I have this moment the favour of your's. I will suspend a tour I was
going to take into Hungary, and instantly set out for Munich; and, if I
can find you not there, will proceed on to Trent. This city, being on
the confines of Italy, will be most convenient, as I presume, to you, in
your return to Tuscany; and I shall hope to meet you in it on the 3/14th
of December.
I shall bring with me only a French valet and an English footman. Other
particulars may be adjusted when I have the honour to see you. Till
when, I am, Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
R. LOVELACE.
***
Now, Jack, I have no manner of apprehension of the event of this meeting.
And I think I must say he seeks me out; not I him. And so let him take
the consequence.
What is infinitely nearer to my heart, is, my ingratitude to the most
excellent of women--My premeditated ingratitude!--Yet all the while
enabled to distinguish and to adore her excellencies, in spite of the
mean opinion of the sex which I had imbibed from early manhood.
But this lady has asserted the worthiness of her sex, and most gloriously
has she exalted it with me now. Yet, surely, as I have said and written
an hundred times, there cannot be such another woman.
But as my loss in her departure is the greatest of any man's, and as she
was dearer to me than to any other person in the world, and once she
herself wished to be so, what an insolence in any man breathing to
pretend to avenge her on me!--Happy! happy! thrice happy! had I known how
to value, as I ought to have valued, the glory of such a preference!
I will not aggravate to myself this aggravation of the Colonel's
pretending to call me to account for my treatment of a lady so much my
own, lest, in the approaching interview, my heart should relent for one
so nearly related to her, and who means honour and justice to her memory;
and I should thereby give him advantages which otherwise he cannot have.
For I know that I shall be inclined to trust to my skill, to save a man
who was so much and so justly valued by her; and shall be loath to give
way to my resentment, as a threatened man. And in this respect only I am
sorry for his skill, and his courage, lest I should be obliged, in my own
defence, to add a chalk to a score that is already too long.
***
Indeed, indeed, Belford, I am, and shall be, to my latest hour, the most
miserable of beings. Such exalted generosity!--Why didst thou put into
my craving hands the copy of her will? Why sentest thou to me the
posthumous letter?--What thou I was earnest to see the will? thou knewest
what they both were [I did not]; and that it would be cruel to oblige me.
The meeting of twenty Colonel Mordens, were there twenty to meet in turn,
would be nothing to me, would not give me a moment's concern, as to my
own safety: but my reflections upon my vile ingratitude to so superior an
excellence will ever be my curse.
Had she been a Miss Howe to me, and treated me as if I were a Hickman, I
had had a call for revenge; and policy (when I had intended to be an
husband) might have justified my attempts to humble her. But a meek and
gentle temper was her's, though a true heroine, whenever honour or virtue
called for an exertion of spirit.
Nothing but my cursed devices stood in the way of my happiness.
Remembrest thou not how repeatedly, from the first, I poured cold water
upon her rising flame, by meanly and ungratefully turning upon her the
injunctions, which virgin delicacy, and filial duty, induced her to lay
me under before I got her into my power?*
* See Vol. III. Letter XV. See also Letters XVII. XLV. XLVI. of that
volume, and many other places.
Did she not tell me, and did I not know it, if she had not told me, that
she could not be guilty of affectation or tyranny to the man whom she
intended to marry?* I knew, as she once upbraided me, that from the time
I had got her from her father's house, I had a plain path before me.**
True did she say, and I triumphed in the discovery, that from that time
I held her soul in suspense an hundred times.*** My ipecacuanha trial
alone was enough to convince an infidel that she had a mind in which love
and tenderness would have presided, had I permitted the charming buds to
put forth and blow.****
* See Vol. V. Letter XXXIV.--It may be observed further, that all
Clarissa's occasional lectures to Miss Howe, on that young lady's
treatment of Mr. Hickman, prove that she was herself above affectation
and tyranny.--See, more particularly, the advice she gives to that
friend of her heart, Letter XXXII. of Vol. VIII.--'O my dear,' says she,
in that Letter, 'that it had been my lot (as I was not permitted to live
single) to have met with a man by whom I could have acted generously and
unreservedly!' &c. &c.
** See Vol. V. Letters XXVI. and XXXIV.
*** Ibid. Letter XXXIV.
**** See Vol. V. Letters II. III.
She would have had no reserve, as once she told me, had I given her cause
of doubt.* And did she not own to thee, that once she could have loved
me; and, could she have made me good, would have made me happy?** O,
Belford! here was love; a love of the noblest kind! A love, as she hints
in her posthumous letter,*** that extended to the soul; and which she not
only avowed in her dying hours, but contrived to let me know it after
death, in that letter filled with warnings and exhortations, which had
for their sole end my eternal welfare!
