Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9)

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And now, my dear, how is it with you? How do you now, as my mother says
to Mr. Hickman, when her pert daughter has made him look sorrowful?

LETTER XXII

MR. HICKMAN, TO MRS. HOWE
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29.

MADAM,

It is with infinite regret that I think myself obliged, by pen and ink,
to repeat my apprehension, that it is impossible for me ever to obtain a
share in the affections of your beloved daughter. O that it were not too
evident to every one, as well as to myself, even to our very servants,
that my love for her, and my assiduities, expose me rather to her scorn
[forgive me, Madam, the hard word!] than to the treatment due to a man
whose proposals have met with your approbation, and who loves her above
all the women in the world!

Well might the merit of my passion be doubted, if, like Mr. Solmes to the
truly-admirably Miss Clarissa Harlowe, I could continue my addresses to
Miss Howe's distaste. Yet what will not the discontinuance cost me!

Give me leave, nevertheless, dearest, worthiest Lady, to repeat, what I
told you, on Monday night, at Mrs. Larkin's, with a heart even bursting
with grief, That I wanted not the treatment of that day to convince me,
that I am not, nor ever can be, the object of Miss Howe's voluntary
favour. What hopes can there be, that a lady will ever esteem, as a
husband, the man, whom, as a lover, she despises? Will not every act of
obligingness from such a one, be construed as an unmanly tameness of
spirit, and entitle him the more to her disdain?--My heart is full:
Forgive me, if I say, that Miss Howe's treatment of me does no credit
either to her education, or fine sense.

Since, then, it is too evident, that she cannot esteem me; and since, as
I have heard it justly observed by the excellent Miss Clarissa Harlowe,
that love is not a voluntary passion; would it not be ungenerous to
subject the dear daughter to the displeasure of a mother so justly fond
of her; and you, Madam, while you are so good as to interest yourself in
my favour, to uneasiness? And why, were I even to be sure, at last, of
succeeding by means of your kind partiality to me, should I wish to make
the best-beloved of my soul unhappy; since mutual must be our happiness,
or misery for life the consequence to both?

My best wishes will for ever attend the dear, the ever-dear lady! may her
nuptials be happy! they must be so, if she marry the man she can honour
with her love. Yet I will say, that whoever be the happy, the thrice-
happy man, he can never love her with a passion more ardent and more
sincere than mine.

Accept, dear Madam, of my most grateful thanks for a distinction that has
been the only support of my presumption in an address I am obliged, as
utterly hopeless, to discontinue. A distinction, on which (and not on my
own merits) I had entirely relied; but which, I find, can avail me
nothing. To the last hour of my life, it will give me pleasure to think,
that had your favour, your recommendation, been of sufficient weight to
conquer what seems to be an invincible aversion, I had been the happiest
of men.

I am, dear Madam, with inviolable respect,
your ever obliged and faithful
humble servant,
CHARLES HICKMAN.

LETTER XXIII

MRS. HOWE, TO CHARLES HICKMAN, ESQ.
THURSDAY, MARCH 30.

I cannot but say, Mr. Hickman, but you have cause to be dissatisfied--to
be out of humour--to be displeased--with Nancy--but, upon my word; but
indeed--What shall I say?--Yet this I will say, that you good young
gentlemen know nothing at all of our sex. Shall I tell you--but why
should I? And yet I will, that if Nancy did not think well of you upon
the main, she is too generous to treat you so freely as she does.--Don't
you think she has courage enough to tell me, she would not see you, and
to refuse at any time seeing you, as she knows on what account you come,
if she had not something in her head favourable to you?--Fie! that I am
forced to say thus much in writing, when I have hinted it to you twenty
and twenty times by word of mouth!

But if you are so indifferent, Mr. Hickman--if you think you can part
with her for her skittish tricks--if my interest in your favour--Why, Mr.
Hickman, I must tell you that my Nancy is worth bearing with. If she be
foolish--what is that owing to?--Is it not to her wit? Let me tell you,
Sir, you cannot have the convenience without the inconvenience. What
workman loves not a sharp tool to work with? But is there not more
danger from a sharp tool than from a blunt one? And what workman will
throw away a sharp tool, because it may cut his fingers? Wit may be
likened to a sharp tool. And there is something very pretty in wit, let
me tell you. Often and often have I been forced to smile at her arch
turns upon me, when I could have beat her for them. And, pray, don't I
bear a great deal from her?--And why? because I love her. And would you
not wish me to judge of your love for her by my own? And would not you
bear with her?--Don't you love her (what though with another sort of
love?) as well as I do? I do assure you, Sir, that if I thought you did
not--Well, but it is plain that you don't!--And is it plain that you
don't?--Well, then, you must do as you think best.

