MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
SUNDAY, JULY 23.
What pain, my dearest friend, does your kind solicitude for my welfare
give me! How much more binding and tender are the ties of pure
friendship, and the union of like minds, than the ties of nature! Well
might the sweet-singer of Israel, when he was carrying to the utmost
extent the praises of the friendship between him and his beloved friend,
say, that the love of Jonathan to him was wonderful; that it surpassed
the love of women! What an exalted idea does it give of the soul of
Jonathan, sweetly attempered for the sacred band, if we may suppose it
but equal to that of my Anna Howe for her fallen Clarissa?--But, although
I can glory in your kind love for me, think, my dear, what concern must
fill a mind, not ungenerous, when the obligation lies all on one side.
And when, at the same time that your light is the brighter for my
darkness, I must give pain to a dear friend, to whom I delighted to give
pleasure; and not pain only, but discredit, for supporting my blighted
fame against the busy tongues of uncharitable censures!
This is that makes me, in the words of my admired exclaimer, very little
altered, often repeat: 'Oh! that I were as in months past! as in the days
when God preserved me! when his candle shined upon my head, and when by
his light I walked through darkness! As I was in the days of my
childhood--when the Almighty was yet with me: when I was in my father's
house: when I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out
rivers of oil.'
You set before me your reasons, enforced by the opinion of your honoured
mother, why I should think of Mr. Lovelace for a husband.*
* See the preceding Letter.
And I have before me your letter of the 13th,* containing the account of
the visit and proposals, and kind interposition of the two Misses
Montague, in the names of the good Ladies Sadleir and Betty Lawrance, and
in that of my Lord M.
* See Letter IX. of this vol.
Also your's of the 18th,* demanding me, as I may say, of those ladies,
and of that family, when I was so infamously and cruelly arrested, and
you knew not what was become of me.
* See Letter XI. ibid.
The answer likewise of those ladies, signed in so full and generous a
manner by themselves,* and by that nobleman, and those two venerable
ladies; and, in his light way, by the wretch himself.
* See Letter XIV. ibid.
Thse, my dearest Miss Howe; and your letter of the 16th,* which came when
I was under arrest, and which I received not till some days after; are
all before me.
* See Letter X. of this volume.
And I have as well weighed the whole matter, and your arguments in
support of your advice, as at present my head and my heart will let me
weigh them.
I am, moreover, willing to believe, not only from your own opinion, but
from the assurances of one of Mr. Lovelace's friends, Mr. Belford, a
good-natured and humane man, who spares not to censure the author of my
calamities (I think, with undissembled and undesigning sincerity) that
that man is innocent of the disgraceful arrest.
And even, if you please, in sincere compliment to your opinion, and to
that of Mr. Hickman, that (over-persuaded by his friends, and ashamed of
his unmerited baseness to me) he would in earnest marry me, if I would
have him.
'*Well, and now, what is the result of all?--It is this--that I must
abide by what I have already declared--and that is, [don't be angry at
me, my best friend,] that I have much more pleasure in thinking of death,
than of such a husband. In short, as I declared in my last, that I
cannot [forgive me, if I say, I will not] ever be his.
* Those parts of this letter which are marked with an inverted comma
[thus ' ] were afterwards transcribed by Miss Howe in Letter LV. written
to the Ladies of Mr. Lovelace's family; and are thus distinguished to
avoid the necessity of repeating them in that letter.
'But you will expect my reasons; I know you will: and if I give them not,
will conclude me either obstinate, or implacable, or both: and those
would be sad imputations, if just, to be laid to the charge of a person
who thinks and talks of dying. And yet, to say that resentment and
disappointment have no part in my determination, would be saying a thing
hardly to be credited. For I own I have resentment, strong resentment,
but not unreasonable ones, as you will be convinced, if already you are
not so, when you know all my story--if ever you do know it--for I begin
to fear (so many things more necessary to be thought of than either this
man, or my own vindication, have I to do) that I shall not have time to
compass what I have intended, and, in a manner, promised you.*
* See Vol. VI. Letter LXXIII.
