 Letter 34 of Clarissa or the history of a young lady. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Bob Gillum, Betus Bledrus, Lampeder, Wales. Clarissa Harlow by Samuel Richardson. Letter 34. Mr. Lovelace to John Belfordisquare, Friday, March 17. I receive, with great pleasure, the early and cheerful assurances of your loyalty and love, and let our principal and most trusty friends, named in my last, know that I do. I would have thee, Jack, come down, as soon as I canst. I believe I shall not want the others so soon, yet they may come down to Lord Ems. I will be there, if not to receive them, to satisfy my Lord that there is no new mischief in hand, which will require his second intervention. For thyself thou must be constantly with me. Not for my security the family dare do nothing but bully. They bark only at a distance, but for my entertainment. Thou art amazed from the Latin and the English classics keep my love-sick soul from drooping. Thou hast best come to me here in thy old corporal's coat, thy servant out of livery, and to be upon a familiar footing with me as a distant relation to be vided for by thy interest above. I mean not in heaven, thou mayst be sure. Thou wilt find me at a little ale-house. They call it an inn, the white-heart, most terribly wounded, but by the weather only, the sign, in a sorry village within five miles from Harlow Place. Everybody knows Harlow Place, for like Versailles it is sprung up from a dung-hill within every elderly person's remembrance. Every poor body particularly knows it, but that only for a few years passed since a certain angel has appeared there among the sons and daughters of men. The people here at that heart are poor but honest, and have gotten it into their hearts and heads, that I am a person of quality in disguise, and there is no reigning in their officious respect. Here is a pretty little smirking daughter, seventeen, six days ago. I call her my rosebud. Her grandmother, for there is no mother, a good, neat old woman as ever filled a wicked chair in a chimney-corner, has besought me to be merciful to her. This is the right way with me. Many and many a pretty rogue had I spared, whom I did not spare, had my power been acknowledged, and my mercy in time implored. But the del bararey superboss should be my motto, were I to have a new one. This simple chit, for there is a simplicity in her, thou wouldst be highly pleased with, all humble, all officious, all innocent. I love her for her humility, her aficionessness, and even for her innocence. We'll be pretty amusement to thee, while I combat with the weather, and dodge and creep about the wars and perlure of how low-pace. Thou wilt see in her mind all that her superiors have been taught to conceal, in order to render themselves less natural, and, of consequence, less pleasing. But I charge thee that thou do not, what I would not permit myself to do for the world, I charge thee that thou do not crop my rosebud. She is the only flower of fragrance that has blown is this vicinage. For ten years past, or will for ten years to come, for I have looked backward to the have-beens, and forward to the will-bees, having but too much leisure upon my hands in my present waiting. I was never honest, so honest, for so long together since my matriculation. It behoves me so to be, some way or other my recess in this little inn may be found out, and it will be then be thought that my rosebud has attracted me. A report in my favour from simplicity so aimable may establish me, for the grandmother's relation to my rosebud may be sworn to, and the father is an honest, poor man, has no joy but in his rosebud. O Jack, spare thou therefore, for I shall leave thee often with her. Spare thou, my rosebud. Let the rule I never departed from, but it cost me a long regret be observed to my rosebud. Never to ruin a poor girl, whose simplicity and innocence were all she had to trust to, and whose fortunes were too low to save her from the rude contempt of worse minds than her own, and from an indigent extreme. Such a one will only pine in secret, and at last, in order to refuge herself from slanderous tongues and villains, be induced to tempt some guilty stream, and seek to end her in the knee-incircling garter that, per-adventure, was the first attempt of abandoned love. No defiances were my rosebud breathed, no self-dependent thee-doubting watchfulnesses, indirectly challenging thy inventive machinations to do their worst. Will she assume unsuspicious of a danger, the lamb's throat will hardly shun thy knife? O be not thou the butcher of my lambkin! The less thou be so, for the reason I am going to give thee, the gentle heart is touched by love. Her soft bosom heaves with a passion she has not yet found a name for. I once caught her eye following a young carpenter, a widow neighbor's son, living, to speak in her dialect, at the little White House over the way. The general youth, he also seems to be, about three years older than herself, playmates from infancy till his eighteenth and her fifteenth year, furnished a lesion for a greater distance in show, while the hearts gave her better for their being nearer than ever. For I soon perceived the love reciprocal, a scrape and a bow at first seeing his pretty mistress, turning often to salute her following eye, and when the winding lane was to deprive him of her sight, his whole body turned round, his hat more reverently doth than before. This answered, for unseen I was behind her, by a low courtesy and a sigh that Johnny was too far off to hear. Happy well, said I to myself, I withdrew and intripped my rosebud, as if it's satisfied with a dumb show, and wishing nothing beyond it. I have examined the little heart. She has made me her confidant. She owns, she could love Johnny Barton very well, and Johnny Barton has told her he could love her better than any maiden he ever saw, but alas it must not be thought of. Why not thought of? She don't know, and then she sighed. But Johnny has an aunt who will give him a hundred pounds when his time is out, and her father cannot give her but a few things, or so to set her out with. And though Johnny's mother said she knows not where Johnny would have a prettier or a notable wife yet, and then she sighed again. What signifies talking? I would not have Johnny be unhappy and poor for me. For what good would that do me, you know, sir? What would I give by my soul? My angel will certainly reform me if her friend's implacable folly ruins us not both. What would I give to have so innocent and so good a heart as either my rosebud's or Johnny's? I have a confounded mischievous one by nature too. I think a good notion now and then rises from it. But it dies away presently. A love of intrigue, an invention for mischief, a triumph in subduing, fortune encouraging supporting, a constitution what signifies palliating? I do believe I had been a rogue had I been a plowboy. But the devil's in this sex. Eternal misguiders who that has once trespassed with them ever recovered his virtue and yet where there is not virtue which nevertheless we free livers are continuing plotting to destroy what is there even in the ultimate of our wishes with them. Preparation and expectation is in a manner everything. Reflection indeed may be something if the mind be hardened above feeling the guilt of a past trespass. But the fruition, what is there in that? And yet that being the end nature will not be satisfied without it. See what grave reflections an innocent subject will produce. It gives me some pleasure to think that it is not out of my power to reform. But then, Jack, I'm afraid I must keep better company than I do at present for we certainly harden one another. But be not cast down, my boy, there will be time enough to give the whore fraternity warning to choose another leader and I fancy that will be the man. Meantime, as I make it my rule whenever I have committed a great very capital enormity to do some good by way of atonement and as I believe I am pretty deal indebted on that score, I intend, before I leave these parts, successfully shall I leave them I hope or I shall be tempted to double the mischief by way of revenge, though not to my rosebud any, to join a hundred pounds to Johnny's aunt's hundred pounds to make one innocent couple handy. I repeat therefore, and half a dozen more therefore spare thou my rosebud. In interruption, another letter anon and both shall go together. End of letter thirty-four. Letter thirty-five of Clarissa or the history of a young lady. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Bob Gillum, Mr. Bledrus, Lampeter, Wales. Clarissa Harlow by Samuel Richardson. Letter thirty-five. Mr. Lovelace to John Belford, Esquire. I have found out by my watchful spy almost as many of my charmers' motions as those of the rest of her relations. It delights me to think how the rascal is caressed by the uncles and the nephew and let into their secrets. Yet it precedes all the time by my line of direction. I have charged him, however, on forfeiture of his present weekly stipend and my future favour to take care that neither my beloved nor any of the family suspect him. I have told him that he may indeed watch her egresses and regresses, but that only keep off other servants from her paths, yet not to be seen by her himself. The dear creature has tempted him. He told them with a bribe which he never offered to convey a letter which he never wrote to Miss Howe. He believes with one enclosed perhaps to me. But he declined it, and he begged they would take notice of it to her. This brought him a stingy shilling, great applause, and an injunction followed it to all the servants for the strictest look out lest she should contrive some way to send it. And above an hour after an order was given him to throw himself in her way and expressing his concern for denying her request to tender his service to her and to bring them her letter which would be proper for him to report that she has refused to give him. Now, sears thou not how many good ends this contrivance answers? In the first place, the lady is secured by it, against her own knowledge in the liberty allouder of taking her private walks in the garden. For this attempt has confirmed them in their belief that now they have turned off her maid, she has no way to send a letter out of the house. If she had, she would not have run the risk of finding a fellow who had not been in her secret so that she can prosecute unsuspectedly her correspondence with me and Miss Howe. In the next place it will perhaps afford me an opportunity of a private interview with her which I am meditating. Let her take it as she will, having found out by my spy who can keep off everybody else that she goes every morning and evening to a woodhouse remote from the dwelling-house under pretence of visiting and feeding a set of bantam poultry which were produced from a breed that was her grandfathers and of which for that reason she is very fond as also of some other curious fowls brought from the same