Volume IX Part 21 (1/2)

The accursed woman, they tell me, has broken her leg. Why was it not her neck?--All, all, but what is owing to her relations, is the fault of that woman, and of her h.e.l.l-born nymphs. The greater the virtue, the n.o.bler the triumph, was a sentence for ever in their mouths.--I have had it several times in my head to set fire to the execrable house; and to watch at the doors and windows, that not a devil in it escape the consuming flames. Had the house stood by itself, I had certainly done it.

But, it seems, the old wretch is in the way to be rewarded, without my help. A shocking letter is received of somebody's in relation to her-- your's, I suppose--too shocking for me, they say, to see at present.*

* See Letter XXV. of this volume.

They govern me as a child in strings; yet did I suffer so much in my fever, that I am willing to bear with them, till I can get tolerably well.

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.

LETTER x.x.xVIII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 20.

I write to demand back again my last letter. I own it was my mind at the different times I wrote it; and, whatever ailed me, I could not help writing it. Such a gloomy impulse came upon me, and increased as I wrote, that, for my soul, I could not forbear running into the miserable.

'Tis strange, very strange, that a man's conscience should be able to force his fingers to write whether he will or not; and to run him into a subject he more than once, at the very time, resolved not to think of.

Nor is it less strange, that (no new reason occurring) he should, in a day or two more, so totally change his mind; have his mind, I should rather say, so wholly illuminated by gay hopes and rising prospects, as to be ashamed of what he had written.

For, on reperusal of a copy of my letter, which fell into my hands by accident, in the hand-writing of my cousin Charlotte, who, unknown to me, had transcribed it, I find it to be such a letter as an enemy would rejoice to see.

This I know, that were I to have continued but one week more in the way I was in when I wrote the latter part of it, I should have been confined, and in straw, the next; for I now recollect, that all my distemper was returning upon me with irresistible violence--and that in spite of water-gruel and soup-meagre.

I own I am still excessively grieved at the disappointment this admirable woman made it so much her whimsical choice to give me.

But, since it has thus fallen out; since she was determined to leave the world; and since she actually ceases to be; ought I, who have such a share of life and health in hand, to indulge gloomy reflections upon an event that is pa.s.sed; and being pa.s.sed, cannot be recalled?--Have I not had a specimen of what will be my case, if I do.

For, Belford, ('tis a folly to deny it,) I have been, to use an old word, quite bestraught.

Why, why did my mother bring me up to bear no controul? Why was I so enabled, as that to my very tutors it was a request that I should not know what contradiction or disappointment was?--Ought she not to have known what cruelty there was in her kindness?

What a punishment, to have my first very great disappointment touch my intellect!--And intellects, once touched--but that I cannot bear to think of--only thus far; the very repentance and amendment, wished me so heartily by my kind and cross dear, have been invalidated and postponed, and who knows for how long?--the amendment at least; can a madman be capable of either?

Once touched, therefore, I must endeavour to banish those gloomy reflections, which might otherwise have brought on the right turn of mind: and this, to express myself in Lord M.'s style, that my wits may not be sent a wool-gathering.

For, let me moreover own to thee, that Dr. Hale, who was my good Astolfo, [you read Ariosto, Jack,] and has brought me back my wit-jar, had much ado, by starving, diet, by profuse phlebotomy, by flaying-blisters, eyelet-hole-cupping, a dark room, a midnight solitude in a midday sun, to effect my recovery. And now, for my comfort, he tells me, that I may still have returns upon full moons--horrible! most horrible!--and must be as careful of myself at both equinoctials, as Caesar was warned to be of the Ides of March.