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Clarissa, Volume 7 by Samuel Richardson

S >> Samuel Richardson >> Clarissa, Volume 7




I think I cannot be more private than where I am. I hope I am safe. All
the risque I run, is in going out, and returning from morning-prayers;
which I have two or three times ventured to do; once at Lincoln's-inn
chapel, at eleven; once at St. Dunstan's, Fleet-street, at seven in the
morning,* in a chair both times; and twice, at six in the morning, at the
neighbouring church in Covent-garden. The wicked wretches I have escaped
from, will not, I hope, come to church to look for me; especially at so
early prayers; and I have fixed upon the privatest pew in the latter
church to hide myself in; and perhaps I may lay out a little matter in an
ordinary gown, by way of disguise; my face half hid by my mob.--I am very
careless, my dear, of my appearance now. Neat and clean takes up the
whole of my attention.


* The seven-o'clock prayers at St. Dunstan's have been since
discontinued.


The man's name at whose house I belong, is Smith--a glove maker, as well
as seller. His wife is the shop-keeper. A dealer also in stockings,
ribbands, snuff, and perfumes. A matron-like woman, plain-hearted, and
prudent. The husband an honest, industrious man. And they live in good
understanding with each other: a proof with me that their hearts are
right; for where a married couple live together upon ill terms, it is a
sign, I think, that each knows something amiss of the other, either with
regard to temper or morals, which if the world knew as well as
themselves, it would perhaps as little like them as such people like each
other. Happy the marriage, where neither man nor wife has any wilful or
premeditated evil in their general conduct to reproach the other with!--
for even persons who have bad hearts will have a veneration for those who
have good ones.

Two neat rooms, with plain, but clean furniture, on the first floor, are
mine; one they call the dining-room.

There is, up another pair of stairs, a very worthy widow-lodger, Mrs.
Lovick by name; who, although of low fortunes, is much respected, as Mrs.
Smith assures me, by people of condition of her acquaintance, for her
piety, prudence, and understanding. With her I propose to be well
acquainted.

I thank you, my dear, for your kind, your seasonable advice and
consolation. I hope I shall have more grace given me than to despond, in
the religious sense of the word: especially as I can apply to myself the
comfort you give me, that neither my will, nor my inconsiderateness, has
contributed to my calamity. But, nevertheless, the irreconcilableness of
my relations, whom I love with an unabated reverence; my apprehensions of
fresh violences, [this wicked man, I doubt, will not let me rest]; my
being destitute of protection; my youth, my sex, my unacquaintedness with
the world, subjecting me to insults; my reflections on the scandal I have
given, added to the sense of the indignities I have received from a man,
of whom I deserved not ill; all together will undoubtedly bring on the
effect that cannot be undesirable to me.--The situation; and, as I
presume to imagine, from principles which I hope will, in due time, and
by due reflection, set me above the sense of all worldly disappointments.

At present, my head is much disordered. I have not indeed enjoyed it
with any degree of clearness, since the violence done to that, and to my
heart too, by the wicked arts of the abandoned creatures I was cast
among.

I must have more conflicts. At times I find myself not subdued enough to
my condition. I will welcome those conflicts as they come, as
probationary ones.--But yet my father's malediction--the temporary part
so strangely and so literally completed!--I cannot, however, think, when
my mind is strongest--But what is the story of Isaac, and Jacob, and
Esau, and of Rebekah's cheating the latter of the blessing designed for
him, (in favour of Jacob,) given us for in the 27th chapter of Genesis?
My father used, I remember, to enforce the doctrine deducible from it, on
his children, by many arguments. At least, therefore, he must believe
there is great weight in the curse he has announced; and shall I not be
solicitous to get it revoked, that he may not hereafter be grieved, for
my sake, that he did not revoke it?

All I will at present add, are my thanks to your mother for her
indulgence to us; due compliments to Mr. Hickman; and my request, that
you will believe me to be, to my last hour, and beyond it, if possible,
my beloved friend, and my dearer self (for what is now myself!)

Your obliged and affectionate
CLARISSA HARLOWE.



LETTER III

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
FRIDAY, JULY 7.


I have three of thy letters at once before me to answer; in each of which
thou complainest of my silence; and in one of them tallest me, that thou
canst not live without I scribble to thee every day, or every other day
at least.

Why, then, die, Jack, if thou wilt. What heart, thinkest thou, can I
have to write, when I have lost the only subject worth writing upon?

