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 that fatal seventh; which, for the future, I will never see anniversarily revolve but in sables; only till that cursed day I had some gleams of hope 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 working strangely retributive. I never was such a fool as to disbelieve a Providence; yet am I not for resolving into judgments every thing that seems to wear an avenging face. Yet if we must be punished either here or hereafter for our misdeeds, better here, say I, than hereafter. Have I not then an interest to think my punishment already not only begun but completed since what I have suffered, and do suffer, passes all description?
To give but one instance of the retributive—here I, who was the barbarous cause of the loss of senses for a week together to the most inimitable of women, have been punished with the loss of my own— preparative to—who knows what?—When, Oh! when, shall I know a joyful hour?
I am kept excessively low; and excessively low I am. This sweet creature's posthumous letter sticks close to me. All her excellencies rise up hourly to my remembrance.
Yet dare I not indulge in these melancholy reflections. I find my head strangely working again—Pen, begone!
FRIDAY, SEPT. 15.
I resume, in a sprightly vein, I hope—Mowbray and Tourville have just now—
But what of Mowbray and Tourville?—What's the world?—What's any body in it?—
Yet they are highly exasperated against thee, for the last letter thou wrotest 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 into their expedient. I must see what change of climate will do.
You tell these fellows, and you tell me, of repenting and reforming; but I can do neither. He who can, must not have the extinction of a Clarissa Harlowe to answer for.—Harlowe!—Curse upon the name!—and curse upon myself for not changing it, as I might have done!—Yet I have no need of urging a curse upon myself—I have it effectually.
'To say I once respected you with a preference!'*—In what stiff language does maidenly modesty on these nice occasion express itself!—To say I once loved you, is the English; and there is truth and ease in the expression.—'To say I once loved you,' then let it be, 'is what I ought to 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 my Clarissa were in being, and could and would own that she loved me?
'But, indeed, Sir, I have been long greatly above you.' Long, my blessed charmer!—Long, indeed, for you have been ever greatly above me, and above 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 so unworthy of her hope to reclaim me!
Then, how generous her motives! Not for her own sake merely, not altogether for mine, did she hope to reclaim me; but equally for the sake of innocents who might otherwise be ruined by me.
And now, why did she write this letter, and why direct it to be given me when an event the most deplorable had taken place, but for my good, and with a view to the safety of innocents she knew not?—And when was this letter written? Was it not at the time, at the very time, that I had been pursuing her, as I may say, from place to place; when her soul was bowed down by calamity and persecution; and herself was denied all forgiveness from relations the most implacable?
Exalted creature!—And couldst thou, at such a time, and so early, and in such circumstances, have so far subdued thy own just resentments, as to wish happiness to the principal author of all thy distresses?—Wish happiness to him who had robbed thee 'of all thy favourite expectations in this life?' To him who had been the cause that thou wert cut off in the bloom of youth?'
Heavenly aspirer!—What a frame must thou be in, to be able to use the word ONLY, in mentioning these important deprivations!—And as this was before thou puttest off immortality, 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 is consideration now, when I have lost the dear creature, for whose sake alone it was worth while to have consideration?—Lost her beyond retrieving—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 dream is already over. 'Thought and reflection are no longer to be kept off.' —No longer continues that 'hardened insensibility' thou chargest upon me. 'Remorse has broken in upon me. Dreadful is my condition;—it is all reproach and horror with me!'—A thousand vultures in turn are preying upon my heart!
But no more of these fruitless reflections—since I am incapable of writing 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 resume it, 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 why should you not;—since, in her ever-to-be-lamented death, I know every thing shocking and grievous—acquaint me, then, with all thou knowest, which I do not know; how her relations, her cruel relations, take it; and whether now the barbed dart of after-reflection sticks not in their hearts, as in mine, up to the very feathers.
***
I will soon quit this kingdom. For now my Clarissa is no more, what is there in it (in the world indeed) worth living for?—But shall I not first, by some masterly mischief, avenge her and myself upon her cursed family?
The accursed woman, they tell me, has broken her leg. Why was it not her neck?—All, all, but what is owing to her relations, is the fault of that woman, and of her hell-born nymphs. The greater the virtue, the nobler the triumph, was a sentence for ever in their mouths.—I have had it several times in my head to set fire to the execrable house; and to watch at the doors and windows, that not a devil in it escape the consuming flames. 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 my help. 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 my fever, that I am willing to bear with them, till I can get tolerably well.
At present I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep. Yet are my disorders nothing 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 all remorse and horror indeed!—Thoughts of hanging, drowning, shooting—then rage, violence, mischief, and despair, took their turns with me. My lucid intervals still worse, giving me to reflect upon what I was the hour 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 their account in manacling, and (abhorred thought!) in personally abusing me by blows and stripes!
Who can bear such reflections as these? TO be made to fear only, to such a one as me, and to fear such wretches too?—What a thing was this, but remotely to apprehend! And yet for a man to be in such a state as to render it necessary for his dearest friends to suffer this to be done for his own sake, and in order to prevent further mischief!—There is no thinking of these things!
I will not think of them, therefore; but will either get a train of cheerful ideas, or hang myself by to-morrow morning.
—— To be a dog, and dead,
Were paradise, to such a life as mine.