Clarissa Harlowe, Samuel Richardson [black authors fiction .txt] 📗

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 anything 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 68 Miss Howe, to Miss Clarissa Harlowe

Thursday Morning

I will now take some notice of your last favour. But being so far behindhand 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 kind to me in this, as to you; for I may venture to affirm, That anyone 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 you38 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!

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.39 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.

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 showed in his letter was not natural to him. And did you before think it was? 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 uncontrollable; and therefore habitually evil.