A meta-dramatic moment in Richardson's Clarissa (Vol IV, Letter LII - Mr. Belford to Robert Lovelace, Esq.)
What a fine subject for tragedy would be the injuries of this lady, and her behaviour under them, both with regard to her implacable friends, and to her persecutor, make? With a grand objection as to the moral, nevertheless; for here virtue is punished!
[Note 1: Mr. Belford's objection, that virtue ought not to suffer in a tragedy, is not well considered; Monimia in The Orphan, Belvidera in Venice Preserved, Athenais in Theodosius, Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear, Desdemona in Othello, Hamlet (to name no more), are instances that a tragdy could hardly be justly called a tragedy, if virtue did not temporarily suffer, and vice for a while triumph. But he recovers himself in the same paragraph, and leads us to look up to the FUTURE for the reward of virtue, and for the punishment of guilt, and observes not amiss when he says; He knows not but that the virgue of such a woman as Clarissay is rewarded in missing such a man as Lovelace.]
Except indeed wee look forward to the rewards of HEREAFTER, which, morally, she must be sure of, or who can? Yet, after all, I knownot, so sad a fellow art thou, and so vile a husband mightest thou have made, whether her virtue is not rewarded in missing thee: for things the most grievous to human nature, when they happen, as this charming creature once observed, are often the happiest for us in the event.
I have frequently thought, in my attendance on this lady, that if Belton's admired author, Nic Rowe, had had such a character before him, he would have drawn another sor of a penitent than he has done, or given his play, which he calls The Fair Penitent, a fitter title. Miss Harlowe is a penitent indeed! I think, if I am not guilty of a contradiction in terms; a penitent without a fault; her parents' conduct towards her from the first considered.
The whole story of the other is a pack of damned stuff. Lothario, 'tis true, seems such another wicked, ungenerous varlet as thou knowest who: the author knew how to draw a rake; but not to paint a penitent. Calista is a desiring luscious wench, and her penitence is nothing els but rage, insolence, and scorn. Her passions are all storm and tumult; nothing of the finer passions of the sex, which, if naturally drawn, will distinguish themselves from the masculine passions by a softness that will even shine through rage and despair. Her character is made up of deceit and disguise. She has no virtue; is all pride; and her devil is as much within her as without her.
How then can the fall of such a one create a proper distress, when all the circumstances of it are considered? For does she not brazen out her crime even after detection? Knowing her own guilt, she calls for Altamont's vengeance on his best friend, as if he had traduced her; yields to marry Altamont, though criminal with another; and actually beds that whining puppy, when she had given up herself body and soul to Lothario; who, nevertheless, refused to marry her.
Her penitence, when begun, she justly styles the frenzy of her soul; and, as I said, after having, as long as she could, most audaciously brazened out her crime, and done all the mischief she could do (occasioning the death of Lothario, of her father, and others), she stabs herself.
And can this be an act of penitence?
But, indeed, outr poets hardly know how to create a distress without horror, murder, and suicide; and must shock your soul to bring tears from your eyes.
Altamont, indeed, who is an amorous blockhead, a credulous cuckold, and though painted as a brave fellow and a soldier) a mere Tom Essence, and a quarreller with his best friend, dies like a fool (as we are led to suppose at the conclusion of the play) without either sword or pop-gun, of mere grief and nonsense, for one of the vilest of her sex: but the fair penitent, as she is called, perishes by her own had; and having no title by her past crimes to laudable pity, forfeits all claim to true penitence, and, in all probability, to future mercy.
But here is Miss CLARISSA HARLOWE, a virtuous, noble, wise, and pious young lady; who being ill-used by her friends, and unhappily ensnared by a vile libertine, whom she believes to be a man of honour, is in a manner forced to throw herself upon his protection. And he, in order to obtain her confidence, never scruples the deepest and most solemn protestations of honour.
After a series of plots and contrivances, all baffled by her virtue and vigilance, he basely has recourse to the vilest of arts, and, to rob hr of her honour, is forced first to rob her of her senses.
