MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
WEDNESDAY, MAY 10.
I WILL write! No man shall write for me.* No woman shall hinder me from
writing. Surely I am of age to distinguish between reason and caprice.
I am not writing to a man, am I?--If I were carrying on a correspondence
with a fellow, of whom my mother disapproved, and whom it might be
improper for me to encourage, my own honour and my duty would engage my
obedience. But as the case is so widely different, not a word more on
this subject, I beseech you!
* Clarissa proposes Mr. Hickman to write for Miss Howe. See Letter XI.
of this volume, Paragr. 5, & ult.
I much approve of your resolution to leave this wretch, if you can make
it up with your uncle.
I hate the man--most heartily do I hate him, for his teasing ways. The
very reading of your account of them teases me almost as much as they can
you. May you have encouragement to fly the foolish wretch!
I have other reasons to wish you may: for I have just made an
acquaintance with one who knows a vast deal of his private history. The
man is really a villain, my dear! an execrable one! if all be true that I
have heard! And yet I am promised other particulars. I do assure you,
my dear friend, that, had he a dozen lives, he might have forfeited them
all, and been dead twenty crimes ago.
If ever you condescend to talk familiarly with him again, ask him after
Miss Betterton, and what became of her. And if he shuffle and
prevaricate as to her, question him about Miss Lockyer.--O my dear, the
man's a villain!
I will have your uncle sounded, as you desire, and that out of hand. But
yet I am afraid of the success; and this for several reasons. 'Tis hard
to say what the sacrifice of your estate would do with some people: and
yet I must not, when it comes to the test, permit you to make it.
As your Hannah continues ill, I would advise you to try to attach Dorcas
to your interest. Have you not been impoliticly shy of her?
I wish you could come at some of his letters. Surely a man of his
negligent character cannot be always guarded. If he be, and if you
cannot engage your servant, I shall suspect them both. Let him be called
upon at a short warning when he is writing, or when he has papers lying
about, and so surprise him into negligence.
Such inquiries, I know, are of the same nature with those we make at an
inn in traveling, when we look into every corner and closet, for fear of
a villain; yet should be frighted out of our wits, were we to find one.
But 'tis better to detect such a one when awake and up, than to be
attacked by him when in bed and asleep.
I am glad you have your clothes. But no money! No books but a Spira, a
Drexelius, and a Practice of Piety! Those who sent the latter ought to
have kept it for themselves--But I must hurry myself from this subject.
You have exceedingly alarmed me by what you hint of his attempt to get
one of my letters. I am assured by my new informant, that he is the head
of a gang of wretched (those he brought you among, no doubt, were some of
them) who join together to betray innocent creatures, and to support one
another afterwards by violence; and were he to come at the knowledge of
the freedoms I take with him, I should be afraid to stir out without a
guard.
I am sorry to tell you, that I have reason to think, that your brother
has not laid aside his foolish plot. A sunburnt, sailor-looking fellow
was with me just now, pretending great service to you from Captain
Singleton, could he be admitted to your speech. I pleaded ignorance as
to the place of your abode. The fellow was too well instructed for me to
get any thing out of him.
I wept for two hours incessantly on reading your's, which enclosed that
from your cousin Morden.* My dearest creature, do not desert yourself.
Let your Anna Howe obey the call of that friendship which has united us
as one soul, and endeavour to give you consolation.
* See Letter XIX. of this volume.
I wonder not at the melancholy reflections you so often cast upon
yourself in your letters, for the step you have been forced upon on one
hand, and tricked into on the other. A strange fatality! As if it were
designed to show the vanity of all human prudence. I wish, my dear, as
you hint, that both you and I have not too much prided ourselves in a
perhaps too conscious superiority over others. But I will stop--how apt
are weak minds to look out for judgments in any extraordinary event!
'Tis so far right, that it is better, and safer, and juster, to arraign
ourselves, or our dearest friends, than Providence; which must always
have wise ends to answer its dispensations.
But do not talk, as if one of your former, of being a warning only*--you
will be as excellent an example as ever you hoped to be, as well as a
warning: and that will make your story, to all that shall come to know
it, of double efficacy: for were it that such a merit as yours could not
ensure to herself noble and generous usage from a libertine heart, who
will expect any tolerable behaviour from men of his character?
* See Vol. III. Letter XXVIII.
If you think yourself inexcusable for taking a step that put you into the
way of delusion, without any intention to go off with him, what must
those giddy creatures think of themselves, who, without half your
provocations and inducements, and without any regard to decorum, leap
walls, drop from windows, and steal away from their parents' house, to
the seducer's bed, in the same day?
Again, if you are so ready to accuse yourself for dispensing with the
prohibitions of the most unreasonable parents, which yet were but half-
prohibitions at first, what ought those to do, who wilfully shut their
ears to the advice of the most reasonable; and that perhaps, where
apparent ruin, or undoubted inconvenience, is the consequence of the
predetermined rashness?