Well might the merit of your passion be doubted, you say, if, like Mr.
Solmes--fiddle-faddle!--Why, you are a captious man, I think!--Has Nancy
been so plain in her repulses of you as Miss Clary Harlowe has been to
Mr. Solmes?--Does Nancy love any man better than you, although she may
not shew so much love to you as you wish for?--If she did, let me tell
you, she would have let us all hear of it.--What idle comparisons then!

But it mat be you are tired out. It may be you have seen somebody else--
it may be you would wish to change mistresses with that gay wretch Mr.
Lovelace. It may be too, that, in that case, Nancy would not be sorry to
change lovers--The truly-admirable Miss Clarissa Harlowe!--Good lack!-
but take care, Mr. Hickman, that you do not praise any woman living, let
her be as admirable and as excellent as she will, above your own
mistress. No polite man will do that, surely. And take care too, that
you do not make her or me think you are in earnest in your anger--just
though it may be, as anger only--I would not for a thousand pounds, that
Nancy should know that you can so easily part with her, if you have the
love for her which you declare you have. Be sure, if you are not
absolutely determined, that you do not so much as whisper the contents of
this your letter to your own heart, as I may say.

Her treatment of you, you say, does no credit either to her education or
fine sense. Very home put, truly! Nevertheless, so say I. But is not
hers the disgrace, more than yours? I can assure you, that every body
blames her for it. And why do they blame her?--Why? because they think
you merit better treatment at her hands: And is not this to your credit?
Who but pities you, and blames he? Do the servants, who, as you observe,
see her skittish airs, disrespect you for them? Do they not, at such
times, look concerned for you? Are they not then doubly officious in
their respects and services to you?--I have observed, with pleasure, that
they are.

But you are afraid you shall be thought tame, perhaps, when married.
That you shall not be though manly enough, I warrant!--And this was poor
Mr. Howe's fear. And many a tug did this lordly fear cost us both, God
knows!--Many more than needed, I am sure:--and more than ought to have
been, had he known how to bear and forbear; as is the duty of those who
pretend to have most sense--And, pray, which would you have to have most
sense, the woman or the man?

Well, Sir, and now what remains, if you really love Nancy so well as you
say you do?--Why, I leave that to you. You may, if you please, come to
breakfast with me in the morning. But with no full heart, nor resenting
looks, I advise you; except you can brave it out. That have I, when
provoked, done many a time with my husband, but never did I get any thing
by it with my daughter: much less will you. Of which, for your
observation, I thought fit to advise you. As from

Your friend,
Anabella Howe.

LETTER XXIV

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
THURSDAY MORNING.

I will now take some notice of your last favour. But being so far
behind-hand with you, must be brief.

In the first place, as to your reproofs, thus shall I discharge myself of
that part of my subject. Is it likely, think you, that I should avoid
deserving them now-and-then, occasionally, when I admire the manner in
which you give me your rebukes, and love you the better for them? And
when you are so well entitled to give them? For what faults can you
possibly have, unless your relations are so kind as to find you a few to
keep their many in countenance?--But they are as king to me in this, as
to you; for I may venture to affirm, That any one who should read your
letters, and would say you were right, would not on reading mine, condemn
me for them quite wrong.

Your resolution not to leave your father's house is right--if you can
stay in it, and avoid being Solmes's wife.

I think you have answered Solmes's letter, as I should have answered it.
--Will you not compliment me and yourself at once, by saying, that was
right?

You have, in your letters to your uncle and the rest, done all that you
ought to do. You are wholly guiltless of the consequence, be it what it
will. To offer to give up your estate!--That would not I have done! You
see this offer staggered them: they took time to consider of it. They
made my heart ache in the time they took. I was afraid they would have
taken you at your word: and so, but for shame, and for fear of Lovelace,
I dare say they would. You are too noble for them. This, I repeat, is
an offer I would not have made. Let me beg of you, my dear, never to
repeat the temptation to them.

