Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 2

But notwithstanding all this, I owe it to the sincerity of friendship to confess, that I know not what I should have done, had your advice been conclusive any way. Had you, my dear, been witness to my different emotions, as I read your letter, when, in one place, you advise me of my danger, if I am carried to my uncle's; in another, when you own you could not bear what I bear, and would do any thing rather than marry the man you hate; yet, in another, to represent to me my reputation suffering in the world's eye; and the necessity I should be under to justify my conduct, at the expense of my friends, were I to take a rash step; in another, insinuate the dishonest figure I should be forced to make, in so compelled a matrimony; endeavouring to cajole, fawn upon, and play the hypocrite with a man to whom I have an aversion; who would have reason to believe me an hypocrite, as well from my former avowals, as from the sense he must have (if common sense he has) of his own demerits; the necessity you think there would be for me, the more averse (were I capable of so much dissimulation) that would be imputable to disgraceful motives; as it would be too visible, that love, either of person or mind, could be neither of them: then his undoubted, his even constitutional narrowness: his too probably jealousy, and unforgiveness, bearing in my mind my declared aversion, and the unfeigned despights I took all opportunities to do him, in order to discourage his address: a preference avowed against him from the same motive; with the pride he professes to take in curbing and sinking the spirits of a woman he had acquired a right to tyrannize over: had you, I say, been witness of my different emotions as I read; now leaning this way, now that; now perplexed; now apprehensive; now angry at one, then at another; now resolving; now doubting; you would have seen the power you have over me; and would have had reason to believe, that, had you given your advice in any determined or positive manner, I had been ready to have been concluded by it. So, my dear, you will find, from these acknowledgements, that you must justify me to those laws of friendship, which require undisguised frankness of heart; although you justification of me in that particular, will perhaps be at the expense of my prudence.

But, upon the whole, this I do repeat—That nothing but the last extremity shall make me abandon my father's house, if they will permit me to stay; and if I can, by any means, by any honest pretences, but keep off my evil destiny in it till my cousin Morden arrives. As one of my trustees, his is a protection, into which I may without discredit throw myself, if my other friends should remain determined. And this (although they seem too well aware of it) is all my hope: for, as to Lovelace, were I to be sure of his tenderness, and even of his reformation, must not the thought of embracing the offered protection of his family, be the same thing, in the world's eye, as accepting of his own?—Could I avoid receiving his visits at his own relations'? Must I not be his, whatever, (on seeing him in a nearer light,) I should find him out to be? For you know, it has always been my observation, that very few people in courtship see each other as they are. Oh! my dear! how wise have I endeavoured to be! How anxious to choose, and to avoid every thing, precautiously, as I may say, that might make me happy, or unhappy; yet all my wisdom now, by a strange fatality, is likely to become foolishness!

Then you tell me, in your usual kindly-partial manner, what is expected of me, more than would be of some others. This should be a lesson to me. What ever my motives were, the world would not know them. To complain of a brother's unkindness, that, indeed, I might do. Differences between brothers and sisters, where interests clash, but too commonly arise: but, where the severe father cannot be separated from the faulty brother, who could bear to lighten herself, by loading a father?—Then, in this particular case, must not the hatred Mr. Lovelace expresses to every one of my family (although in return for their hatred of him) shock one extremely? Must it not shew, that there is something implacable, as well as highly unpolite in his temper?—And what creature can think of marrying so as to be out of all hopes ever to be well with her own nearest and tenderest relations?

But here, having tired myself, and I dare say you, I will lay down my pen.

Mr. Solmes is almost continually here: so is my aunt Hervey: so are my two uncles. Something is working against me, I doubt. What an uneasy state is suspense!—When a naked sword, too, seems hanging over one's head!

I hear nothing but what this confident creature Betty throws out in the wantonness of office. Now it is, Why, Miss, don't you look up your things? You'll be called upon, depend upon it, before you are aware. Another time she intimates darkly, and in broken sentences, (as if on purpose to tease me,) what one says, what another; with their inquiries how I dispose of my time? And my brother's insolent question comes frequently in, Whether I am not writing a history of my sufferings?

