• • •
On reperusing yours in a cooler moment, I cannot but thank you for your friendly love and good intentions. My value for you, from the first hour of our acquaintance till now, I have never found misplaced; regarding at least your intention: thou must, however, own a good deal of blunder of the over-do and under-do kind, with respect to the part thou actedst between me and the beloved of my heart. But thou art really an honest fellow, and a sincere and warm friend. I could almost wish I had not written to Florence till I had received thy letter now before me. But it is gone. Let it go. If he wish peace, and to avoid violence, he will have a fair opportunity to embrace the one and shun the other. If not—he must take his fate.
Wholly yours,
LOVELACE
Letter 536: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
Trent, Dec. 3-14
Tomorrow is to be the Day, that will in all probability send either one or two ghosts to attend the manes [spirit] of my Clarissa.
I arrived here yesterday; and inquiring for an English gentleman of the name of Morden, soon found out the colonel’s lodgings. He had been in town two days; and left his name at every probable place.
He was gone to ride out; and I left my name, and where to be found: and in the evening he made me a visit.
He was plaguy gloomy. That was not I. But yet he told me that I had acted like a man of true spirit in my first letter; and with honour, in giving him so readily this meeting. He wished I had in other respects; and then we might have seen each other upon better terms than now we did.
I said there was no recalling what was passed; and that I wished some things had not been done, as well as he.
To recriminate now, he said, would be as exasperating as unavailable. And as I had so cheerfully given him this opportunity, words should give place to business. Your choice, Mr Lovelace, of time, of place, of weapon, shall be my choice.
The two latter be yours, Mr Morden. The time tomorrow, or next day, as you please.
Next day, then, Mr Lovelace; and we’ll ride out tomorrow, to fix the place.
Agreed, sir.
We parted with a solemn sort of ceremonious civility: and this day I called upon him; and we rode out together to fix upon the place: and both being of one mind, and hating to put off for the morrow what could be done today, would have decided it then: but De la Tour, and the colonel’s valet, who attended us, being unavoidably let into the secret, joined to beg we would have with us a surgeon from Brixen, whom La Tour had fallen in with there, and who had told him he was to ride next morning to bleed a person in a fever, at a lone cottage which, by the surgeon’s description, was not far from the place where we then were, if it were not that very cottage within sight of us.
They undertook so to manage it, that the surgeon should know nothing of the matter till his assistance was called in. And La Tour being, as I assured the colonel, a ready-contriving fellow (whom I ordered to obey him as myself were the chance to be in his favour), we both agreed to defer the decision till tomorrow, and to leave the whole about the surgeon to the management of our two valets; enjoining them absolute secrecy: and so rode back again by different ways.
We fixed upon a little lone valley for the spot—ten tomorrow morning the time—and single rapier the word. Yet I repeatedly told him that I value myself so much upon my skill in that weapon, that I would wish him to choose any other.
He said it was a gentleman’s weapon; and he who understood it not, wanted a qualification that he ought to suffer for not having: but that, as to him, one weapon was as good as another throughout all the instruments of offence.
So, Jack, you see I take no advantage of him: but my devil must deceive me, if he take not his life, or his death, at my hands, before eleven tomorrow morning.
We are to ride thither, and to dismount when at the place; and his footman and mine are to wait at an appointed distance, with a chaise to carry off to the borders of the Venetian territories the survivor, if one drop; or to assist either or both, as occasion may demand.
And thus, Belford, is the matter settled.
A shower of rain has left me nothing else to do: and therefore I write this letter; though I might as well have deferred it till tomorrow twelve o’clock, when I doubt not to be able to write again, to assure you how much I am
Yours, etc.
LOVELACE
Letter 537: F. J. DE LA TOUR TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ., NEAR SOHO SQUARE, LONDON
(Translation)
Trent, December 18. N.S.
Sir,
I have melancholy news to inform you of, by order of the Chevalier Lovelace. He showed me his letter to you before he sealed it; signifying that he was to meet the Chevalier Morden on the 15th. Wherefore, as the occasion of the meeting is so well known to you, I shall say nothing of it here.
The two chevaliers came exactly at their time: they were attended by Monsieur Margate (the colonel’s gentleman) and myself. They had given orders overnight, and now repeated them in each other’s presence, that we should observe a strict impartiality between them: and that, if one fell, each of us should look upon himself, as to any needful help, or retreat, as the servant of the survivor, and take his commands accordingly.
After a few compliments, both the gentlemen, with the greatest presence of mind that I ever beheld in men, stripped to their shirts, and drew.
They parried with equal judgement several passes. My chevalier drew the first blood, making a desperate push, which by a sudden turn of his antagonist missed going clear through him, and wounded him on the fleshy part of the ribs of his right side; which part the sword tore out, being on the extremity of the body: but, before he could recover himself, his adversary, in return, pushed him into the inside of the left arm, near the shoulder: and the sword, by raking his breast as it passed, being followed by a great effusion of blood, the colonel said, sir, I believe you have enough.
