Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9)

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You are pleased to say, and upon your word too! that your regards
(a mighty quaint word for affections) are not so much engaged, as some
of your friends suppose, to another person. What need you give one to
imagine, my dear, that the last month or two has been a period
extremely favourable to that other person, whom it has made an obliger
of the niece for his patience with the uncles.

But, to pass that by--so much engaged!--How much, my dear?--Shall I
infer? Some of your friends suppose a great deal. You seem to own a
little.

Don't be angry. It is all fair: because you have not acknowledged to
me that little. People I have heard you say, who affect secrets,
always excite curiosity.

But you proceed with a kind of drawback upon your averment, as if
recollection had given you a doubt--you know not yourself, if they be
[so much engaged]. Was it necessary to say this to me?--and to say it
upon your word too?--But you know best.--Yet you don't neither, I
believe. For a beginning love is acted by a subtle spirit; and
oftentimes discovers itself to a by-stander, when the person possessed
(why should I not call it possessed?) knows not it has such a demon.

But further you say, what preferable favour you may have for him to
any other person, is owing more to the usage he has received, and for
your sake borne, than to any personal consideration.

This is generously said. It is in character. But, O my friend,
depend upon it, you are in danger. Depend upon it, whether you know
it or not, you are a little in for't. Your native generosity and
greatness of mind endanger you: all your friends, by fighting against
him with impolitic violence, fight for him. And Lovelace, my life for
yours, notwithstanding all his veneration and assiduities, has seen
further than that veneration and those assiduities (so well calculated
to your meridian) will let him own he has seen--has seen, in short,
that his work is doing for him more effectually than he could do it
for himself. And have you not before now said, that nothing is so
penetrating as the eye of a lover who has vanity? And who says
Lovelace wants vanity?

In short, my dear, it is my opinion, and that from the easiness of his
heart and behaviour, that he has seen more than I have seen; more than
you think could be seen--more than I believe you yourself know, or
else you would let me know it.

Already, in order to restrain him from resenting the indignities he
has received, and which are daily offered him, he has prevailed upon
you to correspond with him privately. I know he has nothing to boast
of from what you have written: but is not his inducing you to receive
his letters, and to answer them, a great point gained? By your
insisting that he should keep the correspondence private, it appears
there is one secret which you do not wish the world should know: and
he is master of that secret. He is indeed himself, as I may say, that
secret! What an intimacy does this beget for the lover! How is it
distancing the parent!

Yet who, as things are situated, can blame you?--Your condescension
has no doubt hitherto prevented great mischiefs. It must be
continued, for the same reasons, while the cause remains. You are
drawn in by a perverse fate against inclination: but custom, with such
laudable purposes, will reconcile the inconveniency, and make an
inclination.--And I would advise you (as you would wish to manage on
an occasion so critical with that prudence which governs all your
actions) not to be afraid of entering upon a close examination into
the true springs and grounds of this your generosity to that happy
man.

It is my humble opinion, I tell you frankly, that on inquiry it will
come out to be LOVE--don't start, my dear!--Has not your man himself
had natural philosophy enough to observe already to your aunt Hervey,
that love takes the deepest root in the steadiest minds? The deuce
take his sly penetration, I was going to say; for this was six or
seven weeks ago.

I have been tinctured, you know. Nor on the coolest reflection, could
I account how and when the jaundice began: but had been over head and
ears, as the saying is, but for some of that advice from you, which I
now return you. Yet my man was not half so--so what, my dear--to be
sure Lovelace is a charming fellow. And were he only--but I will not
make you glow, as you read--upon my word I will not.--Yet, my dear,
don't you find at your heart somewhat unusual make it go throb, throb,
throb, as you read just here?--If you do, don't be ashamed to own it--
it is your generosity, my love, that's all.--But as the Roman augur
said, Caesar, beware of the Ides of March!

Adieu, my dearest friend.--Forgive, and very speedily, by the new
found expedient, tell me that you forgive,

Your ever-affectionate,
ANNA HOWE.

LETTER XI

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1.

