_Coke Clifton to Guy Fairfax_
_London, Dover Street_
I will not suppose, Fairfax, you seek to compliment me, when you say
you enjoy the exuberant heat of soul, the fire that pervades my
epistles. I am glad you do. I shall not think the worse of your
talents. Many a line have I written in all the burst of feeling, and
not a few in all the blaze of wit, and have said to myself,--Should he
not understand me now?--Why if he should not, dulness everlasting be
his portion!--But you take the sure way to keep up my ardour. While I
perceive you continue to enjoy I shall continue to be communicative. A
sympathetic yawner I may be, but I do not believe I am often the first
to begin.
I knew not half my own merits. I act my part to admiration. 'Tis true
the combining circumstances are all favourable. I must be a dunce
indeed if in such a school I should want chicanery. Our disputations
have been continual; nor have I ever failed to turn them on the most
convenient topics. But none of them have equalled the last; managed as
it was with dexterity by me, and in the very spirit I wished by my
opponents. I speak in the plural; for I took care to have them both
present. Several remarks which I had heard from him assured me he
would second my plan; which was no less than to prove marriage a
farce!--Would you have believed, Fairfax, I should have had the
temerity to step upon a rock so slippery; and to have requested
this Archimago of Adam's journeymen [Adam you know being the world's
head-gardener] to stay and lend me his support?--Yet thus audacious
was I; and courage as it ought has been crowned with success!
The thought was suggested by themselves; and, had you or I or any of us
vile marriage haters been declaiming against the saffron god, and his
eternal shackles, I doubt whether the best of us could have said any
thing half so much to the purpose!--Is it not excellent?--
Then had you heard me preach, ay, me myself, against libertines and
libertinism!
By the by, Don Cabbage-plant had the insolence to say two or three
devilish severe things, dishonourable to the noble fraternity of us
knights of the bed-chamber, which if I forget may woman never more have
cause to remember me!
However I brought him to own,--I--[Do laugh!] by my very great
apprehensions of the effects of such a doctrine, that though marriage
be a bad thing it is quite necessary, at present, for the defence of
the weaker vessels and modest maidenhood. Ay and I applauded him for
his honest candour! I was glad I had misunderstood him! Thanked him for
all his profound information! In short made him exactly what I wished,
my tool! And a high-tempered tool he is, by the aid of which I will
shew myself a most notable workman!--
Not but the fellow's eye was upon me. I could observe him prying,
endeavouring to search and probe me. But I came too well prepared.
Instead of shrinking from the encounter, my brow contracted increasing
indignation; and my voice grew louder, as I stood forth the champion of
chaste virginity and sanctimonious wedlock!--The scene, in the very
critical sense of the phrase, was high comedy!--
It was well, Fairfax, they went no farther than Paris: had either of
them only reached Turin I had been half undone! And had they touched at
Naples, Rome, Venice, or half a dozen other fair and flourishing
cities, my character for a pretty behaved, demure, and virtuous
gentleman had been irremediably ruined!
Upon my soul I cannot put it out of my head!--Had you heard me
remonstrate what a horrid thing it would be to have marriage destroyed,
and us honest fellows turned loose among the virgins, from whom we
should catch and ravish each a new damsel every new day, and had you
seen what a fine serious undertaker's face I put upon the business,
your heart would have chuckled! To the day of your death it would never
have been forgotten!
Perhaps you will wonder how I could draw such a doctrine from these
spinners of hypothesis. I will tell you. I had heard them severally
maintain--Try to guess what!--Not in seven years, though you were to do
nothing else.--You I suppose like me have heard that liberty, security,
and property are the three main pillars of political happiness?--Well
then, these professors maintain that individual property is a general
evil!--What is more, they maintain it by such arguments as would puzzle
college, council, or senate to refute. But that I am determined never
to torment my brain about such quips and quillets, may I turn Turk if
they would not have made a convert of me, and have persuaded me that an
estate of ten thousand a year was a very intolerable thing!
My intention was to keep my countenance, but to laugh at them in my
heart most incontinently. However, I soon found my side of the question
was not so perfectly beyond all doubt, nor theirs quite so ridiculous
as I had imagined.
'Tis true, I went predetermined to be convinced, and to take all they
should tell me for gospel. I had a conclusion of my own to draw, and if
I could but lead to that, I cared not how much I granted.
I know not whether this predisposition in me was of any advantage to
their argument, though I think it was not; for, so ready was the
solution to every difficulty, I boldly ventured to state objections
which I meant to have kept out of sight, lest I should myself overturn
a system that suited my purpose. I perceived their eagerness, saw there
was no danger that they should stop at trifles even if I should happen
to throw them a bone to pick, and the readiness of each reply raised my
curiosity. I fearlessly drew out my heavy artillery, which they with
ease and safety as fearlessly dismounted. With a breath my strong holds
were all puffed down, like so many houses of cards.
