LETTER XXIII
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.[IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXI. OF THIS VOLUME.]M. HALL, WED. NIGHT, JULY 19.
You might well apprehend that I should think you were playing me booty incommunicating my letter to the lady.
You ask, Who would think you might not read to her the leastexceptionable parts of a letter written in my own defence?--I'll tell youwho--the man who, in the same letter that he asks this question, tellsthe friend whom he exposes to her resentment, 'That there is such an airof levity runs through his most serious letters, that those of this areleast fit to be seen which ought to be most to his credit:' And now whatthinkest thou of thyself-condemned folly? Be, however, I charge thee,more circumspect for the future, that so this clumsy error may standsingly by itself.
'It is painful to her to think of me!' 'Libertine froth!' 'So perniciousand so despicable a plotter!' 'A man whose friendship is no credit to anybody!' 'Hardened wretch!' 'The devil's counterpart!' 'A wicked, wickedman!'--But did she, could she, dared she, to say, or imply all this?--andsay it to a man whom she praises for humanity, and prefers to myself forthat virtue; when all the humanity he shows, and she knows it too, is bymy direction--so robs me of the credit of my own works; admirablyentitled, all this shows her, to thy refinement upon the words resentmentand revenge. But thou wert always aiming and blundering at some thingthou never couldst make out.
The praise thou givest to her ingenuousness, is another of thy peculiars.I think not as thou dost, of her tell-tale recapitulations andexclamations:--what end can they answer?--only that thou hast a holy lovefor her, [the devil fetch thee for thy oddity!] or it is extremelyprovoking to suppose one sees such a charming creature stand uprightbefore a libertine, and talk of the sin against her, that cannot beforgiven!--I wish, at my heart, that these chaste ladies would have alittle modesty in their anger!--It would sound very strange, if I RobertLovelace should pretend to have more true delicacy, in a point thatrequires the utmost, than Miss Clarissa Harlowe.
I think I will put it into the head of her nurse Norton, and her MissHowe, by some one of my agents, to chide the dear novice for herproclamations.
But to be serious: let me tell thee, that, severe as she is, and saucy,in asking so contemptuously, 'What a man is your friend, Sir, to sethimself to punish guilty people!' I will never forgive the cursed woman,who could commit this last horrid violence on so excellent a creature.
The barbarous insults of the two nymphs, in their visits to her; thechoice of the most execrable den that could be found out, in order, nodoubt, to induce her to go back to theirs; and the still more execrableattempt, to propose to her a man who would pay the debt; a snare, I makeno question, laid for her despairing and resenting heart by that devilishSally, (thinking her, no doubt, a woman,) in order to ruin her with me;and to provoke me, in a fury, to give her up to their remorselesscruelty; are outrages, that, to express myself in her style, I never can,never will forgive.
But as to thy opinion, and the two women's at Smith's, that her heart isbroken! that is the true women's language: I wonder how thou camest intoit: thou who hast seen and heard of so many female deaths and revivals.
I'll tell thee what makes against this notion of theirs.
Her time of life, and charming constitution: the good she ever delightedto do, and fancified she was born to do; and which she may still continueto do, to as high a degree as ever; nay, higher: since I am no sordidvarlet, thou knowest: her religious turn: a turn that will always teachher to bear inevitable evils with patience: the contemplation upon herlast noble triumph over me, and over the whole crew; and upon hersucceeding escape from us all: her will unviolated: and the inward prideof having not deserved the treatment she has met with.
How is it possible to imagine, that a woman, who has all theseconsolations to reflect upon, will die of a broken heart?
On the contrary, I make no doubt, but that, as she recovers from thedejection into which this last scurvy villany (which none but wretchesof her own sex could have been guilty of) has thrown her, returning lovewill re-enter her time-pacified mind: her thoughts will then turn oncemore on the conjugal pivot: of course she will have livelier notions inher head; and these will make her perform all her circumvolutions withease and pleasure; though not with so high a degree of either, as if thedear proud rogue could have exalted herself above the rest of her sex, asshe turned round.
Thou askest, on reciting the bitter invectives that the lady made againstthy poor friend, (standing before her, I suppose, with thy fingers in thymouth,) What couldst thou say FOR me?
Have I not, in my former letters, suggested an hundred things, which afriend, in earnest to vindicate or excuse a friend, might say on such anoccasion?
But now to current topics, and the present state of matters here.--It istrue, as my servant told thee, that Miss Howe had engaged, before thiscursed woman's officiousness, to use her interest with her friend in mybehalf: and yet she told my cousins, in the visit they made her, that itwas her opinion that she would never forgive me. I send to thee enclosedcopies of all that passed on this occasion between my cousins Montague,Miss Howe, myself, Lady Betty, Lady Sarah, and Lord M.
