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Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 6

by Samuel Richardson · English · Gutenberg #11364 · 589,669 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 6

Author: Samuel Richardson


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #11364]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11364

Credits: Julie C. Sparks and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLARISSA HARLOWE; OR THE HISTORY OF A YOUNG LADY — VOLUME 6 ***

CLARISSA HARLOWE

or the
HISTORY OF A YOUNG LADY

By Samuel Richardson

Volume VI. (of Nine Volumes)


CONTENTS

 DETAILED CONTENTS
 THE HISTORY OF CLARISSA HARLOWE
 LETTER I
 LETTER II
 LETTER III
 LETTER IV
 LETTER V
 LETTER VI
 LETTER VII
 LETTER VIII
 LETTER IX
 LETTER X
 LETTER XI
 LETTER XII
 LETTER XIII
 LETTER XIV
 LETTER XV
 LETTER XVI
 LETTER XVII
 LETTER XVIII
 LETTER XIX
 LETTER XX
 LETTER XXI
 LETTER XXII
 LETTER XXIII
 LETTER XXIV
 LETTER XXV
 LETTER XXVI
 LETTER XXVII
 LETTER XXVIII
 LETTER XXIX
 LETTER XXX
 LETTER XXXI
 LETTER XXXII
 LETTER XXXIII
 LETTER XXXIV
 LETTER XXXV
 LETTER XXXVI
 LETTER XXXVII
 LETTER XXXVIII
 LETTER XXXIX
 LETTER XL
 LETTER XLI
 LETTER XLII
 LETTER XLIII
 LETTER XLIV
 LETTER XLV
 LETTER XLVI
 LETTER XLVII
 LETTER XLVIII
 LETTER XLIX
 LETTER L
 LETTER LI
 LETTER LII
 LETTER LIII
 LETTER LIV
 LETTER LV
 LETTER LVI
 LETTER LVII
 LETTER LVIII
 LETTER LIX
 LETTER LX
 LETTER LXI
 LETTER LXII
 LETTER LXIII
 LETTER LXIV
 LETTER LXV
 LETTER LXVI
 LETTER LXVII
 LETTER LXVIII
 LETTER LXIX
 LETTER LXX
 LETTER LXXI
 LETTER LXXII
 LETTER LXXIII




DETAILED CONTENTS


LETTER I. II. Lovelace to Belford.—His conditional promise to Tomlinson
in the lady’s favour. His pleas and arguments on their present
situation, and on his darling and hitherto-baffled views. His whimsical
contest with his conscience. His latest adieu to it. His strange
levity, which he calls gravity, on the death of Belford’s uncle.

LETTER III. IV. From the same.—She favours him with a meeting in the
garden. Her composure. Her conversation great and noble. But will not
determine any thing in his favour. It is however evident, he says, that
she has still some tenderness for him. His reasons. An affecting scene
between them. Her ingenuousness and openness of heart. She resolves to
go to church; but will not suffer him to accompany her thither. His
whimsical debate with the God of Love, whom he introduced as pleading
for the lady.

LETTER V. VI. VII. From the same.—He has got the wished-for letter from
Miss Howe.—Informs him of the manner of obtaining it.—His remarks upon
it. Observations on female friendships. Comparison between Clarissa and
Miss Howe.

LETTER VIII. From the same.—Another conversation with the lady. His
plausible arguments to re-obtain her favour ineffectual. His pride
piqued. His revenge incited. New arguments in favour of his wicked
prospects. His notice that a license is actually obtained.

LETTER IX. X. From the same.—Copy of the license; with his observations
upon it. His scheme for annual marriages. He is preparing with Lady
Betty and Miss Montague to wait upon Clarissa. Who these pretended
ladies are. How dressed. They give themselves airs of quality.
Humourously instructs them how to act up their assumed characters.

LETTER XI. XII. Lovelace to Belford.—Once more is the charmer of his
soul in her old lodgings. Brief account of the horrid imposture. Steels
his heart by revengeful recollections. Her agonizing apprehensions.
Temporary distraction. Is ready to fall into fits. But all her
distress, all her prayers, her innocence, her virtue, cannot save her
from the most villanous outrage.

LETTER XIII. Belford to Lovelace.—Vehemently inveighs against him.
Grieves for the lady. Is now convinced that there must be a world after
this to do justice to injured merit. Beseeches him, if he be a man, and
not a devil, to do all the poor justice now in his power.

LETTER XIV. Lovelace to Belford.—Regrets that he ever attempted her.
Aims at extenuation. Does he not see that he has journeyed on to this
stage, with one determined point in view from the first? She is at
present stupified, he says.

LETTER XV. From the same.—The lady’s affecting behaviour in her
delirium. He owns that art has been used to her. Begins to feel
remorse.

LETTER XVI. From the same.—The lady writes upon scraps of paper, which
she tears, and throws under the table. Copies of ten of these rambling
papers; and of a letter to him most affectingly incoherent. He attempts
farther to extenuate his villany. Tries to resume his usual levity; and
forms a scheme to decoy the people at Hampstead to the infamous woman’s
in town. The lady seems to be recovering.

LETTER XVII. From the same.—She attempts to get away in his absence. Is
prevented by the odious Sinclair. He exults in the hope of looking her
into confusion when he sees her. Is told by Dorcas that she is coming
into the dining-room to find him out.

LETTER XVIII. From the same.—A high scene of her exalted, and of his
depressed, behaviour. Offers to make her amends by matrimony. She
treats his offer with contempt. Afraid Belford plays him false.

LETTER XIX. From the same.—Wishes he had never seen her. With all the
women he had known till now, it was once subdued, and always subdued.
His miserable dejection. His remorse. She attempts to escape. A mob
raised. His quick invention to pacify it. Out of conceit with himself
and his contrivances.

LETTER XX. XXI. Lovelace to Belford.—Lord M. very ill. His presence
necessary at M. Hall. Puts Dorcas upon ingratiating herself with her
lady.—He re-urges marriage to her. She absolutely, from the most noble
motives, rejects him.

LETTER XXII. From the same.—Reflects upon himself. It costs, he says,
more pain to be wicked than to be good. The lady’s solemn expostulation
with him. Extols her greatness of soul. Dorcas coming into favour with
her. He is alarmed by another attempt of the lady to get off. She is in
agonies at being prevented. He tried to intimidate her. Dorcas pleads
for her. On the point of drawing his sword against himself. The
occasion.

LETTER XXIII. From the same.—Cannot yet persuade himself but the lady
will be his. Reasons for his opinion. Opens his heart to Belford, as to
his intentions by her. Mortified that she refuses his honest vows. Her
violation but notional. Her triumph greater than her sufferings. Her
will unviolated. He is a better man, he says, than most rakes; and why.

LETTER XXIV. XXV. From the same.—The lady gives a promissory note to
Dorcas, to induce her to further her escape.—A fair trial of skill now,
he says. A conversation between the vile Dorcas and her lady: in which
she engages her lady’s pity. The bonds of wickedness stronger than the
ties of virtue. Observations on that subject.

LETTER XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. From the same.—A new contrivance to
advantage of the lady’s intended escape.—A letter from Tomlinson.
Intent of it.—He goes out to give opportunity for the lady to attempt
an escape. His designs frustrated.

LETTER XXIX. From the same.—An interesting conversation between the
lady and him. No concession in his favour. By his soul, he swears, this
dear girl gives the lie to all their rakish maxims. He has laid all the
sex under obligation to him; and why.

LETTER XXX. Lovelace to Belford.—Lord M. in extreme danger. The family
desire his presence. He intercepts a severe letter from Miss Howe to
her friend. Copy of it.

LETTER XXXI. From the same.—The lady, suspecting Dorcas, tries to
prevail upon him to give her her liberty. She disclaims vengeance, and
affectingly tells him all her future views. Denied, she once more
attempts an escape. Prevented, and terrified with apprehensions of
instant dishonour, she is obliged to make some concession.

LETTER XXXII. From the same.—Accuses her of explaining away her
concession. Made desperate, he seeks occasion to quarrel with her. She
exerts a spirit which overawes him. He is ridiculed by the infamous
copartnership. Calls to Belford to help a gay heart to a little of his
dismal, on the expected death of Lord M.

LETTER XXXIII. From the same.—Another message from M. Hall, to engage
him to go down the next morning.

LETTER XXXIV. XXXV. From the same.—The women’s instigations. His
farther schemes against the lady. What, he asks, is the injury which a
church-rite will not at any time repair?

LETTER XXXVI. From the same.—Himself, the mother, her nymphs, all
assembled with intent to execute his detestable purposes. Her glorious
behaviour on the occasion. He execrates, detests, despises himself; and
admires her more than ever. Obliged to set out early that morning for
M. Hall, he will press her with letters to meet him next Thursday, her
uncle’s birthday, at the altar.

LETTER XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. Lovelace to Clarissa, from M.
Hall.—Urging her accordingly, (the license in her hands,) by the most
engaging pleas and arguments.

LETTER XL. Lovelace to Belford.—Begs he will wait on the lady, and
induce her to write but four words to him, signifying the church and
the day. Is now resolved on wedlock. Curses his plots and contrivances;
which all end, he says, in one grand plot upon himself.

LETTER XLI. Belford to Lovelace. In answer.—Refuses to undertake for
him, unless he can be sure of his honour. Why he doubts it.

LETTER XLII. Lovelace. In reply.—Curses him for scrupulousness. Is in
earnest to marry. After one more letter of entreaty to her, if she keep
sullen silence, she must take the consequence.

LETTER XLIII. Lovelace to Clarissa.—Once more earnestly entreats her to
meet him at the altar. Not to be forbidden coming, he will take for
leave to come.

LETTER XLIV. Lovelace to Patrick M’Donald.—Ordering him to visit the
lady, and instructing him what to say, and how to behave to her.

LETTER XLV. To the same, as Captain Tomlinson.—Calculated to be shown
to the lady, as in confidence.

LETTER XLVI. M’Donald to Lovelace.—Goes to attend the lady according to
direction. Finds the house in an uproar; and the lady escaped.

LETTER XLVII. Mowbray to Lovelace.—With the same news.

LETTER XLVIII. Belford to Lovelace.—Ample particulars of the lady’s
escape. Makes serious reflections on the distress she must be in; and
on his (Lovelace’s) ungrateful usage of her. What he takes the sum of
religion.

LETTER XLIX. Lovelace to Belford.—Runs into affected levity and
ridicule, yet at last owns all his gayety but counterfeit. Regrets his
baseness to the lady. Inveighs against the women for their
instigations. Will still marry her, if she can be found out. One
misfortune seldom comes alone; Lord M. is recovering. He had bespoken
mourning for him.

LETTER L. Clarissa to Miss Howe.—Writes with incoherence, to inquire
after her health. Lets her know whither to direct to her. But forgets,
in her rambling, her private address. By which means her letter falls
into the hands of Miss Howe’s mother.

LETTER LI. Mrs. Howe to Clarissa.—Reproaches her for making all her
friends unhappy. Forbids her to write any more to her daughter.

LETTER LII. Clarissa’s meek reply.

LETTER LIII. Clarissa to Hannah Burton.

LETTER LIV. Hannah Burton. In answer.

LETTER LV. Clarissa to Miss Norton.—Excuses her long silence. Asks her
a question, with a view to detect Lovelace. Hints at his ungrateful
villany. Self-recrimination.

LETTER LVI. Mrs. Norton to Clarissa.—Answers her question. Inveighs
against Lovelace. Hopes she has escaped with her honour. Consoles her
by a brief relation of her own case, and from motives truly pious.

LETTER LVII. Clarissa to Lady Betty Lawrance.—Requests an answer to
three questions, with a view farther to detect Lovelace.

LETTER LVIII. Lady Betty to Clarissa.—Answers her questions. In the
kindest manner offers to mediate between her nephew and her.

LETTER LIX. LX. Clarissa to Mrs. Hodges, her uncle Harlowe’s
housekeeper; with a view of still farther detecting Lovelace.—Mrs.
Hodges’s answer.

LETTER LXI. Clarissa to Lady Betty Lawrance.—Acquaints her with her
nephew’s baseness. Charitably wishes his reformation; but utterly, and
from principle, rejects him.

LETTER LXII. Clarissa to Mrs. Norton.—Is comforted by her kind
soothings. Wishes she had been her child. Will not allow her to come up
to her; why. Some account of the people she is with; and of a worthy
woman, Mrs. Lovick, who lodges in the house. Briefly hints to her the
vile usage she has received from Lovelace.

LETTER LXIII. Mrs. Norton to Clarissa.—Inveighs against Lovelace.
Wishes Miss Howe might be induced to refrain from freedoms that do
hurt, and can do no good. Farther piously consoles her.

LETTER LXIV. Clarissa to Mrs. Norton.—A new trouble. An angry letter
from Miss Howe. The occasion. Her heart is broken. Shall be uneasy,
till she can get her father’s curse revoked. Casts about to whom she
can apply for this purpose. At last resolves to write to her sister to
beg her mediation.

LETTER LXV. Miss Howe to Clarissa.—Her angry and reproachful letter
above-mentioned; demands from her the clearing up of her conduct.

LETTER LXVI. Clarissa to Miss Howe.—Gently remonstrates upon her
severity. To this hour knows not all the methods taken to deceive and
ruin her. But will briefly, yet circumstantially, enter into the darker
part of her sad story, though her heart sinks under the thoughts of a
recollection so painful.

LETTER LXVII. LXVIII. LXIX. LXX. From the same.—She gives the promised
particulars of her story. Begs that the blackest parts of it may be
kept secret; and why. Desires one friendly tear, and no more, may be
dropt from her gentle eye, on the happy day that shall shut up all her
sorrows.

LETTER LXXI. LXXII. Miss Howe to Clarissa.—Execrates the abandoned
profligate. She must, she tells her, look to the world beyond this for
her reward. Unravels some of Lovelace’s plots; and detects his
forgeries. Is apprehensive for her own as well as Clarissa’s safety.
Advises her to pursue a legal vengeance. Laudable custom in the Isle of
Man. Offers personally to attend her in a court of justice.

LETTER LXXIII. Clarissa to Miss Howe.—Cannot consent to a prosecution.
Discovers who it was that personated her at Hampstead. She is quite
sick of life, and of an earth in which innocent and benevolent spirits
are sure to be considered as aliens.




 THE HISTORY OF CLARISSA HARLOWE

VOLUME SIX




 LETTER I


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.


Sat. Midnight.


No rest, says a text that I once heard preached upon, to the wicked—and
I cannot close my eyes (yet only wanted to compound for half an hour in
an elbow-chair)—so must scribble on.

I parted with the Captain after another strong debate with him in
relation to what is to be the fate of this lady. As the fellow has an
excellent head, and would have made an eminent figure in any station of
life, had not his early days been tainted with a deep crime, and he
detected in it; and as he had the right side of the argument; I had a
good deal of difficulty with him; and at last brought myself to
promise, that if I could prevail upon her generously to forgive me, and
to reinstate me in her favour, I would make it my whole endeavour to
get off of my contrivances, as happily as I could; (only that Lady
Betty and Charlotte must come;) and then substituting him for her
uncle’s proxy, take shame to myself, and marry.

But if I should, Jack, (with the strongest antipathy to the state that
ever man had,) what a figure shall I make in rakish annals? And can I
have taken all this pains for nothing? Or for a wife only, that,
however excellent, [and any woman, do I think I could make good,
because I could make any woman fear as well as love me,] might have
been obtained without the plague I have been at, and much more
reputably than with it? And hast thou not seen, that this haughty woman
[forgive me that I call her haughty! and a woman! Yet is she not
haughty?] knows not how to forgive with graciousness? Indeed has not at
all forgiven me? But holds my soul in a suspense which has been so
grievous to her own.

At this silent moment, I think, that if I were to pursue my former
scheme, and resolve to try whether I cannot make a greater fault serve
as a sponge to wipe out the less; and then be forgiven for that; I can
justify myself to myself; and that, as the fair invincible would say,
is all in all.

As it is my intention, in all my reflections, to avoid repeating, at
least dwelling upon, what I have before written to thee, though the
state of the case may not have varied; so I would have thee to
re-consider the old reasonings (particularly those contained in my
answer to thy last* expostulatory nonsense); and add the new as they
fall from my pen; and then I shall think myself invincible;—at least,
as arguing rake to rake.

* See Vol. V. Letter XIV.

I take the gaining of this lady to be essential to my happiness: and is
it not natural for all men to aim at obtaining whatever they think will
make them happy, be the object more or less considerable in the eyes of
others?

As to the manner of endeavouring to obtain her, by falsification of
oaths, vows, and the like—do not the poets of two thousand years and
upwards tell us, that Jupiter laughs at the perjuries of lovers? And
let me add, to what I have heretofore mentioned on that head, a
question or two.

Do not the mothers, the aunts, the grandmothers, the governesses of the
pretty innocents, always, from their very cradles to riper years,
preach to them the deceitfulness of men?—That they are not to regard
their oaths, vows, promises?—What a parcel of fibbers would all these
reverend matrons be, if there were not now and then a pretty credulous
rogue taken in for a justification of their preachments, and to serve
as a beacon lighted up for the benefit of the rest?

Do we not then see, that an honest prowling fellow is a necessary evil
on many accounts? Do we not see that it is highly requisite that a
sweet girl should be now-and-then drawn aside by him?—And the more
eminent the girl, in the graces of person, mind, and fortune, is not
the example likely to be the more efficacious?

If these postulata be granted me, who, I pray, can equal my charmer in
all these? Who therefore so fit for an example to the rest of her
sex?—At worst, I am entirely within my worthy friend Mandeville’s
assertion, that private vices are public benefits.

Well, then, if this sweet creature must fall, as it is called, for the
benefit of all the pretty fools of the sex, she must; and there’s an
end of the matter. And what would there have been in it of uncommon or
rare, had I not been so long about it?—And so I dismiss all further
argumentation and debate upon the question: and I impose upon thee,
when thou writest to me, an eternal silence on this head.

Wafer’d on, as an after-written introduction to the paragraphs which
follow, marked with turned commas, [thus, “]:

Lord, Jack, what shall I do now! How one evil brings on another!
Dreadful news to tell thee! While I was meditating a simple robbery,
here have I (in my own defence indeed) been guilty of murder!—A bl—y
murder! So I believe it will prove. At her last gasp!—Poor impertinent
opposer!—Eternally resisting!—Eternally contradicting! There she lies
weltering in her blood! her death’s wound have I given her!—But she was
a thief, an impostor, as well as a tormentor. She had stolen my pen.
While I was sullenly meditating, doubting, as to my future measures,
she stole it; and thus she wrote with it in a hand exactly like my own;
and would have faced me down, that it was really my own hand-writing.

“But let me reflect before it is too late. On the manifold perfections
of this ever-amiable creature let me reflect. The hand yet is only held
up. The blow is not struck. Miss Howe’s next letter may blow thee up.
In policy thou shouldest be now at least honest. Thou canst not live
without her. Thou wouldest rather marry her than lose her absolutely.
Thou mayest undoubtedly prevail upon her, inflexible as she seems to
be, for marriage. But if now she finds thee a villain, thou mayest
never more engage her attention, and she perhaps will refuse and abhor
thee.

“Yet already have I not gone too far? Like a repentant thief, afraid of
his gang, and obliged to go on, in fear of hanging till he comes to be
hanged, I am afraid of the gang of my cursed contrivances.

“As I hope to live, I am sorry, (at the present writing,) that I have
been such a foolish plotter, as to put it, as I fear I have done, out
of my own power to be honest. I hate compulsion in all forms; and
cannot bear, even to be compelled to be the wretch my choice has made
me! So now, Belford, as thou hast said, I am a machine at last, and no
free agent.

“Upon my soul, Jack, it is a very foolish thing for a man of spirit to
have brought himself to such a height of iniquity, that he must
proceed, and cannot help himself, and yet to be next to certain, that
this very victory will undo him.

“Why was such a woman as this thrown into my way, whose very fall will
be her glory, and, perhaps, not only my shame but my destruction?

“What a happiness must that man know, who moves regularly to some
laudable end, and has nothing to reproach himself with in his progress
to do it! When, by honest means, he attains his end, how great and
unmixed must be his enjoyments! What a happy man, in this particular
case, had I been, had it been given me to be only what I wished to
appear to be!”

Thus far had my conscience written with my pen; and see what a recreant
she had made of me!—I seized her by the throat—There!—There, said I,
thou vile impertinent!—take that, and that!—How often have I gave thee
warning!—and now, I hope, thou intruding varletess, have I done thy
business!

Puling and low-voiced, rearing up thy detested head, in vain implorest
thou my mercy, who, in thy day hast showed me so little!—Take that, for
a rising blow!—And now will thy pain, and my pain for thee, soon be
over. Lie there!—Welter on!—Had I not given thee thy death’s wound,
thou wouldest have robbed me of all my joys. Thou couldest not have
mended me, ’tis plain. Thou couldest only have thrown me into despair.
Didst thou not see, that I had gone too far to recede?—Welter on, once
more I bid thee!—Gasp on!—That thy last gasp, surely!—How hard diest
thou!

ADIEU!—Unhappy man! ADIEU!

’Tis kind in thee, however, to bid me, Adieu!

Adieu, Adieu, Adieu, to thee, O thou inflexible, and, till now,
unconquerable bosom intruder!—Adieu to thee for ever!




 LETTER II


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.


SUNDAY MORN. (JUNE 11). FOUR O’CLOCK.


