In vain dost thou* and thy compeers press me to go to town, while I am
in such an uncertainty as I am in at present with this proud beauty.
All the ground I have hitherto gained with her is entirely owing to her
concern for the safety of people whom I have reason to hate.
*These gentlemen affected what they called the Roman style
(to wit, the thee and the thou) in their letters: and it was
an agreed rule with them, to take in good part whatever
freedoms they treated each other with, if the passages were
written in that style.
Write then, thou biddest me, if I will not come. That, indeed, I can do;
and as well without a subject, as with one. And what follows shall be a
proof of it.
The lady's malevolent brother has now, as I told thee at M. Hall,
introduced another man; the most unpromising in his person and
qualities, the most formidable in his offers, that has yet appeared.
This man has by his proposals captivated every soul of the
Harlowes--Soul! did I say--There is not a soul among them but my
charmer's: and she, withstanding them all, is actually confined, and
otherwise maltreated by a father the most gloomy and positive; at the
instigation of a brother the most arrogant and selfish. But thou knowest
their characters; and I will not therefore sully my paper with them.
But is it not a confounded thing to be in love with one, who is the
daughter, the sister, the niece, of a family, I must eternally despise?
And, the devil of it, that love increasing with her--what shall I call
it?--'Tis not scorn:--'Tis not pride:--'Tis not the insolence of an
adored beauty:--But 'tis to virtue, it seems, that my difficulties are
owin; and I pay for not being a sly sinner, an hypocrite; for being
regardless of my reputation; for permittin slander to open its mouth
against me. But is it necessary for such a one as I, who have been used
to carry all before me, upon my own terms--I, who never inspired a fear,
that had not a discernibly-predominant mixture of love in it, to be a
hypocrite?--Well says the poet:
He who seems virtuous does but act a part;
And shews not his own nature, but his art.
Well, but it seems I must practise for this art, if it would succeed
with this truly-admirable creature; but why practise for it?--Cannot
I indeed reform?--I have but one vice;--Have I, Jack?--Thou knowest my
heart, if any man living does. As far as I know it myself, thou knowest
it. But 'tis a cursed deceiver; for it has many a time imposed upon its
master--Master, did I say? That I am not now; nor have I been from the
moment I beheld this angel of a woman. Prepared indeed as I was by her
character before I saw her: For what a mind must that be, which,
though not virtuous itself, admires not virtue in another?--My visit
to Arabella, owing to a mistake of the sister, into which, as thou hast
heard me say, I was led by the blundering uncle; who was to introduce
me (but lately come from abroad) to the divinity, as I thought; but,
instead of her, carried me to a mere mortal. And much difficulty had I,
so fond and forward my lady! to get off without forfeiting all with a
family I intended should give me a goddess.
I have boasted that I was once in love before:--and indeed I thought
I was. It was in my early manhood--with that quality jilt, whose
infidelity I have vowed to revenge upon as many of the sex as shall come
into my power. I believe, in different climes, I have already
sacrificed an hecatomb to my Nemesis, in pursuance of this vow. But upon
recollecting what I was then, and comparing it with what I find myself
now, I cannot say that I was ever in love before.
What was it then, dost thou ask me, since the disappointment had such
effects upon me, when I found myself jilted, that I was hardly kept in
my senses?--Why, I'll grant thee what, as near as I can remember; for
it was a great while ago:--It was--Egad, Jack, I can hardly tell what
it was--but a vehement aspiration after a novelty, I think. Those
confounded poets, with their terrenely-celestial descriptions, did as
much with me as the lady: they fired my imagination, and set me upon
a desire to become a goddess-maker. I must needs try my new-fledged
pinions in sonnet, elogy, and madrigal. I must have a Cynthia, a Stella,
a Sacharissa, as well as the best of them: darts and flames, and the
devil knows what, must I give to my cupid. I must create beauty, and
place it where nobody else could find it: and many a time have I been at
a loss for a subject, when my new-created goddess has been kinder than
it was proper for my plaintive sonnet that she should be.
Then I found I had a vanity of another sort in my passion: I found
myself well received among the women in general; and I thought it a
pretty lady-like tyranny [I was then very young, and very vain!] to
single out some one of the sex, to make half a score jealous. And I can
tell thee, it had its effect: for many an eye have I made to sparkle
with rival indignation: many a cheek glow; and even many a fan have I
caused to be snapped at a sister-beauty; accompanied with a reflection
perhaps at being seen alone with a wild young fellow who could not be in
private with both at once.
