Volume V. (of Nine Volumes)

CONTENTS

DETAILED CONTENTS

THE HISTORY OF CLARISSA HARLOWE

LETTER I

LETTER II

LETTER III

LETTER IV

LETTER V

LETTER VI

LETTER VII

LETTER VIII

LETTER IX

LETTER X

LETTER XI

LETTER XII

LETTER XIII

LETTER XIV

LETTER XV

LETTER XVI

LETTER XVII

LETTER XVIII

LETTER XIX

LETTER XX

LETTER XXI

LETTER XXIII

LETTER XXIV

LETTER XXV

LETTER XXVI

LETTER XXVII

LETTER XXVIII

LETTER XXIX

LETTER XXX

LETTER XXXI

LETTER XXXII

LETTER XXXIII

LETTER XXXIV

LETTER XXXV

LETTER XXXVI

DETAILED CONTENTS

LETTER I. Lovelace to Belford.— An agreeable airing with the lady. Delightfully easy she. Obsequiously respectful he. Miss Howe's plot now no longer his terror. Gives the particulars of their agreeable conversation while abroad. LETTER II. From the same.— An account of his ipecacuanha plot. Instructs Dorcas how to act surprise and terror. Monosyllables and trisyllables to what likened. Politeness lives not in a storm. Proclamation criers. The lady now sees she loves him. Her generous tenderness for him. He has now credit for a new score. Defies Mrs. Townsend. LETTER III. Clarissa to Miss Howe.— Acknowledged tenderness for Lovelace. Love for a man of errors punishable. LETTER IV. Lovelace to Belford.— Suspicious inquiry after him and the lady by a servant in livery from one Captain Tomlinson. Her terrors on the occasion. His alarming management. She resolves not to stir abroad. He exults upon her not being willing to leave him. LETTER V. VI. From the same.— Arrival of Captain Tomlinson, with a pretended commission from Mr. John Harlowe to set on foot a

general reconciliation, provided he can be convinced that they are actually married. Different conversations on this occasion.—The lady insists that the truth be told to Tomlinson. She carries her point through to the disappointment of one of his private views. He forms great hopes of success from the effects of his ipecacuanha contrivance. LETTER VII. Lovelace to Belford.— He makes such a fair representation to Tomlinson of the situation between him and the lady, behaves so plausibly, and makes an overture so generous, that she is all kindness and unreserved to him. Her affecting exultation on her amended prospects. His unusual sensibility upon it. Reflection on the good effects of education. Pride an excellent substitute to virtue. LETTER VIII. From the same.— Who Tomlinson is. Again makes Belford object, in order to explain his designs by answering the objections. John Harlowe a sly sinner. Hard- hearted reasons for giving the lady a gleam of joy. Illustrated by a story of two sovereigns at war. Extracts from Clarissa's letter to Miss Howe. She rejoices in her present

agreeable prospects. Attributes much to Mr. Hickman. Describes Captain Tomlinson. Gives a character of Lovelace, [which is necessary to be attended to: especially by those who have thought favourably of him for some of his liberal actions, and hardly of her for the distance she at first kept him at.] LETTER IX. Lovelace to Belford.— Letter from Lord M. His further arts and precautions. His happy day promised to be soon. His opinion of the clergy, and of going to church. She pities every body who wants pity. Loves every body. He owns he should be the happiest of men, could he get over his prejudices against matrimony. Draughts of settlements. Ludicrously accounts for the reason why she refuses to hear them read to her. Law and gospel two different things. Sally flings her handkerchief in his face. LETTER X. From the same.— Has made the lady more than once look about her. She owns that he is more than indifferent to her. Checks him with sweetness of temper for his encroaching freedoms. Her proof of true love. He ridicules marriage

purity. Severely reflects upon public freedoms between men and their wives. Advantage he once made upon such an occasion. Has been after a license. Difficulty in procuring one. Great faults and great virtues often in the same person. He is willing to believe that women have no souls. His whimsical reasons. LETTER XI. Lovelace to Belford.— Almost despairs of succeeding (as he had hoped) by love and gentleness. Praises her modesty. His encroaching freedoms resented by her. The woman, he observes, who resents not initiatory freedoms, must be lost. He reasons, in his free way, upon her delicacy. Art of the Eastern monarchs. LETTER XII. From the same.— A letter from Captain Tomlinson makes all up. Her uncle Harlowe's pretended proposal big with art and plausible delusion. She acquiesces in it. He writes to the pretended Tomlinson, on an affecting hint of her's, requesting that her uncle Harlowe would, in person, give his niece to him; or permit Tomlinson to be his proxy on the occasion.—And now for a little of mine, he says, which he has ready to spring. LETTER XIII. Belford to

