not very good; and so I am the less obliged to you. He turned, with an unconcerned air, to Miss Playford, and made her some genteel compliments. I believe you know her not. She visits his cousins Montague. Indeed, he had something in his specious manner to say to everybody; and this too soon quieted the disgust each person had at his entrance. I still kept my seat, and he either saw me not, or would not yet see me; and addressing himself to my mother, taking her unwilling hand, with an air of high assurance, I am glad to see you here, madam, I hope Miss Howe is well. I have reason to complain greatly of her; but hope to owe to her the highest obligation that can be laid on man. My daughter, sir, is accustomed to be too warm and too zealous in her friendships, for either my tranquillity or her own. There had, indeed, been some late occasion given for mutual displeasure between my mother and me; but I think she might have spared this to him; though nobody heard it, I believe, but the person to whom it was spoken, and the lady who told it me; for my mother spoke it low. We are not wholly, madam, to live for ourselves, said the vile hypocrite; it is not every one who has a soul capable of friendship; and what a heart must that be, which can be insensible to the interests of a suffering friend? This sentiment from Mr Lovelace's mouth! said my mother-forgive me, sir; but you can have no end, surely, in endeavouring to make me think as well of you as some innocent creatures have thought of you to their cost. She would have flung from him. But, detaining her hand-Less severe, dear madam, said he, be less severe in this place, I beseech you. You will allow, that a very faulty person may see his errors; and when he does, and owns them, and repents, should he not be treated mercifully? Your air, sir, seems not to be that of a penitent. But the place may as properly excuse this subject, as what you call my severity. But, dearest madam, permit me to say, that I hope for your interest with your charming daughter, (was his sycophant word,) to have it put in my power to convince all the world that there never was a truer penitent. And why, why this anger, dear madam, (for she struggled to get her hand out of his,) these violent airs so maidenly! [impudent fellow !-May I not ask, if Miss Howe be here ? She would not have been here, replied my mother, had she known whom she had been to see. And is she here, then?-Thank Heaven!he disengaged her hand, and stept forward into the company. Dear Miss Lloyd, said he, with an air, (taking her hand as he quitted my mother's) tell me, tell me, is Miss Arabella Harlowe here? Or will she be here? I was informed she would--and this, and the opportunity of paying my compliments to your friend Miss Howe, were great inducements with me to attend the colonel. Superlative assurance! was it not, my dear? Miss Arabella Harlowe, excuse me, sir, said Miss Lloyd, would be very little inclined to meet you here, or anywhere else. Perhaps so, my dear Miss Lloyd; but, perhaps, for that very reason, I am more desirous to see her. Miss Harlowe, sir, said Miss Biddulph, with a threatening air, will hardly be here without her brother. I imagine, if one comes, both will come. Heaven grant they both may! said the wretch. Nothing, Miss Biddulph, shall begin from me to disturb this assembly, I assure you, if they do. One calm half-hour's conversation with that brother and sister, would be a most fortunate opportunity to me, in presence of the colonel and his lady, or whom else they should choose. Then turning round, as if desirous to find out the one or the other, or both, he spied me, and, with a very low bow, approached me. I was all in a flutter, you may suppose. He would have taken my hand; I refused it, all glowing with indignation, everybody's eyes upon us. I went from him to the other end of the room, and sat down, as I thought, out of his hated sight; but presently I heard his odious voice whispering behind my chair, (he leaning upon the back of it with impudent unconcern,) Charming Miss Howe! looking over my shoulder-one request-I started up from my seat, but could hardly stand, neither, for very indignation]-0 this sweet, but becoming disdain! whispered on the insufferable creature-I am sorry to give you all this emotion; but either here, or at your own house, let me entreat you for one quarter of an hour's audience.-I beseech you, madam, but one quarter of an hour, in any of the adjoining apartments. Not for a kingdom, (fluttering my fan.) I knew not what I did. But I could have killed him. We are so much observed-else, on my knees, my dear Miss Howe, would I beg your interest with your charming friend. She'll have nothing to say to you. Killing words!-But indeed I have deserved them, and a dagger in my heart besides. I am so conscious of my demerits, that I have no hope but in your interposition-could I owe that favour to Miss Howe's mediation, which I cannot hope for on any other account My mediation, vilest of men !-My mediation!-I abhor you!