LETTER III
MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TUESDAY MORN. 7 O'CLOCK
My mother and cousin are already gone off in our chariot and four,attended by their doughty 'squire on horseback, and he by two of hisown servants, and one of my mother's. They both love parade when theygo abroad, at least in compliment to one another; which shews, thateach thinks the other does. Robin is your servant and mine, and nobody'selse--and the day is all my own.
I must begin with blaming you, my dear, for your resolution not tolitigate for your right, if occasion were to be given you. Justice isdue to ourselves, as well as to every body else. Still more must I blameyou for declaring to your aunt and sister, that you will not: since (asthey will tell it to your father and brother) the declaration must needsgive advantage to spirits who have so little of that generosity forwhich you are so much distinguished.
There never was a spirit in the world that would insult where it dared,but it would creep and cringe where it dared not. Let me remind you ofa sentence of your own, the occasion for which I have forgotten: 'Thatlittle spirits will always accommodate themselves to the temper of thosethey would work upon: will fawn upon a sturdy-tempered person: willinsult the meek:'--And another given to Miss Biddulph, upon an occasionyou cannot forget:--'If we assume a dignity in what we say and do, andtake care not to disgrace by arrogance our own assumption, every bodywill treat us with respect and deference.'
I remember that you once made an observation, which you said, you wasobliged to Mrs. Norton for, and she to her father, upon an excellentpreacher, who was but an indifferent liver: 'That to excel in theory,and to excel in practice, generally required different talents; whichdid not always meet in the same person.' Do you, my dear (to whom theoryand practice are the same thing in almost every laudable quality), applythe observation to yourself, in this particular case, where resolutionis required; and where the performance of the will of the defunct is thequestion--no more to be dispensed with by you, in whose favour it wasmade, than by any body else who have only themselves in view by breakingthrough it.
I know how much you despise riches in the main: but yet it behovesyou to remember, that in one instance you yourself have judged themvaluable--'In that they put it into our power to lay obligations; whilethe want of that power puts a person under a necessity of receivingfavours--receiving them perhaps from grudging and narrow spirits, whoknow not how to confer them with that grace, which gives the principalmerit to a beneficent action.'--Reflect upon this, my dear, and see howit agrees with the declaration you have made to your aunt and sister,that you would not resume your estate, were you to be turned out ofdoors, and reduced to indigence and want. Their very fears that you willresume, point out to you the necessity of resuming upon the treatmentyou meet with.
I own, that (at first reading) I was much affected with your mother'sletter sent with the patterns. A strange measure however from a mother;for she did not intend to insult you; and I cannot but lament that sosensible and so fine a woman should stoop to so much art as that letteris written with: and which also appears in some of the conversationsyou have given me an account of. See you not in her passiveness, whatboisterous spirits can obtain from gentler, merely by teasing andill-nature?
I know the pride they have always taken in calling you aHarlowe--Clarissa Harlowe, so formal and so set, at every word,when they are grave or proudly solemn.--Your mother has learnt it ofthem--and as in marriage, so in will, has been taught to bury her ownsuperior name and family in theirs. I have often thought that the samespirit governed them, in this piece of affectation, and others ofthe like nature (as Harlowe-Place, and so-forth, though not the elderbrother's or paternal seat), as governed the tyrant Tudor,* who marryingElizabeth, the heiress of the house of York, made himself a title toa throne, which he would not otherwise have had (being but a basedescendant of the Lancaster line); and proved a gloomy and vilehusband to her; for no other cause, than because she had laid him underobligations which his pride would not permit him to own.--Nor would theunprincely wretch marry her till he was in possession of the crown, thathe might not be supposed to owe it to her claim.
* Henry VII.
You have chidden me, and again will, I doubt not, for the liberties Itake with some of your relations. But my dear, need I tell you, thatpride in ourselves must, and for ever will, provoke contempt, and bringdown upon us abasement from others?--Have we not, in the case of acelebrated bard, observed, that those who aim at more than their due,will be refused the honours they may justly claim?--I am very much lothto offend you; yet I cannot help speaking of your relations, as well asof others, as I think they deserve. Praise or dispraise, is the rewardor punishment which the world confers or inflicts on merit ordemerit; and, for my part, I neither can nor will confound them in theapplication. I despise them all, but your mother: indeed I do: and asfor her--but I will spare the good lady for your sake--and oneargument, indeed, I think may be pleaded in her favour, in the presentcontention--she who has for so many years, and with such absoluteresignation, borne what she has borne to the sacrifice of her own will,may think it an easier task than another person can imagine it, for herdaughter to give up hers. But to think to whose instigation all this isoriginally owing--God forgive me; but with such usage I should have beenwith Lovelace before now! Yet remember, my dear, that the step whichwould not be wondered at from such a hasty-tempered creatures as me,would be inexcusable in such a considerate person as you.