A few words to the verbal information thou sentest me last night
concerning thy poor old man; and then I rise from my seat, shake
myself, refresh, new-dress, and so to my charmer, whom, notwithstanding
her reserves, I hope to prevail upon to walk out with me on the Heath
this warm and fine morning.

The birds must have awakened her before now. They are in full song. She
always gloried in accustoming herself to behold the sun rise—one of
God’s natural wonders, as once she called it.

Her window salutes the east. The valleys must be gilded by his rays, by
the time I am with her; for already have they made the up-lands smile,
and the face of nature cheerful.

How unsuitable will thou find this gay preface to a subject so gloomy
as that I am now turning to!

I am glad to hear thy tedious expectations are at last answered.

Thy servant tells me that thou are plaguily grieved at the old fellow’s
departure.

I can’t say, but thou mayest look as if thou wert; harassed as thou
hast been for a number of days and nights with a close attendance upon
a dying man, beholding his drawing-on hour—pretending, for decency’s
sake, to whine over his excruciating pangs; to be in the way to answer
a thousand impertinent inquiries after the health of a man thou
wishedest to die—to pray by him—for so once thou wrotest to me!—To read
by him—to be forced to join in consultation with a crew of solemn and
parading doctors, and their officious zanies, the apothecaries, joined
with the butcherly tribe of scarficators; all combined to carry on the
physical farce, and to cut out thongs both from his flesh and his
estate—to have the superadded apprehension of dividing thy interest in
what he shall leave with a crew of eager-hoping, never-to-be-satisfied
relations, legatees, and the devil knows who, of private gratifiers of
passions laudable and illaudable—in these circumstances, I wonder not
that thou lookest before servants, (as little grieved as thou after
heirship,) as if thou indeed wert grieved; and as if the most wry-fac’d
woe had befallen thee.

Then, as I have often thought, the reflection that must naturally arise
from such mortifying objects, as the death of one with whom we have
been familiar, must afford, when we are obliged to attend it in its
slow approaches, and in its face-twisting pangs, that it will one day
be our own case, goes a great way to credit the appearance of grief.

And that it is this, seriously reflected upon, may temporally give a
fine air of sincerity to the wailings of lively widows, heart-exulting
heirs, and residuary legatees of all denominations; since, by keeping
down the inward joy, those interesting reflections must sadden the
aspect, and add an appearance of real concern to the assumed sables.

Well, but, now thou art come to the reward of all thy watchings,
anxieties, and close attendances, tell me what it is; tell me if it
compensate thy trouble, and answer thy hope?

As to myself, thou seest, by the gravity of my style, how the subject
has helped to mortify me. But the necessity I am under of committing
either speedy matrimony, or a rape, has saddened over my gayer
prospects, and, more than the case itself, contributed to make me
sympathize with the present joyful-sorrow.

Adieu, Jack, I must be soon out of my pain; and my Clarissa shall be
soon out of her’s—for so does the arduousness of the case require.




 LETTER III


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.


SUNDAY MORNING.


I have had the honour of my charmer’s company for two complete hours.
We met before six in Mrs. Moore’s garden. A walk on the Heath refused
me.

The sedateness of her aspect and her kind compliance in this meeting
gave me hopes. And all that either the Captain and I had urged
yesterday to obtain a full and free pardon, that re-urged I; and I told
her, besides, that Captain Tomlinson was gone down with hopes to
prevail upon her uncle Harlowe to come up in person, in order to
present to me the greatest blessing that man ever received.

But the utmost I could obtain was, that she would take no resolution in
my favour till she received Miss Howe’s next letter.

I will not repeat the arguments I used; but I will give thee the
substance of what she said in answer to them.

She had considered of every thing, she told me. My whole conduct was
before her. The house I carried her to must be a vile house. The people
early showed what they were capable of, in the earnest attempt made to
fasten Miss Partington upon her; as she doubted not, with my
approbation. [Surely, thought I, she has not received a duplicate of
Miss Howe’s letter of detection!] They heard her cries. My insult was
undoubtedly premeditated. By my whole recollected behaviour to her,
previous to it, it must be so. I had the vilest of views, no question.
And my treatment of her put it out of all doubt.

Soul over all, Belford! She seems sensible of liberties that my passion
made me insensible of having taken, or she could not so deeply resent.

She besought me to give over all thoughts of her. Sometimes, she said,
she thought herself cruelly treated by her nearest and dearest
relations; at such times, a spirit of repining and even of resentment
took place; and the reconciliation, at other times so desirable, was
not then so much the favourite wish of her heart, as was the scheme she
had formerly planned—of taking her good Norton for her directress and
guide, and living upon her own estate in the manner her grandfather had
intended she should live.

This scheme she doubted not that her cousin Morden, who was one of her
trustees for that estate, would enable her, (and that, as she hoped,
without litigation,) to pursue. And if he can, and does, what, Sir, let
me ask you, said she, have I seen in your conduct, that should make me
prefer to it an union of interest, where there is such a disunion in
minds?

So thou seest, Jack, there is reason, as well as resentment, in the
preference she makes against me!—Thou seest, that she presumes to think
that she can be happy without me; and that she must be unhappy with me!

I had besought her, in the conclusion of my re-urged arguments, to
write to Miss Howe before Miss Howe’s answer could come, in order to
lay before her the present state of things; and if she would pay a
deference to her judgment, to let her have an opportunity to give it,
on the full knowledge of the case—

So I would, Mr. Lovelace, was the answer, if I were in doubt myself,
which I would prefer—marriage, or the scheme I have mentioned. You
cannot think, Sir, but the latter must be my choice. I wish to part
with you with temper—don’t put me upon repeating—

Part with me, Madam! interrupted I—I cannot bear those words!—But let
me beseech you, however, to write to Miss Howe. I hope, if Miss Howe is
not my enemy—

She is not the enemy of your person, Sir;—as you would be convinced, if
you saw her last letter* to me. But were she not an enemy to your
actions, she would not be my friend, nor the friend of virtue. Why will
you provoke from me, Mr. Lovelace, the harshness of expression, which,
however, which, however deserved by you, I am unwilling just now to
use, having suffered enough in the two past days from my own vehemence?

* The lady innocently means Mr. Lovelace’s forged one. See Vol. V.
Letter XXX.

I bit my lip for vexation. And was silent.

Miss Howe, proceeded she, knows the full state of matters already, Sir.
The answer I expect from her respects myself, not you. Her heart is too
warm in the cause of friendship, to leave me in suspense one moment
longer than is necessary as to what I want to know. Nor does her answer
absolutely depend upon herself. She must see a person first, and that
person perhaps see others.

The cursed smuggler-woman, Jack!—Miss Howe’s Townsend, I doubt
not—Plot, contrivance, intrigue, stratagem!—Underground-moles these
women—but let the earth cover me!—let me be a mole too, thought I, if
they carry their point!—and if this lady escape me now!

She frankly owned that she had once thought of embarking out of all our
ways for some one of our American colonies. But now that she had been
compelled to see me, (which had been her greatest dread), and which she
might be happiest in the resumption of her former favourite scheme, if
Miss Howe could find her a reputable and private asylum, till her
cousin Morden could come.—But if he came not soon, and if she had a
difficulty to get to a place of refuge, whether from her brother or
from any body else, [meaning me, I suppose,] she might yet perhaps go
abroad; for, to say the truth, she could not think of returning to her
father’s house, since her brother’s rage, her sister’s upbraidings, her
father’s anger, her mother’s still-more-affecting sorrowings, and her
own consciousness under them all, would be unsupportable to her.

O Jack! I am sick to death, I pine, I die, for Miss Howe’s next letter!
I would bind, gag, strip, rob, and do any thing but murder, to
intercept it.

But, determined as she seems to be, it was evident to me, nevertheless,
that she had still some tenderness for me.

She often wept as she talked, and much oftener sighed. She looked at me
twice with an eye of undoubted gentleness, and three times with an eye
tending to compassion and softness; but its benign rays were as often
snatched back, as I may say, and her face averted, as if her sweet eyes
were not to be trusted, and could not stand against my eager eyes;
seeking, as they did, for a lost heart in her’s, and endeavouring to
penetrate to her very soul.

More than once I took her hand. She struggled not much against the
freedom. I pressed it once with my lips—she was not very angry. A frown
indeed—but a frown that had more distress in it than indignation.

How came the dear soul, (clothed as it is with such a silken vesture,)
by all its steadiness?* Was it necessary that the active gloom of such
a tyrant of a father, should commix with such a passive sweetness of a
will-less mother, to produce a constancy, an equanimity, a steadiness,
in the daughter, which never woman before could boast of? If so, she is
more obliged to that despotic father than I could have imagined a
creature to be, who gave distinction to every one related to her beyond
what the crown itself can confer.

* See Vol. I. Letters IX. XIV. and XIX. for what she herself says on
that steadiness which Mr. Lovelace, though a deserved sufferer by it,
cannot help admiring.

I hoped, I said, that she would admit of the intended visit, which I
had so often mentioned, of the two ladies.

She was here. She had seen me. She could not help herself at present.
She even had the highest regard for the ladies of my family, because of
their worthy characters. There she turned away her sweet face, and
vanquished an half-risen sigh.

I kneeled to her then. It was upon a verdant cushion; for we were upon
the grass walk. I caught her hand. I besought her with an earnestness
that called up, as I could feel, my heart to my eyes, to make me, by
her forgiveness and example, more worthy of them, and of her own kind
and generous wishes. By my soul, Madam, said I, you stab me with your
goodness—your undeserved goodness! and I cannot bear it!

Why, why, thought I, as I did several times in this conversation, will
she not generously forgive me? Why will she make it necessary for me to
bring Lady Betty and my cousin to my assistance? Can the fortress
expect the same advantageous capitulation, which yields not to the
summons of a resistless conqueror, as if it gave not the trouble of
bringing up and raising its heavy artillery against it?

What sensibilities, said the divine creature, withdrawing her hand,
must thou have suppressed! What a dreadful, what a judicial hardness of
heart must thine be! who canst be capable of such emotions, as
sometimes thou hast shown; and of such sentiments, as sometimes have
flowed from thy lips; yet canst have so far overcome them all as to be
able to act as thou hast acted, and that from settled purpose and
premeditation; and this, as it is said, throughout the whole of thy
life, from infancy to this time!

I told her, that I had hoped, from the generous concern she had
expressed for me, when I was so suddenly and dangerously taken ill—[the
ipecacuanha experiment, Jack!]

She interrupted me—Well have you rewarded me for the concern you speak
of!—However, I will frankly own, now that I am determined to think no
more of you, that you might, (unsatisfied as I nevertheless was with
you,) have made an interest—

She paused. I besought her to proceed.

Do you suppose, Sir, and turned away her sweet face as we walked,—Do
you suppose that I had not thought of laying down a plan to govern
myself by, when I found myself so unhappily over-reached and cheated,
as I may say, out of myself—When I found, that I could not be, and do,
what I wished to be, and to do, do you imagine that I had not cast
about, what was the next proper course to take?—And do you believe that
this next course has not caused me some pain to be obliged to—

There again she stopt.

But let us break off discourse, resumed she. The subject grows too—She
sighed—Let us break off discourse—I will go in—I will prepare for
church—[The devil! thought I.] Well, as I can appear in those
every-day-worn clothes—looking upon herself—I will go to church.

She then turned from me to go into the house.

Bless me, my beloved creature, bless me with the continuance of this
affecting conversation.—Remorse has seized my heart!—I have been
excessively wrong—give me farther cause to curse my heedless folly, by
the continuance of this calm but soul-penetrating conversation.

No, no, Mr. Lovelace: I have said too much. Impatience begins to break
in upon me. If you can excuse me to the ladies, it will be better for
my mind’s sake, and for your credit’s sake, that I do not see them.
Call me to them over-nice, petulant, prudish—what you please call me to
them. Nobody but Miss Howe, to whom, next to the Almighty, and my own
mother, I wish to stand acquitted of wilful error, shall know the whole
of what has passed. Be happy, as you may!—Deserve to be happy, and
happy you will be, in your own reflection at least, were you to be ever
so unhappy in other respects. For myself, if I ever shall be enabled,
on due reflection, to look back upon my own conduct, without the great
reproach of having wilfully, and against the light of my own judgment,
erred, I shall be more happy than if I had all that the world accounts
desirable.

The noble creature proceeded; for I could not speak.

This self-acquittal, when spirits are lent me to dispel the darkness
which at present too often over-clouds my mind, will, I hope, make me
superior to all the calamities that can befal me.

Her whole person was informed by her sentiments. She seemed to be
taller than before. How the God within her exalted her, not only above
me, but above herself!

Divine creature! (as I thought her,) I called her. I acknowledged the
superiority of her mind; and was proceeding—but she interrupted me—All
human excellence, said she, is comparative only. My mind, I believe, is
indeed superior to your’s, debased as your’s is by evil habits: but I
had not known it to be so, if you had not taken pains to convince me of
the inferiority of your’s.

How great, how sublimely great, this creature!—By my soul I cannot
forgive her for her virtues! There is no bearing the consciousness of
the infinite inferiority she charged me with.—But why will she break
from me, when good resolutions are taking place? The red-hot iron she
refuses to strike—O why will she suffer the yielding wax to harden?

We had gone but a few paces towards the house, when we were met by the
impertinent women, with notice, that breakfast was ready. I could only,
with uplifted hands, beseech her to give me hope of a renewed
conversation after breakfast.

No—she would go to church.

And into the house she went, and up stairs directly. Nor would she
oblige me with her company at the tea-table.

I offered, by Mrs. Moore, to quit both the table and the parlour,
rather than she should exclude herself, or deprive the two widows of
the favour of her company.

That was not all the matter, she told Mrs. Moore. She had been
struggling to keep down her temper. It had cost her some pains to do
it. She was desirous to compose herself, in hopes to receive benefit by
the divine worship she was going to join in.

Mrs. Moore hoped for her presence at dinner.

She had rather be excused. Yet, if she could obtain the frame of mind
she hoped for, she might not be averse to show, that she had got above
those sensibilities, which gave consideration to a man who deserved not
to be to her what he had been.

This said, no doubt, to let Mrs. Moore know, that the
garden-conversation had not been a reconciling one.

Mrs. Moore seemed to wonder that we were not upon a better foot of
understanding, after so long a conference; and the more, as she
believed that the lady had given in to the proposal for the repetition
of the ceremony, which I had told them was insisted upon by her uncle
Harlowe.—But I accounted for this, by telling both widows that she was
resolved to keep on the reserve till she heard from Captain Tomlinson,
whether her uncle would be present in person at the solemnity, or would
name that worthy gentleman for his proxy.

Again I enjoined strict secresy, as to this particular; which was
promised by the widows, as well as for themselves, as for Miss Rawlins;
of whose taciturnity they gave me such an account, as showed me, that
she was secret-keeper-general to all the women of fashion at Hampstead.

The Lord, Jack! What a world of mischief, at this rate, must Miss
Rawlins know!—What a Pandora’s box must her bosom be!—Yet, had I
nothing that was more worthy of my attention to regard, I would engage
to open it, and make my uses of the discovery.

And now, Belford, thou perceivest, that all my reliance is upon the
mediation of Lady Betty and Miss Montague, and upon the hope of
intercepting Miss Howe’s next letter.




 LETTER IV


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.


This fair inexorable is actually gone to church with Mrs. Moore and
Mrs. Bevis; but Will. closely attends her motions; and I am in the way
to receive any occasional intelligence from him.

She did not choose, [a mighty word with the sex! as if they were always
to have their own wills!] that I should wait upon her. I did not much
press it, that she might not apprehend that I thought I had reason to
doubt her voluntary return.

I once had it in my head to have found the widow Bevis other
employment. And I believe she would have been as well pleased with my
company as to go to church; for she seemed irresolute when I told her
that two out of a family were enough to go to church for one day. But
having her things on, (as the women call every thing,) and her aunt
Moore expecting her company, she thought it best to go—lest it should
look oddly, you know, whispered she, to one who was above regarding how
it looked.

So here am I in my dining-room; and have nothing to do but to write
till they return.

And what will be my subject thinkest thou? Why, the old beaten one to
be sure; self-debate—through temporary remorse: for the blow being not
struck, her guardian angel is redoubling his efforts to save her.

If it be not that, [and yet what power should her guardian angel have
over me?] I don’t know what it is that gives a check to my revenge,
whenever I meditate treason against so sovereign a virtue. Conscience
is dead and gone, as I told thee; so it cannot be that. A young
conscience growing up, like the phoenix, from the ashes of the old one,
it cannot be, surely. But if it were, it would be hard, if I could not
overlay a young conscience.

Well, then, it must be LOVE, I fancy. LOVE itself, inspiring love of an
object so adorable—some little attention possibly paid likewise to thy
whining arguments in her favour.

Let LOVE then be allowed to be the moving principle; and the rather, as
LOVE naturally makes the lover loth to disoblige the object of its
flame; and knowing, that to an offence of the meditated kind will be a
mortal offence to her, cannot bear that I should think of giving it.

Let LOVE and me talk together a little on this subject—be it a young
conscience, or love, or thyself, Jack, thou seest that I am for giving
every whiffler audience. But this must be the last debate on this
subject; for is not her fate in a manner at its crisis? And must not my
next step be an irretrievable one, tend it which way it will?


And now the debate is over.

A thousand charming things, (for LOVE is gentler than CONSCIENCE,) has
this little urchin suggested in her favour. He pretended to know both
our hearts: and he would have it, that though my love was a prodigious
strong and potent love; and though it has the merit of many months,
faithful service to plead, and has had infinite difficulties to
struggle with; yet that it is not THE RIGHT SORT OF LOVE.

Right sort of love!—A puppy!—But, with due regard to your deityship,
said I, what merits has she with YOU, that you should be of her party?
Is her’s, I pray you, a right sort of love? Is it love at all? She
don’t pretend that it is. She owns not your sovereignty. What a d—l
moves you, to plead thus earnestly for a rebel, who despises your
power?

And then he came with his If’s and And’s—and it would have been, and
still, as he believed, would be, love, and a love of the exalted kind,
if I would encourage it by the right sort of love he talked of: and, in
justification of his opinion, pleaded her own confessions, as well
those of yesterday, as of this morning: and even went so far back as to
my ipecacuanha illness.

I never talked so familiarly with his godship before: thou mayest
think, therefore, that his dialect sounded oddly in my ears. And then
he told me, how often I had thrown cold water upon the most charming
flame that ever warmed a lady’s bosom, while but young and rising.

I required a definition of this right sort of love, he tried at it: but
made a sorry hand of it: nor could I, for the soul of me, be convinced,
that what he meant to extol was LOVE.

Upon the whole, we had a noble controversy upon this subject, in which
he insisted upon the unprecedented merit of the lady. Nevertheless I
got the better of him; for he was struck absolutely dumb, when (waving
her present perverseness, which yet was a sufficient answer to all his
pleas) I asserted, and offered to prove it, by a thousand instances
impromptu, that love was not governed by merit, nor could be under the
dominion of prudence, or any other reasoning power: and if the lady
were capable of love, it was of such a sort as he had nothing to do
with, and which never before reigned in a female heart.

I asked him, what he thought of her flight from me, at a time when I
was more than half overcome by the right sort of love he talked of?—And
then I showed him the letter she wrote, and left behind her for me,
with an intention, no doubt, absolutely to break my heart, or to
provoke me to hang, drown, or shoot myself; to say nothing of a
multitude of declarations from her, defying his power, and imputing all
that looked like love in her behaviour to me, to the persecution and
rejection of her friends; which made her think of me but as a last
resort.

LOVE then gave her up. The letter, he said, deserved neither pardon nor
excuse. He did not think he had been pleading for such a declared
rebel. And as to the rest, he should be a betrayer of the rights of his
own sovereignty, if what I had alleged were true, and he were still to
plead for her.

I swore to the truth of all. And truly I swore: which perhaps I do not
always do.

And now what thinkest thou must become of the lady, whom LOVE itself
gives up, and CONSCIENCE cannot plead for?




 LETTER V


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. SUNDAY AFTERNOON.

O Belford! what a hair’s-breadth escape have I had!—Such a one, that I
tremble between terror and joy, at the thought of what might have
happened, and did not.

What a perverse girl is this, to contend with her fate; yet has reason
to think, that her very stars fight against her! I am the luckiest of
me!—But my breath almost fails me, when I reflect upon what a slender
thread my destiny hung.

But not to keep thee in suspense; I have, within this half-hour,
obtained possession of the expected letter from Miss Howe—and by such
an accident! But here, with the former, I dispatch this; thy messenger
waiting.




 LETTER VI


MR. LOVELACE [IN CONTINUATION.]

Thus it was—My charmer accompanied Mrs. Moore again to church this
afternoon. I had been in very earnest, in the first place, to obtain
her company at dinner: but in vain. According to what she had said to
Mrs. Moore,* I was too considerable to her to be allowed that favour.
In the next place, I besought her to favour me, after dinner, with
another garden-walk. But she would again go to church. And what reason
have I to rejoice that she did!

* See Letter III. of this volume.

My worthy friend, Mrs. Bevis, thought one sermon a day, well observed,
enough; so staid at home to bear me company.

The lady and Mrs. Moore had not been gone a quarter of an hour, when a
young country-fellow on horseback came to the door, and inquired for
Mrs. Harriot Lucas. The widow and I (undetermined how we were to
entertain each other) were in the parlour next the door; and hearing
the fellow’s inquiry, O my dear Mrs. Bevis, said I, I am undone, undone
for ever, if you don’t help me out!—Since here, in all probability, is
a messenger from that implacable Miss Howe with a letter; which, if
delivered to Mrs. Lovelace, may undo all we have been doing.

