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

Charlotte, in a whim of delicacy, is displeased that I send the enclosed letter to you⁠—that her handwriting, forsooth! should go into the hands of a single man!

There’s encouragement for thee, Belford! This is a certain sign that thou may’st have her if thou wilt. And yet, till she has given me this unerring demonstration of her glancing towards thee, I could not have thought it. Indeed I have often in pleasantry told her that I would bring such an affair to bear. But I never intended it; because she really is a dainty girl; and thou art such a clumsy fellow in thy person, that I should as soon have wished her a rhinoceros for a husband as thee. But, poor little dears! they must stay till their time’s come! They won’t have this man, and they won’t have that man, from seventeen to twenty-five: but then, afraid, as the saying is, that God has forgot them, and finding their bloom departing, they are glad of whom they can get, and verify the fable of the parson and the pears.

[Enclosed in the Preceding]

Worthy Sir, My Very Good Friend and Patron,

I arrived in town yesterday, after a tolerably pleasant journey (considering the hot weather and dusty roads). I put up at the Bull and Gate in Holborn, and hastened to Covent-garden. I soon found the house where the unhappy lady lodgeth. And, in the back shop, had a good deal of discourse358 with Mrs. Smith, (her landlady), whom I found to be so highly prepossessed in her favour, that I saw it would not answer your desires to take my informations altogether from her: and being obliged to attend my patron, (who to my sorrow,

Miserum et aliena vivere quadra,

I find wanteth much waiting upon, and is another sort of man than he was at college: for, Sir, inter nos, honours change manners. For the aforesaid causes, I thought it would best answer all the ends of the commission with which you honoured me, to engage, in the desired scrutiny, the wife of a particular friend, who liveth almost over-against the house where she lodgeth, and who is a gentlewoman of character, and sobriety, a mother of children, and one who knoweth the world well.

To her I applied myself, therefore, and gave her a short history of the case, and desired she would very particularly inquire into the conduct of the unhappy young lady; her present way of life and subsistence; her visitors, her employments, and suchlike: for these, Sir, you know, are the things whereof you wished to be informed.

Accordingly, Sir, I waited upon the gentlewoman aforesaid, this day; and, to my very great trouble, (because I know it will be to yours,” and likewise to all your worthy family’s), I must say, that I do find things look a little more darkly than I hoped the would. For, alas! Sir, the gentlewoman’s report turneth out not so favourable for Miss’s reputation, as I wished, as you wished, and as everyone of her friends wished. But so it is throughout the world, that one false step generally brings on another; and peradventure a worse, and a still worse; till the poor limed soul (a very fit epithet of the Divine Quarles’s!) is quite entangled, and (without infinite mercy) lost forever.

It seemeth, Sir, she is, notwithstanding, in a very ill state of health. In this, both gentlewomen (that is to say, Mrs. Smith, her landlady, and my friend’s wife) agree. Yet she goeth often out in a chair, to prayers (as it is said). But my friend’s wife told me, that nothing is more common in London, than that the frequenting of the church at morning prayers is made the pretence and cover for private assignations. What a sad thing is this! that what was designed for wholesome nourishment to the poor soul, should be turned into rank poison! But as Mr. Daniel de Foe (an ingenious man, though a dissenter) observeth (but indeed it is an old proverb; only I think he was the first that put it into verse)

God never had a house of pray’r
But Satan had a chapel there.

Yet to do the lady justice, nobody cometh home with her: nor indeed can they, because she goeth forward and backward in a sedan, or chair, (as they call it). But then there is a gentleman of no good character (an intimado of Mr. Lovelace) who is a constant visitor of her, and of the people of the house, whom he regaleth and treateth, and hath (of consequence) their high good words.

I have thereupon taken the trouble (for I love to be exact in any commission I undertake) to inquire particularly about this gentleman, as he is called (albeit I hold no man so but by his actions: for, as Juvenal saith,

—Nobilitas sola est, atque unica virtus

And this I did before I would sit down to write to you.

His name is Belford. He hath a paternal estate of upwards of one thousand pounds by the year; and is now in mourning for an uncle who left him very considerably besides. He beareth a very profligate character as to women, (for I inquired particularly about that), and is Mr. Lovelace’s more especial privado, with whom he holdeth a regular correspondence; and hath been