Coke Clifton to Guy Fairfax

London, Dover Street

War! Fairfax, war!—It is declared!—Open war!—My wrathful spirits are in a blaze, and I am determined. Hear and blame me if you can. But do I not know you? Does not the temper of your letters tell me you will applaud my just anger, and fixed revenge?

Yes, Fairfax, longer to palliate, or wilfully be blind to the partial edicts and haughty ordonnances of this proud beauty, were idiotism! She has presumed too far; I am not quite so tame a creature as she supposes. She shall find I am not the clay, but the potter. I will mould, not be moulded. Poltron as I was, to think of sinking into the docile, domesticated, timid animal called husband! But the lion's paws are not yet pared; beware then, my princess!

The lady would carry it with a high hand, Fairfax. But let her! If I not note her freaks, if I forget her imperious caprice, if my embittered mind slumber in its intents, say not I am the proud-spirited Clifton you once knew; that prompt, bold, and inflexible fellow, whom arrogance could rouse, and injury inflame, but a suffering, patient ass; a meek pitiful thing, such as they would make me!

Wonder not that I now am angry, but that I have so long been torpid. A little phrensy has restored the palsied soul to life, and again has put its powers in motion. I'll play no more at questions and commands—Or, if I do, it shall only be to make sure of my game. I have been reproved, silenced, tongue-tied, brow-beaten; have made myself an ape, been placed behind the door, and have shewed tricks for her diversion. But I am not muzzled yet: they shall find me one of the ferae naturae.

A most excellent project, forsooth! When I am sufficiently familiarized to contradiction, rebuke, fillips on the forehead, and raps on the knuckles, she will then hear me my prayers, pack me off peaceably to bed for tonight, and graciously bestow a pat and a promise upon me for tomorrow! There is danger in the whim, lady; beauteous though you are, and invincible as you may think yourself. Model me!—No!—I am of a metal which not even your files can touch. You cannot knead, dough-bake, and temper me to your leaven.

Fairfax, she had fascinated me! I own it! There is such incantation, in the small circle of her eye, as mortal man scarcely can resist! I adored her; nay still adore! But she knows me not. I have a soul of fire. She has driven me beyond the limits of patience.

Her wisdom degenerates into rhodomontade. She will prescribe the hour and minute when she shall begin to love. She does not pretend to love me yet; and, if she did, her looks, her manner would betray the falsehood of her heart.

Yet let me not wrong her, vexed though I am. Double dealing is not her error: she is sufficiently sincere.

Why would I hide it from myself? Her partialities all lead another way: ay and her passions too, if passions she have. But this most incomprehensible, this tormenting, incoherent romance of determining not to have any, I believe from my soul, in part produces the effect she intends, and almost enables her to keep her determination!

Still and eternally, this fellow! This Frank! Oh that I were an Italian, and that my conscience would permit me to deal him the stilletto!—Let him beware!—He is employed, preferred, praised! It is eulogium everlasting! Had Fame as many trumpets as she has tongues and lies, they would all be insufficient. And not only she but the whole family, father, brother, aunts, the devil knows who, each grateful soul is oozing out the froth of its obligations!

Had they less cause, perhaps I should be less irritated: but he has rescued the poor being of a brother, Edward St. Ives, who had neither courage nor capacity to rescue himself, from the gripe of a gambler. This Edward, who is one of the king's captains, God bless him, and who has spent his fortune in learning the trade, not of a man of war, but of a man of fashion, having lost what ready money he had, staked his honour against a cogger of dice, and was presently tricked out of three thousand guineas; which he was too poor in pocket to pay, and, if I guess right, too poor in spirit afterward to face the ruffian whom he had made his companion.

So Mr. Henley, and it please, you, was chosen, by father and daughter. Though she owns she proposed it first; for she does not scruple to own all which she does not scruple to act. The holy mission was his, to dole out salutary documents of reproof, and apothegms of Epictetus; and to try whether he could not release the bird-limed owl. I was overlooked! I am unfit for the office! I am but little wiser than the booby brother! Whereas Solomon himself, and the seven sages to boot, are but so many men of Gotham, when he is present. The quintessence of all the knowledge, wit, wisdom, and genius that ever saw the sun, from the infantine days of A B C and king Cadmus, to these miraculous times of intuition and metaphysical legerdemain, is bottled up in, his brain; from which it foams and whizzes in our ears, every time discretion can be induced to draw the cork of silence.—Once again, let him beware!

I then am selected for no other purpose but for her morality to make experiments upon.—She is called wife, and wife she may be; nay wife she is, or at least all other women, she being present, are intolerably foolish. But, by heaven, this is no proof of her wisdom! I am the scape-goat!—I!—Be it so!—Should she be caught in her own springe, who can say I am to blame?

She has seen my anger, for I could not hide it; but she has seen it only in part. A hypocrite she wants, and a hypocrite she shall I have. I will act the farce which she is composing; let her look to the catastrophe.

