Clarissa Harlowe, Samuel Richardson [black authors fiction .txt] 📗

spare thy comments. My own reflections render them needless. Dorcas thinks her lady will ask for them: so wishes to have them to lay again under the table.

By the first thou’lt guess that I have told her that Miss Howe is very ill, and can’t write; that she may account the better for not having received the letter designed for her.

[Torn in two pieces]

Paper I

My Dearest Miss Howe,

O what dreadful, dreadful things have I to tell you! But yet I cannot tell you neither. But say, are you really ill, as a vile, vile creature informs me you are?

But he never yet told me truth, and I hope has not in this: and yet, if it were not true, surely I should have heard from you before now!⁠—But what have I to do to upbraid?⁠—You may well be tired of me!⁠—And if you are, I can forgive you; for I am tired of myself: and all my own relations were tired of me long before you were.

How good you have always been to me, mine own dear Anna Howe!⁠—But how I ramble!

I sat down to say a great deal⁠—my heart was full⁠—I did not know what to say first⁠—and thought, and grief, and confusion, and (O my poor head) I cannot tell what⁠—and thought, and grief and confusion, came crowding so thick upon me; one would be first; another would be first; all would be first; so I can write nothing at all.⁠—Only that, whatever they have done to me, I cannot tell; but I am no longer what I was⁠—in any one thing did I say? Yes, but I am; for I am still, and I ever will be,

Your true⁠⸻

Plague on it! I can write no more of this eloquent nonsense myself; which rather shows a raised, than a quenched, imagination: but Dorcas shall transcribe the others in separate papers, as written by the whimsical charmer: and some time hence when all is over, and I can better bear to read them, I may ask thee for a sight of them. Preserve them, therefore; for we often look back with pleasure even upon the heaviest griefs, when the cause of them is removed.

[Scratch’d through, and thrown under the table]

Paper II

—And can you, my dear, honoured Papa, resolve forever to reprobate your poor child?⁠—But I am sure you would not, if you knew what she has suffered since her unhappy⁠—And will nobody plead for your poor suffering girl?⁠—No one good body?⁠—Why then, dearest Sir, let it be an act of your own innate goodness, which I have so much experienced, and so much abused. I don’t presume to think you should receive me⁠—No, indeed!⁠—My name is⁠—I don’t know what my name is!⁠—I never dare to wish to come into your family again!⁠—But your heavy curse, my Papa⁠—Yes, I will call you Papa, and help yourself as you can⁠—for you are my own dear Papa, whether you will or not⁠—and though I am an unworthy child⁠—yet I am your child⁠—

Paper III

A Lady took a great fancy to a young lion, or a bear, I forget which⁠—but a bear, or a tiger, I believe it was. It was made her a present of when a whelp. She fed it with her own hand: she nursed up the wicked cub with great tenderness; and would play with it without fear or apprehension of danger: and it was obedient to all her commands: and its tameness, as she used to boast, increased with its growth; so that, like a lapdog, it would follow her all over the house. But mind what followed: at last, some how, neglecting to satisfy its hungry maw, or having otherwise disobliged it on some occasion, it resumed its nature; and on a sudden fell upon her, and tore her in pieces.⁠—And who was most to blame, I pray? The brute, or the lady? The lady, surely!⁠—For what she did was out of nature, out of character, at least: what it did was in its own nature.

Paper IV

How art thou now humbled in the dust, thou proud Clarissa Harlowe! Thou that never steppedst out of thy father’s house but to be admired! Who wert wont to turn thine eye, sparkling with healthful life, and self-assurance, to different objects at once as thou passedst, as if (for so thy penetrating sister used to say) to plume thyself upon the expected applauses of all that beheld thee! Thou that usedst to go to rest satisfied with the adulations paid thee in the past day, and couldst put off everything but thy vanity!⁠—

Paper V

Rejoice not now, my Bella, my Sister, my Friend; but pity the humbled creature, whose foolish heart you used to say you beheld through the thin veil of humility which covered it.

It must have been so! My fall had not else been permitted⁠—

You penetrated my proud heart with the jealousy of an elder sister’s searching eye.

You knew me better than I knew myself.

Hence your upbraidings and your chidings, when I began to totter.

But forgive now those vain triumphs of my heart.

I thought, poor, proud wretch that I was, that what you said was owing to your envy.

I thought I could acquit my intention of any such vanity.

I was too secure in the knowledge I thought I had of my own heart.

My supposed advantages became a snare to me.

And what now is the end of all?⁠—

Paper VI

What now is become of the prospects of a happy life, which once I thought opening before me?⁠—Who now shall assist in the solemn preparations? Who now shall provide the nuptial ornaments, which soften and divert the apprehensions of the fearful virgin? No court now to be paid to my smiles! No encouraging compliments to inspire thee with hope of laying a mind not unworthy of thee under obligation! No elevation now for conscious merit, and applauded purity, to look down from on