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Файл:Clarissa V. The history of a young lady
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CLARISSA • V
High as her christian spirit soars in this letter, the reader
has seen, in Vol. VIII. Letter LXIV. and in other places, that
that exalted spirit carried her to still more divine elevations,
as she drew nearer to her end.
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 fi xed; 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, fl uttering, unhappy man! consider, whether the barbarous and
perfi dious 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
refl ection. 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 fi nd 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
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SAMUEL RICHARDSON
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.
Refl ect, 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 your’s, 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.
As to myself, you have only robbed me of what once were
my favourite expectations in the transient life I shall have
quitted when you receive this. You have only been the cause
that I have been cut off in the bloom of youth, and of curtailing a life that might have been agreeable to myself, or
otherwise, as had reason to be thankful for being taken away
from the evil of supporting my part of a yoke with a man so
unhappy; I will only say, that, in all probability, every hour
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CLARISSA • V
I had lived with him might have brought with it some new
trouble. And I am (indeed through sharp affl ictions and distresses) indebted to you, secondarily, as I humbly presume to
hope, for so many years of glory, as might have proved years of
danger, temptation, and anguish, had they been added to my
mortal life.
So, Sir, though no thanks to your intention, you have done
me real service; and, in return, I wish you happy. But such has
been your life hitherto, that you can have no time to lose in setting about your repentance. Repentance to such as have lived
only carelessly, and in the omission of their regular duties, and
who never aimed to draw any poor creatures into evil, is not so
easy a task, nor so much in our own power, as some imagine.
How diffi cult a grace then to be obtained, where the guilt is
premeditated, wilful, and complicated!
To say I once respected you with a preference, is what
I ought to blush to own, since, at the very time, I was far from
thinking you even a mortal man; though I little thought that
you, or indeed any man breathing, could be – what you have
proved yourself to be. But, indeed, Sir, I have long been greatly
above you; for from my heart I have despised you, and all your
ways, ever since I saw what manner of man you were.
Nor is it to be wondered that I should be able so to do,
when that preference was not grounded on ignoble motives.
For I was weak enough, and presumptuous enough, to hope to
be a mean, in the hand of Providence, to reclaim a man whom
I thought worthy of the attempt.
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SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Nor have I yet, as you will see by the pains I take, on this
solemn occasion, to awaken you out of your sensual dream,
given over all hopes of this nature.
Hear me, therefore, O Lovelace! as one speaking from
the dead. – Lose no time – set about your repentance instantly – be no longer the instrument of Satan, to draw poor
souls into those subtile snares, which at last shall entangle
your own feet. Seek not to multiply your offences till they become beyond the power, as I may say, of the Divine mercy to
forgive; since justice, no less than mercy, is an attribute of
the Almighty.
Tremble and reform, when you read what is the portion of
the wicked man from God. Thus it is written:
“The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of
the hypocrite but for a moment. He is cast into a net by his
own feet – he walketh upon a snare. Terrors shall make him
afraid on every side, and shall drive him to his feet. His strength
shall be hunger-bitten, and destruction shall be ready at his
side. The fi rst born of death shall devour his strength. His remembrance shall perish from the earth; and he shall have no
name in the streets. He shall be chaced [sic] out of the world.
He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people. They
that have seen him shall say, Where is he? He shall fl y away as
a dream: He shall be chased away as a vision of the night. His
meat is the gall of asps within him. He shall fl ee from the iron
weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through. A fi re
not blown shall consume him. The heaven shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him. The worm shall
feed sweetly on him. He shall be no more remembered. – This
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CLARISSA • V
is the fate of him that knoweth not God.”Whenever you
shall be inclined to consult the sacred oracles from whence
the above threatenings are extracted, you will fi nd doctrines
and texts which a truly penitent and contrite heart may lay
hold of for its consolation.
May your’s, Mr. Lovelace, become such! and may you be
enabled to escape the fate denounced against the abandoned
man, and be entitled to the mercies of a long suffering and gracious God, is the sincere prayer of
CLARISSA HARLOWE
LETTER XXXVII
Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.
M. Hall, Thursday, Sept. 14.
Ever since the fatal seventh of this month, I have been
lost to myself, and to all the joys of life. I might have gone farther back than that fatal seventh; which, for the future, I will
never see anniversarily revolve but in sables; only till that
cursed day I had some gleams of hope now-and-then darting in upon me.
They tell me of an odd letter I wrote to you.
I did write. But very little of the contents of what I wrote do
I remember.
I have been in a cursed way. Methinks something has been
working strangely retributive. I never was such a fool as to disbelieve a Providence; yet am I not for resolving into judgments
every thing that seems to wear an avenging face. Yet if we must
be punished either here or hereafter for our misdeeds, better
here, say I, than hereafter. Have I not then an interest to think
my punishment already not only begun but completed since
what I have suffered, and do suffer, passes all description?
19
I remember
19
See his delirious Letter, No. XXIII.
