menu_book Chapter 9

sir having tired myself with thinking i mean to weary you with reading and revenge myself that way for all the unquiet thought you have given me but i intended this a sober letter and therefore sans rierie let me tell you i have seriously considered all our misfortunes and can see no end of them but by submitting to that which we cannot avoid and by yielding to it break the force of a blow which if resisted brings a certain ruin i think i need not tell you how dear you have been to me nor that in your kindness i placed all the satisfaction of my life twas the only happiness i proposed to myself and had set my heart so much upon it that it was therefore made my punishment to let me see that how innocent soever i thought my affection it was guilty in being greater than is allowable for things of this world tis not a melancholy humour gives me these apprehensions and inclinations nor the persuasions of others tis the result of a long strife with myself before my reason could overcome my passion or bring me to a perfect resignation to whatsoever is allotted for me

tis now done i hope and i have nothing left but to persuade you to that which i assure myself your own judgment will approve in the end and your reason has often prevailed with you to offer that which you would have done then out of kindness to me and point of honour i would have you do now out of wisdom and kindness to yourself not that i would disclaim my part in it or lessen my obligation to you no i am your friend as much as ever i was in my life i think more and i am sure i shall never be less i have known you long enough to discern that you have all the qualities that make an excellent friend and i shall endeavour to deserve that you may be so to me but i would have you do this upon the justest grounds and such as may conduce most to your quiet and future satisfaction when we have tried all ways to happiness there is no such thing to be found but in a mind conformed to one's condition whatever it be and in not aiming at anything that is either impossible or improbable all the rest is but vanity and vexation of spirit and i durst pronounce it so from that little knowledge i have had of the world though i had not scripture for my warrant

the shepherd led brag to the traveller who asked him what weather it was like to be that it should be what weather pleased him and made it good by saying it should be what weather pleased god and what pleased god should please him said an excellent thing in such language and knew enough to make him the happiest person in the world if he made a right use on it there can be no pleasure in a struggling life and that folly which we condemn in an ambitious man that's ever labouring for that which is hardly got and more uncertainly kept is seen in all according to their several humours in some tis covetousness in others pride in some stubbornness of nature that chooses always to go against the tide and in others an unfortunate fancy to things that are in themselves innocent till we make them otherwise by desiring them too much of this sort you and i are i think we have lived hitherto upon hopes so airy that i have often wondered how they could support the weight of our misfortunes

but passion gives us strength above nature we see it in mad people and not to flatter ourselves ours is but a refined degree of madness what can it be else to be lost to all things in the world but that single object that it takes up one's fancy to lose all the quiet and repose of one's life in hunting after it when there is so little likelihood of ever gaining it and so many more probable accidents that will infallibly make us miss on it and which is more than all tis being mastered by that which reason and religion teaches us to govern and in that only gives us a pre-eminence over beasts this soberly considered is enough to let us see our error and consequently to persuade us to redeem it to another person i should justify myself that tis not a lightness in my nature nor any interest that is not common to us both that has wrought this change in me to you that know my heart and from whom i shall never hide it to whom a thousand testimonies of my kindness can witness the reality of it and whose friendship is not built upon common grounds i have no more to say but that i impose not my opinions upon you

and that i had rather you took them up as your own choice than upon my entreaty but if as we have not differed in anything else we could agree in this too and resolve upon a friendship that will be much the perfecter for having nothing of passion in it how happy might we be without so much as a fear of the change that any accident could bring we might defy all that fortune could do and putting off all disguise and constraint with that which only made it necessary make our lives as easy to us as the condition of this world will permit i may own you as a person that i extremely value and esteem and for whom i have a particular friendship and you may consider me as one that will always be your faithful friend and servant dorothy osborne this was written when i expected a letter from you how came i to miss it i thought at first it might be the carrier's fault in changing his time without giving notice but he assures me he did to nan my brother's groom came down to-day too and saw her he tells me but brings me nothing from her if nothing of ill be the cause i am contented you hear the noise my lady anne blunt has made with her marrying i am so weary with meeting it in all places where i go from what she has fallen

they talked but the week before that you should have my lord of strafford did you not intend to write to me when you writ to jane that bit of paper did me great service without it i should have had strange apprehension and my sad dreams and the several frights i have waked in would have run so in my head that i should have concluded something of very ill from your silence poor jane is sick but she will write she says if she can did you send the last part of cyrus to mr hollingsworth letter forty two sir i am extremely sorry that your letter miscarried but i am confident my brother has it not as cunning as he is he could not hide from me but that i should discover it some way or other no he was here and both his men when this letter should have come and not one of them stirred out that day indeed the next day they went all to london the note you writ to jane came in one of nan's by collins but nothing else it must be lost by the porter that was sent with it and was very unhappy that there should be anything in it of more consequence than ordinary it may be numbered amongst the rest of our misfortunes all which an inconsiderate passion has occasioned

