MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
SATURDAY, JULY 22.
What dost hate me for, Belford!--and why more and more! have I been
guilty of any offence thou knewest not before?--If pathos can move such a
heart as thine, can it alter facts!--Did I not always do this
incomparable creature as much justice as thou canst do her for the heart
of thee, or as she can do herself?----What nonsense then thy hatred, thy
augmented hatred, when I still persist to marry her, pursuant to word
given to thee, and to faith plighted to all my relations? But hate, if
thou wilt, so thou dost but write. Thou canst not hate me so much as I
do myself: and yet I know if thou really hatedst me, thou wouldst not
venture to tell me so.
Well, but after all, what need of her history to these women? She will
certainly repent, some time hence, that she has thus needless exposed us
both.
Sickness palls every appetite, and makes us hate what we loved: but
renewed health changes the scene; disposes us to be pleased with
ourselves; and then we are in a way to be pleased with every one else.
Every hope, then, rises upon us: every hour presents itself to us on
dancing feet: and what Mr. Addison says of liberty, may, with still
greater propriety, be said of health, for what is liberty itself without
health?
It makes the gloomy face of nature gay;
Gives beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.
And I rejoice that she is already so much better, as to hold with
strangers such a long and interesting conversation.
Strange, confoundedly strange, and as perverse [that is to say, womanly]
as strange, that she should refuse, and sooner choose to die [O the
obscene word! and yet how free does thy pen make with it to me!] than be
mine, who offended her by acting in character, while her parents acted
shamefully out of theirs, and when I am now willing to act out of my own
to oblige her; yet I am not to be forgiven; they to be faultless with
her!--and marriage the only medium to repair all breaches, and to salve
her own honour!--Surely thou must see the inconsistence of her forgiving
unforgiveness, as I may call it!--yet, heavy varlet as thou art, thou
wantest to be drawn up after her! And what a figure dost thou make with
thy speeches, stiff as Hickman's ruffles, with thy aspirations and
protestations!--unused, thy weak head, to bear the sublimities that fall,
even in common conversation, from the lips of this ever-charming
creature!
But the prettiest whim of all was, to drop the bank note behind her
chair, instead of presenting it on thy knees to her hand!--To make such a
woman as this doubly stoop--by the acceptance, and to take it from the
ground!--What an ungrateful benefit-conferrer art thou!--How awkward, to
take in into thy head, that the best way of making a present to a lady
was to throw the present behind her chair!
I am very desirous to see what she has written to her sister; what she is
about to write to Miss Howe; and what return she will have from the
Harlowe-Arabella. Canst thou not form some scheme to come at the copies
of these letters, or the substance of them at least, and of that of her
other correspondencies? Mrs. Lovick, thou seemest to say, is a pious
woman. The lady, having given such a particular history of herself, will
acquaint her with every thing. And art thou not about to reform!--Won't
this consent of minds between thee and the widow, [what age is she, Jack?
the devil never trumpt up a friendship between a man and a woman, of any
thing like years, which did not end in matrimony, or in the ruin of their
morals!] Won't it strike out an intimacy between ye, that may enable
thee to gratify me in this particular? A proselyte, I can tell thee, has
great influence upon your good people: such a one is a saint of their own
creation: and they will water, and cultivate, and cherish him, as a plant
of their own raising: and this from a pride truly spiritual!
One of my lovers in Paris was a devotée. She took great pains to convert
me. I gave way to her kind endeavours for the good of my soul. She
thought it a point gained to make me profess some religion. The catholic
has its conveniencies. I permitted her to bring a father to me. My
reformation went on swimmingly. The father had hopes of me: he applauded
her zeal: so did I. And how dost thou think it ended?--Not a girl in
England, reading thus far, but would guess!--In a word, very happily: for
she not only brought me a father, but made me one: and then, being
satisfied with each other's conversation, we took different routes: she
into Navarre; I into Italy: both well inclined to propagate the good
lessons in which we had so well instructed each other.
But to return. One consolation arises to me, from the pretty regrets
which this admirable creature seems to have in indulging reflections on
the people's wedding-day.--I ONCE!--thou makest her break off with
saying.
She once! What--O Belford! why didst thou not urge her to explain what
she once hoped?
What once a woman hopes, in love matters, she always hopes, while there
is room for hope: And are we not both single? Can she be any man's but
mine? Will I be any woman's but her's?
I never will! I never can!--and I tell thee, that I am every day, every
hour, more and more in love with her: and, at this instant, have a more
vehement passion for her than ever I had in my life!--and that with views
absolutely honourable, in her own sense of the word: nor have I varied,
so much as in wish, for this week past; firmly fixed, and wrought into my
very nature, as the life of honour, or of generous confidence in me, was,
in preference to the life of doubt and distrust. That must be a life of
doubt and distrust, surely, where the woman confides nothing, and ties up
a man for his good behaviour for life, taking church-and-state sanctions
in aid of the obligation she imposes upon him.
I shall go on Monday to a kind of ball, to which Colonel Ambrose has
invited me. It is given on a family account. I care not on what: for
all that delights me in the thing is, that Mrs. and Miss Howe are to be
there;--Hickman, of course; for the old lady will not stir abroad without
him. The Colonel is in hopes that Miss Arabella Harlowe will be there
likewise; for all the men and women of fashion round him are invited.
I fell in by accident with the Colonel, who I believe, hardly thought I
would accept of the invitation. But he knows me not, if he thinks I am
ashamed to appear at any place, where women dare show their faces. Yet
he hinted to me that my name was up, on Miss Harlowe's account. But, to
allude to one of Lord M.'s phrases, if it be, I will not lie a bed when
any thing joyous is going forward.
As I shall go in my Lord's chariot, I would have had one of my cousins
Montague to go with me: but they both refused: and I shall not choose to
take either of thy brethren. It would look as if I thought I wanted a
bodyguard: besides, one of them is too rough, the other too smooth, and
too great a fop for some of the staid company that will be there; and for
me in particular. Men are known by their companions; and a fop [as
Tourville, for example] takes great pains to hang out a sign by his dress
of what he has in his shop. Thou, indeed, art an exception; dressing
like a coxcomb, yet a very clever fellow. Nevertheless so clumsy a beau,
that thou seemest to me to owe thyself a double spite, making thy
ungracefulness appear the more ungraceful, by thy remarkable tawdriness,
when thou art out of mourning.
I remember, when I first saw thee, my mind laboured with a strong puzzle,
whether I should put thee down for a great fool, or a smatterer in wit.
Something I saw was wrong in thee, by thy dress. If this fellow, thought
I, delights not so much in ridicule, that he will not spare himself, he
must be plaguy silly to take so much pains to make his ugliness more
conspicuous than it would otherwise be.
Plain dress, for an ordinary man or woman, implies at least modesty, and
always procures a kind quarter from the censorious. Who will ridicule a
personal imperfection in one that seems conscious, that it is an
imperfection? Who ever said an anchoret was poor? But who would spare
so very absurd a wrong-head, as should bestow tinsel to make his
deformity the more conspicuous?
But, although I put on these lively airs, I am sick at my soul!--My whole
heart is with my charmer! with what indifference shall I look upon all
the assembly at the Colonel's, my beloved in my ideal eye, and engrossing
my whole heart?