LETTER XII
MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE SATURDAY, MARCH 25.
What can I advise you to do, my noble creature? Your merit is yourcrime. You can no more change your nature, than your persecutors cantheirs. Your distress is owing to the vast disparity between you andthem. What would you have of them? Do they not act in character?--And towhom? To an alien. You are not one of them. They have two dependenciesin their hope to move you to compliance.--Upon their impenetrablenessone [I'd give it a more proper name, if I dared]; the other, on theregard you have always had for your character, [Have they not heretoforeowned as much?] and upon your apprehensions from that of Lovelace, whichwould discredit you, should you take any step by his means to extricateyourself. Then they know, that resentment and unpersuadableness are notnatural to you; and that the anger they have wrought you up to, willsubside, as all extraordinaries soon do; and that once married, you willmake the best of it.
But surely your father's son and eldest daughter have a view (bycommunicating to so narrow a soul all they know of your just aversion tohim) to entail unhappiness for life upon you, were you to have the manwho is already more nearly related to them, than ever he can be to you,although the shocking compulsion should take place.
As to that wretch's perseverance, those only, who know not the man,will wonder at it. He has not the least delicacy. His principal view inmarriage is not to the mind. How shall those beauties be valued, whichcannot be comprehended? Were you to be his, and shew a visible want oftenderness to him, it is my opinion, he would not be much concerned atit. I have heard you well observe, from your Mrs. Norton, That a personwho has any over-ruling passion, will compound by giving up twentysecondary or under-satisfactions, though more laudable ones, in order tohave that gratified.
I'll give you the substance of a conversation [no fear you can be madeto like him worse than you do already] that passed between Sir HarryDowneton and this Solmes, but three days ago, as Sir Harry told it butyesterday to my mother and me. It will confirm to you that what yoursister's insolent Betty reported he should say, of governing by fear,was not of her own head.
Sir Harry told her, he wondered he should wish to obtain you so muchagainst you inclination as every body knew it would be, if he did.
He matter'd not that, he said: coy maids made the fondest wives: [Asorry fellow!] It would not at all grieve him to see a pretty woman makewry faces, if she gave him cause to vex her. And your estate, by theconvenience of its situation, would richly pay him for all he could bearwith your shyness.
He should be sure, he said, after a while, of your complaisance, if notof your love: and in that should be happier than nine parts in ten ofhis married acquaintance.
What a wretch is this!
For the rest, your known virtue would be as great a security to him, ashe could wish for.
She will look upon you, said Sir Harry, if she be forced to marry you,as Elizabeth of France did upon Philip II. of Spain, when he receivedher on his frontiers as her husband, who was to have been but herfather-in-law: that is, with fear and terror, rather than withcomplaisance and love: and you will perhaps be as surly to her, as thatold monarch was to his young bride.
Fear and terror, the wretch, the horrid wretch! said, looked pretty ina bride as well as in a wife: and, laughing, [yes, my dear, the hideousfellow laughed immoderately, as Sir Harry told us, when he said it,] itshould be his care to perpetuate the occasion for that fear, if he couldnot think he had the love. And, truly, he was of opinion, that ifLOVE and FEAR must be separated in matrimony, the man who made himselffeared, fared best.
If my eyes would carry with them the execution which the eyes of thebasilisk are said to do, I would make it my first business to see thiscreature.
My mother, however, says, it would be a prodigious merit in you, if youcould get over your aversion to him. Where, asks she [as you have beenasked before], is the praise-worthiness of obedience, if it be only paidin instance where we give up nothing?
What a fatality, that you have no better an option--either a Scylla or aCharybdis.
Were it not you, I should know how (barbarously as you are used) toadvise you in a moment. But such a noble character to suffer from a(supposed) rashness and indiscretion of such a nature, would, as I haveheretofore observed, be a wound to the sex.
While I was in hope, that the asserting of your own independence wouldhave helped you, I was pleased that you had one resource, as I thought.But now, that you have so well proved, that such a step would not availyou, I am entirely at a loss what to say.
I will lay down my pen, and think.