You both nettled and alarmed me, my dearest Miss Howe, by the
concluding part of your last. At first reading it, I did not think it
necessary, said I to myself, to guard against a critic, when I was
writing to so dear a friend. But then recollecting myself, is there
not more in it, said I, than the result of a vein so naturally lively?
Surely I must have been guilty of an inadvertence. Let me enter into
the close examination of myself which my beloved friend advises.

I do so; and cannot own any of the glow, any of the throbs you
mention.--Upon my word I will repeat, I cannot. And yet the passages
in my letter, upon which you are so humourously severe, lay me fairly
open to your agreeable raillery. I own they do. And I cannot tell
what turn my mind had taken to dictate so oddly to my pen.

But, pray now--is it saying so much, when one, who has no very
particular regard to any man, says, there are some who are preferable
to others? And is it blamable to say, they are the preferable, who
are not well used by one's relations; yet dispense with that usage out
of regard to one's self which they would otherwise resent? Mr.
Lovelace, for instance, I may be allowed to say, is a man to be
preferred to Mr. Solmes; and that I do prefer him to that man: but,
surely, this may be said without its being a necessary consequence
that I must be in love with him.

Indeed I would not be in love with him, as it is called, for the
world: First, because I have no opinion of his morals; and think it a
fault in which our whole family (my brother excepted) has had a share,
that he was permitted to visit us with a hope, which, however, being
distant, did not, as I have observed heretofore,* entitle any of us to
call him to account for such of his immoralities as came to our ears.
Next, because I think him to be a vain man, capable of triumphing
(secretly at least) over a person whose heart he thinks he has
engaged. And, thirdly, because the assiduities and veneration which
you impute to him, seem to carry an haughtiness in them, as if he
thought his address had a merit in it, that would be more than an
equivalent to a woman's love. In short, his very politeness,
notwithstanding the advantages he must have had from his birth and
education, appear to be constrained; and, with the most remarkable
easy and genteel person, something, at times, seems to be behind in
his manner that is too studiously kept in. Then, good-humoured as he
is thought to be in the main to other people's servants, and this even
to familiarity (although, as you have observed, a familiarity that has
dignity in it not unbecoming to a man of quality) he is apt sometimes
to break out into a passion with his own: An oath or a curse follows,
and such looks from those servants as plainly shew terror, and that
they should have fared worse had they not been in my hearing: with a
confirmation in the master's looks of a surmise too well justified.

* Letter III.

Indeed, my dear, THIS man is not THE man. I have great objections to
him. My heart throbs not after him. I glow not, but with indignation
against myself for having given room for such an imputation. But you
must not, my dearest friend, construe common gratitude into love. I
cannot bear that you should. But if ever I should have the misfortune
to think it love, I promise you upon my word, which is the same as
upon my honour, that I will acquaint you with it.

You bid me to tell you very speedily, and by the new-found expedient,
that I am not displeased with you for your agreeable raillery: I
dispatch this therefore immediately, postponing to my next the account
of the inducements which my friends have to promote with so much
earnestness the address of Mr. Solmes.

Be satisfied, my dear, mean time, that I am not displeased with you:
indeed I am not. On the contrary, I give you my hearty thanks for
your friendly premonitions; and I charge you (as I have often done)
that if you observe any thing in me so very faulty as would require
from you to others in my behalf the palliation of friendly and partial
love, you acquaint me with it: for methinks I would so conduct myself
as not to give reason even for an adversary to censure me; and how
shall so weak and so young a creature avoid the censure of such, if my
friend will not hold a looking-glass before me to let me see my
imperfections?

Judge me, then, my dear, as any indifferent person (knowing what you
know of me) would do. I may be at first be a little pained; may glow
a little perhaps to be found less worthy of your friendship than I
wish to be; but assure yourself, that your kind correction will give
me reflection that shall amend me. If it do not, you will have a
fault to accuse me of, that will be utterly inexcusable: a fault, let
me add, that should you not accuse me of it (if in your opinion I am
guilty) you will not be so much, so warmly, my friend as I am yours;
since I have never spared you on the like occasions.

