LETTER XXIV
MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE THURSDAY MORNING.
I will now take some notice of your last favour. But being so farbehind-hand with you, must be brief.
In the first place, as to your reproofs, thus shall I discharge myselfof that part of my subject. Is it likely, think you, that I should avoiddeserving them now-and-then, occasionally, when I admire the manner inwhich you give me your rebukes, and love you the better for them? Andwhen you are so well entitled to give them? For what faults can youpossibly have, unless your relations are so kind as to find you a few tokeep their many in countenance?--But they are as king to me in this, asto you; for I may venture to affirm, That any one who should readyour 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 canstay in it, and avoid being Solmes's wife.
I think you have answered Solmes's letter, as I should have answeredit.--Will you not compliment me and yourself at once, by saying, thatwas right?
You have, in your letters to your uncle and the rest, done all that youought to do. You are wholly guiltless of the consequence, be it what itwill. To offer to give up your estate!--That would not I have done! Yousee this offer staggered them: they took time to consider of it. Theymade my heart ache in the time they took. I was afraid they would havetaken you at your word: and so, but for shame, and for fear of Lovelace,I dare say they would. You are too noble for them. This, I repeat, is anoffer I would not have made. Let me beg of you, my dear, never to repeatthe temptation to them.
I freely own to you, that their usage of you upon it, and Lovelace'sdifferent treatment of you* in his letter received at the same time,would have made me his, past redemption. The duce take the man, I wasgoing to say, for not having so much regard to his character and morals,as would have entirely justified such a step in a CLARISSA, persecutedas she is!
* See Letter XVIII.
I wonder not at your appointment with him. I may further touch upon somepart of this subject by-and-by.
Pray--pray--I pray you now, my dearest friend, contrive to send yourBetty Banes to me!--Does the Coventry Act extend to women, know ye?--Theleast I will do, shall be, to send her home well soused in and draggedthrough our deepest horsepond. I'll engage, if I get her hither, thatshe 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 heloves 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 shownhis vexation. Your expectations of such a christian command of temperin him, in a disappointment of this nature especially, are too early byalmost half a century in a man of his constitution. But nevertheless Iam very far from blaming you for your resentment.
* See Letter XX.
I shall be all impatience to know how this matter ends between you andhim. But a few inches of brick wall between you so lately; and now suchmountains?--And you think to hold it?--May be so!
You see, you say, that the temper he shewed in his letter was notnatural to him. Wretched creepers and insinuators! Yet when opportunityserves, as insolent encroachers!--This very Hickman, I make no doubt,would be as saucy as your Lovelace, if he dared. He has not half thearrogant bravery of the other, and can better hide his horns; that'sall. But whenever he has the power, depend upon it, he will butt at oneas valiantly as the other.
If ever I should be persuaded to have him, I shall watch how theobsequious lover goes off; and how the imperative husband comes uponhim; in short, how he ascends, and how I descend, in the matrimonialwheel, never to take my turn again, but by fits and starts like thefeeble struggles of a sinking state for its dying liberty.
All good-natured men are passionate, says Mr. Lovelace. A pretty pleato 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 passionsto oblige you'--Methinks I should be glad to hear from Mr. Hickman sucha plea for good nature as this.
Indeed, we are too apt to make allowances for such tempers as earlyindulgence has made uncontroulable; and therefore habitually evil. Butif a boisterous temper, when under obligation, is to be thus allowedfor, what, when the tables are turned, will it expect? You know ahusband, 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 forit.
The suiting of the tempers of two persons who are to come together, isa great matter: and there should be boundaries fixed between them, byconsent as it were, beyond which neither should go: and each should holdthe other to it; or there would probably be encroachment in both. Toillustrate my assertion by a very high, and by a more manly (as somewould think it) than womanly instance--if the boundaries of thethree estates that constitute our political union were not known,and occasionally asserted, what would become of the prerogatives andprivileges of each? The two branches of the legislature would encroachupon 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 wereto marry--And would it not surprise you if I were to advance, that thepersons of discretion are generally single?--Such persons are aptto consider too much, to resolve.--Are not you and I complimented assuch?--And would either of us marry, if the fellows and our friendswould let us alone?
But to the former point;--had Lovelace made his addresses to me, (unlessindeed I had been taken with a liking for him more than conditional,)I would have forbid him, upon the first passionate instance of hisgood-nature, as he calls it, ever to see me more: 'Thou must bear withme, honest friend, might I have said [had I condescended to say anything to him] an hundred times more than this:--Begone, therefore!--Ibear with no passions that are predominant to that thou has pretendedfor me!'
But to one of your mild and gentle temper, it would be all one, wereyou married, whether the man were a Lovelace or a Hickman in hisspirit.--You are so obediently principled, that perhaps you would havetold a mild man, that he must not entreat, but command; and that itwas beneath him not to exact from you the obedience you had so solemnlyvowed to him at the altar.--I know of old, my dear, your meek regardto that little piddling part of the marriage-vow which someprerogative-monger foisted into the office, to make that a duty, whichhe knew was not a right.