What, said she, would you have me do?

Call the maid in this moment, that I may give her her lesson; and if it
be as I imagined, I’ll tell you what you shall do.

Wid. Margaret!—Margaret! come in this minute.

Lovel. What answer, Mrs. Margaret, did you give the man, upon his
asking for Mrs. Harriot Lucas?

Peggy. I only asked, What was his business, and who he came from? (for,
Sir, your honour’s servant had told me how things stood): and I came at
your call, Madam, before he answered me.

Lovel. Well, child, if ever you wish to be happy in wedlock yourself,
and would have people disappointed who want to make mischief between
you and your husband, get out of him his message, or letter if he has
one, and bring it to me, and say nothing to Mrs. Lovelace, when she
comes in; and here is a guinea for you.

Peggy. I will do all I can to serve your honour’s worship for nothing:
[nevertheless, with a ready hand, taking the guinea:] for Mr. William
tells me what a good gentleman you be.

Away went Peggy to the fellow at the door.

Peggy. What is your business, friend, with Mrs. Harry Lucas?

Fellow. I must speak to her her own self.

Lovel. My dearest widow, do you personate Mrs. Lovelace—for Heaven’s
sake do you personate Mrs. Lovelace.

Wid. I personate Mrs. Lovelace, Sir! How can I do that?—She is fair; I
am brown. She is slender: I am plump—

Lovel. No matter, no matter—The fellow may be a new-come servant: he is
not in livery, I see. He may not know her person. You can but be
bloated and in a dropsy.

Wid. Dropsical people look not so fresh and ruddy as I do.

Lovel. True—but the clown may not know that. ’Tis but for a present
deception. Peggy, Peggy, call’d I, in a female tone, softly at the
door. Madam, answer’d Peggy; and came up to me to the parlour-door.

Lovel. Tell him the lady is ill; and has lain down upon the couch. And
get his business from him, whatever you do.

Away went Peggy.

Lovel. Now, my dear widow, lie along the settee, and put your
handkerchief over your face, that, if he will speak to you himself, he
may not see your eyes and your hair.—So—that’s right.—I’ll step into
the closet by you.

I did so.

Peggy. [Returning.] He won’t deliver his business to me. He will speak
to Mrs. Harriot Lucas her own self.

Lovel. [Holding the door in my hand.] Tell him that this is Mrs.
Harriot Lucas; and let him come in. Whisper him (if he doubts) that she
is bloated, dropsical, and not the woman she was.

Away went Margery.

Lovel. And now, my dear widow, let me see what a charming Mrs. Lovelace
you’ll make!—Ask if he comes from Miss Howe. Ask if he lives with her.
Ask how she does. Call her, at every word, your dear Miss Howe. Offer
him money—take this half-guinea for him—complain of your head, to have
a pretence to hold it down; and cover your forehead and eyes with your
hand, where your handkerchief hides not your face.—That’s right—and
dismiss the rascal—[here he comes]—as soon as you can.

In came the fellow, bowing and scraping, his hat poked out before him
with both his hands.

Fellow. I am sorry, Madam, an’t please you, to find you ben’t well.

Widow. What is your business with me, friend?

Fellow. You are Mrs. Harriot Lucas, I suppose, Madam?

Widow. Yes. Do you come from Miss Howe?

Fellow. I do, Madam.

Widow. Dost thou know my right name, friend?

Fellow. I can give a shrewd guess. But that is none of my business.

Widow. What is thy business? I hope Miss Howe is well?

Fellow. Yes, Madam; pure well, I thank God. I wish you were so too.

Widow. I am too full of grief to be well.

Fellow. So belike I have hard to say.

Widow. My head aches so dreadfully, I cannot hold it up. I must beg of
you to let me know your business.

Fellow. Nay, and that be all, my business is soon known. It is but to
give this letter into your own partiklar hands—here it is.

Widow. [Taking it.] From my dear friend Miss Howe?—Ah, my head!

Fellow. Yes, Madam: but I am sorry you are so bad.

Widow. Do you live with Miss Howe?

Fellow. No, Madam: I am one of her tenants’ sons. Her lady-mother must
not know as how I came of this errand. But the letter, I suppose, will
tell you all.

Widow. How shall I satisfy you for this kind trouble?

Fellow. No how at all. What I do is for love of Miss Howe. She will
satisfy me more than enough. But, may-hap, you can send no answer, you
are so ill.

Widow. Was you ordered to wait for an answer?

Fellow. No, I cannot say as that I was. But I was bidden to observe how
you looked, and how you was; and if you did write a line or two, to
take care of it, and give it only to our young landlady in secret.

Widow. You see I look strangely. Not so well as I used to do.

Fellow. Nay, I don’t know that I ever saw you but once before; and that
was at a stile, where I met you and my young landlady; but knew better
than to stare a gentlewoman in the face; especially at a stile.

Widow. Will you eat, or drink, friend?

Fellow. A cup of small ale, I don’t care if I do.

Widow. Margaret, take the young man down, and treat him with what the
house affords.

Fellow. Your servant, Madam. But I staid to eat as I come along, just
upon the Heath yonder; or else, to say the truth, I had been here
sooner. [Thank my stars, thought I, thou didst.] A piece of powdered
beef was upon the table, at the sign of the Castle, where I stopt to
inquire for this house: and so, thoff I only intended to wet my
whistle, I could not help eating. So shall only taste of your ale; for
the beef was woundily corned.

Prating dog! Pox on thee! thought I.

He withdrew, bowing and scraping.

Margaret, whispered I, in a female voice [whispering out of the closet,
and holding the parlour-door in my hand] get him out of the house as
fast as you can, lest they come from church, and catch him here.

Peggy. Never fear, Sir.

The fellow went down, and it seems, drank a large draught of ale; and
Margaret finding him very talkative, told him, she begged his pardon,
but she had a sweetheart just come from sea, whom she was forced to
hide in the pantry; so was sure he would excuse her from staying with
him.

Ay, ay, to be sure, the clown said: for if he could not make sport, he
would spoil none. But he whispered her, that one ’Squire Lovelace was a
damnation rogue, if the truth might be told.

For what? said Margaret. And could have given him, she told the widow
(who related to me all this) a good dowse of the chaps.

For kissing all the women he came near.

At the same time, the dog wrapped himself round Margery, and gave her a
smack, that, she told Mrs. Bevis afterwards, she might have heard into
the parlour.

Such, Jack, is human nature: thus does it operate in all degrees; and
so does the clown, as well as his practises! Yet this sly dog knew not
but the wench had a sweetheart locked up in the pantry! If the truth
were known, some of the ruddy-faced dairy wenches might perhaps call
him a damnation rogue, as justly as their betters of the same sex might
’Squire Lovelace.

The fellow told the maid, that, by what he discovered of the young
lady’s face, it looked very rosy to what he took it to be; and he
thought her a good deal fatter, as she lay, and not so tall.

All women are born to intrigue, Jack; and practise it more or less, as
fathers, guardians, governesses, from dear experience, can tell; and in
love affairs are naturally expert, and quicker in their wits by half
than men. This ready, though raw wench, gave an instance of this, and
improved on the dropsical hint I had given her. The lady’s seeming
plumpness was owing to a dropsical disorder, and to the round posture
she lay in—very likely, truly. Her appearing to him to be shorter, he
might have observed, was owing to her drawing her feet up from pain,
and because the couch was too short, she supposed—Adso, he did not
think of that. Her rosy colour was owing to her grief and
head-ache.—Ay, that might very well be—but he was highly pleased that
he had given the letter into Mrs. Harriot’s own hand, as he should tell
Miss Howe.

He desired once more to see the lady at his going away, and would not
be denied. The widow therefore sat up, with her handkerchief over her
face, leaning her head against the wainscot.

He asked if she had any partiklar message?

No: she was so ill she could not write; which was a great grief to her.

Should he call the next day? for he was going to London, now he was so
near; and should stay at a cousin’s that night, who lived in a street
called Fetter-Lane.

No: she would write as soon as able, and send by the post.

Well, then, if she had nothing to send by him, mayhap he might stay in
town a day or two; for he had never seen the lions in the Tower, nor
Bedlam, nor the tombs; and he would make a holiday or two, as he had
leave to do, if she had no business or message that required his
posting down next day.

She had not.

She offered him the half-guinea I had given her for him; but he refused
it with great professions of disinterestedness, and love, as he called
it, to Miss Howe; to serve whom, he would ride to the world’s-end, or
even to Jericho.

And so the shocking rascal went away: and glad at my heart was I when
he was gone; for I feared nothing so much as that he would have staid
till they came from church.

Thus, Jack, got I my heart’s ease, the letter of Miss Howe; and through
such a train of accidents, as makes me say, that the lady’s stars fight
against her. But yet I must attribute a good deal to my own precaution,
in having taken right measures. For had I not secured the widow by my
stories, and the maid by my servant, all would have signified nothing.
And so heartily were they secured, the one by a single guinea, the
other by half a dozen warm kisses, and the aversion they both had to
such wicked creatures as delighted in making mischief between man and
wife, that they promised, that neither Mrs. Moore, Miss Rawlins, Mrs.
Lovelace, nor any body living, should know any thing of the matter.

The widow rejoiced that I had got the mischief-maker’s letter. I
excused myself to her, and instantly withdrew with it; and, after I had
read it, fell to my short-hand, to acquaint thee with my good luck: and
they not returning so soon as church was done, (stepping, as it proved,
into Miss Rawlins’s, and tarrying there awhile, to bring that busy girl
with them to drink tea,) I wrote thus far to thee, that thou mightest,
when thou camest to this place, rejoice with me upon the occasion.

They are all three just come in.

I hasten to them.




 LETTER VII


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.


I have begun another letter to thee, in continuation of my narrative:
but I believe I shall send thee this before I shall finish that. By the
enclosed thou wilt see, that neither of the correspondents deserve
mercy from me: and I am resolved to make the ending with one the
beginning with the other.

If thou sayest that the provocations I have given to one of them will
justify her freedoms; I answer, so they will, to any other person but
myself. But he that is capable of giving those provocations, and has
the power to punish those who abuse him for giving them, will show his
resentment; and the more remorselessly, perhaps, as he has deserved the
freedoms.

If thou sayest, it is, however, wrong to do so; I reply, that it is
nevertheless human nature:—And wouldst thou not have me to be a man,
Jack?

Here read the letter, if thou wilt. But thou art not my friend, if thou
offerest to plead for either of the saucy creatures, after thou hast
read it.

TO MRS. HARRIOT LUCAS,

AT MRS. MOORE’S, AT HAMPSTEAD. JUNE 10.

After the discoveries I had made of the villanous machinations of the
most abandoned of men, particularized in my long letter of Wednesday*
last, you will believe, my dearest friend, that my surprise upon
perusing your’s of Thursday evening from Hampstead** was not so great
as my indignation. Had the villain attempted to fire a city instead of
a house, I should not have wondered at it. All that I am amazed at is,
that he (whose boast, as I am told, it is, that no woman shall keep him
out of her bed-chamber, when he has made a resolution to be in it) did
not discover his foot before. And it is as strange to me, that, having
got you at such a shocking advantage, and in such a horrid house, you
could, at the time, escape dishonour, and afterwards get from such a
set of infernals.

* See Vol. V. Letter XX. ** Ibid. See Letter XXI.

I gave you, in my long letter of Wednesday and Thursday last, reasons
why you ought to mistrust that specious Tomlinson. That man, my dear,
must be a solemn villain. May lightning from Heaven blast the wretch,
who has set him and the rest of his REMORSELESS GANG at work, to
endeavour to destroy the most consummate virtue!—Heaven be praised! you
have escaped from all their snares, and now are out of danger.—So I
will not trouble you at present with the particulars I have further
collected relating to this abominable imposture.

For the same reason, I forbear to communicate to you some new stories
of the abhorred wretch himself which have come to my ears. One, in
particular, of so shocking a nature!—Indeed, my dear, the man’s a
devil.

The whole story of Mrs. Fretchville, and her house, I have no doubt to
pronounce, likewise, an absolute fiction.—Fellow!—How my soul spurns
the villain!

Your thought of going abroad, and your reasons for so doing, most
sensibly affect me. But be comforted, my dear; I hope you will not be
under a necessity of quitting your native country. Were I sure that
that must be the cruel case, I would abandon all my better prospects,
and soon be with you. And I would accompany you whithersoever you went,
and share fortunes with you: for it is impossible that I should be
happy, if I knew that you were exposed not only to the perils of the
sea, but to the attempts of other vile men; your personal graces
attracting every eye; and exposing you to those hourly dangers, which
others, less distinguished by the gifts of nature, might avoid.—All
that I know that beauty (so greatly coveted, and so greatly admired) is
good for.

O my dear, were I ever to marry, and to be the mother of a CLARISSA,
[Clarissa must be the name, if promisingly lovely,] how often would my
heart ache for the dear creature, as she grew up, when I reflected that
a prudence and discretion, unexampled in woman, had not, in you, been a
sufficient protection to that beauty, which had drawn after it as many
admirers as beholders!—How little should I regret the attacks of that
cruel distemper, as it is called, which frequently makes the greatest
ravages in the finest faces!

SAT. AFTERNOON.

I have just parted with Mrs. Townsend.* I thought you had once seen her
with me; but she says she never had the honour to be personally known
to you. She has a manlike spirit. She knows the world. And her two
brothers being in town, she is sure she can engage them in so good a
cause, and (if there should be occasion) both their ships’ crews, in
your service.

* For the account of Mrs. Townsend, &c. see Vol. IV. Letter XLII.

Give your consent, my dear; and the horrid villain shall be repaid with
broken bones, at least, for all his vileness!

The misfortune is, Mrs. Townsend cannot be with you till Thursday next,
or Wednesday, at soonest: Are you sure you can be safe where you are
till then? I think you are too near London; and perhaps you had better
be in it. If you remove, let me, the very moment, know whither.

How my heart is torn, to think of the necessity so dear a creature is
driven to of hiding herself! Devilish fellow! He must have been
sportive and wanton in his inventions—yet that cruel, that savage
sportiveness has saved you from the sudden violence to which he has had
recourse in the violation of others, of names and families not
contemptible. For such the villain always gloried to spread his snares.

The vileness of this specious monster has done more, than any other
consideration could do, to bring Mr. Hickman into credit with me. Mr.
Hickman alone knows (from me) of your flight, and the reason of it. Had
I not given him the reason, he might have thought still worse of the
vile attempt. I communicated it to him by showing him your letter from
Hampstead. When he had read it, [and he trembled and reddened, as he
read,] he threw himself at my feet, and besought me to permit him to
attend you, and to give you the protection of his house. The
good-natured man had tears in his eyes, and was repeatedly earnest on
this subject; proposing to take his chariot-and-four, or a set, and in
person, in the face of all the world, give himself the glory of
protecting such an oppressed innocent.

I could not but be pleased with him. And I let him know that I was. I
hardly expected so much spirit from him. But a man’s passiveness to a
beloved object of our sex may not, perhaps, argue want of courage on
proper occasions.

I thought I ought, in return, to have some consideration for his
safety, as such an open step would draw upon him the vengeance of the
most villanous enterpriser in the world, who has always a gang of
fellows, such as himself, at his call, ready to support one another in
the vilest outrages. But yet, as Mr. Hickman might have strengthened
his hands by legal recourses, I should not have stood upon it, had I
not known your delicacy, [since such a step must have made a great
noise, and given occasion for scandal, as if some advantage had been
gained over you,] and were there not the greatest probability that all
might be more silently, and more effectually, managed, by Mrs.
Townsend’s means.

Mrs. Townsend will in person attend you—she hopes, on Wednesday—her
brothers, and some of their people, will scatteringly, and as if they
knew nothing of you, [so we have contrived,] see you safe not only to
London, but to her house at Deptford.

She has a kinswoman, who will take your commands there, if she herself
be obliged to leave you. And there you may stay, till the wretch’s
fury, on losing you, and his search, are over.

He will very soon, ’tis likely, enter upon some new villany, which may
engross him: and it may be given out, that you are gone to lay claim to
the protection of your cousin Morden at Florence.

Possibly, if he can be made to believe it, he will go over, in hopes to
find you there.

After a while, I can procure you a lodging in one of our neighbouring
villages, where I may have the happiness to be your daily visiter. And
if this Hickman be not silly and apish, and if my mother do not do
unaccountable things, I may the sooner think of marrying, that I may,
without controul, receive and entertain the darling of my heart.

Many, very many, happy days do I hope we shall yet see together; and as
this is my hope, I expect that it will be your consolation.

As to your estate, since you are resolved not to litigate for it, we
will be patient, either till Colonel Morden arrives, or till shame
compels some people to be just.

Upon the whole, I cannot but think your prospects now much happier than
they could have been, had you been actually married to such a man as
this. I must therefore congratulate you upon your escape, not only from
a horrid libertine, but from so vile a husband, as he must have made to
any woman; but more especially to a person of your virtue and delicacy.

You hate him, heartily hate him, I hope, my dear—I am sure you do. It
would be strange, if so much purity of life and manners were not to
abhor what is so repugnant to itself.

In your letter before me, you mention one written to me for a feint.* I
have not received any such. Depend upon it, therefore, that he must
have it. And if he has, it is a wonder that he did not likewise get my
long one of the 7th. Heaven be praised that he did not; and that it
came safe to your hands!

* See Vol. V. Letters XXI. and XXII.

I send this by a young fellow, whose father is one of our tenants, with
command to deliver it to no other hands but your’s. He is to return
directly, if you give him any letter. If not, he will proceed to London
upon his own pleasures. He is a simple fellow; but very honest. So you
may say anything to him. If you write not by him, I desire a line or
two, as soon as possible.

My mother knows nothing of his going to you; nor yet of your abandoning
the fellow. Forgive me! But he is not entitled to good manners.

I shall long to hear how you and Mrs. Townsend order matters. I wish
she could have been with you sooner. But I have lost no time in
engaging her, as you will suppose. I refer to her, what I have further
to say and advise. So shall conclude with my prayers, that Heaven will
direct and protect my dearest creature, and make your future days
happy!

ANNA HOWE.

And now, Jack, I will suppose that thou hast read this cursed letter.
Allow me to make a few observations upon some of its contents.

It is strange to Miss Howe, that having got her friend at such a
shocking advantage, &c. And it is strange to me, too. If ever I have
such another opportunity given to me, the cause of both our wonder, I
believe, will cease.

So thou seest Tomlinson is further detected.—No such person as Mrs.
Fretchville.—May lightning from Heaven—O Lord, O Lord, O Lord!—What a
horrid vixen is this!—My gang, my remorseless gang, too, is brought
in—and thou wilt plead for these girls again; wilt thou? heaven be
praised, she says, that her friend is out of danger—Miss Howe should be
sure of that, and that she herself is safe.—But for this termagant, (as
I often said,) I must surely have made a better hand of it.—

New stories of me, Jack!—What can they be?—I have not found that my
generosity to my Rose-bud ever did me due credit with this pair of
friends. Very hard, Belford, that credits cannot be set against debits,
and a balance struck in a rake’s favour, as well as in that of every
common man!—But he, from whom no good is expected, is not allowed the
merit of the good he does.

I ought to have been a little more attentive to character than I have
been. For, notwithstanding that the measures of right and wrong are
said to be so manifest, let me tell thee, that character biases and
runs away with all mankind. Let a man or woman once establish
themselves in the world’s opinion, and all that either of them do will
be sanctified. Nay, in the very courts of justice, does not character
acquit or condemn as often as facts, and sometimes even in spite of
facts?—Yet, [impolitic that I have been and am!] to be so careless of
mine!—And now, I doubt, it is irretrievable.—But to leave moralizing.

Thou, Jack, knowest almost all my enterprises worth remembering. Can
this particular story, which this girl hints at, be that of Lucy
Villars?—Or can she have heard of my intrigue with the pretty gipsey,
who met me in Norwood, and of the trap I caught her cruel husband in,
[a fellow as gloomy and tyrannical as old Harlowe,] when he pursued a
wife, who would not have deserved ill of him, if he had deserved well
of her!—But he was not quite drowned. The man is alive at this day, and
Miss Howe mentions the story as a very shocking one. Besides, both
these are a twelve-month old, or more.

But evil fame and scandal are always new. When the offender has forgot
a vile fact, it is often told to one and to another, who, having never
heard of it before, trumpet it about as a novelty to others. But well
said the honest corregidor at Madrid, [a saying with which I encroached
Lord M.’s collection,]—Good actions are remembered but for a day: bad
ones for many years after the life of the guilty. Such is the relish
that the world has for scandal. In other words, such is the desire
which every one has to exculpate himself by blackening his neighbour.
You and I, Belford, have been very kind to the world, in furnishing it
with opportunities to gratify its devil.

[Miss Howe will abandon her own better prospects, and share fortunes
with her, were she to go abroad.]—Charming romancer!—I must set about
this girl, Jack. I have always had hopes of a woman whose passions
carry her to such altitudes.—Had I attacked Miss Howe first, her
passions, (inflamed and guided as I could have managed them,) would
have brought her into my lure in a fortnight.

