I am sorry you sent back my Norris. But you must be allowed to do as you
please. So must I, in my turn. We must neither of us, perhaps, expect
absolutely of the other what is the rightest thing to be done: and
yet few folks, so young as we are, better know what the rightest is. I
cannot separate myself from you; although I give a double instance of my
vanity in joining myself with you in this particular assertion.
I am most heartily rejoiced that your prospects are so much mended; and
that, as I hoped, good has been produced out of evil. What must the man
have been, what must have been his views, had he not taken such a
turn, upon a letter so vile, and upon a treatment so unnatural, himself
principally the occasion of it?
You know best your motives for suspending: but I wish you could have
taken him at offers so earnest.* Why should you not have permitted him
to send for Lord M.'s chaplain? If punctilio only was in the way, and
want of a license, and of proper preparations, and such like, my service
to you, my dear: and there is ceremony tantamount to your ceremony.
* Mr. Lovelace, in his next Letter, tells his friend how extremely ill
the Lady was, recovering from fits to fall into stronger fits, and
nobody expecting her life. She had not, he says, acquainted Miss Howe
how very ill she was.--In the next Letter, she tells Miss Howe, that her
motives for suspending were not merely ceremonious ones.
Do not, do not, my dear friend, again be so very melancholy a decliner
as to prefer a shroud, when the matter you wish for is in your power;
and when, as you have justly said heretofore, persons cannot die when
they will.
But it is a strange perverseness in human nature that we slight that
when near us which at a distance we wish for.
You have now but one point to pursue: that is marriage: let that be
solemnized. Leave the rest to Providence, and, to use your own words in
a former letter, follow as that leads. You will have a handsome man,
a genteel man; he would be a wise man, if he were not vain of his
endowments, and wild and intriguing: but while the eyes of many of our
sex, taken by so specious a form and so brilliant a spirit, encourage
that vanity, you must be contented to stay till grey hairs and prudence
enter upon the stage together. You would not have every thing in the
same man.
I believe Mr. Hickman treads no crooked paths; but he hobbles most
ungracefully in a straight one. Yet Mr. Hickman, though he pleases not
my eye, nor diverts my ear, will not, as I believe, disgust the one, nor
shock the other. Your man, as I have lately said, will always keep up
attention; you will always be alive with him, though perhaps more from
fears than hopes: while Mr. Hickman will neither say any thing to keep
one awake, nor yet, by shocking adventures, make one's slumbers uneasy.
I believe I now know which of the two men so prudent a person as you
would, at first, have chosen; nor doubt I that you can guess which I
would have made choice of, if I might. But proud as we are, the proudest
of us all can only refuse, and many of us accept the but half-worthy,
for fear a still worse should offer.
If men had chosen their mistresses for spirits like their own, although
Mr. Lovelace, at the long run, may have been too many for me, I don't
doubt but I should have given heart-ach for heart-ach, for one half-year
at least; while you, with my dull-swift, would have glided on as
serenely, as calmly, as unaccountably, as the succeeding seasons;
and varying no otherwise than they, to bring on new beauties and
conveniencies to all about you.
*****
I was going on in this style--but my mother broke in upon me with a
prohibitory aspect. 'She gave me leave for one letter only.'--She
had just parted with your odious uncle, and they have been in close
conference again.
She has vexed me. I must lay this by till I hear from you again, not
knowing whither to send it.
Direct me to a third place, as I desired in my former.
I told my mother (on her challenging me) that I was writing indeed, and
to you: but it was only to amuse myself; for I protested that I knew not
where to send to you.
I hope that your next may inform me of your nuptials, although the next
to that were to acquaint me that he was the most ungratefullest monster
on earth; as he must be, if not the kindest husband in it.
My mother has vexed me. But so, on revising, I wrote before.--But she
has unhinged me, as you call it: pretended to catechise Hickman, I
assure you, for contributing to our supposed correspondence. Catechised
him severely too, upon my word!--I believe I have a sneaking kindness
for the sneaking fellow, for I cannot endure that any body should treat
him like a fool but myself.
I believe, between you and me, the good lady forgot herself. I heard her
loud. She possibly imagined that my father was come to life again. Yet
the meekness of the man might have soon convinced her, I should have
thought; for my father, it seems, would talk as loud as she, I suppose,
(though within a few yards of each other,) as if both were out of their
way, and were hallooing at half a mile's distance, to get in again.
I know you'll blame me for this sauciness--but I told you I was vexed;
and if I had not a spirit, my parentage on both sides might be doubted.
You must not chide me too severely, however, because I have learned of
you not to defend myself in an error: and I own I am wrong: and that's
enough: you won't be so generous in this case as you are in every other,
if you don't think it is.
Adieu, my dear! I must, I will love you, and love you for ever! So
subscribes your