place. I have an account of all her motions here and as she has owned to me in one of the letters that she corresponds privately with Miss Howe, I presume it is by this way. The interview I am meditating will produce her consent, I hope, to other favours of the like kind. For should she not choose the place which I am expecting to see her I can attend her anywhere in the rambling Dutch taste garden whenever she will permit me that honour. For my implement, High Joseph Lehman has precrued me the opportunity of getting two keys made to the garden door one of which I have given him for reasons good which door opens the haunted coppice as tradition has made the servants think it a man having been found hanging in it about twenty years ago and Joseph upon proper notice will leave it unbolted. But I was obliged previously to give him my honour that no mischief should happen to any of my adversaries from this liberty. For the fellow tells me that he loves all his masters and only that he knows I am a man of honour and that my alliance will do credit to the family and after prejudices are overcome everyone will think so or he would not for the world act the part he does. There never was a rogue who had not a self to himself for being so. What a praise of honesty that every man pretends to it even at the instant that he knows he is pursuing the methods though perhaps prove him a nave to the whole world as well as to his own conscience. But what this stupid family can mean to make all this necessary I cannot imagine. My revenge and my love are uppermost by turns. If the latter succeed not the gratifying of the former will be my only consolation and by all that's good they shall feel it. Although for it I become an exile from my native country for ever I will throw myself into my charmer's presence. I have twice already attempted it in vain. I shall see then what I may depend upon from her favour. If I thought I had no prospect of that I should be tempted to carry it off. That would be a rape worthy of Jupiter. But all gentle shall be my movements or respectful even to reverence my addresses to her. Her hand shall be the only witness to the pressure of my lip, my trembling lip. I know it will tremble if I do not bid it tremble as soft my size as the size of my gentle rosebud. By my humility will I invite her confidence. The loneliness the place shall give me no advantage to dissipate her fears and to engage her reliance upon my honour for the future shall be my whole endeavour. But little will I complain of not at all will I threaten those who are continually threatening me but yet with a view to act the part of Dryden's lion to secure my love or to let loose my vengeance upon my hunters. What though his mighty soul his grief contains he meditates revenge who least complains and like a lion slumbering in his way or sleep dissembling while he waits his prey his fearless foes within his distant straws constrains his roaring and contracts his paws to let the last his time for fury found he shoots with sudden vengeance from the ground the prostrate vulgar passes awe and spares but with a lordly rage his hunter tears. End of letter 35 Clarissa volume 1 by Samuel Richardson letter number 36 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please go to LibriVox.org this recording by Patty Brugman Clarissa Harlow or the history of a young lady volume 1 by Samuel Richardson letter 36 Miss Clarissa Harlow to Miss Howe Saturday March 18th I have been frightened out of my wits still am in a manner out of breath thus occasioned I went down under the usual pretense in hopes to find something from you concerned at my disappointment I was returning from the woodhouse when I heard a rustling as if somebody behind a stack of wood I was extremely surprised but still more to behold a man coming from behind the furthest stack oh I thought at that moment the sin of a prohibited correspondence at the same point of time that I saw that man he besought me not to be frightened and instill nearer approaching me through open a horseman's coat and who should it be but Mr. Loveless I could not but scream out yet attempted to scream the moment I saw a man and again when I saw who it was for I had no voice and had I not caught hold of a prop which supported the old roof I should have sunk I had hitherto as you know kept him at a distance and now as I recovered myself judge of my first emotions when I recollected his character from every mouth of my family his enterprising temper and found myself alone with him in a place so near a by lane and so remote from the house but his respectable behavior soon dissipated these fears and gave me others lest we should be seen together and information of it be given to my brother the consequence of which I could readily think would be if not further mischief an imputed asignation a stricter confinement a forfeited correspondence with you my beloved friend and a pretense for the most violent compulsion and neither the one set of reflections nor the other acquitted him to me for his bold intrusion as soon therefore as I could speak I expressed with the greatest warmth my displeasure and told him he cared not how much he exposed me to the resentment of all my friends provided he could gratify his own impetuous humor I then commanded him to leave the place that moment and was hurrying from him when he threw himself in the way at my feet beseeching my stay for one moment declaring that he suffered himself to be guilty of this rashness as I thought it to avoid one much greater for in short he could not bear the hourly insults he received from my family with the thoughts of having so little interest in my favor that he could not promise himself that his patience and forbearance would be attended with any other issue than to lose me forever and be triumphed over and insulted upon it this man you know has very ready knees you have said that he ought in small points frequently to offend I'm purposed to show what an address he is master of he ran on expressing his apprehensions that a temper so gentle and obliging as he said mine was to everybody but him and a dutifulness so exemplary inclined me to do my part to others whether they did theirs or not by me would be wrought upon in favor of a man set up in part to be revenged upon myself for my grandfathers envied distinction of me and in part to be revenged upon him for having given life to one who would have taken his and now sought to deprive him of hopes dearer to him than life I told him he might be assured that the severity and ill-usage I met with would be far from affecting the proposed end and although I could with great sincerity declare for a single life which had always been my choice and particularly that if I ever married if they would not insist upon a man I had an aversion to it should not be with the man they disliked he interrupted me here he could not help expressing his great concern that after so many instances of his passionate and obsequious devotion and pray sir said I let me interrupt you in my turn why don't you assert in still plainer words the obligation you have laid me under by this your boasted devotion why don't you let me know in terms as high as your implication that a perseverance I have not wished for which has set all my relations with me is a merit that throws upon me the guilt of ingratitude for not having answered it as you seem to expect I must forgive him he said if he who pretended only a comparative merit and otherwise thought no man living could deserve me had presumed to hope for a greater share of my favor than he had hitherto met with when such men as Mr. Symes Mr. Wireley and now lastly so vile a reptile as this Symes however discouraged by myself were made his competitors as to the perseverance I mentioned it was impossible for him not to persevere but I must needs know that were he not in being the terms Symes had proposed were such as would have involved me in the same difficulties with my relations that I now labored under and therefore took the liberty to say that my favor to him far from increasing those difficulties would be the readiest way to extricate me from them they had made it impossible he told me with too much truth to oblige them anyway but by sacrificing myself to Symes they were well apprised besides the differences between the two one whom they hoped to manage as they pleased the other who could and would reflect me from every insult and who had natural prospects much superior to my brother's foolish views of the title how comes this man to know so well all our foibles but I wonder how he came to have a notion of meeting me in this place I was very uneasy to be gone and the more as the night came on a pace but there was no getting from him till I had heard a great deal more of what he had to say as he hoped that I would one day make him the happiest man in the world he assured me that he had so much regard for my fame that he would be as far from advising any step that was likely to cast a shade upon my reputation although that step was to be ever so much in his own favor as I would be to follow such advice but since I was not to be permitted to live single it to my consideration whether I had any way but one to avoid the intended violence to my inclinations my father so jealous of his authority both my uncles in my father's way of thinking my cousin Morden at a distance my uncle and Aunt Hervey odd into insignificance was his word my brother and sister in flaming everyone Solmes offers captivating Miss Howe's mother a party with them for motives respecting example to her own daughter and then he asked me if I would receive a letter from Lady Betty Lawrence on this occasion for Lady Sarah Sadlier he said having lately lost her only child hardly looked into the world or thought of it farther than to wish him married and preferably to all the women in the world with me to be sure my dear I did not make a great deal in what the man said I may be allowed to say this without an imputed glow or throb but I told him nevertheless that although I had great honour for the ladies he was related to yet I should not choose to receive a letter on a subject that had a tendency to promote an end I was far from intending to promote that it became me ill as I was treated at present to hope everything to bear everything when my father saw my steadfastness and that I would die rather than have Mr. Solms he would perhaps recede interrupting me he represented the unlikelihood there was of that from the courses they had entered upon which he thus enumerated they're engaging Mrs. Howe against me in the first place as a person I might have thought to fly to if pushed to desperation my brother continually buzzing in my father's ears that my cousin Morden would soon arrive and then would insist upon giving me possession of my grandfather's estate in pursuance of the will which would render me independent of my father their disgraceful confinement of me their dismissing so suddenly my servant and setting