Part 8 (1/2)

I am yours.

_Letter 36._--My Lady Carlisle was, as Dorothy says, ”an extraordinary person.” She was the daughter of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and at the age of eighteen, against her father's will and under somewhat romantic circ.u.mstances, married James Hay, Earl of Carlisle. Her sister married the Earl of Leicester, and she is therefore aunt to Lady Sunderland and Algernon Sydney. She was a favourite attendant of Queen Henrietta, and there are evil rumours connecting her name with that of Strafford. On Strafford's death, it is a.s.serted that she transferred her affections to Pym, to whom she is said to have betrayed the secrets of the Court. There seems little doubt that it was she who gave notice to Pym of the King's coming to the House to seize the five members. In 1648 she appears, however, to have a.s.sisted the Royalists with money for the purpose of raising a fleet to attack England, and at the Restoration she was received at Court, and employed herself in intriguing for the return of Queen Henrietta to England, which was opposed at the time by Clarendon and others. Soon after this, and in the year of the Restoration, she died suddenly. Poets of all grades, from Waller downwards, have sung of her beauty, vivacity, and wit; and Sir Toby Matthew speaks of her as ”too lofty and dignified to be capable of friends.h.i.+p, and having too great a heart to be susceptible of love,”--an extravagance of compliment hardly satisfactory in this plain age.

My Lord Paget, at whose house at Marlow Mr. Lely was staying, was a prominent loyalist both in camp and council chamber. He married Frances, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Holland, my Lady Diana's sister.

Whether or not Dorothy really a.s.sisted young Sir Harry Yelverton in his suit for the hand of fair Lady Ruthin we cannot say, but they were undoubtedly married. Sir Harry Yelverton seems to have been a man of superior accomplishments and serious learning. He was at this time twenty years of age, and had been educated at St. Paul's School, London, and afterwards at Wadham College, Oxford, under the tutors.h.i.+p of Dr.

Wilkins, Cromwell's brother-in-law, a learned and philosophical mathematician. He was admitted gentleman commoner in 1650, and it is said ”made great proficiency in several branches of learning, being as exact a Latin and Grecian as any in the university of his age or time.”

He succeeded to his father's t.i.tle soon after coming of age, and took a leading part in the politics of the day, becoming Knight of the s.h.i.+re of Northampton in the Restoration Parliament. He was a high Tory, and a great defender of the Church and its ejected ministers, one of whom, Dr.

Thomas Morton, the learned theologian, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, died in his house in 1659. He wrote a discourse on the ”Truth and Reasonableness of the Religion delivered by Jesus Christ,” a Preface to Dr. Morton's work on Episcopacy, and a vindication of the Church of England against the attacks of the famous Edward Bagshawe.

In this letter Dorothy describes some husbands whom she could _not_ marry. See what she expects in a lover! Have we not here some local squires. .h.i.t off to the life? Could George Eliot herself have done more for us in like s.p.a.ce?

SIR,--Why are you so sullen, and why am I the cause? Can you believe that I do willingly defer my journey? I know you do not. Why, then, should my absence now be less supportable to you than heretofore? Nay, it shall not be long (if I can help it), and I shall break through all inconveniences rather than deny you anything that lies in my power to grant. But by your own rules, then, may I not expect the same from you?

Is it possible that all I have said cannot oblige you to a care of yourself? What a pleasant distinction you make when you say that 'tis not melancholy makes you do these things, but a careless forgetfulness.

Did ever anybody forget themselves to that degree that was not melancholy in extremity? Good G.o.d! how you are altered; and what is it that has done it? I have known you when of all the things in the world you would not have been taken for a discontent; you were, as I thought, perfectly pleased with your condition; what has made it so much worse since? I know nothing you have lost, and am sure you have gained a friend that is capable of the highest degree of friends.h.i.+p you can propound, that has already given an entire heart for that which she received, and 'tis no more in her will than in her power ever to recall it or divide it; if this be not enough to satisfy you, tell me what I can do more?

