MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
[IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXIII. OF THIS VOLUME.]
THURDAY, JULY 20.
I read that part of your conclusion to poor Belton, where you inquire
after him, and mention how merrily you and the rest pass your time at
M. Hall. He fetched a deep sigh: You are all very happy! were his words.
--I am sorry they were his words; for, poor fellow, he is going very
fast. Change of air, he hopes, will mend him, joined to the cheerful
company I have left him in. But nothing, I dare say, will.
A consuming malady, and a consuming mistress, to an indulgent keeper, are
dreadful things to struggle with both together: violence must be used to
get rid of the latter; and yet he has not spirit enough left him to exert
himself. His house is Thomasine's house; not his. He has not been
within his doors for a fortnight past. Vagabonding about from inn to
inn; entering each for a bait only; and staying two or three days without
power to remove; and hardly knowing which to go to next. His malady is
within him; and he cannot run away from it.
Her boys (once he thought them his) are sturdy enough to shoulder him in
his own house as they pass by him. Siding with the mother, they in a
manner expel him; and, in his absence, riot away on the remnant of his
broken fortunes. As to their mother, (who was once so tender, so
submissive, so studious to oblige, that we all pronounced him happy, and
his course of life the eligible,) she is now so termagant, so insolent,
that he cannot contend with her, without doing infinite prejudice to his
health. A broken-spirited defensive, hardly a defensive, therefore,
reduced to: and this to a heart, for so many years waging offensive war,
(not valuing whom the opponent,) what a reduction! now comparing himself
to the superannuated lion in the fable, kicked in the jaws, and laid
sprawling, by the spurning heel of an ignoble ass!
I have undertaken his cause. He has given me leave, yet not without
reluctance, to put him into possession of his own house; and to place in
it for him his unhappy sister, whom he has hitherto slighted, because
unhappy. It is hard, he told me, (and wept, poor fellow, when he said
it,) that he cannot be permitted to die quietly in his own house!--The
fruits of blessed keeping these!----
Though but lately apprized of her infidelity, it now comes out to have
been of so long continuance, that he has no room to believe the boys to
be his: yet how fond did he use to be of them!
To what, Lovelace, shall we attribute the tenderness which a reputed
father frequently shows to the children of another man?--What is that, I
pray thee, which we call nature, and natural affection? And what has man
to boast of as to sagacity and penetration, when he is as easily brought
to cover and rear, and even to love, and often to prefer, the product of
another's guilt with his wife or mistress, as a hen or a goose the eggs,
and even young, of others of their kind?
Nay, let me ask, if instinct, as it is called, in the animal creation,
does not enable them to distinguish their own, much more easily than we,
with our boasted reason and sagacity, in this nice particular, can do?
If some men, who have wives but of doubtful virtue, considered this
matter duly, I believe their inordinate ardour after gain would be a good
deal cooled, when they could not be certain (though their mates could)
for whose children they were elbowing, bustling, griping, and perhaps
cheating, those with whom they have concerns, whether friends,
neighbours, or more certain next-of-kin, by the mother's side however.
But I will not push this notion so far as it might be carried; because,
if propagated, it might be of unsocial or unnatural consequence; since
women of virtue would perhaps be more liable to suffer by the mistrusts
and caprices or bad-hearted and foolish-headed husbands, than those who
can screen themselves from detection by arts and hypocrisy, to which a
woman of virtue cannot have recourse. And yet, were this notion duly and
generally considered, it might be attended with no bad effects; as good
education, good inclinations, and established virtue, would be the
principally-sought-after qualities; and not money, when a man (not
biased by mere personal attractions) was looking round him for a partner
in his fortunes, and for a mother of his future children, which are to be
the heirs of his possessions, and to enjoy the fruits of his industry.
But to return to poor Belton.
If I have occasion for your assistance, and that of our compeers, in
re-instating the poor fellow, I will give you notice. Mean time, I have
just now been told that Thomasine declares she will not stir; for, it
seems, she suspects that measures will be fallen upon to make her quit.
She is Mrs. Belton, she says, and will prove her marriage.
If she would give herself these airs in his life-time, what would she
attempt to do after his death?
Her boy threatens any body who shall presume to insult their mother.
Their father (as they call poor Belton) they speak of as an unnatural
one. And their probably true father is for ever there, hostilely there,
passing for her cousin, as usual: now her protecting cousin.
Hardly ever, I dare say, was there a keeper that did not make
keeperess; who lavished away on her kept-fellow what she obtained from
the extravagant folly of him who kept her.
