Befitting a romance, William and Dorothy's love happened against the odds, pursued against their parents' wishes in a period of revolution, war and political turmoil. Dunn argues that it would not likely have occurred without the social disruptions brought by the Civil Wars. While the English Civil Wars divided families and wrecked fortunes (making restorative marriages into dire necesssity), they also provided new opportunities and experiences, especially for women like Dorothy Osborne. In a time of peace, a woman of Dorothy Osborne's background would have been all but sentenced to a secluded life governed by a code of "silence, obedience and humility"(128). The war literally and figuratively "displaced"(9) Dorothy to her eventual benefit.
She was the youngest daughter of Sir Peter Osborne, a wealthy member of the gentry and Charles I's Remembrancer of the Treasury. Osborne's fortunes took a hit during the war thanks to his steadfast Royalist loyalties, shrinking from an income of 4,000 pounds (1/2 a million dollars) to 400 pounds a year. The family also lost two sons and was driven into exile in France for a brief period. Lightly supervised by an immature older brother, Dorothy was traveling to join her father in France in 1648.
William Temple's doting sister, Martha, notes that the year they met, 1648, "'[was] a time so dismal to England, that none but those who were the occasion of those disorders in their country, could have bee sorry to leave it'"(14). William was leaving to go on the proverbial Grand Tour when he encountered Dorothy and her brother on the Isle of Wight. He was smitten, delaying his tour for a month to be near her, and only starting out again when his irate father ordered him to do so. Before leaving each other, Dorothy and William had pledged their love to each other.
As with all romance stories, their families opposed their choice. Surprisingly, politics didn't seem to play a role in their families' opposition. While Dorothy's family were die-hard Royalists, for many individuals, like William's father John, sides seemed less than hard and fast. John Temple served Charles I as Master of the Rolls in Ireland till he was imprisoned for opposing Charles plans to settle with Irish rebels so as to concentrate on opponents at home. The King eventually forgave him but with time Temple gradually moved to the Parliamentarian side. He survived the overthrow of Charles and Oliver Cromwell eventually gave him back his old job in Ireland as Master of the Rolls, a Secretary of State position and assistant to the lord chancellor.
Money was the issue. From their parents' perspective, both William and Dorothy needed to marry someone wealthier to shore up or increase their families' fortune. Dorothy and William gently defied their parents wishes. Dunn summarizes: "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"(87).
Neither William or Dorothy were flaming rebels by any means. They were both raised at a time when parent's exercised a god-like authority over their children. Dunn speculates "Dorothy felt trapped by the expectations of her family and society, and yet she did not actively wish to break the accepted filial contract"(108). In fact, Dorothy did not necessarily approve of love matches made without consideration of fortunes. Writing William her opinion of such matches, she warns, "'the whole world (without any reserve) shall pronounce they did it merely to satisfy their giddy humour...In earnest I believe it would be an injury to you'"(105). However, ultimately, both justified pursuing their love against the wishes of their families because they felt their love was "extraordinary and outside the usual bounds of experience"(106).
They maintained their bonds via letter. Dorothy's letters are candid, flirtatious, elegant yet conversational. By these letters, she aimed to remain very much present to William. While aspects of them have a manipulative aspect, as when she details the suitors her family brings her way. Ultimately they aim to charm and entertain by their perceptions and vignettes, their grace, humor and wit. They did the trick. Dorothy reported that William told her "'that I write better then [sic] the most extraordinary person in the kingdom'"(127).
Dorothy was under a close watch while clandestinely pursuing William; most particularly from her older brother, Henry, a closeted (so Dunn suggests), jealous brother who was particularly opposed to William. As a consequence, sh may have been compelled to destroy William's letters to her. Admiring their eloquence and literary dazzle, The British Library owns them today thanks to William's doting younger sister Martha, who admired their eloquence and literary dazzle. She managed to preserve 57 of Dorothy's charming letters to William. This correspondence has gained notable new admirers since, ranging from Thomas Macaulay to Virginia Woolf.
Dorothy's letters provided her not only with a means of presenting herself to William and bonding him to her, but also as an avenue to display and perfect her literary skills at a time when women were discouraged from public, literary expression. Women wrote in letters and diaries and some circulated romances and novels among friends. With few exceptions, they did not publish. Margaret Lucas was maid of honor to Charles II's sister Henrietta Maria who ended up marrying William of Cavendish and becoming Duchess of Newcastle. She was a flamboyant, larger than life character who with her husbands backing insisted on on a writing career. She published a book of poems that Dorothy asked William to get for her. While Dorothy was "obviously intrigued" by the published Cavendish, she also joined "the chorus of disparagement and rejection" which responded. Dorothy believed that "the author of these poems was obviously mad and her friends should have prevented her from making such a fool of herself"(126-127).
