Read My Heart: Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, A Love Story in the Age of Revolution. Jane Dunn
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on a Sunday to catch the Monday morning carrier and it arrived that evening or Tuesday morning. William wrote his reply on a Wednesday, or often very early on the Thursday to catch the dawn carrier so that his letter would be in Dorothy’s eager hands by the evening or following Friday morning. Dorothy was so desperate for her precious lifeline to him that sometimes she sent one of the Chicksands’ grooms to meet the courier, fortunately oblivious of the emotional import of what he had to collect. Her relating of this in a letter to William in the spring of 1653 was a tour de force that revealed the unbearable tension of waiting for the object of desire, recalled in the warm glow of possession:
Sir, Iam glad you escaped a beating [from her if he had missed the courier] but in Earnest would it had lighted upon my Brother’s Groome, I think I should have beaten him my self if I had bin able. I have Expected your letter all this day with the Greatest impatience that was posible, and at Last resolved to goe out and meet the fellow, and when I came downe to the stables, I found him come, had sett up his horse, and was sweeping the Stable in great Order. I could not imagin him soe very a beast as to think his horses were to bee served before mee, and therfor was presently struck with an aprehension hee had noe letter for mee, it went Colde to my heart as Ice, and hardly left mee courage enough to aske him the question, but when hee had drawled out that hee thought there was a letter for mee in his bag I quickly made him leave his broome. ’Twas well ’tis a dull fellow [for] hee could not but … have discern’d else that I was strangly overjoyed with it, and Earnest to have it, for though the poor fellow made what hast hee could to unty his bag, I did nothing but chide him for being soe slow. At last I had it, and in Earnest I know not whither an intire diamond of the bignesse on’t would have pleased mee half soe well, if it would, it must bee only out of this consideration that such a Juell would make mee Rich Enough to dispute you with Mrs Cl [a possible wife for him promoted by his father]: and perhaps make your father like mee as well.52
About three weeks later, Dorothy was in even greater need of William’s letters as she sat in vigil by her father’s bed, afraid he might be dying. Exhausted and strained, she vented her disappointment at the scrappy letter she had just received from him, exhorting him to start writing to her earlier instead of leaving it to the last minute. She was exasperated too with his petulant comment that she did not value his letters enough:
But harke you, if you think to scape with sending mee such bits of letters you are mistaken. You say you are often interupted and I believe you, but you must use then to begin to write before you receive mine, and hensoever you have any spare time allow mee some of it. Can you doubt that any thing can make your letters Cheap. In Earnest twas unkindly sayed, and if I could bee angry with you, it should bee for that. Noe Certainly they are, and ever will bee, deare to mee, as that which I receive a huge contentment by … O if you doe not send mee long letters then you are the Cruellest person that can bee. If you love mee you will and if you doe not I shall never love my self.53
Portraits were also necessary and affecting substitutes for the absent. They were painted and exchanged as important reminders of the loved one’s presence. Interestingly both Dorothy and William, neither of them rich or aristocratic, were to have portraits painted of themselves by some of the greatest artists of the day. In the summer of 1653 William was obviously missing her greatly and had asked for some memento: Dorothy suggested she get a miniature done of herself to send to William to console him in her absence. Nerves were obviously fraying: ‘For god sake doe not complaine soe that you doe not see mee, I beleeve I doe not suffer lesse in’t then you, but tis not to be helpt. If I had a Picture that were fitt for you, you should have it, I have but one that’s any thing like and that’s a great [full size] one, but I will send it some time or other to Cooper or Hoskins,* and have a litle one drawne by it, if I cannot bee in Towne to sitt my selfe.’54
As suitors came and went it was not just William and Dorothy who suffered. Dorothy’s brother Henry, the family member most assiduous about arranging a good marriage for her, many times came close to hysteria. He certainly subjected her to endless probing conversations, tearful reproaches, emotional blackmail and downright bullying in his attempts to undermine her adamant loyalty to William and antipathy to the candidates he steered her way. He once threatened with violence the messenger bringing the mail to Chicksands and periodically searched the house for evidence of letters from Dorothy’s forbidden lover: this accepted violation of her privacy was possibly the reason why only one of William’s letters from this period exists today, for it would seem Dorothy was forced to dispose of them once she had read them. On one occasion she wrote to William that she was unwilling to destroy the letter she had just received: ‘You must pardon mee I could not burn your other letter for my life, I was soe pleased to see I had soe much to reade, & soe sorry I had don soe soone, that I resolved to begin them again and had like to have lost my dinner by it.’55
If in fact Dorothy felt compelled to destroy each of William’s longed-for letters it would have caused great anguish, for they were largely her only contact with him and had an iconic power. The emotional journey they described was the most important of her life and, as her co-conspirator, his was the only reassuring voice in a chorus of ignorance and hostility. For all she knew, their clandestine letters might have been all they would ever have to show for these years of heightened feeling, should their love story end the way the world expected.
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