* Ibid. Letter XXXVI.
** See Vol. VIII. Letter LXIV.
*** See Letter XXXVI. of this volume.
The cursed women, indeed, endeavoured to excite my vengeance, and my
pride, by preaching to me of me. And my pride was, at times, too much
excited by their vile insinuations. But had it even been as they said;
well might she, who had been used to be courted and admired by every
desiring eye, and worshipped by every respectful heart--well might such
a woman be allowed to draw back, when she found herself kept in suspense,
as to the great question of all, by a designing and intriguing spirit;
pretending awe and distance, as reasons for reining-in a fervour, which,
if real, cannot be reined-in--Divine creature! Her very doubts, her
reserves, (so justly doubting,) would have been my assurance, and my
glory!--And what other trial needed her virtue! What other needed a
purity so angelic, (blessed with such a command in her passions in the
bloom of youth,) had I not been a villain--and a wanton, a conceited, a
proud fool, as well as a villain?
These reflections sharpened, rather than their edge by time abated,
accompany me in whatever I do, and wherever I go; and mingle with all
my diversions and amusements. And yet I go into gay and splendid
company. I have made new acquaintance in the different courts I have
visited. I am both esteemed and sought after, by persons of rank and
merit. I visit the colleges, the churches, the palaces. I frequent
the theatre: am present at every public exhibition; and see all that is
worth seeing, that I had not see before, in the cabinets of the curious:
am sometimes admitted to the toilette of an eminent toast, and make one
with distinction at the assemblies of others--yet can think of nothing,
nor of any body, with delight, but of my CLARISSA. Nor have I seen one
woman with advantage to herself, but as she resembles, in stature, air,
complexion, voice, or in some feature, that charmer, that only charmer
of my soul.
What greater punishment, than to have these astonishing perfections,
which she was mistress of, strike my remembrance with such force, when I
have nothing left me but the remorse of having deprived myself and the
world of such a blessing? Now and then, indeed, am I capable of a gleam
of comfort, arising (not ungenerously) from the moral certainty which I
have of her everlasting happiness, in spite of all the machinations and
devices which I set on foot to ensnare her virtue, and to bring down so
pure a mind to my own level.
For can I be, at worst, [avert that worst,
O thou SUPREME, who only canst avert it!]
So much a wretch, so very far abandon'd,
But that I must, even in the horrid's gloom,
Reap intervenient joy, at least some respite,
From pain and anguish, in her bliss.--
***
If I find myself thus miserable abroad, I will soon return to England,
and follow your example, I think--turn hermit, or some plaguy thing or
other, and see what a constant course of penitence and mortification will
do for me. There is no living at this rate--d--n me if there be!
If any mishap should befal me, you'll have the particulars of it from De
la Tour. He indeed knows but little English; but every modern tongue is
your's. He is a trusty and ingenious fellow; and, if any thing happen,
will have some other papers, which I have already sealed up, for you to
transmit to Lord M. And since thou art so expert and so ready at
executorships, pr'ythee, Belford, accept of the office for me, as well as
for my Clarissa--CLARISSA LOVELACE let me call her.
By all that's good, I am bewitched to her memory. Her very name, with
mine joined to it, ravishes my soul, and is more delightful to me than
the sweetest music.
Had I carried her [I must still recriminate] to any other place than that
accursed woman's--for the potion was her invention and mixture; and all
the persisted-in violence was at her instigation, and at that of her
wretched daughters, who have now amply revenged upon me their own ruin,
which they lay at my door--
But this looks so like the confession of a thief at the gallows, that
possibly thou wilt be apt to think I am intimidated in prospect of the
approaching interview. But far otherwise. On the contrary, most
cheerfully do I go to meet the Colonel; and I would tear my heart out
of my breast with my own hands, were it capable of fear or concern on
that account.
Thus much only I know, that if I should kill him, [which I will not do,
if I can help it,] I shall be far from being easy in my mind; that shall
I never more be. But as the meeting is evidently of his own seeking,
against an option fairly given to the contrary, and I cannot avoid it,
I'll think of that hereafter. It is but repenting and mortifying for all
at once; for I am sure of victory, as I am that I now live, let him be
ever so skillful a swordsman; since, besides that I am no unfleshed
novice, this is a sport that, when provoked to it, I love as well as my
food. And, moreover, I shall be as calm and undisturbed as the bishop at
his prayers; while he, as is evident by his letter, must be actuated by
revenge and passion.
Doubt not, therefore, Jack, that I shall give a good account of this
affair. Mean time, I remain,
Your's most affectionately, &c.
LOVELACE.