What odd heads some people have!--Miss Clarissa Harlowe to be sacrificed
in marriage to Mr. Roger Solmes!--Astonishing!
I must not, you say, give my advice in favour of this man!--You now
convince me, my dear, that you are nearer of kin than I thought you,
to the family that could think of so preposterous a match, or you would
never have had the least notion of my advising in his favour.
Ask for his picture. You know I have a good hand at drawing an ugly
likeness. But I'll see a little further first: for who knows what may
happen, since matters are in such a train; and since you have not the
courage to oppose so overwhelming a torrent?
You ask me to help you to a little of my spirit. Are you in earnest?
But it will not now, I doubt, do you service.--It will not sit naturally
upon you. You are your mother's girl, think what you will; and have
violent spirits to contend with. Alas! my dear, you should have borrowed
some of mine a little sooner;--that is to say, before you had given the
management of your estate into the hands of those who think they have a
prior claim to it. What though a father's!--Has not the father two elder
children?--And do they not both bear more of his stamp and image than
you do?--Pray, my dear, call me not to account for this free question;
lest your application of my meaning, on examination, prove to be as
severe as that.
Now I have launched out a little, indulge me one word more in the same
strain--I will be decent, I promise you. I think you might have know,
that Avarice and Envy are two passions that are not to be satisfied, the
one by giving, the other by the envied person's continuing to deserve
and excel.--Fuel, fuel both, all the world over, to flames insatiate and
devouring.
But since you ask for my opinion, you must tell me all you know or
surmise of their inducements. And if you will not forbid me to make
extracts from your letters for the entertainment of my aunt and cousin
in the little island, who long to hear more of your affairs, it will be
very obliging.
But you are so tender of some people who have no tenderness for any body
but themselves, that I must conjure you to speak out. Remember, that
a friendship like ours admits of no reserves. You may trust my
impartiality. It would be an affront to your own judgment, if you did
not: For do you not ask my advice? And have you not taught me that
friendship should never give a bias against justice?--Justify them,
therefore, if you can. Let us see if there be any sense, whether
sufficient reason or not in their choice. At present I cannot (and yet
I know a good deal of your family) have any conception how all of them,
your mother and your aunt Hervey in particular, can join with the rest
against judgments given. As to some of the others, I cannot wonder at
any thing they do, or attempt to do, where self is concerned.
You ask, Why may not your brother be first engaged in wedlock? I'll tell
you why: His temper and his arrogance are too well known to induce women
he would aspire to, to receive his addresses, notwithstanding his great
independent acquisitions, and still greater prospects. Let me tell you,
my dear, those acquisitions have given him more pride than reputation.
To me he is the most intolerable creature that I ever conversed with.
The treatment you blame, he merited from one whom he addressed with the
air of a person who presumes that he is about to confer a favour, rather
than to receive one. I ever loved to mortify proud and insolent spirits.
What, think you, makes me bear Hickman near me, but that the man is
humble, and knows and keeps his distance?
As to your question, Why your elder sister may not be first provided
for? I answer, Because she must have no man, but one who has a great and
clear estate; that's one thing. Another is, Because she has a younger
sister. Pray, my dear, be so good as to tell me, What man of a great and
clear estate would think of that eldest sister, while the younger were
single?
You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you, by
the constitutions of your family, marry to be still richer? People who
know in what their main excellence consists, are not to be blamed (are
they) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable?--Is
true happiness any part of your family view?--So far from it, that none
of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let
them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what
ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the
cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up, till Death, as greedy an
accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner.
Well then once more I say, do you, my dear, tell me what you know of
their avowed and general motives; and I will tell you more than you will
tell me of their failings! Your aunt Hervey, you say,* has told you: Why
must I ask you to let me know them, when you condescend to ask my advice
on the occasion?
* See Letter VIII.
That they prohibit your corresponding with me, is a wisdom I neither
wonder at, nor blame them for: since it is an evidence to me, that they
know their own folly: And if they do, is it strange that they should be
afraid to trust one another's judgment upon it?
I am glad you have found out a way to correspond with me. I approve
it much. I shall more, if this first trial of it prove successful. But
should it not, and should it fall into their hands, it would not concern
me but for your sake.