I freely own to you, that their usage of you upon it, and Lovelace's
different treatment of you* in his letter received at the same time,
would have made me his, past redemption. The duce take the man, I was
going to say, for not having so much regard to his character and morals,
as would have entirely justified such a step in a CLARISSA, persecuted as
she is!

* See Letter XVIII.

I wonder not at your appointment with him. I may further touch upon some
part of this subject by-and-by.

Pray--pray--I pray you now, my dearest friend, contrive to send your
Betty Banes to me!--Does the Coventry Act extend to women, know ye?--The
least I will do, shall be, to send her home well soused in and dragged
through our deepest horsepond. I'll engage, if I get her hither, that
she will keep the anniversary of her deliverance as long as she lives.

I wonder not at Lovelace's saucy answer, saucy as it really is.* If he
loves you as he ought, he must be vexed at so great a disappointment.
The man must have been a detestable hypocrite, I think, had he not shown
his vexation. Your expectations of such a christian command of temper in
him, in a disappointment of this nature especially, are too early by
almost half a century in a man of his constitution. But nevertheless I
am very far from blaming you for your resentment.

* See Letter XX.

I shall be all impatience to know how this matter ends between you and
him. But a few inches of brick wall between you so lately; and now such
mountains?--And you think to hold it?--May be so!

You see, you say, that the temper he shewed in his letter was not natural
to him. Wretched creepers and insinuators! Yet when opportunity serves,
as insolent encroachers!--This very Hickman, I make no doubt, would be as
saucy as your Lovelace, if he dared. He has not half the arrogant
bravery of the other, and can better hide his horns; that's all. But
whenever he has the power, depend upon it, he will butt at one as
valiantly as the other.

If ever I should be persuaded to have him, I shall watch how the
obsequious lover goes off; and how the imperative husband comes upon him;
in short, how he ascends, and how I descend, in the matrimonial wheel,
never to take my turn again, but by fits and starts like the feeble
struggles of a sinking state for its dying liberty.

All good-natured men are passionate, says Mr. Lovelace. A pretty plea to
a beloved object in the plenitude of her power! As much as to say,
'Greatly I value you, Madam, I will not take pains to curb my passions to
oblige you'--Methinks I should be glad to hear from Mr. Hickman such a
plea for good nature as this.

Indeed, we are too apt to make allowances for such tempers as early
indulgence has made uncontroulable; and therefore habitually evil. But
if a boisterous temper, when under obligation, is to be thus allowed for,
what, when the tables are turned, will it expect? You know a husband,
who, I fancy, had some of these early allowances made for him: and you
see that neither himself nor any body else is the happier for it.

The suiting of the tempers of two persons who are to come together, is a
great matter: and there should be boundaries fixed between them, by
consent as it were, beyond which neither should go: and each should hold
the other to it; or there would probably be encroachment in both. To
illustrate my assertion by a very high, and by a more manly (as some
would think it) than womanly instance--if the boundaries of the three
estates that constitute our political union were not known, and
occasionally asserted, what would become of the prerogatives and
privileges of each? The two branches of the legislature would encroach
upon each other; and the executive power would swallow up both.

But if two persons of discretion, you'll say, come together--

Ay, my dear, that's true: but, if none but persons of discretion were to
marry--And would it not surprise you if I were to advance, that the
persons of discretion are generally single?--Such persons are apt to
consider too much, to resolve.--Are not you and I complimented as such?
--And would either of us marry, if the fellows and our friends would let
us alone?

But to the former point;--had Lovelace made his addresses to me, (unless
indeed I had been taken with a liking for him more than conditional,) I
would have forbid him, upon the first passionate instance of his good-
nature, as he calls it, ever to see me more: 'Thou must bear with me,
honest friend, might I have said [had I condescended to say any thing to
him] an hundred times more than this:--Begone, therefore!--I bear with no
passions that are predominant to that thou has pretended for me!'

But to one of your mild and gentle temper, it would be all one, were you
married, whether the man were a Lovelace or a Hickman in his spirit.--You
are so obediently principled, that perhaps you would have told a mild
man, that he must not entreat, but command; and that it was beneath him
not to exact from you the obedience you had so solemnly vowed to him at
the altar.--I know of old, my dear, your meek regard to that little
piddling part of the marriage-vow which some prerogative-monger foisted
into the office, to make that a duty, which he knew was not a right.

