How soothing a thing is praise from those we love!--Whether conscious
or not of deserving it, it cannot but give us great delight, to see
ourselves stand high in the opinion of those whose favour we are
ambitious to cultivate. An ingenuous mind will make this farther use of
it, that if he be sensible that it does not already deserve the charming
attributes, it will hasten (before its friend finds herself mistaken) to
obtain the graces it is complimented for: and this it will do, as well
in honour to itself, as to preserve its friend's opinion, and justify
her judgment. May this be always my aim!--And then you will not only
give the praise, but the merit; and I shall be more worthy of that
friendship, which is the only pleasure I have to boast of.
Most heartily I thank you for the kind dispatch of your last favour. How
much am I indebted to you! and even to your honest servant!--Under what
obligations does my unhappy situation lay me!
But let me answer the kind contents of it, as well as I may.
As to getting over my disgusts to Mr. Solmes, it is impossible to
be done; while he wants generosity, frankness of heart, benevolence,
manners and every qualification that distinguishes the worthy man. O my
dear! what a degree of patience, what a greatness of soul, is required
in the wife, not to despise a husband who is more ignorant, more
illiterate, more low-minded than herself!--The wretch, vested with
prerogatives, who will claim rule in virtue of them (and not to permit
whose claim, will be as disgraceful to the prescribing wife as to the
governed husband); How shall such a husband as this be borne, were he,
for reasons of convenience and interest, even to be our CHOICE? But,
to be compelled to have such a one, and that compulsion to arise from
motives as unworthy of the prescribers as of the prescribed, who can
think of getting over an aversion so justly founded? How much easier to
bear the temporary persecutions I labour under, because temporary, than
to resolve to be such a man's for life? Were I to comply, must I not
leave my relations, and go to him? A month will decide the one, perhaps:
But what a duration of woe will the other be!--Every day, it is likely,
rising to witness to some new breach of an altar-vowed duty!
Then, my dear, the man seems already to be meditating vengeance against
me for an aversion I cannot help: for yesterday my saucy gaoleress
assured me, that all my oppositions would not signify that pinch of
snuff, holding out her genteel finger and thumb: that I must have Mr.
Solmes: that therefore I had not best carry my jest too far; for that
Mr. Solmes was a man of spirit, and had told HER, that as I should
surely be his, I acted very unpolitely; since, if he had not more mercy
[that was her word, I know not if it were his] than I had, I might have
cause to repent the usage I gave him to the last day of my life. But
enough of this man; who, by what you repeat from Sir Harry Downeton,
has all the insolence of his sex, without any one quality to make that
insolence tolerable.
I have receive two letters from Mr. Lovelace, since his visit to you;
which make three that I have not answered. I doubt not his being very
uneasy; but in his last he complains in high terms of my silence; not
in the still small voice, or rather style of an humble lover, but in a
style like that which would probably be used by a slighted protector.
And his pride is again touched, that like a thief, or eves-dropper, he
is forced to dodge about in hopes of a letter, and returns five miles
(and then to an inconvenient lodging) without any.
His letters and the copy of mine to him, shall soon attend you. Till
when, I will give you the substance of what I wrote him yesterday.
I take him severely to task for his freedom in threatening me, through
you, with a visit to Mr. Solmes, or to my brother. I say, 'That, surely,
I must be thought to be a creature fit to bear any thing; that violence
and menaces from some of my own family are not enough for me to bear, in
order to make me avoid him; but that I must have them from him too, if
I oblige those to whom it is both my inclination and duty to oblige in
every thing that is reasonable, and in my power.
'Very extraordinary, I tell him, that a violent spirit shall threaten to
do a rash and unjustifiable thing, which concerns me but a little, and
himself a great deal, if I do not something as rash, my character and
sex considered, to divert him from it.
'I even hint, that, however it would affect me, were any mischief to
happen on my own account, yet there are persons, as far as I know, who
in my case would not think there would be reason for much regret, were
such a committed rashness as he threatens Mr. Solmes with, to rid her of
two persons whom, had she never known, she had never been unhappy.'
This is plain-dealing, my dear: and I suppose he will put it into still
plainer English for me.
I take his pride to task, on his disdaining to watch for my letters; and
for his eves-dropping language: and say, 'That, surely, he has the less
reason to think so hardly of his situation; since his faulty morals
are the cause of all; and since faulty morals deservedly level all
distinction, and bring down rank and birth to the canaille, and to the
necessity which he so much regrets, of appearing (if I must descent to
his language) as an eves-dropper and a thief. And then I forbid him
ever to expect another letter from me that is to subject him to such
disgraceful hardships.
'As to the solemn vows and protestations he is so ready, upon all
occasions, to make, they have the less weight with me, I tell him,
as they give a kind of demonstration, that he himself, from his own
character, thinks there is reason to make them. Deeds are to me the
only evidence of intentions. And I am more and more convinced of
the necessity of breaking off a correspondence with a person, whose
addresses I see it is impossible either to expect my friends to
encourage, or him to appear to wish that they should think him worthy of
encouragement.
'What therefore I repeatedly desire is, That since his birth, alliances,
and expectations, are such as will at any time, if his immoral character
be not an objection, procure him at least equal advantages in a woman
whose taste and inclinations moreover might be better adapted to
his own; I insist upon it, as well as advise it, that he give up all
thoughts of me: and the rather, as he has all along (by his threatening
and unpolite behaviour to my friends, and whenever he speaks of them)
given me reason to conclude, that there is more malice in them, than
regard to me, in his perseverance.'
This is the substance of the letter I have written to him.
