Clarissa--Or the History of a Young Lady

by Samuel Richardson

  They are entirely attached to her. Whatever she says is, must be, gospel! They are guarantees for her return to Hampstead this night. They are to go back with her. A supper bespoke by Lady Betty at Mrs Moore’s. All the vacant apartments there, by my permission (for I had engaged them for a month certain), to be filled with them and their attendants, for a week at least, or till they can prevail upon the dear perverse, as they hope they shall, to restore me to her favour, and to accompany Lady Betty to Oxfordshire.

  The dear creature has thus far condescended—that she will write to Miss Howe, and acquaint her with the present situation of things.

  If she write, I shall see what she writes. But I believe she will have other employment soon.

  Lady Betty is sure, she tells her, that she shall prevail upon her to forgive me; though she dares say, that I deserve not forgiveness. Lady Betty is too delicate to inquire strictly into the nature of my offence. But it must be an offence against herself, against Miss Montague, against the virtuous of the whole sex, or it could not be so highly resented. Yet she will not leave her till she forgive me, and till she see our nuptials privately celebrated. Meantime, as she approves of her uncle’s expedient, she will address her as already my wife, before strangers.

  Hard then if she had not obliged them with her company, in their coach and four, to and from their cousin Leeson’s, who longed (as they themselves had done) to see a lady so justly celebrated!

  ‘How will Lord M. be raptured when he sees her, and can salute her as his niece!

  ‘How will Lady Sarah bless herself! She will now think her loss of the dear daughter she mourns for, happily supplied!’

  Miss Montague dwells upon every word that falls from her lips. She perfectly adores her new cousin:

  ‘What a happy family,’ chorus we all, ‘will ours be!’

  In short, we are here, as at Hampstead, all joy and rapture: all of us, except my beloved, in whose sweet face (her almost fainting reluctance to re-enter these doors not overcome) reigns a kind of anxious serenity! But how will even that be changed in a few hours!

  Methinks I begin to pity the half-apprehensive beauty! But avaunt, thou unseasonably-intruding pity! Thou hast more than once already well nigh undone me! And, adieu, reflection! Begone, consideration! and commiseration! I dismiss ye all, for at least a week to come! Be remembered her broken word! Her flight, when my fond soul was meditating mercy to her! Be remembered her treatment of me in her letter on her escape to Hampstead!—her Hampstead virulence!

  Be her preference of the single life to me also remembered!—that she despises me!—that she even refuses to be my WIFE! A proud Lovelace to be denied a wife!—to be more proudly rejected by a daughter of the Harlowes!

  Be the execrations of her vixen friend likewise remembered, poured out upon me from her representations, and thereby made her own execrations!

  Is not this the crisis for which I have been long waiting?

  Is not this the hour of her trial—and in her, of the trial of the virtue of her whole sex, so long premeditated, so long threatened? Whether her frost is frost indeed? Whether her virtue is principle? Whether, if once subdued, she will not be always subdued? And will she not want the very crown of her glory, the proof of her till now all-surpassing excellence, if I stop short of the ultimate trial?

  Now is the end of purposes long over-awed, often suspended, at hand. And need I to throw the sins of her cursed family into the too weighty scale?

  Abhorred be force!—be the thoughts of force! There’s no triumph over the will in force! This I know I have said. But would I not have avoided it if I could? Have I not tried every other method? And have I any other recourse left me? Can she resent the last outrage more than she has resented a fainter effort? And if her resentments run ever so high, cannot I repair by matrimony? She will not refuse me, I know, Jack; the haughty beauty will not refuse me, when her pride of being corporally inviolate is brought down; when she can tell no tales, but when (be her resistance what it will) even her own sex will suspect a yielding in resistance; and when that modesty, which may fill her bosom with resentment, will lock up her speech.

  But how know I that I have not made my own difficulties? Is she not a woman? What redress lies for a perpetrated evil? Must she not live? Her piety will secure her life. And will not time be my friend? What, in a word, will be her behaviour afterwards? She cannot fly me! She must forgive me. And, as I have often said, once forgiven, will be for ever forgiven.

