LETTER XXXVII
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.M. HALL, THURSDAY, SEPT. 14.
Ever since the fatal seventh of this month, I have been lost to myself,and to all the joys of life. I might have gone farther back than thatfatal seventh; which, for the future, I will never see anniversarilyrevolve but in sables; only till that cursed day I had some gleams ofhope now-and-then darting in upon me.
They tell me of an odd letter I wrote to you.* I remember I did write.But very little of the contents of what I wrote do I remember.
* See his delirious Letter, No. XXIII.
I have been in a cursed way. Methinks something has been workingstrangely retributive. I never was such a fool as to disbelieve aProvidence; yet am I not for resolving into judgments every thing thatseems to wear an avenging face. Yet if we must be punished either hereor hereafter for our misdeeds, better here, say I, than hereafter. HaveI not then an interest to think my punishment already not only begun butcompleted since what I have suffered, and do suffer, passes alldescription?
To give but one instance of the retributive--here I, who was thebarbarous cause of the loss of senses for a week together to the mostinimitable of women, have been punished with the loss of my own--preparative to--who knows what?--When, Oh! when, shall I know a joyfulhour?
I am kept excessively low; and excessively low I am. This sweetcreature's posthumous letter sticks close to me. All her excellenciesrise up hourly to my remembrance.
Yet dare I not indulge in these melancholy reflections. I find my headstrangely working again--Pen, begone!
FRIDAY, SEPT. 15.
I resume, in a sprightly vein, I hope--Mowbray and Tourville have justnow--
But what of Mowbray and Tourville?--What's the world?--What's any bodyin it?--
Yet they are highly exasperated against thee, for the last letter thouwrotest to them*--such an unfriendly, such a merciless--
* This Letter appears not.
But it won't do!--I must again lay down my pen.--O Belford! Belford!I am still, I am still most miserably absent from myself!--Shall never,never more be what I was!
***
Saturday--Sunday--Nothing done. Incapable of any thing.
MONDAY, SEPT. 18.
Heavy, d--n--y heavy and sick at soul, by Jupiter! I must come intotheir expedient. I must see what change of climate will do.
You tell these fellows, and you tell me, of repenting and reforming; butI can do neither. He who can, must not have the extinction of a ClarissaHarlowe to answer for.--Harlowe!--Curse upon the name!--and curse uponmyself for not changing it, as I might have done!--Yet I have no need ofurging a curse upon myself--I have it effectually.
'To say I once respected you with a preference!'*--In what stiff languagedoes maidenly modesty on these nice occasion express itself!--To say Ionce loved you, is the English; and there is truth and ease in theexpression.--'To say I once loved you,' then let it be, 'is what I oughtto blush to own.'
* See Letter XXXVI. of this volume.
And dost thou own it, excellent creature?--and dost thou then own it?--What music in these words from such an angel!--What would I give that myClarissa were in being, and could and would own that she loved me?
'But, indeed, Sir, I have been long greatly above you.' Long, my blessedcharmer!--Long, indeed, for you have been ever greatly above me, andabove your sex, and above all the world.
'That preference was not grounded on ignoble motives.'
What a wretch was I, to be so distinguished by her, and yet to be sounworthy of her hope to reclaim me!
Then, how generous her motives! Not for her own sake merely, notaltogether for mine, did she hope to reclaim me; but equally for the sakeof innocents who might otherwise be ruined by me.
And now, why did she write this letter, and why direct it to be given mewhen an event the most deplorable had taken place, but for my good, andwith a view to the safety of innocents she knew not?--And when was thisletter written? Was it not at the time, at the very time, that I hadbeen pursuing her, as I may say, from place to place; when her soul wasbowed down by calamity and persecution; and herself was denied allforgiveness from relations the most implacable?
