I receive, with great pleasure, the early and cheerful assurances of
your loyalty and love. And let our principal and most trusty friends
named in my last know that I do.
I would have thee, Jack, come down, as soon as thou canst. I believe I
shall not want the others so soon. Yet they may come down to Lord M.'s.
I will be there, if not to receive them, to satisfy my lord, that there
is no new mischief in hand, which will require his second intervention.
For thyself, thou must be constantly with me: not for my security: the
family dare do nothing but bully: they bark only at a distance: but
for my entertainment: that thou mayest, from the Latin and the English
classics, keep my lovesick soul from drooping.
Thou hadst best come to me here, in thy old corporal's coat: thy servant
out of livery; and to be upon a familiar footing with me, as a distant
relation, to be provided for by thy interest above--I mean not in
Heaven, thou mayest be sure. Thou wilt find me at a little alehouse,
they call it an inn; the White Hart, most terribly wounded, (but by
the weather only,) the sign: in a sorry village, within five miles from
Harlowe-place. Every body knows Harlowe-place, for, like Versailles, it
is sprung up from a dunghill, within every elderly person's remembrance.
Every poor body, particularly, knows it: but that only for a few years
past, since a certain angel has appeared there among the sons and
daughters of men.
The people here at the Hart are poor, but honest; and have gotten it
into their heads, that I am a man of quality in disguise; and there is
no reining-in their officious respect. Here is a pretty little
smirking daughter, seventeen six days ago. I call her my Rose-bud. Her
grandmother (for there is no mother), a good neat old woman, as ever
filled a wicker chair in a chimney-corner, has besought me to be
merciful to her.
This is the right way with me. Many and many a pretty rogue had I
spared, whom I did not spare, had my power been acknowledged, and my
mercy in time implored. But the debellare superbos should be my motto,
were I to have a new one.
This simple chit (for there is a simplicity in her thou wouldst be
highly pleased with: all humble; all officious; all innocent--I love her
for her humility, her officiousness, and even for her innocence) will be
pretty amusement to thee; while I combat with the weather, and dodge and
creep about the walls and purlieus of Harlowe-place. Thou wilt see in
her mind, all that her superiors have been taught to conceal, in order
to render themselves less natural, and of consequence less pleasing.
But I charge thee, that thou do not (what I would not permit myself to
do for the world--I charge thee, that thou do not) crop my Rose-bud. She
is the only flower of fragrance, that has blown in this vicinage for ten
years past, or will for ten years to come: for I have looked backward
to the have-been's, and forward to the will-be's; having but too much
leisure upon my hands in my present waiting.
I never was so honest for so long together since my matriculation. It
behoves me so to be--some way or other, my recess at this little inn may
be found out; and it will then be thought that my Rose-bud has attracted
me. A report in my favour, from simplicities so amiable, may establish
me; for the grandmother's relation to my Rose-bud may be sworn to: and
the father is an honest, poor man; has no joy, but in his Rose-bud.--O
Jack! spare thou, therefore, (for I shall leave thee often alone with
her, spare thou) my Rose-bud!--Let the rule I never departed from, but
it cost me a long regret, be observed to my Rose-bud!--never to ruin a
poor girl, whose simplicity and innocence were all she had to trust to;
and whose fortunes were too low to save her from the rude contempts of
worse minds than her own, and from an indigence extreme: such a one will
only pine in secret; and at last, perhaps, in order to refuge herself
from slanderous tongues and virulence, be induced to tempt some
guilty stream, or seek her end in the knee-encircling garter, that
peradventure, was the first attempt of abandoned love.--No defiances
will my Rose-bud breathe; no self-dependent, thee-doubting watchfulness
(indirectly challenging thy inventive machinations to do their worst)
will she assume. Unsuspicious of her danger, the lamb's throat will
hardly shun thy knife!--O be not thou the butcher of my lambkin!
The less thou be so, for the reason I am going to give thee--The gentle
heart is touched by love: her soft bosom heaves with a passion she
has not yet found a name for. I once caught her eye following a young
carpenter, a widow neighbour's son, living [to speak in her dialect] at
the little white house over the way. A gentle youth he also seems to be,
about three years older than herself: playmates from infancy, till
his eighteenth and her fifteenth year furnished a reason for a greater
distance in shew, while their hearts gave a better for their being
nearer than ever--for I soon perceived the love reciprocal. A scrape and
a bow at first seeing his pretty mistress; turning often to salute her
following eye; and, when a winding lane was to deprive him of her sight,
his whole body turned round, his hat more reverently doffed than before.
This answered (for, unseen, I was behind her) by a low courtesy, and
a sigh, that Johnny was too far off to hear!--Happy whelp! said I to
myself.--I withdrew; and in tript my Rose-bud, as if satisfied with the
dumb shew, and wishing nothing beyond it.
I have examined the little heart. She has made me her confidant. She
owns, she could love Johnny Barton very well: and Johnny Barton has told
her, he could love her better than any maiden he ever saw--but, alas!
it must not be thought of. Why not be thought of!--She don't know!--And
then she sighed: But Johnny has an aunt, who will give him an hundred
pounds, when his time is out; and her father cannot give her but a few
things, or so, to set her out with: and though Johnny's mother says, she
knows not where Johnny would have a prettier, or notabler wife, yet--And
then she sighed again--What signifies talking?--I would not have Johnny
be unhappy and poor for me!--For what good would that do me, you know,
Sir!
What would I give [by my soul, my angel will indeed reform me, if her
friends' implacable folly ruin us not both!--What would I give] to have
so innocent and so good a heart, as either my Rose-bud's, or Johnny's!
I have a confounded mischievous one--by nature too, I think!--A good
motion now-and-then rises from it: but it dies away presently--a love
of intrigue--an invention for mischief--a triumph in subduing--fortune
encouraging and supporting--and a constitution--What signifies
palliating? But I believe I had been a rogue, had I been a plough-boy.
But the devil's in this sex! Eternal misguiders. Who, that has once
trespassed with them, ever recovered his virtue? And yet where there is
not virtue, which nevertheless we freelivers are continually plotting
to destroy, what is there even in the ultimate of our wishes with
them?--Preparation and expectation are in a manner every thing:
reflection indeed may be something, if the mind be hardened above
feeling the guilt of a past trespass: but the fruition, what is there in
that? And yet that being the end, nature will not be satisfied without
it.
See what grave reflections an innocent subject will produce! It gives
me some pleasure to think, that it is not out of my power to reform:
but then, Jack, I am afraid I must keep better company than I do at
present--for we certainly harden one another. But be not cast down, my
boy; there will be time enough to give the whole fraternity warning to
choose another leader: and I fancy thou wilt be the man.
Mean time, as I make it my rule, whenever I have committed a very
capital enormity, to do some good by way of atonement; and as I believe
I am a pretty deal indebted on that score, I intend, before I leave
these parts (successfully shall I leave them I hope, or I shall be
tempted to double the mischief by way of revenge, though not to my
Rose-bud any) to join an hundred pounds to Johnny's aunt's hundred
pounds, to make one innocent couple happy.--I repeat therefore, and for
half a dozen more therefores, spare thou my Rose-bud.
An interruption--another letter anon; and both shall go together.