  Why then should this enervating pity unsteel my foolish heart?

  It shall not. All these things will I remember; and think of nothing else, in order to keep up a resolution which the women about me will have it I shall be still unable to hold.

  I’ll teach the dear charming creature to emulate me in contrivance! I’ll teach her to weave webs and plots against her conqueror! I’ll show her that in her smuggling schemes she is but a spider compared to me, and that she has all this time been spinning only a cobweb!

  • • •

  What shall we do now! We are immersed in the depth of grief and apprehension! How ill do women bear disappointment! Set upon going to Hampstead, and upon quitting for ever a house she re-entered with infinite reluctance; what things she intended to take with her ready packed up; herself on tip-toe to be gone; and I prepared to attend her thither; she begins to be afraid that she shall not go this night; and, in grief and despair, has flung herself into her old apartment; locked herself in; and, through the key-hole, Dorcas sees her on her knees—praying, I suppose, for a safe deliverance.

  And from what? And wherefore these agonizing apprehensions?

  Why, here, this unkind Lady Betty, with the dear creature’s knowledge, though to her concern, and this mad-headed cousin Montague without it, while she was

  employed in directing her package, have hurried away in the coach to their own lodgings. Only, indeed, to put up some night-clothes, and so forth, in order to attend their sweet cousin to Hampstead; and, no less to my surprise than hers, are not yet returned.

  I have sent to know the meaning of it.

  In a great hurry of spirits, she would have had me gone myself. Hardly any pacifying her! The girl, God bless her! is wild with her own idle apprehensions! What is she afraid of?

  I curse them both for their delay. My tardy villain, how he stays! Devil fetch them! Let them send their coach, and we’ll go without them. In her hearing, I bid the fellow tell them so. Perhaps he stays to bring the coach, if anything happens to hinder the ladies from attending my beloved this night.

  Devil take them, again say I!

  Oh! here’s my aunt’s servant, with a billet.

  • • •

  to Robert Lovelace, Esq.

  Monday night

  Excuse us, dear nephew, I beseech you, to my dearest kinswoman. One night cannot break squares. For here Miss Montague has been taken violently ill with three fainting fits, one after another. The hurry of her joy, I believe, to find your dear lady so much surpass all expectation (never did family-love, you know, reign so strong as among us), and the too eager desire she had to attend her, have occasioned it: for she has but weak spirits, poor girl! well as she looks.

  If she be better, we will certainly go with you tomorrow morning, after we have breakfasted with her at your lodgings. But, whether she be, or not, I will do myself the pleasure to attend your lady to Hampstead; and will be with you, for that purpose, about nine in the morning. With due compliments to your most worthily beloved, I am

  Yours affectionately,

  ELIZAB. LAWRANCE

  • • •

  Faith and troth, Jack, I know not what to do with myself: for here, just now, having sent in the above note by Dorcas, out came my beloved with it in her hand: in a fit of frenzy! True, by my soul!

  She had indeed complained of her head all the evening.

  Dorcas ran to me
, out of breath, to tell me that her lady was coming in some strange way: but she followed her so quick, that the frighted wench had not time to say in what way.

  It seems, when she read the billet—Now indeed, said she, am I a lost creature! Oh the poor Clarissa Harlowe!

  She tore off her head-clothes; inquired where I was: and in she came, her shining tresses flowing about her neck; her ruffles torn, and hanging in tatters about her snowy hands; with her arms spread out; her eyes wildly turned as if starting from their orbits. Down sunk she at my feet, as soon as she approached me; her charming bosom heaving to her uplifted face; and, clasping her arms about my knees, Dear Lovelace, said she, if ever—if ever—if ever—And, unable to speak another word, quitting her clasping hold, down prostrate on the floor sunk she, neither in a fit nor out of one.

