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

making it an indispensable condition of their friendship, each to tell the other of her failings; and to be thankful for the freedom taken. One by nature gentle; the other made so by her love and admiration of her exalted friend⁠—impossible that there could be a friendship better calculated for duration.

I must, however, take the liberty to blame Miss Howe for her behaviour to Mr. Hickman. And I infer from it, that even women of sense are not to be trusted with power.

By the way, I am sure I need not desire you not to communicate to this fervent young lady the liberties I have taken with her character.

I dare say my cousin could not approve of Miss Howe’s behaviour to this gentleman; a behaviour which is talked of by as many as know Mr. Hickman and her. Can a wise young lady be easy under such censure? She must know it.

Mr. Hickman is really a very worthy man. Everybody speaks well of him. But he is gentle-dispositioned, and he adores Miss Howe; and love admits not of an air of even due dignity to the object of it. Yet will Mr. Hickman hardly ever get back the reins he has yielded up; unless she, by carrying too far the power of which she seems at present too sensible, should, when she has no favours to confer which he has not a right to demand, provoke him to throw off the too-heavy yoke. And should he do so, and then treat her with negligence, Miss Howe, of all the women I know, will be the least able to support herself under it. She will then be more unhappy than she ever made him; for a man who is uneasy at home, can divert himself abroad; which a woman cannot so easily do, without scandal.⁠—Permit me to take farther notice, as to Miss Howe, that it is very obvious to me, that she has, by her haughty behaviour to this worthy man, involved herself in one difficulty, from which she knows not how to extricate herself with that grace which accompanies all her actions. She intends to have Mr. Hickman. I believe she does not dislike him. And it will cost her no small pains to descend from the elevation she has climbed to.

Another inconvenience she will suffer from her having taught everybody (for she is above disguise) to think, by her treatment of Mr. Hickman, much more meanly of him than he deserves to be thought of. And must she not suffer dishonour in his dishonour?

Mrs. Howe is much disturbed at her daughter’s behaviour to the gentleman. He is very deservedly a favourite of hers. But (another failing in Miss Howe) her mother has not all the authority with her that a mother ought to have. Miss Howe is indeed a woman of fine sense; but it requires a high degree of good understanding, as well as a sweet and gentle disposition of mind, and great discretion, in a child, when grown up, to let it be seen, that she mingles reverence with her love, to a parent, who has talents visibly inferior to her own.

Miss Howe is open, generous, noble. The mother has not any of her fine qualities. Parents, in order to preserve their children’s veneration for them, should take great care not to let them see anything in their conduct, or behaviour, or principles, which they themselves would not approve of in others.

Mr. Hickman has, however, this consideration to comfort himself with, that the same vivacity by which he suffers, makes Miss Howe’s own mother, at times, equally sensible. And as he sees enough of this beforehand, he will have more reason to blame himself than the lady, should she prove as lively a wife as she was a mistress, for having continued his addresses, and married her, against such threatening appearances.

There is also another circumstance which good-natured men, who engage with even lively women, may look forward to with pleasure; a circumstance which generally lowers the spirits of the ladies, and domesticates them, as I may call it; and which, as it will bring those of Mr. Hickman and Miss Howe nearer to a par, that worthy gentleman will have double reason, when it happens, to congratulate himself upon it.

But after all, I see that there is something so charmingly brilliant and frank in Miss Howe’s disposition, although at present visibly overclouded by grief, that it is impossible not to love her, even for her failings. She may, and I hope she will, make Mr. Hickman an obliging wife. And if she does, she will have additional merit with me; since she cannot be apprehensive of check or control; and may therefore, by her generosity and prudence, lay an obligation upon her husband, by the performance of what is no more than her duty.

Her mother both loves and fears her. Yet is Mrs. Howe also a woman of vivacity, and ready enough, I dare say, to cry out when she is pained. But, alas! she has, as I hinted above, weakened her authority by the narrowness of her mind.

Yet once she praised her daughter to me with so much warmth for the generosity of her spirit, that had I not known the old lady’s character, I should have thought her generous herself. And yet I have always observed, that people of narrow tempers are ready to praise generous ones:⁠—and thus have I accounted for it⁠—that such persons generally find it to their purpose, that all the world should be open-minded but themselves.

The old lady applied herself to me, to urge to the young one the contents of the will, in order to hasten her to fix a day for her marriage; but desired that I would not let Miss Howe know that she did.

I took the liberty upon it to tell Miss Howe that I hoped that her part of a will, so soon, and so punctually, in almost all its other articles, fulfilled, would not be the only one that would be slighted.

Her answer was, she