Help me again to my angel, to my CLARISSA; and thou shalt have a letter
from me, or writing at least part of a letter, every hour. All that the
charmer of my heart shall say, that will I put down. Every motion, every
air of her beloved person, every look, will I try to describe; and when
she is silent, I will endeavour to tell thee her thoughts, either what
they are, or what I would have them to be--so that, having her, I shall
never want a subject. Having lost her, my whole soul is a blank: the
whole creation round me, the elements above, beneath, and every thing I
behold, (for nothing can I enjoy,) are a blank without her.

Oh! return, return, thou only charmer of my soul! return to thy adoring
Lovelace! What is the light, what the air, what the town, what the
country, what's any thing, without thee? Light, air, joy, harmony, in my
notion, are but parts of thee; and could they be all expressed in one
word, that word would be CLARISSA.

O my beloved CLARISSA, return thou then; once more return to bless thy
LOVELACE, who now, by the loss of thee, knows the value of the jewel he
has slighted; and rises every morning but to curse the sun that shines
upon every body but him!


***


Well, but, Jack, 'tis a surprising thing to me, that the dear fugitive
cannot be met with; cannot be heard of. She is so poor a plotter, (for
plotting is not her talent,) that I am confident, had I been at liberty,
I should have found her out before now; although the different emissaries
I have employed about town, round the adjacent villages, and in Miss
Howe's vicinage, have hitherto failed of success. But my Lord continues
so weak and low-spirited, that there is no getting from him. I would not
disoblige a man whom I think in danger still: for would his gout, now it
has got him down, but give him, like a fair boxer, the rising-blow, all
would be over with him. And here [pox of his fondness for me! it happens
at a very bad time] he makes me sit hours together entertaining him with
my rogueries: (a pretty amusement for a sick man!) and yet, whenever he
has the gout, he prays night and morning with his chaplain. But what
must his notions of religion be, who after he has nosed and mumbled over
his responses, can give a sigh or groan of satisfaction, as if he thought
he had made up with Heaven; and return with a new appetite to my stories?
--encouraging them, by shaking his sides with laughing at them, and
calling me a sad fellow, in such an accent as shows he takes no small
delight in his kinsman.

The old peer has been a sinner in his day, and suffers for it now: a
sneaking sinner, sliding, rather than rushing into vices, for fear of his
reputation.--Paying for what he never had, and never daring to rise to
the joy of an enterprise at first hand, which could bring him within view
of a tilting, or of the honour of being considered as a principal man in
a court of justice.

To see such an old Trojan as this, just dropping into the grave, which I
hoped ere this would have been dug, and filled up with him; crying out
with pain, and grunting with weakness; yet in the same moment crack his
leathern face into an horrible laugh, and call a young sinner charming
varlet, encoreing him, as formerly he used to do to the Italian eunuchs;
what a preposterous, what an unnatural adherence to old habits!

My two cousins are generally present when I entertain, as the old peer
calls it. Those stories must drag horribly, that have not more hearers
and applauders than relaters.

Applauders!

Ay, Belford, applauders, repeat I; for although these girls pretend to
blame me sometimes for the facts, they praise my manner, my invention, my
intrepidity.--Besides, what other people call blame, that call I praise:
I ever did; and so I very early discharged shame, that cold-water damper
to an enterprising spirit.

These are smart girls; they have life and wit; and yesterday, upon
Charlotte's raving against me upon a related enterprise, I told her, that
I had had in debate several times, whether she were or were not too near
of kin to me: and that it was once a moot point with me, whether I could
not love her dearly for a month or so: and perhaps it was well for her,
that another pretty little puss started up, and diverted me, just as I
was entering upon the course.

They all three held up their hands and eyes at once. But I observed
that, though the girls exclaimed against me, they were not so angry at
this plain speaking as I have found my beloved upon hints so dark that
I have wondered at her quick apprehension.

I told Charlotte, that, grave as she pretended to be in her smiling
resentments on this declaration, I was sure I should not have been put to
the expense of above two or three stratagems, (for nobody admired a good
invention more than she,) could I but have disentangled her conscience
from the embarrasses of consanguinity.

She pretended to be highly displeased: so did her sister for her. I told
her, she seemed as much in earnest as if she had thought me so; and dared
the trial. Plain words, I said, in these cases, were more shocking to
their sex than gradatim actions. And I bid Patty not be displeased at my
distinguishing her sister; since I had a great respect for her likewise.