you must pardon me i cannot be reconciled to it it has been the ruin of us both tis true that nobody must imagine to themselves ever to be absolute master on it but there is a great difference betwixt that and yielding to it between striving with it and soothing it up till it grows too strong for one can i remember how ignorantly and innocently i suffered it to steal upon me by degrees how under a mask of friendship i cozened myself into that which had it appeared to me at first in its true shape i had feared and shunned can i discern that it has made the trouble of your life and cast a cloud upon mine that will help to cover me in my grave can i know that it wrought so upon us both as to make neither of us friends to one another but agree in running wildly to our own destruction and that perhaps of some innocent persons who might live to curse our folly that gave them so miserable a being ah if you love yourself or me you must confess that i have reason to condemn this senseless passion that wheresoher it comes destroys all that entertain it nothing of judgment or discretion can live with it and it puts everything else out of order before it can find a place for itself what has it brought my poor lady anne blunt to

she is the talk of all the footmen and boys in the street and will be company for them shortly and yet is so blinded by her passion as not at all to perceive the misery she has brought herself to and this fond love of hers has so rooted all sense of nature out of her heart that they say she is no more moved than a statue with the affliction of a father and mother that doated on her and had placed the comfort of their lives in her preferment with all this is it not manifest to the whole world that mr blunt could not consider anything in this action but his own interest and that he makes her a very ill return for all her kindness if he had loved her truly he would have died rather than have been the occasion of this misfortune to her my cousin franklin as you observe very well may say fine things now she is warm in moor park but she is very much altered in her opinions since her marriage if these be her own she left a gentleman that i could name whom she had much more of kindness for than ever she had for mr franklin because his estate was less and upon the discovery of some letters that her mother intercepted suffered herself to be persuaded that twenty-three hundred pounds a year was better than twelve hundred though with a person she loved

and has recovered it so well that you see she confesses that there is nothing in her condition she desires to alter at the charge of a wish she is happier by much than i shall ever be but i do not envy her may she long enjoy it and i an early and a quiet grave free from the trouble of this busy world where all with passion pursue their own interests at their neighbour's charges where nobody is pleased but somebody complains on it and where it is impossible to be without giving and receiving injuries you would know what i would be at and how i intend to dispose of myself alas were i in my own disposal you should come to my grave to be resolved but grief alone will not kill all that i can say then is that i resolve on nothing but to arm myself with patience to resist nothing that is laid upon me nor struggle for what i have no hope to get i have no ends nor no designs nor will my heart ever be capable of any but like a country wasted by a civil war where two opposing parties have disputed their rights so long till they have made it worth neither of their conquests tis ruined and desolated by the long strife within it to that degree as twill be useful to none

nobody that knows the condition tis in will think it worth the gaining and i shall not trouble anybody with it no really if i may be permitted to desire anything it shall be only that i may injure nobody but myself i can bear anything that reflects only upon me or if i cannot i can die but i would fain die innocent that i might hope to be happy in the next world though never in this i take it a little ill that you should conjure me by anything with a belief that tis more powerful with me than your kindness no assure yourself what that alone cannot gain will be denied to all the world you would see me you say you may do so if you please though i know not to what end you deceive yourself if you think it would prevail upon me to alter my intentions besides i can make no contrivances it must be here and i must endure the noise it will make and undergo the censures of a people that choose ever to give the worst interpretation that anything will bear

yet if it can be any easy to you to make me more miserable than i am never spare me consider yourself only and not me at all tis no more than i deserve for not accepting what you offered me whilst twas in your power to make it good as you say it then was you were prepared it seems but i was surprised i confess it was a kind fault though and you may pardon it with more reason than i have to forgive it myself and let me tell you this too as lost and as wretched as i am i have still some sense of my reputation left in me i find that to my cost i shall attempt to preserve it as clear as i can and to do that i must if you see me thus make it the last of our interviews what can excuse me if i should entertain any person that is known to pretend to me when i can have no hope of ever marrying him and what hope can i have of that when the fortune that can only make it possible to me depends upon a thousand accidents and contingencies the uncertainty of the place tis in and the government it may fall under

your father's life or his success his disposal of himself and of his fortune besides the time that must necessarily be required to produce all this and the changes that may probably bring with it which tis impossible for us to foresee all this considered what have i to say for myself when people shall ask what tis i expect can there be anything vainer than such a hope upon such grounds you must needs see the folly on it yourself and therefore examine your own heart what is fit for me to do and what you can do for a person you love and that deserves your compassion if nothing else a person that will always have an inviolable friendship for you a friendship that shall take up all the room my passion held in my heart and govern there as master till death come and take possession and turn it out why should you make an impossibility where there is none a thousand accidents might have taken me from you and you must have borne it why would not your own resolution work as much upon you as necessity and time does infallibly upon people