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CLARISSA • V
To give but one instance of the retributive – here I, who
was the barbarous cause of the loss of senses for a week together to the most inimitable of women, have been punished with the loss of my own – preparative to – who knows
what? – When, Oh! when, shall I know a joyful hour?
I am kept excessively low; and excessively low I am. This
sweet creature’s posthumous letter sticks close to me. All her
excellencies rise up hourly to my remembrance.
Yet dare I not indulge in these melancholy refl ections.
I fi nd my head strangely working again – Pen, begone!
FRIDAY, SEPT. 15.
I resume, in a sprightly vein, I hope – Mowbray and Tourville have just now –
But what of Mowbray and Tourville? – What’s
the world? – What’s any body in it? –
Yet they are highly exasperated against thee, for the last
letter thou wrotest to them
20
– such an unfriendly, such
a merciless –
But it won’t do! – I must again lay down my pen. – O Belford! Belford! I am still, I am still most miserably absent from
myself! – Shall never, never more be what I was!
* * *
Saturday – Sunday – Nothing done. Incapable of
any thing.
20
This Letter appears not.
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SAMUEL RICHARDSON
MONDAY, SEPT. 18.
Heavy, d – n – y heavy and sick at soul, by Jupiter!
I must come into their expedient. I must see what change of
climate will do.
You tell these fellows, and you tell me, of repenting and
reforming; but I can do neither. He who can, must not have
the extinction of a Clarissa Harlowe to answer for. – Harlowe! – Curse upon the name! – and curse upon myself for
not changing it, as I might have done! – Yet I have no need of
urging a curse upon myself – I have it effectually.
21
“To say I once respected you with a preference!”
stiff language does maidenly modesty on these nice occasion
express itself! – To say I once loved you, is the English; and
there is truth and ease in the expression. – “To say I once loved
you,” then let it be, “is what I ought to blush to own.”And dost
thou own it, excellent creature? – and dost thou then own
it? – What music in these words from such an angel! – What
would I give that my Clarissa were in being, and could and
would own that she loved me?
“But, indeed, Sir, I have been long greatly above you.” Long,
my blessed charmer! – Long, indeed, for you have been ever
greatly above me, and above your sex, and above all the world.
“That preference was not grounded on ignoble
motives.”What a wretch was I, to be so distinguished by her,
and yet to be so unworthy of her hope to reclaim me!
– In what
21
See Letter XXXVI. of this volume.
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CLARISSA • V
Then, how generous her motives! Not for her own sake
merely, not altogether for mine, did she hope to reclaim me;
but equally for the sake of innocents who might otherwise be
ruined by me.
And now, why did she write this letter, and why direct it to
be given me when an event the most deplorable had taken
place, but for my good, and with a view to the safety of innocents she knew not? – And when was this letter written? Was
it not at the time, at the very time, that I had been pursuing
her, as I may say, from place to place; when her soul was bowed
down by calamity and persecution; and herself was denied all
forgiveness from relations the most implacable?
Exalted creature! – And couldst thou, at such a time,
and so early, and in such circumstances, have so far subdued
thy own just resentments, as to wish happiness to the principal author of all thy distresses? – Wish happiness to him
who had robbed thee “of all thy favourite expectations in this
life?” To him who had been the cause that thou wert cut off in
the bloom of youth?”Heavenly aspirer! – What a frame must
thou be in, to be able to use the word ONLY, in mentioning
these important deprivations! – And as this was before thou
puttest off immortalily, may I not presume that thou now,
– with pitying eye,
Not derogating from thy perfect bliss,
Survey’st all Heav’n around, and wishest for me?
“Consider my ways.” – Dear life of my life! Of what avail is
consideration now, when I have lost the dear creature, for whose
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SAMUEL RICHARDSON
sake alone it was worth while to have consideration? – Lost her
beyond retrieving – swallowed up by the greedy grave – for
ever lost her – that, that’s the thing – matchless woman, how
does this refl ection wound me!
“Your golden dream cannot long last.” – Divine prophetess! my golden dream is already over. “Thought and refl ection are no longer to be kept off.” – No longer continues that
“hardened insensibility’ thou chargest upon me. “Remorse has
broken in upon me. Dreadful is my condition; – it is all reproach and horror with me!” – A thousand vultures in turn
are preying upon my heart!
But no more of these fruitless refl ections – since I am incapable of writing any thing else; since my pen will slide into
this gloomy subject, whether I will or not; I will once more
quit it; nor will I again resume it, till I can be more its master,
and my own.
All I took pen to write for is however unwritten. It was, in
few words, to wish you to proceed with your communications,
as usual. And why should you not; – since, in her ever-tobe-lamented death, I know every thing shocking and grievous – acquaint me, then, with all thou knowest, which I do
not know; how her relations, her cruel relations, take it; and
whether now the barbed dart of after-refl ection sticks not in
their hearts, as in mine, up to the very feathers.
***
I will soon quit this kingdom. For now my Clarissa is no
more, what is there in it (in the world indeed) worth living
for? – But shall I not fi rst, by some masterly mischief, avenge
her and myself upon her cursed family?
190
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