But thinkest thou, [and yet I think thou dost,] that there is any thing
in these high flights among the sex?—Verily, Jack, these vehement
friendships are nothing but chaff and stubble, liable to be blown away
by the very wind that raises them. Apes, mere apes of us! they think
the word friendship has a pretty sound with it; and it is much talked
of—a fashionable word. And so, truly, a single woman, who thinks she
has a soul, and knows that she wants something, would be thought to
have found a fellow-soul for it in her own sex. But I repeat, that the
word is a mere word, the thing a mere name with them; a cork-bottomed
shuttle-cock, which they are fond of striking to and fro, to make one
another glow in the frosty weather of a single-state; but which, when a
man comes in between the pretended inseparables, is given up, like
their music and other maidenly amusements; which, nevertheless, may be
necessary to keep the pretty rogues out of active mischief. They then,
in short, having caught the fish, lay aside the net.*

* He alludes here to the story of a pope, who, (once a poor fisherman,)
through every preferment he rose to, even to that of the cardinalate,
hung up in view of all his guests his net, as a token of humility. But,
when he arrived at the pontificate, he took it down, saying, that there
was no need of the net, when he had caught the fish.

Thou hast a mind, perhaps, to make an exception for these two
ladies.—With all my heart. My Clarissa has, if woman has, a soul
capable of friendship. Her flame is bright and steady. But Miss Howe’s,
were it not kept up by her mother’s opposition, is too vehement to
endure. How often have I known opposition not only cement friendship,
but create love? I doubt not but poor Hickman would fare the better
with this vixen, if her mother were as heartily against him, as she is
for him.

Thus much, indeed, as to these two ladies, I will grant thee, that the
active spirit of the one, and the meek disposition of the other, may
make their friendship more durable than it would otherwise be; for this
is certain, that in every friendship, whether male or female, there
must be a man and a woman spirit, (that is to say, one of them must be
a forbearing one,) to make it permanent.

But this I pronounce, as a truth, which all experience confirms, that
friendship between women never holds to the sacrifice of capital
gratifications, or to the endangering of life, limb, or estate, as it
often does in our nobler sex.

Well, but next comes an indictment against poor beauty! What has beauty
done that Miss Howe should be offended at it?—Miss Howe, Jack, is a
charming girl. She has no reason to quarrel with beauty!—Didst ever see
her?—Too much fire and spirit in her eye, indeed, for a girl!—But
that’s no fault with a man that can lower that fire and spirit at
pleasure; and I know I am the man that can.

For my own part, when I was first introduced to this lady, which was by
my goddess when she herself was a visiter at Mrs. Howe’s, I had not
been half an hour with her, but I even hungered and thirsted after a
romping ’bout with the lively rogue; and, in the second or third visit,
was more deterred by the delicacy of her friend, than by what I
apprehended from her own. This charming creature’s presence, thought I,
awes us both. And I wished her absence, though any other woman were
present, that I might try the differences in Miss Howe’s behaviour
before her friend’s face, or behind her back.

Delicate women make delicate women, as well as decent men. With all
Miss Howe’s fire and spirit, it was easy to see, by her very eye, that
she watched for lessons and feared reproof from the penetrating eye of
her milder dispositioned friend;* and yet it was as easy to observe, in
the candour and sweet manners of the other, that the fear which Miss
Howe stood in of her, was more owing to her own generous apprehension
that she fell short of her excellencies, than to Miss Harlowe’s
consciousness of excellence over her. I have often since I came at Miss
Howe’s letters, revolved this just and fine praise contained in one of
them:** ‘Every one saw that the preference they gave you to themselves
exalted you not into any visible triumph over them; for you had always
something to say, on every point you carried, that raised the yielding
heart, and left every one pleased and satisfied with themselves, though
they carried not off the palm.’

* Miss Howe, in Vol. III. Letter XIX. says, That she was always more
afraid of Clarissa than of her mother; and, in Vol. III. Letter XLIV.
That she fears her almost as much as she loves her; and in many other
places, in her letters, verifies this observation of Lovelace. ** See
Vol. IV. Letter XXXI.

As I propose, in a more advanced life, to endeavour to atone for my
useful freedoms with individuals of the sex, by giving cautions and
instructions to the whole, I have made a memorandum to enlarge upon
this doctrine;—to wit, that it is full as necessary to direct daughters
in the choice of their female companions, as it is to guard them
against the designs of men.

I say not this, however, to the disparagement of Miss Howe. She has
from pride, what her friend has from principle. [The Lord help the sex,
if they had not pride!] But yet I am confident, that Miss Howe is
indebted to the conversation and correspondence of Miss Harlowe for her
highest improvements. But, both these ladies out of the question, I
make no scruple to aver, [and I, Jack, should know something of the
matter,] that there have been more girls ruined, at least prepared for
ruin, by their own sex, (taking in servants, as well as companions,)
than directly by the attempts and delusions of men.

But it is time enough when I am old and joyless, to enlarge upon this
topic.

As to the comparison between the two ladies, I will expatiate more on
that subject, (for I like it,) when I have had them both. Which this
letter of the vixen girl’s, I hope thou wilt allow, warrants me to try
for.

I return to the consideration of a few more of its contents, to justify
my vengeances so nearly now in view.

As to Mrs. Townsend,—her manlike spirit—her two brothers—and the ships’
crews—I say nothing but this to the insolent threatening—Let ’em
come!—But as to her sordid menace—To repay the horrid villain, as she
calls me, for all my vileness by BROKEN BONES!—Broken bones,
Belford!—Who can bear this porterly threatening!—Broken bones,
Jack!—D—n the little vulgar!—Give me a name for her—but I banish all
furious resentment. If I get these two girls into my power, Heaven
forbid that I should be a second Phalaris, who turned his bull upon the
artist!—No bones of their’s will I break—They shall come off with me
upon much lighter terms!—

But these fellows are smugglers, it seems. And am not I a smuggler
too?—I am—and have not the least doubt but I shall have secured my
goods before Thursday, or Wednesday either.

But did I want a plot, what a charming new one does this letter of Miss
Howe strike me out! I am almost sorry, that I have fixed upon one.—For
here, how easy would it be for me to assemble a crew of swabbers, and
to create a Mrs. Townsend (whose person, thou seest, my beloved knows
not) to come on Tuesday, at Miss Howe’s repeated solicitations, in
order to carry my beloved to a warehouse of my own providing?

This, however, is my triumphant hope, that at the very time that these
ragamuffins will be at Hampstead (looking for us) my dear Miss Harlowe
and I [so the Fates I imagine have ordained] shall be fast asleep in
each other’s arms in town.—Lie still, villain, till the time comes.—My
heart, Jack! my heart!—It is always thumping away on the remotest
prospects of this nature.

But it seems that the vileness of this specious monster [meaning me,
Jack!] has brought Hickman into credit with her. So I have done some
good! But to whom I cannot tell: for this poor fellow, should I permit
him to have this termagant, will be punished, as many times we all are,
by the enjoyment of his own wishes—nor can she be happy, as I take it,
with him, were he to govern himself by her will, and have none of his
own; since never was there a directing wife who knew where to stop:
power makes such a one wanton—she despises the man she can govern. Like
Alexander, who wept, that he had no more worlds to conquer, she will be
looking out for new exercises for her power, till she grow uneasy to
herself, a discredit to her husband, and a plague to all about her.

But this honest fellow, it seems, with tears in his eyes, and with
humble prostration, besought the vixen to permit him to set out in his
chariot-and-four, in order to give himself the glory of protecting such
an oppressed innocent, in the face of the whole world. Nay, he
reddened, it seems: and trembled too! as he read the fair complainant’s
letter.—How valiant is all this!—Women love brave men; and no wonder
that his tears, his trembling, and his prostration, gave him high
reputation with the meek Miss Howe.

But dost think, Jack, that I in the like case (and equally affected
with the distress) should have acted thus? Dost think, that I should
not first have rescued the lady, and then, if needful, have asked
excuse for it, the lady in my hand?—Wouldst not thou have done thus, as
well as I?

But, ’tis best as it is. Honest Hickman may now sleep in a whole skin.
And yet that is more perhaps than he would have done (the lady’s
deliverance unattempted) had I come at this requested permission of his
any other way than by a letter that it must not be known that I have
intercepted.

Miss Howe thinks I may be diverted from pursuing my charmer, by some
new-started villany. Villany is a word that she is extremely fond of.
But I can tell her, that it is impossible I should, till the end of
this villany be obtained. Difficulty is a stimulus with such a spirit
as mine. I thought Miss Howe knew me better. Were she to offer herself,
person for person, in the romancing zeal of her friendship, to save her
friend, it should not do, while the dear creature is on this side the
moon.

She thanks Heaven, that her friend has received her letter of the 7th.
We are all glad of it. She ought to thank me too. But I will not at
present claim her thanks.

But when she rejoices that the letter went safe, does she not, in
effect, call out for vengeance, and expect it!—All in good time, Miss
Howe. When settest thou out for the Isle of Wight, love?

I will close at this time with desiring thee to make a list of the
virulent terms with which the enclosed letter abounds: and then, if
thou supposest that I have made such another, and have added to it all
the flowers of the same blow, in the former letters of the same saucy
creature, and those in that of Miss Harlowe, which she left for me on
her elopement, thou wilt certainly think, that I have provocations
sufficient to justify me in all that I shall do to either.

Return the enclosed the moment thou hast perused it.




 LETTER VIII


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. SUNDAY NIGHT—MONDAY MORNING.

I went down with revenge in my heart, the contents of Miss Howe’s
letter almost engrossing me, the moment that Miss Harlowe and Mrs.
Moore (accompanied by Miss Rawlins) came in: but in my countenance all
the gentle, the placid, the serene, that the glass could teach; and in
my behaviour all the polite, that such an unpolite creature, as she has
often told me I am, could put on.

Miss Rawlins was sent for home almost as soon as she came in, to
entertain an unexpected visiter; to her great regret, as well as to the
disappointment of my fair-one, as I could perceive from the looks of
both: for they had agreed, it seems, if I went to town, as I said I
intended to do, to take a walk upon the Heath, at least in Mrs. Moore’s
garden; and who knows, what might have been the issue, had the spirit
of curiosity in the one met with the spirit of communication in the
other?

Miss Rawlins promised to return, if possible: but sent to excuse
herself: her visiter intending to stay with her all night.

I rejoiced in my heart at her message; and, after much supplication,
obtained the favour of my beloved’s company for another walk in the
garden, having, as I told her, abundance of things to say, to propose,
and to be informed of, in order ultimately to govern myself in my
future steps.

She had vouchsafed, I should have told thee, with eyes turned from me,
and in a half-aside attitude, to sip two dishes of tea in my
company—Dear soul!—How anger unpolishes the most polite! for I never
saw Miss Harlowe behave so awkwardly. I imagined she knew not how to be
awkward.

When we were in the garden, I poured my whole soul into her attentive
ear; and besought her returning favour.

She told me, that she had formed her scheme for her future life: that,
vile as the treatment was which she had received from me, that was not
all the reason she had for rejecting my suit: but that, on the maturest
deliberation, she was convinced that she could neither be happy with
me, nor make me happy; and she injoined me, for both our sakes, to
think no more of her.

The Captain, I told her, was rid down post, in a manner, to forward my
wishes with her uncle.—Lady Betty and Miss Montague were undoubtedly
arrived in town by this time. I would set out early in the morning to
attend them. They adored her. They longed to see her. They would see
her.—They would not be denied her company in Oxfordshire. Whither could
she better go, to be free from her brother’s insults?—Whither, to be
absolutely made unapprehensive of any body else?—Might I have any hopes
of her returning favour, if Miss Howe could be prevailed upon to
intercede for me?

Miss Howe prevailed upon to intercede for you! repeated she, with a
scornful bridle, but a very pretty one.—And there she stopt.

I repeated the concern it would be to me to be under a necessity of
mentioning the misunderstanding to Lady Betty and my cousin, as a
misunderstanding still to be made up; and as if I were of very little
consequence to a dear creature who was of so much to me; urging, that
these circumstances would extremely lower me not only in my own
opinion, but in that of my relations.

But still she referred to Miss Howe’s next letter; and all the
concession I could bring her to in this whole conference, was, that she
would wait the arrival and visit of the two ladies, if they came in a
day or two, or before she received the expected letter from Miss Howe.

Thank Heaven for this! thought I. And now may I go to town with hopes
at my return to find thee, dearest, where I shall leave thee.

But yet, as she may find reasons to change her mind in my absence, I
shall not entirely trust to this. My fellow, therefore, who is in the
house, and who, by Mrs. Bevis’s kind intelligence, will know every step
she can take, shall have Andrew and a horse ready, to give me immediate
notice of her motions; and moreover, go whither she will, he shall be
one of her retinue, though unknown to herself, if possible.

This was all I could make of the fair inexorable. Should I be glad of
it, or sorry for it?—

Glad I believe: and yet my pride is confoundedly abated, to think that
I had so little hold in the affections of this daughter of the
Harlowes.

Don’t tell me that virtue and principle are her guides on this
occasion!—’Tis pride, a greater pride than my own, that governs her.
Love, she has none, thou seest; nor ever had; at least not in a
superior degree. Love, that deserves the name, never was under the
dominion of prudence, or of any reasoning power. She cannot bear to be
thought a woman, I warrant! And if, in the last attempt, I find her not
one, what will she be the worse for the trial?—No one is to blame for
suffering an evil he cannot shun or avoid.

Were a general to be overpowered, and robbed by a highwayman, would he
be less fit for the command of an army on that account?—If indeed the
general, pretending great valour, and having boasted that he never
would be robbed, were to make but faint resistance when he was brought
to the test, and to yield his purse when he was master of his own
sword, then indeed will the highwayman who robs him be thought the
braver man.

But from these last conferences am I furnished with one argument in
defence of my favourite purpose, which I never yet pleaded.

O Jack! what a difficulty must a man be allowed to have to conquer a
predominant passion, be it what it will, when the gratifying of it is
in his power, however wrong he knows it to be to resolve to gratify it!
Reflect upon this; and then wilt thou be able to account for, if not to
excuse, a projected crime, which has habit to plead for it, in a breast
as stormy as uncontroulable!

This that follows is my new argument—

Should she fail in the trial; should I succeed; and should she refuse
to go on with me; and even resolve not to marry me (of which I can have
no notion); and should she disdain to be obliged to me for the handsome
provision I should be proud to make for her, even to the half of my
estate; yet cannot she be altogether unhappy—Is she not entitled to an
independent fortune? Will not Col. Morden, as her trustee, put her in
possession of it? And did she not in our former conference point out
the way of life, that she always preferred to the married life—to wit,
‘To take her good Norton for her directress and guide, and to live upon
her own estate in the manner her grandfather desired she should live?’*

* See Letter III. of this volume.

It is moreover to be considered that she cannot, according to her own
notions, recover above one half of her fame, were we not to intermarry;
so much does she think she has suffered by her going off with me. And
will she not be always repining and mourning for the loss of the other
half?—And if she must live a life of such uneasiness and regret for
half, may she not as well repine and mourn for the whole?

Nor, let me tell thee, will her own scheme or penitence, in this case,
be half so perfect, if she do not fall, as if she does: for what a
foolish penitent will she make, who has nothing to repent of!—She
piques herself, thou knowest, and makes it matter of reproach to me,
that she went not off with me by her own consent; but was tricked out
of herself.

Nor upbraid thou me upon the meditated breach of vows so repeatedly
made. She will not, thou seest, permit me to fulfil them. And if she
would, this I have to say, that, at the time I made the most solemn of
them, I was fully determined to keep them. But what prince thinks
himself obliged any longer to observe the articles of treaties, the
most sacredly sworn to, than suits with his interest or inclination;
although the consequence of the infraction must be, as he knows, the
destruction of thousands.

Is not this then the result of all, that Miss Clarissa Harlowe, if it
be not her own fault, may be as virtuous after she has lost her honour,
as it is called, as she was before? She may be a more eminent example
to her sex; and if she yield (a little yield) in the trial, may be a
completer penitent. Nor can she, but by her own wilfulness, be reduced
to low fortunes.

And thus may her old nurse and she; an old coachman; and a pair of old
coach-horses; and two or three old maid-servants, and perhaps a very
old footman or two, (for every thing will be old and penitential about
her,) live very comfortably together; reading old sermons, and old
prayer-books; and relieving old men and old women; and giving old
lessons, and old warnings, upon new subjects, as well as old ones, to
the young ladies of her neighbourhood; and so pass on to a good old
age, doing a great deal of good both by precept and example in her
generation.

And is a woman who can live thus prettily without controul; who ever
did prefer, and who still prefers, the single to the married life; and
who will be enabled to do every thing that the plan she had formed will
direct her to do; to be said to be ruined, undone, and such sort of
stuff?—I have no patience with the pretty fools, who use those strong
words, to describe a transitory evil; an evil which a mere church-form
makes none?

At this rate of romancing, how many flourishing ruins dost thou, as
well as I, know? Let us but look about us, and we shall see some of the
haughtiest and most censorious spirits among our acquaintance of that
sex now passing for chaste wives, of whom strange stories might be
told; and others, whose husbands’ hearts have been made to ache for
their gaieties, both before and after marriage; and yet know not half
so much of them, as some of us honest fellows could tell them.

But, having thus satisfied myself in relation to the worst that can
happen to this charming creature; and that it will be her own fault, if
she be unhappy; I have not at all reflected upon what is likely to be
my own lot.

This has always been my notion, though Miss Howe grudges us rakes the
best of the sex, and says, that the worst is too good for us,* that the
wife of a libertine ought to be pure, spotless, uncontaminated. To what
purpose has such a one lived a free life, but to know the world, and to
make his advantages of it!—And, to be very serious, it would be a
misfortune to the public for two persons, heads of a family, to be both
bad; since, between two such, a race of varlets might be propagated
(Lovelaces and Belfords, if thou wilt) who might do great mischief in
the world.

Thou seest at bottom that I am not an abandoned fellow; and that there
is a mixture of gravity in me. This, as I grow older, may increase; and
when my active capacity begins to abate, I may sit down with the
preacher, and resolve all my past life into vanity and vexation of
spirit.

This is certain, that I shall never find a woman so well suited to my
taste as Miss Clarissa Harlowe. I only wish that I may have such a lady
as her to comfort and adorn my setting sun. I have often thought it
very unhappy for us both, that so excellent a creature sprang up a
little too late for my setting out, and a little too early in my
progress, before I can think of returning. And yet, as I have picked up
the sweet traveller in my way, I cannot help wishing that she would
bear me company in the rest of my journey, although she were stepping
out of her own path to oblige me. And then, perhaps, we could put up in
the evening at the same inn; and be very happy in each other’s
conversation; recounting the difficulties and dangers we had passed in
our way to it.

I imagine that thou wilt be apt to suspect that some passages in this
letter were written in town. Why, Jack, I cannot but say that the
Westminster air is a little grosser than that at Hampstead; and the
conversation of Mrs. Sinclair and the nymphs less innocent than Mrs.
Moore’s and Miss Rawlins’s. And I think in my heart I can say and write
those things at one place which I cannot at the other, nor indeed any
where else.

I came to town about seven this morning—all necessary directions and
precautions remembered to be given.

I besought the favour of an audience before I set out. I was desirous
to see which of her lovely faces she was pleased to put on, after
another night had passed. But she was resolved, I found, to leave our
quarrel open. She would not give me an opportunity so much as to
entreat her again to close it, before the arrival of Lady Betty and my
cousin.

I had notice from my proctor, by a few lines brought by a man and
horse, just before I set out, that all difficulties had been for two
days past surmounted; and that I might have the license for fetching.

I sent up the letter to my beloved, by Mrs. Bevis, with a repeated
request for admittance to her presence upon it; but neither did this
stand me in stead. I suppose she thought it would be allowing of the
consequences that were naturally to be expected to follow the obtaining
of this instrument, if she had consented to see me on the contents of
this letter, having refused me that honour before I sent it up to
her.—No surprising her.—No advantage to be taken of her inattention to
the nicest circumstances.

And now, Belford, I set out upon business.




 LETTER IX


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. MONDAY, JUNE 12.

Durst ever see a license, Jack?

‘Edmund, by divine permission, Lord Bishop of London, to our
well-beloved in Christ, Robert Lovelace, [your servant, my good Lord!
What have I done to merit so much goodness, who never saw your Lordship
in my life?] of the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields, bachelor, and
Clarissa Harlowe, of the same parish, spinster, sendeth
greeting.—WHEREAS ye are, as is alleged, determined to enter into the
holy state of Matrimony [this is only alleged, thou observest] by and
with the consent of, &c. &c. &c. and are very desirous of obtaining
your marriage to be solemnized in the face of the church: We are
willing that your honest desires [honest desires, Jack!] may more
speedily have their due effect: and therefore, that ye may be able to
procure such Marriage to be freely and lawfully solemnized in the
parish church of St. Martin’s in the Fields, or St. Giles’s in the
Fields, in the county of Middlesex, by the Rector, Vicar, or Curate
thereof, at any time of the year, [at ANY time of the year, Jack!]
without publication of bans: Provided, that by reason of any
pre-contract, [I verily think that I have had three or four
pre-contracts in my time; but the good girls have not claimed upon them
of a long while,] consanguinity, affinity, or any other lawful cause
whatsoever, there be no lawful impediment on this behalf; and that
there be not at this time any action, suit, plaint, quarrel, or demand,
moved or depending before any judge ecclesiastical or temporal, for or
concerning any marriage contracted by or with either of you; and that
the said marriage be openly solemnized in the church above-mentioned,
between the hours of eight and twelve in the forenoon; and without
prejudice to the minister of the place where the said woman is a
parishioner: We do hereby, for good causes, [it cost me—let me see,
Jack—what did it cost me?] give and grant our License, as well to you
as to the parties contracting, as to the Rector, Vicar, or Curate of
the said church, where the said marriage is intended to be solemnized,
to solemnize the same, in manner and form above specified, according to
the rites and ceremonies prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer in
that behalf published by authority of Parliament. Provided always, that
if hereafter any fraud shall appear to have been committed, at the time
of granting this License, either by false suggestions, or concealment
of the truth, [now this, Belford, is a little hard upon us; for I
cannot say that every one of our suggestions is literally true:—so, in
good conscience, I ought not to marry under this License;] the License
shall be void to all intents and purposes, as if the same had not been
granted. And in that case we do inhibit all ministers whatsoever, if
any thing of the premises shall come to their knowledge, from
proceeding to the celebration of the said Marriage; without first
consulting Us, or our Vicar-general. Given,’ &c.