-From my soul, I abhor you, vilest of men! Three or four times I repeated these words, stammering too. I was excessively fluttered. even with her too: Where, good madam, could Miss Howe get all this spirit? The company around smiled, for I need not tell you that my mother's high spiritedness is pretty well known; and she, sadly vexed, said, Sir, you treat me as you do the rest of the world You can call me nothing, madam, so bad as I will call myself. I have been, indeed, the vilest of men, but now I am not so. Permit me -everybody's eyes are upon us!--but one moment's audience to exchange but ten words with you, dearest Miss Howe-in whose presence you please for your dear friend's sake--butbut ten words with you, in the next apartment. It is an insult upon me to presume that I would exchange one with you, if I could help it-Out of my way!-Out of my sight, fellow! And away I would have flung, but he took my hand. I was excessively disordered-everybody's eyes more and more intent upon us. Mr Hickman, whom my mother had drawn on one side to enjoin him a patience, which per haps needed not to have been enforced, came up just then with my mother, who had him by his leading-strings-by his sleeve, I should say. Mr Hickman, said the bold wretch, be my advocate but for ten words in the next apartment with Miss Howe, in your presence; and in yours, madam, to my mother. Hear, Nancy, what he has to say to you. To get rid of him, hear his ten words. Excuse me, madam! his very breath-Unhand me, sir! He sighed and looked-O how the practised villain sighed and looked! He then let go my hand, with such a reverence in his manner, as brought blame upon me from some, that I would not hear him; and this incensed me the more. O my dear, this man is a devil! This man is indeed a devil!-So much patience when he pleases! So much gentleness!-Yet so resolute, so persisting, so audacious! I was going out of the assembly in great dis order. He was at the door as soon as I. How kind this is! said the wretch, and, ready to follow me, opened the door for me. I turned back upon this, and not knowing what I did, snapped my fan just in his face, as he turned short upon me, and the powder flew from his hair. Everybody seemed as much pleased as I was vexed. He turned to Mr Hickman, nettled at the powder flying, and at the smiles of the company upon him-Mr Hickman, you will be one of the happiest men in the world, because you are a good man, and will do nothing to provoke this passionate lady, and because she has too much good sense to be provoked without reason; but else, the Lord have mercy upon you! This man, this Mr Hickman, my dear, is too meek for a man. Indeed he is; but my patient mother twits me that her passionate daughter ought to like him the better for that. But meek men abroad are not always meek men at home. I have observed that in more instances than one; and if they were, I should not, I verily think, like them the better for being so. He then turned to my mother, resolved to be I beg pardon, madam, interrupted he;-I might have spared my question-and instantly (I retiring to the other end of the hall) he turned to Miss Playford-What would I give, madam, to hear you sing that song you obliged us with at Lord M.'s! He then, as if nothing had happened, fell into a conversation with her and Miss D’Ollyffe, upon music, and whisperingly sung to Miss Playford, holding her two hands, with such airs of genteel unconcern, that it vexed me not a little to look round, and see how pleased half the giddy fools of our sex were with him, notwithstanding his notorious wicked character. To this it is that such vile fellows owe much of their vileness; whereas, if they found themselves shunned and despised, and treated as beasts of prey, as they are, they would run to their caverns, there howl by themselves, and none but such as sad accident, or unpitiable presumption, threw in their way, would suffer by them. He afterwards talked very seriously, at times, to Mr Hickman; at times, I say, for it was with such breaks and starts of gaiety, turning to this lady, and to that, and then to Mr Hickman again, resuming a serious or a gay air at pleasure, that he took everybody's eye, the women's especially, who were full of their whispering admirations of him, qualified with ifs, and but's, and what pity's, and such sort of stuff, that shewed in their very dispraises too much liking. Well may our sex be the sport and ridicule of such libertines! Unthinking eye-governed creatures!