In short, Jack, it was more pride than love, as I now find it, that put
me upon making such a confounded rout about losing that noble varletess.
I thought she loved me at least as well as I believed I loved her:
nay, I had the vanity to suppose she could not help it. My friends were
pleased with my choice. They wanted me to be shackled: for early did
they doubt my morals, as to the sex. They saw, that the dancing, the
singing, the musical ladies were all fond of my company: For who [I am
in a humour to be vain, I think!]--for who danced, who sung, who touched
the string, whatever the instrument, with a better grace than thy
friend?
I have no notion of playing the hypocrite so egregiously, as to pretend
to be blind to qualifications which every one sees and acknowledges.
Such praise-begetting hypocrisy! Such affectedly disclaimed attributes!
Such contemptible praise-traps!--But yet, shall my vanity extend only
to personals, such as the gracefulness of dress, my debonnaire, and my
assurance?--Self-taught, self-acquired, these!--For my parts, I value
not myself upon them. Thou wilt say, I have no cause.--Perhaps not. But
if I had any thing valuable as to intellectuals, those are not my own;
and to be proud of what a man is answerable for the abuse of, and has
no merit in the right use of, is to strut, like the jay, in borrowed
plumage.
But to return to my fair jilt. I could not bear, that a woman, who was
the first that had bound me in silken fetters [they were not iron ones,
like those I now wear] should prefer a coronet to me: and when the bird
was flown, I set more value upon it, that when I had it safe in my cage,
and could visit in when I pleased.
But now am I indeed in love. I can think of nothing, of nobody, but
the divine Clarissa Harlowe--Harlowe!--How that hated word sticks in my
throat--But I shall give her for it the name of Love.*
* Lovelace.
CLARISSA! O there's music in the name,
That, soft'ning me to infant tenderness,
Makes my heart spring like the first leaps of life!
But couldst thou have believed that I, who think it possible for me
to favour as much as I can be favoured; that I, who for this charming
creature think of foregoing the life of honour for the life of shackles;
could adopt these over-tender lines of Otway?
I checked myself, and leaving the first three lines of the following of
Dryden to the family of whiners, find the workings of the passion in my
stormy soul better expressed by the three last:
Love various minds does variously inspire:
He stirs in gentle natures gentle fires;
Like that of incense on the alter laid.
But raging flames tempestuous souls invade:
A fire which ev'ry windy passion blows;
With pride it mounts, and with revenge it glows.
And with REVENGE it shall glow!--For, dost thou think, that if it were
not from the hope, that this stupid family are all combined to do my
work for me, I would bear their insults?--Is it possible to imagine,
that I would be braved as I am braved, threatened as I am threatened, by
those who are afraid to see me; and by this brutal brother, too, to
whom I gave a life; [a life, indeed, not worth my taking!] had I not
a greater pride in knowing that by means of his very spy upon me, I am
playing him off as I please; cooling or inflaming his violent passions
as may best suit my purposes; permitting so much to be revealed of my
life and actions, and intentions, as may give him such a confidence in
his double-faced agent, as shall enable me to dance his employer upon my
own wires?
This it is that makes my pride mount above my resentment. By this
engine, whose springs I am continually oiling, I play them all off.
The busy old tarpaulin uncle I make but my ambassador to Queen Anabella
Howe, to engage her (for example-sake to her princessly daughter) to
join in their cause, and to assert an authority they are resolved, right
or wrong, (or I could do nothing,) to maintain.
And what my motive, dost thou ask? No less than this, That my beloved
shall find no protection out of my family; for, if I know hers, fly she
must, or have the man she hates. This, therefore, if I take my measures
right, and my familiar fail me not, will secure her mine, in spite of
them all; in spite of her own inflexible heart: mine, without condition;
without reformation-promises; without the necessity of a siege of years,
perhaps; and to be even then, after wearing the guise of merit-doubting
hypocrisy, at an uncertainty, upon a probation unapproved of. Then shall
I have all the rascals and rascalesses of the family come creeping to
me: I prescribing to them; and bringing that sordidly imperious brother
to kneel at the footstool of my throne.
