LETTER XV
MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE FRIDAY, MARCH 3.
I have both your letters at once. It is very unhappy, my dear, sinceyour friends will have you marry, that a person of your merit should beaddressed by a succession of worthless creatures, who have nothing buttheir presumption for their excuse.
That these presumers appear not in this very unworthy light to some ofyour friends, is, because their defects are not so striking to themas to others.--And why? Shall I venture to tell you?--Because they arenearer their own standard--Modesty, after all, perhaps has a concern init; for how should they think that a niece or sister of theirs [I willnot go higher, for fear of incurring your displeasure] should be anangel?
But where indeed is the man to be found (who has the least share of duediffidence) that dares to look up to Miss Clarissa Harlowe with hope, orwith any thing but wishes? Thus the bold and forward, not being sensibleof their defects, aspire; while the modesty of the really worthy fillsthem with too much reverence to permit them to explain themselves. Henceyour Symmes's, your Byron's, your Mullins's, your Wyerley's (the bestof the herd), and your Solmes's, in turn, invade you--Wretches that,looking upon the rest of your family, need not despair of succeeding inan alliance with it--But to you, what an inexcusable presumption!
Yet I am afraid all opposition will be in vain. You must, you will, Idoubt, be sacrificed to this odious man. I know your family. There willbe no resisting such baits as he has thrown out. O, my dear, my belovedfriend! and are such charming qualities, is such exalted merit, to besunk in such a marriage!--You must not, your uncle tells your mother,dispute their authority. AUTHORITY! what a full word is that in themouth of a narrow-minded person, who happened to be born thirty yearsbefore one!--Of your uncles I speak; for as to the paternal authority,that ought to be sacred.--But should not parents have reason for whatthey do?
Wonder not, however, at your Bell's unsisterly behaviour in this affair:I have a particular to add to the inducements your insolent brother isgoverned by, which will account for all her driving. You have alreadyowned, that her outward eye was from the first struck with the figureand address of the man whom she pretends to despise, and who, 'tiscertain, thoroughly despises her: but you have not told me, that stillshe loves him of all men. Bell has a meanness in her very pride; thatmeanness rises with her pride, and goes hand in hand with it; and noone is so proud as Bell. She has owned her love, her uneasy days,and sleepless nights, and her revenge grafted upon her love, to herfavourite Betty Barnes--To lay herself in the power of a servant'stongue! Poor creature!--But LIKE little souls will find one anotherout, and mingle, as well as LIKE great ones. This, however, she told thewench in strict confidence: and thus, by way of the female round-about,as Lovelace had the sauciness on such another occasion, in ridicule ofour sex, to call it, Betty (pleased to be thought worthy of a secret,and to have an opportunity of inveighing against Lovelace's perfidy,as she would have it to be) told it to one of her confidants:that confidant, with like injunctions of secrecy, to Miss Lloyd'sHarriot--Harriot to Miss Lloyd--Miss Lloyd to me--I to you--with leaveto make what you please of it.
And now you will not wonder to find Miss Bell an implacable rival,rather than an affectionate sister; and will be able to account for thewords witchcraft, syren, and such like, thrown out against you; and forher driving on for a fixed day for sacrificing you to Solmes: in short,for her rudeness and violence of every kind.
What a sweet revenge will she take, as well upon Lovelace as upon you,if she can procure her rival sister to be married to the man that sisterhates; and so prevent her having the man whom she herself loves (whethershe have hope of him or not), and whom she suspects her sister loves!
Poisons and poniard have often been set to work by minds inflamed bydisappointed love, and actuated by revenge.--Will you wonder, then, thatthe ties of relationship in such a case have no force, and that a sisterforgets to be a sister?
