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

contempt. And, moreover, I should be almost sorry to find myself spoken well of by a man who could treat, as he treated, a lady who was an ornament to her sex and to human nature.

“I thank you, however, Sir, for your consideration for me in this particular, and for your whole letter, which gives me so desirable an instance of the friendship which you assured me of when I was last in town; and which I as cordially embrace as wish to cultivate.”

Miss Howe, in hers of the 20th, acknowledging the receipt of the letters, and papers, and legacies, sent with Mr. Belford’s letter to Mr. Hickman, assures him, “That no use shall be made of his communications, but what he shall approve of.”

He had mentioned, with compassion, the distresses of the Harlowe family⁠—

“Persons of a pitiful nature, says she, may pity them. I am not one of those. You, I think, pity the infernal man likewise; while I, from my heart, grudge him his frenzy, because it deprives him of that remorse, which, I hope, in his recovery, will never leave him. At times, Sir, let me tell you, that I hate your whole sex for his sake; even men of unblamable characters, whom, at those times, I cannot but look upon as persons I have not yet found out.

“If my dear creature’s personal jewels be sent up to you for sale, I desire that I may be the purchaser of them, at the highest price⁠—of the necklace and solitaire particularly.

“Oh! what tears did the perusal of my beloved’s will cost me!⁠—But I must not touch upon the heart-piercing subject. I can neither take it up, nor quit it, but with execration of the man whom all the world must execrate.”

Mr. Belford, in his answer, promises that she shall be the purchaser of the jewels, if they come into his hands.

He acquaints her that the family had given Colonel Morden the keys of all that belonged to the dear departed; that the unhappy mother had (as the will allows) ordered a piece of needlework to be set aside for her, and had desired Mrs. Norton to get the little book of meditations transcribed, and to let her have the original, as it was all of her dear daughter’s handwriting; and as it might, when she could bear to look into it, administer consolation to herself. And that she had likewise reserved for herself her picture in the Vandyke taste.

Mr. Belford sends with this letter to Miss Howe the lady’s memorandum book, and promises to send her copies of the several posthumous letters. He tells her that Mr. Lovelace being upon the recovery, he had enclosed the posthumous letter directed for him to Lord M. that his Lordship might give it to him, or not, as he should find he could bear it. The following is a copy of that letter:

To Mr. Lovelace

Thursday, Aug. 24.

I told you, in the letter I wrote to you on Tuesday last,403 that you should have another sent you when I had got into my father’s house.

I presume to say, that I am now, at your receiving of this, arrived there; and I invite you to follow me, as soon as you are prepared for so great a journey.

Not to allegorize farther⁠—my fate is now, at your perusal of this, accomplished. My doom is unalterably fixed; and I am either a miserable or happy being to all eternity. If happy, I owe it solely to the Divine mercy; if miserable, to your undeserved cruelty.⁠—And consider not, for your own sake, gay, cruel, fluttering, unhappy man! consider, whether the barbarous and perfidious treatment I have met with from you was worthy the hazard of your immortal soul; since your wicked views were not to be effected but by the wilful breach of the most solemn vows that ever were made by man; and those aided by a violence and baseness unworthy of a human creature.

In time then, once more, I wish you to consider your ways. Your golden dream cannot long last. Your present course can yield you pleasure no longer than you can keep off thought or reflection. A hardened insensibility is the only foundation on which your inward tranquillity is built. When once a dangerous sickness seizes you; when once effectual remorse breaks in upon you; how dreadful will be your condition! How poor a triumph will you then find it, to have been able, by a series of black perjuries, and studied baseness, under the name of gallantry or intrigue, to betray poor unexperienced young creatures, who perhaps knew nothing but their duty till they knew you!⁠—Not one good action in the hour of languishing to recollect, not one worthy intention to revolve, it will be all reproach and horror; and you will wish to have it in your power to compound for annihilation.

Reflect, Sir, that I can have no other motive, in what I write, than your good, and the safety of other innocent creatures, who may be drawn in by your wicked arts and perjuries. You have not, in my wishes for future welfare, the wishes of a suppliant wife, endeavouring for her own sake, as well as for yours, to induce you to reform those ways. They are wholly as disinterested as undeserved. But I should mistrust my own penitence, were I capable of wishing to recompense evil for evil⁠—if, black as your offences have been against me, I could not forgive, as I wish to be forgiven.

I repeat, therefore, that I do forgive you. And may the Almighty forgive you too! Nor have I, at the writing of this, any other essential regrets than what are occasioned by the grief I have given to parents, who, till I knew you, were the most indulgent of parents; by the scandal given to the other branches of my family; by the disreputation brought upon my sex; and by the offence given to virtue in my fall.

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