I will do without you, if I can. The case will be only, as I conceive,
that like of the ancient Sarmatians, their wives then in possession of
their slaves. So that they had to contend not only with those wives,
conscious of their infidelity, and with their slaves, but with the
children of those slaves, grown up to manhood, resolute to defend their
mothers and their long-manumitted fathers. But the noble Sarmatians,
scorning to attack their slaves with equal weapons, only provided
themselves with the same sort of whips with which they used formerly to
chastise them. And attacking them with them, the miscreants fled before
them.--In memory of which, to this day, the device on the coin in
Novogrod, in Russia, a city of the antient Sarmatia, is a man on
horseback, with a whip in his hand.
The poor fellow takes it ill, that you did not press him more than you
did to be of your party at M. Hall. It is owing to Mowbray, he is sure,
that he had so very slight an invitation from one whose invitations used
to be so warm.
Mowbray's speech to him, he says, he never will forgive: 'Why, Tom,' said
the brutal fellow, with a curse, 'thou droopest like a pip or
roup-cloaking chicken. Thou shouldst grow perter, or submit to a
solitary quarantine, if thou wouldst not infect the whole brood.'
For my own part, only that this poor fellow is in distress, as well in
his affairs as in his mind, or I should be sick of you all. Such is the
relish I have of the conversation, and such my admiration of the
deportment and sentiments of this divine lady, that I would forego a
month, even of thy company, to be admitted into her's but for one hour:
and I am highly in conceit with myself, greatly as I used to value thine,
for being able, spontaneously as I may say, to make this preference.
It is, after all, a devilish life we have lived. And to consider how it
all ends in a very few years--to see to what a state of ill health this
poor fellow is so soon reduced--and then to observe how every one of ye
run away from the unhappy being, as rats from a falling house, is fine
comfort to help a man to look back upon companions ill-chosen, and a life
mis-spent!
It will be your turns by-and-by, every man of ye, if the justice of your
country interpose not.
Thou art the only rake we have herded with, if thou wilt not except
thyself, who hast preserved entire thy health and thy fortunes.
Mowbray indeed is indebted to a robust constitution that he has not yet
suffered in his health; but his estate is dwindled away year by year.
Three-fourths of Tourville's very considerable fortunes are already
dissipated; and the remaining fourth will probably soon go after the
other three.
Poor Belton! we see how it is with him!--His own felicity is, that he
will hardly live to want.
Thou art too proud, and too prudent, ever to be destitute; and, to do
thee justice, hath a spirit to assist such of thy friends as may be
reduced; and wilt, if thou shouldest then be living. But I think thou
must, much sooner than thou imaginest, be called to thy account--knocked
on the head perhaps by the friends of those whom thou hast injured; for
if thou escapest this fate from the Harlowe family, thou wilt go on
tempting danger and vengeance, till thou meetest with vengeance; and
this, whether thou marriest, or not: for the nuptial life will not, I
doubt, till age join with it, cure thee of that spirit for intrigue which
is continually running away with thee, in spite of thy better sense, and
transitory resolutions.
Well, then, I will suppose thee laid down quietly among thy worthier
ancestors.
And now let me look forward to the ends of Tourville and Mowbray, [Belton
will be crumbled into dust before thee, perhaps,] supposing thy early
exit has saved thee from gallows intervention.
Reduced, probably, by riotous waste to consequential want, behold them
refuged in some obscene hole or garret; obliged to the careless care of
some dirty old woman, whom nothing but her poverty prevails upon to
attend to perform the last offices for men, who have made such shocking
ravage among the young ones.
Then how miserably will they whine through squeaking organs; their big
voices turned into puling pity-begging lamentations! their now-offensive
paws, how helpless then!--their now-erect necks then denying support to
their aching heads; those globes of mischief dropping upon their quaking
shoulders. Then what wry faces will they make! their hearts, and their
heads, reproaching each other!--distended their parched mouths!--sunk
their unmuscled cheeks!--dropt their under jaws!--each grunting like the
swine he had resembled in his life! Oh! what a vile wretch have I been!
Oh! that I had my life to come over again!--Confessing to the poor old
woman, who cannot shrive them! Imaginary ghosts of deflowered virgins,
and polluted matrons, flitting before their glassy eyes! And old Satan,
to their apprehensions, grinning behind a looking-glass held up before
them, to frighten them with the horror visible in their own countenances!
For my own part, if I can get some good family to credit me with a sister
or daughter, as I have now an increased fortune, which will enable me to
propose handsome settlements, I will desert ye all; marry, and live a
life of reason, rather than a life of a brute, for the time to come.