Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady Volume II Part 19

I am, dear Madam, with inviolable respect, your ever obliged and faithful humble servant, CHARLES HICKMAN.

LETTER XXIII

MRS. HOWE, TO CHARLES HICKMAN, ESQ. THURSDAY, MARCH 30.

I cannot but say, Mr. Hickman, but you have cause to be dissatisfied--to be out of humour--to be displeased--with Nancy--but, upon my word; but indeed--What shall I say?--Yet this I will say, that you good young gentlemen know nothing at all of our s.e.x. Shall I tell you--but why should I? And yet I will, that if Nancy did not think well of you upon the main, she is too generous to treat you so freely as she does.--Don't you think she has courage enough to tell me, she would not see you, and to refuse at any time seeing you, as she knows on what account you come, if she had not something in her head favourable to you?--Fie! that I am forced to say thus much in writing, when I have hinted it to you twenty and twenty times by word of mouth!

But if you are so indifferent, Mr. Hickman--if you think you can part with her for her skittish tricks--if my interest in your favour--Why, Mr. Hickman, I must tell you that my Nancy is worth bearing with. If she be foolish--what is that owing to?--Is it not to her wit? Let me tell you, Sir, you cannot have the convenience without the inconvenience.

What workman loves not a sharp tool to work with? But is there not more danger from a sharp tool than from a blunt one? And what workman will throw away a sharp tool, because it may cut his fingers? Wit may be likened to a sharp tool. And there is something very pretty in wit, let me tell you. Often and often have I been forced to smile at her arch turns upon me, when I could have beat her for them. And, pray, don't I bear a great deal from her?--And why? because I love her. And would you not wish me to judge of your love for her by my own? And would not you bear with her?--Don't you love her (what though with another sort of love?) as well as I do? I do a.s.sure you, Sir, that if I thought you did not--Well, but it is plain that you don't!--And is it plain that you don't?--Well, then, you must do as you think best.

Well might the merit of your pa.s.sion be doubted, you say, if, like Mr.

Solmes--fiddle-faddle!--Why, you are a captious man, I think!--Has Nancy been so plain in her repulses of you as Miss Clary Harlowe has been to Mr. Solmes?--Does Nancy love any man better than you, although she may not shew so much love to you as you wish for?--If she did, let me tell you, she would have let us all hear of it.--What idle comparisons then!

But it mat be you are tired out. It may be you have seen somebody else--it may be you would wish to change mistresses with that gay wretch Mr. Lovelace. It may be too, that, in that case, Nancy would not be sorry to change lovers--The truly-admirable Miss Clarissa Harlowe!--Good lack!-but take care, Mr. Hickman, that you do not praise any woman living, let her be as admirable and as excellent as she will, above your own mistress. No polite man will do that, surely. And take care too, that you do not make her or me think you are in earnest in your anger--just though it may be, as anger only--I would not for a thousand pounds, that Nancy should know that you can so easily part with her, if you have the love for her which you declare you have. Be sure, if you are not absolutely determined, that you do not so much as whisper the contents of this your letter to your own heart, as I may say.

Her treatment of you, you say, does no credit either to her education or fine sense. Very home put, truly! Nevertheless, so say I. But is not hers the disgrace, more than yours? I can a.s.sure you, that every body blames her for it. And why do they blame her?--Why? because they think you merit better treatment at her hands: And is not this to your credit?

Who but pities you, and blames he? Do the servants, who, as you observe, see her skittish airs, disrespect you for them? Do they not, at such times, look concerned for you? Are they not then doubly officious in their respects and services to you?--I have observed, with pleasure, that they are.

But you are afraid you shall be thought tame, perhaps, when married.

That you shall not be though manly enough, I warrant!--And this was poor Mr. Howe's fear. And many a tug did this lordly fear cost us both, G.o.d knows!--Many more than needed, I am sure:--and more than ought to have been, had he known how to bear and forbear; as is the duty of those who pretend to have most sense--And, pray, which would you have to have most sense, the woman or the man?