Then follow the register’s name, and a large pendent seal, with these
words round it—SEAL OF THE VICAR-GENERAL AND OFFICIAL PRINCIPAL OF THE
DIOCESE OF LONDON.

A good whimsical instrument, take it altogether! But what, thinkest
thou, are the arms to this matrimonial harbinger?—Why, in the first
place, two crossed swords; to show that marriage is a state of offence
as well as defence; three lions; to denote that those who enter into
the state ought to have a triple proportion of courage. And [couldst
thou have imagined that these priestly fellows, in so solemn a case,
would cut their jokes upon poor souls who came to have their honest
desires put in a way to be gratified;] there are three crooked horns,
smartly top-knotted with ribands; which being the ladies’ wear, seem to
indicate that they may very probably adorn, as well as bestow, the
bull’s feather.

To describe it according to heraldry art, if I am not mistaken—gules,
two swords, saltire-wise, or; second coat, a chevron sable between
three bugle-horns, OR [so it ought to be]: on a chief of the second,
three lions rampant of the first—but the devil take them for their
hieroglyphics, should I say, if I were determined in good earnest to
marry!

And determined to marry I would be, were it not for this consideration,
that once married, and I am married for life.

That’s the plague of it!—Could a man do as the birds do, change every
Valentine’s day, [a natural appointment! for birds have not the sense,
forsooth, to fetter themselves, as we wiseacre men take great and
solemn pains to do,] there would be nothing at all in it. And what a
glorious time would the lawyers have, on the one hand, with their
_noverini universi’s_, and suits commenceable on restitution of goods
and chattels; and the parsons, on the other, with their indulgencies
[renewable annually, as other licenses] to the honest desires of their
clients?

Then, were a stated mullet, according to rank or fortune, to be paid on
every change, towards the exigencies of the state [but none on renewals
with the old lives, for the sake of encouraging constancy, especially
among the _minores_] the change would be made sufficiently difficult,
and the whole public would be the better for it; while those children,
which the parents could not agree about maintaining, might be
considered as the children of the public, and provided for like the
children of the antient Spartans; who were (as ours would in this case
be) a nation of heroes. How, Jack, could I have improved upon
Lycurgus’s institutions had I been a lawgiver!

Did I never show thee a scheme which I drew up on such a notion as
this?—In which I demonstrated the conveniencies, and obviated the
inconveniencies, of changing the present mode to this? I believe I
never did.

I remember I proved to a demonstration, that such a change would be a
mean of annihilating, absolutely annihilating, four or five very
atrocious and capital sins.—Rapes, vulgarly so called; adultery, and
fornication; nor would polygamy be panted after. Frequently would it
prevent murders and duelling; hardly any such thing as jealousy (the
cause of shocking violences) would be heard of: and hypocrisy between
man and wife be banished the bosoms of each. Nor, probably, would the
reproach of barrenness rest, as it now too often does, where it is
least deserved.—Nor would there possibly be such a person as a barren
woman.

Moreover, what a multitude of domestic quarrels would be avoided, where
such a scheme carried into execution? Since both sexes would bear with
each other, in the view that they could help themselves in a few
months.

And then what a charming subject for conversation would be the gallant
and generous last partings between man and wife! Each, perhaps, a new
mate in eye, and rejoicing secretly in the manumission, could afford to
be complaisantly sorrowful in appearance. ‘He presented her with this
jewel, it will be said by the reporter, for example sake: she him with
that. How he wept! How she sobb’d! How they looked after one another!’
Yet, that’s the jest of it, neither of them wishing to stand another
twelvemonth’s trial.

And if giddy fellows, or giddy girls, misbehave in a first marriage,
whether from noviceship, having expected to find more in the matter
than can be found; or from perverseness on her part, or positiveness on
his, each being mistaken in the other [a mighty difference, Jack, in
the same person, an inmate or a visiter]; what a fine opportunity will
each have, by this scheme, of recovering a lost character, and of
setting all right in the next adventure?

And, O Jack! with what joy, with what rapture, would the changelings
(or changeables, if thou like that word better) number the weeks, the
days, the hours, as the annual obligation approached to its desirable
period!

As for the spleen or vapours, no such malady would be known or heard
of. The physical tribe would, indeed, be the sufferers, and the only
sufferers; since fresh health and fresh spirits, the consequences of
sweet blood and sweet humours (the mind and body continually pleased
with each other) would perpetually flow in; and the joys of
expectation, the highest of all our joys, would invigorate and keep all
alive.

But, that no body of men might suffer, the physicians, I thought, might
turn parsons, as there would be a great demand for parsons. Besides, as
they would be partakers in the general benefit, they must be sorry
fellows indeed if they preferred themselves to the public.

Every one would be married a dozen times at least. Both men and women
would be careful of their characters and polite in their behaviour, as
well as delicate in their persons, and elegant in their dress, [a great
matter each of these, let me tell thee, to keep passion alive,] either
to induce a renewal with the old love, or to recommend themselves to a
new. While the newspapers would be crowded with paragraphs; all the
world their readers, as all the world would be concerned to see who and
who’s together—

‘Yesterday, for instance, entered into the holy state of matrimony,’
[we should all speak reverently of matrimony, then,] ‘the right
Honourable Robert Earl Lovelace’ [I shall be an earl by that time,]
‘with her Grace the Duchess Dowager of Fifty-manors; his Lordship’s
one-and-thirtieth wife.’—I shall then be contented, perhaps, to take
up, as it is called, with a widow. But she must not have had more than
one husband neither. Thou knowest that I am nice in these particulars.

I know, Jack, that thou for thy part, wilt approve of my scheme.

As Lord M. and I, between us, have three or four boroughs at command, I
think I will get into parliament, in order to bring in a bill for this
good purpose.

Neither will the house of parliament, nor the houses of convocation,
have reason to object it. And all the courts, whether spiritual or
sensual, civil or uncivil, will find their account in it when passed
into a law.

By my soul, Jack, I should be apprehensive of a general insurrection,
and that incited by the women, were such a bill to be thrown out.—For
here is the excellency of the scheme: the women will have equal reason
with the men to be pleased with it.

Dost think, that old prerogative Harlowe, for example, must not, if
such a law were in being, have pulled in his horns?—So excellent a wife
as he has, would never else have renewed with such a gloomy tyrant:
who, as well as all other married tyrants, must have been upon good
behaviour from year to year.

A termagant wife, if such a law were to pass, would be a phoenix.

The churches would be the only market-place for the fair sex; and
domestic excellence the capital recommendation.

Nor would there be an old maid in Great Britain, and all its
territories. For what an odd soul must she be who could not have her
twelvemonth’s trial?

In short, a total alteration for the better, in the morals and way of
life in both sexes, must, in a very few years, be the consequence of
such a salutary law.

Who would have expected such a one from me! I wish the devil owe me not
a spite for it.

Then would not the distinction be very pretty, Jack? as in
flowers;—such a gentleman, or such a lady, is an ANNUAL—such a one is a
PERENNIAL.

One difficulty, however, as I remember, occurred to me, upon the
probability that a wife might be _enceinte_, as the lawyers call it.
But thus I obviated it—

That no man should be allowed to marry another woman without his then
wife’s consent, till she were brought-to-bed, and he had defrayed all
incident charges; and till it was agreed upon between them whether the
child should be his, her’s, or the public’s. The women in this case to
have what I call the coercive option; for I would not have it in the
man’s power to be a dog neither.

And, indeed, I gave the turn of the scale in every part of my scheme in
the women’s favour: for dearly do I love the sweet rogues.

How infinitely more preferable this my scheme to the polygamy one of
the old patriarchs; who had wives and concubines without number!—I
believe David and Solomon had their hundreds at a time. Had they not,
Jack?

Let me add, that annual parliaments, and annual marriages, are the
projects next my heart. How could I expatiate upon the benefits that
would arise from both!




 LETTER X


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.


Well, but now my plots thicken; and my employment of writing to thee on
this subject will soon come to a conclusion. For now, having got the
license; and Mrs. Townsend with her tars, being to come to Hampstead
next Wednesday or Thursday; and another letter possibly, or message
from Miss Howe, to inquire how Miss Harlowe does, upon the rustic’s
report of her ill health, and to express her wonder that she has not
heard from her in answer to her’s on her escape; I must soon blow up
the lady, or be blown up myself. And so I am preparing, with Lady Betty
and my cousin Montague, to wait upon my beloved with a coach-and-four,
or a sett; for Lady Betty will not stir out with a pair for the world;
though but for two or three miles. And this is a well-known part of her
character.

But as to the arms and crest upon the coach and trappings?

Dost thou not know that a Blunt’s must supply her, while her own is new
lining and repairing? An opportunity she is willing to take now she is
in town. Nothing of this kind can be done to her mind in the country.
Liveries nearly Lady Betty’s.

Thou hast seen Lady Betty Lawrance several times—hast thou not,
Belford?

No, never in my life.

But thou hast—and lain with her too; or fame does thee more credit than
thou deservest—Why, Jack, knowest thou not Lady Betty’s other name?

Other name!—Has she two?

She has. And what thinkest thou of Lady Bab. Wallis?

O the devil!

Now thou hast it. Lady Barbara thou knowest, lifted up in
circumstances, and by pride, never appears or produces herself, but on
occasions special—to pass to men of quality or price, for a duchess, or
countess, at least. She has always been admired for a grandeur in her
air, that few women of quality can come up to; and never was supposed
to be other than what she passed for; though often and often a paramour
for lords.

And who, thinkest thou, is my cousin Montague?

Nay, how should I know?

How indeed! Why, my little Johanetta Golding, a lively, yet
modest-looking girl, is my cousin Montague.

There, Belford, is an aunt!—There’s a cousin!—Both have wit at will.
Both are accustomed to ape quality.—Both are genteelly descended.
Mistresses of themselves, and well educated—yet past pity.—True Spartan
dames; ashamed of nothing but detection—always, therefore, upon their
guard against that. And in their own conceit, when assuming top parts,
the very quality they ape.

And how dost think I dress them out?—I’ll tell thee.

Lady Betty in a rich gold tissue, adorned with jewels of high price.

My cousin Montague in a pale pink, standing on end with silver flowers
of her own working. Charlotte as well as my beloved is admirable at her
needle. Not quite so richly jewell’d out as Lady Betty; but ear-rings
and solitaire very valuable, and infinitely becoming.

Johanetta, thou knowest, has a good complexion, a fine neck, and ears
remarkably fine—so has Charlotte. She is nearly of Charlotte’s stature
too.

Laces both, the richest that could be procured.

Thou canst not imagine what a sum the loan of the jewels cost me,
though but for three days.

This sweet girl will half ruin me. But seest thou not, by this time,
that her reign is short!—It must be so. And Mrs. Sinclair has already
prepared every thing for her reception once more.


Here come the ladies—attended by Susan Morrison, a tenant-farmer’s
daughter, as Lady Betty’s woman; with her hands before her, and
thoroughly instructed.

How dress advantages women!—especially those who have naturally a
genteel air and turn, and have had education.

Hadst thou seen how they paraded it—Cousin, and Cousin, and Nephew, at
every word; Lady Betty bridling and looking
haughtily-condescending.—Charlotte galanting her fan, and swimming over
the floor without touching it.

How I long to see my niece-elect! cries one—for they are told that we
are not married; and are pleased that I have not put the slight upon
them that they had apprehended from me.

How I long to see my dear cousin that is to be, the other!

Your La’ship, and your La’ship, and an awkward courtesy at every
address—prim Susan Morrison.

Top your parts, ye villains!—You know how nicely I distinguish. There
will be no passion in this case to blind the judgment, and to help on
meditated delusion, as when you engage with titled sinners. My charmer
is as cool and as distinguishing, though not quite so learned in her
own sex, as I am. Your commonly-assumed dignity won’t do for me now.
Airs of superiority, as if born to rank.—But no over-do!—Doubting
nothing. Let not your faces arraign your hearts.

Easy and unaffected!—Your very dresses will give you pride enough.

A little graver, Lady Betty.—More significance, less bridling in your
dignity.

That’s the air! Charmingly hit——Again——You have it.

Devil take you!—Less arrogance. You are got into airs of young quality.
Be less sensible of your new condition. People born to dignity command
respect without needing to require it.

Now for your part, Cousin Charlotte!—

Pretty well. But a little too frolicky that air.—Yet have I prepared my
beloved to expect in you both great vivacity and quality-freedom.

Curse those eyes!—Those glancings will never do. A down-cast bashful
turn, if you can command it. Look upon me. Suppose me now to be my
beloved.

Devil take that leer. Too significantly arch!—Once I knew you the girl
I would now have you to be.

Sprightly, but not confident, cousin Charlotte!—Be sure forget not to
look down, or aside, when looked at. When eyes meet eyes, be your’s the
retreating ones. Your face will bear examination.

O Lord! Lord! that so young a creature can so soon forget the innocent
appearance she first charmed by; and which I thought born with you
all!—Five years to ruin what twenty had been building up! How natural
the latter lesson! How difficult to regain the former!

A stranger, as I hope to be saved, to the principal arts of your
sex!—Once more, what a devil has your heart to do in your eyes?

Have I not told you, that my beloved is a great observer of the eyes?
She once quoted upon me a text,* which showed me how she came by her
knowledge—Dorcas’s were found guilty of treason the first moment she
saw her.

* Eccles. xxvi. The whoredom of a woman may be known in her haughty
looks and eye-lids. Watch over an impudent eye, and marvel not if it
trespass against thee.

Once more, suppose me to be my charmer.—Now you are to encounter my
examining eye, and my doubting heart—

That’s my dear!

Study that air in the pier-glass!—

Charmingly!—Perfectly right!

Your honours, now, devils!—

Pretty well, Cousin Charlotte, for a young country lady! Till form
yields to familiarity, you may courtesy low. You must not be supposed
to have forgot your boarding-school airs.

But too low, too low Lady Betty, for your years and your quality. The
common fault of your sex will be your danger: aiming to be young too
long!—The devil’s in you all, when you judge of yourselves by your
wishes, and by your vanity! Fifty, in that case, is never more than
fifteen.

Graceful ease, conscious dignity, like that of my charmer, Oh! how hard
to hit!

Both together now—

Charming!—That’s the air, Lady Betty!—That’s the cue, Cousin Charlotte,
suited to the character of each!—But, once more, be sure to have a
guard upon your eyes.

Never fear, Nephew!—

Never fear, Cousin.

A dram of Barbadoes each—

And now we are gone—




 LETTER XI


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. AT MRS. SINCLAIR’S, MONDAY
AFTERNOON.

All’s right, as heart can wish!—In spite of all objection—in spite of a
reluctance next to faintings—in spite of all foresight, vigilance,
suspicion—once more is the charmer of my soul in her old lodgings!

Now throbs away every pulse! Now thump, thump, thumps my bounding heart
for something!

But I have not time for the particulars of our management.

My beloved is now directing some of her clothes to be packed up—never
more to enter this house! Nor ever more will she, I dare say, when once
again out of it!

Yet not so much as a condition of forgiveness!—The Harlowe-spirited
fair-one will not deserve my mercy!—She will wait for Miss Howe’s next
letter; and then, if she find a difficulty in her new schemes, [Thank
her for nothing,]—will—will what? Why even then will take time to
consider, whether I am to be forgiven, or for ever rejected. An
indifference that revives in my heart the remembrance of a thousand of
the like nature.—And yet Lady Betty and Miss Montague, [a man would be
tempted to think, Jack, that they wish her to provoke my vengeance,]
declare, that I ought to be satisfied with such a proud suspension!

They are entirely attached to her. Whatever she says, is, must be,
gospel! They are guarantees for her return to Hampstead this night.
They are to go back with her. A supper bespoken by Lady Betty at Mrs.
Moore’s. All the vacant apartments there, by my permission, (for I had
engaged them for a month certain,) to be filled with them and their
attendants, for a week at least, or till they can prevail upon the dear
perverse, as they hope they shall, to restore me to her favour, and to
accompany Lady Betty to Oxfordshire.

The dear creature has thus far condescended—that she will write to Miss
Howe and acquaint her with the present situation of things.

If she write, I shall see what she writes. But I believe she will have
other employment soon.

Lady Betty is sure, she tells her, that she shall prevail upon her to
forgive me; though she dares say, that I deserve not forgiveness. Lady
Betty is too delicate to inquire strictly into the nature of my
offence. But it must be an offence against herself, against Miss
Montague, against the virtuous of the whole sex, or it could not be so
highly resented. Yet she will not leave her till she forgive me, and
till she see our nuptials privately celebrated. Mean time, as she
approves of her uncle’s expedient, she will address her as already my
wife before strangers.

Stedman, her solicitor, may attend her for orders in relation to her
chancery affair, at Hampstead. Not one hour they can be favoured with,
will they lose from the company and conversation of so dear, so
charming a new relation.

Hard then if she had not obliged them with her company in their
coach-and-four, to and from their cousin Leeson’s, who longed, (as they
themselves had done,) to see a lady so justly celebrated.

‘How will Lord M. be raptured when he sees her, and can salute her as
his niece!

‘How will Lady Sarah bless herself!—She will now think her loss of the
dear daughter she mourns for happily supplied!’

Miss Montague dwells upon every word that falls from her lips. She
perfectly adores her new cousin—‘For her cousin she must be. And her
cousin will she call her! She answers for equal admiration in her
sister Patty.

‘Ay, cry I, (whispering loud enough for her to hear,) how will my
cousin Patty’s dove’s eyes glisten and run over, on the very first
interview!—So gracious, so noble, so unaffected a dear creature!’

‘What a happy family,’ chorus we all, ‘will our’s be!’

These and such like congratulatory admirations every hour repeated. Her
modesty hurt by the ecstatic praises:—‘Her graces are too natural to
herself for her to be proud of them: but she must be content to be
punished for excellencies that cast a shade upon the most excellent!’

In short, we are here, as at Hampstead, all joy and rapture—all of us
except my beloved; in whose sweet face, [her almost fainting reluctance
to re-enter these doors not overcome,] reigns a kind of anxious
serenity!—But how will even that be changed in a few hours!

Methinks I begin to pity the half-apprehensive beauty!—But avaunt, thou
unseasonably-intruding pity! Thou hast more than once already well nigh
undone me! And, adieu, reflection! Begone, consideration! and
commiseration! I dismiss ye all, for at least a week to come!—But
remembered her broken word! Her flight, when my fond soul was
meditating mercy to her!—Be remembered her treatment of me in her
letter on her escape to Hampstead! Her Hampstead virulence! What is it
she ought not to expect from an unchained Beelzebub, and a plotting
villain?

Be her preference of the single life to me also remembered!—That she
despises me!—That she even refuses to be my WIFE!—A proud Lovelace to
be denied a wife!—To be more proudly rejected by a daughter of the
Harlowes!—The ladies of my own family, [she thinks them the ladies of
my family,] supplicating in vain for her returning favour to their
despised kinsman, and taking laws from her still prouder punctilio!

Be the execrations of her vixen friend likewise remembered, poured out
upon me from her representations, and thereby made her own execrations!

Be remembered still more particularly the Townsend plot, set on foot
between them, and now, in a day or two, ready to break out; and the
sordid threatening thrown out against me by that little fury!

Is not this the crisis for which I have been long waiting? Shall
Tomlinson, shall these women be engaged; shall so many engines be set
at work, at an immense expense, with infinite contrivance; and all to
no purpose?

Is not this the hour of her trial—and in her, of the trial of the
virtue of her whole sex, so long premeditated, so long
threatened?—Whether her frost be frost indeed? Whether her virtue be
principle? Whether, if once subdued, she will not be always subdued?
And will she not want the crown of her glory, the proof of her till now
all-surpassing excellence, if I stop short of the ultimate trial?

Now is the end of purposes long over-awed, often suspended, at hand.
And need I go throw the sins of her cursed family into the too-weighty
scale?

[Abhorred be force!—be the thoughts of force!—There’s no triumph over
the will in force!] This I know I have said.* But would I not have
avoided it, if I could? Have I not tried every other method? And have I
any other resource left me? Can she resent the last outrage more than
she has resented a fainter effort?—And if her resentments run ever so
high, cannot I repair by matrimony?—She will not refuse me, I know,
Jack: the haughty beauty will not refuse me, when her pride of being
corporally inviolate is brought down; when she can tell no tales, but
when, (be her resistance what it will,) even her own sex will suspect a
yielding in resistance; and when that modesty, which may fill her bosom
with resentment, will lock up her speech.

* Vol. IV. Letter XLVIII.

But how know I, that I have not made my own difficulties? Is she not a
woman! What redress lies for a perpetuated evil? Must she not live? Her
piety will secure her life.—And will not time be my friend! What, in a
word, will be her behaviour afterwards?—She cannot fly me!—She must
forgive me—and as I have often said, once forgiven, will be for ever
forgiven.

