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

not send to anybody I shall write to, what I write, because it will but trouble them: and somebody may do you a mischief, may be⁠—I wish not that anybody do anybody a mischief upon my account.

You tell me, that Lady Betty Lawrance, and your cousin Montague, were here to take leave of me; but that I was asleep, and could not be waked. So you told me at first I was married, you know, and that you were my husband⁠—Ah! Lovelace! look to what you say.⁠—But let not them, (for they will sport with my misery), let not that Lady Betty, let not that Miss Montague, whatever the real ones may do; nor Mrs. Sinclair neither, nor any of her lodgers, nor her nieces, come to see me in my place⁠—real ones, I say; for, Lovelace, I shall find out all your villanies in time⁠—indeed I shall⁠—so put me there as soon as you can⁠—it is for your good⁠—then all will pass for ravings that I can say, as, I doubt no many poor creatures’ exclamations do pass, though there may be too much truth in them for all that⁠—and you know I began to be mad at Hampstead⁠—so you said.⁠—Ah! villanous man! what have you not to answer for!

A little interval seems to be lent me. I had begun to look over what I have written. It is not fit for anyone to see, so far as I have been able to re-peruse it: but my head will not hold, I doubt, to go through it all. If therefore I have not already mentioned my earnest desire, let me tell you it is this: that I be sent out of this abominable house without delay, and locked up in some private madhouse about this town; for such, it seems, there are; never more to be seen, or to be produced to anybody, except in your own vindication, if you should be charged with the murder of my person; a much lighter crime than that of honour, which the greatest villain on earth has robbed me of. And deny me not this my last request, I beseech you; and one other, and that is, never to let me see you more! This surely may be granted to

The miserably abused

Clarissa Harlowe.

I will not bear thy heavy preachments, Belford, upon this affecting letter. So, not a word of that sort! The paper, thou’lt see, is blistered with the tears even of the hardened transcriber; which has made her ink run here and there.

Mrs. Sinclair is a true heroine, and, I think, shames us all. And she is a woman too! Thou’lt say, the beset things corrupted become the worst. But this is certain, that whatever the sex set their hearts upon, they make thorough work of it. And hence it is, that a mischief which would end in simple robbery among men rogues, becomes murder, if a woman be in it.

I know thou wilt blame me for having had recourse to art. But do not physicians prescribe opiates in acute cases, where the violence of the disorder would be apt to throw the patient into a fever or delirium? I aver, that my motive for this expedient was mercy; nor could it be anything else. For a rape, thou knowest, to us rakes, is far from being an undesirable thing. Nothing but the law stands in our way, upon that account; and the opinion of what a modest woman will suffer rather than become a viva voce accuser, lessens much an honest fellow’s apprehensions on that score. Then, if these somnivolencies (I hate the word opiates on this occasion), have turned her head, that is an effect they frequently have upon some constitutions; and in this case was rather the fault of the dose than the design of the giver.

But is not wine itself an opiate in degree?⁠—How many women have been taken advantage of by wine, and other still more intoxicating viands?⁠—Let me tell thee, Jack, that the experience of many of the passive sex, and the consciences of many more of the active, appealed to, will testify that thy Lovelace is not the worst of villains. Nor would I have thee put me upon clearing myself by comparisons.

If she escape a settled delirium when my plots unravel, I think it is all I ought to be concerned about. What therefore I desire of thee, is, that, if two constructions may be made of my actions, thou wilt afford me the most favourable. For this, not only friendship, but my own ingenuousness, which has furnished thee with the knowledge of the facts against which thou art so ready to inveigh, require of thee.

Will is just returned from an errand to Hampstead; and acquaints me, that Mrs. Townsend was yesterday at Mrs. Moore’s, accompanied by three or four rough fellows; a greater number (as supposed) at a distance. She was strangely surprised at the news that my spouse and I are entirely reconciled; and that two fine ladies, my relations, came to visit her, and went to town with her: where she is very happy with me. She was sure we were not married, she said, unless it was while we were at Hampstead: and they were sure the ceremony was not performed there. But that the lady is happy and easy, is unquestionable: and a fling was thrown out by Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Bevis at mischief-makers, as they knew Mrs. Townsend to be acquainted with Miss Howe.

Now, since my fair-one can neither receive, nor send away letters, I am pretty easy as to this Mrs. Townsend and her employer. And I fancy Miss Howe will be puzzled to know what to think of the matter, and afraid of sending by Wilson’s conveyance; and perhaps suppose that her friend slights her; or has changed her mind in my favour, and is ashamed to own it; as she has not had an answer to what she wrote; and will believe that the rustic delivered her