Read My Heart: Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, A Love Story in the Age of Revolution
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From the bestselling author of ‘Elizabeth and Mary’, the remarkable love story of Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, set against the turbulence and romance of 17th-century England. [Note that the family trees contained in this ebook are best viewed on a tablet.]Sir William Temple (1628-99), handsome and intelligent, son of a staunch Parliamentarian, become a celebrated essayist and diplomat in Charles II’s time. Captivating him from their first meeting, when he was just 20, Dorothy Osborne (1627-1696) was an intellectual romantic from a family of committed Royalists. After a long and at times desperate courtship, in which Dorothy rejected numerous other suitors (including Henry Cromwell, son of the Lord Protector), they married in 1654. Their union had been fiercely opposed by both their families, but they went on to build a passionate marriage that brought personal tragedies and public triumphs and betrayals during the huge political upheavals of the age.Their relationship was intellectually collaborative; both were gifted writers, and possessed of strikingly modern sensibilities. Seventy-seven letters written by Dorothy to William during their long clandestine courtship survive, masterpieces of wit and style, with a conversational intimacy that transports the reader to her side. Both were at the social and political centre of life: confidants of William of Orange and Mary, who were instrumental in promoting their marriage, contemporaries of Pepys, and employers of Jonathan Swift.Drawing upon extensive research and the Temples’ own extraordinary writings, Jane Dunn brings to life their remarkable story, offering a rare perspective on one of the most turbulent periods of British history. In illuminating the personal lives, politics and passions of two endearing and independent-minded people, she brilliantly captures not only the story of a marriage, but the spirit of a dawning modern age.
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Jane Dunn. Read My Heart: Dorothy Osborne and Sir William Temple, A Love Story in the Age of Revolution
READ MY HEART
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
THE TEMPLE FAMILY TREE
THE OSBORNE FAMILY TREE
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE. Can There Bee a More Romance Story Than Ours?
CHAPTER TWO. The Making of Dorothy
CHAPTER THREE. When William Was Young
CHAPTER FOUR. Time nor Accidents Shall not Prevaile
CHAPTER FIVE. Shall Wee Ever Bee Soe Happy?
CHAPTER SIX. A Clear Sky Attends Us
CHAPTER SEVEN. Make Haste Home
CHAPTER EIGHT. Into the World
CHAPTER NINE. A Change in the Weather
CHAPTER TEN. Enough of the Uncertainty of Princes
CHAPTER ELEVEN. Taking Leave of All Those Airy Visions
AFTERWORD
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Manuscript Sources
Select editions of letters and works by Sir William Temple and Dorothy Osborne
Selected list of books with biographical information about D.O. and W.T. and others illustrative of their contemporaries and their times
ENDNOTES
INDEX
P.S. IDEAS, INTERVIEWS & FEATURES … About the Author
About the Book
Read On
About the Author. A Romeo and Juliet for the Seventeenth Century
LIFE at a Glance
A Writing Life. When do you write?
Where do you write?
Why do you write?
Pen or computer?
Silence or music?
How do you start a book?
And finish?
Which writer has had the greatest influence on your work?
What are your guilty reading pleasures?
About the Book. Growing Up in the Seventeenth Century: the Insiders’ View
If You Loved This, You Might Like…
Read On. Have You Read?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRAISE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
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A Love Story in theAge of Revolution
JANE DUNN
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This brought forth a cry of eloquent outrage from Sir Peter against ‘these maliciously invented slanders’. He explained how his wife’s tireless efforts of fundraising had exhausted her: ‘For when her mony was spent, and plate sold, she made no difficultie among strangers to ingage her self in a great debt for the releife of this castle, till her credit at last fayled.’ What provisions Lady Osborne then obtained were left to rot in Jersey due, it seemed, to Sir George Carteret’s inertia, or worse. This frustration of her Herculean efforts seemed to be the last straw for his long-suffering wife: ‘oppressed with trouble and greife, she fell into a desperate sicknes, that her self, and all those about her, feared her life’.28
It was possible that her eighteen-year-old daughter Dorothy was with her during this ordeal for, barely conscious, Lady Osborne was carefully embarked on a Dutch ship and accompanied back to England, a journey of two days of which she hardly noticed the passing. Dorothy was to write later of the harsh experiences she had endured in France and the lowering effect they had had on her spirit and demeanour, so much so that her friends on her return hardly recognised her: ‘When I cam out of France nobody knew mee againe … and that Country which usualy gives People a Jollynesse and Gayete that is natural to the Climate, has wrought in mee soe contreary effects that I was as new a thing to them as my Cloth[e]s.’29
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