Why then should this enervating pity unsteel my foolish heart?

It shall not. All these things will I remember; and think of nothing
else, in order to keep up a resolution, which the women about me will
have it I shall be still unable to hold.

I’ll teach the dear, charming creature to emulate me in contrivance;
I’ll teach her to weave webs and plots against her conqueror! I’ll show
her, that in her smuggling schemes she is but a spider compared to me,
and that she has all this time been spinning only a cobweb!


What shall we do now! we are immersed in the depth of grief and
apprehension! How ill do women bear disappointment!—Set upon going to
Hampstead, and upon quitting for ever a house she re-entered with
infinite reluctance; what things she intended to take with her ready
packed up, herself on tiptoe to be gone, and I prepared to attend her
thither; she begins to be afraid that she shall not go this night; and
in grief and despair has flung herself into her old apartment; locked
herself in; and through the key-hole Dorcas sees her on her knees,
praying, I suppose, for a safe deliverance.

And from what? and wherefore these agonizing apprehensions?

Why, here, this unkind Lady Betty, with the dear creature’s knowledge,
though to her concern, and this mad-headed cousin Montague without it,
while she was employed in directing her package, have hurried away in
the coach to their own lodgings, [only, indeed, to put up some
night-clothes, and so forth, in order to attend their sweet cousin to
Hampstead;] and, no less to my surprise than her’s, are not yet
returned.

I have sent to know the meaning of it.

In a great hurry of spirits, she would have had me to go myself. Hardly
any pacifying her! The girl, God bless her! is wild with her own idle
apprehensions! What is she afraid of?

I curse them both for their delay. My tardy villain, how he stays!
Devil fetch them! let them send their coach, and we’ll go without them.
In her hearing I bid the fellow tell them so. Perhaps he stays to bring
the coach, if any thing happens to hinder the ladies from attending my
beloved this night.


Devil take them, again say I! They promised too they would not stay,
because it was but two nights ago that a chariot was robbed at the foot
of Hampstead-hill, which alarmed my fair-one when told of it!

Oh! here’s Lady Betty’s servant, with a billet.

TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ. MONDAY NIGHT.

Excuse us, my dear Nephew, I beseech you, to my dearest kinswoman. One
night cannot break squares: for here Miss Montague has been taken
violently ill with three fainting fits, one after another. The hurry of
her joy, I believe, to find your dear lady so much surpass all
expectations, [never did family love, you know, reign so strong as
among us,] and the too eager desire she had to attend her, have
occasioned it! For she has but weak spirits, poor girl! well as she
looks.

If she be better, we will certainly go with you tomorrow morning, after
we have breakfasted with her, at your lodgings. But whether she be, or
not, I will do myself the pleasure to attend your lady to Hampstead;
and will be with you for that purpose about nine in the morning. With
due compliments to your most worthily beloved, I am

Your’s affectionately, ELIZAB. LAWRANCE.


Faith and troth, Jack, I know not what to do with myself; for here,
just now having sent in the above note by Dorcas, out came my beloved
with it in her hand, in a fit of phrensy!—true, by my soul!

She had indeed complained of her head all the evening.

Dorcas ran to me, out of breath, to tell me, that her lady was coming
in some strange way; but she followed her so quick, that the frighted
wench had not time to say in what way.

It seems, when she read the billet—Now indeed, said she, am I a lost
creature! O the poor Clarissa Harlowe!

She tore off her head-clothes; inquired where I was; and in she came,
her shining tresses flowing about her neck; her ruffles torn, and
hanging in tatters about her snowy hands, with her arms spread out—her
eyes wildly turned, as if starting from their orbits—down sunk she at
my feet, as soon as she approached me; her charming bosom heaving to
her uplifted face; and clasping her arms about my knees, Dear Lovelace,
said she, if ever—if ever—if ever—and, unable to speak another word,
quitting her clasping hold—down—prostrate on the floor sunk she,
neither in a fit nor out of one.

I was quite astonished.—All my purposes suspended for a few moments, I
knew neither what to say, nor what to do. But, recollecting myself, am
I again, thought I, in a way to be overcome, and made a fool of!—If I
now recede, I am gone for ever.

I raised her; but down she sunk, as if quite disjointed—her limbs
failing her—yet not in a fit neither. I never heard of or saw such a
dear unaccountable; almost lifeless, and speechless too for a few
moments; what must her apprehensions be at that moment?—And for
what?—An high-notioned dear soul!—Pretty ignorance!—thought I.

Never having met with so sincere, so unquestionable a repugnance, I was
staggered—I was confounded—yet how should I know that it would be so
till I tried?—And how, having proceeded thus far, could I stop, were I
not to have had the women to goad me on, and to make light of
circumstances, which they pretended to be better judges of than I?

I lifted her, however, into a chair, and in words of disordered
passion, told her, all her fears were needless—wondered at them—begged
of her to be pacified—besought her reliance on my faith and honour—and
revowed all my old vows, and poured forth new ones.

At last, with a heart-breaking sob, I see, I see, Mr. Lovelace, in
broken sentences she spoke—I see, I see—that at last—I am
ruined!—Ruined, if your pity—let me implore your pity!—and down on her
bosom, like a half-broken-stalked lily top-heavy with the overcharging
dews of the morning, sunk her head, with a sigh that went to my heart.

All I could think of to re-assure her, when a little recovered, I said.

Why did I not send for their coach, as I had intimated? It might return
in the morning for the ladies.

I had actually done so, I told her, on seeing her strange uneasiness.
But it was then gone to fetch a doctor for Miss Montague, lest his
chariot should not be so ready.

Ah! Lovelace! said she, with a doubting face; anguish in her imploring
eye.

Lady Betty would think it very strange, I told her, if she were to know
it was so disagreeable to her to stay one night for her company in the
house where she had passed so many.

She called me names upon this—she had called me names before.—I was
patient.

Let her go to Lady Betty’s lodgings then; directly go; if the person I
called Lady Betty was really Lady Betty.

If, my dear! Good Heaven! What a villain does that IF show you believe
me to be!

I cannot help it—I beseech you once more, let me go to Mrs. Leeson’s,
if that IF ought not to be said.

Then assuming a more resolute spirit—I will go! I will inquire my
way!—I will go by myself!—and would have rushed by me.

I folded my arms about her to detain her; pleading the bad way I heard
poor Charlotte was in; and what a farther concern her impatience, if
she went, would give to poor Charlotte.

She would believe nothing I said, unless I would instantly order a
coach, (since she was not to have Lady Betty’s, nor was permitted to go
to Mrs. Leeson’s,) and let her go in it to Hampstead, late as it was,
and all alone, so much the better; for in the house of people of whom
Lady Betty, upon inquiry, had heard a bad character, [Dropt foolishly
this, by my prating new relation, in order to do credit to herself, by
depreciating others,] every thing, and every face, looking with so much
meaning vileness, as well as my own, [thou art still too sensible,
thought I, my charmer!] she was resolved not to stay another night.

Dreading what might happen as to her intellects, and being very
apprehensive that she might possibly go through a great deal before
morning, (though more violent she could not well be with the worst she
dreaded,) I humoured her, and ordered Will. to endeavour to get a coach
directly, to carry us to Hampstead; I cared not at what price.

Robbers, with whom I would have terrified her, she feared not—I was all
her fear, I found; and this house her terror: for I saw plainly that
she now believed that Lady Betty and Miss Montague were both impostors.

But her mistrust is a little of the latest to do her service!

And, O Jack, the rage of love, the rage of revenge is upon me! by turns
they tear me! The progress already made—the women’s instigations—the
power I shall have to try her to the utmost, and still to marry her, if
she be not to be brought to cohabitation—let me perish, Belford, if she
escape me now!


Will. is not yet come back. Near eleven.


Will. is this moment returned. No coach to be got, either for love or
money.

Once more she urges—to Mrs. Leeson’s, let me go, Lovelace! Good
Lovelace, let me go to Mrs. Leeson’s? What is Miss Montague’s illness
to my terror?—-For the Almighty’s sake, Mr. Lovelace!—her hands
clasped.

O my angel! What a wildness is this! Do you know, do you see, my
dearest life, what appearances your causeless apprehensions have given
you?—Do you know it is past eleven o’clock?

Twelve, one, two, three, four—any hour, I care not—If you mean me
honourably, let me go out of this hated house!

Thou’lt observe, Belford, that though this was written afterwards, yet,
(as in other places,) I write it as it was spoken and happened, as if I
had retired to put down every sentence spoken. I know thou likest this
lively present-tense manner, as it is one of my peculiars.

Just as she had repeated the last words, If you mean me honourably, let
me go out of this hated house, in came Mrs. Sinclair, in a great
ferment—And what, pray, Madam, has this house done to you? Mr.
Lovelace, you have known me some time; and, if I have not the niceness
of this lady, I hope I do not deserve to be treated thus!

She set her huge arms akimbo: Hoh! Madam, let me tell you that I am
amazed at your freedoms with my character! And, Mr. Lovelace, [holding
up, and violently shaking her head,] if you are a gentleman, and a man
of honour——

Having never before seen any thing but obsequiousness in this woman,
little as she liked her, she was frighted at her masculine air, and
fierce look—God help me! cried she—what will become of me now! Then,
turning her head hither and thither, in a wild kind of amaze. Whom have
I for a protector! What will become of me now!

I will be your protector, my dearest love!—But indeed you are
uncharitably severe upon poor Mrs. Sinclair! Indeed you are!—She is a
gentlewoman born, and the relict of a man of honour; and though left in
such circumstance as to oblige her to let lodgings, yet would she scorn
to be guilty of a wilful baseness.

I hope so—it may be so—I may be mistaken—but—but there is no crime, I
presume, no treason, to say I don’t like her house.

The old dragon straddled up to her, with her arms kemboed again—her
eye-brows erect, like the bristles upon a hog’s back, and, scouling
over her shortened nose, more than half-hid her ferret eyes. Her mouth
was distorted. She pouted out her blubber-lips, as if to bellows up
wind and sputter into her horse-nostrils; and her chin was curdled, and
more than usually prominent with passion.

With two Hoh-Madams she accosted the frighted fair-one; who, terrified,
caught hold of my sleeve.

I feared she would fall into fits; and, with a look of indignation,
told Mrs. Sinclair that these apartments were mine; and I could not
imagine what she meant, either by listening to what passed between me
and my spouse, or to come in uninvited; and still more I wondered at
her giving herself these strange liberties.

I may be to blame, Jack, for suffering this wretch to give herself
these airs; but her coming in was without my orders.

The old beldam, throwing herself into a chair, fell a blubbering and
exclaiming. And the pacifying of her, and endeavouring to reconcile the
lady to her, took up till near one o’clock.

And thus, between terror, and the late hour, and what followed, she was
diverted from the thoughts of getting out of the house to Mrs.
Leeson’s, or any where else.




 LETTER XII


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 13.

And now, Belford, I can go no farther. The affair is over. Clarissa
lives. And I am

Your humble servant, R. LOVELACE.

[The whole of this black transaction is given by the injured lady to
Miss Howe, in her subsequent letters, dated Thursday, July 6. See
Letters LXVII. LXVIII. LXIX.]




 LETTER XIII


MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ. WATFORD, WEDN. JAN. 14.

O thou savage-hearted monster! What work hast thou made in one guilty
hour, for a whole age of repentance!

I am inexpressibly concerned at the fate of this matchless lady! She
could not have fallen into the hands of any other man breathing, and
suffered as she has done with thee.

I had written a great part of another long letter to try to soften thy
flinty heart in her favour; for I thought it but too likely that thou
shouldst succeed in getting her back again to the accursed woman’s. But
I find it would have been too late, had I finished it, and sent it
away. Yet cannot I forbear writing, to urge thee to make the only
amends thou now canst make her, by a proper use of the license thou
hast obtained.

Poor, poor lady! It is a pain to me that I ever saw her. Such an adorer
of virtue to be sacrificed to the vilest of her sex; and thou their
implement in the devil’s hand, for a purpose so base, so ungenerous, so
inhumane!—Pride thyself, O cruellest of men! in this reflection; and
that thy triumph over a woman, who for thy sake was abandoned of every
friend she had in the world, was effected; not by advantages taken of
her weakness and credulity; but by the blackest artifice; after a long
course of studied deceits had been tried to no purpose.

I can tell thee, it is well either for thee or for me, that I am not
the brother of the lady. Had I been her brother, her violation must
have been followed by the blood of one of us.

Excuse me, Lovelace; and let not the lady fare the worse for my concern
for her. And yet I have but one other motive to ask thy excuse; and
that is, because I owe to thy own communicative pen the knowledge I
have of thy barbarous villany, since thou mightest, if thou wouldst,
have passed it upon me for a common seduction.

CLARISSA LIVES, thou sayest. That she does is my wonder: and these
words show that thou thyself (though thou couldst, nevertheless,
proceed) hardly expectedst she would have survived the outrage. What
must have been the poor lady’s distress (watchful as she had been over
her honour) when dreadful certainty took place of cruel
apprehension!—And yet a man may guess what must have been, by that
which thou paintest, when she suspected herself tricked, deserted, and
betrayed, by the pretended ladies.

That thou couldst behold her phrensy on this occasion, and her
half-speechless, half-fainting prostration at thy feet, and yet retain
thy evil purposes, will hardly be thought credible, even by those who
know thee, if they have seen her.

Poor, poor lady! With such noble qualities as would have adorned the
most exalted married life, to fall into the hands of the only man in
the world, who could have treated her as thou hast treated her!—And to
let loose the old dragon, as thou properly callest her, upon the
before-affrighted innocent, what a barbarity was that! What a poor
piece of barbarity! in order to obtain by terror, what thou dispairedst
to gain by love, though supported by stratagems the most insidious!

O LOVELACE! LOVELACE! had I doubted it before, I should now be
convinced, that there must be a WORLD AFTER THIS, to do justice to
injured merit, and to punish barbarous perfidy! Could the divine
SOCRATES, and the divine CLARISSA, otherwise have suffered?

But let me, if possible, for one moment, try to forget this villanous
outrage on the most excellent of women.

I have business here which will hold me yet a few days; and then
perhaps I shall quit this house for ever.

I have had a solemn and tedious time of it. I should never have known
that I had half the respect I really find I had for the old gentleman,
had I not so closely, at his earnest desire, attended him, and been a
witness of the tortures he underwent.

This melancholy occasion may possibly have contributed to humanize me:
but surely I never could have been so remorseless a caitiff as thou
hast been, to a woman of half this lady’s excellence.

But pr’ythee, dear Lovelace, if thou’rt a man, and not a devil,
resolve, out of hand, to repair thy sin of ingratitude, by conferring
upon thyself the highest honour thou canst receive, in making her
lawfully thine.

But if thou canst not prevail upon thyself to do her this justice, I
think I should not scruple a tilt with thee, [an everlasting rupture at
least must follow] if thou sacrificest her to the accursed women.

Thou art desirous to know what advantage I reap by my uncle’s demise. I
do not certainly know; for I have not been so greedily solicitous on
this subject as some of the kindred have been, who ought to have shown
more decency, as I have told them, and suffered the corpse to have been
cold before they had begun their hungry inquiries. But, by what I
gathered from the poor man’s talk to me, who oftener than I wished
touched upon the subject, I deem it will be upwards of 5000£. in cash,
and in the funds, after all legacies paid, besides the real estate,
which is a clear 1000£. a-year.

I wish, from my heart, thou wert a money-lover! Were the estate to be
of double the value, thou shouldst have it every shilling; only upon
one condition [for my circumstances before were as easy as I wish them
to be while I am single]—that thou wouldst permit me the honour of
being this fatherless lady’s father, as it is called, at the altar.

Think of this! my dear Lovelace! be honest: and let me present thee
with the brightest jewel that man ever possessed; and then, body and
soul, wilt thou bind to thee for ever thy

BELFORD.




 LETTER XIV


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. THURSDAY, JUNE 15.

Let me alone, you great dog, you!—let me alone!—have I heard a lesser
boy, his coward arms held over his head and face, say to a bigger, who
was pommeling him, for having run away with his apple, his orange, or
his ginger-bread.

So say I to thee, on occasion of thy severity to thy poor friend, who,
as thou ownest, has furnished thee (ungenerous as thou art!) with the
weapons thou brandishest so fearfully against him.—And to what purpose,
when the mischief is done? when, of consequence, the affair is
irretrievable? and when a CLARISSA could not move me?

Well, but, after all, I must own, that there is something very singular
in this lady’s case: and, at times, I cannot help regretting that ever
I attempted her; since not one power either of body or soul could be
moved in my favour; and since, to use the expression of the
philosopher, on a much graver occasion, there is no difference to be
found between the skull of King Philip and that of another man.

But people’s extravagant notions of things alter not facts, Belford:
and, when all’s done, Miss Clarissa Harlowe has but run the fate of a
thousand others of her sex—only that they did not set such a romantic
value upon what they call their honour; that’s all.

And yet I will allow thee this—that if a person sets a high value upon
any thing, be it ever such a trifle in itself, or in the eye of others,
the robbing of that person of it is not a trifle to him. Take the
matter in this light, I own I have done wrong, great wrong, to this
admirable creature.

But have I not known twenty and twenty of the sex, who have seemed to
carry their notions of virtue high; yet, when brought to the test, have
abated of their severity? And how should we be convinced that any of
them are proof till they are tried?

A thousand times have I said, that I never yet met with such a woman as
this. If I had, I hardly ever should have attempted Miss Clarissa
Harlowe. Hitherto she is all angel: and was not that the point which at
setting out I proposed to try?* And was not cohabitation ever my
darling view? And am I not now, at last, in the high road to it?—It is
true, that I have nothing to boast of as to her will. The very
contrary. But now are we come to the test, whether she cannot be
brought to make the best of an irreparable evil. If she exclaim, [she
has reason to exclaim, and I will sit down with patience by the hour
together to hear her exclamations, till she is tired of them,] she will
then descend to expostulation perhaps: expostulation will give me hope:
expostulation will show that she hates me not. And, if she hate me not,
she will forgive: and, if she now forgive, then will all be over; and
she will be mine upon my own terms: and it shall then be the whole
study of my future life to make her happy.

* See Vol. III. Letter XVIII.

So, Belford, thou seest that I have journeyed on to this stage [indeed,
through infinite mazes, and as infinite remorses] with one determined
point in view from the first. To thy urgent supplication then, that I
will do her grateful justice by marriage, let me answer in Matt.
Prior’s two lines on his hoped-for auditorship; as put into the mouths
of his St. John and Harley;

—Let that be done, which Matt. doth say.
YEA, quoth the Earl—BUT NOT TO-DAY.


Thou seest, Jack, that I make no resolutions, however, against doing
her, one time or other, the wished-for justice, even were I to succeed
in my principal view, cohabitation. And of this I do assure thee, that,
if I ever marry, it must, it shall be Miss Clarissa Harlowe.—Nor is her
honour at all impaired with me, by what she has so far suffered: but
the contrary. She must only take care that, if she be at last brought
to forgive me, she show me that her Lovelace is the only man on earth
whom she could have forgiven on the like occasion.

But ah, Jack! what, in the mean time, shall I do with this admirable
creature? At present—[I am loth to say it—but, at present] she is quite
stupified.

I had rather, methinks, she should have retained all her active powers,
though I had suffered by her nails and her teeth, than that she should
be sunk into such a state of absolute—insensibility (shall I call it?)
as she has been in every since Tuesday morning. Yet, as she begins a
little to revive, and now-and-then to call names, and to exclaim, I
dread almost to engage with the anguish of a spirit that owes its
extraordinary agitations to a niceness that has no example either in
ancient or modern story. For, after all, what is there in her case that
should stupify such a glowing, such a blooming charmer?—Excess of
grief, excess of terror, have made a person’s hair stand on end, and
even (as we have read) changed the colour of it. But that it should so
stupify, as to make a person, at times, insensible to those imaginary
wrongs, which would raise others from stupifaction, is very surprising!

But I will leave this subject, least it should make me too grave.

I was yesterday at Hampstead, and discharged all obligations there,
with no small applause. I told them that the lady was now as happy as
myself: and that is no great untruth; for I am not altogether so, when
I allow myself to think.

Mrs. Townsend, with her tars, had not been then there. I told them what
I would have them say to her, if she came.

Well, but, after all [how many after-all’s have I?] I could be very
grave, were I to give way to it.—The devil take me for a fool! What’s
the matter with me, I wonder!—I must breathe a fresher air for a few
days.

But what shall I do with this admirable creature the while?—Hang me, if
I know!—For, if I stir, the venomous spider of this habitation will
want to set upon the charming fly, whose silken wings are already so
entangled in my enormous web, that she cannot move hand or foot: for so
much has grief stupified her, that she is at present destitute of will,
as she always seemed to be of desire. I must not therefore think of
leaving her yet for two days together.




 LETTER XV


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.


I have just now had a specimen of what the resentment of this dear
creature will be when quite recovered: an affecting one!—For entering
her apartment after Dorcas; and endeavouring to soothe and pacify her
disordered mind; in the midst of my blandishments, she held up to
Heaven, in a speechless agony, the innocent license (which she has in
her own power); as the poor distressed Catalans held up their English
treaty, on an occasion that keeps the worst of my actions in
countenance.

She seemed about to call down vengeance upon me; when, happily the
leaden god, in pity to her trembling Lovelace, waved over her
half-drowned eyes his somniferous wand, and laid asleep the fair
exclaimer, before she could go half through with her intended
imprecation.

