Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9)

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How willingly would I run away from myself, and what most concerns
myself, if I could! This digression brings me back again to the occasion
of it--and that to the impatience I was in, when I ended my last letter,
for my situation is not altered. I renew, therefore, my former
earnestness, as the new day approaches, and will bring with it perhaps
new trials, that you will (as undivestedly as possible of favour or
resentment) tell me what you would have me do:--for, if I am obliged to
go to my uncle Antony's, all, I doubt, will be over with me. Yet how to
avoid it--that's the difficulty!

I shall deposit this the first thing. When you have it, lose no time, I
pray you, to advise (lest it be too late)

Your ever obliged
CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER XII

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
SATURDAY, MARCH 25.

What can I advise you to do, my noble creature? Your merit is your
crime. You can no more change your nature, than your persecutors can
theirs. Your distress is owing to the vast disparity between you and
them. What would you have of them? Do they not act in character?--And
to whom? To an alien. You are not one of them. They have two
dependencies in their hope to move you to compliance.--Upon their
impenetrableness one [I'd give it a more proper name, if I dared]; the
other, on the regard you have always had for your character, [Have they
not heretofore owned as much?] and upon your apprehensions from that of
Lovelace, which would discredit you, should you take any step by his
means to extricate yourself. Then they know, that resentment and
unpersuadableness are not natural to you; and that the anger they have
wrought you up to, will subside, as all extraordinaries soon do; and that
once married, you will make the best of it.

But surely your father's son and eldest daughter have a view (by
communicating to so narrow a soul all they know of your just aversion to
him) to entail unhappiness for life upon you, were you to have the man
who is already more nearly related to them, than ever he can be to you,
although the shocking compulsion should take place.

As to that wretch's perseverance, those only, who know not the man, will
wonder at it. He has not the least delicacy. His principal view in
marriage is not to the mind. How shall those beauties be valued, which
cannot be comprehended? Were you to be his, and shew a visible want of
tenderness to him, it is my opinion, he would not be much concerned at
it. I have heard you well observe, from your Mrs. Norton, That a person
who has any over-ruling passion, will compound by giving up twenty
secondary or under-satisfactions, though more laudable ones, in order to
have that gratified.

I'll give you the substance of a conversation [no fear you can be made to
like him worse than you do already] that passed between Sir Harry
Downeton and this Solmes, but three days ago, as Sir Harry told it but
yesterday to my mother and me. It will confirm to you that what your
sister's insolent Betty reported he should say, of governing by fear, was
not of her own head.

Sir Harry told her, he wondered he should wish to obtain you so much
against you inclination as every body knew it would be, if he did.

He matter'd not that, he said: coy maids made the fondest wives: [A sorry
fellow!] It would not at all grieve him to see a pretty woman make wry
faces, if she gave him cause to vex her. And your estate, by the
convenience of its situation, would richly pay him for all he could bear
with your shyness.

He should be sure, he said, after a while, of your complaisance, if not
of your love: and in that should be happier than nine parts in ten of his
married acquaintance.

What a wretch is this!

For the rest, your known virtue would be as great a security to him, as
he could wish for.

She will look upon you, said Sir Harry, if she be forced to marry you, as
Elizabeth of France did upon Philip II. of Spain, when he received her on
his frontiers as her husband, who was to have been but her father-in-law:
that is, with fear and terror, rather than with complaisance and love:
and you will perhaps be as surly to her, as that old monarch was to his
young bride.

Fear and terror, the wretch, the horrid wretch! said, looked pretty in a
bride as well as in a wife: and, laughing, [yes, my dear, the hideous
fellow laughed immoderately, as Sir Harry told us, when he said it,] it
should be his care to perpetuate the occasion for that fear, if he could
not think he had the love. And, truly, he was of opinion, that if LOVE
and FEAR must be separated in matrimony, the man who made himself feared,
fared best.

If my eyes would carry with them the execution which the eyes of the
basilisk are said to do, I would make it my first business to see this
creature.

