MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
UXBRIDGE, SEPT. 1, TWELVE O'CLOCK AT NIGHT.
I send you the papers with this. You must account to me honestly and
fairly, when I see you, for the earnestness with which you write for
them. And then also will we talk about the contents of your last
dispatch, and about some of your severe and unfriendly reflections.
Mean time, whatever thou dost, don't let the wonderful creature leave us!
Set before her the sin of her preparation, as if she thought she could
depart when she pleased. She'll persuade herself, at this rate, that she
has nothing to do, when all is ready, but to lie down, and go to sleep:
and such a lively fancy as her's will make a reality of a jest at any
time.
A jest I call all that has passed between her and me; a mere jest to die
for--For has not her triumph over me, from first to last, been infinitely
greater than her sufferings from me?
Would the sacred regard I have for her purity, even for her personal as
well as intellectual purity, permit, I could prove this as clear as the
sun. Tell, therefore, the dear creature that she must not be wicked in
her piety. There is a too much, as well as too little, even in
righteousness. Perhaps she does not think of that.--Oh! that she would
have permitted my attendance, as obligingly as she does of thine!--The
dear soul used to love humour. I remember the time that she knew how to
smile at a piece of apropos humour. And, let me tell thee, a smile upon
the lips, or a sparkling in the eye, must have had its correspondent
cheerfulness in a heart so sincere as her's.
Tell the doctor I will make over all my possessions, and all my
reversions, to him, if he will but prolong her life for one twelvemonth
to come. But for one twelvemonth, Jack!--He will lose all his reputation
with me, and I shall treat him as Belton did his doctor, if he cannot do
this for me, on so young a subject. But nineteen, Belford!--nineteen
cannot so soon die of grief, if the doctor deserve that title; and so
blooming and so fine a constitution as she had but three or four months
ago!
But what need the doctor to ask her leave to write to her friends? Could
he not have done it without letting her know any thing of the matter?
That was one of the likeliest means that could be thought of to bring
some of them about her, since she is so desirous to see them. At least
it would have induced them to send up her favourite Norton. But these
plaguy solemn fellows are great traders in parade. They'll cram down
your throat their poisonous drugs by wholesale, without asking you a
question; and have the assurance to own it to be prescribing: but when
they are to do good, they are to require your consent.
How the dear creature's character rises in every line of thy letters!
But it is owing to the uncommon occasions she has met with that she
blazes out upon us with such a meridian lustre. How, but for those
occasions, could her noble sentiments, her prudent consideration, her
forgiving spirit, her exalted benevolence, and her equanimity in view of
the most shocking prospects (which set her in a light so superior to all
her sex, and even to the philosophers of antiquity) have been manifested?
I know thou wilt think I am going to claim some merit to myself, for
having given her such opportunities of signalizing her virtues. But I am
not; for, if I did, I must share that merit with her implacable
relations, who would justly be entitled to two-thirds of it, at least:
and my soul disdains a partnership in any thing with such a family.
But this I mention as an answer to thy reproaches, that I could be so
little edified by perfections, to which, thou supposest, I was for so
long together daily and hourly a personal witness--when, admirable as she
was in all she said, and in all she did, occasion had not at that time
ripened, and called forth, those amazing perfections which now astonish
and confound me.
Hence it is that I admire her more than ever; and that my love for her is
less personal, as I may say, more intellectual, than ever I thought it
could be to a woman.
Hence also it is that I am confident (would it please the Fates to spare
her, and make her mine) I could love her with a purity that would draw on
my own FUTURE, as well as ensure her TEMPORAL, happiness.--And hence, by
necessary consequence, shall I be the most miserable of all men, if I am
deprived of her.
Thou severely reflectest upon me for my levity: the Abbey instance in
thine eye, I suppose. And I will be ingenuous enough to own, that as
thou seest not my heart, there may be passages, in every one of my
letters, which (the melancholy occasion considered) deserve thy most
pointed rebukes. But faith, Jack, thou art such a tragi-comical mortal,
with thy leaden aspirations at one time, and thy flying hour-glasses and
dreaming terrors at another, that, as Prior says, What serious is, thou
turn'st to farce; and it is impossible to keep within the bounds of
decorum or gravity when one reads what thou writest.
But to restrain myself (for my constitutional gayety was ready to run
away with me again) I will repeat, I must ever repeat, that I am most
egregiously affected with the circumstances of the case: and, were this
paragon actually to quit the world, should never enjoy myself one hour
together, though I were to live to the age of Methusalem.
Indeed it is to this deep concern, that my levity is owing: for I
struggle and struggle, and try to buffet down my cruel reflections as
they rise; and when I cannot, I am forced, as I have often said, to try
to make myself laugh, that I may not cry; for one or other I must do: and
is it not philosophy carried to the highest pitch, for a man to conquer
such tumults of soul as I am sometimes agitated by, and, in the very
height of the storm, to be able to quaver out an horse-laugh?
Your Seneca's, your Epictetus's, and the rest of your stoical tribe, with
all their apathy nonsense, could not come up to this. They could forbear
wry faces: bodily pains they could well enough seem to support; and that
was all: but the pangs of their own smitten-down souls they could not
laugh over, though they could at the follies of others. They read grave
lectures; but they were grave. This high point of philosophy, to laugh
and be merry in the midst of the most soul-harrowing woes, when the
heart-strings are just bursting asunder, was reserved for thy Lovelace.
There is something owing to constitution, I own; and that this is the
laughing-time of my life. For what a woe must that be, which for an hour
together can mortify a man six or seven and twenty, in high blood and
spirits, of a naturally gay disposition, who can sing, dance, and
scribble, and take and give delight in them all?--But then my grief, as
my joy, is sharper-pointed than most other men's; and, like what Dolly
Welby once told me, describing the parturient throes, if there were not
lucid intervals, if they did not come and go, there would be no bearing
them.
***
After all, as I am so little distant from the dear creature, and as she
is so very ill, I think I cannot excuse myself from making her one visit.
Nevertheless, if I thought her so near--[what word shall I use, that my
soul is not shocked at!] and that she would be too much discomposed by a
visit, I would not think of it.--Yet how can I bear the recollection,
that, when she last went from me (her innocence so triumphant over my
premeditated guilt, as was enough to reconcile her to life, and to set
her above the sense of injuries so nobly sustained, that) she should then
depart with an incurable fracture in her heart; and that that should be
the last time I should ever see her!--How, how, can I bear this
reflection!
O Jack! how my conscience, that gives edge even to thy blunt reflections,
tears me!--Even this moment would I give the world to push the cruel
reproacher from me by one ray of my usual gayety!--Sick of myself!--sick
of the remembrance of my vile plots; and of my light, my momentary
ecstacy [villanous burglar, felon, thief, that I was!] which has brought
on me such durable and such heavy remorse! what would I give that I had
not been guilty of such barbarous and ungrateful perfidy to the most
excellent of God's creatures!
I would end, methinks, with one sprightlier line!--but it will not be.--
Let me tell thee then, and rejoice at it if thou wilt, that I am
Inexpressibly miserable!