-Would not a little reflection teach us, that a man of merit must be a man of modesty, because a diffident one? and that such a wretch as this must have taken his degrees in wickedness, and gone through a course of vileness, before he could arrive at this impenetrable effrontery? an effrontery which can proceed only from the light opinion he has of us, and the high one of himself. But our sex are generally modest and bashful themselves, and are too apt to consider that which, in the main, is their principal grace, as a defect; and finely do they judge, when they think of supplying that defect by choosing a man that cannot be ashamed. His discourse to Mr Hickman turned upon you, and his acknowledged injuries of you, though he could so lightly start from the subject, and return to it. I have no patience with such a devil-man he cannot be called. To be sure, he would be have in the same manner anywhere, or in any presence, even at the altar itself, if a woman were with him there. It shall be ever a rule with me, that he who does not regard a woman with some degree of reverence, will look upon her, and occasionally treat her, with contempt. He had the confidence to offer to take me out, but I absolutely refused him, and shunned him all I could, putting on the most contemptuous airs; but nothing could mortify him. I wished twenty times I had not been there. The gentlemen were as ready as I to wish he had broken his neck, rather than been present, I believe; for nobody was regarded but he. So little of the fop, yet so elegant and rich in his dress; his person so specious; his air so intrepid; so much meaning and penetration in his face; so much gaiety, yet so little of the monkey; though a travelled gentleman, yet no affectation; no mere toupet-man, but all manly; and his courage and wit, the one so known, the other so dreaded, that you must think the petits maîtres, (of which there were four or five present) were most deplorably off in his company; and one grave gentleman observed to me, (pleased to see me shun him as I did) that the poet's observation was too true, that the generality of ladies were rakes in their hearts, or they could not be so much taken with a man who had so notorious a character. I told him the reflection both of the poet and applier was much too general, and made with more ill nature than good manners. When the wretch saw how industriously I avoided him, (shifting from one part of the hall to another,) he at last boldly stepped up to me, as my mother and Mr Hickman were talking to me, and thus before them accosted me : I beg your pardon, madam; but, by your mother's leave, I must have a few moments' conversation with you, either here or at your own house; and I beg you will give me the opportunity. Nancy, said my mother, hear what he has to say to you. In my presence you may, and bet ter in the adjoining apartment, if it must be, than to come to you at our own house. I retired to one corner of the hall, my mother following me, and he, taking Mr Hickman under his arm, following her-Well, sir, said I, what have you to say?-Tell me here. I have been telling Mr Hickman, said he, how much I am concerned for the injuries I have done to the most excellent woman in the world, and yet that she obtained such a glorious triumph over me the last time I had the honour to see her, as, with my penitence, ought to have abated her former resentments; but that I will, with all my soul, enter into any measures to obtain her forgiveness of me. My cousins Montague have told you this. Lady Betty, and Lady Sarah, and my Lord M., are engaged for my honour. I know your power with the dear creature. My cousins told me you gave them hopes you would use it in my behalf. My Lord M., and his two sisters are impatiently expecting the fruits of it. You must have heard from her before now; I hope you have. And will you be so good as to tell me if I may have any hopes? If I must speak on this subject, let me tell you that you have broken her heart. know not the value of the lady you have injured. You deserve her not; and she despises you, as she ought. You Dear Miss Howe, mingle not passion with denunciations so severe. I must know my fate. I will go abroad once more, if I find her absolutely irreconcileable; but I hope she will give me leave to attend upon her, to know my doom from her own mouth. It would be death immediate for her to see you. And what must you be, to be able to look her in the face? I then reproached him (with vehemence enough, you may believe,) on his baseness, and the evils he had made you suffer; the distress he had reduced you to; all your friends made your enemies; the vile house he had carried you to; hinted at his villainous arts; the dreadful arrest; and told him of your present deplorable illness, and resolution to die rather than have him. He vindicated not any part of his conduct but that of the arrest; and so solemnly protested his sorrow for his usage of you, accusing himself in the freest manner, and by deserved appellations, that I promised to lay before you this part of our conversation. And now you have it. My mother, as well as Mr Hickman, believes, from what passed on this occasion, that he is touched in conscience for the wrongs he has done you ; but, by his whole behaviour, I must own, it seems to me that nothing can touch him for half an hour together. Yet I have no doubt that he would willingly marry you, and it piques his pride, I could see, that he should be denied ; as it did mine, that such a wretch had dared to think it in his power to have such a woman whenever he pleased, and that it must be accounted a condescension, and matter of obligation (by all his own family at least) that