And lastly, to all who will know your story, you will be an excellent
example of watchfulness, and of that caution and reserve by which a
prudent person, who has been supposed to be a little misled, endeavours
to mend her error; and, never once losing sight of her duty, does all in
her power to recover the path she has been rather driven out of than
chosen to swerve from.
Come, come, my dearest friend, consider but these things; and steadily,
without desponding, pursue your earnest purposes to amend what you think
has been amiss; and it may not be a misfortune in the end that you have
erred; especially as so little of your will was in your error.
And indeed I must say that I use the words misled, and error, and such-
like, only in compliment to your own too-ready self-accusations, and to
the opinion of one to whom I owe duty: for I think in my conscience, that
every part of your conduct is defensible: and that those only are
blamable who have no other way to clear themselves but by condemning you.
I expect, however, that such melancholy reflections as drop from your pen
but too often will mingle with all your future pleasures, were you to
marry Lovelace, and were he to make the best of husbands.
You was immensely happy, above the happiness of a mortal creature, before
you knew him: every body almost worshipped you: envy itself, which has of
late reared up its venomous head against you, was awed, by your superior
worthiness, into silence and admiration. You was the soul of every
company where you visited. Your elders have I seen declining to offer
their opinions upon a subject till you had delivered yours; often, to
save themselves the mortification of retracting theirs, when they heard
yours. Yet, in all this, your sweetness of manners, your humility and
affability, caused the subscription every one made to your sentiments,
and to your superiority, to be equally unfeigned, and unhesitating; for
they saw that their applause, and the preference they gave you to
themselves, subjected not themselves to insults, nor exalted you into any
visible triumph over them; for you had always something to say on every
point you carried that raised the yielding heart, and left every one
pleased and satisfied with themselves, though they carried not off the
palm.
Your works were showed or referred to wherever fine works were talked of.
Nobody had any but an inferior and second-hand praise for diligence, for
economy, for reading, for writing, for memory, for facility in learning
every thing laudable, and even for the more envied graces of person and
dress, and an all-surpassing elegance in both, where you were known, and
those subjects talked of.
The poor blessed you every step you trod: the rich thought you their
honour, and took a pride that they were not obliged to descend from their
own class for an example that did credit to it.
Though all men wished for you, and sought you, young as you were; yet,
had not those who were brought to address you been encouraged out of
sordid and spiteful views, not one of them would have dared to lift up
his eyes to you.
Thus happy in all about you, thus making happy all within your circle,
could you think that nothing would happen to you, to convince you that
you were not to be exempted from the common lot?--To convinced you, that
you were not absolutely perfect; and that you must not expect to pass
through life without trial, temptation, and misfortune?
Indeed, it must be owned that no trial, no temptation, worthy of your
virtue, and of your prudence, could well have attacked you sooner,
because of your tender years, and more effectually, than those heavy ones
under which you struggle; since it must be allowed, that you equanimity
and foresight made you superior to common accidents; for are not most of
the troubles that fall to the lot of common mortals brought upon
themselves either by their too large desires, or too little deserts?--
Cases, both, from which you stood exempt.--It was therefore to be some
man, or some worse spirit in the shape of one, that, formed on purpose,
was to be sent to invade you; while as many other such spirits as there
are persons in your family were permitted to take possession, severally,
in one dark hour, of the heart of every one of it, there to sit perching,
perhaps, and directing every motion to the motions of the seducer
without, in order to irritate, to provoke, to push you forward to meet
him.
Upon the whole, there seems, as I have often said, to have been a kind of
fate in your error, if it were an error; and this perhaps admitted for
the sake of a better example to be collected from your SUFFERINGS, than
could have been given, had you never erred: for my dear, the time of
ADVERSITY is your SHINING-TIME. I see it evidently, that adversity must
call forth graces and beauties which could not have been brought to light
in a run of that prosperous fortune which attended you from your cradle
till now; admirably as you became, and, as we all thought, greatly as you
deserved that prosperity.
All the matter is, the trial must be grievous to you. It is to me: it is
to all who love you, and looked upon you as one set aloft to be admired
and imitated, and not as a mark, as you have lately found, for envy to
shoot its shafts at.
Let what I have written above have its due weight with you, my dear; and
then, as warm imaginations are not without a mixture of enthusiasm, your
Anna Howe, who, on reperusal of it, imagines it to be in a style superior
to her usual style, will be ready to flatter herself that she has been in
a manner inspired with the hints that have comforted and raised the
dejected heart of her suffering friend; who, from such hard trials, in a
bloom so tender, may find at times her spirits sunk too low to enable her
to pervade the surrounding darkness, which conceals from her the hopeful
dawning of the better day which awaits her.
I will add no more at present, than that I am
Your ever faithful and affectionate
ANNA HOWE.