Here I break off to begin another letter to you, with the assurance,
mean time, that I am, and ever will be,

Your equally affectionate and grateful,
CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER XII

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
THURSDAY MORNING, MARCH 2.

Indeed you would not be in love with him for the world!--Your servant,
my dear. Nor would I have you. For, I think, with all the advantages
of person, fortune, and family, he is not by any means worthy of you.
And this opinion I give as well from the reasons you mention (which I
cannot but confirm) as from what I have heard of him but a few hours
ago from Mrs. Fortescue, a favourite of Lady Betty Lawrance, who knows
him well--but let me congratulate you, however, on your being the
first of our sex that ever I heard of, who has been able to turn that
lion, Love, at her own pleasure, into a lap-dog.

Well but, if you have not the throbs and the glows, you have not: and
are not in love; good reason why--because you would not be in love;
and there's no more to be said.--Only, my dear, I shall keep a good
look-out upon you; and so I hope you will be upon yourself; for it is
no manner of argument that because you would not be in love, you
therefore are not.--But before I part entirely with this subject, a
word in your ear, my charming friend--'tis only by way of caution, and
in pursuance of the general observation, that a stander-by is often a
better judge of the game than those that play.--May it not be, that
you have had, and have, such cross creatures and such odd heads to
deal with, as have not allowed you to attend to the throbs?--Or, if
you had them a little now and then, whether, having had two accounts
to place them to, you have not by mistake put them to the wrong one?

But whether you have a value for Lovelace or not, I know you will be
impatient to hear what Mrs. Fortescue has said of him. Nor will I
keep you longer in suspense.

An hundred wild stories she tells of him from childhood to manhood:
for, as she observed, having never been subject to contradiction, he
was always as mischievous as a monkey. But I shall pass over these
whole hundred of his puerile rogueries (although indicative ones, as I
may say) to take notice as well of some things you are not quite
ignorant of, as of others you know not, and to make a few observations
upon him and his ways.

Mrs. Fortescue owns, what every body knows, 'that he is notoriously,
nay, avowedly, a man of pleasure; yet says, that in any thing he sets
his heart upon or undertakes, he is the most industrious and
persevering mortal under the sun. He rests it seems not above six
hours in the twenty-four--any more than you. He delights in writing.
Whether at Lord M.'s, or at Lady Betty's, or Lady Sarah's, he has
always a pen in his fingers when he retires. One of his companions
(confirming his love of writing) has told her, that his thoughts flow
rapidly to his pen:' And you and I, my dear, have observed, on more
occasions than one, that though he writes even a fine hand, he is one
of the readiest and quickest of writers. He must indeed have had
early a very docile genius; since a person of his pleasurable turn and
active spirit, could never have submitted to take long or great pains
in attaining the qualifications he is master of; qualifications so
seldom attained by youth of quality and fortune; by such especially of
those of either, who, like him, have never known what it was to be
controuled.

'He had once it seems the vanity, upon being complimented on these
talents (and on his surprising diligence, for a man of pleasure) to
compare himself to Julius Caesar; who performed great actions by day,
and wrote them down at night; and valued himself, that he only wanted
Caesar's out-setting, to make a figure among his contemporaries.

'He spoke of this indeed, she says, with an air of pleasantry: for she
observed, and so have we, that he has the art of acknowledging his
vanity with so much humour, that it sets him above the contempt which
is due to vanity and self-opinion; and at the same time half persuades
those who hear him, that he really deserves the exultation he gives
himself.'

But supposing it to be true that all his vacant nightly hours are
employed in writing, what can be his subjects? If, like Caesar, his
own actions, he must undoubtedly be a very enterprising and very
wicked man; since nobody suspects him to have a serious turn; and,
decent as he is in his conversation with us, his writings are not
probably such as would redound either to his own honour, or to the
benefit of others, were they to be read. He must be conscious of
this, since Mrs. Fortescue says, 'that in the great correspondence by
letters which he holds, he is as secret and as careful as if it were
of a treasonable nature;--yet troubles not his head with politics,
though nobody knows the interests of princes and courts better than he
is said to do.'

