LETTER XXVII

Mr. Belford, to Robert Lovelace, ESQ. 
Thursday night.

I was forced to take back my twenty guineas.  How the women managed it I can’t tell, (I suppose they too readily found a purchaser for the rich suit;) but she mistrusted, that I was the advancer of the money; and would not let the clothes go.  But Mrs. Lovick has actually sold, for fifteen guineas, some rich lace worth three times the sum; out of which she repaid her the money she borrowed for fees to the doctor, in an illness occasioned by the barbarity of the most savage of men.  Thou knowest his name!

The Doctor called on her in the morning it seems, and had a short debate with her about fees.  She insisted that he should take one every time he came, write or not write; mistrusting that he only gave verbal directions to Mrs. Lovick, or the nurse, to avoid taking any.

He said that it would be impossible for him, had he not been a physician, to forbear inquiries after the health and welfare of so excellent a person.  He had not the thought of paying her a compliment in declining the offered fee:  but he knew her case could not so suddenly vary as to demand his daily visits.  She must permit him, therefore, to inquire of the women below after her health; and he must not think of coming up, if he were to be pecuniarily rewarded for the satisfaction he was so desirous to give himself.

It ended in a compromise for a fee each other time; which she unwillingly submitted to; telling him, that though she was at present desolate and in disgrace, yet her circumstances were, of right, high; and no expenses could rise so as to be scrupled, whether she lived or died.  But she submitted, she added, to the compromise, in hopes to see him as often as he had opportunity; for she really looked upon him, and Mr. Goddard, from their kind and tender treatment of her, with a regard next to filial.

I hope thou wilt make thyself acquainted with this worthy Doctor when thou comest to town; and give him thy thanks, for putting her into conceit with the sex that thou hast given her so much reason to execrate.

Farewell.

LETTER XXVIII

Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, ESQ. 
M. Hall, Friday, July 21.

Just returned from an interview with this Hickman:  a precise fop of a fellow, as starched as his ruffles.

Thou knowest I love him not, Jack; and whom we love not we cannot allow a merit to! perhaps not the merit they should be granted.  However, I am in earnest, when I say, that he seems to me to be so set, so prim, so affected, so mincing, yet so clouterly in his person, that I dare engage for thy opinion, if thou dost justice to him, and to thyself, that thou never beheldest such another, except in a pier-glass.