May your's, Mr. Lovelace, become such! and may you be enabled to escape the fate denounced against the abandoned man, and be entitled to the mercies of a long suffering and gracious God, is the sincere prayer of
CLARISSA HARLOWE ************************* [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
LETTER XXXVII
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. M. HALL, THURSDAY, SEPT. 14.
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.
* See his delirious Letter, No. XXIII.
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 every thing 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?
To give but one instance of the retributive—here I, who was the barbarous cause of the loss of senses for a week together to the most inimitable of women, have been punished with the loss of my own— preparative to—who knows what?—When, Oh! when, shall I know a joyful hour?
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.