MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 20.
I write to demand back again my last letter. I own it was my mind at the different times I wrote it; and, whatever ailed me, I could not help writing it. Such a gloomy impulse came upon me, and increased as I wrote, that, for my soul, I could not forbear running into the miserable.
'Tis strange, very strange, that a man's conscience should be able to force his fingers to write whether he will or not; and to run him into a subject he more than once, at the very time, resolved not to think of.
Nor is it less strange, that (no new reason occurring) he should, in a day or two more, so totally change his mind; have his mind, I should rather say, so wholly illuminated by gay hopes and rising prospects, as to be ashamed of what he had written.
For, on reperusal of a copy of my letter, which fell into my hands by accident, in the hand-writing of my cousin Charlotte, who, unknown to me, had transcribed it, I find it to be such a letter as an enemy would rejoice to see.
This I know, that were I to have continued but one week more in the way I was in when I wrote the latter part of it, I should have been confined, and in straw, the next; for I now recollect, that all my distemper was returning upon me with irresistible violence—and that in spite of water-gruel and soup-meagre.
I own I am still excessively grieved at the disappointment this admirable woman made it so much her whimsical choice to give me.
But, since it has thus fallen out; since she was determined to leave the world; and since she actually ceases to be; ought I, who have such a share of life and health in hand, to indulge gloomy reflections upon an event that is passed; and being passed, cannot be recalled?—Have I not had a specimen of what will be my case, if I do.
For, Belford, ('tis a folly to deny it,) I have been, to use an old word, quite bestraught.
Why, why did my mother bring me up to bear no controul? Why was I so enabled, as that to my very tutors it was a request that I should not know what contradiction or disappointment was?—Ought she not to have known what cruelty there was in her kindness?
What a punishment, to have my first very great disappointment touch my intellect!—And intellects, once touched—but that I cannot bear to think of—only thus far; the very repentance and amendment, wished me so heartily by my kind and cross dear, have been invalidated and postponed, and who knows for how long?—the amendment at least; can a madman be capable of either?
Once touched, therefore, I must endeavour to banish those gloomy reflections, which might otherwise have brought on the right turn of mind: and this, to express myself in Lord M.'s style, that my wits may not be sent a wool-gathering.
For, let me moreover own to thee, that Dr. Hale, who was my good Astolfo, [you read Ariosto, Jack,] and has brought me back my wit-jar, had much ado, by starving, diet, by profuse phlebotomy, by flaying-blisters, eyelet-hole-cupping, a dark room, a midnight solitude in a midday sun, to effect my recovery. And now, for my comfort, he tells me, that I may still have returns upon full moons—horrible! most horrible!—and must be as careful of myself at both equinoctials, as Cæsar was warned to be of the Ides of March.
How my heart sickens at looking back upon what I was! Denied the sun, and all comfort: all my visiters low-born, tip-toe attendants: even those tip-toe slaves never approaching me but periodically, armed with gallipots, boluses, and cephalic draughts; delivering their orders to me in hated whispers; and answering other curtain-holding impertinents, inquiring how I was, and how I took their execrable potions, whisperingly too! What a cursed still life was this!—Nothing active in me, or about me, but the worm that never dies.
Again I hasten from the recollection of scenes, which will, at times, obtrude themselves upon me.
Adieu, Belford!
But return me my last letter—and build nothing upon its contents. I must, I will, I have already, overcome these fruitless gloominess. Every hour my constitution rises stronger and stronger to befriend me; and, except a tributary sigh now-and-then to the memory of my heart's beloved, it gives me hope that I shall quickly be what I was—life, spirit, gaiety, and once more the plague of a sex that has been my plague, and will be every man's plague at one time or other of his life. I repeat my desire, however, that you will write to me as usual. I hope you have good store of particulars by you to communicate, when I can better bear to hear of the dispositions that were made for all that was mortal of my beloved Clarissa.
But it will be the joy of my heart to be told that her implacable friends are plagued with remorse. Such things as those you may now send me: for company in misery is some relief; especially when a man can think those he hates as miserable as himself.
One more adieu, Jack!