Lovelace.— Again earnestly expostulates with him in the lady's favour. Remembers and applauds the part she bore in the conversation at his collation. The frothy wit of libertines how despicable. Censures the folly, the weakness, the grossness, the unpermanency of sensual love. Calls some of his contrivances trite, stale, and poor. Beseeches him to remove her from the vile house. How many dreadful stories could the horrid Sinclair tell the sex! Serious reflections on the dying state of his uncle. LETTER XIV. Lovelace to Belford.— Cannot yet procure a license. Has secured a retreat, if not victory. Defends in anger the simplicity of his inventive contrivances. Enters upon his general defence, compared with the principles and practices of other libertines. Heroes and warlike kings worse men than he. Epitome of his and the lady's story after ten years' cohabitation. Caution to those who would censure him. Had the sex made virtue a recommendation to their favour, he says, he should have had a greater regard to his morals than he has had. LETTER XV. From the same.—

Preparative to his little mine, as he calls it. Loves to write to the moment. Alarm begins. Affectedly terrified. LETTER XVI. From the same.— The lady frighted out of her bed by dreadful cries of fire. She awes him into decency. On an extorted promise of forgiveness, he leaves her. Repenting, he returns; but finds her door fastened. What a triumph has her sex obtained by her virtue! But how will she see him next morning, as he has given her. LETTER XVII. Lovelace to Belford.— Dialogue with Clarissa, the door between them. Her letter to him. She will not see him for a week. LETTER XVIII. From the same.— Copies of letters that pass between them. Goes to the commons to try to get the license. She shall see him, he declares, on his return. Love and compassion hard to be separated. Her fluctuating reasons on their present situation. Is jealous of her superior qualities. Does justice to her immovable virtue. LETTER XIX. From the same.— The lady escaped. His rage. Makes a solemn vow of revenge, if once more he gets her into his power. His man Will. is gone in search of her. His

hopes; on what grounded. He will advertise her. Describes her dress. Letter left behind her. Accuses her (that is to say, LOVELACE accuses her,) of niceness, prudery, affectation. LETTER XX. From the same.— A letter from Miss Howe to Clarissa falls into his hands; which, had it come to her's, would have laid open and detected all his designs. In it she acquits Clarissa of prudery, coquetry, and undue reserve. Admires, applauds, blesses her for the example she has set for her sex, and for the credit she has done it, by her conduct in the most difficult situations. [This letter may be considered as a kind of summary of Clarissa's trials, her persecutions, and exemplary conduct hitherto; and of Mr. Lovelace's intrigues, plots, and views, so far as Miss Howe could be supposed to know them, or to guess at them.] A letter from Lovelace, which farther shows the fertility of his contriving genius. LETTER XXI. Clarissa to Miss Howe.— Informs her of Lovelace's villany, and of her escape. Her only concern, what. The course she intends to pursue. LETTER XXII. Lovelace to Belford.—

Exults on hearing, from his man Will., that the lady has refuged herself at Hampstead. Observations in a style of levity on some passages in the letter she left behind her. Intimates that Tomlinson is arrived to aid his purposes. The chariot is come; and now, dressed like a bridegroom, attended by a footman she never saw, he is already, he says, at Hampstead. LETTER XXIII. XXIV. Lovelace to Belford.— Exults on his contrivances.—By what means he gets into the lady's presence at Mrs. Moore's. Her terrors, fits, exclamations. His plausible tales to Mrs. Moore and Miss Rawlins. His intrepid behaviour to the lady. Copies of letters from Tomlinson, and of pretended ones from his own relations, calculated to pacify and delude her. LETTER XXV. XXVI. From the same.— His farther arts, inventions, and intrepidity. She puts home questions to him. 'Ungenerous and ungrateful she calls him. He knows not the value of the heart he had insulted. He had a plain path before him, after he had tricked her out of her father's house! But that now her mind was raised above fortune, and above him.' His