Now I know this to be her secret motive, (the more grating to her, asher pride is concerned to make her disavow it), and can consider itjoined with her former envy, and as strengthened by a brother, who hassuch an ascendant over the whole family; and whose interest (slave to itas he always was) engaged him to ruin you with every one: both possessedof the ears of all your family, and having it as much in their power asin their will to misrepresent all you say, all you do; such subject alsoas to the rencounter, and Lovelace's want of morals, to expatiate upon:your whole family likewise avowedly attached to the odious man by meansof the captivating proposals he has made them;--when I consider allthese things, I am full of apprehensions for you.--O my dear, how willyou be able to maintain your ground;--I am sure, (alas! I am too sure)that they will subdue such a fine spirit as yours, unused to opposition;and (tell it not in Gath) you must be Mrs. Solmes!
Mean time, it is now easy, as you will observe, to guess from whatquarter the report I mentioned to you in one of my former, came,That the younger sister has robbed the elder of her lover:* for Bettywhispered it, at the time she whispered the rest, that neither Lovelacenor you had done honourably by her young mistress.--How cruel, my dear,in you, to rob the poor Bella of the only lover she only had!--At theinstant too that she was priding herself, that now at last she shouldhave it in her power not only to gratify her own susceptibilities, butto give an example to the flirts of her sex** (my worship's self inher eye) how to govern their man with a silken rein, and without acurb-bridle!
* Letter I.
** Letter II.
Upon the whole, I have now no doubt of their persevering in favour ofthe despicable Solmes; and of their dependence upon the gentleness ofyour temper, and the regard you have for their favour, and for your ownreputation. And now I am more than ever convinced of the propriety ofthe advice I formerly gave you, to keep in your own hands the estatebequeathed to you by your grandfather.--Had you done so, it would haveprocured you at least an outward respect from your brother and sister,which would have made them conceal the envy and ill-will that now arebursting upon you from hearts so narrow.
I must harp a little more upon this string--Do not you observe, how muchyour brother's influence has overtopped yours, since he has got intofortunes so considerable, and since you have given some of them anappetite to continue in themselves the possession of your estate, unlessyou comply with their terms?
I know your dutiful, your laudable motives; and one would have thought,that you might have trusted to a father who so dearly loved you. But hadyou been actually in possession of that estate, and living up to it, andupon it, (your youth protected from blighting tongues by the companyof your prudent Norton, as you had proposed,) do you think that yourbrother, grudging it to you at the time as he did, and looking upon itas his right as an only son, would have been practising about it, andaiming at it? I told you some time ago, that I thought your trials butproportioned to your prudence:* but you will be more than woman, ifyou can extricate yourself with honour, having such violent spirits andsordid minds in some, and such tyrannical and despotic wills in others,to deal with. Indeed, all may be done, and the world be taught furtherto admire you for your blind duty and will-less resignation, if you canpersuade yourself to be Mrs. Solmes.
* Letter I.
I am pleased with the instances you give me of Mr. Lovelace'sbenevolence to his own tenants, and with his little gift to youruncle's. Mrs. Fortescue allows him to be the best of landlords: I mighthave told you that, had I thought it necessary to put you into somelittle conceit of him. He has qualities, in short, that may make hima tolerable creature on the other side of fifty: but God help thepoor woman to whose lot he shall fall till then! women, I should say,perhaps; since he may break half-a-dozen hearts before that time.--Butto the point I was upon--Shall we not have reason to commend thetenant's grateful honesty, if we are told, that with joy the poor mancalled out your uncle, and on the spot paid him in part of his debtthose two guineas?--But what shall we say of that landlord, who, thoughhe knew the poor man to be quite des
titute, could take it; and, sayingnothing while Mr. Lovelace staid, as soon as he was gone, tell of it inpraise of the poor fellow's honesty?--Were this so, and were not thatlandlord related to my dearest friend, how should I despise such awretch?--But, perhaps, the story is aggravated. Covetous people haveevery one's ill word: and so indeed they ought; because they areonly solicitous to keep that which they prefer to every one's goodone.--Covetous indeed would they be, who deserved neither, yet expectedboth!
I long for your next letter. Continue to be as particular as possible.I can think of no other subject but what relates to you and to youraffairs: for I am, and ever will be, most affectionately,
Your own, ANNA HOWE.