But I am now used to her pertness: and as it is only through that that I can hear of any thing intended against me, before it is to be put in execution; and as, when she is most impertinent, she pleads a commission for it; I bear with her: yet, now-and-then, not without a little of the heart-burn.

    I will deposit thus far. Adieu, my dear. CL. HARLOWE.

Written on the cover, after she went down, with a pencil:

On coming down, I found your second letter of yesterday's date.[11 - See the next letter.] I have read it; and am in hopes that the enclosed will in a great measure answer your mother's expectations of me.

My most respectful acknowledgements to her for it, and for her very kind admonitions.

You'll read to her what you please of the enclosed.

LETTER XIV

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE SAT. MARCH 25

I follow my last of this date by command. I mentioned in my former my mother's opinion of the merit you would have, if you could oblige your friends against your own inclination. Our conference upon this subject was introduced by the conversation we had had with Sir Harry Downeton; and my mother thinks it of so much importance, that she enjoins me to give you the particulars of it. I the rather comply, as I was unable in my last to tell what to advise you to; and as you will in this recital have my mother's opinion at least, and, perhaps, in hers what the world's would be, were it only to know what she knows, and not so much as I know.

My mother argues upon this case in a most discouraging manner for all such of our sex as look forward for happiness in marriage with the man of their choice.

Only, that I know, she has a side-view of her daughter; who, at the same time that she now prefers no one to another, values not the man her mother most regards, of one farthing; or I should lay it more to heart.

What is there in it, says she, that all this bustle is about? Is it such a mighty matter for a young woman to give up her inclinations to oblige her friends?

Very well, my mamma, thought I! Now, may you ask this—at FORTY, you may. But what would you have said at EIGHTEEN, is the question?

Either, said she, the lady must be thought to have very violent inclinations [And what nice young creature would have that supposed?] which she could not give up; or a very stubborn will, which she would not; or, thirdly, have parents she was indifferent about obliging.

You know my mother now-and-then argues very notably; always very warmly at least. I happen often to differ from her; and we both think so well of our own arguments, that we very seldom are so happy as to convince one another. A pretty common case, I believe, in all vehement debatings. She says, I am too witty; Angelice, too pert: I, That she is too wise; that is to say, being likewise put into English, not so young as she has been: in short, is grown so much into mother, that she has forgotten she ever was a daughter. So, generally, we call another cause by consent—yet fall into the old one half a dozen times over, without consent—quitting and resuming, with half-angry faces, forced into a smile, that there might be some room to piece together again: but go a-bed, if bedtime, a little sullen nevertheless: or, if we speak, her silence is broken with an Ah! Nancy! You are so lively! so quick! I wish you were less like your papa, child!

I pay it off with thinking, that my mother has no reason to disclaim her share in her Nancy: and if the matter go off with greater severity on her side than I wish for, then her favourite Hickman fares the worse for it next day.

I know I am a saucy creature. I know, if I do not say so, you will think so. So no more of this just now. What I mention it for, is to tell you, that on this serious occasion I will omit, if I can, all that passed between us, that had an air of flippancy on my part, or quickness on my mother's, to let you into the cool and cogent of the conversation.

'Look through the families, said she, which we both know, where the man and the woman have been said to marry for love; which (at the time it is so called) is perhaps no more than a passion begun in folly or thoughtlessness, and carried on from a spirit of perverseness and opposition [here we had a parenthetical debate, which I omit]; and see, if they appear to be happier than those whose principal inducement to marry has been convenience, or to oblige their friends; or ever whether they are generally so happy: for convenience and duty, where observed, will afford a permanent and even an increasing satisfaction (as well at the time, as upon the reflection) which seldom fail to reward themselves: while love, if love be the motive, is an idle passion' [idle in ONE SENSE my mother cannot say; for love is as busy as a monkey, and as mischievous as a school-boy]—'it is a fervour, that, like all other fervours, lasts but a little while after marriage; a bow overstrained, that soon returns to its natural bent.

'As it is founded generally upon mere notional excellencies, which were unknown to the persons themselves till attributed to either by the other; one, two, or three months, usually sets all right on both sides; and then with opened eyes they think of each other—just as every body else thought of them before.

