Fool! to that body to return, Where it condemn"d and destin"d is to mourn!
[I could a tale unfold---- Would harrow up thy soul----]
O my Miss Howe! if thou hast friendship, help me, And speak the words of peace to my divided soul, That wars within me, And raises ev"ry sense to my confusion.
I"m tott"ring on the brink Of peace; an thou art all the hold I"ve left!
a.s.sist me----in the pangs of my affliction!
When honour"s lost, "tis a relief to die: Death"s but a sure retreat from infamy.
[By swift misfortunes How I am pursu"d!
Which on each other Are, like waves, renew"d!]
The farewell, youth, And all the joys that dwell With youth and life!
And life itself, farewell!
For life can never be sincerely blest.
Heav"n punishes the bad, and proves the best.
After all, Belford, I have just skimmed over these transcriptions of Dorcas: and I see there are method and good sense in some of them, wild as others of them are; and that her memory, which serves her so well for these poetical flights, is far from being impaired. And this gives me hope, that she will soon recover her charming intellects--though I shall be the sufferer by their restoration, I make no doubt.
But, in the letter she wrote to me, there are yet greater extravagancies; and though I said it was too affecting to give thee a copy of it, yet, after I have let thee see the loose papers enclosed, I think I may throw in a transcript of that. Dorcas therefore shall here transcribe it. I cannot. The reading of it affected me ten times more than the severest reproaches of a regular mind could do.
TO MR. LOVELACE
I never intended to write another line to you. I would not see you, if I could help it--O that I never had!
But tell me, of a truth, is Miss Howe really and truly ill?--Very ill?- And is not her illness poison? And don"t you know who gave it to her?
What you, or Mrs. Sinclair, or somebody (I cannot tell who) have done to my poor head, you best know: but I shall never be what I was. My head is gone. I have wept away all my brain, I believe; for I can weep no more.
Indeed I have had my full share; so it is no matter.
But, good now, Lovelace, don"t set Mrs. Sinclair upon me again.--I never did her any harm. She so affrights me, when I see her!--Ever since--when was it? I cannot tell. You can, I suppose. She may be a good woman, as far as I know. She was the wife of a man of honour--very likely--though forced to let lodgings for a livelihood. Poor gentlewoman! Let her know I pity her: but don"t let her come near me again--pray don"t!
Yet she may be a very good woman--
What would I say!--I forget what I was going to say.
O Lovelace, you are Satan himself; or he helps you out in every thing; and that"s as bad!
But have you really and truly sold yourself to him? And for how long?
What duration is your reign to have?
Poor man! The contract will be out: and then what will be your fate!
O Lovelace! if you could be sorry for yourself, I would be sorry too--but when all my doors are fast, and nothing but the key-hole open, and the key of late put into that, to be where you are, in a manner without opening any of them--O wretched, wretched Clarissa Harlowe!
For I never will be Lovelace--let my uncle take it as he pleases.
Well, but now I remember what I was going to say--it is for your good-- not mine--for nothing can do me good now!--O thou villanous man! thou hated Lovelace!
But Mrs. Sinclair may be a good woman--if you love me--but that you don"t --but don"t let her bl.u.s.ter up with her worse than mannish airs to me again! O she is a frightful woman! If she be a woman! She needed not to put on that fearful mask to scare me out of my poor wits. But don"t tell her what I say--I have no hatred to her--it is only fright, and foolish fear, that"s all.--She may not be a bad woman--but neither are all men, any more than all women alike--G.o.d forbid they should be like you!
Alas! you have killed my head among you--I don"t say who did it!--G.o.d forgive you all!--But had it not been better to have put me out of all your ways at once? You might safely have done it! For n.o.body would require me at your hands--no, not a soul--except, indeed, Miss Howe would have said, when she should see you, What, Lovelace, have you done with Clarissa Harlowe?--And then you could have given any slight, gay answer-- sent her beyond sea; or, she has run away from me, as she did from her parents. And this would have been easily credited; for you know, Lovelace, she that could run away from them, might very well run away from you.
But this is nothing to what I wanted to say. Now I have it.
I have lost it again--This foolish wench comes teasing me--for what purpose should I eat? For what end should I wish to live?--I tell thee, Dorcas, I will neither eat nor drink. I cannot be worse than I am.
I will do as you"d have me--good Dorcas, look not upon me so fiercely-- but thou canst not look so bad as I have seen somebody look.
