COLONEL MORDEN, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. SATURDAY, SEPT. 23.
DEAR SIR,
I am very sorry that any thing you have heard I have said should give you uneasiness.
I am obliged to you for the letters you have communicated to me; and still further for your promise to favour me with others occasionally.
All that relates to my dear cousin I shall be glad to see, be it from whom it will.
I leave to your own discretion, what may or may not be proper for Miss Howe to see from a pen so free as mine.
I admire her spirit. Were she a man, do you think, Sir, she, at this time, would have your advice to take upon such a subject as that upon which you write?
Fear not, however, that your communications shall put me upon any measures that otherwise I should not have taken. The wickedness, Sir, is of such a nature, as admits not of aggravation.
Yet I do assure you, that I have not made any resolutions that will be a tie upon me.
I have indeed expressed myself with vehemence upon the occasion. Who could forbear to do so? But it is not my way to resolve in matters of moment, till opportunity brings the execution of my purposes within my reach. We shall see by what manner of spirit this young man will be actuated on his recovery. If he continue to brave and defy a family, which he has so irreparably injured—if—but resolutions depending upon future contingencies are best left to future determination, as I just now hinted.
Mean time, I will own that I think my cousin's arguments unanswerable. No good man but must be influenced by them.—But, alas! Sir, who is good?
As to your arguments; I hope you will believe me, when I assure you, as I now do, that your opinion and your reasonings have, and will always have, great and deserved weight with me; and that I respect you still more than I did, if possible, for your expostulations in support of my cousin's pious injunctions to me. They come from you, Sir, with the greatest propriety, as her executor and representative; and likewise as you are a man of humanity, and a well-wisher to both parties.
I am not exempt from violent passions, Sir, any more than your friend; but then I hope they are only capable of being raised by other people's insolence, and not by my own arrogance. If ever I am stimulated by my imperfections and my resentments to act against my judgment and my cousin's injunctions, some such reflections as these that follow will run away with my reason. Indeed they are always present with me.
In the first place; my own disappointment: who came over with the hope of
passing the remainder of my days in the conversation of a kinswoman
so beloved; and to whom I have a double relation as her cousin and
trustee.
Then I reflect, too, too often perhaps for my engagements to her in her
last hours, that the dear creature could only forgive for herself.
She, no doubt, is happy: but who shall forgive for a whole family,
in all its branches made miserable for their lives?
That the more faulty her friends were as to her, the more enormous his
ingratitude, and the more inexcusable—What! Sir, was it not enough
that she suffered what she did for him, but the barbarian must make
her suffer for her sufferings for his sake?—Passion makes me
express this weakly; passion refuses the aid of expression
sometimes, where the propriety of a resentment prima facie declares
expression to be needless. I leave it to you, Sir, to give this
reflection its due force.
That the author of this diffusive mischief perpetuated it premeditatedly,
wantonly, in the gaiety of his heart. To try my cousin, say you,
Sir! To try the virtue of a Clarissa, Sir!—Has she then given him
any cause to doubt her virtue?—It could not be.—If he avers that
she did, I am indeed called upon—but I will have patience.
That he carried her, as now appears, to a vile brothel, purposely to put
her out of all human resource; himself out of the reach of all
human remorse: and that, finding her proof against all the common
arts of delusion, base and unmanly arts were there used to effect
his wicked purposes. Once dead, the injured saint, in her will,
says, he has seen her.
That I could not know this, when I saw him at M. Hall: that, the object
of his attempts considered, I could not suppose there was such a
monster breathing as he: that it was natural for me to impute her
refusal of him rather to transitory resentment, to consciousness of
human frailty, and mingled doubts of the sincerity of his offers,
than to villanies, which had given the irreversible blow, and had
at that instant brought her down to the gates of death, which in a
very few days enclosed her.
That he is a man of defiance: a man who thinks to awe every one by his
insolent darings, and by his pretensions to superior courage and
skill.
That, disgrace as he is to his name, and to the character of a gentleman,
the man would not want merit, who, in vindication of the
dishonoured distincion, should expunge and blot him out of the
worthy list.
That the injured family has a son, who, however unworthy of such a
sister, is of a temper vehement, unbridled, fierce; unequal,
therefore, (as he has once indeed been found,) to a contention
with this man: the loss of which son, by a violent death on such
an occasion, and by a hand so justly hated, would complete the
misery of the whole family; and who, nevertheless, resolves to
call him to account, if I do not; his very misbehaviour, perhaps,
to such a sister, stimulating his perverse heart to do her memory
the more signal justice; though the attempt might be fatal to
himself.
