[Page 67]
LETTER XII.
Miss Clarissa Harlowe, To Miss Howe.
Sunday Morning, March 26.
How soothing a thing is praise from those we love!---Whether conscious or not of deserving it, it cannot but give us great delight, to see ourselves stand high in the opinion of those whose favour we are ambitious to cultivate. An ingenuous mind will make this farther use of it, that if it be sensible, that it does not already deserve the charming attributes, it will hasten (before its friend finds herself mistaken) to obtain the graces it is complimented for: And this it will do, as well in honour to itself, as to preserve its friend's opinion, and justify her judgment. May This be always my aim!---And then you will not only give the praise, but the merit; and I shall be more worthy of that friendship, which is the only pleasure I have to boast of.
Most heartily I thank you for the kind dispatch of your last favour. How much am I indebted to you! and even to your honest servant!---Under what obligations does my unhappy situation lay me!
But let me answer the kind contents of it, as well as I may.
As to getting over my disgusts to Mr. Solmes, it is impossible to be done; while he wants Generosity, Frankness of Heart, Benevolence, Manners, and every qualification that distinguishes a worthy man. O my dear! what a degree of Patience, what a Greatness of Soul, is required in the Wife, not to despise a Husband who is more ignorant, more illiterate, more low-minded, than herself!---The wretch, vested with prerogatives, who will claim rule in virtue of them (and not to permit whose claim, will be as disgraceful to the prescribing Wife as to the governed Husband); How shall such a Husband as This be borne, were
[Page 68]
he, for reasons of convenience and interest, even to be our CHOICE? But, to compelled to have such a one, and that compulsion to arise from motives as unworthy of the prescribers as of the prescribed, who can think of getting over an aversion so justly founded? How much easier to bear the temporary persecutions I labour under, because temporary, than to resolve to be such a man's for life? Were I to comply, must I not leave my relations, and go to him? A month will decide the one, perhaps: But what a duration of woe will the other be!---Every day, it is likely, rising to witness to some new breach of an altar-vowed duty!
Then, my dear, the man seems already to be meditating vengeance against me for an aversion I cannot help: For yesterday my saucy gaoleress assured me, That all my oppositions would not signify that pinch of snuff, holding out her genteel finger and thumb: That I must have Mr. Solmes: That therefore I had not best carry my jest too far; for that Mr. Solmes was a man of spirit, and had told HER, that as I should surely be his, I acted very unpoliticly; since, if he had not more mercy [that was her word; I know not if it were his] than I had, I might have cause to repent the usage I gave him to the last day of my life.
But enough of this man; who, by what you repeat from Sir Harry Downeton, has all the insolence of his Sex, without any one quality to make that insolence tolerable.
I have received two Letters from Mr. Lovelace, since his visit to you; which make three that I have not answered. I doubt not his being very uneasy; but in his last he complains in high terms of my silence; not in the still small voice, or rather style of an humble Lover, but in a style like that which would probably be used by a slighted Protector. And his pride is again touched, that like a thief, or eves-dropper, he is forced to dodge about in hopes of a Letter, and return five miles (and then to an inconvenient lodging) without any.
[Page 69]
His Letters, and the copy of mine to him, shall soon attend you: Till when, I will give you the substance of what I wrote to him yesterday.
I take him severely to task for his freedom in threatening me, thro' you, with a visit to Mr. Solmes, or to my Brother. I say, 'That, surely, I must be thought to be a creature fit to bear any-thing; that violence and menaces from some of my own family are not enough for me to bear, in order to make me avoid him; but that I must have them from him too, if I oblige those whom it is both my inclination and duty to oblige in every-thing that is reasonable, and in my power.
'Very extraordinary, I tell him, that a violent spirit shall threaten to do a rash and unjustifiable thing, which concerns me but little, and himself a great deal, if I do not something as rash, my Character and Sex considered, to divert him from it.