I long to know what Miss Howe wrote to her friend, in order to induce herto marry the despicable plotter; the man whose friendship is no credit toany body; the wicked, wicked man. Thou hadst the two letters in thyhand. Had they been in mine, the seal would have yielded to the touch ofmy warm finger, (perhaps without the help of the post-office bullet;) andthe folds, as other placations have done, opened of themselves to obligemy curiosity. A wicked omission, Jack, not to contrive to send them downto me by man and horse! It might have passed, that the messenger whobrought the second letter, took them both back. I could have returnedthem by another, when copied, as from Miss Howe, and nobody but myselfand thee the wiser.
That's a charming girl! her spirit, her delightful spirit!--not to bemarried to it--how I wish to get that lively bird into my cage! how wouldI make her flutter and fly about!--till she left a feather upon everywire!
Had I begun there, I am confident, as I have heretofore said,* that Ishould not have had half the difficulty with her as I have had with hercharming friend. For these passionate girls have high pulses, and aclever fellow may make what sport he pleases with their unevenness--nowtoo high, now too low, you need only to provoke and appease them byturns; to bear with them, and to forbear to tease and ask pardon; andsometimes to give yourself the merit of a sufferer from them; thencatching them in the moment of concession, conscious of their ill usageof you, they are all your own.
* See Vol. VI. Letter VII.
But these sedate, contemplative girls, never out of temper but withreason; when that reason is given them, hardly ever pardon, or afford youanother opportunity to offend.
It was in part the apprehension that this would be so with my dear MissHarlowe, that made me carry her to a place where I believed she would beunable to escape me, although I were not to succeed in my first attempts.Else widow Sorlings's would have been as well for me as widow Sinclair's.For early I saw that there was no credulity in her to graft upon: nopretending to whine myself into her confidence. She was proof againstamorous persuasion. She had reason in her love. Her penetration andgood sense made her hate all compliments that had not truth and nature inthem. What could I have done with her in any other place? and yet howlong, even there, was I kept in awe, in spite of natural incitement, andunnatural instigations, (as I now think them,) by the mere force of thatnative dignity, and obvious purity of mind and manners, which fill everyone with reverence, if not with holy love, as thou callest it,* themoment he sees her!--Else, thinkest thou not, it was easy for me to be afine gentleman, and a delicate lover, or, at least a specious andflattering one?
* See Letter XXI. of this volume.
Lady Sarah and Lady Betty, finding the treaty, upon the success of whichthey have set their foolish hearts, likely to run into length, are aboutdeparting to their own seats; having take
n from me the best security thenature of the case will admit of, that is to say, my word, to marry thelady, if she will have me.
And after all, (methinks thou asked,) art thou still resolved to repair,if reparation be put into thy power?
Why, Jack, I must needs own that my heart has now-and-then someretrograde motions upon thinking seriously of the irrevocable ceremony.We do not easily give up the desire of our hearts, and what we imagineessential to our happiness, let the expectation or hope of compassing itbe ever so unreasonable or absurd in the opinion of others. Recurringsthere will be; hankerings that will, on every but-remotely-favourableincident, (however before discouraged and beaten back by ill success,)pop up, and abate the satisfaction we should otherwise take incontrariant overtures.
'Tis ungentlemanly, Jack, man to man, to lie.----But matrimony I do notheartily love--although with a CLARISSA--yet I am in earnest to marryher.
But I am often thinking that if now this dear creature, suffering time,and my penitence, my relations' prayers, and Miss Howe's mediation tosoften her resentments, (her revenge thou hast prettily* distinguishedaway,) and to recall repulsed inclination, should consent to meet me atthe altar--How vain will she then make all thy eloquent periods ofexecration!--How many charming interjections of her own will she spoil!And what a couple of old patriarchs shall we become, going in themill-horse round; getting sons and daughters; providing nurses for themfirst, governors and governesses next; teaching them lessons theirfathers never practised, nor which their mother, as her parents will say,was much the better for! And at last, perhaps, when life shall be turnedinto the dully sober stillness, and I become desirous to forget all mypast rogueries, what comfortable reflections will it afford to find themall revived, with equal, or probably greater trouble and expense, in thepersons and manners of so many young Lovelaces of the boys; and to havethe girls run away with varlets, perhaps not half so ingenious as myself;clumsy fellows, as it might happen, who could not afford the baggages oneexcuse for their weakness, besides those disgraceful ones of sex andnature!--O Belford! who can bear to think of these things!----Who, at mytime of life especially, and with such a bias for mischief!