Thou wilt guess, by what I have written, that some little art has been
made use of: but it was with a generous design (if thou’lt allow me the
word on such an occasion) in order to lessen the too-quick sense she
was likely to have of what she was to suffer. A contrivance I never had
occasion for before, and had not thought of now, if Mrs. Sinclair had
not proposed it to me: to whom I left the management of it: and I have
done nothing but curse her ever since, lest the quantity should have
for ever dampened her charming intellects.

Hence my concern—for I think the poor lady ought not to have been so
treated. Poor lady, did I say?—What have I to do with thy creeping
style?—But have not I the worst of it; since her insensibility has made
me but a thief to my own joys?

I did not intend to tell thee of this little innocent trick; for such I
designed it to be; but that I hate disingenuousness: to thee,
especially: and as I cannot help writing in a more serious vein than
usual, thou wouldst perhaps, had I not hinted the true cause, have
imagined that I was sorry for the fact itself: and this would have
given thee a good deal of trouble in scribbling dull persuasives to
repair by matrimony; and me in reading thy cruel nonsense. Besides, one
day or other, thou mightest, had I not confessed it, have heard of it
in an aggravated manner; and I know thou hast such an high opinion of
this lady’s virtue, that thou wouldst be disappointed, if thou hadst
reason to think that she was subdued by her own consent, or any the
least yielding in her will. And so is she beholden to me in some
measure, that, at the expense of my honour, she may so justly form a
plea, which will entirely salve her’s.

And now is the whole secret out.

Thou wilt say I am a horrid fellow!—As the lady does, that I am the
unchained Beelzebub, and a plotting villain: and as this is what you
both said beforehand, and nothing worse can be said, I desire, if thou
wouldst not have me quite serious with thee, and that I should think
thou meanest more by thy tilting hint than I am willing to believe thou
dost, that thou wilt forbear thy invectives: For is not the thing
done?—Can it be helped?—And must I not now try to make the best of
it?—And the rather do I enjoin to make thee this, and inviolable
secrecy; because I begin to think that my punishment will be greater
than the fault, were it to be only from my own reflection.




 LETTER XVI


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. FRIDAY, JUNE 16.

I am sorry to hear of thy misfortune; but hope thou wilt not long lie
by it. Thy servant tells me what narrow escape thou hadst with thy
neck, I wish it may not be ominous: but I think thou seemest not to be
in so enterprising a way as formerly; and yet, merry or sad, thou seest
a rake’s neck is always in danger, if not from the hangman, from his
own horse. But, ’tis a vicious toad, it seems; and I think thou
shouldst never venture upon his back again; for ’tis a plaguy thing for
rider and horse both to be vicious.

The fellow tells me, thou desirest me to continue to write to thee in
order to divert thy chagrin on thy forced confinement: but how can I
think it in my power to divert, when my subject is not pleasing to
myself?

Caesar never knew what it was to be hipped, I will call it, till he
came to be what Pompey was; that is to say, till he arrived at the
height of his ambition: nor did thy Lovelace know what it was to be
gloomy, till he had completed his wishes upon the most charming
creature in the world.

And yet why say I completed? when the will, the consent, is wanting—and
I have still views before me of obtaining that?

Yet I could almost join with thee in the wish, which thou sendest me up
by thy servant, unfriendly as it is, that I had had thy misfortune
before Monday night last: for here, the poor lady has run into a
contrary extreme to that I told thee of in my last: for now is she as
much too lively, as before she was too stupid; and ’bating that she has
pretty frequent lucid intervals, would be deemed raving mad, and I
should be obliged to confine her.

I am most confoundedly disturbed about it: for I begin to fear that her
intellects are irreparably hurt.

Who the devil could have expected such strange effects from a cause so
common and so slight?

But these high-souled and high-sensed girls, who had set up for shining
lights and examples to the rest of the sex, are with such difficulty
brought down to the common standard, that a wise man, who prefers his
peace of mind to his glory, in subduing one of that exalted class,
would have nothing to say to them.

I do all in my power to quiet her spirits, when I force myself into her
presence.

I go on, begging pardon one minute; and vowing truth and honour
another.

I would at first have persuaded her, and offered to call witnesses to
the truth of it, that we were actually married. Though the license was
in her hands, I thought the assertion might go down in her disorder;
and charming consequences I hoped would follow. But this would not do.—

I therefore gave up that hope: and now I declare to her, that it is my
resolution to marry her, the moment her uncle Harlowe informs me that
he will grace the ceremony with his presence.

But she believes nothing I say; nor, (whether in her senses, or not)
bears me with patience in her sight.

I pity her with all my soul; and I curse myself, when she is in her
wailing fits, and when I apprehend that intellects, so charming, are
for ever damped.

But more I curse these women, who put me upon such an expedient! Lord!
Lord! what a hand have I made of it!—And all for what?

Last night, for the first time since Monday night, she got to her pen
and ink; but she pursues her writing with such eagerness and hurry, as
show too evidently her discomposure.

I hope, however, that this employment will help to calm her spirits.


Just now Dorcas tells me, that what she writes she tears, and throws
the paper in fragments under the table, either as not knowing what she
does, or disliking it: then gets up, wrings her hands, weeps, and
shifts her seat all round the room: then returns to her table, sits
down, and writes again.


One odd letter, as I may call it, Dorcas has this moment given me from
her—Carry this, said she, to the vilest of men. Dorcas, a toad, brought
it, without any further direction to me. I sat down, intending (though
’tis pretty long) to give thee a copy of it: but, for my life, I
cannot; ’tis so extravagant. And the original is too much an original
to let it go out of my hands.

But some of the scraps and fragments, as either torn through, or flung
aside, I will copy, for the novelty of the thing, and to show thee how
her mind works now she is in the whimsical way. Yet I know I am still
furnishing thee with new weapons against myself. But spare thy
comments. My own reflections render them needless. Dorcas thinks her
lady will ask for them: so wishes to have them to lay again under the
table.

By the first thou’lt guess that I have told her that Miss Howe is very
ill, and can’t write; that she may account the better for not having
received the letter designed for her.

PAPER I (Torn in two pieces.)

MY DEAREST MISS HOWE,

O what dreadful, dreadful things have I to tell you! But yet I cannot
tell you neither. But say, are you really ill, as a vile, vile creature
informs me you are?

But he never yet told me truth, and I hope has not in this: and yet, if
it were not true, surely I should have heard from you before now!—But
what have I to do to upbraid?—You may well be tired of me!—And if you
are, I can forgive you; for I am tired of myself: and all my own
relations were tired of me long before you were.

How good you have always been to me, mine own dear Anna Howe!—But how I
ramble!

I sat down to say a great deal—my heart was full—I did not know what to
say first—and thought, and grief, and confusion, and (O my poor head) I
cannot tell what—and thought, and grief and confusion, came crowding so
thick upon me; one would be first; another would be first; all would be
first; so I can write nothing at all.—Only that, whatever they have
done to me, I cannot tell; but I am no longer what I was—in any one
thing did I say? Yes, but I am; for I am still, and I ever will be,

Your true——

Plague on it! I can write no more of this eloquent nonsense myself;
which rather shows a raised, than a quenched, imagination: but Dorcas
shall transcribe the others in separate papers, as written by the
whimsical charmer: and some time hence when all is over, and I can
better bear to read them, I may ask thee for a sight of them. Preserve
them, therefore; for we often look back with pleasure even upon the
heaviest griefs, when the cause of them is removed.

PAPER II (Scratch’d through, and thrown under the table.)

—And can you, my dear, honoured Papa, resolve for ever to reprobate
your poor child?—But I am sure you would not, if you knew what she has
suffered since her unhappy—And will nobody plead for your poor
suffering girl?—No one good body?—Why then, dearest Sir, let it be an
act of your own innate goodness, which I have so much experienced, and
so much abused. I don’t presume to think you should receive me—No,
indeed!—My name is—I don’t know what my name is!—I never dare to wish
to come into your family again!—But your heavy curse, my Papa—Yes, I
will call you Papa, and help yourself as you can—for you are my own
dear Papa, whether you will or not—and though I am an unworthy
child—yet I am your child—

PAPER III

A Lady took a great fancy to a young lion, or a bear, I forget
which—but a bear, or a tiger, I believe it was. It was made her a
present of when a whelp. She fed it with her own hand: she nursed up
the wicked cub with great tenderness; and would play with it without
fear or apprehension of danger: and it was obedient to all her
commands: and its tameness, as she used to boast, increased with its
growth; so that, like a lap-dog, it would follow her all over the
house. But mind what followed: at last, some how, neglecting to satisfy
its hungry maw, or having otherwise disobliged it on some occasion, it
resumed its nature; and on a sudden fell upon her, and tore her in
pieces.—And who was most to blame, I pray? The brute, or the lady? The
lady, surely!—For what she did was out of nature, out of character, at
least: what it did was in its own nature.

PAPER IV

How art thou now humbled in the dust, thou proud Clarissa Harlowe! Thou
that never steppedst out of thy father’s house but to be admired! Who
wert wont to turn thine eye, sparkling with healthful life, and
self-assurance, to different objects at once as thou passedst, as if
(for so thy penetrating sister used to say) to plume thyself upon the
expected applauses of all that beheld thee! Thou that usedst to go to
rest satisfied with the adulations paid thee in the past day, and
couldst put off every thing but thy vanity!—-

PAPER V

Rejoice not now, my Bella, my Sister, my Friend; but pity the humbled
creature, whose foolish heart you used to say you beheld through the
thin veil of humility which covered it.

It must have been so! My fall had not else been permitted—

You penetrated my proud heart with the jealousy of an elder sister’s
searching eye.

You knew me better than I knew myself.

Hence your upbraidings and your chidings, when I began to totter.

But forgive now those vain triumphs of my heart.

I thought, poor, proud wretch that I was, that what you said was owing
to your envy.

I thought I could acquit my intention of any such vanity.

I was too secure in the knowledge I thought I had of my own heart.

My supposed advantages became a snare to me.

And what now is the end of all?—

PAPER VI

What now is become of the prospects of a happy life, which once I
thought opening before me?—Who now shall assist in the solemn
preparations? Who now shall provide the nuptial ornaments, which soften
and divert the apprehensions of the fearful virgin? No court now to be
paid to my smiles! No encouraging compliments to inspire thee with hope
of laying a mind not unworthy of thee under obligation! No elevation
now for conscious merit, and applauded purity, to look down from on a
prostrate adorer, and an admiring world, and up to pleased and
rejoicing parents and relations!

PAPER VII

Thou pernicious caterpillar, that preyest upon the fair leaf of virgin
fame, and poisonest those leaves which thou canst not devour!

Thou fell blight, thou eastern blast, thou overspreading mildew, that
destroyest the early promises of the shining year! that mockest the
laborious toil, and blastest the joyful hopes, of the painful
husbandman!

Thou fretting moth, that corruptest the fairest garment!

Thou eating canker-worm, that preyest upon the opening bud, and turnest
the damask-rose into livid yellowness!

If, as religion teaches us, God will judge us, in a great measure, by
our benevolent or evil actions to one another—O wretch! bethink thee,
in time bethink thee, how great must be thy condemnation!

PAPER VIIII

At first, I saw something in your air and person that displeased me
not. Your birth and fortunes were no small advantages to you.—You acted
not ignobly by my passionate brother. Every body said you were brave:
every body said you were generous: a brave man, I thought, could not be
a base man: a generous man, could not, I believed, be ungenerous, where
he acknowledged obligation. Thus prepossessed, all the rest that my
soul loved and wished for in your reformation I hoped!—I knew not, but
by report, any flagrant instances of your vileness. You seemed frank,
as well as generous: frankness and generosity ever attracted me:
whoever kept up those appearances, I judged of their hearts by my own;
and whatever qualities I wished to find in them, I was ready to find;
and, when found, I believed them to be natives of the soil.

My fortunes, my rank, my character, I thought a further security. I was
in none of those respects unworthy of being the niece of Lord M. and of
his two noble sisters.—Your vows, your imprecations—But, Oh! you have
barbarously and basely conspired against that honour, which you ought
to have protected: and now you have made me—What is it of vile that you
have not made me?—

Yet, God knows my heart, I had no culpable inclinations!—I honoured
virtue!—I hated vice!—But I knew not, that you were vice itself!

PAPER IX

Had the happiness of any of the poorest outcast in the world, whom I
had never seen, never known, never before heard of, lain as much in my
power, as my happiness did in your’s, my benevolent heart would have
made me fly to the succour of such a poor distressed—with what pleasure
would I have raised the dejected head, and comforted the desponding
heart!—But who now shall pity the poor wretch, who has increased,
instead of diminished, the number of the miserable!

PAPER X

Lead me, where my own thoughts themselves may lose me;
Where I may dose out what I’ve left of life,
Forget myself, and that day’s guile!——
Cruel remembrance!——how shall I appease thee?


[Death only can be dreadful to the bad;*
To innocence ’tis like a bugbear dress’d
To frighten children. Pull but off the mask,
And he’ll appear a friend.]


* Transcriber’s note: Portions set off in square brackets [ ] are
written at angles to the majority of the text, as if squeezed into
margins.


——Oh! you have done an act
That blots the face and blush of modesty;
    Takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And makes a blister there!

    Then down I laid my head,
Down on cold earth, and for a while was dead;
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled!
    Ah! sottish soul! said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
    Fool! to resume her broken chain,
And row the galley here again!
    Fool! to that body to return,
Where it condemn’d and destin’d is to mourn!


[I could a tale unfold——
Would harrow up thy soul——]


O my Miss Howe! if thou hast friendship, help me,
And speak the words of peace to my divided soul,
    That wars within me,
And raises ev’ry sense to my confusion.
    I’m tott’ring on the brink
Of peace; an thou art all the hold I’ve left!
Assist me——in the pangs of my affliction!

When honour’s lost, ’tis a relief to die:
Death’s but a sure retreat from infamy.


[By swift misfortunes
    How I am pursu’d!
Which on each other
    Are, like waves, renew’d!]


The farewell, youth,
    And all the joys that dwell
With youth and life!
    And life itself, farewell!

For life can never be sincerely blest.
Heav’n punishes the bad, and proves the best.


After all, Belford, I have just skimmed over these transcriptions of
Dorcas: and I see there are method and good sense in some of them, wild
as others of them are; and that her memory, which serves her so well
for these poetical flights, is far from being impaired. And this gives
me hope, that she will soon recover her charming intellects—though I
shall be the sufferer by their restoration, I make no doubt.

But, in the letter she wrote to me, there are yet greater
extravagancies; and though I said it was too affecting to give thee a
copy of it, yet, after I have let thee see the loose papers enclosed, I
think I may throw in a transcript of that. Dorcas therefore shall here
transcribe it. I cannot. The reading of it affected me ten times more
than the severest reproaches of a regular mind could do.

TO MR. LOVELACE

I never intended to write another line to you. I would not see you, if
I could help it—O that I never had!

But tell me, of a truth, is Miss Howe really and truly ill?—Very
ill?—And is not her illness poison? And don’t you know who gave it to
her?

What you, or Mrs. Sinclair, or somebody (I cannot tell who) have done
to my poor head, you best know: but I shall never be what I was. My
head is gone. I have wept away all my brain, I believe; for I can weep
no more. Indeed I have had my full share; so it is no matter.

But, good now, Lovelace, don’t set Mrs. Sinclair upon me again.—I never
did her any harm. She so affrights me, when I see her!—Ever since—when
was it? I cannot tell. You can, I suppose. She may be a good woman, as
far as I know. She was the wife of a man of honour—very likely—though
forced to let lodgings for a livelihood. Poor gentlewoman! Let her know
I pity her: but don’t let her come near me again—pray don’t!

Yet she may be a very good woman—

What would I say!—I forget what I was going to say.

O Lovelace, you are Satan himself; or he helps you out in every thing;
and that’s as bad!

But have you really and truly sold yourself to him? And for how long?
What duration is your reign to have?

Poor man! The contract will be out: and then what will be your fate!

O Lovelace! if you could be sorry for yourself, I would be sorry
too—but when all my doors are fast, and nothing but the key-hole open,
and the key of late put into that, to be where you are, in a manner
without opening any of them—O wretched, wretched Clarissa Harlowe!

For I never will be Lovelace—let my uncle take it as he pleases.

Well, but now I remember what I was going to say—it is for your
good—not mine—for nothing can do me good now!—O thou villanous man!
thou hated Lovelace!

But Mrs. Sinclair may be a good woman—if you love me—but that you
don’t—but don’t let her bluster up with her worse than mannish airs to
me again! O she is a frightful woman! If she be a woman! She needed not
to put on that fearful mask to scare me out of my poor wits. But don’t
tell her what I say—I have no hatred to her—it is only fright, and
foolish fear, that’s all.—She may not be a bad woman—but neither are
all men, any more than all women alike—God forbid they should be like
you!

Alas! you have killed my head among you—I don’t say who did it!—God
forgive you all!—But had it not been better to have put me out of all
your ways at once? You might safely have done it! For nobody would
require me at your hands—no, not a soul—except, indeed, Miss Howe would
have said, when she should see you, What, Lovelace, have you done with
Clarissa Harlowe?—And then you could have given any slight, gay
answer—sent her beyond sea; or, she has run away from me, as she did
from her parents. And this would have been easily credited; for you
know, Lovelace, she that could run away from them, might very well run
away from you.

But this is nothing to what I wanted to say. Now I have it.

I have lost it again—This foolish wench comes teasing me—for what
purpose should I eat? For what end should I wish to live?—I tell thee,
Dorcas, I will neither eat nor drink. I cannot be worse than I am.

I will do as you’d have me—good Dorcas, look not upon me so
fiercely—but thou canst not look so bad as I have seen somebody look.

Mr. Lovelace, now that I remember what I took pen in hand to say, let
me hurry off my thoughts, lest I lose them again—here I am sensible—and
yet I am hardly sensible neither—but I know my head is not as it should
be, for all that—therefore let me propose one thing to you: it is for
your good—not mine; and this is it:

I must needs be both a trouble and an expense to you. And here my uncle
Harlowe, when he knows how I am, will never wish any man to have me:
no, not even you, who have been the occasion of it—barbarous and
ungrateful!—A less complicated villany cost a Tarquin—but I forget what
I would say again—

Then this is it—I never shall be myself again: I have been a very
wicked creature—a vain, proud, poor creature, full of secret
pride—which I carried off under an humble guise, and deceived every
body—my sister says so—and now I am punished—so let me be carried out
of this house, and out of your sight; and let me be put into that
Bedlam privately, which once I saw: but it was a sad sight to me then!
Little as I thought what I should come to myself!—That is all I would
say: this is all I have to wish for—then I shall be out of all your
ways; and I shall be taken care of; and bread and water without your
tormentings, will be dainties: and my straw-bed the easiest I have lain
in—for—I cannot tell how long!

My clothes will sell for what will keep me there, perhaps as long as I
shall live. But, Lovelace, dear Lovelace, I will call you; for you have
cost me enough, I’m sure!—don’t let me be made a show of, for my
family’s sake; nay, for your own sake, don’t do that—for when I know
all I have suffered, which yet I do not, and no matter if I never do—I
may be apt to rave against you by name, and tell of all your baseness
to a poor humbled creature, that once was as proud as any body—but of
what I can’t tell—except of my own folly and vanity—but let that
pass—since I am punished enough for it—

So, suppose, instead of Bedlam, it were a private mad-house, where
nobody comes!—That will be better a great deal.

But, another thing, Lovelace: don’t let them use me cruelly when I am
there—you have used me cruelly enough, you know!—Don’t let them use me
cruelly; for I will be very tractable; and do as any body would have me
to do—except what you would have me do—for that I never will.—Another
thing, Lovelace: don’t let this good woman, I was going to say vile
woman; but don’t tell her that—because she won’t let you send me to
this happy refuge, perhaps, if she were to know it—

Another thing, Lovelace: and let me have pen, and ink, and paper,
allowed me—it will be all my amusement—but they need not send to any
body I shall write to, what I write, because it will but trouble them:
and somebody may do you a mischief, may be—I wish not that any body do
any body a mischief upon my account.

You tell me, that Lady Betty Lawrance, and your cousin Montague, were
here to take leave of me; but that I was asleep, and could not be
waked. So you told me at first I was married, you know, and that you
were my husband—Ah! Lovelace! look to what you say.—But let not them,
(for they will sport with my misery,) let not that Lady Betty, let not
that Miss Montague, whatever the real ones may do; nor Mrs. Sinclair
neither, nor any of her lodgers, nor her nieces, come to see me in my
place—real ones, I say; for, Lovelace, I shall find out all your
villanies in time—indeed I shall—so put me there as soon as you can—it
is for your good—then all will pass for ravings that I can say, as, I
doubt no many poor creatures’ exclamations do pass, though there may be
too much truth in them for all that—and you know I began to be mad at
Hampstead—so you said.—Ah! villanous man! what have you not to answer
for!


A little interval seems to be lent me. I had begun to look over what I
have written. It is not fit for any one to see, so far as I have been
able to re-peruse it: but my head will not hold, I doubt, to go through
it all. If therefore I have not already mentioned my earnest desire,
let me tell you it is this: that I be sent out of this abominable house
without delay, and locked up in some private mad-house about this town;
for such, it seems, there are; never more to be seen, or to be produced
to any body, except in your own vindication, if you should be charged
with the murder of my person; a much lighter crime than that of honour,
which the greatest villain on earth has robbed me of. And deny me not
this my last request, I beseech you; and one other, and that is, never
to let me see you more! This surely may be granted to

The miserably abused CLARISSA HARLOWE.