*****
I have considered, and considered again; but, I protest, I know no morewhat to say now, than before. Only this: That I am young, like yourself;and have a much weaker judgment, and stronger passions, than you have.
I have heretofore said, that you have offered as much as you ought, inoffering to live single. If you were never to marry, the estate they areso loth should go out of their name, would, in time, I suppose, revertto your brother: and he or his would have it, perhaps, much morecertainly this way, than by the precarious reversions which Solmes makesthem hope for. Have you put this into their odd heads, my dear?--Thetyrant word AUTHORITY, as they use it, can be the only objection againstthis offer.
One thing you must consider, that, if you leave your parents, your dutyand love will not suffer you to justify yourself by an appeal againstthem; and so you'll have the world against you. And should Lovelacecontinue his wild life, and behave ungratefully to you, will not hisbaseness seem to justify their cruel treatment of you, as well as theirdislike of him?
May heaven direct you for the best!--I can only say, that for my ownpart, I would do any thing, go any where, rather than be compelled tomarry the man I hate; and (were he such a man as Solmes) must alwayshate. Nor could I have borne what you have borne, if from father anduncles, not from brother and sister.
My mother will have it, that after they have tried their utmost effortsto bring you into their measures, and find them ineffectual, they willrecede. But I cannot say I am of her mind. She does not own, she hasany authority for this, but her own conjecture. I should otherwise havehoped, that your uncle Antony and she had been in on one secret, andthat favourable to you. Woe be to one of them at least [to you uncle tobe sure I mean] if they should be in any other!
You must, if possible, avoid being carried to that uncle's. The man, theparson, your brother and sister present!--They'll certainly there marryyou to the wretch. Nor will your newly-raised spirit support you in yourresistance on such an occasion. Your meekness will return; and youwill have nothing for it but tears [tears despised by them all] andineffectual appeals and lamentations: and these tears when the ceremonyis profaned, you must suddenly dry up; and endeavour to dispose ofyourself to such a humble frame of mind, as may induce your new-madelord to forgive all your past declarations of aversion.
In short, my dear, you must then blandish him over with a confession,that all your past behaviour was maidenly reserve only: and it will beyour part to convince him of the truth of his imprudent sarcasm, thatthe coyest maids make the fondest wives. Thus will you enter the statewith a high sense of obligation to his forgiving goodness: and if youwill not be kept to it by that fear, by which he proposes to govern, Iam much mistaken.
Yet, after all, I must leave the point undetermined, and only to bedetermined, as you find they recede from their avowed purpose, orresolve to remove you to your uncle Antony's. But I must repeat mywishes, that something may fall out, that neither of these men may callyou his!--And may you live single, my dearest friend, till some manshall offer, that may be as worthy of you, as man can be!
But yet, methinks, I would not, that you, who are so admirably qualifiedto adorn the married state, should be always single. You know I amincapable of flattery; and that I always speak and write the sincerestdictates of my heart. Nor can you, from what you must know of yourown merit (taken only in a comparative light with others) doub
t mysincerity. For why should a person who delight to find out and admireevery thing that is praise-worthy in another, be supposed ignorant oflike perfections in herself, when she could not so much admire them inanother, if she had them not herself? And why may not I give her thosepraises, which she would give to any other, who had but half of herexcellencies?--Especially when she is incapable of pride and vain-glory;and neither despises others for the want of her fine qualities, norovervalues herself upon them?--Over-values, did I say!--How can that be?
Forgive me, my beloved friend. My admiration of you (increased, as itis, by every letter you write) will not always be held down in silence;although, in order to avoid offending you, I generally endeavour to keepit from flowing to my pen, when I write to you, or to my lips, wheneverI have the happiness to be in your company.
I will add nothing (though I could add a hundred things on account ofyour latest communications) but that I am
Your ever affectionate and faithful ANNA HOWE.
I hope I have pleased you with my dispatch. I wish I had been able toplease you with my requested advice.
You have given new beauties to the charming Ode which you havetransmitted to me. What pity that the wretches you have to deal with,put you out of your admirable course; in the pursuit of which, like thesun, you was wont to cheer and illuminate all you shone upon!