Unable to bring her, notwithstanding, to his ungenerous views of cohabitation, she overawes him in the very entrance of a fresh act of premediatated guilt, in presence of the most abandoned of women assembled to assist his devilish purpose; triumphs over them all by virtue only of her innocence; and escapes from the vile hands he had put her into.
She nobly, not franteically, resents: refuses to see or to marry the wretch; who, repending the usage of so divine a creature, would fain move her to forgive his baseness and make him her husband: and this though persecuted by all her friends, and abandoned to the deepest distress, being obliged, from ample fortunes, to make way with her apparel for subsistence, surrounded also by stranger; and forced (in want of others) to make a friend of the friend of her seducer.
Though longing for death, and making all proper preparations for it, convinced that grief and ill-usage have broken her noble heart, she abhors the impious thought of shortening her alloted period; and, as much a stranger to revenge as despair, is able to forgive the author of her ruin; wishes his repentance, and that she may be the las victim to his barbarous perfidy; and is solicitous for nothing so much in this life as to prevent vindictive mischief to and from the man who has used her so basely.
This is penitence! This is piety! and hence a distress naturally arises that must worthily affect every heart.
Robert Lovelace's thoughts on disrespecting the sacred, and on theatre as "the epitome of the world", in Richardson's Clarissa (vol. IV, letter ix):
I could make some pretty observations upon one or two places of the lady's meditation: but, wicked as I am thought to be, I never was so abandond as to turn into ridicule, or even to treat with levity, things sacred. I think it the highest degree of ill manners to jest upon those subjects which the world in general look upon with veneration, and call divine. I would not even treat the mythology of the heathen to a heathen, with the ridicule that perhaps would fairly lie from some of the absurdities that strike every common observer. Nor, when at Rome, and in other popish countries, did I ever behave shockingly at those ceremonies which I thought very extraordianry: for I saw some people affected, and seemingly edified, by them; and I contented myself to think, though they were beyond my comprehension, that if they answered any good end to the many, there was religion enough in them, or civil policy at least, to exempt them from the ridicule of even a bad man who had common sense and good manners.
For the like reason I have never given noisy or tumultuous instances of dislike to a new play, if I thought it ever so indifferent: for I concluded, first, that every one was entitled to see quietly what he paid for: and, next, as the theatre (the epitome of the world) consisted of pit, boxes, and gallery, it was hard, I thought, if there could be such a performance exhibited as would not please somebody in that mixed multitude: and, if it did, those somebodies had as much right to enjoy their own judgments undisturbedly as I had to enjoy mine.
This was my way of showing my disapprobation; I never went again. And as a man is at his option, whehter he will go to a play or not, he has not the same excuse for expressing his dislike clamorously as if he were compelled to see it.
—oOo—
Escribe Clarissa (Vol. III, carta LXXXV) a Anna Howe, describiendo los engaños de Lovelace, con el burdel en el que la alojaba, y con sus falsas primas aristócratas:
He always loved to speak as he found. No man in the world had suffered more from calumny than he himself had done.
Esto, por supuesto, es estilo indirecto libre. No es Clarisa describiendo lo que opina del carácter de él, o de si ha sido víctima de la calumnia, sino transmitiendo lo que Lovelace dice sobre sí mismo. Y así seguimos:
Women, he owned, ought to be more scrupulous than men needed to be where they lodged. Nevertheless, he wished that fact, rather than surmise, were to be the foundation of their judgments, especially when they spoke of one another.
He meant no reflection upon her ladyship's informants, or rather surmisants (as he might call them), be they who they would: nor did he think himself obliged to defend characters impeached, or not thought well of, by women of virtue and honour. Neither were there people of importance enought to have so much said about them.
The pretended Lady Betty said, All who knew her would clear her of censoriousness: that it gave her some opinion, she must neds say, of the people, that he had continued thereso long with me; that I had rather negative than positive reasons of dislike to them; and that so shrewd a man as she heard Captain Tomlison was, had not objected to them.