An Italian air, in my usual careless way, a half-struggled-for kiss from
me, and a shrug of the shoulder, by way of admiration, from each pretty
cousin, and sad, sad fellow, from the old peer, attended with a
side-shaking laugh, made us all friends.

There, Jack!--Wilt thou, or wilt thou not, take this for a letter?
there's quantity, I am sure.--How have I filled a sheet (not a short-hand
one indeed) without a subject! My fellow shall take this; for he is
going to town. And if thou canst think tolerably of such execrable
stuff, I will send thee another.



LETTER IV

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
SIX, SATURDAY MORNING, JULY 8.


Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou askest,
in one of thy three letters before me, to entertain thee with?--And thou
tallest me, that, when I have least to narrate, to speak, in the Scottish
phrase, I am most diverting. A pretty compliment, either to thyself, or
to me. To both indeed!--a sign that thou hast as frothy a heart as I a
head. But canst thou suppose that this admirable woman is not all, is
not every thing with me? Yet I dread to think of her too; for detection
of all my contrivances, I doubt, must come next.

The old peer is also full of Miss Harlowe: and so are my cousins. He
hopes I will not be such a dog [there's a specimen of his peer-like
dialect] as to think of doing dishonourably by a woman of so much merit,
beauty, and fortune; and he says of so good a family. But I tell him,
that this is a string he must not touch: that it is a very tender point:
in short, is my sore place; and that I am afraid he would handle it too
roughly, were I to put myself in the power of so ungentle an operator.

He shakes his crazy head. He thinks all is not as it should be between
us; longs to have me present her to him as my wife; and often tells me
what great things he will do, additional to his former proposals; and
what presents he will make on the birth of the first child. But I hope
the whole of his estate will be in my hands before such an event takes
place. No harm in hoping, Jack! Lord M. says, were it not for hope, the
heart would break.


***


Eight o'clock at Midsummer, and these lazy varletesses (in full health)
not come down yet to breakfast!--What a confounded indecency in young
ladies, to let a rake know that they love their beds so dearly, and, at
the same time, where to have them! But I'll punish them--they shall
breakfast with their old uncle, and yawn at one another as if for a
wager; while I drive my phaeton to Colonel Ambroses's, who yesterday gave
me an invitation both to breakfast and dine, on account of two Yorkshire
nieces, celebrated toasts, who have been with him this fortnight past;
and who, he says, want to see me. So, Jack, all women do not run away
from me, thank Heaven!--I wish I could have leave of my heart, since the
dear fugitive is so ungrateful, to drive her out of it with another
beauty. But who can supplant her? Who can be admitted to a place in it
after Miss Clarissa Harlowe?

At my return, if I can find a subject, I will scribble on, to oblige
thee.

My phaeton's ready. My cousins send me word they are just coming down:
so in spite I'll be gone.


SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

I did stay to dine with the Colonel, and his lady, and nieces: but I
could not pass the afternoon with them, for the heart of me. There was
enough in the persons and faces of the two young ladies to set me upon
comparisons. Particular features held my attention for a few moments:
but these served but to whet my impatience to find the charmer of my
soul; who, for person, for air, for mind, never had any equal. My heart
recoiled and sickened upon comparing minds and conversation. Pert wit, a
too-studied desire to please; each in high good humour with herself; an
open-mouth affectation in both, to show white teeth, as if the principal
excellence; and to invite amorous familiarity, by the promise of a sweet
breath; at the same time reflecting tacitly upon breaths arrogantly
implied to be less pure.

Once I could have borne them.

They seemed to be disappointed that I was so soon able to leave them.
Yet have I not at present so much vanity [my Clarissa has cured me of my
vanity] as to attribute their disappointment so much to particular liking
of me, as to their own self-admiration. They looked upon me as a
connoisseur in beauty. They would have been proud of engaging my
attention, as such: but so affected, so flimsy-witted, mere skin-deep
beauties!--They had looked no farther into themselves than what their
glasses were flattering-glasses too; for I thought them passive-faced,
and spiritless; with eyes, however, upon the hunt for conquests, and
bespeaking the attention of others, in order to countenance their own.
----I believe I could, with a little pains, have given them life and
soul, and to every feature of their faces sparkling information--but my
Clarissa!--O Belford, my Clarissa has made me eyeless and senseless to
every other beauty!--Do thou find her for me, as a subject worthy of my
pen, or this shall be the last from

Thy
LOVELACE.




LETTER V

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
SUNDAY NIGHT, JULY 9.


