I shall long to hear how you and Mrs. Townsend order matters. I wish she could have been with you sooner. But I have lost no time in engaging her, as you will suppose. I refer to her, what I have further to say and advise. So shall conclude with my prayers, that Heaven will direct and protect my dearest creature, and make your future days happy!
And now, Jack, I will suppose that thou hast read this cursed letter. Allow me to make a few observations upon some of its contents.
It is strange to Miss Howe, that having got her friend at such a shocking advantage, etc.
And it is strange to me, too. If ever I have such another opportunity given to me, the cause of both our wonder, I believe, will cease.
So thou seest Tomlinson is further detected.—No such person as Mrs. Fretchville.—May lightning from Heaven
—O Lord, O Lord, O Lord!—What a horrid vixen is this!—My gang
, my remorseless gang
, too, is brought in—and thou wilt plead for these girls again; wilt thou? heaven be praised
, she says, that her friend is out of danger—Miss Howe should be sure of that, and that she herself is safe.—But for this termagant, (as I often said), I must surely have made a better hand of it.—
New stories
of me, Jack!—What can they be?—I have not found that my generosity to my Rosebud ever did me due credit with this pair of friends. Very hard, Belford, that credits cannot be set against debits, and a balance struck in a rake’s favour, as well as in that of every common man!—But he, from whom no good is expected, is not allowed the merit of the good he does.
I ought to have been a little more attentive to character than I have been. For, notwithstanding that the measures of right and wrong are said to be so manifest, let me tell thee, that character biases and runs away with all mankind. Let a man or woman once establish themselves in the world’s opinion, and all that either of them do will be sanctified. Nay, in the very courts of justice, does not character acquit or condemn as often as facts, and sometimes even in spite of facts?—Yet, (impolitic that I have been and am!) to be so careless of mine!—And now, I doubt, it is irretrievable.—But to leave moralizing.
Thou, Jack, knowest almost all my enterprises worth remembering. Can this particular story, which this girl hints at, be that of Lucy Villars?—Or can she have heard of my intrigue with the pretty gipsy, who met me in Norwood, and of the trap I caught her cruel husband in, (a fellow as gloomy and tyrannical as old Harlowe), when he pursued a wife, who would not have deserved ill of him, if he had deserved well of her!—But he was not quite drowned. The man is alive at this day, and Miss Howe mentions the story as a very shocking one. Besides, both these are a twelvemonth old, or more.
But evil fame and scandal are always new. When the offender has forgot a vile fact, it is often told to one and to another, who, having never heard of it before, trumpet it about as a novelty to others. But well said the honest corregidor at Madrid, (a saying with which I encroached Lord M.’s collection)—Good actions are remembered but for a day: bad ones for many years after the life of the guilty.
Such is the relish that the world has for scandal. In other words, such is the desire which everyone has to exculpate himself by blackening his neighbour. You and I, Belford, have been very kind to the world, in furnishing it with opportunities to gratify its devil.
(Miss Howe will abandon her own better prospects, and share fortunes with her, were she to go abroad.
)—Charming romancer!—I must set about this girl, Jack. I have always had hopes of a woman whose passions carry her to such altitudes.—Had I attacked Miss Howe first, her passions, (inflamed and guided as I could have managed them), would have brought her into my lure in a fortnight.
But thinkest thou, (and yet I think thou dost), that there is anything in these high flights among the sex?—Verily, Jack, these vehement friendships are nothing but chaff and stubble, liable to be blown away by the very wind that raises them. Apes, mere apes of us! they think the word friendship has a pretty sound with it; and it is much talked of—a fashionable word. And so, truly, a single woman, who thinks she has a soul, and knows that she wants something, would be thought to have found a fellow-soul for it in her own sex. But I repeat, that the word is a mere word, the thing a mere name with them; a cork-bottomed shuttlecock, which they are fond of striking to and fro, to make one another glow in the frosty weather of a single-state; but which, when a man comes in between the pretended inseparables, is given up, like their music and other maidenly amusements; which, nevertheless, may be necessary to keep the pretty rogues out of active mischief. They then, in short, having caught the fish, lay aside the net.239
Thou hast a mind, perhaps, to make an exception for these two ladies.—With all my heart. My Clarissa has, if woman has, a soul capable of friendship. Her flame is bright and steady. But Miss Howe’s, were it not kept up by her mother’s opposition, is too vehement to endure. How often have I known opposition not only cement friendship, but create love? I doubt not but poor Hickman would fare the better with this vixen, if her mother were as heartily against him, as she is for him.
Thus much, indeed, as to these two ladies, I will grant thee, that the active spirit of
