You will permit me, my dear, to touch upon a few passages in your last
letter, that affect me sensibly.
In the first place, you must allow me to say, low as I am in spirits,
that I am very angry with you, for your reflections on my relations,
particularly on my father and mother, and on the memory of my
grandfather. Nor, my dear, does your own mother always escape the keen
edge of your vivacity. One cannot one's self forbear to write or speak
freely of those we love and honour, when grief from imagined hard
treatment wrings the heart: but it goes against one to hear any body
else take the same liberties. Then you have so very strong a manner of
expression where you take a distaste, that when passion has subdued,
and I come (upon reflection) to see by your severity what I have given
occasion for, I cannot help condemning myself.
But least of all can I bear that you should reflect upon my mother.
What, my dear, if her meekness should not be rewarded? Is the want of
reward, or the want even of a grateful acknowledgement, a reason for us
to dispense with what we think our duty? They were my father's lively
spirits that first made him an interest in her gentle bosom. They were
the same spirits turned inward, as I have heretofore observed,* that
made him so impatient when the cruel malady seized him. He always loved
my mother: And would not LOVE and PITY excusably, nay laudably, make a
good wife (who was an hourly witness of his pangs, when labouring under
a paroxysm, and his paroxysms becoming more and more frequent, as well
as more and more severe) give up her own will, her own likings,
to oblige a husband, thus afflicted, whose love for her was
unquestionable?--And if so, was it not too natural [human nature is not
perfect, my dear] that the husband thus humoured by the wife, should be
unable to bear controul from any body else, much less contradiction from
his children?
* See Letter V.
If then you would avoid my highest displeasure, you must spare my
mother: and, surely, you will allow me, with her, to pity, as well as to
love and honour my father.
I have no friend but you to whom I can appeal, to whom I dare complain.
Unhappily circumstanced as I am, it is but too probable that I shall
complain, because it is but too probably that I shall have more and more
cause given me for complaint. But be it your part, if I do, to sooth my
angry passions, and to soften my resentments; and this the rather, as
you know what an influence your advice has upon me; and as you must
also know, that the freedoms you take with my friends, can have no other
tendency, but to weaken the sense of my duty to them, without answering
any good end to myself.
I cannot help owning, however, that I am pleased to have you join with
me in opinion of the contempt which Mr. Solmes deserves from me. But
yet, permit me to say, that he is not quite so horrible a creature as
you make him: as to his person, I mean; for with regard to his mind,
by all I have heard, you have done him but justice: but you have such
a talent at an ugly likeness, and such a vivacity, that they sometimes
carry you out of verisimilitude. In short, my dear, I have known you, in
more instances than one, sit down resolved to write all that wit, rather
than strict justice, could suggest upon the given occasion. Perhaps it
may be thought, that I should say the less on this particular subject,
because your dislike of him arises from love to me: But should it not be
our aim to judge of ourselves, and of every thing that affects us, as
we may reasonably imagine other people would judge of us and of our
actions?
As to the advice you give, to resume my estate, I am determined not to
litigate with my father, let what will be the consequence to myself.
I may give you, at another time, a more particular answer to your
reasonings on this subject: but, at present, will only observe, that
it is in my opinion, that Lovelace himself would hardly think me worth
addressing, were he to know this would be my resolution. These men, my
dear, with all their flatteries, look forward to the PERMANENT. Indeed,
it is fit they should. For love must be a very foolish thing to look
back upon, when it has brought persons born to affluence into indigence,
and laid a generous mind under obligation and dependence.
You very ingeniously account for the love we bear to one another, from
the difference in our tempers. I own, I should not have thought of that.
There may possibly be something in it: but whether there be or not,
whenever I am cool, and give myself time to reflect, I will love you the
better for the correction you give, be as severe as you will upon me.
Spare me not, therefore, my dear friend, whenever you think me in the
least faulty. I love your agreeable raillery: you know I always did:
nor, however over-serious you think me, did I ever think you flippant,
as you harshly call it. One of the first conditions of our mutual
friendship was, each should say or write to the other whatever was upon
her mind, without any offence to be taken: a condition, that is indeed
indispensable in friendship.
I knew your mother would be for implicit obedience in a child. I am
sorry my case is so circumstanced, that I cannot comply. It would be
my duty to do so, if I could. You are indeed very happy, that you have
nothing but your own agreeable, yet whimsical, humours to contend with,
in the choice she invites you to make of Mr. Hickman. How happy I should
be, to be treated with so much lenity!--I should blush to have my mother
say, that she begged and prayed me, and all in vain, to encourage a man
so unexceptionable as Mr. Hickman.
Indeed, my beloved Miss Howe, I am ashamed to have your mother say, with
ME in her view, 'What strange effects have prepossession and love upon
young creatures of our sex!' This touches me the more sensibly, because
you yourself, my dear, are so ready to persuade me into it.
I should be very blamable to endeavour to hide any the least bias
upon my mind, from you: and I cannot but say--that this man--this
Lovelace--is a man that might be liked well enough, if he bore such
a character as Mr. Hickman bears; and even if there were hopes of
reclaiming him. And further still I will acknowledge, that I believe it
possible that one might be driven, by violent measures, step by step, as
it were, into something that might be called--I don't know what to
call it--a conditional kind of liking, or so. But as to the word
LOVE--justifiable and charming as it is in some cases, (that is to say,
in all the relative, in all the social, and, what is still beyond both,
in all our superior duties, in which it may be properly called divine;)
it has, methinks, in the narrow, circumscribed, selfish, peculiar sense,
in which you apply it to me, (the man too so little to be approved of
for his morals, if all that report says of him be true,) no pretty sound
with it. Treat me as freely as you will in all other respects, I will
love you, as I have said, the better for your friendly freedom. But,
methinks, I could be glad that you would not let this imputation pass so
glibly from your pen, or your lips, as attributable to one of your own
sex, whether I be the person or not: since the other must have a double
triumph, when a person of your delicacy (armed with such contempts of
them all, as you would have one think) can give up a friend, with an
exultation over her weakness, as a silly, love-sick creature.
I could make some other observations upon the contents of your last two
letters; but my mind is not free enough at present. The occasion for the
above stuck with me; and I could not help taking the earliest notice of
them.
Having written to the end of my second sheet, I will close this letter,
and in my next, acquaint you with all that has happened here since my
last.