I begin to think that marriage and I shall never meet; for, if I withstand her, woman cannot tempt me. And her I shall withstand. At least I never will have her till I have humbled her; and then perhaps I shall not be in the humour. And yet my heart tells me that I shall. For in spite of all its anger, in spite of her injustice and glaring indifference, the remembrance of which puts me in a fever, it would be misery to know her, recollect her, and live without her.

But, patience! Her pride shall first be lowered. I must command, not be commanded: and, when my clemency is implored, I will then take time to consider.

My brain is in a ferment, and its various engines are already in commotion. She herself, her hated favourite, her father, her brother, her aunt, her uncle, her maid, every creature that surrounds her must each and all contribute to my purposes and plots. Parts fit for the actors must be assigned. The how and what I know not yet precisely, for I have scarcely sketched the canvas; but I have conceived some bold and masterly strokes, and I foresee the execution must be daring and impassioned. I am in haste to begin, and my hot oscillatory spirits can with difficulty be tamed to the still pause of prudence and premeditation: they are eager for the fight, and think caution a tardy general, if not a coward.

I know not how it is, but when I am angry, very angry, I feel as if I were in my element. My blood delights to boil, and my passions to bubble. I hate still water. An agitated sea! An evening when the fiery sun forebodes a stormy morning, and the black-based clouds rise, like mountains with hoary tops, to tell me tempests are brewing! These give emotion and delight supreme! Oh for a mistress such as I could imagine, and such as Anna St. Ives moulded by me could make! One that could vary her person, her pleasures, and her passions, purposely to give mine variety! Whose daily and nightly study all should centre in me, and my gratifications! Whose eyes should flash lightning to rouse the chilled sensations, and shed appeasing dews to quench the fire of rage. These are the objects in which I could delight; these the devotions I require. Change for me. A true English day; in which winter and summer, hail, rain, and sunshine meet and mingle.

I had almost forgotten one chief cause of my resentment; though the most fortunate one I could have wished for to promote my purpose. This Sir Arthur dallies with me. I find, from various items which the candour of her mind has suffered to escape, that the motive is poverty. I am glad of it. I will urge and hurry her into a promise to be mine. The generosity of her temper will aid me. I will plead the injury done me by hesitation. I feel it, and therefore my pleadings will be natural. It is her pride to repair the wrongs which others commit. This pride and this heroism of soul, which I must acknowledge in her are unaffected, shall be the main engines with which I will work. Without these perhaps I might despair; but with them hold myself secure of victory.

Yes, lady of the high sciences, you must descend, and let my star mount the horizon! The gathering clouds must eclipse your effulgence, while I shine chief of the constellation!

As for the rest of the family, more or less, they are all fools; therefore are neither to be feared nor pitied. On her perhaps I may have compassion, when I have taught her contrition, and when she knows me for her superior.

I have written a volume, yet have not half disburthened my labouring mind. Oh that I could present the picture to you complete! That I could paint her as she is; all beauty, all excellence, all kindness, all frost! That I could shew the sweet enthusiast in the heyday insolence of her power; pretending to guide, reform, humble, and subjugate me; while love and vengeance swell my heart, hypocrisy smooths my face, and plots innumerable busy my brain! It is a fruitful, rich, resplendent scene; of which, Fairfax, you have no conception. Me you have known, intimately, and are honest enough to own you have admired: but of her all ideal tracings are contemptible!

Nor should this knight of the magic lanthorn be forgotten; this Nestor junior; this tormenting rival—Oh how I could curse! He who stands, as ready as if Satan had sent him, to feed the spreading flames with oil! He fills his place on the canvas. And who knows but I may teach him, yet, to do his office as he ought? How would it delight me! There is an intemperance of superiority which no human patience can support, nor any acts of kindness compensate. A triumph over her will indeed be a triumph over him, and therefore doubly delicious!

I grant he forbears to prate of the life he gave me. But am I not reminded of the oppressive gift every time he dares to contradict me? Would I endure his interference as I do; would I be shouldered and butted at, by him; would I permit his opinion to be asked, or his dogmas to silence me, were I not burthened with this unasked benefit?

Infatuated lunatic, as I was! But I am in the school of prudence, at present; and suppose I shall learn a little some time; though I do not know when; since, I am told, it is not easy to learn a trade one hates.

Mean while I pay my court assiduously to the two peers, Evelyn and Fitz Allen, who at present are both in town. Nothing must be neglected, nothing left unprepared. Vigilance, foresight, and cunning must do their office, and will soon be in full employment: of what kind I cannot yet determine; or whether it must be open war or covert, or both; but my augury predicts the scene will soon be all life, all agitation, all enjoyment. Commotion is my element, battle my delight, and conquest my heaven!

This is my hour of appointment: she is expecting me, yet my crowding thoughts will with difficulty allow me to lay down the pen: they rise in armies, and I could write world without end, and never come to an amen. But I must begone. Adieu.

I imagine that by this time you are at Paris; or will be before the arrival of this letter; which, according to your directions, I shall superscribe Poste restante.

C. CLIFTON