Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady Volume I Part 33

To be so particular as you require in subjects of conversation, it is impossible to be short.

I will add to it only the a.s.surance, That I am, and ever will be,

Your affectionate and faithful friend and servant, CLARISSA HARLOWE.

You'll be so good, my dear, as to remember, that the date of your last letter to me was the 9th.

LETTER x.x.xVII

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE. SUNDAY, MARCH 19.

I beg your pardon, my dearest friend, for having given you occasion to remind me of the date of my last. I was willing to have before me as much of the workings of your wise relations as possible; being verily persuaded, that one side or the other would have yielded by this time: and then I should have had some degree of certainty to found my observations upon. And indeed what can I write that I have not already written?--You know, that I can do nothing but rave at your stupid persecutors: and that you don't like. I have advised you to resume your own estate: that you won't do. You cannot bear the thoughts of having their Solmes: and Lovelace is resolved you shall be his, let who will say to the contrary. I think you must be either the one man's or the other's. Let us see what their next step will be.

As to Lovelace, while he tells his own story (having also behaved so handsomely on his intrusion in the wood-house, and intended so well at church) who can say, that the man is in the least blameworthy?--Wicked people! to combine against so innocent a man!--But, as I said, let us see what their next step will be, and what course you will take upon it; and then we may be the more enlightened.

As to your change of style to your uncles, and brother and sister, since they were so fond of attributing to you a regard for Lovelace, and would not be persuaded to the contrary; and since you only strengthened their arguments against yourself by denying it; you did but just as I would have done, in giving way to their suspicions, and trying what that would do--But if--but if--Pray, my dear, indulge me a little--you yourself think it was necessary to apologize to me for that change of style to them--and till you will speak out like a friend to her unquestionable friend, I must tease you a little--let it run therefore; for it will run--

If, then, there be not a reason for this change of style, which you have not thought fit to give me, be so good as to watch, as I once before advised you, how the cause for it will come on--Why should it be permitted to steal upon you, and you know nothing of the matter?

When we get a great cold, we are apt to puzzle ourselves to find out when it began, or how we got it; and when that is accounted for, down we sit contented, and let it have its course; or, if it be very troublesome, take a sweat, or use other means to get rid of it. So my dear, before the malady you wot of, yet wot not of, grows so importunate, as that you must be obliged to sweat it out, let me advise you to mind how it comes on. For I am persuaded, as surely as that I am now writing to you, that the indiscreet violence of your friends on the one hand, and the insinuating address of Lovelace on the other, (if the man be not a greater fool than any body thinks him,) will effectually bring it to this, and do all his work for him.

But let it--if it must be Lovelace or Solmes, the choice cannot admit of debate. Yet if all be true that is reported, I should prefer almost any of your other lovers to either; unworthy as they also are. But who can be worthy of a Clarissa?

I wish you are not indeed angry with me for harping so much on one string. I must own, that I should think myself inexcusable so to do, (the rather, as I am bold enough to imagine it a point out of all doubt from fifty places in your letters, were I to labour the proof,) if you would ingenuously own--

Own what? you'll say. Why, my Anna Howe, I hope you don't think that I am already in love--!

No, to be sure! How can your Anna Howe have such a thought?--What then shall we call it? You might have helped me to a phrase--A conditional kind of liking!--that's it.--O my friend! did I not know how much you despise prudery; and that you are too young, and too lovely, to be a prude--

But, avoiding such hard names, let me tell you one thing, my dear (which nevertheless I have told you before); and that is this: that I shall think I have reason to be highly displeased with you, if, when you write to me, you endeavour to keep from me any secret of your heart.

Let me add, that if you would clearly and explicitly tell me, how far Lovelace has, or has not, a hold in your affections, I could better advise you what to do, than at present I can. You, who are so famed for prescience, as I may call it; and than whom no young lady ever had stronger pretensions to a share of it; have had, no doubt, reasonings in your heart about him, supposing you were to be one day his: [no doubt but you have had the same in Solmes's case: whence the ground for the hatred of the one; and for the conditional liking of the other.] Will you tell me, my dear, what you have thought of Lovelace's best and of his worst?--How far eligible for the first; how far rejectable for the last?--Then weighing both parts in opposite scales, we shall see which is likely to preponderate; or rather which does preponderate. Nothing less than the knowledge of the inmost recesses of your heart, can satisfy my love and my friendship. Surely, you are not afraid to trust yourself with a secret of this nature: if you are, then you may the more allowably doubt me. But, I dare say, you will not own either--nor is there, I hope, cause for either.

