LETTER XL
MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19.
I have a piece of intelligence to give you, which concerns you much toknow.
Your brother having been assured that you are not married, has taken aresolution to find you out, waylay you, and carry you off. A friend ofhis, a captain of a ship, undertakes to get you on ship-board, and tosail away with you, either to Hull or Leith, in the way to one of yourbrother's houses.
They are very wicked: for in spite of your virtue they conclude you tobe ruined. But if they can be assured when they have you that you arenot, they will secure you till they can bring you out Mrs. Solmes. Meantime, in order to give Mr. Lovelace full employment, they talk of aprosecution which will be set up against him, for some crime they havegot a notion of, which they think, if it do not cost him his life, willmake him fly his country.
This is very early news. Miss Bell told it in confidence, and withmighty triumph over Lovelace, to Miss Lloyd, who is at present herfavourite, though as much you admirer as ever. Miss Lloyd, being veryapprehensive of the mischief which might follow such an attempt, toldit to me, with leave to apprize you privately of it--and yet neithershe nor I would be sorry, perhaps, if Lovelace were to be fairlyhanged--that is to say, if you, my dear, had no objection to it. Butwe cannot bear that such an admirable creature should be made thetennis-ball of two violent spirits--much less that you should be seized,and exposed to the brutal treatment of wretches who have no bowels.
If you can engage Mr. Lovelace to keep his temper upon it, I think youshould acquaint him with it, but not to mention Miss Lloyd. Perhaps hiswicked agent may come at the intelligence, and reveal it to him. Butleave it to your own discretions to do as you think fit in it. All myconcern is, that this daring and foolish project, if carried on, willbe a mean of throwing you more into his power than ever. But as it willconvince you that there can be no hope of a reconciliation, I wish youwere actually married, let the cause for prosecution hinted at be whatit will, short of murder or a rape.
Your Hannah was very thankful for your kind present. She heaped athousand blessings upon you for it. She has Mr. Lovelace's too by thistime.
I am pleased with Mr. Hickman, I can tell you:--for he has sent hertwo guineas by the person who carries Mr. Lovelace's five, as from anunknown hand: nor am I, or you, to know it. But he does a great manythings of this sort, and is as silent as the night in his charities; fornobody knows of them till the gratitude of the benefited will not letthem be concealed. He is now and then my almoner, and, I believe, alwaysadds to my little benefactions.
But his time is not come to be praised to his face for these things; nordoes he seem to want that encouragement.
The man certainly has a good mind. Nor can we expect in one man everygood quality. But he is really a silly fellow, my dear, to trouble hishead about me, when he sees how much I despise his whole sex; andmust of course make a common man look like a fool, were he not tomake himself look like one, by wishing to pitch his tent so oddly. Ourlikings and dislikings, as I have often thought, are seldom governed byprudence, or with a view to happiness. The eye, my dear, the wicked eye,has such a strict alliance with the heart--and both have such enmity tothe judgment!--What an unequal union, the mind and body! All the senses,like the family at Harlowe-place, in a confederacy against that whichwould animate, and give honour to the whole, were it allowed its properprecedence.
Permit me, I beseech you, before you go to London to send youforty-eight guineas. I mention that sum to oblige you, because, byaccepting back the two to Hannah, I will hold you indebted to mefifty.--Surely this will induce you! You know that I cannot want themoney. I told you that I had near double that sum, and that the half ofit is more than my mother knows I am mistress of. You are afraid that mymother will question me on this subject; and then you think I must ownthe truth. But little as I love equivocation, and little as you wouldallow of it in your Anna Howe, it is hard if I cannot (were I to be putto it ever so closely) find something to say that would bring me off,as you have, what can you do at such a place as London?--You don't knowwhat occasion you may have for messengers, intelligence, and suchlike.If you don't oblige me, I shall not think your stomach so much down asyou say it is, and as, in this one particular, I think it ought to be.
As to the state of things between my mother and me, you know enough ofher temper, not to need to be told that she never espouses or resentswith indifference. Yet will she not remember that I am her daughter. No,truly, I am all my papa's girl.
She was very sensible, surely, of the violence of my poor father'stemper, that she can so long remember that, when acts of tenderness andaffection seem quite forgotten. Some daughters would be tempted to thinkthat controul sat very heavy upon a mother, who can endeavour to exertthe power she has over a child, and regret, for years after death, thatshe had not the same over a husband.
If this manner of expression becomes not me of my mother, the fault willbe somewhat extenuated by the love I always bore to my father, and bythe reverence I shall ever pay to his memory: for he was a fond father,and perhaps would have been as tender a husband, had not my mother andhe been too much of a temper to agree.