my sisters over me they're engaging my mother contrary to her own judgment against me these he said were all so many flagrant proofs that they would stick at nothing to carry their point and were what made him inexpressibly uneasy he appealed to me whether ever I knew my father recede from any resolution he had once fixed especially if he thought either his prerogative or his authority concerned in the question his acquaintance with our family he said enabled him to give me some examples but they would be too grating to me of an arbitrariness that had few examples even in the families of princes an arbitrariness which the most excellent of women my mother too severely experienced he was proceeding as I thought with reflections of this sort and I angrily told him I would not permit my father to be reflected upon adding that his severity to me however unmerited was not a warrant for me to dispense something that could be so construed for however well warranted he was to make such reflections from the prerogatives they were continually giving him he do how offensive to me any liberties of this sort would be and yet he must own that it was painful to him who had youth and passions to be allowed for as well as others and who had always valued himself under speaking his mind to curb himself under such treatment nevertheless his consideration for me to find himself in his observations to facts that were too flagrant and too openly avowed to be disputed it could not therefore justly displease he would venture to say if he had made this natural inference from the premises that if such were my father's behavior to a wife who disputed not the imaginary prerogatives he was so unprecedentedly fond of asserting what room had a daughter to hope apart from an authority he was so earnest and so much more concerned to maintain family interests at the same time engaging an aversion however causelessly conceived simulating my brother's and sister's resentments and selfish views cooperating and my banishment from their presence depriving me of all personal plea and treaty in my own favor how unhappy my dear that there is but too much reason for these observations and for this inference made likewise with more coolness in respect to my family than one would have apprehended from a man so much provided out of passion so high and generally thought uncontrollable will you not question me about throbs and glows if from such instances of a command over his fiery temper for my sake I am ready to infer my friend's capable of a reconciliation with him he might be affected by arguments apparently calculated for his present and future good nor is it a very bad indication that he has such moderate notions of that very high prerogative in husband of which we in our family have been accustomed to hear so much he represented to me that my present disgraceful confinement was known to all the world that neither my sister nor my brother scrupled to represent me as an obliged and favored child in the state of actual rebellion that nevertheless everybody who knew me was ready to justify me for an aversion to a man whom everybody thought utterly unworthy of me and more fit for my sister that unhappy as he was in not having been able to make any greater impression upon me in his favor all the world gave me to him nor was there but one objection made to him by his very enemies his birth, his prospects all very unexceptionable and the latter splendid and that objection he thanked God and my example was in a fair way of being removed forever since he had seen his error and was heartily sick of the courses he had followed however were far less enormous than malice and envy had represented them to be but of this he should say the less as it were much better to justify himself by his actions than by the most solemn asservations and promises and then complimenting my person he assured me for that he always loved virtue although he had not followed its rules as he ought that he was still more captivated with the grace of my mind and would frankly own that till he had the honor to know me he had never met with an inducement sufficient to enable him to overcome an unhappy kind of prejudice to matrimony which had made him before impenetrable to the wishes and recommendations of all his relations you see my dear he scruples not to speak of himself as his enemies speak of him I cannot say but his openness in these particulars gives a credit to his other professions I should easily I think detect a hypocrite and this man particularly who is said to have allowed himself a great in great liberties were he to pretend to instantaneous lights and convictions at this time of life too habits I am sensible are not so easily changed you have always joined with me in remarking that he will speak his mind with freedoms even to a degree of unpoliteness sometimes and that his very treatment of my family is a proof that he cannot make a mean court to anybody for interest sake what pity where there are such laudable traces that they should have been so mired and choked up as I might say we have heard that the man's head is better than his heart but do you really think Mr. Loveless why should not there be something in blood in the human creature as well as in the ignomular animals none of his family are exceptional but himself indeed the characters of the ladies are admirable but I shall incur the imputation I wish to avoid yet what a look of sensoriousness does it carry in an unsparing friend to take one task for doing that justice and making those which ought without scruple to do and to make in the behalf of any other man living he then again pressed me to receive a letter of offered protection from Lady Betty he said that people of birth stood a little too much upon punctilio as people of value also did but indeed birth worthily lived up to was virtue virtue birth the inducements to a decent punctilio the same the origin of both one how came this notion from him else Lady Betty would write to me but she would be willing to be the first prized that her offer will be well received as it would have the appearance of being made against the liking of one part of my family and which nothing would induce her to make but the degree of unworthy persecution which I actually labored under and had reason further to apprehend I told him that however greatly I thought myself obliged to Lady Betty Lawrence if this offer came from herself yet it was easy to see to what it led it might look like vanity in me perhaps to say that this urgency in him on this occasion more the face of art in order to engage me into measures from which I might not easily extricate myself that I should not be affected by the splendor of even a royal title goodness I thought was greatness that the excellent characters of the ladies of his family weighed more with me than the consideration that they were half sisters to Lord M. and daughters of an Earl that he would not have found encouragement from me had my friends been consenting to his address if he had only a mere relative merit to those ladies since in that case the very reasons that made me admire them would have been so many objections to their kinsmen I then assured him that it was with infinite concern that I had found myself drawn into an epistolary correspondence with him especially since that correspondence had been prohibited and the only agreeable use I could think of making of this unexpected and undesired interview was to let him know that I should from henceforth think myself obliged to discontinue it and I hoped that he would not have the thought of engaging me to carry it on by menacing my relations there was light enough to distinguish that he looked very grave upon this he's so much valued my free choice he said and my unbiased favor scorning to set himself upon a footing with Psalms in his compulsory methods used in that man's behalf that he should hate himself were he capable of a view of an intimidating me by so very poor method but nevertheless there were two things to be considered first that the continual outrageous he was treated with the spies set over him one of which he had detected the indignities all his family were likewise treated with as also myself avowedly in malice to him or he should not presume to take him upon himself to resent for me without my leave the artful wretch saw he would have lain open here had he not thus guarded all these considerations called upon him to shoo a proper resentment and he would leave it to me to judge whether it would be reasonable for him as a man of spirit to bear such insults if it were not for my sake I would be pleased to consider in the next place whether the situation I was in a prisoner in my father's house and my whole family determined to compel me to marry a man unworthy of me and that speedily and whether I consented or not admitted of delay in the preventative measures he was desirous to put me upon in the last resort only or was there a necessity he said if I were actually in Lady Betty's protection that I should be his if afterwards I should see anything objectionable in his conduct but what would the world conclude would be the end I demanded were I in the last resort as he proposed to throw myself into the protection of his friends but that it was with such a view and what less did the world think of me now he asked than that I was confined that I might not you are to consider Madam you have not now an option and to whom is it owing that you have not and that you are in the power of those parents why should I call them who are determined that you shall not have an option all I propose is that you will embrace such a protection but not till you have tried every way to avoid the necessity for it and give me leave to say preceded he that if a correspondence on which I have founded all my hopes is at this critical conjuncture to be broken off and if you are resolved not to be provided against the worst it must be plain to me that you will at last yield worst to me only it cannot be to you and then and he put his hand clenched to his forehead how shall I bear this supposition then will you be that psalms but by all that sacred neither he nor your brother nor your uncles shall enjoy their triumph perdition sees my soul if they shall the man's vehemence frightened me yet in resentment I would have left him but throwing myself at his feet leave me not thus I beseech you dearest madam leave me not thus in despair I kneel not repenting of what I have vowed in such a case that I have supposed I reavow it at your feet and so we did then think not it is by way of menace or to intimidate you to favor me if your heart inclines you than he arose to obey your father your brother rather and to have psalms although I shall avenge myself on those who have insulted me for their insults to myself and family yet will I tear out my heart from this bosom if possible with my own hands were it to scruple to give up its ardors to a woman capable of such a preference I told him