Be pleased to observe one thing, my dear, that whenever I have given myself any of those airs of raillery, which have seemed to make you look about you, (when, likewise, your case may call for a more serious turn from a sympathizing friend,) it has not been upon those pa.s.sages which are written, though, perhaps not intended, with such explicitness [don't be alarmed, my dear!] as leaves little cause of doubt: but only when you affect reserve; when you give new words for common things; when you come with your curiosities, with your conditional likings, and with your PRUDE-encies [mind how I spell the word] in a case that with every other person defies all prudence--over-acts of treason all these, against the sovereign friendship we have avowed to each other.

Remember, that you found me out in a moment. You challenged me. I owned directly, that there was only my pride between the man and me; for I could not endure, I told you, to think of any fellow living to give me a moment's uneasiness. And then my man, as I have elsewhere said, was not such a one as yours: so I had reason to impute full as much as to my own inconsideration, as to his power over me: nay, more: but still more to yours. For you reasoned me out of the curiosity first; and when the liking was brought to be conditional--why then, you know, I throbbed no more about him.

O! pray now, as you say, now I have mentioned that my fellow was not such a charming fellow as yours, let Miss Biddulph, Miss Lloyd, Miss Campion, and me, have your opinion, how far figure ought to engage us: with a view to your own case, however--mind that--as Mr. Tony says--and whether at all, if the man be vain of it; since, as you observe in a former, that vanity is a stop-short pride in such a one, that would make one justly doubt the worthiness of his interior. You, our pattern, so lovely in feature, so graceful in person, have none of it; and have therefore with the best grace always held, that it is not excusable even in a woman.

You must know, that this subject was warmly debated among us in our last conversation: and Miss Lloyd wished me to write to you upon it for your opinion; to which, in every debated case, we always paid the greatest deference. I hope you will not be so much engrossed by your weighty cares, as not to have freedom of spirits enough to enter upon the task.

You know how much we all admire your opinion on such topics; which ever produces something new and instructive, as you handle the subjects. And pray tell us, to what you think it owing, that your man seems so careful to adorn that self-adorned person of his! yet so manages, that one cannot for one's heart think him a c.o.xcomb?--Let this question, and the above tasks, divert, and not displease you, my dear. One subject, though ever so important, could never yet engross your capacious mind. If they should displease you, you must recollect the many instances of my impertinence which you have forgiven, and then say, 'This is a mad girl: but yet I love her!--And she is my own'

ANNA HOWE.

LETTER x.x.xVIII

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE MONDAY, MARCH 20.

Your last so sensibly affects me, that I must postpone every other consideration, however weighty, to reply to it: and this I will do very distinctly, and with all the openness of heart which our mutual friendship demands.

But let me observe, in the first place, gratefully observe, that if I have in fifty pa.s.sages of my letters given you such undoubted proofs of my value for Mr. Lovelace, that you have spared me for the sake of my explicitness, it is acting by me with a generosity worthy of yourself.

But lives the man, think you, who is so very bad, that he does not give even a doubting mind reason at one time to be better pleased with him than at another? And when that reason offers, is it not just to express one's self accordingly? I would do the man who addresses me as much justice, as if he did not address me: it has such a look of tyranny, it appears so ungenerous, methinks, in our s.e.x, to use a man worse for his respect to us, (no other cause for disrespect occurring,) that I would not by any means be that person who should do so.

But, although I may intend no more than justice, it will perhaps be difficult to hinder those who know the man's views, from construing it as a partial favour: and especially if the eager-eyed observer has been formerly touched herself, and would triumph that her friend had been no more able to escape than she. n.o.ble minds, emulative of perfection, (and yet the pa.s.sion properly directed, I do not take to be an imperfection neither,) may be allowed a little generous envy, I think.

If I meant by this a reflection, by way of revenge, it is but a revenge, my dear, in the soft sense of the word. I love, as I have told you, your pleasantry. Although at the time your reproof may pain me a little; yet, on recollection, when I find it more of the cautioning friend than of the satirizing observer, I shall be all grat.i.tude upon it. All the business will be this; I shall be sensible of the pain in the present letter perhaps; but I shall thank you in the next, and ever after.