We have heard before you wrote, that all was not right between your
relations and you at your coming home: that Mr. Solmes visited you, and
that with a prospect of success. But I concluded the mistake lay in the
person; and that his address was to Miss Arabella. And indeed had she
been as good-natured as your plump ones generally are, I should have
thought her too good for him by half. This must certainly be the thing,
thought I; and my beloved friend is sent for to advise and assist in her
nuptial preparations. Who knows, said I to my mother, but that when
the man has thrown aside his yellow full-buckled peruke, and his
broad-brimmed beaver (both of which I suppose were Sir Oliver's best
of long standing) he may cut a tolerable figure dangling to church
with Miss Bell!--The woman, as she observes, should excel the man in
features: and where can she match so well for a foil?
I indulged this surmise against rumour, because I could not believe that
the absurdest people in England could be so very absurd as to think of
this man for you.
We heard, moreover, that you received no visiters. I could assign no
reason for this, except that the preparations for your sister were to be
private, and the ceremony sudden, for fear this man should, as another
man did, change his mind. Miss Lloyd and Miss Biddulph were with me to
inquire what I knew of this; and of your not being in church, either
morning or afternoon, the Sunday after your return from us; to the
disappointment of a little hundred of your admirers, to use their words.
It was easy for me to guess the reason to be what you confirm--their
apprehensions that Lovelace would be there, and attempt to wait on you
home.
My mother takes very kindly your compliments in your letter to her. Her
words upon reading it were, 'Miss Clarissa Harlowe is an admirable young
lady: wherever she goes, she confers a favour: whomever she leaves, she
fills with regret.'--And then a little comparative reflection--'O my
Nancy, that you had a little of her sweet obligingness!'
No matter. The praise was yours. You are me; and I enjoyed it. The more
enjoyed it, because--Shall I tell you the truth?--Because I think myself
as well as I am--were it but for this reason, that had I twenty brother
James's, and twenty sister Bell's, not one of them, nor all of them
joined together, would dare to treat me as yours presume to treat you.
The person who will bear much shall have much to bear all the world
through; it is your own sentiment,* grounded upon the strongest instance
that can be given in your own family; though you have so little improved
by it.
* Letter V.
The result is this, that I am fitter for this world than you; you for
the next than me:--that is the difference.--But long, long, for my sake,
and for hundreds of sakes, may it be before you quit us for company more
congenial to you and more worthy of you!
I communicated to my mother the account you give of your strange
reception; also what a horrid wretch they have found out for you; and
the compulsory treatment they give you. It only set her on magnifying
her lenity to me, on my tyrannical behaviour, as she will call it
[mothers must have their way, you know, my dear] to the man whom she so
warmly recommends, against whom it seems there can be no just exception;
and expatiating upon the complaisance I owe her for her indulgence. So I
believe I must communicate to her nothing farther--especially as I know
she would condemn the correspondence between us, and that between you
and Lovelace, as clandestine and undutiful proceedings, and divulge our
secret besides; for duty implicit is her cry. And moreover she lends
a pretty open ear to the preachments of that starch old bachelor your
uncle Antony; and for an example to her daughter would be more careful
how she takes your part, be the cause ever so just.
Yet is this not the right policy neither. For people who allow nothing
will be granted nothing: in other words, those who aim at carrying too
many points will not be able to carry any.
But can you divine, my dear, what the old preachment-making,
plump-hearted soul, your uncle Antony, means by his frequent amblings
hither?--There is such smirking and smiling between my mother and him!
Such mutual praises of economy; and 'that is my way!'--and 'this I
do!'--and 'I am glad it has your approbation, Sir!'--and 'you look into
every thing, Madam!'--'Nothing would be done, if I did not!'--
Such exclamations against servants! Such exaltings of self! And
dear heart, and good lack!--and 'las a-day!--And now-and-then their
conversation sinking into a whispering accent, if I come across
them!--I'll tell you, my dear, I don't above half like it.
Only that these old bachelors usually take as many years to resolve upon
matrimony as they can reasonably expect to live, or I should be ready
to fire upon his visits; and to recommend Mr. Hickman to my mother's
acceptance, as a much more eligible man: for what he wants in years,
he makes up in gravity; and if you will not chide me, I will say, that
there is a primness in both (especially when the man has presumed too
much with me upon my mother's favour for him, and is under discipline on
that account) as make them seem near of kin: and then in contemplation
of my sauciness, and what they both fear from it, they sigh away! and
seem so mightily to compassionate each other, that if pity be but one
remove from love, I am in no danger, while they are both in a great
deal, and don't know it.