that he talked to me in very high language but that he might assure himself that I never would have Mr. Psalms yet that this I said not in favor to him and I had declared as much to my relations where there are not such a man as himself in the world when I declare that I would still honor him with my correspondence he could not bear that hoping to obtain greater instances of my favor he should forfeit the only one he had to boast of I bid him for bear rashness or resentment to any of my family and I would for some time at least till I saw what issue my present trials were likely to have proceed with the correspondence which nevertheless my heart condemned and his spirit him the impatient creature said interrupting me for bearing what he did when he considered that the necessity of it was imposed upon him not by my will for then he would bear it cheerfully and a thousand times more but by creatures and there he stopped I told him plainly that he might think himself whose indifferent character as tomorrows had given such a handle against him for all it was but just that a man should be spoken evil of who set no value upon his reputation he offered to vindicate himself but I told him I would judge him by his own rule, by his actions not by his professions were not his enemies he said so powerful and so determined and had they not already shown their intentions in such high acts of even cruel compulsion but would leave me to my own choice or to my desire of living single he would have been content to 12 months probation or more but he was confident that one month would either complete all their purposes or render them abortive and I best knew what hopes I had of my father's receding he did not know him if I had any I said I would try every method that either my duty or my influence upon any of them should suggest before I would put myself into any protection what else would do would resign the envy to state that I dared to say would he was content he said to abide that issue he should be far from wishing me to embrace any other protection but as he had frequently said in the last necessity but dearest creature he said catching my hand with ardor and pressing it to his lips if the yielding up of that estate will do resign it and be mine with all my soul your resignation this was not ungenerously said but what will not these men say to obtain belief and power over one I made many efforts to go and now it was so dark that I began to have great apprehensions I cannot say from his behavior indeed he has a good deal raised himself in my opinion by his personal respect even to reverence which he paid me during the whole conference for although he flamed out once upon a supposition that Psalms might succeed it was upon a supposition that would excuse passion if anything could you know in a man pretending to love with fervor although it was so leveled that I could not avoid resenting it he recommended himself to my favorite parting with great earnestness yet with his great submission not offering to condition anything with me although he hinted his wishes for another meeting which I forbade him ever attempting again in the same place and I will own to you from whom I should be really blamable and conceal anything that his arguments drawn from the disgraceful treatment I meet with of what I am to expect make me begin to apprehend that I shall be obligated to be either the one mans or the others and if so I fancy I shall not incur your blame were I to say which of the two it must be you have said which it must not be but oh my dear the single life is by far the most eligible to me indeed it is and I hope yet to be permitted to make that option I got back without observation but the apprehension that I should not gave me great uneasiness and made me begin a letter in a greater flutter than he gave me cause to be in except at the first seeing him for then indeed my spirits failed me and it was a particular felicity that in such a place in such a fright and alone with him I fainted not away I should add that having a reproached him with his behavior last Sunday at church he solemnly assured me that it was not what had been represented to me that he did not expect to see me there but hoped to have an opportunity to address himself to my father and to be permitted to attend him home but that the good doctor Lewin had persuaded him not to attempt speaking to any of the family at that time observing to him the emotions into which his presence had put everybody he intended no pride or haughtiness of behavior he assured me and that the attributing such to him was the effect of that ill-will which he had the mortification to find inseparable adding that when he bowed to my mother it was a compliment he intended generally to everyone in the pew as well as to her whom he sincerely venerated if he may be believed and I should think he would not have come purposely to defy my family yet expect favor from me one may see my dear at the force of hatred which misrepresents all things yet why should Shory accept officially to please her principles make a report in his disfavor he told me that he would appeal to Dr. Lewin for his justification on this head adding that the whole conversation between the doctor and him turned upon his desire to attempt to reconcile himself to us all in the face of the church and upon the doctors endeavoring to dissuade him from making such a public overture till he knew how it would be accepted but to what purpose his appeal when I am debarred from seeing that good man or anyone who advised me what to do in my present difficult situation I fancy my dear however that there would hardly be a guilty person in the world or each suspected or accused person to tell his or her own story and be allowed in a degree of credit I have written a very long letter to be so particular as you require in subjects of conversation it is impossible to be short I will add to it only the assurance that I am and ever will be your affectionate and faithful friend and servant Clarissa Harlow you'll be so good my dear as to remember that the date of your last letter to me was the ninth end of letter 36 read by Patti Brugman for more information or to volunteer please visit I beg your pardon my dearest friend for having given you occasion to remind me of the date of my last I was willing to have before me as much of the workings of your wise relations as possible being verily persuaded that one side or the other would have yielded by this time and then I should have had some degree of certainty to found my observations upon and indeed what can I write that I have not already written you know I can do nothing but rave at your stupid orders and that you don't like I advised you to resume your own estate that you won't do you cannot bear the thought of having their soams and love lace is resolved you shall be his let who will say to the contrary I think you must be either one man's all the others let us see what their next step will be as to love lace while he tells his own story having behaved so handsomely on his intrusion in the woodhouse and intended so well at church who can say but that the man is the least blame worthy wicked people to combine against so innocent a man but as I said let us see what their next step will be and what course you will take upon it and then we may be the more enlightened as to your change of style to your uncles and brother and sister since they were so fond of attributing to you a regard for love lace and would not be persuaded to the contrary and since you only strengthened their arguments against yourself by denying it you did but just as I would have done in giving way to their suspicions and trying what they would do but if but if pray my dear indulge me a little you yourself think it was necessary to apologize to me for that change of style to them until you will speak out like a friend to her unquestionable friend I must tease you a little let it run therefore for it will run if then there not be a reason for this change of style which you have not thought to give me be so good as to watch as I once therefore advised you how the cause for it will come on why should it be permitted to steal upon you and you know nothing of the matter when we get a great cold we are apt to puzzle ourselves to find out when it began or how we got it and when it is accounted for down we sit contented and let it have its course or if it be very troublesome take a sweat or some other means to get rid of it so my dear before the melody you what of yet what not of grows so important as you must be obliged to sweat it out let me advise you to mind how it comes on for I am persuaded as surely as I am now writing to you that the indiscreet violence of your friends on the one hand and the insinuating address of lovelace on the other if the man be not a greater fool than anybody thinks him will actually bring it to this and do all his work for him but let it if it must be lovelace or soams the choice cannot admit of debate yet if it be true that is reported I should prefer almost any of your other lovers to either unworthy as they also are but who can be worthy of a Clarissa I wish you are not indeed angry with me for harping so much on string I must own that I should think myself inexcusable so to do the rather as I am bold enough to imagine it a point out of all doubt from fifty places in your letters where I delay the proof if you would ingeniously own own what you'll say why my Anna how I hope you don't think that I'm already in love no to be sure how can your Anna how have such a thought and shall we call it you might have helped me to a phrase a conditional sort of viking that's it oh my friend did I not know how much you despise prudery and that you are too young too lovely to be approved but avoiding such hard names let me tell you one thing my dear which nevertheless I have told you before and that is this that I shall think I have reason to be highly displeased with you if when you write to me you endeavor to keep from me any secret of your heart let me add that if you would clearly and explicitly tell me how far love lace has or has not a hold in your affections I could better advise you what to do than at present I can you who are so famed with presensions as I may call it and that whom no young lady ever had stronger pretensions to share of it have had no doubt reasonings in your heart about him supposing you wear one day his no doubt you are the same in Somes's case whence the ground for the hatred of one and for the conditional viking of the other will you tell me my dear what of love lace's best and of his worst how far eligible for the first how far rejectable for the last then weighing both parts in opposite scales we shall see which is likely to preponderate or rather which does preponderate nothing less than the knowledge of the inmost recesses of your heart can satisfy my love and my friendship surely you are not afraid to trust yourself with a secret of this nature if you are