Now, Jack, have I a subject with a vengeance. I am in the very height of
my trial for all my sins to my beloved fugitive. For here to-day, at
about five o'clock, arrived Lady Sarah Sadleir and Lady Betty Lawrance,
each in her chariot-and-six. Dowagers love equipage; and these cannot
travel ten miles without a sett, and half a dozen horsemen.

My time had hung heavy upon my hands; and so I went to church after
dinner. Why may not handsome fellows, thought I, like to be looked at,
as well as handsome wenches? I fell in, when service was over, with
Major Warneton; and so came not home till after six; and was surprised,
at entering the court-yard here, to find it littered with equipages and
servants. I was sure the owners of them came for no good to me.

Lady Sarah, I soon found, was raised to this visit by Lady Betty; who has
health enough to allow her to look out to herself, and out of her own
affairs, for business. Yet congratulation to Lord M. on his amendment,
[spiteful devils on both accounts!] was the avowed errand. But coming in
my absence, I was their principal subject; and they had opportunity to
set each other's heart against me.

Simon Parsons hinted this to me, as I passed by the steward's office; for
it seems they talked loud; and he was making up some accounts with old
Pritchard.

However, I hastened to pay my duty to them--other people not performing
theirs, is no excuse for the neglect of our own, you know.


And now I enter upon my TRIAL.


With horrible grave faces was I received. The two antiquities only bowed
their tabby heads; making longer faces than ordinary; and all the old
lines appearing strong in their furrowed foreheads and fallen cheeks; How
do you, Cousin? And how do you, Mr. Lovelace? looking all round at one
another, as who should say, do you speak first: and, do you: for they
seemed resolved to lose no time.

I had nothing for it, but an air as manly, as theirs was womanly. Your
servant, Madam, to Lady Betty; and, Your servant, Madam, I am glad to see
you abroad, to Lady Sarah.

I took my seat. Lord M. looked horribly glum; his fingers claspt, and
turning round and round, under and over, his but just disgouted thumb;
his sallow face, and goggling eyes, on his two kinswomen, by turns; but
not once deigning to look upon me.

Then I began to think of the laudanum, and wet cloth, I told thee of long
ago; and to call myself in question for a tenderness of heart that will
never do me good.

At last, Mr. Lovelace!----Cousin Lovelace!----Hem!--Hem!--I am sorry,
very sorry, hesitated Lady Sarah, that there is no hope of your ever
taking up----

What's the matter now, Madam?

The matter now!----Why Lady Betty has two letters from Miss Harlowe,
which have told us what's the matter----Are all women alike with you?

Yes; I could have answered; 'bating the difference which pride makes.

Then they all chorus'd upon me--Such a character as Miss Harlowe's!
cried one----A lady of so much generosity and good sense! Another--How
charmingly she writes! the two maiden monkeys, looking at her find
handwriting: her perfections my crimes. What can you expect will be the
end of these things! cried Lady Sarah--d----d, d----d doings! vociferated
the Peer, shaking his loose-fleshe'd wabbling chaps, which hung on his
shoulders like an old cow's dewlap.

For my part, I hardly knew whether to sing or say what I had to reply to
these all-at-once attacks upon me!-Fair and softly, Ladies--one at a
time, I beseech you. I am not to be hunted down without being heard, I
hope. Pray let me see these letters. I beg you will let me see them.

There they are:--that's the first--read it out, if you can.

I opened a letter from my charmer, dated Thursday, June 29, our
wedding-day, that was to be, and written to Lady Betty Lawrance. By the
contents, to my great joy, I find the dear creature is alive and well,
and in charming spirits. But the direction where to send an answer to
was so scratched out that I could not read it; which afflicted me much.

She puts three questions in it to Lady Betty.

1st. About a letter of her's, dated June 7, congratulating me on my
nuptials, and which I was so good as to save Lady Betty the trouble of
writing----A very civil thing of me, I think!

Again--'Whether she and one of her nieces Montague were to go to town, on
an old chancery suit?'--And, 'Whether they actually did go to town
accordingly, and to Hampstead afterwards?' and, 'Whether they brought to
town from thence the young creature whom they visited?' was the subject
of the second and third questions.

A little inquisitive, dear rogue! and what did she expect to be the
better for these questions?----But curiosity, d----d curiosity, is the
itch of the sex--yet when didst thou know it turned to their benefit?--
For they seldom inquire, but what they fear--and the proverb, as my Lord
has it, says, It comes with a fear. That is, I suppose, what they fear
generally happens, because there is generally occasion for the fear.

