• • •
Know then, my dear, that I accompanied my mother to Colonel Ambrose’s, on the occasion I mentioned to you in my former. Many ladies and gentlemen were there, whom you know; particularly Miss Kitty D’Oily, Miss Lloyd, Miss Biddy D’Ollyffe, Miss Biddulph, and their respective admirers, with the colonel’s two nieces, fine women both; besides many whom you know not; for they were strangers to me, but by name. A splendid company, and all pleased with one another, till Colonel Ambrose introduced one, who the moment he was brought into the great hall set the whole assembly into a kind of agitation.
It was your villain.
I thought I should have sunk as soon as I set my eyes upon him. My mother was also affected; and coming to me, Nancy, whispered she, can you bear the sight of that wretch without too much emotion? If not, withdraw into the next apartment.
I could not remove. Everybody’s eyes were glanced from him to me. I sat down, and fanned myself, and was forced to order a glass of water. Oh that I had the eye the basilisk is reported to have, thought I, and that his life were within the power of it—directly would I kill him!
He entered with an air so hateful to me, but so agreeable to every other eye, that I could have looked him dead for that too.
After the general salutations, he singled out Mr Hickman, and told him he had recollected some parts of his behaviour to him when he saw him last, which had made him think himself under obligation to his patience and politeness.
And so, indeed, he was.
Miss D’Oily, upon his complimenting her among a knot of ladies, asked him, in their hearing, how Miss Clarissa Harlowe did?
He heard, he said, you were not so well as he wished you to be, and as you deserved to be.
Oh Mr Lovelace, said she, what have you to answer for on that young lady’s account, if all be true that I have heard?
I have a great deal to answer for, said the unblushing villain: but that dear lady has so many excellencies, and so much delicacy, that little sins are great ones in her eye.
Little sins! replied the lady: Mr Lovelace’s character is so well known that nobody believes he can commit little sins.
You are very good to me, Miss D’Oily.
Indeed I am not.
Then I am the only person to whom you are not very good: and so I am the less obliged to you.
• • •
I still kept my seat, and he either saw me not, or would not yet see me; and addressing himself to my mother, taking her unwilling hand with an air of high assurance, I am glad to see you here, madam: I hope Miss Howe is well. I have reason to complain greatly of her: but hope to owe to her the highest obligations that can be laid on man.
My daughter, sir, is accustomed to be too warm and too zealous in her friendships for either my tranquillity or her own.
We are not wholly, madam, to live for ourselves, said the vile hypocrite. It is not everyone who has a soul capable of friendship: and what a heart must that be, which can be insensible to the interests of a suffering friend?
This sentiment from Mr Lovelace’s mouth, said my mother! Forgive me, sir; but you can have no end, surely, in endeavouring to make me think as well of you, as some innocent creatures have thought of you, to their cost.
She would have flung from him. But, detaining her hand—Less severe, dear madam, said he, be less severe in this place, I beseech you. You will allow that a very faulty person may see his errors; and when he does, and owns them, and repents, should he not be treated mercifully?
Your air, sir, seems not to be that of a penitent. But the place may as properly excuse this subject, as what you call my severity.
But, dearest madam, permit me to say that I hope for your interest with your charming daughter (was his sycophant word) to have it put into my power to convince all the world that there never was a truer penitent. And why, why this anger, dear madam (for she struggled to get her hand out of his); these violent airs, so maidenly! Impudent fellow! May I not ask if Miss Howe be here?
She would not have been here, replied my mother, had she known whom she had been to see.
And is she here, then? Thank Heaven! He disengaged her hand, and stepped forward into company.
Charming Miss Howe!
I was all in a flutter, you may suppose. He would have taken my hand. I refused it, all glowing with indignation: everybody’s eyes upon us.
When the wretch saw how industriously I avoided him (shifting from one part of the hall to another), he at last boldly stepped up to me, as my mother and Mr Hickman were talking to me; and thus, before them, accosted me:
I beg your pardon, madam; but, by your mother’s leave, I must have a few moments’ conversation with you, either here or at your own house; and I beg you will give me the opportunity.
Nancy, said my mother, hear what he has to say to you. In my presence you may: and better in the adjoining apartment, if it must be, than to come to you at our own house.
I retired to one corner of the hall, my mother following me, and he, taking Mr Hickman under the arm, following her. Well, sir, said I, what have you to say? Tell me here.
Lady Betty, and Lady Sarah, and my Lord M. are engaged for my honour. I know your power with the dear creature. My cousins told me you gave them hopes you would use it in my behalf. My Lord M. and his two sisters are impatiently expecting the fruits of it. You must have heard from her before now: I hope you have. And will you be so good as to tell me, if I may have any hopes?
If I must speak on this subject, let me tell you that you have broken her heart. You know not the value of the lady you have injured. You deserve her not. And she despises you as she ought.
Dear Miss Howe, mingle not passion with denunciations so severe. I must know my fate. I will go abroad once more, if I find her absolutely irreconcilable. But I hope she will give me leave to attend upon her, to know my doom from her own mouth.