then you may the more allowably doubt me but I dare say you will not own either nor is there I hope cause for either be pleased to observe one thing my dear that whenever I have given myself any of those heirs of railway which have seemed to make you look about you when likewise your case may call for more serious turn it has not been upon those passages which are written perhaps not intended with such explicitness don't be alarmed my dear as leaves little cause for doubt but only when you effect reserve when you give new words for common things when you come with your curiosities with your conditional likings and with your prude and seas mind how I spell the word in a case that with every person defies all prudence over acts of treason all these against a sovereign friendship we have avowed to each other remember that you found me out in a moment you challenged me I owned directly there was only my pride between the man and me for I could not endure I told you to think of any fellow living to give me a moments of laziness and then my man as I have elsewhere said was not such a one as yours so I had reason to impute full as much to my own consideration as to his power over me nay more but still more to yours for you reasoned me out of the curiosity first and when the liking was brought to the conditional why then you know I throbbed no more about him oh pray now as you say now I've mentioned that my fellow is not such a charming fellow as yours let Miss Bidolph, Miss Lloyd Miss Campion and me have your opinion how far figure ought to engage us with a view to your own case however mind that as Mr. Tony says and whether at all if the man be vain of it since as you observed in a former that vanity is a stop short pride in such a one that would make one justly doubt the worthiness of his interior you are pattern so lovely in feature so graceful in person have none of it and have therefore with the best grace always held that it is not excusable even in a woman you must know that this subject was warmly debated among us in our last conversation and Miss Lloyd wish me to write to you upon it for your opinion to which in every debated case we always paid the greatest deference I hope you will not be so much engrossed by your mighty cares as not our freedom of spirits enough to enter upon the task you know how much we all admire your opinion on such topics which ever produces something new and instructive as you handle the subjects and pray tell us to what you think is owing that your man seems so careful to adorn that self adorned person of his yet so manages that one cannot for one's heart think him a coxcomb let this question and the above tasks divert and not displease you my dear one subject though ever so important could never yet engross your capacious mind if they should displease you you must recollect the many instances of my impertence which you have forgiven and then say this is a mad girl but yet I love her and she is my own Anna Howe End of letter 37 letter 38 of Clarissa volume 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Anna Simon Clarissa Harlow or The History of a Young Lady volume 1 by Samuel Richardson letter 38 Miss Clarissa Harlow to Miss Howe Monday, March 20 your last so sensibly affects me that I must postpone every other consideration however weighty to reply to it and this I will do very distinctly and with all the openness of heart and friendship demand but let me observe in the first place gratefully observe that if I have in fifty passages of my letters given you such undoubted proofs of my value for Mr. Loveless that you have spared me for the sake of my explicitness it is acting by me with a generosity worthy of yourself but lives the man think you who is so very bad that it does not give even a doubting mind reason at one time to be better pleased with him than at another and when that reason offers is it not just to express oneself accordingly I would do the man who addresses me as much justice as if he did not address me it has such a look of tyranny it appears so ungenerous me things in our sex to use a man worse for his respect to us no other cause for disrespect occurring that I would not by any means be that person who should do so but although I may intend no more than justice it will perhaps be difficult to hinder those who know the man's views from constring it as a partial favour and especially if the eager-eyed observer has been formally touched herself and would triumph that her friend had been no more able to escape than she noble minds, amunitive of perfection and yet the passion properly directed I do not take to be an imperfection neither may be allowed a little generous envy I think if I meant by this a reflection by way of revenge it is but a revenge my dear in the soft sense of the word I love as I've told you your pleasantry although at the time your reproof may pain me a little yet on recollection when I find it more of the cautioning friend than of the satirizing observer I shall be all gratitude upon it all the business will be this I shall be sensible of the pain in the present letter perhaps but I shall thank you in the next and ever after in this way I hope my dear you will account for a little of that sensibility which you find above and perhaps still more as I proceed you frequently remind me by an excellent example your own to me that I must not spare you I'm not conscious that I have written anything of this man that has not been more in his dispraise than in his favour such as the man that I think I must have been faulty and ought to take myself to account if I had not but you think otherwise I will not put you upon laboring the proof as you call it my conduct must then have a faulty appearance at least and I will endeavour to rectify it but of this I assure you that whatever interpretation my words were capable of I intended not any reserve to you I wrote my heart at the time if I had had thought of disguising it or been conscious that there was reason for doing so perhaps I had not given you the opportunity of remarking upon my curiosity after his relations esteem for me nor upon my conditional liking and such like all I intended by the first I believe I honestly told you at the time to that letter I therefore refer whether it make for me or against me and by the other that I might bear in mind what it became a person of my sex and character to be and to do in such an unhappy situation where the imputed love is thought an unjudiful and therefore a criminal passion and where the supported object of it is a man of faulty morals too and I am sure you will excuse my desire of appearing at those times the person I ought to be had I no other view in it but to merit the continuance of your good opinion but that I may acquit myself of having reserves oh my dear I must hear break off end of letter 38 letter 39 of Clarissa volume 1 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Anna Simon Clarissa Harlow or the history of a young lady volume 1 by Samuel Richardson letter 39 Ms. Clarissa Harlow to Ms. Howe Monday March 12 this letter will account to you my dear for my abrupt breaking off in the answer I was writing to yours of yesterday and which possibly I shall not be able to finish and send you till tomorrow or next day having a great deal to say to the subjects you put to me in it what I am now to give you are the particulars of another effort made by my friends Ms. Norton it seems they had sent to her yesterday to be here this day to take their instructions and to try what she could do with me it would at least I suppose they thought have this effect to render me inexcusable with her or to let her see that there was no room for the expostulations she had often wanted to make in my favour to my mother the declaration that my heart was free afforded them an argument to prove obscenity and perverseness upon me since it could be nothing else that governed me in my opposition to their wills if I had no particular esteem for another man and now that I've given them reason in order to obviate this argument to suppose that I have a preference to another they are resolved to carry their schemes into execution as soon as possible and in order to do this they sent for this good woman for whom they know I have even a filial regard she found assembled my father and mother, my brother and sister my two uncles and my Aunt Hervey my brother acquainted her with all that had passed since he was last permitted to see me with the contents of my letters evowing my regard for Mr. Loveless as they all interpreted them with the substance of their answers to them and with their resolutions my mother spoke next and delivered herself to this effect as the good woman told me after reciting how many times I had been indulged in my refusals of different men and the pains she had taken to induce me to oblite my whole family in one instance out of five or six and my obscenity upon it oh my good Mrs. Norton said the dear lady could you have thought that my Clarissa and your Clarissa was capable of so determined an opposition to the will of parents so indulgent to her but see what you can do with her the matter is gone too far to be receded from on our parts her father had concluded everything with Mr. Solms not doubting her compliance such noble sediments Mrs. Norton and such advantages to the whole family in short she has it in her power to lay an obligation upon us all Mr. Solms knowing she has good principles and hoping by his patience now and good treatment hereafter to engage her gratitude and by degrees her love is willing to overlook all overlook all my dear Mr. Solms to overlook all there's a word Mrs. Norton if you are convinced that it is a child's duty to submit to her parents authority in the most important point as well as in the least I beg you will try your influence over her I have none her father has none her uncles neither although it is her apparent interest to oblige us all for on that condition her grandfather's estate is not half what living and dying is purpose to be done for her if anybody can prevail with her and I hope you will heartily enter upon this task the good woman asked whether she was permitted to expostulate with them upon the occasion before she came up to me my arrogant brother told her she was sent full to expostulate with his sister and not with them and this goody Norton she is always goody with him you may tell her that the treaty with Mr. Solms is concluded and nothing but her compliance with her duty is wanting of consequence to be done for your expostulation or hers either be assured of this Mrs. Norton said my father in an angry tone that we will not be baffled by her we will not appear like fools in this matter and as if we have no authority over our own daughter we will not in short be bullied out of our child by a cursed rake who had liked to have killed our only son and so should better make a merit of her obedience for comply she shall if I live independent as she thinks my father's indiscreet bounty