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

thou dost. And if they should (of thy entering into a state which has been so much ridiculed by thee, and by all of us) thou hast one advantage⁠—it is this, that thou canst not be ashamed.

Deferring to the post-day to close my letter, I find one left at my cousin Osgood’s, with directions to be forwarded to the lady. It was brought within these two hours by a particular hand, and has a Harlowe-seal upon it. As it may therefore be of importance, I dispatch it with my own, by my servant, post-haste.114

I suppose you will soon be in town. Without the lady, I hope. Farewell.

Be honest, and be happy,

J. Belford.

Sat. April 22.

Letter 144 Mrs. Hervey, to Miss Clarissa Harlowe

[In answer to Letter 110]

Dear Niece,

It would be hard not to write a few lines, so much pressed to write, to one I ever loved. Your former letter I received; yet was not at liberty to answer it. I break my word to answer you now.

Strange informations are every day received about you. The wretch you are with, we are told, is every hour triumphing and defying⁠—Must not these informations aggravate? You know the uncontrollableness of the man. He loves his own humour better than he loves you⁠—though so fine a creature as you are! I warned you over and over: no young lady was ever more warned!⁠—Miss Clarissa Harlowe to do such a thing!

You might have given your friends the meeting. If you had held your aversion, it would have been complied with. As soon as I was entrusted myself with their intention to give up the point, I gave you a hint⁠—a dark one perhaps115⁠—but who would have thought⁠—O Miss!⁠—Such an artful flight!⁠—Such cunning preparations!

But you want to clear up things⁠—what can you clear up? Are you not gone off?⁠—With a Lovelace too? What, my dear, would you clear up?

You did not design to go, you say. Why did you meet him then, chariot and six, horsemen, all prepared by him? O my dear, how art produces art!⁠—Will it be believed?⁠—If it would, what power will he be thought to have had over you!⁠—He⁠—Who?⁠—Lovelace!⁠—The vilest of libertines!⁠—Over whom? A Clarissa!⁠—Was your love for such a man above your reason? Above your resolution? What credit would a belief of this, if believed, bring you?⁠—How mend the matter?⁠—Oh! that you had stood the next morning!

I’ll tell you all that was intended if you had.

It was, indeed, imagined that you would not have been able to resist your father’s entreaties and commands. He was resolved to be all condescension, if anew you had not provoked him. I love my Clary Harlowe, said he, but an hour before the killing tidings were brought him; I love her as my life: I will kneel to her, if nothing else will do, to prevail upon her to oblige me.

Your father and mother (the reverse of what should have been!) would have humbled themselves to you: and if you could have denied them, and refused to sign the settlements previous to the meeting, they would have yielded, although with regret.

But it was presumed, so naturally sweet your temper, so self-denying as they thought you, that you could not have withstood them, notwithstanding all your dislike of the one man, without a greater degree of headstrong passion for the other, than you had given any of us reason to expect from you.

If you had, the meeting on Wednesday would have been a lighter trial to you. You would have been presented to all your assembled friends, with a short speech only, “That this was the young creature, till very lately faultless, condescending, and obliging; now having cause to glory in a triumph over the wills of father, mother, uncles, the most indulgent; over family-interests, family-views; and preferring her own will to everybody’s! and this for a transitory preference to person only; there being no comparison between the men in their morals.”

Thus complied with, and perhaps blessed, by your father and mother, and the consequences of your disobedience deprecated in the solemnest manner by your inimitable mother, your generosity would have been appealed to, since your duty would have been found too weak an inducement, and you would have been bid to withdraw for one half hour’s consideration. Then would the settlements have been again tendered for your signing, by the person least disobliging to you; by your good Norton perhaps; she perhaps seconded by your father again; and, if again refused, you would have again have been led in to declare such your refusal. Some restrictions which you yourself had proposed, would have been insisted upon. You would have been permitted to go home with me, or with your uncle Antony, (with which of us was not agreed upon, because they hoped you might be persuaded), there to stay till the arrival of your cousin Morden; or till your father could have borne to see you; or till assured that the views of Lovelace were at an end.

This the intention, your father so set upon your compliance, so much in hopes that you would have yielded, that you would have been prevailed upon by methods so condescending and so gentle; no wonder that he, in particular, was like a distracted man, when he heard of your flight⁠—of your flight so premeditated;⁠—with your ivy summerhouse dinings, your arts to blind me, and all of us!⁠—Naughty, naughty, young creature!

I, for my part, would not believe it, when told of it. Your uncle Hervey would not believe it. We rather expected, we rather feared, a still more desperate adventure. There could be but one more desperate; and I was readier to have the cascade resorted to, than the garden backdoor.⁠—Your mother fainted away, while her heart was torn between the two apprehensions.⁠—Your father, poor man! your father was beside himself for near an hour⁠—What imprecations!⁠—What dreadful imprecations!⁠—To this day he