'I even hint, that, however it would affect me, were any mischief to happen on my account, yet there are persons, as far as I know, who in my case would not think there would be reason for much regret, were such a committed rashness as he threatens Mr. Solmes with, to rid her of two persons whom had she never known, she had never been unhappy.'
This is plain-dealing, my dear: And I suppose he will put it into still plainer English for me.
I take his Pride to task, on his disdaining to watch for my Letters; and for his eves-dropping language: And say, 'That, surely, he has the less reason to think so hardly of his situation; since his faulty morals are the cause of all; and since faulty morals deservedly level all distinction, and bring down Rank and Birth to the Canaille, and to the necessity which he so much regrets, of appearing (if I must descend to his language) as an eves-dropper and a thief. And then I forbid him ever to expect another
[Page 70]
Letter from me that is to subject him to such disgraceful hardships.
'As to the solemn vows and protestations he is so ready, upon all occasions, to make, they have the less weight with me, I tell him, as they give a kind of demonstration, that he himself, from his own character, thinks there is reason to make them. Deeds are to me the only evidences of Intentions. And I am more and more convinced of the necessity of breaking-off a correspondence with a person, whose addresses I see it is impossible either to expect my friends to encourage, or him to appear to wish that they should think him worthy of encouragement.
'What therefore I repeatedly desire is, That since his Birth, Alliances, and Expectations, are such as will at any time, if his immoral character be not an objection, procure him at least equal advantages in a woman whose taste and inclinations moreover might be better adapted to his own; I insist upon it, as well as advise it, that he give up all thoughts of me: And the rather, as he has all along (by his threatening and unpolite behaviour to my friends, and whenever he speaks of them) given me reason to conclude, that there is more malice to them, than regard to me, in his perseverance.'
This is the substance of the Letter I have written to him.
The man, to be sure, must have the penetration to observe, that my correspondence with him hitherto is owing more to the severity I meet with, than to a very high value for him. And so I would have him think. What a worse than Moloch deity is That, which expects an offering of Reason, Duty, and Discretion, to be made to its shrine!
Your Mother is of opinion, you say, that at last my friends will relent. Heaven grant that they may!---But my Brother and Sister have such an influence
[Page 71]
over every-body, and are so determined; so pique themselves upon subduing me, and carrying their point; that I despair that they will:---And yet, if they do not, I frankly own, I would not scruple to throw myself upon any not disreputable protection, by which I might avoid my present persecutions, on one hand, and not give Mr. Lovelace advantage over me, on the other---That is to say, were there manifestly no other way left me: For, if there were, I should think the leaving my Father's house, without his consent, one of the most inexcuseable actions I could be guilty of, were the protection to be ever so unexceptionable; and This notwithstanding the independent fortune willed me by my Grandfather. And indeed I have often reflected with a degree of indignation and disdain, upon the thought of what a low, selfish creature that child must be, who is to be reined in only by the hopes of what a parent can or will do for her.
But notwithstanding all this, I owe it to the sincerity of friendship to confess, that I know not what I should have done, had your advice been conclusive any-way. Had you, my dear, been witness to my different emotions, as I read your Letter, when, in one place, you advise me of my danger, if I am carried to my Uncle's; in another, when you own you could not bear what I bear, and would do anything rather than marry the man you hate; yet, in another, represent to me my reputation suffering in the world's eye; and the necessity I should be under to justify my conduct, at the expence of my friends, were I to take a rash step; in another, insinuate the dishonest figure I should be forced to make, in so compelled a Matrimony; endeavouring to cajole, fawn upon, and play the hypocrite with a man to whom I have an aversion; who would have reason to believe me an hypocrite, as well from my former avowals, as from the sense he must have (if common sense he has) of his own demerits:---The necessity you
[Page 72]
think there would be for me, the more averse I really was, to seem the fonder of him: A fondness (were I capable of so much dissimulation) that would be imputable to disgraceful motives; as it would be too visible, that Love, either of person or mind, could be neither of them---Then his undoubted, his even constitutional narrowness: His too probable jealousy, and unforgivingness, bearing in mind my declared aversion, and the unfeigned despights I took all opportunities to do him, in order to discourage his address: A preference avowed against him from the same motive: with the pride he professes to take in curbing and sinking the spirits of a woman he had acquired a right to tyrannize over:---Had you, I say, been witness of my different emotions as I read; now leaning this way, now that; now perplexed; now apprehensive; now angry at one, then at another; now resolving; now doubting;---you would have seen the power you have over me; and would have had reason to believe, that, had you given your advice in any determined or positive manner, I had been ready to have been concluded by it. So, my dear, you will find, from these acknowlegements, that you must justify me to those Laws of Friendship, which require undisguised frankness of heart; altho' your justification of me in that particular, will perhaps be at the expence of my prudence.