has made her of me her father indeed since that she has never been like she was before an unjust bequest and it is likely to prosper accordingly but if she marry that vile rake loveless I will litigate every shilling with her tell her so and that the will may be set aside and shall my uncle's joined with equal heat my brother was violent in his declarations my sister put in with fair men's on the same side my aunt Hervey was pleased to say there was no article so proper for parents to govern in as this of marriage and it was very fit mine should be obliged thus instructed the good woman came up to me she told me all that had passed and was very earnest with me to comply and so much justice did she to the task imposed upon her that I more than once thought that her own opinion went with theirs but when she saw what an immovable aversion I had to the man she lamented with me their determined resolution and then examined into the sincerity of my declaration that I would gladly compound with them by living single of this being satisfied she was so convinced that this offer which carried into execution would exclude loveless effectually or to be accepted that she would go down although I told her it was what I attended over to no purpose and undertake to be guaranteed for me on that score she went accordingly but soon returned in tears being used harshly for urging this alternative they had a right to my obedience upon their own terms they said my proposal was an artifice only to gain time nothing but marrying Mr. Solmes should do they had told me so before they should not be at rest till it was done for they knew what an interest loveless had in my heart I had as good as owned it in my letters to my uncles and brother and sister although I had most ingeniously declared otherwise to my mother I depended, they said, upon their indulgence and my own power over them they would not have banished me from their presence if they had not known that their consideration for me was greater than mine for them and they would be obeyed or I never should be restored to their favour let the consequence be what it would my brother thought fit to tell the good woman that her whining nonsense did but harden me there was a perverseness he said in female minds a tragedy pride that would make a romantic young creature such a one as me risk anything to obtain pity I was of an age and a turn the insulin said to be fond of a lover like this dress and my grief which she pleaded would never break my heart I should sooner break that of the best and most indulgent of mothers he added that she might once more go up to me but that if she prevailed not he should suspect that the man they all hated had found a way to attach her to his interest everybody blamed him for this unworthy reflection which greatly affected the good woman but nevertheless he said and nobody contradicted him that if she could not prevail upon her sweet child as it seems she had fondly called me she had best drawed her own home to bear Terry till she was sent full and so leave her sweet child to her father's management sure nobody had ever so insolent so hard-hearted a brother as I have so much resignation to be expected from me so much arrogance and to so good a woman and of so fine an understanding to be allowed in him she nevertheless told him that however she might be ridiculed for speaking of the sweetness of my disposition she must take upon herself to say that there never was a sweeter in the sex and that she had ever found that by mild methods and gentleness I might at any time be prevailed upon even in points against my own judgment and opinion my Aunt Hervey'd hereupon said it was worthwhile to consider what Mrs. Norton said and that she had sometimes allowed herself to doubt whether I'd been begun with by such methods as generous tempers are only to be influenced by in cases where their hearts are supposed to be opposite to the will of their friends she had both my brother and sister upon her for this who referred to my mother well she had not treated me with an indulgence that had hardly any example my mother said she must own that no indulgence had been wanting from her but she must need say and had often said it that the reception I met with on my return from Miss Howe and the manner in which the proposal of Mr. Psalms was made to me which was such as left nothing to my choice for I had an opportunity to converse with him where not what she had by any means approved of she was silenced you will guess by whom with my dear, my dear you have ever something to say something to palliate for this rebel of a girl remember her treatment of you of me remember that the wretch whom we so justly hate would not there persist in his purposes but for her encouragement of him and obstinacy to us Mrs. Norton angry to her go up to her once more and if you think gentleness will do you have a commission to be gentle it will not never make use of that plea again hi my good woman said my mother try your force with her my sister Harvey and I will go up to her and bring her down in our hands to receive her father's blessing and assurances of everybody's love if she'll be prevailed upon and in that case we will all love you the better for your good offices she came up to me and repeated all these passages with tears but I told her that after what had passed between us she could not hope to prevail upon me to comply with measures so holy my brothers and so much to my aversion and then falling me to her maternal bosom I leave you my dearest miss said she I leave you because I must but let me beseech you to do nothing rashly nothing in becoming your character if all be true that is said if the loveless cannot deserve you if you can comply remember it is your duty to comply they take not I own the right method with so generous a spirit but remember that there would not be any merit in your compliance if it were not to be against your own liking remember also what is expected from a character so extraordinary as yours remember it is in your power to unite or disunite your whole family forever although it should at present be disagreeable to you to be thus compelled your prudence I daresay when you consider the matter seriously will enable you to get over all prejudices against the one and all preprocessions in favour of the other and then the obligation you will lay all your family under will be not only meritorious in you with regard to them but in a few months very probably highly satisfactory as well as reputable to yourself consider my dearest Norton said I only consider that it is not a small thing that is incisive upon not for a short duration it is for my life consider too that all this is owing to an overbearing brother who governs everybody consider how desirous I am to oblige to them if a single life and breaking all correspondence with the man they hate because my brother hates him will do it I consider everything my dearest miss and added to what I have said do you only consider that if by pursuing your own will and rejecting theirs you should be unhappy you will be deprived of all that consolation which those have who have been directed by their parents although the event prove not answerable to their wishes I must go repeated she your brother will say and she wept that I harden you by my whining nonsense this indeed hard that so much regard should be paid to the humours and so little to the inclination of another but let me repeat that it is your duty to acquiesce if you can acquiesce your father has given your brother's schemes his sanction and they are now his miss the loveless I doubt is not a man that will justify your choice so much as you will there dislike it is easy to see that your brother has a few in discrediting you with all your friends with your uncles in particular but for that very reason you should comply if possible in order to disconcert his ungenerous measures I will pray for you and that is all I can do for you I must now go down and make a report that you are resolved never to have missed the psalms must I consider my dear miss clary must I indeed you must but of this I do assure you that I will do nothing to disgrace the part you have had in my education I will bear everything that shall be short of forcing my hand into his who never can have any share in my heart I will try by patient duty by humility to overcome them but death will I choose in any shape rather than that man I dread to go down said she with so determined an answer they will have no patience with me but let me leave you with one observation which I beg of you always to bear in mind that persons of prudence and distinguished talents like yours seem to be sprinkled through the world to give credit by their example to religion and virtue when such persons willfully err how great must be the fault how ungrateful to that God who blessed them with such talents what a loss likewise to the world what a wound to virtue but this I hope will never be to be said of Miss Clarissa Harlow I could give her no answer but by my tears and I thought when she went away the better half of my heart went with her I listened to hear what reception she would meet with below and found it was just such a one as she had apprehended will she or will she not be Mrs. Salmes none of your whining circumlocutions Mrs. Norton you may guess who said this will she or will she not comply with her parents will this cut short all she was going to say if I must speak so briefly Miss will sooner die than have anybody but loveless interrupted my brother this madam, this sir is your meek daughter this is Mrs. Norton's sweet child well goodie you may return to your own habitation I am empowered to forbid you to have any correspondence with this perverse girl for a month to come to tell you the favour of our whole family or of any individual of it and saying this uncontradicted by anybody he himself showed her to the door no doubt with all that air of cruel insult which the hearty rich can put on to the unhappy low who have not pleased them so here my dear Miss Howe am I deprived of the advice of one of the most prudent and conscientious women in the world where I to have ever so much occasion for it I might indeed write as I presume under your cover and receive her answers to what I should write but should such a correspondence be charged upon her I know she would not be guilty of a falsehood for the world nor even of an equivocation and should she own it after this prohibition she would forfeit my mother's favour for ever and in my dangerous fever some time ago I engaged my mother to promise me that if I died before I could do anything for the good woman she would set her above want for the rest of her life should her eyes fill her or sickness befall her and she could not provide for herself as she now so prettily doused by her fine needle-works what measures will they fall upon next will they not recede when they find that it must be a rooted antipathy and nothing else that could make a temper not