Well, Sir, and now what remains, if you really love Nancy so well as you say you do?--Why, I leave that to you. You may, if you please, come to breakfast with me in the morning. But with no full heart, nor resenting looks, I advise you; except you can brave it out. That have I, when provoked, done many a time with my husband, but never did I get any thing by it with my daughter: much less will you. Of which, for your observation, I thought fit to advise you. As from

Your friend, Anabella Howe.

LETTER XXIV

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE THURSDAY MORNING.

I will now take some notice of your last favour. But being so far behind-hand with you, must be brief.

In the first place, as to your reproofs, thus shall I discharge myself of that part of my subject. Is it likely, think you, that I should avoid deserving them now-and-then, occasionally, when I admire the manner in which you give me your rebukes, and love you the better for them? And when you are so well ent.i.tled to give them? For what faults can you possibly have, unless your relations are so kind as to find you a few to keep their many in countenance?--But they are as king to me in this, as to you; for I may venture to affirm, That any one who should read your letters, and would say you were right, would not on reading mine, condemn me for them quite wrong.

Your resolution not to leave your father's house is right--if you can stay in it, and avoid being Solmes's wife.

I think you have answered Solmes's letter, as I should have answered it.--Will you not compliment me and yourself at once, by saying, that was right?

You have, in your letters to your uncle and the rest, done all that you ought to do. You are wholly guiltless of the consequence, be it what it will. To offer to give up your estate!--That would not I have done! You see this offer staggered them: they took time to consider of it. They made my heart ache in the time they took. I was afraid they would have taken you at your word: and so, but for shame, and for fear of Lovelace, I dare say they would. You are too n.o.ble for them. This, I repeat, is an offer I would not have made. Let me beg of you, my dear, never to repeat the temptation to them.

I freely own to you, that their usage of you upon it, and Lovelace's different treatment of you* in his letter received at the same time, would have made me his, past redemption. The duce take the man, I was going to say, for not having so much regard to his character and morals, as would have entirely justified such a step in a CLARISSA, persecuted as she is!

* See Letter XVIII.

I wonder not at your appointment with him. I may further touch upon some part of this subject by-and-by.

Pray--pray--I pray you now, my dearest friend, contrive to send your Betty Banes to me!--Does the Coventry Act extend to women, know ye?--The least I will do, shall be, to send her home well soused in and dragged through our deepest horsepond. I'll engage, if I get her hither, that she will keep the anniversary of her deliverance as long as she lives.

I wonder not at Lovelace's saucy answer, saucy as it really is.* If he loves you as he ought, he must be vexed at so great a disappointment.

The man must have been a detestable hypocrite, I think, had he not shown his vexation. Your expectations of such a christian command of temper in him, in a disappointment of this nature especially, are too early by almost half a century in a man of his const.i.tution. But nevertheless I am very far from blaming you for your resentment.

* See Letter XX.

I shall be all impatience to know how this matter ends between you and him. But a few inches of brick wall between you so lately; and now such mountains?--And you think to hold it?--May be so!

You see, you say, that the temper he shewed in his letter was not natural to him. Wretched creepers and insinuators! Yet when opportunity serves, as insolent encroachers!--This very Hickman, I make no doubt, would be as saucy as your Lovelace, if he dared. He has not half the arrogant bravery of the other, and can better hide his horns; that's all. But whenever he has the power, depend upon it, he will b.u.t.t at one as valiantly as the other.

If ever I should be persuaded to have him, I shall watch how the obsequious lover goes off; and how the imperative husband comes upon him; in short, how he ascends, and how I descend, in the matrimonial wheel, never to take my turn again, but by fits and starts like the feeble struggles of a sinking state for its dying liberty.

All good-natured men are pa.s.sionate, says Mr. Lovelace. A pretty plea to a beloved object in the plenitude of her power! As much as to say, 'Greatly I value you, Madam, I will not take pains to curb my pa.s.sions to oblige you'--Methinks I should be glad to hear from Mr. Hickman such a plea for good nature as this.

Indeed, we are too apt to make allowances for such tempers as early indulgence has made uncontroulable; and therefore habitually evil. But if a boisterous temper, when under obligation, is to be thus allowed for, what, when the tables are turned, will it expect? You know a husband, who, I fancy, had some of these early allowances made for him: and you see that neither himself nor any body else is the happier for it.

