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

Jack. I have always had hopes of a woman whose passions carry her to such altitudes.⁠—Had I attacked Miss Howe first, her passions, (inflamed and guided as I could have managed them), would have brought her into my lure in a fortnight.

But thinkest thou, (and yet I think thou dost), that there is anything in these high flights among the sex?⁠—Verily, Jack, these vehement friendships are nothing but chaff and stubble, liable to be blown away by the very wind that raises them. Apes, mere apes of us! they think the word friendship has a pretty sound with it; and it is much talked of⁠—a fashionable word. And so, truly, a single woman, who thinks she has a soul, and knows that she wants something, would be thought to have found a fellow-soul for it in her own sex. But I repeat, that the word is a mere word, the thing a mere name with them; a cork-bottomed shuttlecock, which they are fond of striking to and fro, to make one another glow in the frosty weather of a single-state; but which, when a man comes in between the pretended inseparables, is given up, like their music and other maidenly amusements; which, nevertheless, may be necessary to keep the pretty rogues out of active mischief. They then, in short, having caught the fish, lay aside the net.239

Thou hast a mind, perhaps, to make an exception for these two ladies.⁠—With all my heart. My Clarissa has, if woman has, a soul capable of friendship. Her flame is bright and steady. But Miss Howe’s, were it not kept up by her mother’s opposition, is too vehement to endure. How often have I known opposition not only cement friendship, but create love? I doubt not but poor Hickman would fare the better with this vixen, if her mother were as heartily against him, as she is for him.

Thus much, indeed, as to these two ladies, I will grant thee, that the active spirit of the one, and the meek disposition of the other, may make their friendship more durable than it would otherwise be; for this is certain, that in every friendship, whether male or female, there must be a man and a woman spirit, (that is to say, one of them must be a forbearing one), to make it permanent.

But this I pronounce, as a truth, which all experience confirms, that friendship between women never holds to the sacrifice of capital gratifications, or to the endangering of life, limb, or estate, as it often does in our nobler sex.

Well, but next comes an indictment against poor beauty! What has beauty done that Miss Howe should be offended at it?⁠—Miss Howe, Jack, is a charming girl. She has no reason to quarrel with beauty!⁠—Didst ever see her?⁠—Too much fire and spirit in her eye, indeed, for a girl!⁠—But that’s no fault with a man that can lower that fire and spirit at pleasure; and I know I am the man that can.

A sweet auburn beauty is Miss Howe. A first beauty among beauties, when her sweeter friend (with such an assemblage of serene gracefulness, of natural elegance, of native sweetness, yet conscious, though not arrogant dignity, every feature glowing with intelligence) is not in company.

The difference between the two, when together, I have sometimes delighted to read, in the addresses of a stranger entering into the presence of both, when standing side by side. There never was an instance on such an occasion where the stranger paid not his first devoirs to my Clarissa.

A respectful, solemn awe sat upon every feature of the addresser’s face. His eye seemed to ask leave to approach her; and lower than common, whether man or woman, was the bow or courtesy. And although this awe was immediately diminished by her condescending sweetness, yet went it not so entirely off, but that you might see the reverence remain, as if the person saw more of the goddess than of the woman in her.

But the moment the same stranger turns to Miss Howe, (though proud and saucy, and erect and bridling, she), you will observe by the turn of his countenance, and the air of his address, a kind of equality assumed. He appears to have discovered the woman in her, charming as that woman is. He smiles⁠—he seems to expect repartee and smartness, and is never disappointed. But then visibly he prepares himself to give as well as to take. He dares, after he has been a while in her company, to dispute a point with her⁠—every point yielded up to the other, though no assuming or dogmatical air compels it.

In short, with Miss Howe, a bold man sees, (no doubt but Sir George Colmar did), that he and she may either very soon be familiar together, (I mean with innocence), or he may so far incur her displeasure, as to be forbid her presence forever.

For my own part, when I was first introduced to this lady, which was by my goddess when she herself was a visitor at Mrs. Howe’s, I had not been half an hour with her, but I even hungered and thirsted after a romping ’bout with the lively rogue; and, in the second or third visit, was more deterred by the delicacy of her friend, than by what I apprehended from her own. This charming creature’s presence, thought I, awes us both. And I wished her absence, though any other woman were present, that I might try the differences in Miss Howe’s behaviour before her friend’s face, or behind her back.

Delicate women make delicate women, as well as decent men. With all Miss Howe’s fire and spirit, it was easy to see, by her very eye, that she watched for lessons and feared reproof from the penetrating eye of her milder dispositioned friend;240 and yet it was as easy to observe, in the candour and sweet manners of the other, that the fear which Miss Howe stood in