naturally inflexible so sturdy Howe dear my dear be you happy to know that it is in your power to be so is all that seems wanting to make you so Calissa Harlow end of letter 39 Calissa Harlow or the history of a young lady volume 1 by Samuel Richardson letter 40 this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please go to LibriVox.org this recording by Patty Brugman letter 40 Ms. Calissa Harlow to Ms. Howe in continuation of the subject in letter 38 I will now though midnight for I have no sleep in my eyes resume the subject I was forced so abruptly to quit and will obey yours Ms. Lloyds, Ms. Campions and Ms. Dilbulf's call with as much temper as my divided thought will admit the dead stillness of the solemn hour will I hope contribute to calm my disturbed mind in order to acquit myself of so heavy a charge is that of having reserves to so dear a friend I will acknowledge and I thought I had over and over that it is owing to my particular situation if Mr. Loveless appears to me in a tolerable light and I take upon me to say that they had opposed to him a man of sense a virtue of generosity one who enjoyed his fortune with credit who had a tenderness in his nature for the calamities of others which would have given a moral assurance that he would have been still less wanting and grateful returns to an obliging spirit had they opposed such a man had they opposed such a man as this to Mr. Loveless and Ben as earnest to have me married as now they are I do not know myself if they would have had reason to tax me with that invincible obstancy which they lay to my charge and this whatever had been the figure of a man since the heart is what we women should judge by in the choice we make for the security for the party's good behavior in every relation of life but situated as I am that's persecuted and driven I own to you that I have now and then had a little more difficulty than I wished for in passing by Mr. Loveless's tolerable qualities to keep up my dislike to him for his others you say I must have argued with myself in his favor and in his disfavor on a supposition that I might possibly be one day his I own that I have and thus called upon my dearest friend I will set before you both parts of the argument and first what occurred to me in his favor at his introduction into our family his negative virtues were insisted upon he was no gamester no horse racer no fox hunter no drinker my poor Aunt Hervey had in confidence given us to apprehend most disagreeable evil especially to a wife of the least delicacy from a wine lover and common sense instructed me that sobriety in a man is no small point to be secured when so many mischiefs happen daily from excess I remember that my sister had a terrible circumstance in his character while she had any hopes of him he was never thought to be a nigger not even ungenerous nor when his conduct came to be inquired into an extravagant squanderer his pride so far was it a laudable pride secured from him that then he was ever ready to own his errors he was no gesture upon sacred things or Mr. Wirely's fault who seemed to think that there was wit in saying bold things which would shock a serious mind his conversation with us was always unexceptionable even chastely so which be his actions what they would shoot him capable of being influenced by a decent company and that he might probably therefore be a lead man rather than a leader in other company and one late instance so late as last Saturday evening has raised him not a little in my opinion with regard to this point of good and at the same time of manly behaviour as to the advantage of birth that is of his side above any man who has been found out for me if we may judge by that expression of his which you were pleased with at the time that upon true quality predatory distinction if good sense were not wanting humour sat as easy as his glove that with as familiar an air was his familiar expression well none but the prosperous upstart mushroomed into rank another of his peculiar was arrogantly proud of it if I say we may judge of him by this we shall conclude in his favour that he knows what sort of behaviour is to be expected from persons of birth whether he act upon it or not conviction is half way to amendment his fortunes in possession are handsome in expectations blended so nothing need be said on that subject but it is impossible say some that he should make a tender or kind husband those who are for imposing upon me such a man as Mr.Sola mays and by method so violent are not entitled to make this objection but now in this subject let me tell you how I have argued with myself for still you must remember that I am upon the extenuating part of his character a great deal of the treatment a wife may expect from him will possibly depend upon herself perhaps she must practice obedience to a man so little used to control and must be careful to oblige and what husband expects not this the more perhaps if he had not reason to assure himself of the preferable love of his wife before she became such and how much easier and pleasant her to obey the man of her choice if he should be even more unreasonable sometimes then she would not have had could she have avoided it then I think as the man were the farmers of his matrimonial office and made obedience a part of the woman's vow she ought not even in policy to show him that she can break through her part of the contract however lightly she may think of the instance lest he should take it into his head himself as judge think as lightly of other points which she may hold more important but indeed no point so solemnly vowed can be slight this principled and acting accordingly what a wretch must that husband be who could treat such a wife brutally will loveless's wife be the only person to whom he will not pay the grateful debt of civility in good manners he is allowed to be brave whoever knew a brave man if a brave man of sense and universally baseman and how much the gentleness of our sex and the manner of our training up and education make us need the protection of the brave and the countenance of the generous let the general approbation which we are all so naturally inclined to give to men of that charity testify at worst will he confine me to my chamber will he deny me the visits of my dearest friend and forbid me to correspond with her will he take from me the mistrously management which I had not faultily discharged will he set a servant over me with license to insult me will he as not a sister permit his cousins Montague and would either of these ladies accept of a permission to insult and tyrannize over me cannot be why then think I often do you tempt me oh my cruel friends to try the difference and then has the secret pleasure intruded itself to be able to reclaim such a man to the paths of virtue and honor to be a secondary means if I were to be his of saving him and preventing the mischiefs so enterprising a creature might otherwise be guilty of if he be such a one when I have thought of him in these lights and that is a man of sense he will sooner see his errors than another I own to you that I have had some difficulty to avoid taking the path they so violently endeavor to make me shun and all that command of my passions which has ever been attributed to me as my greatest praise and in so young a creature as my distinction has hardly been sufficient for me and let me add that the favor of his relations all but himself unexceptionable has made a good deal of additional weight thrown in the same scale but now in his disfavor when I have reflected upon the prohibition of my parents the giddy appearance disgraceful to our sex that such a preference would have that there is no manner of likelihood inflamed by the re-counter and upheld by art and ambition on my brother's side that ever the animosity will be got over that I might therefore be at perpetual variance with all my own family that I must go to him and to his as an obliged and half-fortunate person that his aversion to them all is as strong as theirs to him that his whole family are hated for his sake they hating ours return that he has a very immoral character as to women that knowing this it is a high degree of impurity to think of joining in wedlock with such a man that he is young, unbroken his passions unsubdued and violent in temper yet artfully I'm afraid vindictive too that such a husband might unsettle me in all my own principles and hazard my future hopes that his own relations to excellent aunts and an uncle from whom he has such large expectations have no influence upon him that what tolerable qualities he has are found more in pride than in virtue knowing as he does the excellency of moral precepts and believing the doctrine of future rewards and punishments he can live as if he despised the one and defied the other the probability that the taint arising from such free principles may go down into the manners of posterity that I knowing these things and the importance of them should be more inexcusable than one who knows them not the error against judgment is worse infinitely worse than an error in judgment reflecting upon these things I cannot help conjuring you my dear to pray with me and to pray for me that I may not be pushed upon such indiscreet measures as will render me inexcusable to myself for that is the test after all the world's opinion ought to be but a secondary consideration I have said in his praise that he is extremely ready to own his errors but I have sometimes made a great drawback upon this article in his disfavor having been ready to apprehend that this ingenuousness may possibly be attributable to two causes neither of them by any means credible to him the one that advises are so much his masters that he attempts not to conquer them the other that he may think it policy to give up one half of his character to save the other that the whole may be blamable by this means silencing by acknowledgement the objections he cannot answer which may give him the praise of ingenuousness when he can obtain no other and when the challenged proof might bring out upon discussion other evils these you will allow instructions but everything his enemies say of him cannot be false I will proceed by and by sometimes we have both thought him one of the most undesigning merely witty men we ever knew at other times one of the deepest creatures we ever conversed with so that when in one visit we have imagined we fathomed him in the next he has made us ready to give him up as impenetrable this impenetrableness my dear is to be put among the shades of his character yet upon the whole you have been so far of his party that you have contested that his principal fault is over frankness and too much regardlessness of appearance and that he is too giddy and pitiful you would have it that at the time he says anything good he means what he speaks that his variableness and levity are constitutional owing to sound health and to a soul and body that was your observation fitted for and pleased