The man, to be sure, must have the penetration to observe, that my
correspondence with him hitherto is owing more to the severity I meet
with, than to a very high value for him. And so I would have him think.
What a worse than moloch deity is that, which expects an offering of
reason, duty, and discretion, to be made to its shrine!
Your mother is of opinion, you say, that at last my friends will relent.
Heaven grant that they may!--But my brother and sister have such an
influence over every body, and are so determined; so pique themselves
upon subduing me, and carrying their point; that I despair that they
will. And yet, if they do not, I frankly own, I would not scruple to
throw myself upon any not disreputable protection, by which I might
avoid my present persecutions, on one hand, and not give Mr. Lovelace
advantage over me, on the other--that is to say, were there manifestly
no other way left me: for, if there were, I should think the leaving my
father's house, without his consent, one of the most inexcusable actions
I could be guilty of, were the protection to be ever so unexceptionable;
and this notwithstanding the independent fortune willed me by my
grandfather. And indeed I have often reflected with a degree of
indignation and disdain, upon the thoughts of what a low, selfish
creature that child must be, who is to be reined in only by the hopes of
what a parent can or will do for her.
But notwithstanding all this, I owe it to the sincerity of friendship to
confess, that I know not what I should have done, had your advice been
conclusive any way. Had you, my dear, been witness to my different
emotions, as I read your letter, when, in one place, you advise me of
my danger, if I am carried to my uncle's; in another, when you own you
could not bear what I bear, and would do any thing rather than marry
the man you hate; yet, in another, to represent to me my reputation
suffering in the world's eye; and the necessity I should be under to
justify my conduct, at the expense of my friends, were I to take a rash
step; in another, insinuate the dishonest figure I should be forced to
make, in so compelled a matrimony; endeavouring to cajole, fawn upon,
and play the hypocrite with a man to whom I have an aversion; who would
have reason to believe me an hypocrite, as well from my former avowals,
as from the sense he must have (if common sense he has) of his own
demerits; the necessity you think there would be for me, the more averse
(were I capable of so much dissimulation) that would be imputable to
disgraceful motives; as it would be too visible, that love, either of
person or mind, could be neither of them: then his undoubted, his even
constitutional narrowness: his too probably jealousy, and unforgiveness,
bearing in my mind my declared aversion, and the unfeigned despights I
took all opportunities to do him, in order to discourage his address:
a preference avowed against him from the same motive; with the pride he
professes to take in curbing and sinking the spirits of a woman he had
acquired a right to tyrannize over: had you, I say, been witness of
my different emotions as I read; now leaning this way, now that; now
perplexed; now apprehensive; now angry at one, then at another; now
resolving; now doubting; you would have seen the power you have over me;
and would have had reason to believe, that, had you given your advice
in any determined or positive manner, I had been ready to have
been concluded by it. So, my dear, you will find, from these
acknowledgements, that you must justify me to those laws of friendship,
which require undisguised frankness of heart; although you justification
of me in that particular, will perhaps be at the expense of my prudence.
But, upon the whole, this I do repeat--That nothing but the last
extremity shall make me abandon my father's house, if they will permit
me to stay; and if I can, by any means, by any honest pretences, but
keep off my evil destiny in it till my cousin Morden arrives. As one
of my trustees, his is a protection, into which I may without discredit
throw myself, if my other friends should remain determined. And this
(although they seem too well aware of it) is all my hope: for, as
to Lovelace, were I to be sure of his tenderness, and even of his
reformation, must not the thought of embracing the offered protection of
his family, be the same thing, in the world's eye, as accepting of his
own?--Could I avoid receiving his visits at his own relations'? Must I
not be his, whatever, (on seeing him in a nearer light,) I should find
him out to be? For you know, it has always been my observation, that
very few people in courtship see each other as they are. Oh! my dear!
how wise have I endeavoured to be! How anxious to choose, and to avoid
every thing, precautiously, as I may say, that might make me happy,
or unhappy; yet all my wisdom now, by a strange fatality, is likely to
become foolishness!
Then you tell me, in your usual kindly-partial manner, what is expected
of me, more than would be of some others. This should be a lesson to me.
What ever my motives were, the world would not know them. To complain
of a brother's unkindness, that, indeed, I might do. Differences between
brothers and sisters, where interests clash, but too commonly arise:
but, where the severe father cannot be separated from the faulty
brother, who could bear to lighten herself, by loading a father?--Then,
in this particular case, must not the hatred Mr. Lovelace expresses
to every one of my family (although in return for their hatred of
him) shock one extremely? Must it not shew, that there is something
implacable, as well as highly unpolite in his temper?--And what creature
can think of marrying so as to be out of all hopes ever to be well with
her own nearest and tenderest relations?
But here, having tired myself, and I dare say you, I will lay down my
pen.
*****
Mr. Solmes is almost continually here: so is my aunt Hervey: so are my
two uncles. Something is working against me, I doubt. What an uneasy
state is suspense!--When a naked sword, too, seems hanging over one's
head!
I hear nothing but what this confident creature Betty throws out in
the wantonness of office. Now it is, Why, Miss, don't you look up your
things? You'll be called upon, depend upon it, before you are aware.
Another time she intimates darkly, and in broken sentences, (as if on
purpose to tease me,) what one says, what another; with their inquiries
how I dispose of my time? And my brother's insolent question comes
frequently in, Whether I am not writing a history of my sufferings?
But I am now used to her pertness: and as it is only through that that
I can hear of any thing intended against me, before it is to be put in
execution; and as, when she is most impertinent, she pleads a commission
for it; I bear with her: yet, now-and-then, not without a little of the
heart-burn.