* See Letter XVIII. of this volume.
Of this I am absolutely convinced, that if a man ever intends to marry,and to enjoy in peace his own reflections, and not be afraidretribution, or of the consequences of his own example, he should neverbe a rake.
This looks like conscience; don't it, Belford?
But, being in earnest still, as I have said, all I have to do in mypresent uncertainty, is, to brighten up my faculties, by filing off therust they have contracted by the town smoke, a long imprisonment in myclose attendance to so little purpose on my fair perverse; and to braceup, if I can, the relaxed fibres of my mind, which have been twitched andconvulsed like the nerves of some tottering paralytic, by means of thetumults she has excited in it; that so I may be able to present to her ahusband as worthy as I can be of her acceptance; or, if she reject me, bein a capacity to resume my usual gaiety of heart, and show others of themisleading sex, that I am not discouraged, by the difficulties I have metwith from this sweet individual of it, from endeavouring to make myselfas acceptable to them as before.
In this latter case, one tour to France and Italy, I dare say, will dothe business. Miss Harlowe will by that time have forgotten all she hassuffered from her ungrateful Lovelace: though it will be impossible thather Lovelace should ever forget a woman, whose equal he despairs to meetwith, were he to travel from one end of the world to the other.
If thou continuest paying off the heavy debts my long letters, for somany weeks together, have made thee groan under, I will endeavour torestrain myself in the desires I have, (importunate as they are,) ofgoing to town, to throw myself at the feet of my soul's beloved. Policyand honesty, both join to strengthen the restraint my own promise and thyengagement have laid me under on this head. I would not afresh provoke:on the contrary, would give time for her resentments to subside, that soall that follows may be her own act and deed.
***
Hickman, [I have a mortal aversion to that fellow!] has, by a line whichI have just now received, requested an interview with me on Friday at Mr.Dormer's, as at a common friend's. Does the business he wants to meet meupon require that it should be at a common friend's?--A challengeimplied: Is it not, Belford?--I shall not be civil to him, I doubt. Hehas been an intermeddler?--Then I envy him on Miss Howe's account: for ifI have a right notion of this Hickman, it is impossible that that viragocan ever love him.
Every one knows that the mother, (saucy as the daughter sometimes is,)crams him down her throat. Her mother is one of the mostviolent-spirited women in England. Her late husband could not stand inthe matrimonial contention of Who should? but tipt off the perch in it,neither knowing how to yield, nor knowing how to conquer.
A charming encouragement for a man of intrigue, when he has reason tobelieve that the woman he has a view upon has no love for her husband!What good principles must that wife have, who is kept in againsttemptation by a sense of her duty, and plighted faith, where affectionhas no hold of her!
Pr'ythee let's know, very particularly, how it fares with poor Belton.'Tis an honest fellow. Something more than his Thomasine seems to stickwith him.
Thou hast not been preaching to him conscience and reformation, hastthou?--Thou shouldest not take liberties with him of this sort, unlessthou thoughtest him absolutely irrecoverable. A man in ill health, andcrop-sick, cannot play with these solemn things as thou canst, and beneither better nor worse for them.--Repentance, Jack, I have a notion,should be set about while a man is in health and spirits. What's a manfit for, [not to begin a new work, surely!] when he is not himself, normaster of his faculties?--Hence, as I apprehend, it is that a death-bedrepentance is supposed to be such a precarious and ineffectual thing.
As to myself, I hope I have a great deal of time before me; since Iintend one day to be a reformed man. I have very serious reflectionsnow-and-then. Yet am I half afraid of the truth of what my charmer oncetold me, that a man cannot repent when he will.--Not to hold it, Isuppose she meant! By fits and starts I have repented a thousand times.
Casting my eye over the two preceding paragraphs, I fancy there issomething like contradiction in them. But I will not reconsider them.The subject is a very serious one. I don't at present quite understandit. But now for one more airy.
Tourville, Mowbray, and myself, pass away our time as pleasantly aspossibly we can without thee. I wish we don't add to Lord M.'s goutydays by the joy we give him.
This is one advantage, as I believe I have elsewhere observed, that wemale-delinquents in love-matters have of the other sex:--for while they,poor things! sit sighing in holes and corners, or run to woods and grovesto bemoan themselves on their baffled hopes, we can rant and roar, huntand hawk; and, by new loves, banish from our hearts all remembrance ofthe old ones.
Merrily, however, as we pass our time, my reflections upon the injuriesdone to this noble creature bring a qualm upon my heart very often. ButI know she will permit me to make her amends, after she has plagued meheartily; and that's my consolation.
An honest fellow still--clap thy wings, and crow, Jack!----