'I have one reason to give in support of my resolution, that, I believe,
yourself will allow of: but having owned that I have resentments, I will
begin with those considerations in which anger and disappointment have
too great a share; in hopes that, having once disburdened my mind upon
paper, and to my Anna Howe, of those corroding uneasy passions, I shall
prevent them for ever from returning to my heart, and to have their place
supplied by better, milder, and more agreeable ones.
'My pride, then, my dearest friend, although a great deal mortified, is
not sufficiently mortified, if it be necessary for me to submit to make
that man my choice, whose actions are, and ought to be, my abhorrence!--
What!--Shall I, who have been treated with such premeditated and
perfidious barbarity, as is painful to be thought of, and cannot, with
modesty be described, think of taking the violator to my heart? Can I
vow duty to one so wicked, and hazard my salvation by joining myself to
so great a profligate, now I know him to be so? Do you think your
Clarissa Harlowe so lost, so sunk, at least, as that she could, for the
sake of patching up, in the world's eye, a broken reputation, meanly
appear indebted to the generosity, or perhaps compassion, of a man, who
has, by means so inhuman, robbed her of it? Indeed, my dear, I should
not think my penitence for the rash step I took, any thing better than a
specious delusion, if I had not got above the least wish to have Mr.
Lovelace for my husband.
'Yes, I warrant, I must creep to the violator, and be thankful to him for
doing me poor justice!
'Do you not already see me (pursuing the advice you give) with a downcast
eye, appear before his friends, and before my own, (supposing the latter
would at last condescend to own me,) divested of that noble confidence
which arises from a mind unconscious of having deserved reproach?
'Do you not see me creep about mine own house, preferring all my honest
maidens to myself--as if afraid, too, to open my lips, either by way of
reproof or admonition, lest their bolder eyes should bid me look inward,
and not expect perfection from them?
'And shall I entitle the wretch to upbraid me with his generosity, and
his pity; and perhaps to reproach me for having been capable of forgiving
crimes of such a nature?
'I once indeed hoped, little thinking him so premeditatedly vile a man,
that I might have the happiness to reclaim him: I vainly believed that he
loved me well enough to suffer my advice for his good, and the example I
humbly presumed I should be enabled to set him, to have weight with him;
and the rather, as he had no mean opinion of my morals and understanding:
But now what hope is there left for this my prime hope?--Were I to marry
him, what a figure should I make, preaching virtue and morality to a man
whom I had trusted with opportunities to seduce me from all my own
duties!--And then, supposing I were to have children by such a husband,
must it not, think you, cut a thoughtful person to the heart; to look
round upon her little family, and think she had given them a father
destined, without a miracle, to perdition; and whose immoralities,
propagated among them by his vile example, might, too probably, bring
down a curse upon them? And, after all, who knows but that my own sinful
compliances with a man, who might think himself entitled to my obedience,
might taint my own morals, and make me, instead of a reformer, an
imitator of him?--For who can touch pitch, and not be defiled?
'Let me then repeat, that I truly despise this man! If I know my own
heart, indeed I do!--I pity him! beneath my very pity as he is, I
nevertheless pity him!--But this I could not do, if I still loved him:
for, my dear, one must be greatly sensible of the baseness and
ingratitude of those we love. I love him not, therefore! my soul
disdains communion with him.
'But, although thus much is due to resentment, yet have I not been so
far carried away by its angry effects as to be rendered incapable of
casting about what I ought to do, and what could be done, if the
Almighty, in order to lengthen the time of my penitence, were to bid
me to live.
'The single life, at such times, has offered to me, as the life, the
only life, to be chosen. But in that, must I not now sit brooding over
my past afflictions, and mourning my faults till the hour of my release?
And would not every one be able to assign the reason why Clarissa Harlowe
chose solitude, and to sequester herself from the world? Would not the
look of every creature, who beheld me, appear as a reproach to me? And
would not my conscious eye confess my fault, whether the eyes of others
accused me or not? One of my delights was, to enter the cots of my poor
neighbours, to leave lessons to the boys, and cautions to the elder
girls: and how should I be able, unconscious, and without pain, to say
to the latter, fly the delusions of men, who had been supposed to have
run away with one?
