Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9)

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I am glad to hear you say this: and take this, and this, and this, my
charming Niece! (for so she called me almost at every word, kissing me
earnestly, and clasping her arms about my neck:) and God protect you,
and direct you! But you must submit: indeed you must. Some one day
in a month from this is all the choice that is left you.

And this, I suppose, was the doom my sister called for; and yet no
worse than what had been pronounced upon me before.

She repeated these last sentences louder than the former. 'And
remember, Miss,' added she, 'it is your duty to comply.'--And down she
went, leaving me with my heart full, and my eyes running over.

The very repetition of this fills me with almost equal concern to that
which I felt at the time.

I must lay down my pen. Mistiness, which give to the deluged eye the
appearance of all the colours in the rainbow, will not permit me to
write on.

WEDNESDAY, FIVE O'CLOCK

I will now add a few lines--My aunt, as she went down from me, was met
at the foot of the stairs by my sister, who seemed to think she had
staid a good while after her; and hearing her last words prescribing
to me implicit duty, praised her for it, and exclaimed against my
obstinacy. Did you ever hear of such perverseness, Madam? said she:
Could you have thought that your Clarissa and every body's Clarissa,
was such a girl?--And who, as you said, is to submit, her father or
she?

My aunt said something in answer to her, compassionating me, as I
thought, by her accent: but I heard not the words.

Such a strange perseverance in a measure so unreasonable!--But my
brother and sister are continually misrepresenting all I say and do;
and I am deprived of the opportunity of defending myself!--My sister
says,* that had they thought me such a championess, they you not have
engaged with me: and now, not knowing how to reconcile my supposed
obstinacy with my general character and natural temper, they seem to
hope to tire me out, and resolve to vary their measures accordingly.
My brother, you see,** is determined to carry this point, or to
abandon Harlowe-place, and never to see it more. So they are to lose
a son, or to conquer a daughter--the perversest and most ungrateful
that ever parents had!--This is the light he places things in: and has
undertaken, it seems, to subdue me, if his advice should be followed.
It will be farther tried; of that I am convinced; and what will be
their next measure, who can divine?

* See Letter XLII. of Vol. I.
** Ibid.

I shall dispatch, with this, my answer to your's of Sunday last, begun
on Monday;* but which is not yet quite finished. It is too long to
copy: I have not time for it. In it I have been very free with you,
my dear, in more places than one. I cannot say that I am pleased with
all I have written--yet will not now alter it. My mind is not at ease
enough for the subject. Don't be angry with me. Yet, if you can excuse
one or two passages, it will be because they were written by

Your
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

* See Letter XL, ibid.

LETTER II

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
WEDNESDAY NIGHT, MARCH 22.

ANGRY!--What should I be angry for? I am mightily pleased with your
freedom, as you call it. I only wonder at your patience with me;
that's all. I am sorry I gave you the trouble of so long a letter
upon the occasion,* notwithstanding the pleasure I received in reading
it.

* See Vol. I, Letter XXXVII, for the occasion; and Letters XXXVIII.
and XL. of the same volume, for the freedom Clarissa apologizes for.

I believe you did not intend reserves to me: for two reasons I believe
you did not: First, because you say you did not: Next, because you
have not as yet been able to convince yourself how it is to be with
you; and persecuted as you are, how so to separate the effects that
spring from the two causes [persecution and love] as to give to each
its particular due. But this I believe I hinted to you once before;
and so will say no more upon this subject at present.

Robin says, you had but just deposited your last parcel when he took
it: for he was there but half an hour before, and found nothing. He
had seen my impatience, and loitered about, being willing to bring me
something from you, if possible.

My cousin Jenny Fynnett is here, and desires to be my bedfellow
to-night. So I shall not have an opportunity to sit down with that
seriousness and attention which the subjects of yours require. For
she is all prate, you know, and loves to set me a prating; yet comes
upon a very grave occasion--to procure my mother to go with her to her
grandmother Larking, who has long been bed-ridden; and at last has
taken it into her head that she is mortal, and therefore will make her
will; a work she was till now extremely averse to; but it must be upon
condition that my mother, who is her distant relation, will go to her,
and advise her as to the particulars of it: for she has a high
opinion, as every one else has, of my mother's judgment in all matters
relating to wills, settlements, and such-like notable affairs.