'The lovers imaginaries [her own notable word!] are by that time gone off; nature and old habits (painfully dispensed with or concealed) return: disguises thrown aside, all the moles, freckles, and defects in the minds of each discover themselves; and 'tis well if each do not sink in the opinion of the other, as much below the common standard, as the blinded imagination of both had set them above it. And now, said she, the fond pair, who knew no felicity out of each other's company, are so far from finding the never-ending variety each had proposed in an unrestrained conversation with the other (when they seldom were together; and always parted with something to say; or, on recollection, when parted, wishing they had said); that they are continually on the wing in pursuit of amusements out of themselves; and those, concluded my sage mamma, [Did you think her wisdom so very modern?] will perhaps be the livelier to each, in which the other has no share.'

I told my mother, that if you were to take any rash step, it would be owing to the indiscreet violence of your friends. I was afraid, I said, that these reflection upon the conduct of people in the married state, who might set out with better hopes, were but too well grounded: but that this must be allowed me, that if children weighed not these matters so thoroughly as they ought, neither did parents make those allowances for youth, inclination, and inexperience, which had been found necessary to be made for themselves at their children's time of life.

I remembered a letter, I told her, hereupon, which you wrote a few months ago, personating an anonymous elderly lady (in Mr. Wyerley's day of plaguing you) to Miss Drayton's mother, who, by her severity and restraints, had like to have driven the young lady into the very fault against which her mother was most solicitous to guard her. And I dared to say, she would be pleased with it.

I fetched the first draught of it, which at my request you obliged me at the time; and read the whole letter to my mother. But the following passage she made me read twice. I think you once told me you had not a copy of this letter.

'Permit me, Madam, [says the personated grave writer,] to observe, That if persons of your experience would have young people look forward, in order to be wiser and better by their advice, it would be kind in them to look backward, and allow for their children's youth, and natural vivacity; in other words, for their lively hopes, unabated by time, unaccompanied by reflection, and unchecked by disappointment. Things appear to us all in a very different light at our entrance upon a favourite party, or tour; when, with golden prospects, and high expectations, we rise vigorous and fresh like the sun beginning its morning course; from what they do, when we sit down at the end of our views, tired, and preparing for our journey homeward: for then we take into our reflection, what we had left out in prospect, the fatigues, the checks, the hazards, we had met with; and make a true estimate of pleasures, which from our raised expectations must necessarily have fallen miserably short of what we had promised ourselves at setting out. Nothing but experience can give us a strong and efficacious conviction of this difference: and when we would inculcate the fruits of that upon the minds of those we love, who have not lived long enough to find those fruits; and would hope, that our advice should have as much force upon them, as experience has upon us; and which, perhaps, our parents' advice had not upon ourselves, at our daughter' time of life; should we not proceed by patient reasoning and gentleness, that we may not harden, where we would convince? For, Madam, the tenderest and most generous minds, when harshly treated, become generally the most inflexible. If the young lady knows her heart to be right, however defective her head may be for want of age and experience, she will be apt to be very tenacious. And if she believes her friends to be wrong, although perhaps they may be only so in their methods of treating her, how much will every unkind circumstance on the parent's part, or heedless one on the child's, though ever so slight in itself, widen the difference! The parent's prejudice in disfavour, will confirm the daughter's in favour, of the same person; and the best reasonings in the world on either side, will be attributed to that prejudice. In short, neither of them will be convinced: a perpetual opposition ensues: the parent grows impatient; the child desperate: and, as a too natural consequence, that falls out which the mother was most afraid of, and which possibly had not happened, if the child's passions had been only led, not driven.'

My mother was pleased with the whole letter; and said, It deserved to have the success it met with. But asked me what excuse could be offered for a young lady capable of making such reflections (and who at her time of life could so well assume the character of one of riper years) if she should rush into any fatal mistake herself?

She then touched upon the moral character of Mr. Lovelace; and how reasonable the aversion of your reflections is to a man who gives himself the liberties he is said to take; and who indeed himself denies not the accusation; having been heard to declare, that he will do all the mischief he can to the sex, in revenge for the ill usage and broken vows of his first love, at a time when he was too young [his own expression it seems] to be insincere.