I think, Niece Charlotte, proceeded she, as my nephew has not parted with these lodgings, you and I (fo, as my dear Miss Harlowe dislikes the people, I would not ask her for her company) will take a dish of tea with my nephew there, before we go out of town, and then we shall see what sort of people they are. I have heard that Mrs. Sinclair is a mighty forbidding creature.
With all my heart, madam. In your ladyship's company I shall make no scruple of going any whither.
It was ladyship at every word; and as she seemed proud of her title, and of her dress too, I might have guseed that she was not used to either.
What say you, Cousin Lovelace? Lady Sarah, thogh a melancholy woman, is very inquisitive about all your affairs. I must acquaint her with every particular circumstance when I go down.
With all his heart. He would attend whenever she pleased. She would see very handsome apartments, and very civil people.
The deuce is in them, said the Miss Montague, if they appear other to us.
They then fell into family talk, family happiness on my hoped-for accession into it. They mentioned Lord M.'s and Lady Sara's great desire to see me. How many friends and admirers, with up-lift hands, I should have! [O my dear, what a triumph must these creatures, and he, have over the poor devoted all the time!] What a happy man he would be! They would not, the Lady Betty said, give themselves the mortification but to suppose that I should not be one of them!
Presents were hinted at. She resolved that I should go with her to Glenham Hall. She would not be refused, although whe were to stay a week beyond her time for me.
She longed for the expected letter from you. I mot write to hasten it, and to let Miss Howe know how everything stood since I wrote last. That might dispose me absolutely in their favour and in her nephew's; and then she hoped there would be no occasion for me to think of entering upon any new measures.
Indeed, my dear, I did at the time intend, if I heard not from you by morning, to dispatch a man and horse to you, with the particulars of all, that you might (if you thoughtt proper) at least put off Mrs. Townsend's coming up another day. But I was miserably prevented.
(...)
—oOo—
A curious passage from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748). Lovelace descanting on the fate of the World's Fair at the Great World Fair. Note well the description of an Early Modern Merry-Go-Round:
It is certainly as much my misfortune to have fallen in with Miss Clarissa Harlowe, were I to have valued my reputation or ease, as it is that of Miss Harlowe to have been acquainted with me. And, after all, what have I done more than prosecute the maxims by which thou and I and every rake are governed, and which, before I knew this lady, we have pursued from pretty girl to pretty girl, as fast as we had set one down, taking another up; just as the fellows do with the flying coaches and flying horses at a country fair, with a Who rides next! Who rides next!
But here, in the present case, to carry on the volant metahor (for I must either be merry, or mad), is a pretty little miss just come out of her hanging-sleeve coat, brought to buy a pretty little fairing; for the world, Jack, is but a great fair, thou knowest; and, to give thee serious reflection for serious, all its toys but tinselled hobby-horses, gilt gingerbread, squeaking trumpets, painted drums, and so forth.
Now behold this pretty little miss skimming from booth to boothe, in a very pretty manner. One pretty little fellow called Wyerley perhaps; another jiggeting rascal called Biron, a third simpering varlet of the name of Symmes, and a more hideous villain than any of the rest, with a long bag under his arm, and parchment settlements tagged to his heels, ycleped Solmes; pursue her from raree-show to raree-show, shouldering upon one another at every turning, stopping when she stops, and set a spinning again when she moves. And thus dangled after, but still in the eye of her watchful guardians, traverss the pretty little miss through the whole fair, equally delighted and delighting: till at last, taken with the invitation of the laced-hat orator, and seeing several pretty little bib-wearers stuck together in the flying coaches, cutting safely the yielding air, in the one go-up the other go-down picture-oft-the-world vehicle, and all with as little fear as wit, is tempted to ride next.
In then suppose she slyly pops, when none of her friends are near her: and if, after two or three ups and downs, her pretty head turns giddy, and she throws herself part of the reach when at its elevation, and so dashes out her pretty little brains, who can help it? And would you hang the poor fellow whose professed trade it was to set the pretty little creature a flying?