There are a great many ingredients must go to the making me happy in a husband. First, as my cousin Franklin says, our humours must agree; and to do that he must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used that kind of company. That is, he must not be so much a country gentleman as to understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than his wife; nor of the next sort of them whose aim reaches no further than to be Justice of the Peace, and once in his life High Sheriff, who reads no book but statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a speech interlarded with Latin that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them rather than persuade them into quietness. He must not be a thing that began the world in a free school, was sent from thence to the university, and is at his furthest when he reaches the Inns of Court, has no acquaintance but those of his form in these places, speaks the French he has picked out of old laws, and admires nothing but the stories he has heard of the revels that were kept there before his time. He must not be a town gallant neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary, that cannot imagine how an hour should be spent without company unless it be in sleeping, that makes court to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is laughed at equally. Nor a travelled Monsieur whose head is all feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but dances and duets, and has courage enough to wear slashes when every one else dies with cold to see him. He must not be a fool of no sort, nor peevish, nor ill-natured, nor proud, nor covetous; and to all this must be added, that he must love me and I him as much as we are capable of loving. Without all this, his fortune, though never so great, would not satisfy me; and with it, a very moderate one would keep me from ever repenting my disposal.

I have been as large and as particular in my descriptions as my cousin Molle is in his of Moor Park,--but that you know the place so well I would send it you,--nothing can come near his patience in writing it, but my reading on't. Would you had sent me your father's letter, it would not have been less welcome to me than to you; and you may safely believe that I am equally concerned with you in anything. I should be pleased to see something of my Lady Carlisle's writing, because she is so extraordinary a person. I have been thinking of sending you my picture till I could come myself; but a picture is but dull company, and that you need not; besides, I cannot tell whether it be very like me or not, though 'tis the best I ever had drawn for me, and Mr. Lilly [Lely]

will have it that he never took more pains to make a good one in his life, and that was it I think that spoiled it. He was condemned for making the first he drew for me a little worse than I, and in making this better he has made it as unlike as t'other. He is now, I think, at my Lord Pagett's at Marloe [Marlow], where I am promised he shall draw a picture of my Lady for me,--she gives it me, she says, as the greatest testimony of her friends.h.i.+p to me, for by her own rule she is past the time of having pictures taken of her. After eighteen, she says, there is no face but decays apparently; I would fain have had her excepted such as had never been beauties, for my comfort, but she would not.

When you see your friend Mr. Heningham, you may tell him in his ear there is a willow garland coming towards him. He might have sped better in his suit if he had made court to me, as well as to my Lady Ruthin.

She has been my wife this seven years, and whosoever pretends there must ask my leave. I have now given my consent that she shall marry a very pretty little gentleman, Sir Christopher Yelverton's son, and I think we shall have a wedding ere it be long. My Lady her mother, in great kindness, would have recommended Heningham to me, and told me in a compliment that I was fitter for him than her daughter, who was younger, and therefore did not understand the world so well; that she was certain if he knew me he would be extremely taken, for I would make just that kind of wife he looked for. I humbly thanked her, but said I was certain he would not make that kind of husband I looked for,--and so it went no further.

I expect my eldest brother here shortly, whose fortune is well mended by my other brother's death, so as if he were satisfied himself with what he has done, I know no reason why he might not be very happy; but I am afraid he is not. I have not seen my sister since I knew she was so; but, sure, she can have lost no beauty, for I never saw any that she had, but good black eyes, which cannot alter. He loves her, I think, at the ordinary rate of husbands, but not enough, I believe, to marry her so much to his disadvantage if it were to do again; and that would kill me were I as she, for I could be infinitely better satisfied with a husband that had never loved me in hopes he might, than with one that began to love me less than he had done.

I am yours.

_Letter 37._

SIR,--You say I abuse you; and Jane says you abuse me when you say you are not melancholy: which is to be believed? Neither, I think; for I could not have said so positively (as it seems she did) that I should not be in town till my brother came back: he was not gone when she writ, nor is not yet; and if my brother Peyton had come before his going, I had spoiled her prediction. But now it cannot be; he goes on Monday or Tuesday at farthest. I hope you did truly with me, too, in saying that you are not melancholy (though she does not believe it). I am thought so, many times, when I am not at all guilty on't. How often do I sit in company a whole day, and when they are gone am not able to give an account of six words that was said, and many times could be so much better pleased with the entertainment my own thoughts give me, that 'tis all I can do to be so civil as not to let them see they trouble me. This may be your disease. However, remember you have promised me to be careful of yourself, and that if I secure what you have entrusted me with, you will answer for the rest. Be this our bargain then; and look that you give me as good an account of one as I shall give you of t'other. In earnest, I was strangely vexed to see myself forced to disappoint you so, and felt your trouble and my own too. How often I have wished myself with you, though but for a day, for an hour: I would have given all the time I am to spend here for it with all my heart.