When Dorothy's friend Katherine Philip's poems were published in an unauthorized edition in 1664, she was mortified. In a letter to Dorothy, s he wrote, "'this has so extremely disturbed me...that I have been on a rack ever since I heard it"(198) and enlisted Dorothy's aid in establishing that she had not authorized the publication. For Philips, it was enough to write for the applause of a small circle of family and female confidants. Dunn claims that Dorothy was content with a similarly modest audience, receiving " a more intimate validation of her talents and character within the circle of the friends and family who received [her letters] and valued them"(198).
With the exception of one, William's letters to Dorothy are lost. In addition to these now lost letters, William endeared himself to Dorothy by sending her his re-workings of French Romances. In his re-tellings, William managed to communicate his feelings for her. Indeed, the indirection involved may have provided him a particularly secure forum in which he could most honestly express his true feelings.
Dorothy's letters are beautiful, but she fades a bit in this dual biography after she and William marry and the letters between them stop. William had a noteworthy career as a diplomat and public intellectual of sorts. He was involved in forging alliances and treaties and served as a friend and mentor to William of Orange, the future king of England. He advised kings and spoke his mind publicly; he wrote a number of books, an admiring portrait of the Netherlands and the Dutch, a collections of essays on various topics, a memoir. No less a figure than Jonathon Swift served as his secretary in his later years when he assembled his papers.
Dorothy's had a much less public life which Dunn goes to great lengths to recapture. William apparently relied upon her advice as well as her companionship and the Dutch even suspected that she had a hand in shaping the prose of his public correspondence. When William made inquiries into the personality of Mary Stuart, his future wife, it was Dorothy who went back to England to vet her and prepare a report. It was Dorothy who did the heavy lifting of collecting what the Crown owed William for his services overseas. Apparently, ambassadors often picked up the expenses of their embassies initially and then sought repayment after the fact with varying success. Dunn argues that "Dorothy's curiosity, rational intellect and acuity about human nature would have been of the greatest help to her more credulous and romantic husband"(263).
Dorothy wished for a marriage of equals and Dunn attempts to treat the two as equals with varying success. In perhaps too eager a leveling, Dunn goes to great lengths to emphasize the literary quality of Dorothy's letters while making less mention of William's considerable skills in this area. Yet Swift, who served as William's secretary in later years, eulogized his former employer as "'universally esteemed the most accomplished writer of his time'"(367).
While Dorothy is indeed the more famous literary figure, I was again and again struck by particular instances of William's writing. As a young man, he wrote:
"my thoughts....take such airy paths and are so light themselves....this I speak of is a crowd of restless capering antique fancies, bounding hear[sic] and there, fixing no where, building in one half hour castes in Ireland, monasteries in France, palaces in Virginia, dancing at a wedding, weeping at a burial, enthroned like a King, inragged like a beggar, a lover, a friend, an indifferent person and sometimes things of as little relation one to another as the great Turk and a red herring, to say the truth it's at least a painless posture of mind if not something more, and why not?'"(120).
William seemed ahead of his time, libertarian and almost cosmopolitan. His moderate and public spirited bent comes out most clearly in his praise of the Dutch. He admired them for
"'the beauty and strength of their towns, the commodiousness of travelling in their country by their canals, bridges, and cawseys; the pleasantness of their walks, and their grafts [streets on either side of the canal] in and near all their cities: and, in short, the beauty, convenience, and sometimes magnificence, of all public works, to which every man pays as willingly, and takes as much pleasure and vanity in them as those of other countries do in the same circumstances, among the possessions of their families, or private inheritance'"(265).
As extraordinarily talented and learned as he was, William was not ambitious, nor did his natural honesty particularly suit itself to the intrigue that was part and parcel of a 17th century diplomat's trade. He retired relatively early, in his early fifties, to his beloved Manor house at Moor Park in Surrey, and surrounded himself by his family. Yet, this wasn't a retirement. Temple believed
"'[gardening] and building being a sort of creation, that raise beautiful fabrics and figures out of nothing, that make the convenience and pleasure of all private habitations, that employ many hands, and circulate much money among the poorer sort and artisans, that are a public service to one's country, by the example as well as effect, which adorn the scene, improve the earth, and even the air itself to some degree'"(337).
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