The suiting of the tempers of two persons who are to come together, is a great matter: and there should be boundaries fixed between them, by consent as it were, beyond which neither should go: and each should hold the other to it; or there would probably be encroachment in both. To ill.u.s.trate my a.s.sertion by a very high, and by a more manly (as some would think it) than womanly instance--if the boundaries of the three estates that const.i.tute our political union were not known, and occasionally a.s.serted, what would become of the prerogatives and privileges of each? The two branches of the legislature would encroach upon each other; and the executive power would swallow up both.

But if two persons of discretion, you'll say, come together--

Ay, my dear, that's true: but, if none but persons of discretion were to marry--And would it not surprise you if I were to advance, that the persons of discretion are generally single?--Such persons are apt to consider too much, to resolve.--Are not you and I complimented as such?--And would either of us marry, if the fellows and our friends would let us alone?

But to the former point;--had Lovelace made his addresses to me, (unless indeed I had been taken with a liking for him more than conditional,) I would have forbid him, upon the first pa.s.sionate instance of his good-nature, as he calls it, ever to see me more: 'Thou must bear with me, honest friend, might I have said [had I condescended to say any thing to him] an hundred times more than this:--Begone, therefore!--I bear with no pa.s.sions that are predominant to that thou has pretended for me!'

But to one of your mild and gentle temper, it would be all one, were you married, whether the man were a Lovelace or a Hickman in his spirit.--You are so obediently principled, that perhaps you would have told a mild man, that he must not entreat, but command; and that it was beneath him not to exact from you the obedience you had so solemnly vowed to him at the altar.--I know of old, my dear, your meek regard to that little piddling part of the marriage-vow which some prerogative-monger foisted into the office, to make that a duty, which he knew was not a right.

Our way of training-up, you say, makes us need the protection of the brave. Very true: And how extremely brave and gallant is it, that this brave man will free us from all insults but those which will go nearest to our hearts; that is to say, his own!

How artfully has Lovelace, in the abstract you give me of one of his letters, calculated to your meridian! Generous spirits hate compulsion!--He is certainly a deeper creature by much than once we thought him. He knows, as you intimate, that his own wild pranks cannot be concealed: and so owns just enough to palliate (because it teaches you not to be surprised at) any new one, that may come to your ears; and then, truly, he is, however faulty, a mighty ingenuous man; and by no means an hypocrite: a character the most odious of all others, to our s.e.x, in a lover, and the least to be forgiven, were it only because, when detected, it makes us doubt the justice of those praises which we are willing to believe he thought to be our due.

By means of this supposed ingenuity, Lovelace obtains a praise, instead of a merited dispraise; and, like an absolved confessionaire, wipes off as he goes along one score, to begin another: for an eye favourable to him will not see his faults through a magnifying gla.s.s; nor will a woman, willing to hope the best, forbear to impute it to ill-will and prejudice all that charity can make so imputable. And if she even give credit to such of the unfavourable imputations as may be too flagrant to be doubted, she will be very apt to take in the future hope, which he inculcates, and which to question would be to question her own power, and perhaps merit: and thus may a woman be inclined to make a slight, even a fancied merit atone for the most glaring vice.

I have a reason, a new one, for this preachment upon a text you have given me. But, till I am better informed, I will not explain myself.

If it come out, as I shrewdly suspect it will, the man, my dear, is a devil; and you must rather think of--I protest I had like to have said Solmes than him.

But let this be as it will, shall I tell you, how, after all his offences, he may creep in with you again?

I will. Thus then: It is but to claim for himself the good-natured character: and this, granted, will blot out the fault of pa.s.sionate insolence: and so he will have nothing to do, but this hour to accustom you to insult; the next, to bring you to forgive him, upon his submission: the consequence must be, that he will, by this teazing, break your resentment all to pieces: and then, a little more of the insult, and a little less of the submission, on his part, will go down, till nothing else but the first will be seen, and not a bit of the second. You will then be afraid to provoke so offensive a spirit: and at last will be brought so prettily, and so audibly, to p.r.o.nounce the little reptile word OBEY, that it will do one's heart good to hear you.

The Muscovite wife then takes place of the managed mistress. And if you doubt the progression, be pleased, my dear, to take your mother's judgment upon it.