The misfortune was, in short, that when one was out of humour, theother would be so too: yet neither of their tempers comparativelybad. Notwithstanding all which, I did not imagine, girl as I was in myfather's life-time, that my mother's part of the yoke sat so heavy uponher neck as she gives me room to think it did, whenever she is pleasedto disclaim her part of me.
Both parents, as I have often thought, should be very careful, if theywould secure to themselves the undivided love of their children, that,of all things, they should avoid such durable contentions with eachother, as should distress their children in choosing their party, whenthey would be glad to reverence both as they ought.
But here is the thing: there is not a better manager of affairs in thesex than my mother; and I believe a notable wife is more impatient ofcontroul than an indolent one. An indolent one, perhaps, thinks shehas some thing to compound for; while women of the other character, Isuppose, know too well their own significance to think highly of that ofany body else. All must be their own way. In one word, because they areuseful, they will be more than useful.
I do assure you, my dear, were I man, and a man who loved my quiet, Iwould not have one of these managing wives on any consideration. I wouldmake it a matter of serious inquiry beforehand, whether my mistress'squalifications, if I heard she was notable, were masculine or feminineones. If indeed I were an indolent supine mortal, who might be in dangerof perhaps choosing to marry for the qualifications of a steward.
But, setting my mother out of the question, because she is my mother,have I not seen how Lady Hartley pranks up herself above all her sex,because she knows how to manage affairs that do not belong to her sexto manage?--Affairs that do no credit to her as a woman to understand;practically, I mean; for the theory of them may not be amiss to beknown.
Indeed, my dear, I do not think a man-woman a pretty character at all:and, as I said, were I a man, I would sooner choose a dove, though itwere fit for nothing but, as the play says, to go tame about house,and breed, than a wife that is setting at work (my insignificant selfpresent perhaps) every busy our my never-resting servants, those ofthe stud not excepted; and who, with a besom in her hand, as I may say,would be continually filling my with apprehensions that she wanted tosweep me out of my own house as useless lumber.
Were indeed the mistress of a family (like the wonderful young lady I somuch and so justly admire) to know how to confine herself within her ownrespectable rounds of the needle, the pen, the housekeeper's bills, thedairy for her amusement; to see the poor fed from superfluities thatwould otherwise be wasted, and exert herself in all the really-usefulbranches of domestic management; then would she move in her propersphere; then would she render herself amiably useful, and respectablynecessary; then would she become the mistress-wheel of the family,[whatever you think of your
Anna Howe, I would not have her be themaster-wheel,] and every body would love her; as every body did you,before your insolent brother came back, flushed with his unmeritedacquirements, and turned all things topsy-turvy.
If you will be informed of the particulars of our contention, afteryou have known in general that your unhappy affair was the subject, whythen, I think I must tell you.
Yet how shall I?==I feel my cheek glow with mingled shame andindignation.--Know then, my dear,--that I have been--as I may say--thatI have been beaten--indeed 'tis true. My mother thought fit to slap myhands to get from me a sheet of a letter she caught me writing to you;which I tore, because she should not read it, and burnt it before herface.
I know this will trouble you: so spare yourself the pains to tell me itdoes.
Mr. Hickman came in presently after. I would not see him. I am eithertoo much a woman to be beat, or too much a child to have an humbleservant--so I told my mother. What can one oppose but sullens, when itwould be unpardonable so much as to think of lifting up a finger?
In the Harlowe style, She will be obeyed, she says: and even Mr. Hickmanshall be forbid the house, if he contributes to the carrying on of acorrespondence which she will not suffer to be continued.
Poor man! He stands a whimsical chance between us. But he knows he issure of my mother; but not of me. 'Tis easy then for him to choose hisparty, were it not his inclination to serve you, as it surely is. Andthis makes him a merit with me, which otherwise he would not have had;notwithstanding the good qualities which I have just now acknowledged inhis favour. For, my dear, let my faults in other respects be what theymay, I will pretend to say, that I have in my own mind those qualitieswhich I praised him for. And if we are to come together, I could forthat reason better dispense with them in him.--So if a husband, who hasa bountiful-tempered wife, is not a niggard, nor seeks to restrain her,but has an opinion of all she does, that is enough for him: as, on thecontrary, if a bountiful-tempered husband has a frugal wife, it isbest for both. For one to give, and the other to give, except they haveprudence, and are at so good an understanding with each other as tocompare notes, they may perhaps put it out of their power to be just.Good frugal doctrine, my dear! But this way of putting it is middlingthe matter between what I have learnt of my mother's over-prudent andyour enlarged notions.--But from doctrine to fact--
I shut myself up all that day; and what little I did eat, eat alone. Butat night she sent up Kitty with a command, upon my obedience, to attendher at supper.