he would vouchsafe to think of marriage. Now, my dear, you have before you the reason why I suspend the decisive negative to the ladies of his family. My mother, Miss Lloyd, and Miss Biddulph, who were inquisitive after the subject of our retired conversation, and whose curiosity I thought it was right, in some degree, to gratify, (especially as these young ladies are of our select acquaintance,) are all of opinion that you should be his. You will let Mr Hickman know your whole mind, and when he acquaints me with it, I will tell you all my own. Meantime, may the news he will bring me of the state of your health, be favourable! prays, with the utmost fervency, Your ever faithful and affectionate ANNA HOWE. LETTER CCLXXV. MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE. Thursday, July 27. MY DEAREST MISS HOWE, AFTER I have thankfully acknowledged your favour in sending Mr Hickman to visit me before you set out upon your intended journey, I must chide you (in the sincerity of that faithful love, which could not be the love it is if it would not admit of that cementing freedom) for suspending the decisive negative, which, upon such full deliberation, I had entreated you to give to Mr Lovelace's relations. I am sorry that I am obliged to repeat to you, my dear, who know me so well, that, were I sure I should live many years, I would not have Mr Lovelace; much less can I think of him, as it is probable I may not live one. As to the world and its censures, you know, my dear, that however desirous I always was of a fair fame, yet I never thought it right to give more than a second place to the world's opinion. The challenges made to Mr Lovelace by Miss D'Oyly, in public company, are a fresh proof that I have lost my reputation; and what advantage would it be to me, were it retrievable, and were I to live long, if I could not acquit myself to myself? Having in my former said so much on the freedoms you have taken with my friends, I shall say the less now; but your hint, that something else has newly passed between some of them and you, gives me great concern, and that as well for my own sake as for theirs, since it must necessarily incense them against me. I wish, my dear, that I had been left to my own course on an occasion so very interesting to myself. But, since what is done cannot be helped, I must abide the consequences; yet I dread, more than before, what may be my sister's answer, if an answer will be at all vouchsafed. Will you give me leave, my dear, to close this subject with one remark?-It is this: That my beloved friend, in points where her own laudable zeal is concerned, has ever seemed more ready to fly from the rebuke, than from the fault. If you will excuse this freedom, I will acknowledge thus far in favour of your way of thinking, as to the conduct of some parents in these nice cases, that indiscreet opposition does frequently as much mischief as giddy love. As to the invitation you are so kind as to give me to remove privately into your neighbour hood, I have told Mr Hickman that I will consider of it; but believe, if you will be so good as to excuse me, that I shall not accept of it, even should I be able to remove. I will give you my reasons for declining it; and so I ought, when both my love and my gratitude would make a visit now and then from my dear Miss Howe, the most consolate thing in the world to me. You must know then, that this great town, wicked as it is, wants not opportunities of being better, having daily prayers at several churches in it, and I am desirous, as my strength will permit, to embrace those opportunities. The method I have proposed to myself (and was beginning to practise when that cruel arrest deprived me both of freedom and strength) is this: When I was disposed to gentle exercise, I took a chair to St Dunstan's Church, in Fleet Street, where are prayers at seven in the morning; I proposed, if the weather favoured, to walk (if not, to take chair) to Lincoln's-Inn Chapel, where, at eleven in the morning, and at five in the afternoon, are the same desirable opportunities; and at other times to go no farther than Covent-Garden Church, where are early morning prayers likewise. This method pursued, I doubt not, will greatly help, as it has already done, to calm my disturbed thoughts, and to bring me to that perfect resignation after which I aspire; for I must own, my dear, that sometimes still my griefs and my reflections are too heavy for me, and all the aid I can draw from religious duties is hardly sufficient to support my staggering reason. I am a very young creature, you know, my dear, to be left to my own conduct in such circumstances as I am in. Another reason why I choose not to go down into your neighbourhood, is the displeasure that might arise, on my account, between your mother and you. If indeed you were actually married, and the worthy man, who would then have a title to all your regard, were earnestly desirous of near neighbourhood, I know not what I might do; for although I might not perhaps intend to give up my other important reasons at