precautionary contrivances. LETTER XXVII. XXVIII. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. From the same.— Character of widow Bevis. Prepossesses the women against Miss Howe. Leads them to think she is in love with him. Apt himself to think so; and why. Women like not novices; and why. Their vulgar aphorism animadverted on. Tomlinson arrives. Artful conversation between them. Miss Rawlins's prudery. His forged letter in imitation of Miss Howe's, No. IV. Other contrivances to delude the lady, and attach the women to his party. LETTER XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. From the same.— Particulars of several interesting conversations between himself, Tomlinson, and the lady. Artful management of the two former. Her noble spirit. He tells Tomlinson before her that he never had any proof of affection from her. She frankly owns the regard she once had for him. 'He had brought her,' she tells Tomlinson and him, 'more than once to own it to him. Nor did his own vanity, she was sure, permit him to doubt of it. He had kept her soul in suspense an hundred times.' Both men

affected in turn by her noble behaviour, and great sentiments. Their pleas, prayers, prostrations, to move her to relent. Her distress.

LETTER I

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. FRIDAY EVENING.

Just returned from an airing with my charmer, complied with after great importunity. She was attended by the two nymphs. They both topt their parts; kept their eyes within bounds; made moral reflections now-and- then. O Jack! what devils are women, when all tests are got over, and we have completely ruined them!

The coach carried us to Hampstead, to Highgate, to Muswell-hill; back to Hampstead to the Upper-Flask: there, in compliment to the nymphs, my beloved consented to alight, and take a little repast. Then home early by Kentish-town.

Delightfully easy she, and so respectful and obliging I, all the way, and as we walked out upon the heath, to view the variegated prospects which that agreeable elevation affords, that she promised to take now-and-then a little excursion with me. I think, Miss Howe, I think, said I to myself, every now-and-then as we walked, that thy wicked devices are superceded.

But let me give thee a few particulars of our conversation in the circumrotation we took, while in the coach—She had received a letter from Miss Howe yesterday, I presumed?

She made no answer. How happy should I think myself to be admitted into their correspondence? I would joyfully make an exchange of communications.

So, though I hoped not to succeed by her consent, [and little did she think I had so happily in part succeeded without it,] I thought it not amiss to urge for it, for several reasons: among others, that I might account to her for my constant employment at my pen; in order to take off her jealousy, that she was the subject of thy correspondence and mine: and that I might justify my secrecy and uncommunicativeness by her own.

I proceeded therefore—That I loved familiar-letter-writing, as I had more than once told her, above all the species of writing: it was writing from the heart, (without the fetters prescribed by method or study,) as the very word cor-respondence implied. Not the heart only; the soul was in it. Nothing of body, when friend writes to friend; the mind impelling sovereignly the vassal-fingers. It was, in short, friendship recorded; friendship given under hand and seal; demonstrating that the parties were under no apprehension of changing from time or accident, when they so liberally gave testimonies, which would always be ready, on failure or infidelity, to be turned against them.—For my own part, it was the principal diversion I had in her absence; but for this innocent amusement, the distance she so frequently kept me at would have been intolerable.

Sally knew my drift; and said, She had had the honour to see two or three of my letters, and of Mr. Belford's; and she thought them the most entertaining that she had ever read.

My friend Belford, I said, had a happy talent in the letter-writing way; and upon all subjects.

I expected my beloved would have been inquisitive after our subject: but (lying perdue, as I saw) not a word said she. So I touched upon this article myself.

Our topics were various and diffuse: sometimes upon literary articles [she was very attentive upon this]; sometimes upon the public entertainments; sometimes amusing each other with the fruits of the different correspondencies we held with persons abroad, with whom we had contracted friendships; sometimes upon the foibles and perfections of our particular friends; sometimes upon our own present and future hopes; sometimes aiming at humour and raillery upon each other.—It might indeed appear to savour of vanity, to suppose my letters would entertain a lady of her delicacy and judgment: but yet I could not but say, that perhaps she would be far from thinking so hardly of me as sometimes she had seemed to do, if she were to see the letters which generally passed between Mr. Belford and me [I hope, Jack, thou hast more manners, than to give me the lie, though but in thy heart].

She then spoke: after declining my compliment in such a manner, as only a person can do, who deserved it, she said, For her part, she had always thought me a man of sense [a man of sense, Jack! What a niggardly praise!],—and should therefore hope, that, when I wrote, it exceeded even my speech: for that it was impossible, be the letters written in as easy and familiar a style as they would, but that they must have that advantage from sitting down to write them which prompt speech could not always have. She should think it very strange therefore, if my letters were barren of sentiment; and as strange, if I gave myself liberties upon premeditation, which could have no excuse at all, but from a thoughtlessness, which itself wanted excuse.—But if Mr. Belford's letters and mine were upon subjects so general, and some of them equally (she presumed) instructive and entertaining, she could not but say, that she should be glad to see any of them; and particularly those which Miss Martin had seen and praised.