In this way, I hope, my dear, you will account for a little of that sensibility which you find above, and perhaps still more, as I proceed.--You frequently remind me, by an excellent example, your own to me, that I must not spare you!

I am not conscious, that I have written any thing of this man, that has not been more in his dispraise than in his favour. Such is the man, that I think I must have been faulty, and ought to take myself to account, if I had not. But you think otherwise, I will not put you upon labouring the proof, as you call it. My conduct must then have a faulty appearance at least, and I will endeavour to rectify it. But of this I a.s.sure you, that whatever interpretation my words were capable of, I intended not any reserve to you. I wrote my heart at the time: if I had had thought of disguising it, or been conscious that there was reason for doing so, perhaps I had not given you the opportunity of remarking upon my curiosity after his relations' esteem for me; nor upon my conditional liking, and such-like. All I intended by the first, I believe, I honestly told you at the time. To that letter I therefore refer, whether it make for me, or against me: and by the other, that I might bear in mind, what it became a person of my s.e.x and character to be and to do, in such an unhappy situation, where the imputed love is thought an undutiful, and therefore a criminal pa.s.sion; and where the supported object of it is a man of faulty morals too. And I am sure you will excuse my desire of appearing at those times the person I ought to be; had I no other view in it but to merit the continuance of your good opinion.

But that I may acquit myself of having reserves--O, my dear, I must here break off--!

LETTER x.x.xIX

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE MONDAY, MARCH 12.

This letter will account to you, my dear, for my abrupt breaking off in the answer I was writing to yours of yesterday; and which, possibly, I shall not be able to finish and send you till to-morrow or next day; having a great deal to say to the subjects you put to me in it. What I am now to give you are the particulars of another effort made by my friends, through the good Mrs. Norton.

It seems they had sent to her yesterday, to be here this day, to take their instructions, and to try what she could do with me. It would, at least, I suppose they thought, have this effect; to render me inexcusable with her; or to let her see, that there was no room for the expostulations she had often wanted to make in my favour to my mother.

The declaration, that my heart was free, afforded them an argument to prove obstinacy and perverseness upon me; since it could be nothing else that governed me in my opposition to their wills, if I had no particular esteem for another man. And now, that I have given them reason (in order to obviate this argument) to suppose that I have a preference to another, they are resolved to carry their schemes into execution as soon as possible. And in order to this, they sent for this good woman, for whom they know I have even a filial regard.

She found a.s.sembled my father and mother, my brother and sister, my two uncles, and my aunt Hervey.

My brother acquainted her with all that had pa.s.sed since she was last permitted to see me; with the contents of my letters avowing my regard for Mr. Lovelace (as they all interpreted them); with the substance of their answers to them; and with their resolutions.

My mother spoke next; and delivered herself to this effect, as the good woman told me.

After reciting how many times I had been indulged in my refusals of different men, and the pains she had taken with me, to induce me to oblige my whole family in one instance out of five or six, and my obstinacy upon it; 'O my good Mrs. Norton, said the dear lady, could you have thought, that my Clarissa and your Clarissa was capable of so determined an opposition to the will of parents so indulgent to her? But see what you can do with her. The matter is gone too far to be receded from on our parts. Her father had concluded every thing with Mr. Solmes, not doubting her compliance. Such n.o.ble settlements, Mrs. Norton, and such advantages to the whole family!--In short, she has it in her power to lay an obligation upon us all. Mr. Solmes, knowing she has good principles, and hoping by his patience now, and good treatment hereafter, to engage her grat.i.tude, and by degrees her love, is willing to overlook all!--'

[Overlook all, my dear! Mr. Solmes to overlook all! There's a word!]

'So, Mrs. Norton, if you are convinced, that it is a child's duty to submit to her parents' authority, in the most important point as well as in the least, I beg you will try your influence over her: I have none: her father has none: her uncles neither: although it is her apparent interest to oblige us all; for, on that condition, her grandfather's estate is not half of what, living and dying, is purposed to be done for her. If any body can prevail with her, it is you; and I hope you will heartily enter upon this task.'

The good woman asked, Whether she was permitted to expostulate with them upon the occasion, before she came up to me?