My mother, however, says, it would be a prodigious merit in you, if you
could get over your aversion to him. Where, asks she [as you have been
asked before], is the praise-worthiness of obedience, if it be only paid
in instance where we give up nothing?

What a fatality, that you have no better an option--either a Scylla or a
Charybdis.

Were it not you, I should know how (barbarously as you are used) to
advise you in a moment. But such a noble character to suffer from a
(supposed) rashness and indiscretion of such a nature, would, as I have
heretofore observed, be a wound to the sex.

While I was in hope, that the asserting of your own independence would
have helped you, I was pleased that you had one resource, as I thought.
But now, that you have so well proved, that such a step would not avail
you, I am entirely at a loss what to say.

I will lay down my pen, and think.

***

I have considered, and considered again; but, I protest, I know no more
what to say now, than before. Only this: That I am young, like yourself;
and have a much weaker judgment, and stronger passions, than you have.

I have heretofore said, that you have offered as much as you ought, in
offering to live single. If you were never to marry, the estate they are
so loth should go out of their name, would, in time, I suppose, revert to
your brother: and he or his would have it, perhaps, much more certainly
this way, than by the precarious reversions which Solmes makes them hope
for. Have you put this into their odd heads, my dear?--The tyrant word
AUTHORITY, as they use it, can be the only objection against this offer.

One thing you must consider, that, if you leave your parents, your duty
and love will not suffer you to justify yourself by an appeal against
them; and so you'll have the world against you. And should Lovelace
continue his wild life, and behave ungratefully to you, will not his
baseness seem to justify their cruel treatment of you, as well as their
dislike of him?

May heaven direct you for the best!--I can only say, that for my own
part, I would do any thing, go any where, rather than be compelled to
marry the man I hate; and (were he such a man as Solmes) must always
hate. Nor could I have borne what you have borne, if from father and
uncles, not from brother and sister.

My mother will have it, that after they have tried their utmost efforts
to bring you into their measures, and find them ineffectual, they will
recede. But I cannot say I am of her mind. She does not own, she has
any authority for this, but her own conjecture. I should otherwise have
hoped, that your uncle Antony and she had been in on one secret, and that
favourable to you. Woe be to one of them at least [to you uncle to be
sure I mean] if they should be in any other!

You must, if possible, avoid being carried to that uncle's. The man, the
parson, your brother and sister present!--They'll certainly there marry
you to the wretch. Nor will your newly-raised spirit support you in your
resistance on such an occasion. Your meekness will return; and you will
have nothing for it but tears [tears despised by them all] and
ineffectual appeals and lamentations: and these tears when the ceremony
is profaned, you must suddenly dry up; and endeavour to dispose of
yourself to such a humble frame of mind, as may induce your new-made lord
to forgive all your past declarations of aversion.

In short, my dear, you must then blandish him over with a confession,
that all your past behaviour was maidenly reserve only: and it will be
your part to convince him of the truth of his imprudent sarcasm, that the
coyest maids make the fondest wives. Thus will you enter the state with
a high sense of obligation to his forgiving goodness: and if you will not
be kept to it by that fear, by which he proposes to govern, I am much
mistaken.

Yet, after all, I must leave the point undetermined, and only to be
determined, as you find they recede from their avowed purpose, or resolve
to remove you to your uncle Antony's. But I must repeat my wishes, that
something may fall out, that neither of these men may call you his!--And
may you live single, my dearest friend, till some man shall offer, that
may be as worthy of you, as man can be!

But yet, methinks, I would not, that you, who are so admirably qualified
to adorn the married state, should be always single. You know I am
incapable of flattery; and that I always speak and write the sincerest
dictates of my heart. Nor can you, from what you must know of your own
merit (taken only in a comparative light with others) doubt my sincerity.
For why should a person who delight to find out and admire every thing
that is praise-worthy in another, be supposed ignorant of like
perfections in herself, when she could not so much admire them in
another, if she had them not herself? And why may not I give her those
praises, which she would give to any other, who had but half of her
excellencies?--Especially when she is incapable of pride and vain-glory;
and neither despises others for the want of her fine qualities, nor
overvalues herself upon them?--Over-values, did I say!--How can that be?

