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

button. They are fools to anathematize and curse me, who can give them ten curses for one, were they to hold it for a day together.

I have one half of the house to myself; and that the best; for the great enjoy that least which costs them most: grandeur and use are two things: the common part is their’s; the state part is mine: and here I lord it, and will lord it, as long as I please; while the two pursy sisters, the old gouty brother, and the two musty nieces, are stived up in the other half, and dare not stir for fear of meeting me: whom, (that’s the jest of it), they have forbidden coming into their apartments, as I have them into mine. And so I have them all prisoners, while I range about as I please. Pretty dogs and doggesses to quarrel and bark at me, and yet, whenever I appear, afraid to pop out of their kennels; or, if out before they see me, at the sight of me run growling in again, with their flapt ears, their sweeping dewlaps, and their quivering tails curling inwards.

And here, while I am thus worthily waging war with beetles, drones, wasps, and hornets, and am all on fire with the rage of slighted love, thou art regaling thyself with phlegm and rock-water, and art going on with thy reformation-scheme and thy exultations in my misfortunes!

The devil take thee for an insensible dough-baked varlet! I have no more patience with thee than with the lady; for thou knowest nothing either of love or friendship, but art as unworthy of the one, as incapable of the other; else wouldst thou not rejoice, as thou dost under the grimace of pity, in my disappointments.

And thou art a pretty fellow, art thou not? to engage to transcribe for her some parts of my letters written to thee in confidence? Letters that thou shouldest sooner have parted with thy cursed tongue, than have owned that thou ever hadst received such: yet these are now to be communicated to her! But I charge thee, and woe be to thee if it be too late! that thou do not oblige her with a line of mine.

If thou hast done it, the least vengeance I will take is to break through my honour given to thee not to visit her, as thou wilt have broken through thine to me, in communicating letters written under the seal of friendship.

I am now convinced, too sadly for my hopes, by her letter to my cousin Charlotte, that she is determined never to have me.

Unprecedented wickedness, she calls mine to her. But how does she know what love, in its flaming ardour, will stimulate men to do? How does she know the requisite distinctions of the words she uses in this case?⁠—To think the worst, and to be able to make comparisons in these very delicate situations, must she not be less delicate than I had imagined her to be?⁠—But she has heard that the devil is black; and having a mind to make one of me, brays together, in the mortar of her wild fancy, twenty chimney-sweepers, in order to make one sootier than ordinary rise out of the dirty mass.

But what a whirlwind does she raise in my soul by her proud contempts of me! Never, never, was mortal man’s pride so mortified! How does she sink me, even in my own eyes!⁠—“Her heart sincerely repulses me, she says, for my meanness!”⁠—Yet she intends to reap the benefit of what she calls so!⁠—Curse upon her haughtiness, and her meanness, at the same time!⁠—Her haughtiness to me, and her meanness to her own relations; more unworthy of kindred with her, than I can be, or I am mean indeed.

Yet who but must admire, who but must adore her; Oh! that cursed, cursed house! But for the women of that!⁠—Then their d⁠⸺⁠d potions! But for those, had her unimpaired intellects, and the majesty of her virtue, saved her, as once it did by her humble eloquence,323 another time by her terrifying menaces against her own life.324

Yet in both these to find her power over me, and my love for her, and to hate, to despise, and to refuse me!⁠—She might have done this with some show of justice, had the last-intended violation been perpetrated:⁠—but to go away conqueress and triumphant in every light!⁠—Well may she despise me for suffering her to do so.

She left me low and mean indeed!⁠—And the impression holds with her.⁠—I could tear my flesh, that I gave her not cause⁠—that I humbled her not indeed;⁠—or that I stayed not in town to attend her motions instead of Lord M.’s, till I could have exalted myself, by giving to myself a wife superior to all trial, to all temptation.

I will venture one more letter to her, however; and if that don’t do, or procure me an answer, then will I endeavour to see her, let what will be the consequence. If she get out of my way, I will do some noble mischief to the vixen girl whom she most loves, and then quit the kingdom forever.

And now, Jack, since thy hand is in at communicating the contents of private letters, tell her this, if thou wilt. And add to it, That if she abandon me, God will: and what then will be the fate of

Her

Lovelace.

Letter 396 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

[In answer to Letter 383]

Monday, Aug. 7

And so you have actually delivered to the fair implacable extracts of letters written in the confidence of friendship! Take care⁠—take care, Belford⁠—I do indeed love you better than I love any man in the world: but this is a very delicate point. The matter is grown very serious to me. My heart is bent upon having her. And have her I will, though I marry her in the agonies of