most tragical manner, and requesting that her entreaties may avert so dreadful a catastrophe.
This correspondence with Mrs. Belfour commenced in October, 1748; and she thus concludes her letter to the novelist, her ladyship taking care to mystify her identity by giving her address, Post-office, Exeter, although resident at Haigh in Lancashire. “If you disappoint me,” she writes, “attend to my curse.”
“May the hatred of all the young, beautiful, and virtuous for ever be your portion, and may your eyes never behold anything but age and deformity! May you meet with applause only from envious old maids, surly bachelors, and tyrannical parents; may you be doomed to the company of such! and after death may their ugly souls haunt you!
“Now make Lovelace and Clarissa unhappy if you dare!
“Perhaps you may think all this proceeds from a giddy girl of sixteen; but know I am past my romantic time of life, though young enough to wish two lovers happy in a married state. As I myself am in that class, it makes me still more anxious for the lovely pair. I have a common understanding, and middling judgment, for one of my sex, which I tell you for fear you should not find it out.”
The correspondence thus commenced goes on, until the vanity of Richardson induces him to describe to his unknown correspondent his private circumstances: and to a hint given in the January following by Lady Bradshaigh, of her intention to visit London before she is a year older, when she “shall long to see” Mr. Richardson, and “perhaps may contrive that, though unknown to him,” he replies,—
“But do not, my dear correspondent (still let me call you so) say, that you will see me, unknown to myself, when you come to town. Permit me to hope, that you will not be personally a stranger to me then.”
This is followed by an acknowledgment from Madame Belfour, that she is not his “Devonshire lady,” having but very little knowledge of the place, though she has a friend there; observing archly, “Lancashire, if you please;” adding an invitation, if he is inclined to take a journey of two hundred miles, with the promise of “a most friendly reception from two persons, who have great reason to esteem” him “a very valuable acquaintance.”
Richardson responded to this invitation by another—
“But I will readily come into any proposal you shall make, to answer the purpose of your question; and if you will be so cruel as to keep yourself still incognito, will acquiesce. I wish you would accept of our invitation on your coming to town. But three little miles from Hyde Park Corner. I keep no vehicle.”
(This was before the age of omnibuses.)
—“but one should be at yours, and at your dear man’s command, as long as you should both honour us with your presence. You shall be only the sister, the cousin, the niece—the what you please of my incognito, and I will never address you as other than what you choose to pass for. If you knew, Madam, you would not question that I am in earnest on this occasion; the less question it, as that at my little habitation near Hammersmith, I have common conveniences, though not splendid ones, to make my offer good.”