My chevalier swore by G-d, he was not hurt: ‘twas a pin’s point: and so made another pass at his antagonist; which he, with a surprising dexterity, received under his arm, and run my dear chevalier into the body: who immediately fell; saying, The luck is yours, sir. Oh my beloved Clarissa! Now art thou—Inwardly he spoke three or four words more. His sword dropped from his hand. Mr Morden threw his down, and ran to him, saying in French—Ah monsieur, you are a dead man! Call to God for mercy!
We gave the signal agreed upon to the footmen; and they to the surgeons; who instantly came up.
Colonel Morden, I found, was too well used to the bloody work; for he was as cool as if nothing so extraordinary had happened, assisting the surgeons, though his own wound bled much. But my dear chevalier fainted away two or three times running, and vomited blood besides.
However, they stopped the bleeding for the present; and we helped him into the voiture; and then the colonel suffered his own wound to be dressed.
The colonel, against the surgeons’ advice, would mount on horseback to pass into the Venetian territories; and generously gave me a purse of gold to pay the surgeons; desiring me to make a present to the footman; and to accept of the remainder, as a mark of his satisfaction in my conduct; and in my care and tenderness of my master.
The surgeons told him, that my chevalier could not live over the day.
When the colonel took leave of him, Mr Lovelace said in French, You have well revenged the dear creature.
I have, sir, said Mr Morden, in the same language: and perhaps shall be sorry that you called upon me to this work, while I was balancing whether to obey, or disobey, the dear angel.
There is a fate in it! replied my chevalier—a cursed fate!—or this could not have been! But be ye all witnesses, that I have provoked my destiny, and acknowledge that I fall by a man of honour.
Sir, said the colonel, with the piety of a confessor (wringing Mr Lovelace’s hand), snatch these few fleeting moments, and commend yourself t
o God.
And so he rode off.
The voiture proceeded slowly with my chevalier; yet the motion set both his wounds bleeding afresh; and it was with difficulty they again stopped the blood.
We brought him alive to the first cottage; and he gave orders to me to dispatch to you the packet I herewith send sealed up; and bid me write to you the particulars of this most unhappy affair, and to give you thanks, in his name, for all your favours and friendship to him.
Contrary to all expectation, he lived over the night: but suffered much, as well from his impatience and disappointment, as from his wounds; for he seemed very unwilling to die.
He was delirious, at times, in the two last hours; and then several times cried out, Take her away! Take her away! but named nobody. And sometimes praised some lady (that Clarissa, I suppose, whom he had called upon when he received his death’s wound) calling her, Sweet Excellence! Divine Creature! Fair Sufferer! And once he said, Look down, blessed Spirit, look down! And there stopped—his lips however moving.
At nine in the morning, he was seized with convulsions, and fainted away; and it was a quarter of an hour before he came out of them.
His few last words I must not omit, as they show an ultimate composure; which may administer some consolation to his honourable friends.
Blessed—said he, addressing himself no doubt to Heaven; for his dying eyes were lifted up—a strong convulsion prevented him for a few moments saying more. But recovering, he again with great fervour (lifting up his eyes, and his spread hands) pronounced the word Blessed. Then, in a seeming ejaculation, he spoke inwardly so as not to be understood: at last, he distinctly pronounced these three words,
LET THIS EXPIATE!
And then, his head sinking on his pillow, he expired; at about half an hour after ten.
He little thought, poor gentleman! his end so near: so had given no direction about his body. I have caused it to be embowelled, and deposited in a vault, till I have orders from England.
This is a favour that was procured with difficulty; and would have been refused, had he not been an Englishman of rank: a nation with reason respected in every Austrian government—for he had refused ghostly attendance, and the Sacraments in the Catholic way. May his soul be happy, I pray God!
I have had some trouble also on account of the manner of his death, from the Magistracy here: who have taken the requisite informations in the affair. And it has cost me some money. Of which, and of my dear Chevalier’s effects, I will give you a faithful account in my next. And so, waiting at this place your commands, I am, sir,
Your most faithful and obedient servant,
F. J. DE LA TOUR
Afterword
Such deep penetration into nature; such power to raise and alarm the passions, few writers, either ancient or modern, have been possessed of. My affections are so strongly engaged, and my fears are so raised, by what I have already read, that I cannot express my eagerness to see the rest. . . .
—Henry Fielding, on reading the first installment of Clarissa
Henry Fielding may have been Samuel Richardson’s great rival as a novelist, but he knew a work of genius when he saw it. Clarissa is, without doubt, one of the great masterpieces of European culture. That’s an enormous claim, I know, but with a heavyweight like Fielding at my back, I’m going to do my best to justify it. Let’s start with some background on Richardson himself, and then a brief résumé of Clarissa.