Our way of training-up, you say, makes us need the protection of the
brave. Very true: And how extremely brave and gallant is it, that this
brave man will free us from all insults but those which will go nearest
to our hearts; that is to say, his own!

How artfully has Lovelace, in the abstract you give me of one of his
letters, calculated to your meridian! Generous spirits hate compulsion!
--He is certainly a deeper creature by much than once we thought him. He
knows, as you intimate, that his own wild pranks cannot be concealed: and
so owns just enough to palliate (because it teaches you not to be
surprised at) any new one, that may come to your ears; and then, truly,
he is, however faulty, a mighty ingenuous man; and by no means an
hypocrite: a character the most odious of all others, to our sex, in a
lover, and the least to be forgiven, were it only because, when detected,
it makes us doubt the justice of those praises which we are willing to
believe he thought to be our due.

By means of this supposed ingenuity, Lovelace obtains a praise, instead
of a merited dispraise; and, like an absolved confessionaire, wipes off
as he goes along one score, to begin another: for an eye favourable to
him will not see his faults through a magnifying glass; nor will a woman,
willing to hope the best, forbear to impute it to ill-will and prejudice
all that charity can make so imputable. And if she even give credit to
such of the unfavourable imputations as may be too flagrant to be
doubted, she will be very apt to take in the future hope, which he
inculcates, and which to question would be to question her own power, and
perhaps merit: and thus may a woman be inclined to make a slight, even a
fancied merit atone for the most glaring vice.

I have a reason, a new one, for this preachment upon a text you have
given me. But, till I am better informed, I will not explain myself. If
it come out, as I shrewdly suspect it will, the man, my dear, is a devil;
and you must rather think of--I protest I had like to have said Solmes
than him.

But let this be as it will, shall I tell you, how, after all his
offences, he may creep in with you again?

I will. Thus then: It is but to claim for himself the good-natured
character: and this, granted, will blot out the fault of passionate
insolence: and so he will have nothing to do, but this hour to accustom
you to insult; the next, to bring you to forgive him, upon his
submission: the consequence must be, that he will, by this teazing, break
your resentment all to pieces: and then, a little more of the insult, and
a little less of the submission, on his part, will go down, till nothing
else but the first will be seen, and not a bit of the second. You will
then be afraid to provoke so offensive a spirit: and at last will be
brought so prettily, and so audibly, to pronounce the little reptile word
OBEY, that it will do one's heart good to hear you. The Muscovite wife
then takes place of the managed mistress. And if you doubt the
progression, be pleased, my dear, to take your mother's judgment upon it.

But no more of this just now. Your situation is become too critical to
permit me to dwell upon these sort of topics. And yet this is but an
affected levity with me. My heart, as I have heretofore said, is a
sincere sharer in all your distresses. My sun-shine darts but through a
drizly cloud. My eye, were you to see it, when it seems to you so
gladdened, as you mentioned in a former, is more than ready to overflow,
even at the very passages perhaps upon which you impute to me the
archness of exultation.

But now the unheard-of cruelty and perverseness of some of your friends
[relations, I should say--I am always blundering thus!] the as strange
determinedness of others; your present quarrel with Lovelace; and your
approaching interview with Solmes, from which you are right to apprehend
a great deal; are such considerable circumstances in your story, that it
is fit they should engross all my attention.

You ask me to advise you how to behave upon Solmes's visit. I cannot for
my life. I know they expect a great deal from it: you had not else had
your long day complied with. All I will say is, That if Solmes cannot be
prevailed for, now that Lovelace has so much offended you, he never will.
When the interview is over, I doubt not but that I shall have reason to
say, that all you did, that all you said, was right, and could not be
better: yet, if I don't think so, I won't say so; that I promise you.

Only let me advise you to pull up a spirit, even to your uncle, if there
be occasion. Resent the vile and foolish treatment you meet with, in
which he has taken so large a share, and make him ashamed of it, if you
can.

