When in 1624 Constantijn Huygens was staying in London with an official delegation, he received a number of letters from Dorothea van Dorp. Dorothea lived next to the Huygens family in The Hague and had once been his childhood sweetheart. In these letters she not only kept him informed on the latest gossip of high society in The Hague, but she also urged Huygens on several occasions to have Lady Killigrew, a mutual acquaintance, send her a present. On 24 March Dorothea wrote:

A month later she received a number of gemstones from this Lady Killigrew, for which Dorothea thanked her through the mediation of Huygens. In May, Dorothea sent Lady Killigrew a present; a bracelet made of amber. This gift was presumably also offered upon request, for it was accompanied by a letter to Huygens which stated:

These phrases about Lady Killigrew went on for a while, after which Dorothea directed her attentions once more to Huygens himself:

This begging for gifts seems to suggest that Dorothea was a rather bad-mannered young girl; it is definitely not a way in which one would expect “a humble servant” to behave. Yet Dorothea van Dorp came from an old, noble family. Her father had played an important role in the liberation of the Dutch from the Spanish, and had made an impressive career for himself in the military. He died as the governor of Tholen, Zeeland, in 1612 and was buried at The Hague. His second wife, Sara van Trello, moved to The Hague after his demise, and brought Dorothea, who was born from his first marriage to Anna Schets, along to live with her. In The Hague they lived at the Voorhout, which was then – and still is – a very classy lane in the centre of town.