By this however my main business was done more effectually. We came to
it by fair deduction. It was not abruptly introduced; it was major,
minor, and consequent--All individual property is an evil--Marriage
makes woman individual property--Therefore marriage is an evil--Could
there be better logic?
As for his saving clause, that marriage in these times of prejudice and
vice [I have the whole cant by rote, Fairfax.] is a necessary evil,
leave me to do that away. What! Is she not a heroine? And can I not
convince her that to act according to a bad system, when there is a
better, were to descend to the ways of the vulgar? Can I not teach her
how superior she is to the pretty misses who conform to such mistaken
laws? Shall she want the courage and the generosity to set the first
good example? How often have I seen her eyes sparkle, her bosom heave,
and her zeal break forth in virtuous resolutions to encounter any peril
to obtain a worthy purpose! And can there be a more worthy?
Curse upon these qualms of conscience! Never before did I feel any
thing so teazing, so tormenting! And, knowing what I know, remembering
what I never can forget, the slights, injuries, and insults I have
received, how I came to feel them now is to me wholly inconceivable.
She is acting it is true with what she calls the best and purest of
intentions toward me; she believes them to be such; she sometimes
almost obliges me to believe them such myself. She tortures me, by half
constraining me to revere the virtues in favour of which she harangues
so divinely. But shall I like a poor uxorious lackadaisy driveller sit
down satisfied with a divided heart?--I! she not with her own lips,
under her own hand, avowed and signed her contumelious guilt, her
audacious preference of a rival?--A mean, a base, a vulgar rival!--And
after this shall my projects suffer impediment from cheesecurd
compassion?--Shall the querulous voice of conscience arrest my avenging
arm?--No, Fairfax!--It cannot be! Though my heart in its anger could
not accuse her of a single crime beside, that alone, that damning
preference would be all-sufficient!--The furies have no stings that
equal this recollection!
I have been throwing up my sashes, striding across my room, and
construing ten lines of Seneca, and my pulse again begins to beat more
temperately.
Let us argue the point with this pert, unruly, marplot conscience of
mine.
It was not at first without considerable reluctance and even pain that
I began to plot. I almost abhorred reducing her to the level of the
sex, not one of whom was ever yet her equal. But she used me ill,
Fairfax. Yes, she used me ill; and you well know that want of
resentment is want of courage. None but pitiful, contemptible,
no-souled fellows forget insults, till ample vengeance have been taken.
And shall conscience insolently pretend to contradict the decree?
Beside I could not but remember our old maxims, the Cyprian battles our
jovial corps had fought, and the myrtle wreaths each wight had won.
Should I, the leader the captain of the band, be the first to fly my
colours? Was it not our favourite axiom that he who could declare, upon
his honour, he had found a generous woman, who never had attempted once
to deceive, trifle with, or play him trick, should still be
acknowledged a companion of our order, even though he were to marry:
but that all coquetry, all tergiversation, all wrongs, however slight,
were unpardonable, and only one way to be redressed? What answer can
conscience give to that?
Your letters too are another stimulative. You detail the full, true and
particular account of your amorous malefactions, and vaunt of petty
obstacles, petty arts, and petty triumphs over Signoras and Madames who
advance, challenge you to the field, and give battle purposely to be
overcome. Their whole resistance is but to make you feel how great an
Alexander you are, and that having vanquished them you are invincible!
As you will certainly never meet with an Anna St. Ives, 'tis possible
you may die in that opinion. But, I tell you, Fairfax, if you compare
these practised Amazons to my heroine, you are in a most heterodox and
damnable error, of which if you do not timely repent your soul will
never find admission into the lover's Elysium.
Bear witness, however, to my honesty; of women I allow her to be the
most excellent, but still a woman, and not as I foolishly for a while
supposed an absolute goddess. No, no. Madam can curvet and play her
pranks, though of totally a different kind; and, being almost mortal at
present, mere mortal must become in despite of conscience and its green
sickness physiognomy.
At first I knew her not; and, unwilling to encounter logic in a gauze
cap, I ceased to oppose her arguments, and thought to conciliate her by
resolving to be of her creed. What could be more generous? But no,
forsooth! The veil was too thin! To pretend conviction when it was not
felt, and to be satisfied with arguments before I had heard them, were
all insufficient for her! The prize could be gained only by him who
could answer the enigmas of the Sphinx! I must enter the lists of
cavil, and run a tilt at wrangling, ere the lady would bestow the meed
of conquest! Can conscience pretend to palliate conduct like this?
