I will now take some notice of your last favour. But being so far
behind-hand with you, must be brief.
In the first place, as to your reproofs, thus shall I discharge myself
of that part of my subject. Is it likely, think you, that I should avoid
deserving them now-and-then, occasionally, when I admire the manner in
which you give me your rebukes, and love you the better for them? And
when you are so well entitled to give them? For what faults can you
possibly have, unless your relations are so kind as to find you a few to
keep their many in countenance?--But they are as king to me in this, as
to you; for I may venture to affirm, That any one who should read
your letters, and would say you were right, would not on reading mine,
condemn me for them quite wrong.
Your resolution not to leave your father's house is right--if you can
stay in it, and avoid being Solmes's wife.
I think you have answered Solmes's letter, as I should have answered
it.--Will you not compliment me and yourself at once, by saying, that
was right?
You have, in your letters to your uncle and the rest, done all that you
ought to do. You are wholly guiltless of the consequence, be it what it
will. To offer to give up your estate!--That would not I have done! You
see this offer staggered them: they took time to consider of it. They
made my heart ache in the time they took. I was afraid they would have
taken you at your word: and so, but for shame, and for fear of Lovelace,
I dare say they would. You are too noble for them. This, I repeat, is an
offer I would not have made. Let me beg of you, my dear, never to repeat
the temptation to them.
I freely own to you, that their usage of you upon it, and Lovelace's
different treatment of you* in his letter received at the same time,
would have made me his, past redemption. The duce take the man, I was
going to say, for not having so much regard to his character and morals,
as would have entirely justified such a step in a CLARISSA, persecuted
as she is!
* See Letter XVIII.
I wonder not at your appointment with him. I may further touch upon some
part of this subject by-and-by.
Pray--pray--I pray you now, my dearest friend, contrive to send your
Betty Banes to me!--Does the Coventry Act extend to women, know ye?--The
least I will do, shall be, to send her home well soused in and dragged
through our deepest horsepond. I'll engage, if I get her hither, that
she will keep the anniversary of her deliverance as long as she lives.
I wonder not at Lovelace's saucy answer, saucy as it really is.* If he
loves you as he ought, he must be vexed at so great a disappointment.
The man must have been a detestable hypocrite, I think, had he not shown
his vexation. Your expectations of such a christian command of temper
in him, in a disappointment of this nature especially, are too early by
almost half a century in a man of his constitution. But nevertheless I
am very far from blaming you for your resentment.
* See Letter XX.
I shall be all impatience to know how this matter ends between you and
him. But a few inches of brick wall between you so lately; and now such
mountains?--And you think to hold it?--May be so!
You see, you say, that the temper he shewed in his letter was not
natural to him. Wretched creepers and insinuators! Yet when opportunity
serves, as insolent encroachers!--This very Hickman, I make no doubt,
would be as saucy as your Lovelace, if he dared. He has not half the
arrogant bravery of the other, and can better hide his horns; that's
all. But whenever he has the power, depend upon it, he will butt at one
as valiantly as the other.
If ever I should be persuaded to have him, I shall watch how the
obsequious lover goes off; and how the imperative husband comes upon
him; in short, how he ascends, and how I descend, in the matrimonial
wheel, never to take my turn again, but by fits and starts like the
feeble struggles of a sinking state for its dying liberty.
All good-natured men are passionate, says Mr. Lovelace. A pretty plea
to a beloved object in the plenitude of her power! As much as to say,
'Greatly I value you, Madam, I will not take pains to curb my passions
to oblige you'--Methinks I should be glad to hear from Mr. Hickman such
a plea for good nature as this.
Indeed, we are too apt to make allowances for such tempers as early
indulgence has made uncontroulable; and therefore habitually evil. But
if a boisterous temper, when under obligation, is to be thus allowed
for, what, when the tables are turned, will it expect? You know a
husband, who, I fancy, had some of these early allowances made for him:
and you see that neither himself nor any body else is the happier for
it.
The suiting of the tempers of two persons who are to come together, is
a great matter: and there should be boundaries fixed between them, by
consent as it were, beyond which neither should go: and each should hold
the other to it; or there would probably be encroachment in both. To
illustrate my assertion by a very high, and by a more manly (as some
would think it) than womanly instance--if the boundaries of the
three estates that constitute our political union were not known,
and occasionally asserted, what would become of the prerogatives and
privileges of each? The two branches of the legislature would encroach
upon each other; and the executive power would swallow up both.