Mrs. Larking lives about seventeen miles off; and as my mother cannot
endure to lie out of her own house, she proposes to set out early in
the morning, that she might be able to get back again at night. So,
to-morrow I shall be at your devotion from day-light to day-light; nor
will I be at home to any body.

I have hinted before, that I could almost wish my mother and Mr.
Hickman would make a match of it: and I here repeat my wishes. What
signifies a difference of fifteen or twenty years; especially when the
lady has spirits that will make her young a long time, and the lover
is a mighty sober man?--I think, verily, I could like him better for a
papa, than for a nearer relation: and they are strange admirers of one
another.

But allow me a perhaps still better (and, as to years, more suitable
and happier) disposal; for the man at least.--What think you, my dear,
of compromising with your friends, by rejecting both men, and
encouraging my parader?--If your liking one of the two go no farther
than conditional, I believe it will do. A rich thought, if it obtain
your approbation! In this light, I should have a prodigious respect
for Mr. Hickman; more by half than I can have in the other. The vein
is opened--Shall I let it flow? How difficult to withstand
constitutional foibles!

Hickman is certainly a man more in your taste than any of those who
have hitherto been brought to address you. He is mighty sober, mighty
grave, and all that. Then you have told me, that he is your
favourite. But that is because he is my mother's perhaps. The man
would certainly rejoice at the transfer; or he must be a greater fool
than I take him to be.

O but your fierce lover would knock him o' the head--I forgot that!--
What makes me incapable of seriousness when I write about Hickman?--
Yet the man so good a sort of man in the main!--But who is perfect?
This is one of my foibles: and it is something for you to chide me
for.

You believe me to be very happy in my prospect in relation to him:
because you are so very unhappy in the foolish usage you meet with,
you are apt (as I suspect) to think that tolerable which otherwise
would be far from being so. I dare say, you would not, with all your
grave airs, like him for yourself; except, being addressed by Solmes
and him, you were obliged to have one of them.--I have given you a
test. Let me see what you will say to it.

For my own part, I confess to you, that I have great exceptions to
Hickman. He and wedlock never yet once entered into my head at one
time. Shall I give you my free thoughts of him?--Of his best and his
worst; and that as if I were writing to one who knows him not?--I
think I will. Yet it is impossible I should do it gravely. The
subject won't bear to be so treated in my opinion. We are not come so
far as that yet, if ever we shall: and to do it in another strain, ill
becomes my present real concern for you.

***

Here I was interrupted on the honest man's account. He has been here
these two hours--courting the mother for the daughter, I suppose--yet
she wants no courting neither: 'Tis well one of us does; else the man
would have nothing but halcyon; and be remiss, and saucy of course.

He was going. His horses at the door. My mother sent for me down,
pretending to want to say something to me.

Something she said when I came that signified nothing--Evidently, for
no reason called me, but to give me an opportunity to see what a fine
bow her man could make; and that she might wish me a good night. She
knows I am not over ready to oblige him with my company, if I happen
to be otherwise engaged. I could not help an air a little upon the
fretful, when I found she had nothing of moment to say to me, and when
I saw her intention.

She smiled off the visible fretfulness, that the man might go away in
good humour with himself.

He bowed to the ground, and would have taken my hand, his whip in the
other. I did not like to be so companioned: I withdrew my hand, but
touched his elbow with a motion, as if from his low bow I had supposed
him falling, and would have helped him up--A sad slip, it might have
been! said I.

A mad girl! smiled it off my mother.

He was quite put out; took his horse-bridle, stumped back, back, back,
bowing, till he run against his servant. I laughed. He mounted his
horse. I mounted up stairs, after a little lecture; and my head is so
filled with him, that I must resume my intention, in hopes to divert
you for a few moments.

Take it then--his best, and his worst, as I said before.

Hickman is a sort of fiddling, busy, yet, to borrow a word from you,
unbusy man: has a great deal to do, and seems to me to dispatch
nothing. Irresolute and changeable in every thing, but in teasing me
with his nonsense; which yet, it is evident, he must continue upon my
mother's interest more than upon his own hopes; for none have I given
him.