But, upon the whole, This I do repeat---That nothing but the last extremity shall make me abandon my Father's House, if they will permit me to stay; and if I can, by any means, by any honest pretences, but keep off my evil destiny in it till my Cousin Morden arrives. As one of my Trustees, his is a protection, into which I may without discredit throw myself, if my other friends should remain determined. And This (altho' they seem too well aware of it) is all my hope: For, as to Lovelace, were I to be sure of his tenderness, and even of his reformation, must
[Page 73]
not the thoughts of embracing the offered protection of his family, be the same thing in the world's eye, as accepting of his own?---Could I avoid receiving his visits at his own Relations? Must I not be his, whatever (on seeing him in a nearer light) I should find him out to be? For you know, it has always been my observation, that very few people in courtship see each other as they are. Oh! my dear! how wise have I endeavoured to be! how anxious to chuse, and to avoid every-thing, precautiously, as I may say, that might make me happy, or unhappy; yet all my wisdom now, by a strange fatality, likely to become foolishness!
Then you tell me, in your usual kindly-partial manner, what is expected of me, more than would be of some others. This should be a lesson to me. Whatever my motives were, the world would not know them: To complain of a Brother's unkindness, that, indeed, I might do: Differences between Brothers and Sisters, where interests clash, but too commonly arise: But where the severe Father cannot be separated from the faulty Brother; who could bear to lighten herself, by loading a Father?---Then, in this particular case, must not the hatred Mr. Lovelace expresses to every one of my family (altho' in return for their hatred of him) shock one extremely? Must it not shew, that there is something implacable, as well as highly unpolite in his temper?---And what creature can think of marrying so as to be out of all hopes ever to be well with her own nearest and tenderest Relations?
But here, having tired myself, and I dare say you, I will lay down my pen.
Mr. Solmes is almost continually here: So is my Aunt Harvey: So are my two Uncles. Something is working against me, I doubt. What an uneasy state is suspense! ---When a naked sword, too, seems hanging over one's head!
[Page 74]
I hear nothing but what this confident creature Betty throws out in the wantonness of office. Now it is, Why, Miss, don't you look up your Things. You'll be called upon, depend upon it, before you are aware. Another time she intimates darkly, and in broken sentences (as if on purpose to teaze me) what one says, what another; with their enquiries how I dispose of my time? And my Brother's insolent question comes frequently in, Whether I am not writing a History of my Sufferings?
But I am now used to her pertness: And as it is only thro' that, that I can hear of any-thing intended against me, before it is to be put in execution; and as, when she is most impertinent, she pleads a commission for it; I bear with her: Yet, now-and-then, not without a little of the heart-burn.
I will deposit thus far. Adieu, my dear.
Clarissa Harlowe.
Written on the Cover, after she went down, with a pensil:
On coming down, I found your second Letter of yesterday's date (a) [Footnote a: 1Kb]. I have read it; and am in hopes that the inclosed will in a great measure answer your Mother's expectations of me.
My most respectful acknowlegements to her for it, and for her very kind admonitions.
You'll read to her what you please of the inclosed.