You could not but have laughed if you had seen me last night. My brother and Mr. Gibson were talking by the fire; and I sat by, but as no part of the company. Amongst other things (which I did not at all mind), they fell into a discourse of flying; and both agreed it was very possible to find out a way that people might fly like birds, and despatch their journeys: so I, that had not said a word all night, started up at that, and desired they would say a little more on't, for I had not marked the beginning; but instead of that, they both fell into so violent a laughing, that I should appear so much concerned in such an art; but they little knew of what use it might have been to me. Yet I saw you last night, but 'twas in a dream; and before I could say a word to you, or you to me, the disorder my joy to see you had put me into awakened me. Just now I was interrupted, too, and called away to entertain two dumb gentlemen;--you may imagine whether I was pleased to leave my writing to you for their company;--they have made such a tedious visit, too; and I am so tired with making of signs and tokens for everything I had to say. Good G.o.d! how do those that live with them always? They are brothers; and the eldest is a baronet, has a good estate, a wife and three or four children. He was my servant heretofore, and comes to see me still for old love's sake; but if he could have made me mistress of the world I could not have had him; and yet I'll swear he has nothing to be disliked in him but his want of tongue, which in a woman might have been a virtue.

I sent you a part of _Cyrus_ last week, where you will meet with one Doralise in the story of Abradah and Panthee. The whole story is very good; but the humour makes the best part of it. I am of her opinion in most things that she says in her character of ”_L'honnest homme_” that she is in search of, and her resolution of receiving no heart that had been offered to anybody else. Pray, tell me how you like her, and what fault you find in my Lady Carlisle's letter? Methinks the hand and the style both show her a great person, and 'tis writ in the way that's now affected by all that pretend to wit and good breeding; only, I am a little scandalized to confess that she uses that word faithful,--she that never knew how to be so in her life.

I have sent you my picture because you wished for it; but, pray, let it not presume to disturb my Lady Sunderland's. Put it in some corner where no eyes may find it out but yours, to whom it is only intended. 'Tis not a very good one, but the best I shall ever have drawn of me; for, as my Lady says, my time for pictures is past, and therefore I have always refused to part with this, because I was sure the next would be a worse.

There is a beauty in youth that every one has once in their lives; and I remember my mother used to say there was never anybody (that was not deformed) but were handsome, to some reasonable degree, once between fourteen and twenty. It must hang with the light on the left hand of it; and you may keep it if you please till I bring you the original. But then I must borrow it (for 'tis no more mine, if you like it), because my brother is often bringing people into my closet where it hangs, to show them other pictures that are there; and if he miss this long thence, 'twould trouble his jealous head.

You are not the first that has told me I knew better what quality I would not have in a husband than what I would; but it was more pardonable in them. I thought you had understood better what kind of person I liked than anybody else could possibly have done, and therefore did not think it necessary to make you that description too. Those that I reckoned up were only such as I could not be persuaded to have upon no terms, though I had never seen such a person in my life as Mr. Temple: not but that all those may make very good husbands to some women; but they are so different from my humour that 'tis not possible we should ever agree; for though it might be reasonably enough expected that I should conform mine to theirs (to my shame be it spoken), I could never do it. And I have lived so long in the world, and so much at my own liberty, that whosoever has me must be content to take me as they find me, without hope of ever making me other than I am. I cannot so much as disguise my humour. When it was designed that I should have had Sir Jus., my brother used to tell he was confident that, with all his wisdom, any woman that had wit and discretion might make an a.s.s of him, and govern him as she pleased. I could not deny that possibly it might be so, but 'twas that I was sure I could never do; and though 'tis likely I should have forced myself to so much compliance as was necessary for a reasonable wife, yet farther than that no design could ever have carried me; and I could not have flattered him into a belief that I admired him, to gain more than he and all his generation are worth.

'Tis such an ease (as you say) not to be solicitous to please others: in earnest, I am no more concerned whether people think me handsome or ill-favoured, whether they think I have wit or that I have none, than I am whether they think my name Elizabeth or Dorothy. I would do n.o.body no injury; but I should never design to please above one; and that one I must love too, or else I should think it a trouble, and consequently not do it. I have made a general confession to you; will you give me absolution? Methinks you should; for you are not much better by your own relation; therefore 'tis easiest to forgive one another. When you hear anything from your father, remember that I am his humble servant, and much concerned in his good health.

I am yours.

_Letter 38._--Lady Isabella is Lady Isabella Rich, my Lady Diana's eldest sister. She married Sir James Thynne. Many years ago she had an intrigue with the Duke of Ormond, by whom she had a son, but Dorothy speaks, I think, of some later scandal than this.