I will not bear thy heavy preachments, Belford, upon this affecting
letter. So, not a word of that sort! The paper, thou’lt see, is
blistered with the tears even of the hardened transcriber; which has
made her ink run here and there.

Mrs. Sinclair is a true heroine, and, I think, shames us all. And she
is a woman too! Thou’lt say, the beset things corrupted become the
worst. But this is certain, that whatever the sex set their hearts
upon, they make thorough work of it. And hence it is, that a mischief
which would end in simple robbery among men rogues, becomes murder, if
a woman be in it.

I know thou wilt blame me for having had recourse to art. But do not
physicians prescribe opiates in acute cases, where the violence of the
disorder would be apt to throw the patient into a fever or delirium? I
aver, that my motive for this expedient was mercy; nor could it be any
thing else. For a rape, thou knowest, to us rakes, is far from being an
undesirable thing. Nothing but the law stands in our way, upon that
account; and the opinion of what a modest woman will suffer rather than
become a _viva voce_ accuser, lessens much an honest fellow’s
apprehensions on that score. Then, if these somnivolencies [I hate the
word opiates on this occasion,] have turned her head, that is an effect
they frequently have upon some constitutions; and in this case was
rather the fault of the dose than the design of the giver.

But is not wine itself an opiate in degree?—How many women have been
taken advantage of by wine, and other still more intoxicating
viands?—Let me tell thee, Jack, that the experience of many of the
passive sex, and the consciences of many more of the active, appealed
to, will testify that thy Lovelace is not the worst of villains. Nor
would I have thee put me upon clearing myself by comparisons.

If she escape a settled delirium when my plots unravel, I think it is
all I ought to be concerned about. What therefore I desire of thee, is,
that, if two constructions may be made of my actions, thou wilt afford
me the most favourable. For this, not only friendship, but my own
ingenuousness, which has furnished thee with the knowledge of the facts
against which thou art so ready to inveigh, require of thee.


Will. is just returned from an errand to Hampstead; and acquaints me,
that Mrs. Townsend was yesterday at Mrs. Moore’s, accompanied by three
or four rough fellows; a greater number (as supposed) at a distance.
She was strangely surprised at the news that my spouse and I are
entirely reconciled; and that two fine ladies, my relations, came to
visit her, and went to town with her: where she is very happy with me.
She was sure we were not married, she said, unless it was while we were
at Hampstead: and they were sure the ceremony was not performed there.
But that the lady is happy and easy, is unquestionable: and a fling was
thrown out by Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Bevis at mischief-makers, as they
knew Mrs. Townsend to be acquainted with Miss Howe.

Now, since my fair-one can neither receive, nor send away letters, I am
pretty easy as to this Mrs. Townsend and her employer. And I fancy Miss
Howe will be puzzled to know what to think of the matter, and afraid of
sending by Wilson’s conveyance; and perhaps suppose that her friend
slights her; or has changed her mind in my favour, and is ashamed to
own it; as she has not had an answer to what she wrote; and will
believe that the rustic delivered her last letter into her own hand.

Mean time I have a little project come into my head, of a new kind;
just for amusement-sake, that’s all: variety has irresistible charms. I
cannot live without intrigue. My charmer has no passions; that is to
say, none of the passions that I want her to have. She engages all my
reverence. I am at present more inclined to regret what I have done,
than to proceed to new offences: and shall regret it till I see how she
takes it when recovered.

Shall I tell thee my project? ’Tis not a high one.—’Tis this—to get
hither to Mrs. Moore, Miss Rawlins, and my widow Bevis; for they are
desirous to make a visit to my spouse, now we are so happy together.
And, if I can order it right, Belton, Mowbray, Tourville, and I, will
show them a little more of the ways of this wicked town, than they at
present know. Why should they be acquainted with a man of my character,
and not be the better and wiser for it?—I would have every body rail
against rakes with judgment and knowledge, if they will rail. Two of
these women gave me a great deal of trouble: and the third, I am
confident, will forgive a merry evening.

Thou wilt be curious to know what the persons of these women are, to
whom I intend so much distinction. I think I have not heretofore
mentioned any thing characteristic of their persons.

Mrs. Moore is a widow of about thirty-eight; a little mortified by
misfortunes; but those are often the merriest folks, when warmed. She
has good features still; and is what they call much of a gentlewoman,
and very neat in her person and dress. She has given over, I believe,
all thoughts of our sex: but when the dying embers are raked up about
the half-consumed stump, there will be fuel enough left, I dare say, to
blaze out, and give a comfortable warmth to a half-starved by-stander.

Mrs. Bevis is comely; that is to say, plump; a lover of mirth, and one
whom no grief ever dwelt with, I dare say, for a week together; about
twenty-five years of age: Mowbray will have very little difficulty with
her, I believe; for one cannot do every thing one’s self. And yet
sometimes women of this free cast, when it comes to the point, answer
not the promises their cheerful forwardness gives a man who has a view
upon them.

Miss Rawlins is an agreeable young lady enough; but not beautiful. She
has sense, and would be thought to know the world, as it is called;
but, for her knowledge, is more indebted to theory than experience. A
mere whipt-syllabub knowledge this, Jack, that always fails the person
who trusts to it, when it should hold to do her service. For such young
ladies have so much dependence upon their own understanding and
wariness, are so much above the cautions that the less opinionative may
be benefited by, that their presumption is generally their overthrow,
when attempted by a man of experience, who knows how to flatter their
vanity, and to magnify their wisdom, in order to take advantage of
their folly. But, for Miss Rawlins, if I can add experience to her
theory, what an accomplished person will she be!—And how much will she
be obliged to me; and not only she, but all those who may be the better
for the precepts she thinks herself already so well qualified to give!
Dearly, Jack, do I love to engage with these precept-givers, and
example-setters.

Now, Belford, although there is nothing striking in any of these
characters; yet may we, at a pinch, make a good frolicky half-day with
them, if, after we have softened their wax at table by encouraging
viands, we can set our women and them into dancing: dancing, which all
women love, and all men should therefore promote, for both their sakes.

And thus, when Tourville sings, Belton fiddles, Mowbray makes rough
love, and I smooth; and thou, Jack, wilt be by that time well enough to
join in the chorus; the devil’s in’t if we don’t mould them into what
shape we please—our own women, by their laughing freedoms, encouraging
them to break through all their customary reserves. For women to women,
thou knowest, are great darers and incentives: not one of them loving
to be outdone or outdared, when their hearts are thoroughly warmed.

I know, at first, the difficulty will be the accidental absence of my
dear Mrs. Lovelace, to whom principally they will design their visit:
but if we can exhilarate them, they won’t then wish to see her; and I
can form twenty accidents and excuses, from one hour to another, for
her absence, till each shall have a subject to take up all her
thoughts.

I am really sick at heart for a frolic, and have no doubt but this will
be an agreeable one. These women already think me a wild fellow; nor do
they like me the less for it, as I can perceive; and I shall take care,
that they shall be treated with so much freedom before one another’s
faces, that in policy they shall keep each other’s counsel. And won’t
this be doing a kind thing by them? since it will knit an indissoluble
band of union and friendship between three women who are neighbours,
and at present have only common obligations to one another: for thou
wantest not to be told, that secrets of love, and secrets of this
nature, are generally the strongest cement of female friendships.

But, after all, if my beloved should be happily restored to her
intellects, we may have scenes arise between us that will be
sufficiently busy to employ all the faculties of thy friend, without
looking out for new occasions. Already, as I have often observed, has
she been the means of saving scores of her sex, yet without her own
knowledge.

SATURDAY NIGHT.

By Dorcas’s account of her lady’s behaviour, the dear creature seems to
be recovering. I shall give the earliest notice of this to the worthy
Capt. Tomlinson, that he may apprize uncle John of it. I must be
properly enabled, from that quarter, to pacify her, or, at least, to
rebate her first violence.




 LETTER XVII


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SIX O’CLOCK,
(JUNE 18.)

I went out early this morning, and returned not till just now; when I
was informed that my beloved, in my absence, had taken it into her head
to attempt to get away.

She tripped down, with a parcel tied up in a handkerchief, her hood on;
and was actually in the entry, when Mrs. Sinclair saw her.

Pray, Madam, whipping between her and the street-door, be pleased to
let me know where you are going?

Who has a right to controul me? was the word.

I have, Madam, by order of your spouse: and, kemboing her arms, as she
owned, I desire you will be pleased to walk up again.

She would have spoken; but could not: and, bursting into tears, turned
back, and went up to her chamber: and Dorcas was taken to task for
suffering her to be in the passage before she was seen.

This shows, as we hoped last night, that she is recovering her charming
intellects.

Dorcas says, she was visible to her but once before the whole day; and
then she seemed very solemn and sedate.

I will endeavour to see her. It must be in her own chamber, I suppose;
for she will hardly meet me in the dining-room. What advantage will the
confidence of our sex give me over the modesty of her’s, if she be
recovered!—I, the most confident of men: she, the most delicate of
women. Sweet soul! methinks I have her before me: her face averted:
speech lost in sighs—abashed—conscious—what a triumphant aspect will
this give me, when I gaze on her downcast countenance!


This moment Dorcas tells me she believes she is coming to find me out.
She asked her after me: and Dorcas left her, drying her red-swoln eyes
at her glass; [no design of moving me by tears!] sighing too sensibly
for my courage. But to what purpose have I gone thus far, if I pursue
not my principal end? Niceness must be a little abated. She knows the
worst. That she cannot fly me; that she must see me; and that I can
look her into a sweet confusion; are circumstances greatly in my
favour. What can she do but rave and exclaim? I am used to raving and
exclaiming—but, if recovered, I shall see how she behaves upon this our
first sensible interview after what she has suffered.

Here she comes.




 LETTER XVIII


MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. SUNDAY NIGHT.

Never blame me for giving way to have art used with this admirable
creature. All the princes of the air, or beneath it, joining with me,
could never have subdued her while she had her senses.

I will not anticipate—only to tell thee, that I am too much awakened by
her to think of sleep, were I to go to bed; and so shall have nothing
to do but to write an account of our odd conversation, while it is so
strong upon my mind that I can think of nothing else.

She was dressed in a white damask night-gown, with less negligence than
for some days past. I was sitting with my pen in my fingers; and stood
up when I first saw her, with great complaisance, as if the day were
still her own. And so indeed it is.

She entered with such dignity in her manner as struck me with great
awe, and prepared me for the poor figure I made in the subsequent
conversation. A poor figure indeed!—But I will do her justice.

She came up with quick steps, pretty close to me; a white handkerchief
in her hand; her eyes neither fierce nor mild, but very earnest; and a
fixed sedateness in her whole aspect, which seemed to be the effect of
deep contemplation: and thus she accosted me, with an air and action
that I never saw equalled.

You see before you, Sir, the wretch, whose preference of you to all
your sex you have rewarded—as it indeed deserved to be rewarded. My
father’s dreadful curse has already operated upon me in the very letter
of it, as to this life; and it seems to me too evident that it will not
be your fault that it is not entirely completed in the loss of my soul,
as well as of my honour—which you, villanous man! have robbed me of,
with a baseness so unnatural, so inhuman, that it seems you, even you,
had not the heart to attempt it, till my senses were made the previous
sacrifice.

Here I made an hesitating effort to speak, laying down my pen: but she
proceeded!—Hear me out, guilty wretch!—abandoned man!—Man, did I
say?—Yet what name else can I? since the mortal worryings of the
fiercest beast would have been more natural, and infinitely more
welcome, that what you have acted by me; and that with a premeditation
and contrivance worthy only of that single heart which now, base as
well as ungrateful as thou art, seems to quake within thee.—And well
may’st thou quake; well may’st thou tremble, and falter, and hesitate,
as thou dost, when thou reflectest upon what I have suffered for thy
sake, and upon the returns thou hast made me!

By my soul, Belford, my whole frame was shaken: for not only her looks
and her action, but her voice, so solemn, was inexpressibly affecting:
and then my cursed guilt, and her innocence, and merit, and rank, and
superiority of talents, all stared me at that instant in the face so
formidably, that my present account, to which she unexpectedly called
me, seemed, as I then thought, to resemble that general one, to which
we are told we shall be summoned, when our conscience shall be our
accuser.

But she had had time to collect all the powers of her eloquence. The
whole day probably in her intellects. And then I was the more
disappointed, as I had thought I could have gazed the dear creature
into confusion—but it is plain, that the sense she has of her wrongs
sets this matchless woman above all lesser, all weaker considerations.

My dear—my love—I—I—I never—no never—lips trembling, limbs quaking,
voice inward, hesitating, broken—never surely did miscreant look so
like a miscreant! while thus she proceeded, waving her snowy hand, with
all the graces of moving oratory.

I have no pride in the confusion visible in thy whole person. I have
been all the day praying for a composure, if I could not escape from
this vile house, that should once more enable me to look up to my
destroyer with the consciousness of an innocent sufferer. Thou seest
me, since my wrongs are beyond the power of words to express, thou
seest me, calm enough to wish, that thou may’st continue harassed by
the workings of thy own conscience, till effectual repentance take hold
of thee, that so thou may’st not forfeit all title to that mercy which
thou hast not shown to the poor creature now before thee, who had so
well deserved to meet with a faithful friend where she met with the
worst of enemies.

But tell me, (for no doubt thou hast some scheme to pursue,) tell me,
since I am a prisoner, as I find, in the vilest of houses, and have not
a friend to protect or save me, what thou intendest shall become of the
remnant of a life not worth the keeping!—Tell me, if yet there are more
evils reserved for me; and whether thou hast entered into a compact
with the grand deceiver, in the person of his horrid agent in this
house; and if the ruin of my soul, that my father’s curse may be
fulfilled, is to complete the triumphs of so vile a confederacy?—Answer
me!—Say, if thou hast courage to speak out to her whom thou hast
ruined, tell me what farther I am to suffer from thy barbarity?

She stopped here, and, sighing, turned her sweet face from me, drying
up with her handkerchief those tears which she endeavoured to restrain;
and, when she could not, to conceal from my sight.

As I told thee, I had prepared myself for high passions, raving,
flying, tearing execration; these transient violences, the workings of
sudden grief, and shame, and vengeance, would have set us upon a par
with each other, and quitted scores. These have I been accustomed to;
and as nothing violent is lasting, with these I could have wished to
encounter. But such a majestic composure—seeking me—whom, yet it is
plain, by her attempt to get away, she would have avoided seeking—no
Lucretia-like vengeance upon herself in her thought—yet swallowed up,
her whole mind swallowed up, as I may say, by a grief so heavy, as, in
her own words, to be beyond the power of speech to express—and to be
able, discomposed as she was, to the very morning, to put such a
home-question to me, as if she had penetrated my future view—how could
I avoid looking like a fool, and answering, as before, in broken
sentences and confusion?

What—what-a—what has been done—I, I, I—cannot but say—must own—must
confess—hem—hem——is not right—is not what should have
been—but-a—but—but—I am truly—truly—sorry for it—upon my soul I
am—and—and—will do all—do every thing—do what—whatever is incumbent
upon me—all that you—that you—that you shall require, to make you
amends!——

O Belford! Belford! whose the triumph now! HER’S, or MINE?

Amends! O thou truly despicable wretch! Then lifting up her eyes—Good
Heaven! who shall pity the creature who could fall by so base a
mind!—Yet—[and then she looked indignantly upon me!] yet, I hate thee
not (base and low-souled as thou art!) half so much as I hate myself,
that I saw thee not sooner in thy proper colours! That I hoped either
morality, gratitude, or humanity, from a libertine, who, to be a
libertine, must have got over and defied all moral sanctions.*

* Her cousin Morden’s words to her in his letter from Florence. See
Vol. IV. Letter XIX.

She then called upon her cousin Morden’s name, as if he had warned her
against a man of free principles; and walked towards the window; her
handkerchief at her eyes. But, turning short towards me, with an air of
mingled scorn and majesty, [what, at the moment, would I have given
never to have injured her!] What amends hast thou to propose! What
amends can such a one as thou make to a person of spirit, or common
sense, for the evils thou hast so inhumanely made me suffer?

As soon, Madam—as soon—as—as soon as your uncle—or—not waiting——

Thou wouldest tell me, I suppose—I know what thou wouldest tell me—But
thinkest thou, that marriage will satisfy for a guilt like thine?
Destitute as thou hast made me both of friends and fortune, I too much
despise the wretch, who could rob himself of his wife’s virtue, to
endure the thoughts of thee in the light thou seemest to hope I will
accept thee in!—

I hesitated an interruption; but my meaning died away upon my trembling
lips. I could only pronounce the word marriage—and thus she proceeded:

Let me, therefore, know whether I am to be controuled in the future
disposal of myself? Whether, in a country of liberty, as this, where
the sovereign of it must not be guilty of your wickedness, and where
you neither durst have attempted it, had I one friend or relation to
look upon me, I am to be kept here a prisoner, to sustain fresh
injuries? Whether, in a word, you intend to hinder me from going where
my destiny shall lead me?

After a pause—for I was still silent:

Can you not answer me this plain question?—I quit all claim, all
expectation, upon you—what right have you to detain me here?

I could not speak. What could I say to such a question?

O wretch! wringing her uplifted hands, had I not been robbed of my
senses, and that in the basest manner—you best know how—had I been able
to account for myself, and your proceedings, or to have known but how
the days passed—a whole week should not have gone over my head, as I
find it has done, before I had told you, what I now tell you—That the
man who has been the villain to me you have been, shall never make me
his wife.—I will write to my uncle, to lay aside his kind intentions in
my favour—all my prospects are shut in—I give myself up for a lost
creature as to this world—hinder me not from entering upon a life of
severe penitence, for corresponding, after prohibition, with a wretch
who has too well justified all their warnings and inveteracy; and for
throwing myself into the power of your vile artifices. Let me try to
secure the only hope I have left. This is all the amends I ask of you.
I repeat, therefore, Am I now at liberty to dispose of myself as I
please?

Now comes the fool, the miscreant again, hesitating his broken answer:
My dearest love, I am confounded, quite confounded, at the thought of
what—of what has been done; and at the thought of—to whom. I see, I
see, there is no withstanding your eloquence!—Such irresistible proofs
of the love of virtue, for its own sake, did I never hear of, nor meet
with, in all my reading. And if you can forgive a repentant villain,
who thus on his knees implores your forgiveness, [then down I dropt,
absolutely in earnest in all I said,] I vow by all that’s sacred and
just, (and may a thunderbolt strike me dead at your feet, if I am not
sincere!) that I will by marriage before to-morrow noon, without
waiting for your uncle, or any body, do you all the justice I now can
do you. And you shall ever after controul and direct me as you please,
till you have made me more worthy of your angelic purity than now I am:
nor will I presume so much as to touch your garment, till I have the
honour to call so great a blessing lawfully mine.

O thou guileful betrayer! there is a just God, whom thou invokest: yet
the thunderbolt descends not; and thou livest to imprecate and deceive!

My dearest life! rising; for I hoped she was relenting——

Hadst thou not sinned beyond the possibility of forgiveness,
interrupted she; and this had been the first time that thus thou
solemnly promisest and invokest the vengeance thou hast as often
defied; the desperateness of my condition might have induced me to
think of taking a wretched chance with a man so profligate. But, after
what I have suffered by thee, it would be criminal in me to wish to
bind my soul in covenant to a man so nearly allied to perdition.

Good God!—how uncharitable!—I offer not to defend—would to Heaven that
I could recall—so nearly allied to perdition, Madam!—So profligate a
man, Madam!——

O how short is expression of thy crimes, and of my sufferings! Such
premeditation is thy baseness! To prostitute the characters of persons
of honour of thy own family—and all to delude a poor creature, whom
thou oughtest—But why talk I to thee? Be thy crimes upon thy head! Once
more I ask thee, Am I, or am I not, at my own liberty now?

I offered to speak in defence of the women, declaring that they really
were the very persons——

Presume not, interrupted she, base as thou art, to say one word in
thine own vindication. I have been contemplating their behaviour, their
conversation, their over-ready acquiescences, to my declarations in thy
disfavour; their free, yet affectedly-reserved light manners: and now
that the sad event has opened my eyes, and I have compared facts and
passages together, in the little interval that has been lent me, I
wonder I could not distinguish the behaviour of the unmatron-like jilt,
whom thou broughtest to betray me, from the worthy lady whom thou hast
the honour to call thy aunt: and that I could not detect the
superficial creature whom thou passedst upon me for the virtuous Miss
Montague.

Amazing uncharitableness in a lady so good herself!—That the high
spirits those ladies were in to see you, should subject them to such
censures!—I do must solemnly vow, Madam——

That they were, interrupting me, verily and indeed Lady Betty Lawrance
and thy cousin Montague!—O wretch! I see by thy solemn averment [I had
not yet averred it,] what credit ought to be given to all the rest. Had
I no other proof——

Interrupting her, I besought her patient ear. ‘I had found myself, I
told her, almost avowedly despised and hated. I had no hope of gaining
her love, or her confidence. The letter she had left behind her, on her
removal to Hampstead, sufficiently convinced me that she was entirely
under Miss Howe’s influence, and waited but the return of a letter from
her to enter upon measures that would deprive me of her for ever: Miss
Howe had ever been my enemy: more so then, no doubt, from the contents
of the letter she had written to her on her first coming to Hampstead;
that I dared not to stand the event of such a letter; and was glad of
an opportunity, by Lady Betty’s and my cousin’s means (though they knew
not my motive) to get her back to town; far, at the time, from
intending the outrage which my despair, and her want of confidence in
me, put me so vilely upon’—

I

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