I went down; but most gloriously in the sullens. YES, and NO, were greatwords with me, to every thing she asked, for a good while.
That behaviour, she told me, should not do for her.
Beating should not do for me, I said.
My bold resistance, she told me, had provoked her to slap my hand; andshe was sorry to have been so provoked. But again insisted that I wouldeither give up my correspondence absolutely, or let her see all thatpassed in it.
I must not do either, I told her. It was unsuitable both to myinclination and to my honour, at the instigation of base minds to giveup a friend in distress.
She rung all the maternal changes upon the words duty, obedience, filialobligation, and so forth.
I told her that a duty too rigorously and unreasonably exacted had beenyour ruin, if you were ruined.
If I were of age to be married, I hope she would think me capableof making, or at least of keeping, my own friendships; such a oneespecially as this, with a woman too, and one whose friendship sheherself, till this distressful point of time, had thought the mostuseful and edifying that I had ever contracted.
The greater the merit, the worse the action: the finer the talents, themore dangerous the example.
There were other duties, I said, besides the filial one; and I hoped Ineed not give up a suffering friend, especially at the instigation ofthose by whom she suffered. I told her, that it was very hard to annexsuch a condition as that to my duty; when I was persuaded, that bothduties might be performed, without derogating from either: that anunreasonable command (she must excuse me, I must say it, though I wereslapped again) was a degree of tyranny: and I could not have expected,that at these years I should be allowed now will, no choice of myown! where a woman only was concerned, and the devilish sex not in thequestion.
What turned most in favour of her argument was, that I desired to beexcused from letting her read all that passes between us. She insistedmuch upon this: and since, she said, you were in the hands of themost intriguing man in the world, and a man who had made a jest ofher favourite Hickman, as she had been told, she knows not whatconsequences, unthought of by your or me, may flow from such acorrespondence.
So you see, my dear, that I fare the worse on Mr. Hickman's account!My mother might see all that passes between us, did I not know, thatit would cramp your spirit, and restrain the freedom of your pen, asit would also the freedom of mine: and were she not moreover so firmlyattached to the contrary side, that inferences, consequences, straineddeductions, censures, and constructions the most partial, would forever to be haled in to tease me, and would perpetually subject us to thenecessity of debating and canvassing.
Besides, I don't choose that she should know how much this artful wretchhas outwitted, as I may call it, a person so much his superior in allthe nobler qualities of the human mind.
The generosity of your heart, and the greatness of your soul, full wellI know; but do offer to dissuade me from this correspondence.
Mr. Hickman, immediately on the contention above, offered his service;and I accepted of it, as you will see by my last. He thinks, thoughhe has all honour for my mother, that she is unkind to us both. He waspleased to tell me (with an air, as I thought) that he not only approvedof our correspondence, but admired the steadiness of my friendship; andhaving no opinion of your man, but a great one of me, thinks that myadvice or intelligence from time to time may be of use to you; andon this presumption said, that it would be a thousand pities that youshould suffer for want of either.
Mr. Hickman pleased me in the main of his speech; and it is well thegeneral tenor of it was agreeable; otherwise I can tell him, I shouldhave reckoned with him for his word approve; for it is a style I havenot yet permitted him to talk to me in. And you see, my dear, what thesemen are--no sooner do they find that you have favoured them with thepower of doing you an agreeable service, but they take upon them toapprove, forsooth, of your actions! By which is implied a right todisapprove, if they think fit.
I have told my mother how much you wish to be reconciled to yourrelations, and how independent you are upon Lovelace.
Mark the end of the latter assertion, she says. And as toreconciliation, she knows that nothing will do, (and will have it, thatnothing ought to do,) but your returning back, without presuming tocondition with them. And this if you do, she says, will best show yourindependence on Lovelace.
You see, my dear, what your duty is, in my mother's opinion.
I suppose your next, directed to Mr. Hickman, at his own house, will befrom London.
Heaven preserve you in honour and safety, is my prayer.
What you do for change of clothes, I cannot imagine.
It is amazing to me what your relations can mean by distressing you,as they seem resolved to do. I see they will throw you into his arms,whether you will or not.
I send this by Robert, for dispatch-sake: and can only repeat thehitherto-rejected offer of my best services. Adieu, my dearest friend.Believe me ever
Your affectionate and faithful ANNA HOWE.