Now, my dear, I know you will be upon me with your grave airs: so in for
the lamb, as the saying is, in for the sheep; and do you yourself look
about you; for I'll have a pull with you by way of being aforehand.
Hannibal, we read, always advised to attack the Romans upon their own
territories.
You are pleased to say, and upon your word too! that your regards (a
mighty quaint word for affections) are not so much engaged, as some
of your friends suppose, to another person. What need you give one to
imagine, my dear, that the last month or two has been a period extremely
favourable to that other person, whom it has made an obliger of the
niece for his patience with the uncles.
But, to pass that by--so much engaged!--How much, my dear?--Shall I
infer? Some of your friends suppose a great deal. You seem to own a
little.
Don't be angry. It is all fair: because you have not acknowledged to
me that little. People I have heard you say, who affect secrets, always
excite curiosity.
But you proceed with a kind of drawback upon your averment, as if
recollection had given you a doubt--you know not yourself, if they be
[so much engaged]. Was it necessary to say this to me?--and to say
it upon your word too?--But you know best.--Yet you don't neither,
I believe. For a beginning love is acted by a subtle spirit; and
oftentimes discovers itself to a by-stander, when the person possessed
(why should I not call it possessed?) knows not it has such a demon.
But further you say, what preferable favour you may have for him to any
other person, is owing more to the usage he has received, and for your
sake borne, than to any personal consideration.
This is generously said. It is in character. But, O my friend, depend
upon it, you are in danger. Depend upon it, whether you know it or not,
you are a little in for't. Your native generosity and greatness of mind
endanger you: all your friends, by fighting against him with
impolitic violence, fight for him. And Lovelace, my life for yours,
notwithstanding all his veneration and assiduities, has seen further
than that veneration and those assiduities (so well calculated to your
meridian) will let him own he has seen--has seen, in short, that his
work is doing for him more effectually than he could do it for himself.
And have you not before now said, that nothing is so penetrating as the
eye of a lover who has vanity? And who says Lovelace wants vanity?
In short, my dear, it is my opinion, and that from the easiness of his
heart and behaviour, that he has seen more than I have seen; more than
you think could be seen--more than I believe you yourself know, or else
you would let me know it.
Already, in order to restrain him from resenting the indignities he has
received, and which are daily offered him, he has prevailed upon you to
correspond with him privately. I know he has nothing to boast of from
what you have written: but is not his inducing you to receive his
letters, and to answer them, a great point gained? By your insisting
that he should keep the correspondence private, it appears there is one
secret which you do not wish the world should know: and he is master of
that secret. He is indeed himself, as I may say, that secret! What an
intimacy does this beget for the lover! How is it distancing the parent!
Yet who, as things are situated, can blame you?--Your condescension has
no doubt hitherto prevented great mischiefs. It must be continued,
for the same reasons, while the cause remains. You are drawn in by
a perverse fate against inclination: but custom, with such
laudable purposes, will reconcile the inconveniency, and make an
inclination.--And I would advise you (as you would wish to manage on an
occasion so critical with that prudence which governs all your actions)
not to be afraid of entering upon a close examination into the true
springs and grounds of this your generosity to that happy man.
It is my humble opinion, I tell you frankly, that on inquiry it will
come out to be LOVE--don't start, my dear!--Has not your man himself had
natural philosophy enough to observe already to your aunt Hervey, that
love takes the deepest root in the steadiest minds? The deuce take his
sly penetration, I was going to say; for this was six or seven weeks
ago.
I have been tinctured, you know. Nor on the coolest reflection, could
I account how and when the jaundice began: but had been over head and
ears, as the saying is, but for some of that advice from you, which I
now return you. Yet my man was not half so--so what, my dear--to be sure
Lovelace is a charming fellow. And were he only--but I will not make
you glow, as you read--upon my word I will not.--Yet, my dear, don't you
find at your heart somewhat unusual make it go throb, throb, throb, as
you read just here?--If you do, don't be ashamed to own it--it is your
generosity, my love, that's all.--But as the Roman augur said, Caesar,
beware of the Ides of March!
Adieu, my dearest friend.--Forgive, and very speedily, by the new found
expedient, tell me that you forgive,
Your ever-affectionate, ANNA HOWE.