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

that’s certain. If my mother disoblige me in so important an article, I shan’t think of obliging her in such another. It is impossible, surely, that the desire of popping me off to that honest man can be with such a view.

I repeat, that it cannot come to anything. But these widows⁠—Then such a love in us all, both old and young, of being courted and admired!⁠—and so irresistible to their elderships to be flattered, that all power is not over with them; but that they may still class and prank it with their daughters.⁠—It vexed me heartily to have her tell me of this proposal with self-complaisant simperings; and yet she affected to speak of it as if she had no intention to encourage it.

These antiquated bachelors (old before they believe themselves to be so) imagine that when they have once persuaded themselves to think of the state, they have nothing more to do than to make their minds known to the woman.

Your uncle’s overgrown fortune is indeed a bait; a tempting one. A saucy daughter to be got rid of! The memory of the father of that daughter not precious enough to weigh much!⁠—But let him advance if he dare⁠—let her encourage⁠—but I hope she won’t.

Excuse me, my dear. I am nettled. They have fearfully rumpled my gorget. You’ll think me faulty. So, I won’t put my name to this separate paper. Other hands may resemble mine. You did not see me write it.

Letter 184 Miss Clarissa Harlowe, to Miss Howe

Monday Afternoon, May 15

Now indeed it is evident, my best, my only friend, that I have but one choice to make. And now I do find that I have carried my resentment against this man too far; since now I am to appear as if under an obligation to his patience with me for a conduct, which perhaps he will think (if not humoursome and childish) plainly demonstrative of my little esteem of him; of but a secondary esteem at least, where before, his pride, rather than his merit, had made him expect a first. O my dear! to be cast upon a man that is not a generous man; that is indeed a cruel man! a man that is capable of creating a distress to a young creature, who, by her evil destiny is thrown into his power; and then of enjoying it, as I may say! (I verily think I may say so, of this savage!)⁠—What a fate is mine!

You give me, my dear, good advice, as to the peremptory manner in which I ought to treat him: But do you consider to whom it is that you give it?⁠—And then should I take it, and should he be capable of delay, I unprotected, desolate, nobody to fly to, in what a wretched light must I stand in his eyes; and, what is still as bad, in my own! O my dear, see you not, as I do, that the occasion for this my indelicate, my shocking situation should never have been given by me, of all creatures; since I am unequal, utterly unequal, to the circumstances to which my inconsideration has reduced me?⁠—What! I to challenge a man for a husband!⁠—I to exert myself to quicken the delayer in his resolutions! and, having as you think lost an opportunity, to begin to try to recall it, as from myself, and for myself! to threaten him, as I may say, into the marriage state!⁠—O my dear! if this be right to be done, how difficult is it, where modesty and self (or where pride, if you please) is concerned, to do that right? or, to express myself in your words, to be father, mother, uncle, to myself!⁠—especially where one thinks a triumph over one is intended.

You say, you have tried Mrs. Norton’s weight with my mother⁠—bad as the returns are which my application by Mr. Hickman has met with, you tell me, “that you have not acquainted me with all the bad, nor now, perhaps, ever will.” But why so, my dear? What is the bad, what can be the bad, which now you will never tell me of?⁠—What worse, than renounce me! and forever! “My uncle, you say, believes me ruined: he declares that he can believe everything bad of a creature who could run away with a man: and they have all made a resolution not to stir an inch in my favour; no, not to save my life!”⁠—Have you worse than this, my dear, behind?⁠—Surely my father has not renewed his dreadful malediction!⁠—Surely, if so, my mother has not joined in it! Have my uncles given their sanction, and made it a family act? And themselves thereby more really faulty, than ever they suppose me to be, though I the cause of that greater fault in them?⁠—What, my dear, is the worst, that you will leave forever unrevealed?

O Lovelace! why comest thou not just now, while these black prospects are before me? For now, couldst thou look into my heart, wouldst thou see a distress worthy of thy barbarous triumph!

I was forced to quit my pen. And you say you have tried Mrs. Norton’s weight with my mother?

What is done cannot be remedied: but I wish you had not taken a step of this importance to me without first consulting me. Forgive me, my dear, but I must tell you that that high-soul’d and noble friendship which you have ever avowed with so obliging and so uncommon a warmth, although it has been always the subject of my grateful admiration, has been often the ground of my apprehension, because of its unbridled fervour.

Well, but now to look forward, you are of opinion that I must be his: and that I cannot leave him with reputation to myself, whether with or without his consent. I must, if so, make the best of the bad matter.

He went out in the morning; intending not to return to dinner, unless (as he