Curiosity indeed she avows to be her only motive for these
interrogatories: for, though she says her Ladyship may suppose the
questions are not asked for good to me, yet the answer can do me no harm,
nor her good, only to give her to understand, whether I have told her a
parcel of d----d lyes; that's the plain English of her inquiry.

Well, Madam, said I, with as much philosophy as I could assume; and may I
ask--Pray, what was your Ladyship's answer?

There's a copy of it, tossing it to me, very disrespectfully.

This answer was dated July 1. A very kind and complaisant one to the
lady, but very so-so to her poor kinsman--That people can give up their
own flesh and blood with so much ease!--She tells her 'how proud all our
family would be of an alliance with such an excellence.' She does me
justice in saying how much I adore her, as an angel of a woman; and begs
of her, for I know not how many sakes, besides my soul's sake, 'that she
will be so good as to have me for a husband:' and answers--thou wilt
guess how--to the lady's questions.

Well, Madam; and pray, may I be favoured with the lady's other letter?
I presume it is in reply to your's.

It is, said the Peer: but, Sir, let me ask you a few questions, before
you read it--give me the letter, Lady Betty.

There it is, my Lord.

Then on went the spectacles, and his head moved to the lines--a charming
pretty hand!--I have often heard that this lady is a genius.

And so, Jack, repeating my Lord's wise comments and questions will let
thee into the contents of this merciless letter.

'Monday, July 3,' [reads my Lord.]--Let me see!--that was last Monday; no
longer ago! 'Monday, July the third--Madam--I cannot excuse myself'--um,
um, um, um, um, um, [humming inarticulately, and skipping,]--'I must own
to you, Madam, that the honour of being related'----

Off went the spectacles--Now, tell me, Sir-r, Has not this lady lost all
the friends she had in the world for your sake?

She has very implacable friends, my Lord: we all know that.

But has she not lost them all for your sake?--Tell me that.

I believe so, my Lord.

Well then!--I am glad thou art not so graceless as to deny that.

On went the spectacles again--'I must own to you, Madam, that the honour
of being related to ladies as eminent for their virtue as for their
descent.'--Very pretty, truly! saith my Lord, repeating, 'as eminent for
their virtue as for their descent, was, at first, no small inducement
with me to lend an ear to Mr. Lovelace's address.'

There is dignity, born-dignity, in this lady, cried my Lord.

Lady Sarah. She would have been a grace to our family.

Lady Betty. Indeed she would.

Lovel. To a royal family, I will venture to say.

Lord M. Then what a devil---

Lovel. Please to read on, my Lord. It cannot be her letter, if it does
not make you admire her more and more as you read. Cousin Charlotte,
Cousin Patty, pray attend----Read on, my Lord.

Miss Charlotte. Amazing fortitude!

Miss Patty only lifted up her dove's eyes.

Lord M. [Reading.] 'And the rather, as I was determined, had it come
to effect, to do every thing in my power to deserve your favourable
opinion.'

Then again they chorus'd upon me!

A blessed time of it, poor I!--I had nothing for it but impudence!

Lovel. Pray read on, my Lord--I told you how you would all admire her
----or, shall I read?

Lord M. D----d assurance! [Then reading.] 'I had another motive,
which I knew would of itself give me merit with your whole family: [they
were all ear:] a presumptuous one; a punishably-presumptuous one, as it
has proved: in the hope that I might be an humble mean, in the hand of
Providence, to reclaim a man who had, as I thought, good sense enough at
bottom to be reclaimed; or at least gratitude enough to acknowledge the
intended obligation, whether the generous hope were to succeed or not.'
--Excellent young creature!--

Excellent young creature! echoed the Ladies, with their handkerchiefs at
their eyes, attended with music.

Lovel. By my soul, Miss Patty, you weep in the wrong place: you shall
never go with me to a tragedy.

Lady Betty. Hardened wretch.

His Lordship had pulled off his spectacles to wipe them. His eyes were
misty; and he thought the fault in his spectacles.

I saw they were all cocked and primed--to be sure that is a very pretty
sentence, said I----that is the excellency of this lady, that in every
line, as she writes on, she improves upon herself. Pray, my Lord,
proceed--I know her style; the next sentence will still rise upon us.

Lord M. D----d fellow! [Again saddling, and reading.] 'But I have
been most egregiously mistaken in Mr. Lovelace!' [Then they all
clamoured again.]--'The only man, I persuade myself'----