Then I have a quarrel against his face, though in his person, for a
well-thriven man, tolerably genteel--Not to his features so much
neither; for what, as you have often observed, are features in a man?
--But Hickman, with strong lines, and big cheek and chin bones, has
not the manliness in his aspect, which Lovelace has with the most
regular and agreeable features.

Then what a set and formal mortal he is in some things!--I have not
been able yet to laugh him out of his long bid and beads. Indeed,
that is, because my mother thinks they become him; and I would not be
so free with him, as to own I should choose to have him leave it off.
If he did, so particular is the man, he would certainly, if left to
himself, fall into a King-William's cravat, or some such antique
chin-cushion, as by the pictures of that prince one sees was then the
fashion.

As to his dress in general, he cannot indeed be called a sloven, but
sometimes he is too gaudy, at other times too plain, to be uniformly
elegant. And for his manners, he makes such a bustle with them, and
about them, as would induce one to suspect that they are more
strangers than familiars to him. You, I know, lay this to his
fearfulness of disobliging or offending. Indeed your over-doers
generally give the offence they endeavour to avoid.

The man however is honest: is of family: has a clear and good estate;
and may one day be a baronet, an't please you. He is humane and
benevolent, tolerably generous, as people say; and as I might say too,
if I would accept of his bribes; which he offers in hopes of having
them all back again, and the bribed into the bargain. A method taken
by all corrupters, from old Satan, to the lowest of his servants.
Yet, to speak in the language of a person I am bound to honour, he is
deemed a prudent man; that is to say a good manager.

Then I cannot but confess, that now I like not anybody better,
whatever I did once.

He is no fox-hunter: he keeps a pack indeed; but prefers not his
hounds to his fellow-creatures. No bad sign for a wife, I own. He
loves his horse; but dislikes racing in a gaming way, as well as all
sorts of gaming. Then he is sober; modest; they say, virtuous; in
short, has qualities that mothers would be fond of in a husband for
their daughters; and for which perhaps their daughters would be the
happier could they judge as well for themselves, as experience
possibly may teach them to judge for their future daughters.

Nevertheless, to own the truth, I cannot say I love the man: nor, I
believe, ever shall.

Strange! that these sober fellows cannot have a decent sprightliness,
a modest assurance with them! Something debonnaire; which need not be
separated from that awe and reverence, when they address a woman,
which should shew the ardour of their passion, rather than the
sheepishness of their nature; for who knows not that love delights in
taming the lion-hearted? That those of the sex, who are most
conscious of their own defect in point of courage, naturally require,
and therefore as naturally prefer, the man who has most of it, as the
most able to give them the requisite protection? That the greater
their own cowardice, as it would be called in a man, the greater is
their delight in subjects of heroism? As may be observed in their
reading; which turns upon difficulties encountered, battles fought,
and enemies overcome, four or five hundred by the prowess of one
single hero, the more improbable the better: in short, that their man
should be a hero to every one living but themselves; and to them know
no bound to his humility. A woman has some glory in subduing a heart
no man living can appall; and hence too often the bravo, assuming the
hero, and making himself pass for one, succeeds as only a hero should.

But as for honest Hickman, the good man is so generally meek, as I
imagine, that I know not whether I have any preference paid me in his
obsequiousness. And then, when I rate him, he seems to be so
naturally fitted for rebuke, and so much expects it, that I know not
how to disappoint him, whether he just then deserve it, or not. I am
sure, he has puzzled me many a time when I have seen him look penitent
for faults he has not committed, whether to pity or laugh at him.

You and I have often retrospected the faces and minds of grown people;
that is to say, have formed images for their present appearances,
outside and in, (as far as the manners of the persons would justify us
in the latter) what sort of figures they made when boys and girls.
And I'll tell you the lights in which HICKMAN, SOLMES, and LOVELACE,
our three heroes, have appeared to me, supposing them boys at school.

Solmes I have imagined to be a little sordid, pilfering rogue, who
would purloin from every body, and beg every body's bread and butter
from him; while, as I have heard a reptile brag, he would in a winter-
morning spit upon his thumbs, and spread his own with it, that he
might keep it all to himself.

Hickman, a great overgrown, lank-haired, chubby boy, who would be
hunched and punched by every body; and go home with his finger in his
eye, and tell his mother.