  I was quite astonished. All my purposes suspended for a few moments, I knew neither what to say, nor what to do. But, recollecting myself, am I again, thought I, in a way to be overcome and made a fool of! If I now recede, I am gone for ever.

  I raised her: but down she sunk, as if quite disjointed; her limbs failing her—yet not in a fit neither. I never heard of, or saw, such a dear unaccountable: almost lifeless, and speechless too for a few moments! What must her apprehensions be at that moment! And for what? A high-notioned dear soul! Pretty ignorance! thought I.

  Never having met with a repugnance so greatly repugnant, I was staggered. I was confounded. Yet how should I know that it would be so till I tried? And how, having proceeded thus far, could I stop, were I not to have had the women to goad me on, and to make light of circumstances which they pretended to be better judges of than me.

  I lifted her, however, into a chair; and, in words of disordered passion, told her all her fears were needless: wondered at them: begged of her to be pacified: besought her reliance on my faith and honour: and re-vowed all my old vows, and poured forth new ones.

  At last, with an heart-breaking sob, I see, I see, Mr Lovelace, in broken sentences she spoke—I see, I see—that at last—at last—I am ruined!—ruined—if your pity—Let me implore your pity! And down on her bosom, like a half-broken-stalked lily, top-heavy with the overcharging dews of the morning, sunk her head with a sigh that went to my heart.

  Lady Betty would think it very strange, I told her, if she were to know it was so disagreeable to her to stay one night, for her company, in a house where she had passed so many!

  She called me names upon this. She had called me names before. I was patient.

  Let her go to Lady Betty’s lodgings, then; directly go; if the person I called Lady Betty was really Lady Betty.

  If! my dear! Good Heaven! What a villain does that IF show you believe me to be!

  I cannot help it. I beseech you once more, let me go to Mrs Leeson’s, if that IF ought not to be said.

  Then assuming a more resolute spirit—I will go! I will inquire my way! I will go by myself! And would have rushed by me.

  I folded my arms about her to detain her; pleading the bad way I heard poor Charlotte was in; and what a farther concern her impatience, if she went, would give her.

  She would believe nothing I said, unless I would instantly order a coach (since she was not to have Lady Betty’s, nor was permitted to go to Mrs Leeson’s), and let her go in it to Hampstead, late as it was; and all alone; so much the better: for in the house of people, of whom Lady Betty upon inquiry had heard a bad character (dropped foolishly this, by my prating new relation, in order to do credit to herself by depreciating others); everything, and every face, looking with so much meaning vileness, as well as my own (thou art still too sensible, thought I, my charmer!), she was resolved not to stay another night.

  I was all her fear, I found; and this house her terror: for I saw plainly that she now believed that Lady Betty and Miss Montague were both impostors.

  But her mistrust is a little of the latest to do her service.

  Letter 257: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

  Tuesday morn. June 13

  And now, Belford, I can go no farther. The affair is over. Clarissa lives. And I am

  Your humble servant,

  R. LOVELACE

  Letter 259: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

  Thursday, June 15

  Let me alone, you great dog, you! Let me alone!—have I heard a lesser boy, his coward arms held over his head and face, say to a bigger, who was pummelling him for having run away with his apple, his orange, or his gingerbread.

  So say I to thee, on occasion of thy severity to thy poor friend, who, as thou ownest, has furnished thee (ungenerous as thou art!) with the weapons thou brandishest so fearfully against him. And to what purpose, when the mischief is done; when, of consequence, the affair is irretrievable? and when a Clarissa could not move me?

  Well, but after all, I must own that there is something very singular in this lady’s case: and at times I cannot help regretting that I ever attempted her; since not one power either of body or soul could be moved in my favour.

  But people’s extravagant notions of things alter not facts, Belford: and, when all’s done, Miss Clarissa Harlowe has but run the fate of a thousand others of her sex—only that they did not set such a romantic value upon what they call their honour; that’s all.