It would be death immediate for her to see you. And what must you be, to be able to look her in the face?
He vindicated not any part of his conduct, but that of the arrest; and so solemnly protested his sorrow for his usage of you, accusing himself in the freest manner, and by deserved appellations, that I promised to lay before you this part of our conversation. And now you have it.
My mother, as well as Mr Hickman, believes, from what passed on this occasion, that he is touched in conscience for the wrongs he has done you: but, by his whole behaviour, I must own it seems to me that nothing can touch him for half an hour together. Yet I have no doubt that he would willingly marry you; and it piques his pride, I could see, that he should be denied: as it did mine, that such a wretch had dared to think it in his power to have such a woman whenever he pleased; and that it must be accounted a condescension, and matter of obligation (by all his own family at least), that he would vouchsafe to think of marriage.
Now, my dear, you have the reason before you why I suspend the decisive negative to the ladies of his family.
You will let Mr Hickman know your whole mind; and when he acquaints me with it, I will tell you all my own.
Meantime, may the news he will bring me of the state of your health be favourable! prays, with the utmost fervency,
Your ever-faithful and affectionate
ANNA HOWE
Letter 368: MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE
Thursday, July 27
My dearest Miss Howe,
After I have thankfully acknowledged your favour in sending Mr Hickman to visit me before you set out upon your intended journey, I must chide you (in the sincerity of that faithful love, which could not be the love it is if it would not admit of that cementing freedom) for
suspending the decisive negative, which, upon such full deliberation, I had entreated you to give to Mr Lovelace’s relations.
I am sorry that I am obliged to repeat to you, my dear, who know me so well
, that were I sure I should live many years I would not have Mr Lovelace: much less can I think of him, as it is probable I may not live one.
As to the world, and its censures, you know, my dear, that, however desirous I always was of a fair fame, yet I never thought it right to give more than a second place to the world’s opinion. The challenges made to Mr Lovelace by Miss D’Oily in public company are a fresh proof that I have lost my reputation: and what advantage would it be to me, were it retrievable, and were I to live long, if I could not acquit myself to myself?
Your account of the gay, unconcerned behaviour of Mr Lovelace at the colonel’s does not surprise me at all, after I am told that he had the intrepidity to go thither, knowing who were invited and expected. Only this, my dear, I really wonder at, that Miss Howe could imagine that I could have a thought of such a man for a husband.
Poor wretch! I pity him, to see him fluttering about; abusing talents that were given him for excellent purposes; taking courage for wit; and dancing, fearless of danger, on the edge of a precipice!
But, indeed, his threatening to see me most sensibly alarms and shocks me. I cannot but hope that I never, never more shall see him in this world.
I commend myself, my dearest Miss Howe, to your prayers; and conclude with repeated thanks for sending Mr Hickman to me; and with wishes for your health and happiness, and for the speedy celebration of your nuptials,
Your ever-affectionate and obliged
CLARISSA HARLOWE
Letter 370: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
Friday, July 28
Come, come, Belford, let people run away with notions as they will, I am comparatively a very innocent man. And if by these, and other like reasonings, I have quieted my own conscience, a great end is answered. What have I to do with the world?
I hope thy pleas in my favour, when she gave thee (so generously gave thee) for me, my letters, were urged with an honest energy. But I suspect thee much for being too ready to give up thy client.
Since then thy unhappy awkwardness destroys the force of thy arguments, I think thou hadst better (for the present, however) forbear to urge her on the subject of accepting the reparation I offer; lest the continual teasing of her to forgive me should but strengthen her in her denials of forgiveness; till, for consistency sake, she’ll be forced to adhere to a resolution so often avowed. Whereas, if left to herself, a little time and better health, which will bring on better spirits, will give her quicker resentments; those quicker resentments will lead her into vehemence; that vehemence will subside, and turn into expostulation and parley: my friends will then interpose, and guarantee for me: and all our trouble on both sides will be over. Such is the natural course of things.
In short, I cannot bear the thought that a lady whom once I had bound to me in the silken cords of love, should slip through my fingers, and be able, while my heart flames out with a violent passion for her, to despise me, and to set both love and me at defiance. Thou canst not imagine how much I envy thee, and her doctor, and her apothecary, and everyone whom I hear of being admitted to her presence and conversation; and wish to be the one or the other in turn.
Wherefore, if nothing else will do, I will see her.
But, in whatever shape I shall choose to appear, of this thou mayest assure thyself, I will apprise thee beforehand of my determined-upon visit, that thou mayest contrive to be out of the way, and to know nothing of the matter. This will save thy word; and, as to mine, can she think worse of me than she does at present?
Letter 371: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
This cursed arrest, because of the ill effects the terror might have had upon her in that hoped-for circumstance, has concerned me more than on any other account. It would be the pride of my life to prove, in this charming frost-piece, the triumph of nature over principle, and to have a young Lovelace by such an angel: and then, for its sake, I am confident she will live, and will legitimate it. And what a meritorious little cherub would it be, that should lay an obligation upon both parents before it was born, which neither of them would be able to repay! Could I be sure it is so, I should be out of all pain for her recovery: pain, I say; since, were she to die (die! abominable word! how I hate it!) I verily think I should be the most miserable man in the world.
