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

for not sending it by Hickman’s servant; unless I had a bank note. Inquiring for such may cause distrust. My mother is so busy, so inquisitive⁠—I don’t love suspicious tempers.

And here she is continually in and out⁠—I must break off.

Mr. Hickman begs his most respectful compliments to you, with offer of his services. I told him I would oblige him, because minds in trouble take kindly anybody’s civilities: but that he was not to imagine that he particularly obliged me by this; since I should think the man or woman either blind or stupid who admired not a person of your exalted merit for your own sake, and wished not to serve you without view to other reward than the honour of serving you.

To be sure, that was his principal motive, with great daintiness he said it: but with a kiss of his hand, and a bow to my feet, he hoped, that a fine lady’s being my friend did not lessen the merit of the reverence he really had for her.

Believe me ever, what you, my dear, shall ever find me,

Your faithful and affectionate,

Anna Howe.

Letter 120 Miss Clarissa Harlowe, to Miss Howe

Sat. Afternoon

I detain your messenger while I write an answer to yours; the poor old man not being very well.

You dishearten me a good deal about Mr. Lovelace. I may be too willing from my sad circumstances to think the best of him. If his pretences to reformation are but pretences, what must be his intent? But can the heart of man be so very vile? Can he, dare he, mock the Almighty? But I may not, from one very sad reflection, think better of him; that I am thrown too much into his power, to make it necessary for him (except he were to intend the very utmost villany by me) to be such a shocking hypocrite? He must, at least be in earnest at the time he gives the better hopes. Surely he must. You yourself must join with me in this hope, or you could not wish me to be so dreadfully yoked.

But after all, I had rather, much rather, be independent of him, and of his family, although I have an high opinion of them; at least till I see what my own may be brought to.⁠—Otherwise, I think, it were best for me, at once, to cast myself into Lady Betty’s protection. All would then be conducted with decency, and perhaps many mortifications would be spared me. But then I must be his, at all adventures, and be thought to defy my own family. And shall I not first see the issue of one application? And yet I cannot make this, till I am settled somewhere, and at a distance from him.

Mrs. Sorlings showed me a letter this morning, which she had received from her sister Greme last night; in which Mrs. Greme (hoping I would forgive her forward zeal if her sister thinks fit to show her letter to me) “wishes (and that for all the noble family’s sake, and she hopes she may say for my own) that I will be pleased to yield to make his honour, as she calls him, happy.” She grounds her officiousness, as she calls it, upon what he was so condescending (her word also) to say to her yesterday, in his way to Windsor, on her presuming to ask, if she might soon give him joy? “That no man ever loved a woman as he loves me: that no woman ever so well deserved to be beloved: that he loves me with such a purity as he had never believed himself capable of, or that a mortal creature could have inspired him with; looking upon me as all soul; as an angel sent down to save his;” and a great deal more of this sort: “but that he apprehends my consent to make him happy is at a greater distance than he wishes; and complained of too severe restrictions I had laid upon him before I honoured him with my confidence: which restrictions must be as sacred to him, as if they were parts of the marriage contract,” etc.

What, my dear, shall I say to this? How shall I take it? Mrs. Greme is a good woman. Mrs. Sorlings is a good woman. And this letter agrees with the conversation between Mr. Lovelace and me, which I thought, and still think, so agreeable.86 Yet what means the man by foregoing the opportunities he has had to declare himself?⁠—What mean his complaints of my restrictions to Mrs. Greme? He is not a bashful man.⁠—But you say, I inspire people with an awe of me.⁠—An awe, my dear!⁠—As how?

I am quite petulant, fretful, and peevish, with myself, at times, to find that I am bound to see the workings of the subtle, or this giddy spirit, which shall I call it?

How am I punished, as I frequently think, for my vanity, in hoping to be an example to young persons of my sex! Let me be but a warning, and I will now be contented. For, be my destiny what it may, I shall never be able to hold up my head again among my best friends and worthiest companions.

It is one of the cruelest circumstances that attends the faults of the inconsiderate, that she makes all who love her unhappy, and gives joy only to her own enemies, and to the enemies of her family.

What an useful lesson would this afford, were it properly inculcated at the time that the tempted mind was balancing upon a doubtful adventure?

You know not, my dear, the worth of a virtuous man; and, noble-minded as you are in most particulars, you partake of the common weakness of human nature, in being apt to slight what is in your own power.

You would not think of using Mr. Lovelace, were he your suitor, as you do the much worthier Mr. Hickman⁠—would you?⁠—You know who says in my mother’s