I replied, that I had heard every one say, that the lady meant really used him ill; that it affected him so much at the time, that he was forced to travel upon it; and to drive her out of his heart, ran into courses which he had ingenuousness enough himself to condemn: that, however, he had denied that he had thrown out such menaces against the sex when charged with them by me in your presence; and declared himself incapable of so unjust and ungenerous a resentment against all, for the perfidy of one.

You remember this, my dear, as I do your innocent observation upon it, that you could believe his solemn asseveration and denial: 'For surely, said you, the man who would resent, as the highest indignity that could be offered to a gentleman, the imputation of a wilful falsehood, would not be guilty of one.'

I insisted upon the extraordinary circumstances in your case; particularizing them. I took notice, that Mr. Lovelace's morals were at one time no objection with your relations for Arabella: that then much was built upon his family, and more upon his part and learning, which made it out of doubt, that he might be reclaimed by a woman of virtue and prudence: and [pray forgive me for mentioning it] I ventured to add, that although your family might be good sort of folks, as the world went, yet no body but you imputed to any of them a very punctilious concern for religion or piety—therefore were they the less entitled to object to defect of that kind in others. Then, what an odious man, said I, have they picked out, to supplant in a lady's affections one of the finest figures of a man, and one noted for his brilliant parts, and other accomplishments, whatever his morals may be!

Still my mother insisted, that there was the greater merit in your obedience on that account; and urged, that there hardly ever was a very handsome and a very sprightly man who made a tender and affectionate husband: for that they were generally such Narcissus's, as to imagine every woman ought to think as highly of them, as they did of themselves.

There was no danger from that consideration here, I said, because the lady still had greater advantages of person and mind, than the man; graceful and elegant, as he must be allowed to be, beyond most of his sex.

She cannot endure to hear me praise any man but her favourite Hickman; upon whom, nevertheless, she generally brings a degree of contempt which he would escape, did she not lessen the little merit he has, by giving him, on all occasions, more than I think he can deserve, and entering him into comparisons in which it is impossible but he must be a sufferer. And now [preposterous partiality!] she thought for her part, that Mr. Hickman, bating that his face indeed was not so smooth, nor his complexion quite so good, and saving that he was not so presuming and so bold (which ought to be no fault with a modest woman) equaled Mr. Lovelace at any hour of the day.

To avoid entering further into such an incomparable comparison, I said, I did not believe, had they left you to your own way, and treated you generously, that you would have had the thought of encouraging any man whom they disliked—

Then, Nancy, catching me up, the excuse is less—for if so, must there not be more of contradiction, than love, in the case?

Not so, neither, Madam: for I know Miss Clarissa Harlowe would prefer Mr. Lovelace to all men, if morals—

IF, Nancy!—That if is every thing.—Do you really think she loves Mr. Lovelace?

What would you have had me say, my dear?—I won't tell you what I did say: But had I not said what I did, who would have believed me?

Besides, I know you love him!—Excuse me, my dear: Yet, if you deny it, what do you but reflect upon yourself, as if you thought you ought not to allow yourself in what you cannot help doing?

Indeed, Madam, said I, the man is worthy of any woman's love [if, again, I could say]—But her parents—

Her parents, Nancy—[You know, my dear, how my mother, who accuses her daughter of quickness, is evermore interrupting one!]

May take wrong measures, said I—

Cannot do wrong—they have reason, I'll warrant, said she—

By which they may provoke a young woman, said I, to do rash things, which otherwise she would not do.

But, if it be a rash thing, [returned she,] should she do it? A prudent daughter will not wilfully err, because her parents err, if they were to err: if she do, the world which blames the parents, will not acquit the child. All that can be said, in extenuation of a daughter's error in this case, arises from a kind consideration, which Miss Clary's letter to Lady Drayton pleads for, to be paid to her daughter's youth and inexperience. And will such an admirable young person as Miss Clarissa Harlowe, whose prudence, as we see, qualifies her to be an advisor of persons much older than herself, take shelter under so poor a covert?