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

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 everyone 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.

Shakespeare.

Thou art curious to know, if I have not started a new game? If it be possible for so universal a lover to be confined so long to one object?⁠—Thou knowest nothing of this charming creature, that thou canst put such questions to me; or thinkest thou knowest me better than thou dost. All that’s excellent in her sex is this lady!⁠—Until by matrimonial or equal intimacies, I have found her less than angel, it is impossible to think of any other. Then there are so many stimulatives to such a spirit as mine in this affair, besides love: such a field of stratagem and contrivance, which thou knowest to be the delight of my heart. Then the rewarding end of all!⁠—To carry off such a girl as this, in spite of all her watchful and implacable friends; and in spite of a prudence and reserve that I never met with in any of the sex;⁠—what a triumph!⁠—What a triumph over the whole sex!⁠—And then such a revenge to gratify; which is only at present politically reined in, eventually to break forth with greater fury⁠—Is it possible, thinkest thou, that there can be room for a thought that is not of her, and devoted to her?

By the advices I have this moment received, I have reason to think, that I shall have occasion for thee here. Hold thyself in readiness to come down upon the first summons.

Let Belton, and Mowbray, and Tourville, likewise prepare themselves. I have a great mind to contrive a method to send James Harlowe to travel for improvement. Never was there a booby ’squire that more wanted it. Contrive it, did I say? I have already contrived it; could I but put it in execution without being suspected to have a hand in it. This I am resolved upon; if I have not his sister, I will have him.

But be this as it may, there is a present likelihood of room for glorious mischief. A confederacy had been for some time formed against me; but the uncles and the nephew are now to be double-servanted (single-servanted they were before); and those servants are to be double armed when they attend their masters abroad. This indicates their resolute enmity to me, and as resolute favour to Solmes.

The reinforced orders for this hostile apparatus are owing it seems to a visit I made yesterday to their church.⁠—A good place I thought to begin a reconciliation in; supposing