While Lovelace I have supposed a curl-pated villain, full of fire,
fancy, and mischief; an orchard-robber, a wall-climber, a horse-rider
without saddle or bridle, neck or nothing: a sturdy rogue, in short,
who would kick and cuff, and do no right, and take no wrong of any
body; would get his head broke, then a plaster for it, or let it heal
of itself; while he went on to do more mischief, and if not to get, to
deserve, broken bones. And the same dispositions have grown up with
them, and distinguish them as me, with no very material alteration.

Only that all men are monkeys more or less, or else that you and I
should have such baboons as these to choose out of, is a mortifying
thing, my dear.

I am sensible that I am a little out of season in treating thus
ludicrously the subject I am upon, while you are so unhappy; and if my
manner does not divert you, as my flightiness used to do, I am
inexcusable both to you, and to my own heart: which, I do assure you,
notwithstanding my seeming levity, is wholly in your case.

As this letter is extremely whimsical, I will not send it until I can
accompany it with something more solid and better suited to your
unhappy circumstances; that is to say, to the present subject of our
correspondence. To-morrow, as I told you, will be wholly my own, and
of consequence yours. Adieu, therefore, till then.

LETTER III

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
TUESDAY MORN. 7 O'CLOCK

My mother and cousin are already gone off in our chariot and four,
attended by their doughty 'squire on horseback, and he by two of his
own servants, and one of my mother's. They both love parade when they
go abroad, at least in compliment to one another; which shews, that
each thinks the other does. Robin is your servant and mine, and
nobody's else--and the day is all my own.

I must begin with blaming you, my dear, for your resolution not to
litigate for your right, if occasion were to be given you. Justice is
due to ourselves, as well as to every body else. Still more must I
blame you for declaring to your aunt and sister, that you will not:
since (as they will tell it to your father and brother) the
declaration must needs give advantage to spirits who have so little of
that generosity for which you are so much distinguished.

There never was a spirit in the world that would insult where it
dared, but it would creep and cringe where it dared not. Let me
remind you of a sentence of your own, the occasion for which I have
forgotten: 'That little spirits will always accommodate themselves to
the temper of those they would work upon: will fawn upon a sturdy-
tempered person: will insult the meek:'--And another given to Miss
Biddulph, upon an occasion you cannot forget:--'If we assume a dignity
in what we say and do, and take care not to disgrace by arrogance our
own assumption, every body will treat us with respect and deference.'

I remember that you once made an observation, which you said, you was
obliged to Mrs. Norton for, and she to her father, upon an excellent
preacher, who was but an indifferent liver: 'That to excel in theory,
and to excel in practice, generally required different talents; which
did not always meet in the same person.' Do you, my dear (to whom
theory and practice are the same thing in almost every laudable
quality), apply the observation to yourself, in this particular case,
where resolution is required; and where the performance of the will of
the defunct is the question--no more to be dispensed with by you, in
whose favour it was made, than by any body else who have only
themselves in view by breaking through it.

I know how much you despise riches in the main: but yet it behoves you
to remember, that in one instance you yourself have judged them
valuable--'In that they put it into our power to lay obligations;
while the want of that power puts a person under a necessity of
receiving favours--receiving them perhaps from grudging and narrow
spirits, who know not how to confer them with that grace, which gives
the principal merit to a beneficent action.'--Reflect upon this, my
dear, and see how it agrees with the declaration you have made to your
aunt and sister, that you would not resume your estate, were you to be
turned out of doors, and reduced to indigence and want. Their very
fears that you will resume, point out to you the necessity of resuming
upon the treatment you meet with.

I own, that (at first reading) I was much affected with your mother's
letter sent with the patterns. A strange measure however from a
mother; for she did not intend to insult you; and I cannot but lament
that so sensible and so fine a woman should stoop to so much art as
that letter is written with: and which also appears in some of the
conversations you have given me an account of. See you not in her
passiveness, what boisterous spirits can obtain from gentler, merely by
teasing and ill-nature?