'What then, my dear and only friend, can I wish for but death?--And what,
after all, is death? 'Tis but a cessation from mortal life: 'tis but the
finishing of an appointed course: the refreshing inn after a fatiguing
journey; the end of a life of cares and troubles; and, if happy, the
beginning of a life of immortal happiness.
'If I die not now, it may possibly happen that I may be taken when I am
less prepared. Had I escaped the evils I labour under, it might have
been in the midst of some gay promising hope; when my heart had beat high
with the desire of life; and when the vanity of this earth had taken hold
of me.
'But now, my dear, for your satisfaction let me say that, although I wish
not for life, yet would I not, like a poor coward, desert my post when I
can maintain it, and when it is my duty to maintain it.
'More than once, indeed, was I urged by thoughts so sinful: but then it
was in the height of my distress: and once, particularly, I have reason
to believe, I saved myself by my desperation from the most shocking
personal insults; from a repetition, as far as I know, of his vileness;
the base women (with so much reason dreaded by me) present, to intimidate
me, if not to assist him!--O my dear, you know not what I suffered on
that occasion!--Nor do I what I escaped at the time, if the wicked man
had approached me to execute the horrid purposes of his vile heart.'
As I am of opinion, that it would have manifested more of revenge and
despair than of principle, had I committed a violence upon myself, when
the villany was perpetrated; so I should think it equally criminal, were
I now wilfully to neglect myself; were I purposely to run into the arms
of death, (as that man supposes I shall do,) when I might avoid it.
Nor, my dear, whatever are the suppositions of such a short-sighted, such
a low-souled man, must you impute to gloom, to melancholy, to
despondency, nor yet to a spirit of faulty pride, or still more faulty
revenge, the resolution I have taken never to marry this: and if not
this, any man. So far from deserving this imputation, I do assure you,
(my dear and only love,) that I will do every thing I can to prolong my
life, till God, in mercy to me, shall be pleased to call for it. I have
reason to think my punishment is but the due consequence of my fault, and
I will not run away from it; but beg of Heaven to sanctify it to me.
When appetite serves, I will eat and drink what is sufficient to support
nature. A very little, you know, will do for that. And whatever my
physicians shall think fit to prescribe, I will take, though ever so
disagreeable. In short, I will do every thing I can do to convince all
my friends, who hereafter may think it worth their while to inquire after
my last behaviour, that I possessed my soul with tolerable patience; and
endeavoured to bear with a lot of my own drawing; for thus, in humble
imitation of the sublimest exemplar, I often say:--Lord, it is thy will;
and it shall be mine. Thou art just in all thy dealings with the
children of men; and I know thou wilt not afflict me beyond what I can
bear: and, if I can bear it, I ought to bear it; and (thy grace assisting
me) I will bear it.
'But here, my dear, is another reason; a reason that will convince you
yourself that I ought not to think of wedlock; but of a preparation for a
quite different event. I am persuaded, as much as that I am now alive,
that I shall not long live. The strong sense I have ever had of my
fault, the loss of my reputation, my disappointments, the determined
resentment of my friends, aiding the barbarous usage I have met with
where I least deserved it, have seized upon my heart: seized upon it,
before it was so well fortified by religious considerations as I hope it
now is. Don't be concerned, my dear--But I am sure, if I may say it with
as little presumption as grief, That God will soon dissolve my substance;
and bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living.'
And now, my dearest friend, you know all my mind. And you will be
pleased to write to the ladies of Mr. Lovelace's family, that I think
myself infinitely obliged to them for their good opinion of me; and that
it has given me greater pleasure than I thought I had to come in this
life, that, upon the little knowledge they have of me, and that not
personal, I was thought worthy (after the ill usage I have received) of
an alliance with their honourable family: but that I can by no means
think of their kinsman for a husband: and do you, my dear, extract from
the above such reasons as you think have any weight with them.
I would write myself to acknowledge their favour, had I not more
employment for my head, my heart, and my fingers, than I doubt they will
be able to go through.
I should be glad to know when you set out on your journey; as also your
little stages; and your time of stay at your aunt Harman's; that my
prayers may locally attend you whithersoever you go, and wherever you
are.