I am pleased with what these ladies write. And the more as I have caused them to be again sounded, and find that the whole family are as desirous as ever of your alliance.
I think there can be no objection to your going to London. There, as in the centre, you’ll be in the way of hearing from everybody and sending to anybody. And then you will put all his sincerity to the test, as to his promised absence and such-like.
But really, my dear, I think you have nothing for it but marriage. You may try (that you may say you have tried) what your relations can be brought to. But the moment they refuse your proposals, submit to the yoke and make the best of it. He will be a savage indeed, if he makes you speak out. Yet it is my opinion that you must bend a little; for he cannot bear to be thought slightly of.
All the world, in short, expect you to have this man. They think that you left your father’s house for this very purpose. The longer the ceremony is delayed, the worse appearance it will have in the world’s eye. And it will not be the fault of some of your relations if a slur be not thrown upon your reputation while you continue unmarried.
I have written through many interruptions: and you’ll see the first sheet creased and rumpled, occasioned by putting it into my bosom on my mamma’s sudden coming upon me. We have had one very pretty debate, I’ll assure you; but it is not worth while to trouble you with the particulars. But upon my word—no matter though—
Your Hannah cannot attend you. The poor girl left her place about a fortnight ago on account of a rheumatic disorder which has confined her to her room ever since. She burst into tears when Kitty carried to her your desire of having her, and called herself doubly unhappy that she could not wait upon a mistress whom she so dearly loved.
You must take your own way: but if you suffer any inconvenience either as to clothes or money, that is in my power to supply, I will never forgive you. My mamma (if that be your objection) need not know anything of the matter.
Your next letter, I suppose, will be from London. Pray direct it, and your future letters till further notice, to Mr Hickman at his own house. He is entirely devoted to you. Don’t take so heavily my mamma’s partiality and prejudices. I hope I am past a baby.
Heaven preserve you, and make you as happy as I think you deserve to be, prays
Your ever affectionate
ANNA HOWE
Letter 129: MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE
Wedn. morn. April 19
I am glad, my dear friend, that you approve of my removal to London.
The disagreement between your mamma and you gives me inexpressible affliction. I hope I think you both more unhappy than you are.
If I am to be obliged to anybody in England for money, it shall be to you. Your mother need not know of your kindness to me, you say. But she must know it, if it be done, and if she challenge my beloved friend upon it—for would you either falsify or prevaricate? I wish your mamma could be made easy on this head. Forgive me, my dear—but I know—yet once she had a better opinion of me. Oh my inconsiderate rashness! Excuse me once more, I pray you. Pride, when it is native, will show itself sometimes, in the midst of mortifications!—but my stomach is down already!
• • •
I am unhappy that I cannot have my worthy Hannah! I am as sorry for the poor creature’s illness as for my own disappointment by it. Come, my dear Miss Howe, since you press me to be beholden to you; and would think me proud if I absolutely refused your favour, pray be so good as to send her two guineas in my name.
If I have nothing for it, as you say, but matrimony, it yields a little comfort that his relations do not despise the fugitive, as persons of their rank and quality-pride might be supposed to do, for having been a fugitive.
Your ever obliged and affectionate friend,
CL. H.
Letter 130: MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE
Thursday, April 20
Mr Lovelace’s servant is already returned with an answer from his friend Mr Doleman, who has taken pains in his inquiries, and is very particular. Mr Lovelace brought me the letter as soon as he had read it; and as he now knows that I acquaint you with everything that offers, I desired him to let me send it to you for your perusal. Be pleased to return it by the first opportunity. You will see by it that his friends in town have a notion that we are actually married.
• • •
to Robert Lovelace, Esq.
Tuesday night, April 18
• • •
Dear sir,
I am extremely rejoiced to hear that we shall so soon have you in town after so long an absence. You will be the more welcome still, if what report says be true; which is that you are actually married to the fair lady upon whom we have heard you make such encomiums. Mrs Doleman and my sister both wish you joy, if you are, and joy upon your near prospect, if you are not. I have been in town for this week past, to get help if I could, from my paralytic complaints, and am in a course for them—which nevertheless did not prevent me from making the desired inquiries. This is the result.
• • •
You may have a first floor, well-furnished, at a mercer’s in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, with what conveniencies you please for servants: and these either by the quarter or month. The terms according to the conveniencies required.
Mrs Doleman has seen lodgings in Norfolk Street and others in Cecil Street; but though the prospects to the Thames and Surrey hills look inviting from both these streets, yet I suppose they are too near the city.
The owner of those in Norfolk Street would have half the house go together. It would be too much for your description therefore: and I suppose that you will hardly, when you think fit to declare your marriage, be in lodgings.
Those in Cecil Street are neat and convenient. The owner is a widow of good character; but she insists, that you take them for a twelvemonth certain.
