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 remember 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 everything 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?
…
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 reflections. I find 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?—
…
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 anything.
MONDAY, SEPT. 18.
…
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.
‘To say I once respected you with a preference!’*—In what 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.
…
But no more of these fruitless reflections—since I am incapable of writing anything 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-to-be-lamented death, I know everything 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-reflection 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 first, by some masterly mischief, avenge her and myself upon her cursed family?
…
At present I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep. Yet are my disorders nothing to what they were; for, Jack, my brain was on fire day and night; and had it not been of the asbestos kind, it had all been consumed.
I had no distinct ideas, but of dark and confused misery; it was all remorse and horror indeed!—Thoughts of hanging, drowning, shooting—then rage, violence, mischief, and despair, took their turns with me. My lucid intervals still worse, giving me to reflect upon what I was the hour before, and what I was likely to be the next, and perhaps for life— the sport of enemies!—the laughter of fools!—and the hanging-sleeved, go-carted property of hired slaves; who were, perhaps, to find their account in manacling, and (abhorred thought!) in personally abusing me by blows and stripes!
Who can bear such reflections as these? TO be made to fear only, to such a one as me, and to fear such wretches too?—What a thing was this, but remotely to apprehend! And yet for a man to be in such a state as to render it necessary for his dearest friends to suffer this to be done for his own sake, and in order to prevent further mischief!—There is no thinking of these things!
I will not think of them, therefore; but will either get a train of cheerful ideas, or hang myself by to-morrow morning.
—— To be a dog, and dead,
Were paradise, to such a life as mine.
There's a lot going on here with writing–Lovelace not writing for days, putting down the pen, unable to write what he really needs to write. What do you make of this? Does Lovelace's inability to “master” the pen mean that he has changed? Or is this similar to what we've seen before (e.g., in some of his ranting letters before Clarissa's death) in that his grief appears to wear off rather quickly?
This letter seems very similar to the kinds of letters we saw from Clarissa right after the rape, particularly in this passage:
“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?—
…
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!”
Lovelace's tone is confused and pleading here. He wonders what the purpose of the world even is, and he seems very lost and kind of powerless. Most interestingly, he says that he is “miserably absent from himself” and this reminded me of a letter Clarissa wrote (I think it was to Anna?) about having to separate herself into different “selves” because she wasn't sure who she was anymore. How fitting, then, that the Lovelace we get at the end of the novel sounds almost as lost as he made Clarissa sound at one point.
I don't know whether or not he's actually changed entirely (likely not…knowing him), but I think this confused and almost hopeless voice we're getting from Lovelace is a kind of change worth considering.
I very much like the question, and Meghan's phrase “confused and almost hopeless.” I think we are witnessing something new in Lovelace here. Performance is clearly going; writing is blocked; and what a fine phrase–“absent from myself.” In the midst of her own despair, Clarissa exclaimed (page 919) “What a world we live in!” Here we catch the parallel in Lovelace: “What's the world? What's anybody in it?” I feel like he is now in the process of being as tempered by despair as Clarissa was. And surely maturing as we haven't seen him before; just look at his amazingly amicable letter to Colonel Morden (534.I), trying all that he can do to avoid the duel. (Such a remarkable book, in too many ways to enumerate.)
I too find this a very different kind of letter than what we have earlier seen him compose. As Tony says, performance is going and wrting is blocked. As Jessica quoted, “miserably absent from myself.”