Exalted creature!--And couldst thou, at such a time, and so early, and insuch circumstances, have so far subdued thy own just resentments, as towish happiness to the principal author of all thy distresses?--Wishhappiness to him who had robbed thee 'of all thy favourite expectationsin this life?' To him who had been the cause that thou wert cut off inthe bloom of youth?'
Heavenly aspirer!--What a frame must thou be in, to be able to use theword ONLY, in mentioning these important deprivations!--And as this wasbefore thou puttest off immortalily, may I not presume that thou now,
---- with pitying eye, Not derogating from thy perfect bliss, Survey'st all Heav'n around, and wishest for me?
'Consider my ways.'--Dear life of my life! Of what avail isconsideration now, when I have lost the dear creature, for whose sakealone it was worth while to have consideration?--Lost her beyondretrieving--swallowed up by the greedy grave--for ever lost her--that,that's the thing--matchless woman, how does this reflection wound me!
'Your golden dream cannot long last.'--Divine prophetess! my golden dreamis already over. 'Thought and reflection are no longer to be kept off.'--No longer continues that 'hardened insensibility' thou chargest uponme. 'Remorse has broken in upon me. Dreadful is my condition;--it isall reproach and horror with me!'--A thousand vultures in turn arepreying upon my heart!
But no more of these fruitless reflections--since I am incapable ofwriting any thing else; since my pen will slide into this gloomy subject,whether I will or not; I will once more quit it; nor will I again resumeit, till I can be more its master, and my own.
All I took pen to write for is however unwritten. It was, in few words,to wish you to proceed with your communications, as usual. And whyshould you not;--since, in her ever-to-be-lamented death, I know everything shocking and grievous--acquaint me, then, with all thou knowest,which I do not know; how her relations, her cruel relations, take it; andwhether now the barbed dart of after-reflection sticks not in theirhearts, as in mine, up to the very feathers.
***
I will soon quit this kingdom. For now my Clarissa is no more, what isthere in it (in the world indeed) worth living for?--But shall I notfirst, by some masterly mischief, avenge her and myself upon her cursedfamily?
The accursed woman, they tell me, has broken her leg. Why was it not herneck?--All, all, but what is owing to her relations, is the fault of thatwoman, and of her hell-born nymphs. The greater the virtue, the noblerthe triumph, was a sentence for ever in their mouths.--I have had itseveral times in my head to set fire to the execrable house; and to watchat the doors and windows, that not a devil in it escape the consumingflames. Had the house stood by itself, I had certainly done it.
But, it seems, the old wretch is in the way to be rewarded, without myhelp. A shocking letter is received of somebody's in relation to her--your's, I suppose--too shocking for me, they say, to see at present.*
* See Letter XXV. of this volume.
They govern me as a child in strings; yet did I suffer so much in myfever, that I am willing to bear with them, till I can get tolerablywell.
At present I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep. Yet are my disordersnothing to what they were; for, Jack, my brain was on fire day and night;and had it not been of the asbestos kind, it had all been consumed.
I had no distinct ideas, but of dark and confused misery; it was allremorse and horror indeed!--Thoughts of hanging, drowning, shooting--thenrage, violence, mischief, and despair, took their turns with me. Mylucid intervals still worse, giving me to reflect upon what I was thehour before, and what I was likely to be the next, and perhaps for life--the sport of enemies!--the laughter of fools!--and the hanging-sleeved,go-carted property of hired slaves; who were, perhaps, to find theiraccount in manacling, and (abhorred thought
!) in personally abusing me byblows and stripes!
Who can bear such reflections as these? TO be made to fear only, to sucha one as me, and to fear such wretches too?--What a thing was this, butremotely to apprehend! And yet for a man to be in such a state as torender it necessary for his dearest friends to suffer this to be done forhis own sake, and in order to prevent further mischief!--There is nothinking of these things!
I will not think of them, therefore; but will either get a train ofcheerful ideas, or hang myself by to-morrow morning.
---- To be a dog, and dead, Were paradise, to such a life as mine.