You may have good accommodations in Dover Street, at a widow’s, the relict of an officer in the guards, who dying soon after he had purchased his commission (to which he had a good title by service, and which cost him most part of what he had), she was obliged to let lodgings.
This may possibly be an objection. But she is very careful, she says, that she takes no lodgers but of figure and reputation. She rents two good houses, distant from each other, only joined by a large handsome passage. The inner house is the genteelest, and is very elegantly furnished; but you may have the use of a very handsome parlour in the outer house, if you choose to look into the street.
A little garden belongs to the inner house, in which the old gentlewoman has displayed a true female fancy, and crammed it with vases, flower-pots and figures, without number.
As these lodgings seemed to me the most likely to please you, I was more particular in my inquiries about them. The apartments she has to let are in the inner house: they are a dining-room, two neat parlours, a withdrawing-room, two or three handsome bedchambers (one with a pretty light closet in it, which looks into the little garden); all furnished in taste.
The widow consents that you should take them for a month only, and what of them you please. The terms, she says, she will not fall out upon when she knows what your lady expects, and what her servants are to do, or yours will undertake; for she observed that servants are generally worse to deal with than their masters or mistresses.
The lady may board or not, as she pleases.
As we suppose you married, but that you have reason from family differences to keep it private for the present, I thought it not amiss to hint as much to the widow (but as uncertainty, however), and asked her if she could in that case accommodate you and your servants, as well as the lady and hers? She said she could; and wished by all means it were to be so; since the circumstance of a person’s being single, if not as well recommended as this lady, was one of her usual exceptions.
Let me add that the lodgings at the mercer’s,
those in Cecil Street, those at the widow’s in Dover Street, any of them, may be entered upon at a day’s warning.
I am, my dear sir,
Your sincere and affectionate friend and servant,
Tho. Doleman
• • •
You will easily guess, my dear, when you have read the letter, which lodgings I made choice of. But first, to try him, as in so material a point I thought I could not be too circumspect, I seemed to prefer those in Norfolk Street, for the very reason the writer gives why he thought I would not; that is to say, for its neighbourhood to a city so well governed as London is said to be. Nor should I have disliked a lodging in the heart of it, having heard but indifferent accounts of the liberties sometimes taken at the other end of the town—then seeming to incline to the lodgings in Cecil Street—then to the mercer’s. But he made no visible preference: and when I asked his opinion of the widow gentlewoman’s, he said, he thought these the most to my taste and convenience. But as he hoped that I would think lodgings necessary but for a very little while, he knew not which to give his vote for.
I then fixed upon the widow’s; and he has written accordingly to Mr Doleman, making my compliments to his lady and sister for their kind offer.
I am to have the dining-room, the bedchamber with the light closet (of which, if I stay any time at the widow’s, I shall make great use), and a servant’s room; and we propose to set out on Saturday morning. As for a maidservant, poor Hannah’s illness is a great disappointment to me: but, as he says, I can make the widow satisfaction for one of hers, till I can get one to my mind. And you know, I want not much attendance.
• • •
Mr Lovelace has just now, of his own accord, given me five guineas for poor Hannah. I send them enclosed. Be so good as to cause them to be conveyed to her; and to let her know from whom they came.
He has obliged me much by this little mark of his considerateness. Indeed I have the better opinion of him ever since he proposed her return to me.
• • •
And now, my dear, lest anything should happen, in so variable a situation as mine to overcloud my prospects (which at present are more promising than ever yet they have been since I quitted Harlowe Place), I will snatch the opportunity to subscribe myself
Your not unhoping
and ever obliged friend and servant,
CL. HARLOWE
Letter 131: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
Thursday, April 20
Thou knowest the widow; thou knowest her nieces; thou knowest the lodgings: and didst thou ever read a letter more artfully couched than this of Tom Doleman? Every possible objection anticipated! Every accident provided against! Every tittle of it plot-proof!
Who could forbear smiling to see my charmer, like a farcical dean and chapter, choose what was before chosen for her; and sagaciously (as they go in form to prayers, that God would direct their choice) pondering upon the different proposals, as if she would make me believe she has a mind for some other? The dear sly rogue looking upon me, too, with a view to discover some emotion in me: that I can tell her lay deeper than her eye could reach, though it had been a sunbeam.
No confidence in me, fair one! None at all, ‘tis plain. And shall it be said, that I, a master of arts in love, shall be overmatched by so unpractised a novice?
But to see the charmer so far satisfied with my contrivance as to borrow my friend’s letter, in order to satisfy Miss Howe likewise!
