Correspondence

About two months into it now, I am steadily working my way through Clarissa and am not that far off half way through.

The schemes of Lovelace (the bad protagonist) for the seduction of Clarissa (the good protagonist) are getting a touch fantastic. At the same time he is fascinated to know what is passing between her and her good friend Miss. Howe, to which end he tries starting an earnest conversation about their mutual love of letter writing. In the course of which, fond of flaunting a bit of learning, he remarks on correspondence being the combination of the 'coeur' from France with the 'respondent' from home. A true meeting of hearts as well of as minds.

But checking in OED I find that this is not the case at all, with 'cor' being a corruption of the Latin for together and 'respondent' being someone who replies. So yes, an interchange of letters, but nothing as to whether hearts or minds are involved. Amusingly, OED also comes up with a 1756 sense of sexual intercourse, offering the quote 'when a Babylonian and his wife had a mind to correspond'. Not many years after the publication of the book in question.

All of which brought a complication to the surface. Having recently bought a Kindle version of the book for reading in bed, on which more in due course, I find that the bit in question, from Letter 1, Volume 5, Lovelace to Belford, Friday evening, does not appear in the corresponding Letter 210 in the Penguin edition at all. A large chunk of Lovelace dilating to Belford about his earnest conversation has been omitted - without comment or distinguishing mark that I could see.

The Penguin edition does include a tables of correspondences at the back, tying together the various numbering schemes for letters used in the various editions. But that does not help here Nor does it tell of an edition in which Volume 5 starts at letter 210. All very complicated. Perhaps there are blogs out there in which everything is explained, rather as you get blogs about Simenon and all his publications.

PS 1: the edition snapped above would suit me quite well. But I don't want to spend that much. Rather a big jump from the 99p I paid for my Kindle edition.

PS 2: the seller of this book comes from Dinkytown. Checking, this is a business district in Minneapolis, possibly named for its streetcars, once called Dinkys, but in any case nothing to do with the diecast toy cars of my childhood.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/clarissa.html. Clarissa's last outing.