'Tis true, this pretty little miss, being a very pretty little miss, being a very much-admired little miss, being a very good little miss, who always minded her book, and had passed though her sampler doctrine with high applause; had even stitched out in gaudy propriety of colours, an Abraham offering up Isaac, a Samson and the Philistines, and flowers, and knots, and trees, and the sun and the moon, and the seven stars, all hug up in frames with glasses before the, for the admiration of her future grandchildren, who likewise was entitled to a very pretty little estate: who was descened from a pretty little family upwards of the hundred years' gentility; which lived in a very pretty little manner respected a very little on their own accounts, a great deal on hers:—
For such a pretty little miss as this to come to so great a misfortune, must be a very sad thing: but, tell me, would not the losing of any ordinary child, of any other less considerable family, of less shining or amiable qualities, have been as great and as heavy a loss to that family, as the losing this pretty little miss could be to hers?
(Vol. III, 316-17)
—oOo—
(from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Letter CXXIV — Mr. Lovelace to John Belford, Esq.; Everyman, II.490-92)
(The rake Lovelace defends his strategy to deceive and seduce Clarissa, by means of the lies and elaborate fabrications he delights in, and protests the accuracy of his plotting genius when Belford upbraids him):
Trite, stale, poor (sayest thou) are some of my contrivances? That of the widow particularly? I have no patience with thee. Had not that contrivance its effect at the time, for a procrastination? And had I not then reason to fear that the lady would find enough to make her dislike this house? And was it not right (intending what I intended) to lead her on from time to time, with a notion that a house of her own would be ready for her soon, in order to induce her to continue here till it was?
Trite, stale, and poor! Thou art a silly fellow, and no judge, when thou sayest this. Had I not, like a blockhead, revealed to thee, as I went along, the secret purposes of my heart, but had kept all in till the event had explained my mysteries, I would have defied thee to have been able, any more than the lady, to have guessed at what was to befall her, till it had actually come to pass. Nor doubt I, in this case, that, instead of presuming to reflect upon her for credulity, as loving me to her misfortune, and for hoping against probability, thou wouldest have been readier, to censure her for nicety and overscrupulousness. And let me tell thee, that had she loved me as I wished her to love me, she could not possibly have been so very apprehensive of my designs, nor so ready to be influenced by Miss Howe's precautions, as she has always been, although my general character made not for me with her.
But in thy opinion, I suffer for that simplicity in my contrivances, which is their principal excellence. No machinery make I necessary. No unnatural flights aim I at. All pure nature, taking advantage of nature, as nature tends; and so simple my devices, that when they are known, thou, even thou, imaginest thou couldest have thought of the same. An indeed thou seemest to own, that the slight thou puttest upon them is owing to my letting thee into them beforehand—undistinguishing as well as ungrateful as thou art!
Yet, after all, I would not have thee think that I do not know my weak places. I have formerly told you, that it is difficult for the ablest general to say what he will do, or what he can do, when he is obliged to regulate his motions by those of a watchful enemy. If thou givest due weight to this consideration, thou wilt not wonder that I should make many marches and countermarches, some of which may appear to a slight observer unnecessary.
But let me cursorily enter into debate with thee on this subject, now that I am within sight of my journey's end.
Abundance of impertinent things thou tellest me in this letter; some of which thou hadst from myself; others that I knew before.
All that thou sayest in this charming creature's praise, is short of what I have said and written on the inexhaustible subject.
Her virtue, her resistance, which are her merits, are my stimulatives. Have I not told thee so twenty times over?
Devil, as these girls between them call me, what of devil am I, but in my contrivances? I am not more of a devil than others, in the end I aim at; for when I have carried my point, it is still but one seduction. And I have perhaps been spared the guilt of many seductions in the time.
What of uncommon would there be in this case, but for her watchfulness? As well as I love intrigue and stratagem, dost think that I had not rather have gained my end with less trouble and less guilt?
The man, let me tell thee, who is as wicked as he can be, is a worse man than I am. Let me ask any rake in England, if, resolving to carry his point, he would have been so long about it? Or have had so much compunction as I have had?
Were every rake, nay, were every man, to sit down, as I do, and write all that enters into his head or into his heart, and to accuse himself with equal freedom and truth, what an army of miscreants should I have to keep me in countenance!
—oOo—