This was put close.

I looked at her, to see if I could discover any tincture of jealousy in this hint; that Miss Martin had seen what I had not shown to her. But she did not look it: so I only said, I should be very proud to show her not only those, but all that passed between Mr. Belford and me; but I must remind her, that she knew the condition.

No, indeed! with a sweet lip pouted out, as saucy as pretty; implying a lovely scorn, that yet can only be lovely in youth so blooming, and beauty so divinely distinguished.

How I long to see such a motion again! Her mouth only can give it.

But I am mad with love—yet eternal will be the distance, at the rate I go on: now fire, now ice, my soul is continually upon the hiss, as I may say. In vain, however, is the trial to quench—what, after all, is unquenchable.

Pr'ythee, Belford, forgive my nonsense, and my Vulcan-like metaphors—Did I not tell thee, not that I am sick of love, but that I am mad with it? Why brought I such an angel into such a house? into such company?—And why do I not stop my ears to the sirens, who, knowing my aversion to wedlock, are perpetually touching that string?

I was not willing to be answered so easily: I was sure, that what passed between two such young ladies (friends so dear) might be seen by every body: I had more reason than any body to wish to see the letters that passed between her and Miss Howe; because I was sure they must be full of admirable instruction, and one of the dear correspondents had deigned to wish my entire reformation.

She looked at me as if she would look me through: I thought I felt eye- beam, after eye-beam, penetrate my shivering reins.—But she was silent. Nor needed her eyes the assistance of speech.

Nevertheless, a little recovering myself, I hoped that nothing unhappy had befallen either Miss Howe or her mother. The letter of yesterday sent by a particular hand: she opening it with great emotion—seeming to have expected it sooner—were the reasons for my apprehensions.

We were then at Muswell-hill: a pretty country within the eye, to Polly, was the remark, instead of replying to me.

But I was not so to be answered—I should expect some charming subjects and characters from two such pens: I hoped every thing went on well between Mr. Hickman and Miss Howe. Her mother's heart, I said, was set upon that match: Mr. Hickman was not without his merits: he was what the ladies called a SOBER man: but I must needs say, that I thought Miss Howe deserved a husband of a very different cast!

This, I supposed, would have engaged her into a subject from which I could have wiredrawn something:—for Hickman is one of her favourites— why, I can't divine, except for the sake of opposition of character to that of thy honest friend.

But she cut me short by a look of disapprobation, and another cool remark upon a distant view; and, How far off, Miss Horton, do you think that clump of trees may be? pointing out of the coach.—So I had done.

Here endeth all I have to write concerning our conversation on this our agreeable airing.

We have both been writing ever since we came home. I am to be favoured with her company for an hour, before she retires to rest.

All that obsequious love can suggest, in order to engage her tenderest sentiments for me against tomorrow's sickness, will I aim at when we meet. But at parting will complain of a disorder in my stomach.

***

We have met. All was love and unexceptionable respect on my part. Ease and complaisance on her's. She was concerned for my disorder. So sudden!—Just as we parted! But it was nothing. I should be quite well by the morning.

Faith, Jack, I think I am sick already. Is it possible for such a giddy fellow as me to persuade myself to be ill! I am a better mimic at this rate than I wish to be. But every nerve and fibre of me is always ready to contribute its aid, whether by health or by ailment, to carry a resolved-on roguery into execution.

Dorcas has transcribed for me the whole letter of Miss Howe, dated Sunday, May 14, of which before I had only extracts. She found no other letter added to that parcel: but this, and that which I copied myself in character last Sunday whilst she was at church, relating to the smuggling scheme,* are enough for me.

See Vol. IV. Letter XXIX. * Ibid. Letter XLII.

***

Dorcas tells me, that her lady has been removing her papers from the mahogany chest into a wainscot box, which held her linen, and which she put into her dark closet. We have no key of that at present. No doubt but all her letters, previous to those I have come at, are in that box. Dorcas is uneasy upon it: yet hopes that her lady does not suspect her; for she is sure that she laid in every thing as she found it.

LETTER II