All my fear arises from the little hold I have in the heart of this
charming frost-piece: such a constant glow upon her lovely features:
eyes so sparkling: limbs so divinely turned: health so florid: youth so
blooming: air so animated--to have an heart so impenetrable: and I, the
hitherto successful Lovelace, the addresser--How can it be? Yet there
are people, and I have talked with some of them, who remember that
she was born. Her nurse Norton boasts of her maternal offices in her
earliest infancy; and in her education gradatim. So there is full proof,
that she came not from above all at once an angel! How then can she be
so impenetrable?
But here's her mistake; nor will she be cured of it--She takes the man
she calls her father [her mother had been faultless, had she not been
her father's wife]; she takes the men she calls her uncles; the fellow
she calls her brother; and the poor contemptible she calls her sister;
to be her father, to be her uncles, her brother, her sister; and that,
as such, she owes to some of them reverence, to others respect, let them
treat her ever so cruelly!--Sordid ties!--Mere cradle prejudices!--For
had they not been imposed upon her by Nature, when she was in a perverse
humour, or could she have chosen her relations, would any of these have
been among them?
How my heart rises at her preference of them to me, when she is
convinced of their injustice to me! Convinced, that the alliance would
do honour to them all--herself excepted; to whom every one owes honour;
and from whom the most princely family might receive it. But how much
more will my heart rise with indignation against her, if I find she
hesitates but one moment (however persecuted) about preferring me to the
man she avowedly hates! But she cannot surely be so mean as to purchase
her peace with them at so dear a rate. She cannot give a sanction to
projects formed in malice, and founded in a selfishness (and that at her
own expense) which she has spirit enough to despise in others; and ought
to disavow, that we may not think her a Harlowe.
By this incoherent ramble thou wilt gather, that I am not likely to come
up in haste; since I must endeavour first to obtain some assurance from
the beloved of my soul, that I shall not be sacrificed to such a wretch
as Solmes! Woe be to the fair one, if ever she be driven into my
power (for I despair of a voluntary impulse in my favour) and I find a
difficulty in obtaining this security.
That her indifference to me is not owing to the superior liking she has
for any other, is what rivets my chains. But take care, fair one; take
care, O thou most exalted of female minds, and loveliest of persons, how
thou debasest thyself by encouraging such a competition as thy sordid
relations have set on foot in mere malice to me!--Thou wilt say I rave.
And so I do:
Perdition catch my soul, but I do love her.
Else, could I hear the perpetual revilings of her implacable
family?--Else, could I basely creep about--not her proud father's
house--but his paddock and garden walls?--Yet (a quarter of a mile
distance between us) not hoping to behold the least glimpse of her
shadow?--Else, should I think myself repaid, amply repaid, if the
fourth, fifth, or sixth midnight stroll, through unfrequented paths, and
over briery enclosures, affords me a few cold lines; the even expected
purport only to let me know, that she values the most worthless person
of her very worthless family, more than she values me; and that she
would not write at all, but to induce me to bear insults, which unman
me to bear?--My lodging in the intermediate way at a wretched alehouse;
disguised like an inmate of it: accommodations equally vile, as those
I met with in my Westphalian journey. 'Tis well, that the necessity for
all this arise not from scorn and tyranny! but is first imposed upon
herself!
But was ever hero in romance (fighting with giants and dragons excepted)
called upon to harder trials?--Fortune and family, and reversionary
grandeur on my side! Such a wretched fellow my competitor!--Must I not
be deplorably in love, that can go through these difficulties, encounter
these contempts?--By my soul, I am half ashamed of myself: I, who am
perjured too, by priority of obligation, if I am faithful to any woman
in the world?
And yet, why say I, I am half ashamed?--Is it not a glory to love her
whom every one who sees her either loves, or reveres, or both? Dryden
says,
The cause of love can never be assign'd:
'Tis in no face;--but in the lover's mind.
--And Cowley thus addresses beauty as a mere imaginary:
Beauty! thou wild fantastic ape,
Who dost in ev'ry country change thy shape:
Here black; there brown; here tawny; and there white!
Thou flatt'rer, who comply'st with ev'ry sight!
Who hast no certain what, nor where.
But both these, had they been her contemporaries, and known her, would
have confessed themselves mistaken: and, taking together person, mind,
and behaviour, would have acknowledged the justice of the universal
voice in her favour.
--Full many a lady
I've ey'd with best regard; and many a time
Th' harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too-diligent ear. For sev'ral virtues
Have I liked several women. Never any
With so full a soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she ow'd,
And put it to the foil. But SHE!--O SHE!
So perfect and so peerless is created,
Of ev'ry creature's best.