Our way of training-up, you say, makes us need the protection of thebrave. Very true: And how extremely brave and gallant is it, that thisbrave man will free us from all insults but those which will go nearestto our hearts; that is to say, his own!
How artfully has Lovelace, in the abstract you give me of one ofhis letters, calculated to your meridian! Generous spirits hatecompulsion!--He is certainly a deeper creature by much than once wethought him. He knows, as you intimate, that his own wild pranks cannotbe concealed: and so owns just enough to palliate (because it teachesyou not to be surprised at) any new one, that may come to your ears; andthen, truly, he is, however faulty, a mighty ingenuous man; and by nomeans an hypocrite: a character the most odious of all others, to oursex, 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 weare willing to believe he thought to be our due.
By means of this supposed ingenuity, Lovelace obtains a praise, insteadof a merited dispraise; and, like an absolved confessionaire, wipes offas he goes along one score, to begin another: for an eye favourableto him will not see his faults through a magnifying glass; nor will awoman, willing to hope the best, forbear to impute it to ill-will andprejudice all that charity can make so imputable. And if she even givecredit to such of the unfavourable imputations as may be too flagrantto be doubted, she will be very apt to take in the future hope, whichhe inculcates, and which to question would be to question her own power,and perhaps merit: and thus may a woman be inclined to ma
ke 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 havegiven 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 adevil; and you must rather think of--I protest I had like to have saidSolmes than him.
But let this be as it will, shall I tell you, how, after all hisoffences, he may creep in with you again?
I will. Thus then: It is but to claim for himself the good-naturedcharacter: and this, granted, will blot out the fault of passionateinsolence: and so he will have nothing to do, but this hour toaccustom you to insult; the next, to bring you to forgive him, uponhis submission: the consequence must be, that he will, by this teazing,break your resentment all to pieces: and then, a little more of theinsult, 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 thesecond. You will then be afraid to provoke so offensive a spirit: andat last will be brought so prettily, and so audibly, to pronounce thelittle 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 ifyou doubt the progression, be pleased, my dear, to take your mother'sjudgment upon it.
But no more of this just now. Your situation is become too critical topermit me to dwell upon these sort of topics. And yet this is but anaffected levity with me. My heart, as I have heretofore said, is asincere sharer in all your distresses. My sun-shine darts but througha drizly cloud. My eye, were you to see it, when it seems to you sogladdened, as you mentioned in a former, is more than ready to overflow,even at the very passages perhaps upon which you impute to me thearchness of exultation.
But now the unheard-of cruelty and perverseness of some of your friends[relations, I should say--I am always blundering thus!] the as strangedeterminedness of others; your present quarrel with Lovelace; and yourapproaching interview with Solmes, from which you are right to apprehenda great deal; are such considerable circumstances in your story, that itis fit they should engross all my attention.
You ask me to advise you how to behave upon Solmes's visit. I cannot formy life. I know they expect a great deal from it: you had not else hadyour long day complied with. All I will say is, That if Solmes cannotbe prevailed for, now that Lovelace has so much offended you, he neverwill. When the interview is over, I doubt not but that I shall havereason to say, that all you did, that all you said, was right, and couldnot be better: yet, if I don't think so, I won't say so; that I promiseyou.
Only let me advise you to pull up a spirit, even to your uncle, if therebe occasion. Resent the vile and foolish treatment you meet with, inwhich he has taken so large a share, and make him ashamed of it, if youcan.
I know not, upon recollection, but this interview may be a good thingfor you, however designed. For when Solmes sees (if that be to be so)that it is impossible he should succeed with you; and your relations seeit too; the one must, I think, recede, and the other come to terms withyou, upon offers, that it is my opinion, will go hard enough with you tocomply with; when the still harder are dispensed with.
There are several passages in your last letters, as well as in yourformer, which authorize me to say this. But it would be unseasonable totouch this subject farther just now.
But, upon the whole, I have no patience to see you thus made sport ofyour brother's and sister's cruelty: For what, after so much steadinesson your part, in so many trials, can be their hope? except indeed it beto drive you to extremity, and to ruin you in the opinion of your unclesas well as father.
I urge you by all means to send out of their reach all the lettersand papers you would not have them see. Methinks, I would wish you todeposit likewise a parcel of clothes, linen, and the like, before yourinterview with Solmes: lest you should not have an opportunity for itafterwards. Robin shall fetch it away on the first orders by day or bynight.
I am in hopes to procure from my mother, if things come to extremity,leave for you to be privately with us.
I will condition to be good-humoured, and even kind, to HER favourite,if she will shew me an indulgence that shall make me serviceable toMINE.
This alternative has been a good while in my head. But as your foolishuncle has so strangely attached my mother to their views, I cannotpromise that I shall succeed as I wish.
Do not absolutely despair, however. What though the contention will bebetween woman and woman? I fancy I shall be able to manage it, by thehelp of a little female perseverance. Your quarrel with Lovelace, ifit continue, will strengthen my hands. And the offers you made in youranswer to your uncle Harlowe's letter of Sunday night last, duly dweltupon, must add force to my pleas.
I depend upon your forgiveness of all the perhaps unseasonableflippancies of your naturally too lively, yet most sincerelysympathizing, ANNA HOWE.