That you and I, my dear, should love to write, is no wonder. We have
always, from the time each could hold a pen, delighted in epistolary
correspondencies. Our employments are domestic and sedentary; and we
can scribble upon twenty innocent subjects, and take delight in them
because they are innocent; though were they to be seen, they might not
much profit or please others. But that such a gay, lively young
fellow as this, who rides, hunts, travels, frequents the public
entertainments, and has means to pursue his pleasures, should be able
to set himself down to write for hours together, as you and I have
heard him say he frequently does, that is the strange thing.

Mrs. Fortescue says, 'that he is a complete master of short-hand
writing.' By the way, what inducements could a swift writer as he
have to learn short-hand!

She says (and we know it as well as she) 'that he has a surprising
memory, and a very lively imagination.'

Whatever his other vices are, all the world, as well as Mrs.
Fortescue, says, 'he is a sober man. And among all his bad qualities,
gaming, that great waster of time as well as fortune, is not his
vice:' So that he must have his head as cool, and his reason as clear,
as the prime of youth and his natural gaiety will permit; and by his
early morning hours, a great portion of time upon his hands to employ
in writing, or worse.

Mrs. Fortescue says, 'he has one gentleman who is more his intimate
and correspondent than any of the rest.' You remember what his
dismissed bailiff said of him and of his associates.* I don't find
but that Mrs. Fortescue confirms this part of it, 'that all his
relations are afraid of him; and that his pride sets him above owing
obligations to them. She believes he is clear of the world; and that
he will continue so;' No doubt from the same motive that makes him
avoid being obliged to his relations.

* Letter IV.

A person willing to think favourably of him would hope, that a brave,
a learned, and a diligent, man, cannot be naturally a bad man.--But if
he be better than his enemies say he is (and if worse he is bad
indeed) he is guilty of an inexcusable fault in being so careless as
he is of his reputation. I think a man can be so but from one of
these two reasons: either that he is conscious he deserves the ill
spoken of him; or, that he takes a pride in being thought worse than
he is. Both very bad and threatening indications; since the first must
shew him to be utterly abandoned; and it is but natural to conclude
from the other, that what a man is not ashamed to have imputed to him,
he will not scruple to be guilty of whenever he has an opportunity.

Upon the whole, and upon all I could gather from Mrs. Fortescue, Mr.
Lovelace is a very faulty man. You and I have thought him too gay,
too inconsiderate, too rash, too little an hypocrite, to be deep. You
see he never would disguise his natural temper (haughty as it
certainly is) with respect to your brother's behaviour to him. Where
he thinks a contempt due, he pays it to the uttermost. Nor has he
complaisance enough to spare your uncles.

But were he deep, and ever so deep, you would soon penetrate him, if
they would leave you to yourself. His vanity would be your clue.
Never man had more: Yet, as Mrs. Fortescue observed, 'never did man
carry it off so happily.' There is a strange mixture in it of
humourous vivacity:--Since but for one half of what he says of
himself, when he is in the vein, any other man would be insufferable.

***

Talk of the devil, is an old saying. The lively wretch has made me a
visit, and is but just gone away. He is all impatience and resentment
at the treatment you meet with, and full of apprehensions too, that
they will carry their point with you.

I told him my opinion, that you will never be brought to think of such
a man as Solmes; but that it will probably end in a composition, never
to have either.

No man, he said, whose fortunes and alliances are so considerable,
ever had so little favour from a woman for whose sake he had borne so
much.

I told him my mind as freely as I used to do. But whoever was in
fault, self being judge? He complained of spies set upon his conduct,
and to pry into his life and morals, and this by your brother and
uncles.

I told him, that this was very hard upon him; and the more so, as
neither his life nor morals perhaps would stand a fair inquiry.

He smiled, and called himself my servant.--The occasion was too fair,
he said, for Miss Howe, who never spared him, to let it pass.--But,
Lord help the shallow souls of the Harlowes! Would I believe it! they
were for turning plotters upon him. They had best take care he did
not pay them in their own coin. Their hearts were better turned for
such works than their heads.

I asked him, If he valued himself upon having a head better turned
than theirs for such works, as he called them?

