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

And then she began again to rave.

I cannot bear, said I, rising from my seat with a stern air, to see a reasonable creature behave so outrageously!⁠—Will this vehemence, think you, mend the matter? Will it avail you anything? Will it not rather shorten the life you are so desirous to have lengthened, and deprive you of the only opportunity you can ever have to settle your affairs for both worlds?⁠—Death is but the common lot: and if it be yours soon, looking at her, it will be also yours, and yours, and yours, speaking with a raised voice, and turning to every trembling devil round her, (for they all shook at my forcible application), and mine also. And you have reason to be thankful, turning again to her, that you did not perish in that act of intemperance which brought you to this: for it might have been your neck, as well as your leg; and then you had not had the opportunity you now have for repentance⁠—and, the Lord have mercy upon you! into what a state might you have awoke!

Then did the poor wretch set up an inarticulate frightful howl, such a one as I never before heard of her; and seeing everyone half-frighted, and me motioning to withdraw, O pity me, pity me, Mr. Belford, cried she, her words interrupted by groans⁠—I find you think I shall die!⁠—And what may I be, and where, in a very few hours⁠—who can tell?

I told her it was vain to flatter her: it was my opinion she would not recover.

I was going to re-advise her to calm her spirits, and endeavour to resign herself, and to make the beset of the opportunity yet left her; but this declaration set her into a most outrageous raving. She would have torn her hair, and beaten her breast, had not some of the wretches held her hands by force, while others kept her as steady as they could, lest she should again put out her new-set leg; so that, seeing her thus incapable of advice, and in a perfect frenzy, I told Sally Martin, that there was no bearing the room; and that their best way was to send for a minister to pray by her, and to reason with her, as soon as she should be capable of it. And so I left them; and never was so sensible of the benefit of fresh air, as I was the moment I entered the street.

Nor is it to be wondered at, when it is considered that, to the various ill smells that will always be found in a close sick bedroom, (for generally, when the physician comes, the air is shut out), this of Mrs. Sinclair was the more particularly offensive, as, to the scent of plasters, salves, and ointments, were added the stenches of spirituous liquors, burnt and unburnt, of all denominations; for one or other of the creatures, under pretence of colics, gripes, or qualms, were continually calling for supplies of these, all the time I was there. And yet this is thought to be a genteel house of the sort; and all the prostitutes in it are prostitutes of price, and their visitors people of note.

O, Lovelace! what lives do most of us rakes and libertines lead! what company do we keep! And, for such company, what society renounce, or endeavour to make like these!

What woman, nice in her person, and of purity in her mind and manners, did she know what miry wallowers the generality of men of our class are in themselves, and constantly trough and sty with, but would detest the thoughts of associating with such filthy sensualists, whose favourite taste carries them to mingle with the dregs of stews, brothels, and common sewers?

Yet, to such a choice are many worthy women betrayed, by that false and inconsiderate notion, raised and propagated, no doubt, by the author of all delusion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. We rakes, indeed, are bold enough to suppose, that women in general are as much rakes in their hearts, as the libertines some of them suffer themselves to be take with are in their practice. A supposition, therefore, which it behoves persons of true honour of that sex to discountenance, by rejecting the address of every man, whose character will not stand the test of that virtue which is the glory of a woman: and indeed, I may say, of a man too: why should it not?

How, indeed, can it be, if this point be duly weighed, that a man who thinks alike of all the sex, and knows it to be in the power of a wife to do him the greatest dishonour man can receive, and doubts not her will to do it, if opportunity offer, and importunity be not wanting: that such a one, from principle, should be a good husband to any woman? And, indeed, little do innocents think, what a total revolution of manners, what a change of fixed habits, nay, what a conquest of a bad nature, and what a portion of Divine Grace, is required, to make a man a good husband, a worthy father, and true friend, from principle; especially when it is considered, that it is not in a man’s own power to reform when he will. This, (to say nothing of my own experience), thou, Lovelace, hast found in the progress of thy attempts upon the divine Miss Harlowe. For whose remorses could be deeper, or more frequent, yet more transient than thine!

Now, Lovelace, let me know if the word grace can be read from my pen without a sneer from thee and thy associates? I own that once it sounded oddly in my ears. But I shall never forget what a grave man once said on this very word⁠—that with him it was a rake’s shibboleth.388 He had always hopes of one who could bear the mention of it without ridiculing it; and ever gave him