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

can describe the distress she must be in?

By thy former letters, it may be supposed, that she can have very little money: nor, by the suddenness of her flight, more clothes than those she has on. And thou knowest who once said,261 “Her parents will not receive her. Her uncles will not entertain her. Her Norton is in their direction, and cannot. Miss Howe dare not. She has not one friend or intimate in town⁠—entirely a stranger to it.” And, let me add, has been despoiled of her honour by the man for whom she had made all these sacrifices; and who stood bound to her by a thousand oaths and vows, to be her husband, her protector, and friend!

How strong must be her resentment of the barbarous treatment she has received! how worthy of herself, that it has made her hate the man she once loved! and, rather than marry him, choose to expose her disgrace to the whole world: to forego the reconciliation with her friends which her heart was so set upon: and to hazard a thousand evils to which her youth and her sex may too probably expose an indigent and friendly beauty!

Rememberest thou not that home push upon thee, in one of the papers written in her delirium; of which, however it savours not?⁠—

I will assure thee, that I have very often since most seriously reflected upon it: and as thy intended second outrage convinces me that it made no impression upon thee then, and perhaps thou hast never thought of it since, I will transcribe the sentence.

“If, as religion teaches us, God will judge us, in a great measure! by our benevolent or evil actions to one another⁠—O wretch! bethink thee, in time bethink thee, how great must be thy condemnation.”262

And is this amiable doctrine the sum of religion? Upon my faith, I believe it is. For, to indulge a serious thought, since we are not atheists, except in practice, does God, the Being of Beings, want anything of us for Himself! And does he not enjoin us works of mercy to one another, as the means to obtain his mercy? A sublime principle, and worthy of the Supreme Superintendent and Father of all things!⁠—But if we are to be judged by this noble principle, what, indeed, must be thy condemnation on the score of this lady only? and what mine, and what all our confraternity’s, on the score of other women: though we are none of us half so bad as thou art, as well for want of inclination, I hope, as of opportunity!

I must add, that, as well for thy own sake, as for the lady’s, I wish ye were yet to be married to each other. It is the only medium that can be hit upon to salve the honour of both. All that’s past may yet be concealed from the world, and from all her sufferings, if thou resolvest to be a tender and kind husband to her.

And if this really be thy intention, I will accept with pleasure of a commission from thee that shall tend to promote so good an end, whenever she can be found; that is to say, if she will admit to her presence a man who professes friendship to thee. Nor can I give a greater demonstration, that I am

Thy sincere friend,

J. Belford.

P.S.: Mabell’s clothes were thrown into the passage this morning: nobody knows by whom.

Letter 294 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

Friday, June 30

I am ruined, undone, blown up, destroyed, and worse than annihilated, that’s certain!⁠—But was not the news shocking enough, dost thou think, without thy throwing into the too-weighty scale reproaches, which thou couldst have had no opportunity to make but for my own voluntary communications? at a time too, when, as it falls out, I have another very sensible disappointment to struggle with?

I imagine, if there be such a thing as future punishment, it must be none of the smallest mortifications, that a new devil shall be punished by a worse old one. And, take that! And, take that! to have the old satyr cry to the screaming sufferer, laying on with a cat-o’-nine-tails, with a star of burning brass at the end of each: and, for what! for what!⁠—Why, if the truth may be fairly told, for not being so bad a devil as myself.

Thou art, surely, casuist good enough to know, (what I have insisted upon263 heretofore), that the sin of seducing a credulous and easy girl, is as great as that of bringing to your lure an incredulous and watchful one.

However ungenerous an appearance what I am going to say may have from my pen, let me tell thee, that if such a woman as Miss Harlowe chose to enter into the matrimonial state, (I am resolved to disappoint thee in thy meditated triumph over my rage and despair!) and, according to the old patriarchal system, to go on contributing to get sons and daughters, with no other view than to bring them up piously, and to be good and useful members of the commonwealth, what a devil had she to do, to let her fancy run a gadding after a rake? one whom she knew to be a rake?

Oh! but truly she hoped to have the merit of reclaiming him. She had formed pretty notions how charming it would look to have a penitent of her own making dangling at her side at church, through an applauding neighbourhood: and, as their family increased, marching with her thither, at the head of their boys and girls, processionally, as it were, boasting of the fruits of their honest desires, as my good lord bishop has it in his license. And then, what a comely sight, all kneeling down together in one pew, according to eldership as we have seen in effigy, a whole family upon some