Nothing that is paper can 'scape me when I have time to write, and 'tis to you. But that I am not willing to excite your envy, I would tell you how many letters I have despatched since I ended yours; and if I could show them you 'twould be a certain cure for it, for they are all very short ones, and most of them merely compliments, which I am sure you care not for.
I had forgot in my other to tell you what Jane requires for the satisfaction of what you confess you owe her. You must promise her to be merry, and not to take cold when you are at the tennis court, for there she hears you are found.
Because you mention my Lord Broghill and his wit, I have sent you some of his verses. My brother urged them against me one day in a dispute, where he would needs make me confess that no passion could be long lived, and that such as were most in love forgot that ever they had been so within a twelvemonth after they were married; and, in earnest, the want of examples to bring for the contrary puzzled me a little, so that I was fain to bring out those pitiful verses of my Lord Biron to his wife, which was so poor an argument that I was e'en ashamed on't myself, and he quickly laughed me out of countenance with saying they were just such as a married man's flame would produce and a wife inspire. I send you a love letter, too; which, simple as you see, it was sent me in very good earnest, and by a person of quality, as I was told. If you read it when you go to bed, 'twill certainly make your sleep approved.
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 circumstances, 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 asserted 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 assisted 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 friendship, 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 assisted 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 tutorship 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 title soon after coming of age, and took a leading part in the politics of the day, becoming Knight of the Shire 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 hit off to the life? Could George Eliot herself have done more for us in like space?
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 God! 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 friendship 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.