MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
SATURDAY, MAY 27.
Mr. Lovelace, my dear, has been very ill. Suddenly taken. With a
vomiting of blood in great quantities. Some vessel broken. He
complained of a disorder in his stomach over night. I was the
affected with it, as I am afraid it was occasioned by the violent
contentions between us.--But was I in fault?
How lately did I think I hated him!--But hatred and anger, I see, are but
temporary passions with me. One cannot, my dear, hate people in danger
of death, or who are in distress or affliction. My heart, I find, is not
proof against kindness, and acknowledgements of errors committed.
He took great care to have his illness concealed from me as long as he
could. So tender in the violence of his disorder!--So desirous to make
the best of it!--I wish he had not been ill in my sight. I was too much
affected--every body alarming me with his danger. The poor man, from
such high health, so suddenly taken!--and so unprepared!--
He is gone out in a chair. I advised him to do so. I fear that my
advice was wrong; since quiet in such a disorder must needs be best. We
are apt to be so ready, in cases of emergency, to give our advice,
without judgment, or waiting for it!--I proposed a physician indeed; but
he would not hear of one. I have great honour for the faculty; and the
greater, as I have always observed that those who treat the professors of
the art of healing contemptuously, too generally treat higher
institutions in the same manner.
I am really very uneasy. For I have, I doubt, exposed myself to him, and
to the women below. They indeed will excuse me, as they think us
married. But if he be not generous, I shall have cause to regret this
surprise; which (as I had reason to think myself unaccountably treated by
him) has taught me more than I knew of myself.
'Tis true, I have owned more than once, that I could have liked Mr.
Lovelace above all men. I remember the debates you and I used to have on
this subject, when I was your happy guest. You used to say, and once you
wrote,* that men of his cast are the men that our sex do not naturally
dislike: While I held, that such were not (however that might be) the men
we ought to like. But what with my relations precipitating of me, on one
hand, and what with his unhappy character, and embarrassing ways, on the
other, I had no more leisure than inclination to examine my own heart in
this particular. And this reminds me of a transcribe, though it was
written in raillery. 'May it not be,' say you,** 'that you have had such
persons to deal with, as have not allowed you to attend to the throbs; or
if you had them a little now-and-then, whether, having had two accounts
to place them to, you have not by mistake put them to the wrong one?' A
passage, which, although it came into my mind when Mr. Lovelace was least
exceptionable, yet that I have denied any efficacy to, when he has teased
and vexed me, and given me cause of suspicion. For, after all, my dear,
Mr. Lovelace is not wise in all his ways. And should we not endeavour,
as much as is possible, (where we are not attached by natural ties,) to
like and dislike as reason bids us, and according to the merit or demerit
of the object? If love, as it is called, is allowed to be an excuse for
our most unreasonable follies, and to lay level all the fences that a
careful education has surrounded us by, what is meant by the doctrine of
subduing our passions?--But, O my dearest friend, am I not guilty of a
punishable fault, were I to love this man of errors? And has not my own
heart deceived me, when I thought it did not? And what must be that love,
that has not some degree of purity for its object? I am afraid of
recollecting some passages in my cousin Morden's letter.***--And yet why
fly I from subjects that, duly considered, might tend to correct and
purify my heart? I have carried, I doubt, my notions on this head too
high, not for practice, but for my practice. Yet think me not guilty of
prudery neither; for had I found out as much of myself before; or,
rather, had he given me heart's ease enough before to find it out, you
should have had my confession sooner.
* See Vol. IV. Letter XXXIV.
** See Vol. I. Letter XII.
*** See Vol. IV. Letter XIX, & seq.
Nevertheless, let me tell you (what I hope I may justly tell you,) that
if again he give me cause to resume distance and reserve, I hope my
reason will gather strength enough from his imperfections to enable me to
keep my passions under.--What can we do more than govern ourselves by the
temporary lights lent us?
You will not wonder that I am grave on this detection--Detection, must I
call it? What can I call it?--
Dissatisfied with myself, I am afraid to look back upon what I have
written: yet know not how to have done writing. I never was in such an
odd frame of mind.--I know not how to describe it.--Was you ever so?--
Afraid of the censure of her you love--yet not conscious that you deserve
it?
Of this, however, I am convinced, that I should indeed deserve censure,
if I kept any secret of my heart from you.
But I will not add another word, after I have assured you, that I will
look still more narrowly into myself: and that I am
Your equally sincere and affectionate
CL. HARLOWE.