Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 2 (19 page)

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.

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.

You have taught me what to say to, and what to think of, Mr. Lovelace. You have, by agreeable anticipation, let me know how it is probable he will apply to me to be excused. I will lay every thing before you that shall pass on the occasion, if he do apply, that I may take your advice, when it can come in time; and when it cannot, that I may receive your correction, or approbation, as I may happen to merit either.--Only one thing must be allowed for me; that whatever course I shall be permitted or be forced to steer, I must be considered as a person out of her own direction. Tost to and fro by the high winds of passionate controul, (and, as I think, unseasonable severity,) I behold the desired port, the single state, into which I would fain steer; but am kept off by the foaming billows of a brother's and sister's envy, and by the raging winds of a supposed invaded authority; while I see in Lovelace, the rocks on one hand, and in Solmes, the sands on the other; and tremble, lest I should split upon the former, or strike upon the latter.

But you, my better pilot, to what a charming hope do you bid me aspire, if things come to extremity!--I will not, as you caution me, too much depend upon your success with your mother in my favour; for well I know her high notions of implicit duty in a child: but yet I will hope too; because her seasonable protection may save me perhaps from a greater rashness: and in this case, she shall direct me in all my ways: I will do nothing but by her orders, and by her advice and yours: not see any body: not write to any body: nor shall any living soul, but by her direction and yours, know where I am. In any cottage place me, I will never stir out, unless, disguised as your servant, I am now-and-then permitted an evening-walk with you: and this private protection to be granted for no longer time than till my cousin Morden comes; which, as I hope, cannot be long.