Then, Sir, to be a witness, as I am every hour, to the calamity and
distress of a family to which I am related; every one of whom,
however averse to an alliance with him while it had not place,
would no doubt have been soon reconciled to the admirable
creature, had the man (to whom, for his family and fortunes, it
was not a disgrace to be allied) done her but common justice!
To see them hang their pensive heads; mope about, shunning one another;
though formerly never used to meet but to rejoice in each other;
afflicting themselves with reflections, that the last time they
respectively saw the dear creature, it was here or there, at such
a place, in such an attitude; and could they have thought that it
would have been the last?—Every one of them reviving instances of
her excellencies that will for a long time make their very
blessings a curse to them!
Her closet, her chamber, her cabinet, given up to me to disfurnish, in
order to answer (now too late obliging!) the legacies bequeathed;
unable themselves to enter them; and even making use of less
convenient back stairs, that they may avoid passing by the doors
of her apartment!
Her parlour locked up; the walks, the retirements, the summer-house in
which she delighted, and in which she used to pursue her charming
works; that in particular, from which she went to the fatal
interview, shunned, or hurried by, or over!
Her perfections, nevertheless, called up to remembrance, and enumerated;
incidents and graces, unheeded before, or passed over in the group
of her numberless perfections, now brought back into notice, and
dwelt upon!
The very servants allowed to expatiate upon these praiseful topics to
their principals! Even eloquent in their praises! The distressed
principals listening and weeping! Then to see them break in upon
the zealous applauders, by their impatience and remorse, and throw
abroad their helpless hands, and exclaim; then again to see them
listen to hear more of her praises, and weep again—they even
encouraging the servants to repeat how they used to be stopt by
strangers to ask after her, and by those who knew her, to be told
of some new instances to her honour—how aggravating all this!
In dreams they see her, and desire to see her; always an angle, and
accompanied by angels; always clad in robes of light; always
endeavouring to comfort them, who declare, that they shall never
more know comfort!
What an example she set! How she indited! How she drew! How she
wrought! How she talked! How she sung! How she played! Her
voice music! Her accent harmony!
Her conversation how instructive! how sought after! The delight of
persons of all ages, of both sexes, of all ranks! Yet how humble,
how condescending! Never were dignity and humility so
illustriously mingled!
At other times, how generous, how noble, how charitable, how judicious in
her charities! In every action laudable! In every attitude
attractive! In every appearance, whether full-dressed, or in the
housewife's more humble garb, equally elegant, and equally lovely!
Like, or resembling, Miss Clarissa Harlowe, they now remember to
be a praise denoting the highest degree of excellence, with every
one, whatever person, action, or rank, spoken of.—The desirable
daughter; the obliging kinswoman; the affectionate sister, (all
envy now subsided!) the faithful, the warm friend; the affable,
the kind, the benevolent mistress!—Not one fault remembered! All
their severities called cruelties: mutually accusing each other;
each him and herself; and all to raise her character, and torment
themselves.
Such, Sir, was the angel, of whom the vilest of men has deprived the world! You, Sir, who know more of the barbarous machinations and practices of this strange man, can help me to still more inflaming reasons, were they needed, why a man, not perfect, may stand excused to the generality of the world, if he should pursue his vengeance; and the rather, as through an absence of six years, (high as just report, and the promises of her early youth from childhood, had raised her in his esteem,) he could not till now know one half of her excellencies—till now! that we have lost, for ever lost, the admirable creature!—
But I will force myself from the subject, after I have repeated that I have not yet made any resolutions that can bind me. Whenever I do, I shall be glad they may be such as may merit the honour of your approbation.
I send you back the copies of the posthumous letters. I see the humanity of your purpose, in the transmission of them to me; and I thank you most heartily for it. I presume, that it is owing to the same laudable consideration, that you kept back the copy of that to the wicked man himself.
I intend to wait upon Miss Howe in person with the diamond ring, and such other of the effects bequeathed to her as are here. I am, Sir,
Your most faithful and obliged servant, WM. MORDEN.
[Mr. Belford, in his answer to this letter, farther enforces the lady's
dying injunctions; and rejoices that the Colonel has made no
vindictive resolutions; and hopes every thing from his prudence
and consideration, and from his promise given to the dying lady.
He refers to the seeing him in town on account of the dreadful ends of
two of the greatest criminals in his cousin's affair. 'This, says
he, together with Mr. Lovelace's disorder of mind, looks as if
Providence had already taken the punishment of these unhappy
wretches into its own hands.'
He desires the Colonel will give him a day's notice of his coming to
town, lest otherwise he may be absent at the time—this he does,
though he tells him not the reason, with a view to prevent a
meeting between him and Mr. Lovelace; who might be in town (as he
apprehends,) about the same time, in his way to go abroad.]