As for the earnestness she expresses for death, she has found the words ready to her hand in honest Job; else she would not have delivered herself with such strength and vehemence.
Her innate piety (as I have more than once observed) will not permit her to shorten her own life, either by violence or neglect. She has a mind too noble for that; and would have done it before now, had she designed any such thing.
Moreover, has she it not in her power to disappoint, as much as she has been disappointed? Revenge, Jack, has induced many a woman to cherish a life, which grief and despair would otherwise have put an end to.
And, after all, death is no such eligible thing as Job in his calamities makes it. And a death desired merely from worldly disappointment shows not a right mind, let me tell this lady, whatever she may think of it.
I find, by one of thy three letters, that my beloved had some account from Hickman of my interview with Miss Howe, at Colonel Ambrose’s. I had a very agreeable time of it there; although severely rallied by several of the assembly. It concerns me, however, not a little, to find our affair so generally known among the flippanti of both sexes. It is all her own fault. There never, surely, was such an odd little soul as this. Not to keep her own secret, when the revealing of it could answer no possible good end; and when she wants not (one would think) to raise to herself either pity or friends, or to me enemies, by the proclamation! Why, Jack, must not all her own sex laugh in their sleeves at her weakness!
I am glad, however, that Miss Howe, as much as she hates me, kept her word with my cousins on their visit to her, and with me at the colonel’s, to endeavour to persuade her friend to make up all matters by matrimony; which, no doubt, is the best, nay, the only method she can take for her own honour, and that of her family.
I had once thoughts of revenging myself on that little vixen, and particularly as thou mayst remember, had planned something to this purpose on the journey she is going to take, which had been talked of some time. But, I think—let me see—yes, I think I will let this Hickman have her safe and entire, as thou believest the fellow to be a tolerable sort of a mortal, and that I had made the worst of him: and I am glad, for his own sake, he has not launched out too virulently against me to thee.
And thus, if I pay thee not in quality, I do in quantity (and yet leave a multitude of things unobserved upon): for I begin not to know what to do with myself here. Tired with Lord M.—tired with my cousins Montague—tired with the country—tired of myself: longing for what I have not; I must go to town; and there have an interview with the charmer of my soul: for desperate diseases must have desperate remedies; and I only wait to know my doom from Miss Howe; and then, if it be rejection, I will try my fate, and receive my sentence at her feet. But I will apprise thee of it beforehand, as I told thee, that thou mayest keep thy parole with the lady in the best manner thou canst.
Letter 372: MISS HOWE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
Friday night, July 28
You put me in hope that, were I actually married and Mr Hickman to desire it, you would think of obliging me with a visit on the occasion; and that, perhaps, when with me, it would be difficult for you to remove far from me.
Lord, my dear, what a stress do you seem to lay upon Mr Hickman’s desiring it! To be sure he does, and would of all things desire to have you near us, and with us, if we might be so favoured. Policy, as well as veneration for you, would undoubtedly make the man, if not a fool, desire this. But let me tell you that if Mr Hickman, after marriage, should pretend to dispute with me my friendships, as I hope I am not quite a fool, I should let him know how far his own quiet was concerned in such an impertinence; espec
ially if they were such friendships as were contracted before I knew him.
I know I always differed from you on this subject; for you think more highly of a husband’s prerogative, than most people do of the royal one. These notions, my dear, from a person of your sense and judgement are no-way advantageous to us; inasmuch as they justify that insolent sex in their assumptions; when hardly one out of ten of them, their opportunities considered, deserve any prerogative at all. Look through all the families we know; and we shall not find one third of them have half the sense of their wives. And yet these are to be vested with prerogatives! And a woman of twice their sense has nothing to do but hear, tremble, and obey—and for conscience-sake too, I warrant!
But Mr Hickman and I may perhaps have a little discourse upon these sort of subjects before I suffer him to talk of the day: and then I shall let him know what he has to trust to; as he will me, if he be a sincere man, what he pretends to expect from me. But let me tell you, my dear, that it is more in your power than perhaps you think it, to hasten the day so much pressed-for by my mother, as well as wished-for by you—for the very day that you can assure me that you are in a tolerable state of health, and have discharged your doctor and apothecary at their own motions on that account—some day in a month from that desirable news shall be it. So, my dear, make haste and be well; and then this matter will be brought to effect in a manner more agreeable to your Anna Howe than it otherwise ever can.
You are, it seems (and that too much for your health), employed in writing. I hope it is in penning down the particulars of your tragical story. And my mother has put me in mind to press you to it, with a view that one day, if it might be published under feigned names, it would be of as much use as honour to the sex. My mother says she cannot help admiring you for the propriety of your resentment in your refusal of the wretch; and she would be extremely glad to have her advice of penning your sad story complied with. And then, she says, your noble conduct throughout your trials and calamities will afford not only a shining example to your sex; but, at the same time (those calamities befalling SUCH a person), a fearful warning to the inconsiderate young creatures of it.