with each other and hence you concluded that could this goodness as you call it of corporal and animal faculties be pointed by discretion that is to say could his vivacity be confined within the pale of moral obligations he would be far from being rejectable as a companion for life but I used then to say and I still am of opinion that he wants a heart if he does everything a wrong head may be convinced may have a right turn given it but one who is able to give a heart if a heart be wanting divine grace working a miracle or next to a miracle can only change a bad heart should one not fly the man who is but suspected of such a one what do parents do when they endeavor to force inclination but make her think better than otherwise she would think of a man obnoxious to themselves and perhaps his character will not stand examination I have said that I think Mr. Loveless of indicative man upon my word I have sometimes doubted whether his perseverance and his addresses to me has not been the more obstinate since he has found himself so disagreeable since from that time I verily think he has been the more fervent in them yet courts them not defiance for this indeed he pleads disinterestedness I am sure he cannot politeness and the more plausibility as he is apprised of the ability they have to make it worth his while to court them who he has declared and with so much reason or there would be no bearing him and the lowest submissions on his part would not be accepted and to oblige me has offered to seek a reconciliation with them if I would give him hope of success as to his behavior at church the Sunday before last I lay no stress upon that because I doubt there was too much outward pride and intentional humility and shory who was not his enemy could not have mistaken it I do not think him so deeply learned in human nature or in ethics as some have thought him don't you remember how he stared at the following trite observations which every moralist could have furnished him with complaining as he did in half menacing strain of the obliquies raised against him that if he were innocent he should despise the obliquie if not revenge would not wipe off his guilt that nobody ever thought of turning a sword into a sponge that it was his own power by reformation of an error laid to his charge by an enemy to make that enemy one of his best friends and which was a capitalist revenge in the world against his will such an enemy would not wish him to be without the faults he taxed him with but the intention he said was the wound how so I asked him when that cannot wound without the application that the adversary only held the sword he himself pointed it at the breast and morally resent that malice which he might be the better for as long as he lived what could be the reading he has been said to be master of to wonder as he did at these observations then indeed he must take pleasure in revenge and yet holds others to be inexcusable for the same fault he is not however the only one who can see how truly blamed those errors are in another which they hardly think such in themselves from these considerations from these overbalances it was that I said in a former and I would not be in love with this man for the world and it was going further than prudence would warrant what I was for compounding with you by the words conditional liking which you so humorously rally well but me thinks you say what is all this to the purpose this is still but reasoning but if you are in love you are and love like the vapors is the deeper root for having no sufficient cause assignable for its hold and so you call upon me again to have no reserves and so forth why then my dear if you will have it I think that with all his prepondering faults I like him better than I ever thought I should like him and those faults considered better perhaps than I ought to like him and I believe it is possible for the persecution I labor under to induce me to like him still more especially while I can recollect to his advantage our last interview and as every day produces stronger instances of tyranny I will call it on the other side in a word I will frankly own since you cannot think anything I say to explicit that were he now but a moral man I would prefer him to all the men I ever saw so that this is but conditional liking still you'll say know our hope is it more I never was in love as it is called and whether this be it or not I must submit to you I think it is if it be no such mighty monarch no such unconquerable power as I have heard it represented and it must have met with greater encouragement than I think I have given it to be absolutely unconquerable since I am persuaded that I could yet without a throb most willingly give up the one man to get rid of the other but now to be a little more serious with you if my dear happy situation had driven or led me if you please into a liking of the man and if that liking had in your opinion inclined me to love him should you whose mind is susceptible of the most friendly impressions who have such high emotions of the delicacy which ought to be observed by our sex in these matters and who actually do enter so deeply into the distress of one you love and you have pushed so far that unhappy friend on so very nice a subject especially when I aimed not as you could prove by fifty instances it seemed to guard against being found out had you rallied me by word of mouth in manner you do it might have been more in character especially if your friend's distress had been surmounted and if she had affected the harsh airs in revolving the subject but to sit down to write it as me thinks I see you with a gladdened eye and with all the archness of exaltation indeed my dear and I take notice of it rather for the sake of your own generosity than for my own sake for as I have said I love your rallyery it is not so very pretty the delicacy of the subject I lay down my pen here that you may consider a little if you please I resume to give you my opinion of the force which figure or person ought to have upon our sex and this I shall do both generally as to the other sex and particularly as to this man whence you will be able to collect how far my friends are in the right or in the wrong when they attribute the appeal of prejudice in favor of one man and in disfavor of the other on the score of figure but first let me observe that they see abundant reason on comparing Mr. Loveless and Mr. Solmes together to believe that this may be a consideration with me and therefore they believe it is there is certainly something very plausible and attractive as well as credible to a woman's choice in figure it gives a favorable impression at first sight in which we wish to be confirmed and if upon further acquaintance we find reason to be so we are pleased with our judgment and like the person better for having given us cause to compliment our own sagacity in our first sighted impressions but nevertheless it has been generally a rule with me to suspect a fine figure both in man and woman good deal of reason to approve my rule with regard to men especially who ought to value themselves rather upon their intellectual than personal qualities for as to our sex if a fine woman should be led by the opinion of the world to be in vain and conceded upon her form and features and that to such a degree as to have neglected the more material and more durable recommendations the world will be ready to excuse her since a pretty fool in all she says and in all she does will please we know not why but who would grudge this pretty fool her short day since with her summer sun when her butterfly flutters are over and the winter age and furrows arrive she will feel the just effects of having neglected to cultivate her better faculties for then lie another Helen who would be unable to bear the reflection even of her own glass and being sunk into the insignificances of a mere old woman she will be entitled to the contempt which follow that character of the discrete matron who carries up we will not in such a one's case say down into advanced life the ever amiable character of virtuous prudence and useful experience the mind's solid veneration take place of airy admiration and more than supply the want of it but for a man to be vain of his person how effeminate if such a one happens to have genius it seldom strikes deep into intellectual subjects his outside usually runs away with them to adorn and perhaps intending to adorn to render ridiculous that person takes up all his attention all he does is personal that is to say for himself all he admires is himself and in spite of the correction of the stage which so often and so just exposes a coxcomb he usually dwindles down and sinks into that character and of consequence becomes the scorn of one sex and the jest of the other this is generally the case of your fine figures of men who themselves undress an outward appearance whence it is that I repeat that mere person in a man is a despicable consideration but if a man besides figure has learning and such talents as would have distinguished him whatever were his form then indeed person is an addition and if he has not run to egregiously into self admiration and if he has preserved his morals he is truly a valuable being Mr. Lovelace has certainly taste and as far as I am able to determine he has judgment in most of the politer arts but although he has a humorous way of carrying it off yet one may see that he values himself not a little both on his person and his parts and even upon his dress and yet he has so happy an ease in the latter that it seems to be the least part of his study and as to the former I should hold myself inexcusable if I were to add to his vanity by shrewing the least regard for what is too evidently so much his and now my dear let me ask you have I come to your expectation if I have not when my mind is more at ease I will endeavor to please you better for me thinks my sentences drag my style creeps my imagination is sunk my spirits serve me not only to tell you that whether I have more or less I am wholly devoted to the commands of my dear Ms. Howe P.S. the insolent Betty Barnes has just now fired me anew by reporting to me the following expressions of the hideous creature Soames that he is sure of the coy girl and that with little labor to himself that be I ever so averse to him beforehand he can depend upon my principal and it will be a pleasure to him to see by what pretty degrees I shall come to horrid wretch that it was all of her's observation who knew the world perfectly well that fear was a better security than love for a woman's good behavior to her husband although for his part to such a fine creature truly he would try what love would do for a few weeks at least being unwilling to believe that the old knight used to avert that fondness spoils more wives than it makes good what think you my dear of such a wretch as this tutored to by that old surly misogynist as he was deemed sir Oliver End of Chapter 40 Read by Patty Bregman