  And yet I will allow thee this—That if a person sets a high value upon anything, be it ever such a trifle in itself, or in the eye of others, the robbing of that person of it is not a trifle to him. Take the matter in this light, I own I have done wrong, great wrong, to this admirable creature.

  But have I not known twenty and twenty of the sex, who have seemed to carry their notions of virtue high; yet, when brought to the test, have abated of their severity? And how should we be convinced that any of them are proof, till they are tried?

  A thousand times have I said that I never yet met with such a woman as this. If I had, I hardly ever should have attempted Miss Clarissa Harlowe. Hitherto she is all angel: and was not that the point which at setting out I proposed to try? And was not cohabitation ever my darling view? And am I not now, at last, in the high road to it? It is true, that I have nothing to boast of as to her will. The very contrary. But now are we come to the test, whether she cannot be brought to make the best of an irreparable evil? If she exclaim (she has reason to exclaim, and I will sit down with patience by the hour together to hear her exclamations, till she is tired of them), she will then descend to expostulation perhaps. Expostulation will give me hope: expostulation will show that she hates me not. And if she hate me not, she will forgive: and if she now forgive; then will all be over; and she will be mine upon my own terms: and it shall then be the whole study of my future life to make her happy.

  Thou seest, Jack, that I make no resolutions, however, against doing her, one time or other, the wished-for justice, even were I to succeed in my principal view, cohabitation. And of this I do assure thee, that, if I ever marry, it must, it shall, be Miss Clarissa Harlowe. Nor is her honour at all impaired with me, by what she has so far suffered: but the contrary. She must only take care that, if she be at last brought to forgive me, she show me that her Lovelace is the only man on earth whom she could have forgiven on the like occasion.

  But, ah, Jack! what, in the meantime, shall I do with this admirable creature? At present—I am loath to say it—but, at present she is quite stupefied.

  I had rather, methinks, she should have retained all her active powers, though I had suffered by her nails and her teeth, than that she should be sunk into such a state of absolute—insensibility (shall I call it?) as she has been in ever since Tuesday morning. Yet, as she begins a little to revive, and now and then to call names and to exclaim, I dread almost to engage with the anguish of a spirit that owes its extraordinary agitations to a niceness that has no example either in ancient or modern story.

  But I will leave this subject, lest it should make me too grave.

 
; I was yesterday at Hampstead, and discharged all obligations there, with no small applause. I told them that the lady was now as happy as myself: and that is no great untruth; for I am not altogether so when I allow myself to think.

  Well, but, after all (how many after-all’s have I?), I could be very grave, were I to give way to it. The devil take me for a fool! What’s the matter with me, I wonder! I must breathe a fresher air for a few days.

  But what shall I do with this admirable creature the while? Hang me, if I know! For, if I stir, the venomous spider of this habitation will want to set upon the charming fly, whose silken wings are already so entangled in my enormous web that she cannot move hand or foot: for so much has grief stupefied her, that she is at present as destitute of will, as she always seemed of desire. I must not therefore think of leaving her yet for two days together.

  Letter 260: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

  I have just now had a specimen of what this dear creature’s resentment will be when quite recovered: an affecting one! For, entering her apartment after Dorcas; and endeavouring to soothe and pacify her disordered mind; in the midst of my blandishments, she held up to Heaven, in a speechless agony, the innocent [marriage] licence (which she has in her own power).

  She seemed about to call down vengeance upon me; when, happily, the leaden god in pity to her trembling Lovelace waved over her half-drowned eyes his somniferous wand, and laid asleep the fair exclaimer before she could go half through with her intended imprecation.

  Thou wilt guess, by what I have written, that some little art has been made use of; but it was with a generous design (if thou’lt allow me the word on such an occasion) in order to lessen the too quick sense she was likely to have of what she was to suffer. A contrivance I never had occasion for before, and had not thought of now if Mrs Sinclair had not proposed it to me: to whom I left the management of it: and I have done nothing but curse her ever since, lest the quantity should have for ever damped her charming intellects.