the time I should make you a congratulatory visit, yet I might not know how to deny myself the pleasure of continuing near you when there. I send you enclosed the copy of my letter to my sister. I hope it will be thought to be written with a true penitent spirit, for indeed it is. I desire that you will not think I stoop too low in it, since there can be no such a thing as that in a child to parents whom she has unhappily offended. But if still (perhaps more disgusted than before at your freedom with them) they should pass it by with the contempt of silence-for I have not yet been favoured with an answerI must learn to think it right in them to do so, especially as it is my first direct application; for I have often censured the boldness of those who, applying for a favour which it is in a person's option to grant or to refuse, take the liberty of being offended, if they are not gratified, as if the petitioned had not as good a right to reject, as the petitioner to ask. But if my letter should be answered, and that in such terms as will make me loath to communicate it to so warm a friend, you must not, my dear, take upon you to censure my relations, but allow for them, as they know not what I have suffered, as being filled with just resentments against me, (just to them if they think them just,) and as not being able to judge of the reality of my penitence. And after all, what can they do for me?They can only pity me, and what will that do, but augment their own grief, to which, at present, their resentment is an alleviation? For can they, by their pity, restore to me my lost reputation? Can they, by it, purchase a spunge that will wipe out from the year the past fatal four months of my life?* Your account of the gay unconcerned behaviour of Mr Lovelace, at the colonel's, does not surprise me at all, after I am told that he had the intrepidity to go there, knowing who were invited and expected. Only this, my dear, I really wonder at, that Miss Howe could imagine that I could have a thought of such a man for a husband. Poor wretch! I pity him, to see him fluttering about, abusing talents that were given him for excellent purposes, taking inconsideration for courage, and dancing, fearless of danger, on the edge of a precipice! But, indeed, his threatening to see me, most sensibly alarms and shocks me. I cannot but hope that I never, never more shall see him in this world. Since you are loath, my dear, to send the desired negative to the ladies of his family, I will only trouble you to transmit the letter I shall enclose for that purpose; directed indeed to yourself, because it was to you that those ladies applied themselves on this occasion, but to be sent by you to any of the ladies, at your own choice. I commend myself, my dearest Miss Howe, to your prayers; and conclude with repeated thanks for sending Mr Hickman to me; and with wishes for your health and happiness, and for the speedy celebration of your nuptials. Your ever affectionate and obliged CLARISSA HARLOWE. LETTER CCLXXVI. MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE. [Enclosed in the preceding.] Thursday, July 27. MY DEAREST MISS HOWE, SINCE you seem loath to acquiesce in my determined resolution, signified to you as soon as I was able to hold a pen, I beg the favour of you, by this, or by any other way you think most proper, to acquaint the worthy ladies, who have applied to you in behalf of their relation, that, although I am infinitely obliged to their generous opinion of me, yet I cannot consent to sanctify, as I may say, Mr Lovelace's repeated breaches of all moral sanctions, and hazard my future happiness by an union with a man, through whose premeditated injuries, in a long train of the basest contrivances, I have forfeited my temporal hopes. He himself, when he reflects upon his own actions, must surely bear testimony to the justice as well as fitness of my determination. The ladies, I dare say, would, were they to know the whole of my unhappy story. Be pleased to acquaint them that I deceive myself, if my resolution on this head (however ungratefully, and even inhumanly he has treated me) be not owing more to principle than passion. Nor can I give a stronger proof of the truth of this assurance, than by declaring that I can and will forgive him, on this one easy condition, that he will never molest me more. In whatever way you choose to make this declaration, be pleased to let my most respectful compliments to the ladies of that noble family, and to my Lord M., accompany it. And do you, my dear, believe that I shall be, to the last moment of my life, Your ever obliged and affectionate LETTER CCLXXVII. MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. Friday, July 28. I HAVE three letters of thine to take notice of:t but am divided in my mind, whether to quarrel with thee on thy unmerciful reflections, or to thank thee for thy acceptable particularity and diligence. But several of my sweet dears • She takes in the time that she appointed to meet Mr Lovelace. + Letters CCLXXI. CCLXXII. and CCLXXIII. of this Vol. |