My mother and cousin are already gone off in our chariot and four,
attended by their doughty 'squire on horseback, and he by two of his
own servants, and one of my mother's. They both love parade when they
go abroad, at least in compliment to one another; which shews, that
each thinks the other does. Robin is your servant and mine, and nobody's
else--and the day is all my own.
I must begin with blaming you, my dear, for your resolution not to
litigate for your right, if occasion were to be given you. Justice is
due to ourselves, as well as to every body else. Still more must I blame
you for declaring to your aunt and sister, that you will not: since (as
they will tell it to your father and brother) the declaration must needs
give advantage to spirits who have so little of that generosity for
which you are so much distinguished.
There never was a spirit in the world that would insult where it dared,
but it would creep and cringe where it dared not. Let me remind you of
a sentence of your own, the occasion for which I have forgotten: 'That
little spirits will always accommodate themselves to the temper of those
they would work upon: will fawn upon a sturdy-tempered person: will
insult the meek:'--And another given to Miss Biddulph, upon an occasion
you cannot forget:--'If we assume a dignity in what we say and do, and
take care not to disgrace by arrogance our own assumption, every body
will treat us with respect and deference.'
I remember that you once made an observation, which you said, you was
obliged to Mrs. Norton for, and she to her father, upon an excellent
preacher, who was but an indifferent liver: 'That to excel in theory,
and to excel in practice, generally required different talents; which
did not always meet in the same person.' Do you, my dear (to whom theory
and practice are the same thing in almost every laudable quality), apply
the observation to yourself, in this particular case, where resolution
is required; and where the performance of the will of the defunct is the
question--no more to be dispensed with by you, in whose favour it was
made, than by any body else who have only themselves in view by breaking
through it.
I know how much you despise riches in the main: but yet it behoves
you to remember, that in one instance you yourself have judged them
valuable--'In that they put it into our power to lay obligations; while
the want of that power puts a person under a necessity of receiving
favours--receiving them perhaps from grudging and narrow spirits, who
know not how to confer them with that grace, which gives the principal
merit to a beneficent action.'--Reflect upon this, my dear, and see how
it agrees with the declaration you have made to your aunt and sister,
that you would not resume your estate, were you to be turned out of
doors, and reduced to indigence and want. Their very fears that you will
resume, point out to you the necessity of resuming upon the treatment
you meet with.
I own, that (at first reading) I was much affected with your mother's
letter sent with the patterns. A strange measure however from a mother;
for she did not intend to insult you; and I cannot but lament that so
sensible and so fine a woman should stoop to so much art as that letter
is written with: and which also appears in some of the conversations
you have given me an account of. See you not in her passiveness, what
boisterous spirits can obtain from gentler, merely by teasing and
ill-nature?
I know the pride they have always taken in calling you a
Harlowe--Clarissa Harlowe, so formal and so set, at every word,
when they are grave or proudly solemn.--Your mother has learnt it of
them--and as in marriage, so in will, has been taught to bury her own
superior name and family in theirs. I have often thought that the same
spirit governed them, in this piece of affectation, and others of
the like nature (as Harlowe-Place, and so-forth, though not the elder
brother's or paternal seat), as governed the tyrant Tudor,* who marrying
Elizabeth, the heiress of the house of York, made himself a title to
a throne, which he would not otherwise have had (being but a base
descendant of the Lancaster line); and proved a gloomy and vile
husband to her; for no other cause, than because she had laid him under
obligations which his pride would not permit him to own.--Nor would the
unprincely wretch marry her till he was in possession of the crown, that
he might not be supposed to owe it to her claim.
* Henry VII.
You have chidden me, and again will, I doubt not, for the liberties I
take with some of your relations. But my dear, need I tell you, that
pride in ourselves must, and for ever will, provoke contempt, and bring
down upon us abasement from others?--Have we not, in the case of a
celebrated bard, observed, that those who aim at more than their due,
will be refused the honours they may justly claim?--I am very much loth
to offend you; yet I cannot help speaking of your relations, as well as
of others, as I think they deserve. Praise or dispraise, is the reward
or punishment which the world confers or inflicts on merit or
demerit; and, for my part, I neither can nor will confound them in the
application. I despise them all, but your mother: indeed I do: and as
for her--but I will spare the good lady for your sake--and one
argument, indeed, I think may be pleaded in her favour, in the present
contention--she who has for so many years, and with such absolute
resignation, borne what she has borne to the sacrifice of her own will,
may think it an easier task than another person can imagine it, for her
daughter to give up hers. But to think to whose instigation all this is
originally owing--God forgive me; but with such usage I should have been
with Lovelace before now! Yet remember, my dear, that the step which
would not be wondered at from such a hasty-tempered creatures as me,
would be inexcusable in such a considerate person as you.
