O fie! O strange! Miss Howe knows nothing of this! To be sure she won’t look upon her, if this be true!
’Tis true, very true, Mr. Hickman! True as I am here to tell you so!—And he is an ugly fellow too; uglier to look at than me.
Thank you, Sir! Why, to be sure, you are one of the handsomest men in England.
Well, but the wretch she so spitefully prefers to me is a misshapen, meagre varlet; more like a skeleton than a man! Then he dresses—you never saw a devil so bedizened! Hardly a coat to his back, nor a shoe to his foot. A bald-pated villain, yet grudges to buy a peruke to his baldness: for he is as covetous as hell, never satisfied, yet plaguey rich.
Why, Sir, there is some joke in this, surely. A man of common parts knows not how to take such gentleman as you. But, Sir, if there be any truth in the story, what is he? Some Jew or miserly citizen, I suppose, that may have presumed on the lady’s distressful circumstances; and your lively wit points him out as it pleases.
Why, the rascal has estates in every county in England, and out of England too.
Some East India governor, I suppose, if there be anything in it. The lady once had thoughts of going abroad. But I fancy all this time you are in jest, Sir. If not, we must surely have heard of him—
Heard of him! Aye, Sir, we have all heard of him—But none of us care to be intimate with him—except this lady—and that, as I told you, in spite of me—his name, in short, is Death!—Death! Sir, stamping, and speaking loud, and full in his ears; which made him jump half a yard high.
(Thou never beheldest any man so disconcerted. He looked as if the frightful skeleton was before him, and he had not his accounts ready. When a little recovered, he fribbled with his waistcoat buttons, as if he had been telling his beads).
This, Sir, proceeded I, is her wooer!—Nay, she is so forward a girl, that she wooes him: but I hope it never will be a match.
He had before behaved, and now looked with more spirit than I expected from him.
I came, Sir, said he, as a mediator of differences.—It behoves me to keep my temper. But, Sir, and turned short upon me, as much as I love peace, and to promote it, I will not be ill-used.
As I had played so much upon him, it would have been wrong to take him at his more than half-menace: yet I think I owe him a grudge, for his presuming to address Miss Howe.
You mean no defiance, I presume, Mr. Hickman, any more than I do offence. On that presumption, I ask your excuse. But this is my way. I mean no harm. I cannot let sorrow touch my heart. I cannot be grave six minutes together, for the blood of me. I am a descendant of old Chancellor Moore, I believe; and should not forbear to cut a joke, were I upon the scaffold. But you may gather, from what I have said, that I prefer Miss Harlowe, and that upon the justest grounds, to all the women in the world: and I wonder that there should be any difficulty to believe, from what I have signed, and from what I have promised to my relations, and enabled them to promise for me, that I should be glad to marry that excellent creature upon her own terms. I acknowledge to you, Mr. Hickman, that I have basely injured her. If she will honour me with her hand, I declare that is my intention to make her the best of husbands.—But, nevertheless, I must say that if she goes on appealing her case, and exposing us both, as she does, it is impossible to think the knot can be knit with reputation to either. And although, Mr. Hickman, I have delivered my apprehensions under so ludicrous a figure, I am afraid that she will ruin her constitution: and, by seeking Death when she may shun him, will not be able to avoid him when she would be glad to do so.
This cool and honest speech let down his stiffened muscles into complacence. He was my very obedient and faithful humble servant several times over, as I waited on him to his chariot: and I was his almost as often.
Letter 347
Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.
[In answer to Letters 340, 344, 345]
Friday Night,
I will throw away a few paragraphs upon the contents of thy last shocking letters just brought me; and send what I shall write by the fellow who carries mine on the interview with Hickman.
Reformation, I see, is coming fast upon thee. Thy uncle’s slow death, and thy attendance upon him through every stage towards it, prepared thee for it. But go thou on in thine own way, as I will in mine. Happiness consists in being pleased with what we do: and if thou canst find delight in being sad, it will be as well for thee as if thou wert merry, though no other person should join to keep thee in countenance.
I am, nevertheless, exceedingly disturbed at the lady’s ill health. It is entirely owing to the cursed arrest. She was absolutely triumphant over me and the whole crew before. Thou believest me guiltless of that: so, I hope, does she.—The rest, as I have often said, is a common case; only a little uncommonly circumstanced; that’s all: Why, then, all these severe things from her, and from thee?
As to selling her clothes, and her laces, and so forth, it has, I own, a shocking sound to it. What an implacable as well as unjust set of wretches are those of her unkindredly kin, who have money of
