Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

strength will permit, to embrace those opportunities. The method I have proposed to myself (and was beginning to practise when that cruel arrest deprived me both of freedom and strength) is this: when I was disposed to gentle exercise, I took a chair to St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, where are prayers at seven in the morning: I proposed, if the weather favoured, to walk (if not, to take chair) to Lincoln's Inn Chapel; where, at eleven in the morning, and at five in the afternoon, are the same desirable opportunities; and at other times to go no farther than Covent Garden Church, where are early morning prayers likewise.

Another reason why I choose not to go down into your neighbourhood, is, the displeasure that might arise on my account between your mother and you.

Your account of the gay unconcerned behaviour of Mr. Lovelace, at the Colonel's, does not surprise me at all, after I am told, that he had the intrepidity to go thither, knowing who were invited and expected.—Only this, my dear, I really wonder at, that Miss Howe could imagine, that I could have a thought of such a man for a husband.

Poor wretch! I pity him, to see him fluttering about; abusing talents that were given him for excellent purposes; taking inconsideration for courage; and dancing, fearless of danger, on the edge of a precipice!

But indeed his threatening to see me most sensibly alarms and shocks me. I cannot but hope that I never, never more, shall see him in this world.

Since you are so loth, my dear, to send the desired negative to the ladies of his family, I will only trouble you to transmit the letter I shall inclose for that purpose; directed indeed to yourself, because it was to you that those ladies applied themselves on this occasion; but to be sent by you to any one of the ladies at your own choice.

I commend myself, my dearest Miss Howe, to your prayers; and conclude with repeated thanks for sending Mr. Hickman to me; and with wishes for your health and happiness, and for the speedy celebration of your nuptials; Your ever-affectionate and obliged

CLARISSA HARLOWE

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE

[Inclosed in the preceding.]

MY DEAREST MISS HOWE,-Since you seem loth to acquiesce in my determined resolution, signified to you as soon as I was able to hold a pen, I beg the favour of you, by this, or by any other way you think most proper, to acquaint the worthy ladies who have applied to you in behalf of their relation, that, although I am infinitely obliged to their generous opinion of me, yet I cannot consent to sanctify, as I may say, Mr. Lovelace's repeated breaches of all moral sanctions, and hazard my future happiness by an union with a man, through whose premeditated injuries, in a long train of the basest contrivances, I have forfeited my temporal hopes.

He himself, when he reflects upon his own actions, must surely bear testimony to the justice as well as fitness of my determination. The ladies, I dare say, would, were they to know the whole of my unhappy story.

Be pleased to acquaint them, that I deceive myself, if my resolution on this head (however ungratefully, and even inhumanly, he has treated me) be not owing more to principle than passion. Nor can I give a stronger proof of the truth of this assurance, than by declaring, that I can and will forgive him, on this one easy condition, that he will never molest me more.

In whatever way you choose to make this declaration, be pleased to let my most respectful compliments to the ladies of the noble family, and to my Lord M. accompany

it. And do you, my dear, believe, that I shall be, to the

last moment of my life,

Your ever-obliged and affectionate
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

[ocr errors]

MR. LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

Friday, July 28.

CANNOT endure thee for thy hopelessness in the

lady's recovery; and that in contradiction to the

doctor and apothecary.

I can tell thee, that, if nothing else will do, I am determined, in spite of thy buskin airs, and of thy engagements for me to the contrary, to see her myself.

Face to face have I known many a quarrel made up, which distance would have kept alive, and widened. Thou wilt be a madder Jack than he in the Tale of a Tub, if thou givest an active opposition to this interview.

In short, I cannot bear the thought, that a woman whom once I had bound to me in the silken cords of love, should slip through my fingers, and be able, while my heart flames out with a violent passion for her, to despise me, and to set both love and me at defiance. Thou canst not imagine how much I envy thee, and her doctor, and her apothecary, and every one who I hear are admitted to her presence and conversation; and wish to be the one or the other in turn.

Wherefore, if nothing else will do, I will see her. I'll tell thee of an admirable expedient, just come across me, to save thy promise, and my own.

Mrs. Lovick, you say, is a good woman: If the lady be worse, she shall advise her to send for a parson to pray by her: Unknown to her, unknown to the lady, unknown to thee (for so it may pass) I will contrive to be the man, petticoated out, and vested in a gown and cassock. I once,

for a certain purpose, did assume the canonicals; and I was thought to make a fine sleek appearance; my broad rose-bound beaver became me mightily; and I was much admired upon the whole by all who saw me.

Methinks it must be charmingly apropos to see me kneeling down by her bed-side (I am sure I shall pray heartily) beginning out of the Common Prayer Book the Sick Office for the restoration of the languishing lady, and concluding with an exhortation to charity and forgiveness for myself.

I will consider of this matter. But, in whatever shape I shall choose to appear, of this thou mayst assure thyself, I will apprise thee beforehand of my visit, that thou mayst contrive to be out of the way, and to know nothing of the matter. This will save thy word; and, as to mine, can she think worse of me than she does at present?

have me.

Well, but the lady refers my destiny to the letter she has written, actually written, to Miss Howe; to whom it seems she has given her reasons why she will not I long to know the contents of this letter: but am in great hopes that she has so expressed her denials as shall give room to think, she only wants to be persuaded to the contrary, in order to reconcile herself to herself.

I am glad that Miss Howe (as much as she hates me) kept her word with my cousins on their visit to her, and with me at the Colonel's, to endeavour to persuade her friend to make up all matters by matrimony; which, no doubt, is the best, nay, the only method she can take, for her own honour, and that of her family.

I had once thoughts of revenging myself on that vixen, and, particularly, as thou mayst remember, had planned something to this purpose on the journey she is going to take, which had been talked of some time. But, I think

let me see-yes, I think, I will let this Hickman have her safe, as thou believest the fellow to be a tolerable sort

of a mortal, and that I had made the worst of him and I am glad, for his own sake, he has not launched out too virulently against me to thee.

Although I just now said a kind thing or two for this fellow Hickman; yet I can tell thee, I could (to use one of my noble peer's humble phrases) eat him up without a corn of salt, when I think of his impudence to salute my charmer twice at parting: and have still less patience with the lady herself for presuming to offer her cheek or lip (thou sayest not which) to him, and to press his clumsy fist between her charming hands. An honour worth a king's ransom; and what would I give what would I not give? to have! And then he, in return, to press her, as thou sayest he did, to his stupid heart; at that time, no doubt, more sensible, than ever it was before !

By thy description of their parting, I see thou wilt be a delicate fellow in time. My mortification in this lady's displeasure, will be thy exaltation from her conversation. I envy thee as well for thy opportunities, as for thy improvements and such an impression has thy concluding paragraph made upon me, that I wish I do not get into a reformation humour as well as thou: and then what a couple of lamentable puppies shall we make, howling in recitative to each other's discordant music!

:

Let me improve upon the thought, and imagine that, turned hermits, we have opened the two old caves at Hornsey, or dug new ones; and in each of our cells set up a death's head, and an hour-glass, for objects of contemplation-I have seen such a picture: but then, Jack, had not the old penitent a suffocating long grey beard? What figures would a couple of brocaded or laced-waistcoated toupets make with their sour screwed up half-cocked faces, and more than half-shut eyes, in a kneeling attitude, recapitulating their respective rogueries? This scheme, were we only to make trial of it, and return afterwards to our old ways, might serve to better purpose by far, than

« VorigeDoorgaan »