I know the pride they have always taken in calling you a Harlowe--
Clarissa Harlowe, so formal and so set, at every word, when they are
grave or proudly solemn.--Your mother has learnt it of them--and as in
marriage, so in will, has been taught to bury her own superior name
and family in theirs. I have often thought that the same spirit
governed them, in this piece of affectation, and others of the like
nature (as Harlowe-Place, and so-forth, though not the elder brother's
or paternal seat), as governed the tyrant Tudor,* who marrying
Elizabeth, the heiress of the house of York, made himself a title to
a throne, which he would not otherwise have had (being but a base
descendant of the Lancaster line); and proved a gloomy and vile
husband to her; for no other cause, than because she had laid him
under obligations which his pride would not permit him to own.--Nor
would the unprincely wretch marry her till he was in possession of the
crown, that he might not be supposed to owe it to her claim.

* Henry VII.

You have chidden me, and again will, I doubt not, for the liberties I
take with some of your relations. But my dear, need I tell you, that
pride in ourselves must, and for ever will, provoke contempt, and
bring down upon us abasement from others?--Have we not, in the case of
a celebrated bard, observed, that those who aim at more than their
due, will be refused the honours they may justly claim?--I am very
much loth to offend you; yet I cannot help speaking of your relations,
as well as of others, as I think they deserve. Praise or dispraise,
is the reward or punishment which the world confers or inflicts on
merit or demerit; and, for my part, I neither can nor will confound
them in the application. I despise them all, but your mother: indeed
I do: and as for her--but I will spare the good lady for your sake--
and one argument, indeed, I think may be pleaded in her favour, in the
present contention--she who has for so many years, and with such
absolute resignation, borne what she has borne to the sacrifice of her
own will, may think it an easier task than another person can imagine
it, for her daughter to give up hers. But to think to whose
instigation all this is originally owing--God forgive me; but with
such usage I should have been with Lovelace before now! Yet remember,
my dear, that the step which would not be wondered at from such a
hasty-tempered creatures as me, would be inexcusable in such a
considerate person as you.

After your mother has been thus drawn in against her judgment, I am the
less surprised, that your aunt Hervey should go along with her; since
the two sisters never separate. I have inquired into the nature of the
obligation which Mr. Hervey's indifferent conduct in his affairs has laid
him under--it is only, it seems, that your brother has paid off for him a
mortgage upon one part of his estate, which the mortgagee was about to
foreclose; and taken it upon himself. A small favour (as he has ample
security in his hands) from kindred to kindred: but such a one, it is
plain, as has laid the whole family of the Herveys under obligation to
the ungenerous lender, who has treated him, and his aunt too (as Miss
Dolly Hervey has privately complained), with the less ceremony ever
since.

Must I, my dear, call such a creature your brother?--I believe I must--
Because he is your father's son. There is no harm, I hope, in saying
that.

I am concerned, that you ever wrote at all to him. It was taking too
much notice of him: it was adding to his self-significance; and a call
upon him to treat you with insolence. A call which you might have been
assured he would not fail to answer.

But such a pretty master as this, to run riot against such a man as
Lovelace; who had taught him to put his sword into his scabbard, when he
had pulled it out by accident!--These in-door insolents, who, turning
themselves into bugbears, frighten women, children, and servants, are
generally cravens among men. Were he to come fairly across me, and say
to my face some of the free things which I am told he has said of me
behind my back, or that (as by your account) he has said of our sex, I
would take upon myself to ask him two or three questions; although he
were to send me a challenge likewise.

I repeat, you know that I will speak my mind, and write it too. He is
not my brother. Can you say, he is yours?--So, for your life, if you are
just, you can't be angry with me: For would you side with a false brother
against a true friend? A brother may not be a friend: but a friend will
always be a brother--mind that, as your uncle Tony says!

I cannot descend so low, as to take very particular notice of the
epistles of these poor souls, whom you call uncles. Yet I love to divert
myself with such grotesque characters too. But I know them and love you;
and so cannot make the jest of them which their absurdities call for.

You chide me, my dear,* for my freedoms with relations still nearer and
dearer to you, than either uncles or brother or sister. You had better
have permitted me (uncorrected) to have taken my own way. Do not use
those freedoms naturally arise from the subject before us? And from whom
arises that subject, I pray you? Can you for one quarter of an hour put
yourself in my place, or in the place of those who are still more
indifferent to the case than I can be?--If you can--But although I have
you not often at advantage, I will not push you.

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