Mr. Lovelace, now that I remember what I took pen in hand to say, let me hurry off my thoughts, lest I lose them again--here I am sensible--and yet I am hardly sensible neither--but I know my head is not as it should be, for all that--therefore let me propose one thing to you: it is for your good--not mine; and this is it:
I must needs be both a trouble and an expense to you. And here my uncle Harlowe, when he knows how I am, will never wish any man to have me: no, not even you, who have been the occasion of it--barbarous and ungrateful!
--A less complicated villany cost a Tarquin--but I forget what I would say again--
Then this is it--I never shall be myself again: I have been a very wicked creature--a vain, proud, poor creature, full of secret pride--which I carried off under an humble guise, and deceived every body--my sister says so--and now I am punished--so let me be carried out of this house, and out of your sight; and let me be put into that Bedlam privately, which once I saw: but it was a sad sight to me then! Little as I thought what I should come to myself!--That is all I would say: this is all I have to wish for--then I shall be out of all your ways; and I shall be taken care of; and bread and water without your tormentings, will be dainties: and my straw-bed the easiest I have lain in--for--I cannot tell how long!
My clothes will sell for what will keep me there, perhaps as long as I shall live. But, Lovelace, dear Lovelace, I will call you; for you have cost me enough, I"m sure!--don"t let me be made a show of, for my family"s sake; nay, for your own sake, don"t do that--for when I know all I have suffered, which yet I do not, and no matter if I never do--I may be apt to rave against you by name, and tell of all your baseness to a poor humbled creature, that once was as proud as any body--but of what I can"t tell--except of my own folly and vanity--but let that pa.s.s--since I am punished enough for it--
So, suppose, instead of Bedlam, it were a private mad-house, where n.o.body comes!--That will be better a great deal.
But, another thing, Lovelace: don"t let them use me cruelly when I am there--you have used me cruelly enough, you know!--Don"t let them use me cruelly; for I will be very tractable; and do as any body would have me to do--except what you would have me do--for that I never will.--Another thing, Lovelace: don"t let this good woman, I was going to say vile woman; but don"t tell her that--because she won"t let you send me to this happy refuge, perhaps, if she were to know it--
Another thing, Lovelace: and let me have pen, and ink, and paper, allowed me--it will be all my amus.e.m.e.nt--but they need not send to any body I shall write to, what I write, because it will but trouble them: and somebody may do you a mischief, may be--I wish not that any body do any body a mischief upon my account.
You tell me, that Lady Betty Lawrance, and your cousin Montague, were here to take leave of me; but that I was asleep, and could not be waked.
So you told me at first I was married, you know, and that you were my husband--Ah! Lovelace! look to what you say.--But let not them, (for they will sport with my misery,) let not that Lady Betty, let not that Miss Montague, whatever the real ones may do; nor Mrs. Sinclair neither, nor any of her lodgers, nor her nieces, come to see me in my place--real ones, I say; for, Lovelace, I shall find out all your villanies in time-- indeed I shall--so put me there as soon as you can--it is for your good-- then all will pa.s.s for ravings that I can say, as, I doubt no many poor creatures" exclamations do pa.s.s, though there may be too much truth in them for all that--and you know I began to be mad at Hampstead--so you said.--Ah! villanous man! what have you not to answer for!
A little interval seems to be lent me. I had begun to look over what I have written. It is not fit for any one to see, so far as I have been able to re-peruse it: but my head will not hold, I doubt, to go through it all. If therefore I have not already mentioned my earnest desire, let me tell you it is this: that I be sent out of this abominable house without delay, and locked up in some private mad-house about this town; for such, it seems, there are; never more to be seen, or to be produced to any body, except in your own vindication, if you should be charged with the murder of my person; a much lighter crime than that of honour, which the greatest villain on earth has robbed me of. And deny me not this my last request, I beseech you; and one other, and that is, never to let me see you more! This surely may be granted to
The miserably abused CLARISSA HARLOWE.
I will not bear thy heavy preachments, Belford, upon this affecting letter. So, not a word of that sort! The paper, thou"lt see, is blistered with the tears even of the hardened transcriber; which has made her ink run here and there.
Mrs. Sinclair is a true heroine, and, I think, shames us all. And she is a woman too! Thou"lt say, the beset things corrupted become the worst.
But this is certain, that whatever the s.e.x set their hearts upon, they make thorough work of it. And hence it is, that a mischief which would end in simple robbery among men rogues, becomes murder, if a woman be in it.