After your mother has been thus drawn in against her judgment, I am theless surprised, that your aunt Hervey should go along with her; sincethe two sisters never separate. I have inquired into the nature of theobligation which Mr. Hervey's indifferent conduct in his affairs haslaid him under--it is only, it seems, that your brother has paid offfor him a mortgage upon one part of his estate, which the mortgagee wasabout to foreclose; and taken it upon himself. A small favour (as he hasample security in his hands) from kindred to kindred: but such a one, itis plain, as has laid the whole family of the Herveys under obligationto the ungenerous lender, who has treated him, and his aunt too (asMiss Dolly Hervey has privately complained), with the less ceremony eversince.
Must I, my dear, call such a creature your brother?--I believe Imust--Because he is your father's son. There is no harm, I hope, insaying that.
I am concerned, that you ever wrote at all to him. It was taking toomuch notice of him: it was adding to his self-significance; and a callupon him to treat you with insolence. A call which you might have beenassured he would not fail to answer.
But such a pretty master as this, to run riot against such a man asLovelace; who had taught him to put his sword into his scabbard, whenhe had pulled it out by accident!--These in-door insolents, who, turningthemselves into bugbears, frighten women, children, and servants, aregenerally cravens among men. Were he to come fairly across me, and sayto my face some of the free things which I am told he has said of mebehind my back, or that (as by your account) he has said of our sex, Iwould take upon myself to ask him two or three questions; although hewere to send me a challenge likewise.
I repeat, you know that I will speak my mind, and write it too. He isnot my brother. Can you say, he is yours?--So, for your life, if youare just, you can't be angry with me: For would you side with a falsebrother against a true friend? A brother may not be a friend: but afriend will always be a brother--mind that, as your uncle Tony says!
I cannot descend so low, as to take very particular notice of theepistles of these poor souls, whom you call uncles. Yet I love to divertmyself with such grotesque characters too. But I know them and love you;and so cannot make the jest of them which their absurdities call for.
You chide me, my dear,* for my freedoms with relations still nearer anddearer to you, than either uncles or brother or sister. You had betterhave permitted me (uncorrected) to have taken my own way. Do not usethose freedoms naturally arise from the subject before us? And from whomarises that subject, I pray you? Can you for one quarter of an hourput yo
urself in my place, or in the place of those who are still moreindifferent to the case than I can be?--If you can--But although I haveyou not often at advantage, I will not push you.
* See Vol. I. Letter XXVIII.
Permit me, however, to subjoin, that well may your father love yourmother, as you say he does. A wife who has no will but his! But werethere not, think you, some struggles between them at first, gout out ofthe question?--Your mother, when a maiden, had, as I have heard (and itis very likely) a good share of those lively spirits which she likedin your father. She has none of them now. How came they to bedissipated?--Ah! my dear!--she has been too long resident inTrophonius's cave, I doubt.*
* Spectator, Vol. VIII. No. 599.
Let me add one reflection upon this subject, and so entitle myself toyour correction for all at once.--It is upon the conduct of those wives(for you and I know more than one such) who can suffer themselves tobe out-blustered and out-gloomed of their own wills, instead of beingfooled out of them by acts of tenderness and complaisance.--I wish,that it does not demonstrate too evidently, that, with some of thesex, insolent controul is a more efficacious subduer than kindness orconcession. Upon my life, my dear, I have often thought, that many of usare mere babies in matrimony: perverse fools when too much indulged andhumoured; creeping slaves, when treated harshly. But shall it be said,that fear makes us more gentle obligers than love?--Forbid it, Honour!Forbid it, Gratitude! Forbid it, Justice! that any woman of sense shouldgive occasion to have this said of her!
Did I think you would have any manner of doubt, from the style orcontents of this letter, whose saucy pen it is that has run on at thisrate, I would write my name at length; since it comes too much from myheart to disavow it: but at present the initials shall serve; and I willgo on again directly.
A.H.