your father would take it very ill i believe if you should pretend to love me better than he did my lady yet she is dead and he lives and perhaps may do to love again there is a gentlewoman in this country that loved so passionately for six or seven years that her friends who kept her from marrying fearing her death consented to it and within half a year her husband died which afflicted her so strongly nobody thought she would have lived she saw no light but candles in three years nor came abroad in five and now that tis some nine years past she is passionately taken again with another and how long she has been so nobody knows but herself this is to let you see tis not impossible what i ask nor unreasonable think on it and attempt it at least but do it sincerely and do not help your passion to master you as you have ever loved me do this

the carrier shall bring your letters to suffolk house to jones i shall long to hear from you but if you should deny the only hope that's left me i must beg you will defer it till christmas day be past for to deal freely with you i have some devotions to perform then which must not be disturbed with anything and nothing is like to do it as so sensible an affliction adieu your faithful friend and servant dorothy osborne letter forty three sir i can say little more than i did i am convinced of the vileness of the world and all that's in it and that i deceived myself extremely when i expected anything of comfort from it no i have no more to do in it but to grow every day more and more wary of it if it be possible that i have not yet reached the highest degree of hatred for it but i thank god i hate nothing else but the base world and the vices that make a part of it i am in perfect charity with my enemies and have compassion for all people's misfortunes as well as for my own especially for those i may have caused and i may truly say i bear my share of such

but as nothing obliges me to relieve a person that is in extreme want till i change conditions with him and come to be where he began and that i may be thought compassionate if i do all that i can without prejudicing myself too much so let me tell you that if i could help it i would not love you and that as long as i live i shall strive against it as against that which had been my ruin and was certainly sent me as a punishment for my sin but i shall always have a sense of your misfortunes equal if not above my own i shall pray that you may obtain a quiet i never hoped for but in my grave and i shall never change my condition but with my life yet let not this give you a hope nothing ever can persuade me to enter the world again i shall in a short time have disengaged myself of all my little affairs in it and settled myself in a condition to apprehend nothing but too long a life therefore i wish you would forget me and to induce you to it let me tell you freely that i deserve you should if i remember anybody tis against my will

i am possessed with that strange insensibility that my nearest relations have no tie upon me and i find myself no more concerned in those that i have heretofore had great tenderness of affection for than in my kindred that died long before i was born leave me to this and seek a better fortune i beg it of you as heartily as i forgive you all those strange thoughts you have had of me think me so still if that will do anything towards it for god's sake do take any course that may make you happy or if that cannot be less unfortunate at least than your friend and humble servant dorothy osborne i can hear nothing of that letter but i hear from all people that i know part of my unhappy story and from some that i do not know a lady whose face i never saw scented me as knew she had out of ireland letter forty four sir if you have ever loved me do not refuse the last request i shall ever make you tis to preserve yourself from the violence of your passion

vent it all upon me call me and think me what you please make me if it be possible more wretched than i am i'll bear it all without the least murmur nay i deserve it all for had you never seen me you had certainly been happy tis my misfortunes only that have that infectious quality as to strike at the same time me and all that's dear to me i am the most unfortunate woman breathing but i was never false no i call heaven to witness that if my life could satisfy for the least injury my fortune has done you i cannot say twas i that did them too i would lay it down with greater joy than any person ever received a crown and if i ever forget what i owe you or ever entertain the thought of kindness for any person in the world besides may i live a long and miserable life tis the greatest curse i can invent if there be a greater may i feel it this is all i can say tell me if it be possible i can do anything for you and tell me how i may deserve your pardon for all the trouble i have given you i would not die without it

your faithful friend and servant dorothy osborne directed for mr temple letter forty five sir tis most true what you say that few have what they merit if it were otherwise you would be happy i think But then I should be so too, and that must not be. A false and an inconstant person cannot merit it, I am sure. You are kind in your good wishes, but I aim at no friends nor no princes. The honour would be lost upon me.

I should become a crown so ill there would be no striving for it after me, and sure I should not wear it long. Your letter was a much greater loss to me than that of Henry Cromwell, and therefore, tis that, with all my care and diligence, I cannot inquire it out. You will not complain, I believe, of the shortness of my last, whatever else you dislike in it,

and if I spare you at any time, tis because I cannot but imagine, since I am so wearisome to myself, that I must needs be so to everybody else, though, at present, I have other occasions that will not permit this to be a long one. I am sorry it should be only in my power to make a friend miserable, and that, where I have so great a kindness, I should do so great injuries. But tis my fortune, and I must bear it.

T'will be none to you, I hope, to pray for you, nor to desire that you would, all passion laid aside, freely tell me my faults, that I may, at least, ask your forgiveness, where it is not in my power to make your better satisfaction. I would fain make even with all the world, and be out of danger of dying in anybody's debt. Then I have nothing more to do in it but to expect when I shall be so happy as to leave it,

and always to remember that my misfortune makes all my faults towards you, and that my faults to God make all my misfortunes. Your unhappy friend and servant, Dorothy Osborne. End of section 9