Samuel Richardson: From Printer to Pamela
Samuel Richardson was born near Derby in 1689. He was married twice and had twelve children, of whom only four girls survived—as he wrote to his friend Lady Bradshaigh, “I lost six sons (all my sons) and two daughters.” His education was limited, but by the age of thirteen, he was making money writing love letters for the young women he knew, and years later he said it was this experience that gave him his intimate knowledge of the female heart. By 1739 he had an extremely successful printing business in London, but had never yet put pen to paper on his own account until the booksellers Charles Rivington and John Osborne asked him to produce a volume of “familiar letters.” Familiar letters were a popular form of minor literature in the eighteenth century—a bit like a modern agony-aunt column, in which tricky questions of behavior were examined in letters between different correspondents. Richardson started to write a dialogue between a young maidservant and her parents, in which she asks for their advice in fending off the sexual advances of her unscrupulous master, and it was this that eventually grew into Pamela; Or Virtue Rewarded.
The book was published—with Richardson claiming the letters were genuine and he merely their editor—in November 1740. To say it was a sensation is putting it mildly. There were five editions by the end of 1741, with some twenty thousand copies sold. Richardson promoted his book with a remarkably successful—and remarkably modern—marketing campaign, employing all the tricks of the book trade, including newspaper publicity and celebrity endorsements. He may even have been involved in the production of a pamphlet called Pamela Censured, which denounced the novel as pornographic, and had—of course—a predictably healthy effect on sales. Pamela’s origins in the moral dilemmas of the familiar letter tell us a good deal about what Richardson hoped to achieve in the book, and he made his intentions plain in a letter to Aaron Hill in 1741:
I thought the story, if written in an easy and natural manner . . . might possibly introduce a new species of writing, that might possibly turn young people into a course of reading different from the pomp and parade of romance-writing.
We can argue till the cows come home whether Pamela was the first true “novel” in English (and academics still do), but what is absolutely undeniable is that Richardson himself wished to be seen as the pioneer of something new and radical, that had never been attempted in fiction before. And in Clarissa that is what he achieves.
Clarissa: “A Double Yet Separate Correspondence”
Clarissa was Richardson’s second novel, published in three installments from December 1747 to December 1748. It tells the tale of the beautiful and virtuous Clarissa Harlowe, who is tricked away from her parents’ house by the libertine Robert Lovelace, raped by him, and dies. Or, as Samuel Johnson’s friend Hester Thrale Piozzi put it, “A Man gets a Girl from her Parents—violates her Free Will, & She dies of a broken heart. That is all the Story.” All the story indeed, and in its original edition, it takes the best part of a million words to tell it. And that’s one reason why I’m so delighted that Signet publishes this abridged version, because it makes this magnificent novel accessible to readers who don’t have the hours and hours of TV-less and Web-less leisure that Richardson’s contemporaries needed to fill.
Like Pamela before it, Clarissa is a novel-in-letters. This “epistolary” approach to novel writing was a common form in the eighteenth century, and Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility may well have started out that way. It fell out of favor in the Victorian period but has enjoyed something of a renaissance in bestsellers like We Need to Talk About Kevin. And as readers of that novel will know, it’s a form that appears deceptively simple, but requires great technical skill to carry off. Richardson described his characters as writing “to the moment,” and there really is an amazing immediacy to these letters, written so soon after the events they relate. Many of Richardson’s correspondents told him they found it “impossible to think [the novel] a Fiction,” and his friend Susanna Highmore was not alone in reacting to Clarissa’s death as if she had been a living friend:
I laid down the Book, and felt for some Moments I verily think as much Affliction as such a Friend in real Life so circumstanc’d could feel. . . . I see, I hear, I feel the same, and am for the present as unhappy, as if it were all true. . . .
Some of that “reality effect” is due to what the characters say, but it’s also how they say it. Richardson was remarkably innovative in the way he used both syntax and typography t
o mimic the ebb and flow of thought. The short, half-finished sentences, the dashes, italics, question marks and exclamation marks, all show him straining language to represent emotion—a dazzling technique that anticipates the development of the modern “stream of consciousness” novel by nearly two hundred years.
In constructing his narrative, Richardson expertly devises what he calls a “double yet separate correspondence” between Clarissa and her friend Anna on the one hand, and Lovelace and his confidant Belford on the other, as the two protagonists reveal, in private, the “secret recesses of the heart.” Or do they? Letters were the subject of much debate in the eighteenth century, and for every commentator who extolled the letter as the quintessence of openness, truth and self-expression, there was another who warned of its elusive and possibly even treacherous nature. Samuel Johnson was particularly skeptical about the alleged sincerity of the letter, especially in the hands of an accomplished wordsmith, observing, “There is, indeed, no transaction which offers stronger temptations to fallacy and sophistication than epistolary intercourse.”
The tension here—as in Clarissa—is thus between “letter as portrait,” and “letter as mask.” Confession and revelation on the one hand; artifice and rhetoric on the other. And for Richardson’s contemporaries, the first was traditionally associated with letters by women, and the second with letters by men. In fact Richardson often warns his female correspondents about the dangers of writing to men, telling the young Sophia Westcomb that his own sex is “hardly ever devoid of design,” which “makes a correspondence dangerous.”