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

pretending the lady was abroad. Drank her lighthearted⁠—then carried her to a play⁠—then it was too late, you know, to see the pretended lady⁠—then to a bagnio⁠—ruined her, as they call it, and all this the same day. Kept her on (an ugly dog, too!) a fortnight or three weeks, then left her to the mercy of the people of the bagnio, (never paying for anything), who stripped her of all her clothes, and because she would not take on, threw her into prison; where she died in want and despair!”⁠—A true story, thou knowest, Jack.⁠—This fellow deserved to be d⁠⸺⁠d. But has our Bob been such a villain as this?⁠—And would he not have married this flinty-hearted lady?⁠—So he is justified very evidently.

Why, then, should such cursed qualms take him?⁠—Who would have thought he had been such poor blood? Now (rot the puppy!) to see him sit silent in a corner, when he has tired himself with his mock majesty, and with his argumentation, (Who so fond of arguing as he?) and teaching his shadow to make mouths against the wainscot⁠—The devil fetch me if I have patience with him!

But he has had no rest for these ten days⁠—that’s the thing!⁠—You must write to him; and pr’ythee coax him, Jack, and send him what he writes for, and give him all his way⁠—there will be no bearing him else. And get the lady buried as fast as you can; and don’t let him know where.

This letter should have gone yesterday. We told him it did. But were in hopes he would have inquired after it again. But he raves as he has not any answer.

What he vouchsafed to read of other of your letters has given my Lord such a curiosity as makes him desire you to continue your accounts. Pray do; but not in your hellish Arabic; and we will let the poor fellow only into what we think fitting for his present way.

I live a cursed dull poking life here. What with I so lately saw of poor Belton, and what I now see of this charming fellow, I shall be as crazy as he soon, or as dull as thou, Jack; so must seek for better company in town than either of you. I have been forced to read sometimes to divert me; and you know I hate reading. It presently sets me into a fit of drowsiness; and then I yawn and stretch like a devil.

Yet in Dryden’s Palemon and Arcite have I just now met with a passage, that has in it much of our Bob’s case. These are some of the lines.

[Mr. Mowbray then recites some lines from that poem, describing a distracted man, and runs the parallel; and then, priding himself in his performance, says:]

Let me tell you, that had I begun to write as early as you and Lovelace, I might have cut as good a figure as either of you. Why not? But boy or man I ever hated a book. ’Tis folly to lie. I loved action, my boy. I hated droning; and have led in former days more boys from their book, than ever my master made to profit by it. Kicking and cuffing, and orchard-robbing, were my early glory.

But I am tired of writing. I never wrote such a long letter in my life. My wrist and my fingers and thumb ache d⁠⸺⁠n⁠—y. The pen is an hundred weight at least. And my eyes are ready to drop out of my head upon the paper.⁠—The cramp but this minute in my fingers. Rot the goose and the goose-quill! I will write no more long letters for a twelvemonth to come. Yet one word; we think the mad fellow coming to. Adieu.

Letter 497 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

Uxbridge, Sat. Sept. 9

Jack,

I think it absolutely right that my ever-dear and beloved lady should be opened and embalmed. It must be done out of hand this very afternoon. Your acquaintance, Tomkins, and old Anderson of this place, I will bring with me, shall be the surgeons. I have talked to the latter about it.

I will see everything done with that decorum which the case, and the sacred person of my beloved require.

Everything that can be done to preserve the charmer from decay shall also be done. And when she will descend to her original dust, or cannot be kept longer, I will then have her laid in my family-vault, between my own father and mother. Myself, as I am in my soul, so in person, chief mourner. But her heart, to which I have such unquestionable pretensions, in which once I had so large a share, and which I will prize above my own, I will have. I will keep it in spirits. It shall never be out of my sight. And all the charges of sepulture too shall be mine.

Surely nobody will dispute my right to her. Whose was she living?⁠—Whose is she dead but mine?⁠—Her cursed parents, whose barbarity to her, no doubt, was the true cause of her death, have long since renounced her. She left them for me. She chose me therefore; and I was her husband. What though I treated her like a villain? Do I not pay for it now? Would she not have been mine had I not? Nobody will dispute but she would. And has she not forgiven me?⁠—I am then in statu quo prius with her, am I not? as if I had never offended?⁠—Whose then can she be but mine?

I will free you from your executorship, and all your cares.

Take notice, Belford, that I do hereby actually discharge you, and everybody, from all cares and troubles relating to her. And as to her last testament, I will execute it myself.

There were no articles between us, no settlements; and she is mine, as you see I have proved to a demonstration; nor could she dispose of herself but as