I then turned my thoughts to a new project, and endeavoured to
overpower her by passion, by excess of ardour, by tenderness and
importunity. They had a temporary effect, but I found them equally
inefficacious. Nor was the art by which I had oftenest been successful
forgotten; though I confess that with her, from the beginning, it
afforded me but little hope. I tried to familiarize her to freedoms. I
began with her hands; but she soon taught me that even her hands were
sacred; they were not to be treated with familiarity, nor to be kissed
and pressed like other hands! Let conscience if it can tell me why.
In fine, while to this insolent pedagogue she has been all honeysuckle,
sweet marjoram and heart's ease, to me she has been rue, wormwood and
hellebore: him praising, me reproving: confiding in him, suspecting me:
and, as the very summit and crown of injury, proclaiming him the
possessor the master of her admiration, or in plain English of her
heart.
And now, if after this impartial, this cool, this stoic examination Mr.
Conscience should ever again be impertinent enough to open his lips, I
am determined without the least ceremony to kick him out of doors.
When this famous conference of which I told you some half an hour ago
was ended, and our president, our monarch of morals and mulberries had
quitted his chair and withdrawn, I played an aftergame of no small
moment. After pronouncing a panegyric on the gentleman, as a legislator
fit for truth and me, I read the lady a modest lecture on confidence,
informed her of almost the exact quantity which I expected she would
repose in me, and declaimed with eloquence and effect against those
suspicious beauties who always regard us honest fellows as so many
naughty goblins; who, like the Ethiopian monster, voraciously devour
every Virgin-Andromeda they meet. But as I tell you, I did it
modestly. I kept on my guard, watched the moment to press forward or to
retreat; and wielded my weapons with dexterity and success.
Poor girl! Is it not a pity that the very shield in which she confides,
her perfect honesty and sincerity, should be destined to fall upon and
overwhelm her?--Thus says counsellor Sentiment: and counseller
Sentiment is a great orator!--But what say I? Why I say so have the
Fates decreed, and therefore let the Fates look to it; 'tis no concern
of mine; I am but their willing instrument.
These however are but the preliminaries, the preparations for the
combat. Ere long I shall be armed at all points, and what is better by
her own fair hands. Nor do I know how soon I may begin the attack. I
have been casting about to send this superintendant of the cardinal
virtues, this captain of casuists and caterpillars out of the way; and
I think I have hit upon a tolerably bold and ingenious stratagem. I say
bold because I perceive it is not without danger; but I doubt I cannot
devise a better. Without naming or appearing to mean myself, I have
suggested to him, by inventing a tale of two friends of mine, what a
noble and disinterested thing it would be for him to go down into the
country and prevail on his father to remove all obstacles to our
marriage--
How! Say you. Is marriage your plan? And if not is not that the way to
ruin all?
There is the danger I talked of; but I do not think it great. The
scoundrel gardener, I mean the father; who is heartily despised by
every body, is desirous that his son should marry Anna. I know not
whether I ever before mentioned this sublime effort of impudence. The
cunning rascal has so long been the keeper of Sir Arthur's purse, that
it is supposed two thirds of the contents have glided into his own
pocket. This is the reason of the delay on Sir Arthur's part, which at
present I do not wish to shorten. That this son of a grub catcher, a
Demosthenes though he be, should prevail on such a father, if he were
to go down as I hope he will, is but little probable. However, should
the least prognostic of such a miracle appear, I have my remedy
prepared. I will generously have a letter written to the senior
overseer of the gravel walks, which if the character I have heard of
him be not wholly false, shall revive all his hopes, and put an end to
compliance.
In Italy, where amorous plotting is the national profession, I was not
easily circumvented; and here, where another gunpowder treason would as
soon be suspected as such gins and snares, at least by these very
honest and sublime simpletons, I laugh at the supposition of being
unearthed.
One word more. I think I observe in this knight of Gotham, this Sir
Arthur, a more cordial kind of yearning toward our young prince of
Babel land than formerly; a sort of desire to be more intimate with
him, of which by the by the youth is not very prompt to admit, and an
effort to treat him with more respect himself, by way as it were of
setting a good example to others. If my conjectures are right, the
threats of the old muckworm father have shaken the crazy nerves of the
baronet; and I half suspect there is something more of meaning at the
bottom of this. Were it so, were he to attempt to discard me, it would
indeed add another spur to the fury of revenge! An affront so deep
given by this poor being, this essence of insignificance, would make
revenge itself, hot unsatiable revenge grow more hot, madden more, and
thirst even after blood!--Patience foams at the supposition!
Thank heaven I hear the noisy postman with his warning bell, which
obliges me in good time to conclude and cool these fermenting juices of
mine!