He drew off: and then ran into the highest professions of reverence
and affection for you.

The object so meritorious, who can doubt the reality of his
professions?

Adieu, my dearest, my noble friend!--I love and admire you for the
generous conclusion of your last more than I can express. Though I
began this letter with impertinent raillery, knowing that you always
loved to indulge my mad vein; yet never was there a heart that more
glowed with friendly love, than that of

Your own
ANNA HOWE.

LETTER XIII

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1.

I now take up my pen to lay before you the inducements and motive
which my friends have to espouse so earnestly the address of this Mr.
Solmes.

In order to set this matter in a clear light, it is necessary to go a
little back, and even perhaps to mention some things which you already
know: and so you may look upon what I am going to relate, as a kind
of supplement to my letters of the 15th and 20th of January last.*

* Letters IV. and V.

In those letters, of which I have kept memorandums, I gave you an
account of my brother's and sister's antipathy to Mr. Lovelace; and
the methods they took (so far as they had then come to my knowledge)
to ruin him in the opinion of my other friends. And I told you, that
after a very cold, yet not a directly affrontive behaviour to him,
they all of a sudden* became more violent, and proceeded to personal
insults; which brought on at last the unhappy rencounter between my
brother and him.

* See Letter IV.

Now you must know, that from the last conversation that passed between
my aunt and me, it comes out, that this sudden vehemence on my
brother's and sister's parts, was owing to stronger reasons than to
the college-begun antipathy on his side, or to slighted love on hers;
to wit, to an apprehension that my uncles intended to follow my
grandfather's example in my favour; at least in a higher degree than
they wish they should. An apprehension founded it seems on a
conversation between my two uncles and my brother and sister: which my
aunt communicated to me in confidence, as an argument to prevail upon
me to accept of Mr. Solmes's noble settlements: urging, that such a
seasonable compliance, would frustrate my brother's and sister's
views, and establish me for ever in the love of my father and uncles.

I will give you the substance of this communicated conversation, after
I have made a brief introductory observation or two, which however I
hardly need to make to you who are so well acquainted with us all, did
not the series or thread of the story require it.

I have more than once mentioned to you the darling view some of us
have long had of raising a family, as it is called. A reflection, as
I have often thought, upon our own, which is no considerable or
upstart one, on either side, on my mother's especially.--A view too
frequently it seems entertained by families which, having great
substance, cannot be satisfied without rank and title.

My uncles had once extended this view to each of us three children;
urging, that as they themselves intended not to marry, we each of us
might be so portioned, and so advantageously matched, as that our
posterity, if not ourselves, might make a first figure in our
country.--While my brother, as the only son, thought the two girls
might be very well provided for by ten or fifteen thousand pounds
a-piece: and that all the real estates in the family, to wit, my
grandfather's, father's, and two uncles', and the remainder of their
respective personal estates, together with what he had an expectation
of from his godmother, would make such a noble fortune, and give him
such an interest, as might entitle him to hope for a peerage. Nothing
less would satisfy his ambition.

With this view he gave himself airs very early; 'That his grandfather
and uncles were his stewards: that no man ever had better: that
daughters were but incumbrances and drawbacks upon a family:' and this
low and familiar expression was often in his mouth, and uttered always
with the self-complaisance which an imagined happy thought can be
supposed to give the speaker; to wit, 'That a man who has sons brings
up chickens for his own table,' [though once I made his comparison
stagger with him, by asking him, If the sons, to make it hold, were to
have their necks wrung off?] 'whereas daughters are chickens brought
up for tables of other men.' This, accompanied with the equally
polite reflection, 'That, to induce people to take them off their
hands, the family-stock must be impaired into the bargain,' used to
put my sister out of all patience: and, although she now seems to
think a younger sister only can be an incumbrance, she was then often
proposing to me to make a party in our own favour against my brother's
rapacious views, as she used to call them: while I was for considering
the liberties he took of this sort, as the effect of a temporary
pleasantry, which, in a young man, not naturally good-humoured, I was
glad to see; or as a foible that deserved raillery, but no other
notice.

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