I know not, upon recollection, but this interview may be a good thing for
you, however designed. For when Solmes sees (if that be to be so) that
it is impossible he should succeed with you; and your relations see it
too; the one must, I think, recede, and the other come to terms with you,
upon offers, that it is my opinion, will go hard enough with you to
comply with; when the still harder are dispensed with.

There are several passages in your last letters, as well as in your
former, which authorize me to say this. But it would be unseasonable to
touch this subject farther just now.

But, upon the whole, I have no patience to see you thus made sport of
your brother's and sister's cruelty: For what, after so much steadiness
on your part, in so many trials, can be their hope? except indeed it be
to drive you to extremity, and to ruin you in the opinion of your uncles
as well as father.

I urge you by all means to send out of their reach all the letters and
papers you would not have them see. Methinks, I would wish you to
deposit likewise a parcel of clothes, linen, and the like, before your
interview with Solmes: lest you should not have an opportunity for it
afterwards. Robin shall fetch it away on the first orders by day or by
night.

I am in hopes to procure from my mother, if things come to extremity,
leave for you to be privately with us.

I will condition to be good-humoured, and even kind, to HER favourite, if
she will shew me an indulgence that shall make me serviceable to MINE.

This alternative has been a good while in my head. But as your foolish
uncle has so strangely attached my mother to their views, I cannot
promise that I shall succeed as I wish.

Do not absolutely despair, however. What though the contention will be
between woman and woman? I fancy I shall be able to manage it, by the
help of a little female perseverance. Your quarrel with Lovelace, if it
continue, will strengthen my hands. And the offers you made in your
answer to your uncle Harlowe's letter of Sunday night last, duly dwelt
upon, must add force to my pleas.

I depend upon your forgiveness of all the perhaps unseasonable
flippancies of your naturally too lively, yet most sincerely
sympathizing,
ANNA HOWE.

LETTER XXV

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
FRIDAY, MARCH 31.

You have very kindly accounted for your silence. People in misfortune
are always in doubt. They are too apt to turn even unavoidable accidents
into slights and neglects; especially in those whose favourable opinion
they wish to preserve.

I am sure I ought evermore to exempt my Anna Howe from the supposed
possibility of her becoming one of those who bask only in the sun-shine
of a friend: but nevertheless her friendship is too precious to me, not
to doubt my own merits on the one hand, and not to be anxious for the
preservation of it, on the other.

You so generously gave me liberty to chide you, that I am afraid of
taking it, because I could sooner mistrust my own judgment, than that of
a beloved friend, whose ingenuousness in acknowledging an imputed error
seems to set her above the commission of a wilful one. This makes me
half-afraid to ask you, if you think you are not too cruel, too
ungenerous shall I say? in your behaviour to a man who loves you so
dearly, and is so worthy and so sincere a man?

Only it is by YOU, or I should be ashamed to be outdone in that true
magnanimity, which makes one thankful for the wounds given by a true
friend. I believe I was guilty of a petulance, which nothing but my
uneasy situation can excuse; if that can. I am but almost afraid to
beg of you, and yet I repeatedly do, to give way to that charming spirit,
whenever it rises to your pen, which smiles, yet goes to the quick of my
fault. What patient shall be afraid of a probe in so delicate a hand?--
I say, I am almost afraid to pray you to give way to it, for fear you
should, for that very reason, restrain it. For the edge may be taken
off, if it does not make the subject of its raillery wince a little.
Permitted or desired satire may be apt, in a generous satirist, mending
as it rallies, to turn too soon into panegyric. Yours is intended to
instruct; and though it bites, it pleases at the same time: no fear of a
wound's wrankling or festering by so delicate a point as you carry; not
envenomed by personality, not intending to expose, or ridicule, or
exasperate. The most admired of our moderns know nothing of this art:
Why? Because it must be founded in good nature, and directed by a right
heart. The man, not the fault, is generally the subject of their satire:
and were it to be just, how should it be useful; how should it answer any
good purpose; when every gash (for their weapon is a broad sword, not a
lancet) lets in the air of public ridicule, and exasperates where it
should heal? Spare me not therefore because I am your friend. For that
very reason spare me not. I may feel your edge, fine as it is. I may be
pained: you would lose you end if I were not: but after the first
sensibility (as I have said more than once before) I will love you the
better, and my amended heart shall be all yours; and it will then be more
worthy to be yours.

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