Forgive me, my beloved friend. My admiration of you (increased, as it
is, by every letter you write) will not always be held down in silence;
although, in order to avoid offending you, I generally endeavour to keep
it from flowing to my pen, when I write to you, or to my lips, whenever I
have the happiness to be in your company.

I will add nothing (though I could add a hundred things on account of
your latest communications) but that I am

Your ever affectionate and faithful
ANNA HOWE.

I hope I have pleased you with my dispatch. I wish I had been able to
please you with my requested advice.

You have given new beauties to the charming Ode which you have
transmitted to me. What pity that the wretches you have to deal with,
put you out of your admirable course; in the pursuit of which, like the
sun, you was wont to cheer and illuminate all you shone upon!

LETTER XIII

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
SUNDAY MORNING, MARCH 26.

How soothing a thing is praise from those we love!--Whether conscious or
not of deserving it, it cannot but give us great delight, to see
ourselves stand high in the opinion of those whose favour we are
ambitious to cultivate. An ingenuous mind will make this farther use of
it, that if he be sensible that it does not already deserve the charming
attributes, it will hasten (before its friend finds herself mistaken) to
obtain the graces it is complimented for: and this it will do, as well in
honour to itself, as to preserve its friend's opinion, and justify her
judgment. May this be always my aim!--And then you will not only give
the praise, but the merit; and I shall be more worthy of that friendship,
which is the only pleasure I have to boast of.

Most heartily I thank you for the kind dispatch of your last favour. How
much am I indebted to you! and even to your honest servant!--Under what
obligations does my unhappy situation lay me!

But let me answer the kind contents of it, as well as I may.

As to getting over my disgusts to Mr. Solmes, it is impossible to be
done; while he wants generosity, frankness of heart, benevolence,
manners and every qualification that distinguishes the worthy man. O my
dear! what a degree of patience, what a greatness of soul, is required in
the wife, not to despise a husband who is more ignorant, more illiterate,
more low-minded than herself!--The wretch, vested with prerogatives, who
will claim rule in virtue of them (and not to permit whose claim, will be
as disgraceful to the prescribing wife as to the governed husband); How
shall such a husband as this be borne, were he, for reasons of
convenience and interest, even to be our CHOICE? But, to be compelled to
have such a one, and that compulsion to arise from motives as unworthy of
the prescribers as of the prescribed, who can think of getting over an
aversion so justly founded? How much easier to bear the temporary
persecutions I labour under, because temporary, than to resolve to be
such a man's for life? Were I to comply, must I not leave my relations,
and go to him? A month will decide the one, perhaps: But what a duration
of woe will the other be!--Every day, it is likely, rising to witness to
some new breach of an altar-vowed duty!

Then, my dear, the man seems already to be meditating vengeance against
me for an aversion I cannot help: for yesterday my saucy gaoleress
assured me, that all my oppositions would not signify that pinch of
snuff, holding out her genteel finger and thumb: that I must have Mr.
Solmes: that therefore I had not best carry my jest too far; for that Mr.
Solmes was a man of spirit, and had told HER, that as I should surely be
his, I acted very unpolitely; since, if he had not more mercy [that was
her word, I know not if it were his] than I had, I might have cause to
repent the usage I gave him to the last day of my life. But enough of
this man; who, by what you repeat from Sir Harry Downeton, has all the
insolence of his sex, without any one quality to make that insolence
tolerable.

I have receive two letters from Mr. Lovelace, since his visit to you;
which make three that I have not answered. I doubt not his being very
uneasy; but in his last he complains in high terms of my silence; not in
the still small voice, or rather style of an humble lover, but in a style
like that which would probably be used by a slighted protector. And his
pride is again touched, that like a thief, or eves-dropper, he is forced
to dodge about in hopes of a letter, and returns five miles (and then to
an inconvenient lodging) without any.