After your mother has been thus drawn in against her judgment, I am the
less surprised, that your aunt Hervey should go along with her; since
the two sisters never separate. I have inquired into the nature of the
obligation which Mr. Hervey's indifferent conduct in his affairs has
laid him under--it is only, it seems, that your brother has paid off
for him a mortgage upon one part of his estate, which the mortgagee was
about to foreclose; and taken it upon himself. A small favour (as he has
ample security in his hands) from kindred to kindred: but such a one, it
is plain, as has laid the whole family of the Herveys under obligation
to the ungenerous lender, who has treated him, and his aunt too (as
Miss Dolly Hervey has privately complained), with the less ceremony ever
since.
Must I, my dear, call such a creature your brother?--I believe I
must--Because he is your father's son. There is no harm, I hope, in
saying that.
I am concerned, that you ever wrote at all to him. It was taking too
much notice of him: it was adding to his self-significance; and a call
upon him to treat you with insolence. A call which you might have been
assured he would not fail to answer.
But such a pretty master as this, to run riot against such a man as
Lovelace; who had taught him to put his sword into his scabbard, when
he had pulled it out by accident!--These in-door insolents, who, turning
themselves into bugbears, frighten women, children, and servants, are
generally cravens among men. Were he to come fairly across me, and say
to my face some of the free things which I am told he has said of me
behind my back, or that (as by your account) he has said of our sex, I
would take upon myself to ask him two or three questions; although he
were to send me a challenge likewise.
I repeat, you know that I will speak my mind, and write it too. He is
not my brother. Can you say, he is yours?--So, for your life, if you
are just, you can't be angry with me: For would you side with a false
brother against a true friend? A brother may not be a friend: but a
friend will always be a brother--mind that, as your uncle Tony says!
I cannot descend so low, as to take very particular notice of the
epistles of these poor souls, whom you call uncles. Yet I love to divert
myself with such grotesque characters too. But I know them and love you;
and so cannot make the jest of them which their absurdities call for.
You chide me, my dear,* for my freedoms with relations still nearer and
dearer to you, than either uncles or brother or sister. You had better
have permitted me (uncorrected) to have taken my own way. Do not use
those freedoms naturally arise from the subject before us? And from whom
arises that subject, I pray you? Can you for one quarter of an hour
put yourself in my place, or in the place of those who are still more
indifferent to the case than I can be?--If you can--But although I have
you not often at advantage, I will not push you.
* See Vol. I. Letter XXVIII.
Permit me, however, to subjoin, that well may your father love your
mother, as you say he does. A wife who has no will but his! But were
there not, think you, some struggles between them at first, gout out of
the question?--Your mother, when a maiden, had, as I have heard (and it
is very likely) a good share of those lively spirits which she liked
in your father. She has none of them now. How came they to be
dissipated?--Ah! my dear!--she has been too long resident in
Trophonius's cave, I doubt.*
* Spectator, Vol. VIII. No. 599.
Let me add one reflection upon this subject, and so entitle myself to
your correction for all at once.--It is upon the conduct of those wives
(for you and I know more than one such) who can suffer themselves to
be out-blustered and out-gloomed of their own wills, instead of being
fooled out of them by acts of tenderness and complaisance.--I wish,
that it does not demonstrate too evidently, that, with some of the
sex, insolent controul is a more efficacious subduer than kindness or
concession. Upon my life, my dear, I have often thought, that many of us
are mere babies in matrimony: perverse fools when too much indulged and
humoured; creeping slaves, when treated harshly. But shall it be said,
that fear makes us more gentle obligers than love?--Forbid it, Honour!
Forbid it, Gratitude! Forbid it, Justice! that any woman of sense should
give occasion to have this said of her!
Did I think you would have any manner of doubt, from the style or
contents of this letter, whose saucy pen it is that has run on at this
rate, I would write my name at length; since it comes too much from my
heart to disavow it: but at present the initials shall serve; and I will
go on again directly.