Silly little rogues! to walk out into by-paths on the strength of their own judgements!—when nothing but experience can teach them how to disappoint us, and learn them grandmother-wisdom! When they have it indeed, then may they sit down, like so many Cassandras, and preach caution to others; who will as little mind them as they did their instructresses, whenever a fine handsome confident fellow, such a one as thou knowest who, comes cross them.
But, Belford, didst thou not mind that sly rogue Doleman’s naming Dover Street for the widow’s place of abode! What dost think could be meant by that? ‘Tis impossible thou shouldst guess. So, not to puzzle thee about it—suppose the widow Sinclair’s in Dover Street should be inquired after by some officious person in order to come at characters (Miss Howe is as sly as the devil, and as busy to the full); and neither such a name, nor such a house can be found in that street, nor a house to answer the description, then will not the keenest hunter in England be at a fault?
But how wilt thou do, methinks thou askest, to hinder the lady from resenting the fallacy, and mistrusting thee the more on that account when she finds it out to be in another street?
Pho! never mind that: either I shall have a way for it, or we shall thoroughly understand one another by that time; or if we don’t, she’ll know enough of me not to wonder at such a peccadillo.
If thou further objectest that Tom Doleman is too great a dunce to write such a letter in answer to mine;—canst thou not imagine that, in order to save honest Tom all this trouble, I, who know the town so well, could send him a copy of what he should write, and leave him nothing to do but transcribe?
This it is to have leisure upon my hands! What a matchless plotter thy friend! Stand by and let me swell! I am already as big as an elephant; and ten times wiser! mightier too by far! Have I not reason to snuff the moon with my proboscis?
I shall make good use of the Dolemanic hint of being married. But I will not tell thee all at once. Nor, indeed, have I thoroughly digested that part of my plot. When a general must regulate himself by the motions of a watchful adversary, how can he say beforehand what he will, or what he will not do?
I never forget the minutiae in my contrivances. In all doubtable matters the minutiae closely attended to and provided for are of more service than a thousand oaths, vows and protestations made to supply the neglect of them, when jealousy has actually got into the working mind.
But I will not anticipate—besides, it looks as if I were afraid of leaving anything to my old friend CHANCE; which has many a time been an excellent second to me; and ought not to be affronted or despised; especially by one who has the art of making unpromising incidents turn out in his favour.
Letter 135: MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE
(In continuation)
I must write on, although I were not to send it to anybody. You have often heard me own the advantages I have found from writing down everything of moment that befalls me; and of all I think and of all I do that may be of future use to me. For, besides that this helps to form one to a style, and opens and expands the ductile mind, everyone will find that many a good thought evaporates in thinking; many a good resolution goes off, driven out of memory, perhaps, by some other not so good. But when I set down what I will do, or what I have done on this or that occasion; the resolution or action is before me, either to be adhered to, withdrawn or amended; and I have entered into compact with myself, as I may say; having given it under my own hand, to improve rather than go backward, as I live longer.
I would willingly therefore write to you, if I might; the rather as it would be more inspiriting to have some end in view in what I write; some friend to please; besides merely seeking to gratify my passion for scribbling.
But why, if your mamma will permit our correspondence on communicating to her all that passes in it, and if she will condescend to one only condition, may it not be complied with?
Would she not, do you think, my dear, be prevailed upon to have the communication made to her in confidence?
But if your mamma will receive the communications in confidence, pray show her all that I have written, or shall write. If my past conduct deserves not heavy blame, I shall then perhaps have the benefit of her advice as well as yours. And if I shall wilfully deserve blame for the time to come, I will be contented to be denied yours as well as hers for ever.
And all this upon the following consideration: ‘That it is much more eligible, as well as
honourable, to be corrected with the gentleness of an undoubted friend, than by continuing either blind or wilful, to expose ourselves to the censures of an envious and perhaps malignant world.’
But it is as needless, I dare say, to remind you of this, as it is to repeat my request, that you will not, in your turn, spare the follies and the faults of
Your ever affectionate
CL. HARLOWE
• • •
(Subjoined to the above)
I said that I would avoid writing anything of my own particular affairs in the above address, if I could.
I will write one letter more to inform you how we stand.
I fear, I very much fear that my unhappy situation will draw me in to be guilty of evasion, of little affectations and of curvings from the plain simple truth which I was wont to value myself upon. But allow me to say, and this for your sake and in order to lessen your mother’s fears of any ill consequences that she might apprehend from our correspondence, that if I am at any time guilty of a failure in these respects, I will not go on in it: but repent and seek to recover my lost ground, that I may not bring error into habit.
Letter 136: MISS HOWE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
• • •
Friday morn. April 21
My mamma will not comply with your condition, my dear. I hinted it to her, as from myself. But the Harlowes (excuse me) have got her entirely in with them. It is a scheme of mine, she told me, to draw her into your party against your parents—which, for her own sake, she is very careful about.