayes Your humble Servant

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Her request that he write again to reassure her and her signing off ‘for I am where I was, still the same, and alwayes Your humble Servant’ is eloquent of how nothing for her has changed since their last passionate meeting and, she implied, nothing would change, however many eligible suitors, however great the familial pressure. William himself may have had his sexual adventures as a young man abroad, but his heart too had remained constant over the last four years, despite the competing charms of young women with greater fortunes promoted by his family. His sister Martha recalled Dorothy’s and William’s single-minded commitment to each other over the years, to the confounding of some of their friends and all their family, the general thought being that they were negligent of their duty to marry well and disrespectful to their parents: ‘soe long a persuit, though against the consent of most of her friends, & dissatisfaction of some of his, it haveing occasion’d his refusall of a very great fortune when his Famely was most in want of it, as she had done of many considerable offers of great Estates & Famelies’.

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This first letter, tantalisingly revealing and yet concealing so much, had the desired effect on William’s febrile emotions. His answer threw caution to the winds and his professions of affection transformed Dorothy’s confidence. She was emboldened enough to scold him in the next for his neglect in not calling in to see her secretly on his recent trip to Bedford, when he had blamed his horse’s sudden lameness: ‘Is it posible that you came soe neer mee at Bedford and would not see mee, seriously I should never have beleeved it from another. Would your horse had lost all his legg’s instead of a hoofe, that hee might not have bin able to carry you further, and you, somthing that you vallewed extreamly and could not hope to finde any where but at Chicksands. I could wish you a thousand little mischances I am soe angry with you.’

(#litres_trial_promo) She was dismayed too by the length of his recent absence and the infrequency of his letters: ‘for God sake lett mee aske you what you have done all this while you have bin away[?] what you mett with in holland that could keep you there soe long[?] why you went noe further, and, why I was not to know you went so farr[?]’

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Perhaps in answer to this William wrote a letter to her, which he embedded in the translated and reworked French romances he sent to her during their separation. They were a way of expressing his frustrated feelings for her, he told Dorothy, and a cartharsis too, for contemplating the miseries of others put his own suffering into perspective:

I remember you have asked me what I did[,] how past my time when I was last abroad. such scribling as this will give you account of a great deal ont. I lett no sad unfortunate storys scape mee but I would tell um over at large and in as feeling a manner as I could, in hopes that the compassion of others misfortunes might diminish the ressentment of my owne. besides twas a vent for my passion, all I made others say was what I should have said myself to you upon the like occasion. you will in this find a letter that was meant for you.

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He entitled the collection of stories, A True Romance, or the Disastrous Chances of Love and Fortune, with more than an eye to his own much impeded love affair with Dorothy. William then added a dedicatory letter, quite obviously written to Dorothy about their own emotional plight. His conversational writing style, so valued in his later essays, was already evident. Although this letter was formal, as there was a chance that the collection of romances would be read by others, it was remarkably simple and straightforward for someone with the emotional exuberance of youth, writing at a time when grandiose prose style was still admired. This was a rare letter in his youthful voice to his young love and worth quoting extensively as it transmitted something of his character and energy, setting his epistolary presence beside hers. He started by offering her his heart and his efforts at creative story-telling, diminished, he believed, by his all-consuming love for her:

To My Lady

Madame

Having so good a title to my heart you may justly lay claime to all that comes from it, theese fruits I know will not bee worth your owning for alas what can bee expected from so barren a soile as that must needs bee having been scorched up with those flames wch your eys have long since kindled in it.

He added that the story of the viccissitudes of their love was more than a match for the ‘tragicall storys’ that follow. But it would take too long, was too painful to recall and it had no end, ‘should I heer trace over all the wandring steps of an unfortunate passion wch has so long and so variously tormented me … Tis not heer my intention to publish a secrett or entertain you with what you are already so well acquainted [i.e. their own love story] tis onely to tell you the occasion that brought thees storys into the frame wherein now you see them.’ William then admits his painful longing for her presence and inability to endure this long separation:

‘Would I could doe it without calling to mind the pains of that taedious absence, wch I thought never would have ended but with my life, having lasted so much longer then I could ever figure to myself a possibility of living without you. How slowly the lame minutes of that time past away you will easily imagine, and how I was faine by all diversions to lessen the occasions of thinking on you, wch yett cost mee so many sighs as I wonder how they left mee breath enough to serve till my return.’

He continued with an explanation of how the translating and reforming of these tales took his mind off his own misfortunes and gave a voice to his overflowing feelings:

‘I made it the pastime of those lonely houres that my broken sleeps usd each night to leave upon my hands. besides in the expressing of their severall passions I found a vent for my owne, wch if kept in had sure burst mee before now, and shewd you a heart wch you have so wholly taken up that contentment could nere find a room in it since you first came there. I send you thees storys as indeed they are properly yours whose remembrance indited [inspired] whatever is passionate in any line of them.’

William then signed off, dedicating his life to her:

And now Madam I must onely aske for pardon for entitling you to The disastrous chances of Love and Fortune; you will not bee displeasd since I thereby entitle you to my whole life wch hath hitherto been composed of nothing else. but whilst I am yours I can never bee unhappy, and shall alwaies esteem fortune my friend so long as you shall esteem mee Your servant

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In fact this second journey abroad, of which Dorothy had been so keen to hear more, was not spent merely moping for his love and writing melodramatic romances. He also found himself highly impressed by what he found in the Dutch United Provinces, a republic in its heyday, full of prosperous, liberal-minded people who nevertheless lived frugally and with a strong sense of civic duty and pride. This golden age was immortalised by the extraordinary efflorescence of great Dutch painters, among them Vermeer, Rembrandt and van Hoogstraten, whose paintings of secular interiors, serene portraits and domestic scenes of vivid humanity reflected the order and self-confidence of an ascendant nation. William was particularly impressed by how willingly the Dutch paid their taxes and took the kind of pride in their public spaces, transport and buildings that Englishmen took only in their private estates. Brussels also attracted him greatly; still at the centre of the Spanish Netherlands, it was here that he learned Spanish. He suggested to his sister, and probably to Dorothy too, that he was considering a career as a diplomat and should Charles II return to the throne and offer him employment, ‘whenever the Governement was setled agin, he should be soe well pleas’d to serve him in, as being His Resident there [in Brussels]’.

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