His letters and the copy of mine to him, shall soon attend you. Till
when, I will give you the substance of what I wrote him yesterday.

I take him severely to task for his freedom in threatening me, through
you, with a visit to Mr. Solmes, or to my brother. I say, 'That, surely,
I must be thought to be a creature fit to bear any thing; that violence
and menaces from some of my own family are not enough for me to bear, in
order to make me avoid him; but that I must have them from him too, if I
oblige those to whom it is both my inclination and duty to oblige in
every thing that is reasonable, and in my power.

'Very extraordinary, I tell him, that a violent spirit shall threaten to
do a rash and unjustifiable thing, which concerns me but a little, and
himself a great deal, if I do not something as rash, my character and sex
considered, to divert him from it.

'I even hint, that, however it would affect me, were any mischief to
happen on my own account, yet there are persons, as far as I know, who in
my case would not think there would be reason for much regret, were such
a committed rashness as he threatens Mr. Solmes with, to rid her of two
persons whom, had she never known, she had never been unhappy.'

This is plain-dealing, my dear: and I suppose he will put it into still
plainer English for me.

I take his pride to task, on his disdaining to watch for my letters; and
for his eves-dropping language: and say, 'That, surely, he has the less
reason to think so hardly of his situation; since his faulty morals are
the cause of all; and since faulty morals deservedly level all
distinction, and bring down rank and birth to the canaille, and to the
necessity which he so much regrets, of appearing (if I must descent to
his language) as an eves-dropper and a thief. And then I forbid him ever
to expect another letter from me that is to subject him to such
disgraceful hardships.

'As to the solemn vows and protestations he is so ready, upon all
occasions, to make, they have the less weight with me, I tell him, as
they give a kind of demonstration, that he himself, from his own
character, thinks there is reason to make them. Deeds are to me the only
evidence of intentions. And I am more and more convinced of the
necessity of breaking off a correspondence with a person, whose addresses
I see it is impossible either to expect my friends to encourage, or him
to appear to wish that they should think him worthy of encouragement.

'What therefore I repeatedly desire is, That since his birth, alliances,
and expectations, are such as will at any time, if his immoral character
be not an objection, procure him at least equal advantages in a woman
whose taste and inclinations moreover might be better adapted to his own;
I insist upon it, as well as advise it, that he give up all thoughts of
me: and the rather, as he has all along (by his threatening and unpolite
behaviour to my friends, and whenever he speaks of them) given me reason
to conclude, that there is more malice in them, than regard to me, in his
perseverance.'

This is the substance of the letter I have written to him.

The man, to be sure, must have the penetration to observe, that my
correspondence with him hitherto is owing more to the severity I meet
with, than to a very high value for him. And so I would have him think.
What a worse than moloch deity is that, which expects an offering of
reason, duty, and discretion, to be made to its shrine!

Your mother is of opinion, you say, that at last my friends will relent.
Heaven grant that they may!--But my brother and sister have such an
influence over every body, and are so determined; so pique themselves
upon subduing me, and carrying their point; that I despair that they
will. And yet, if they do not, I frankly own, I would not scruple to
throw myself upon any not disreputable protection, by which I might avoid
my present persecutions, on one hand, and not give Mr. Lovelace advantage
over me, on the other--that is to say, were there manifestly no other way
left me: for, if there were, I should think the leaving my father's
house, without his consent, one of the most inexcusable actions I could
be guilty of, were the protection to be ever so unexceptionable; and this
notwithstanding the independent fortune willed me by my grandfather. And
indeed I have often reflected with a degree of indignation and disdain,
upon the thoughts of what a low, selfish creature that child must be, who
is to be reined in only by the hopes of what a parent can or will do for
her.

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.* I have
read it; and am in hopes that the enclosed will in a great measure answer
your mother's expectations of me.

* See the next letter.

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.

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