LETTER LIX
MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MRS. JUDITH NORTON SAT. JULY 29.
I congratulate you, my dear Mrs. Norton, with all my heart, on your son"s recovery; which I pray to G.o.d, with all your own health, to perfect.
I write in some hurry, being apprehensive of the sequence of the hints you give of some method you propose to try in my favour [with my relations, I presume, you mean]: but you will not tell me what, you say, if it prove unsuccessful.
Now I must beg of you that you will not take any step in my favour, with which you do not first acquaint me.
I have but one request to make to them, besides what is contained in my letter to my sister; and I would not, methinks, for the sake of their own future peace of mind, that they should be teased so by your well-meant kindness, and that of Miss Howe, as to be put upon denying me that. And why should more be asked for me than I can partake of? More than is absolutely necessary for my own peace?
You suppose I should have my sister"s answer to my letter by the time your"s reached my hand. I have it: and a severe one, a very severe one, it is. Yet, considering my fault in their eyes, and the provocations I am to suppose they so newly had from my dear Miss Howe, I am to look upon it as a favour that it was answered at all. I will send you a copy of it soon; as also of mine, to which it is an answer.
I have reason to be very thankful that my father has withdrawn that heavy malediction, which affected me so much--A parent"s curse, my dear Mrs.
Norton! What child could die in peace under a parent"s curse? so literally fulfilled too as this has been in what relates to this life!
My heart is too full to touch upon the particulars of my sister"s letter.
I can make but one atonement for my fault. May that be accepted! And may it soon be forgotten, by every dear relation, that there was such an unhappy daughter, sister, or niece, as Clarissa Harlowe!
My cousin Morden was one of those who was so earnest in prayer for my recovery, at nine and eleven years of age, as you mention. My sister thinks he will be one of those who wish I never had had a being. But pray, when he does come, let me hear of it with the first.
You think that, were it not for that unhappy notion of my moving talent, my mother would relent. What would I give to see her once more, and, although unknown to her, to kiss but the hem of her garment!
Could I have thought that the last time I saw her would have been the last, with what difficulty should I have been torn from her embraced feet!--And when, screened behind the yew-hedge on the 5th of April last,*
I saw my father, and my uncle Antony, and my brother and sister, how little did I think that that would be the last time I should ever see them; and, in so short a s.p.a.ce, that so many dreadful evils would befal me!
* See Vol. II. Letter x.x.xVI.
But I can write nothing but what must give you trouble. I will therefore, after repeating my desire that you will not intercede for me but with my previous consent, conclude with the a.s.surance, that I am, and ever will be,
Your most affectionate and dutiful CLARISSA HARLOWE.
LETTER LX
MISS AR. HARLOWE, TO MISS CL. HARLOWE [IN ANSWER TO HER"S OF FRIDAY, JULY 21, LETTER XLV. OF THIS VOLUME.]
THURSDAY, JULY 27.
O MY UNHAPPY LOST SISTER!
What a miserable hand have you made of your romantic and giddy expedition!--I pity you at my heart.
You may well grieve and repent!--Lovelace has left you!--In what way or circ.u.mstances you know best.
I wish your conduct had made your case more pitiable. But "tis your own seeking!
G.o.d help you!--For you have not a friend will look upon you!--Poor, wicked, undone creature!--Fallen, as you are, against warning, against expostulation, against duty!
But it signifies nothing to reproach you. I weep over you.
My poor mother!--Your rashness and folly have made her more miserable than you can be.--Yet she has besought my father to grant your request.
My uncles joined with her: for they thought there was a little more modesty in your letter than in the letters of your pert advocate: and my father is pleased to give me leave to write; but only these words for him, and no more: "That he withdraws the curse he laid upon you, at the first hearing of your wicked flight, so far as it is in his power to do it; and hopes that your present punishment may be all that you will meet with. For the rest, he will never own you, nor forgive you; and grieves he has such a daughter in the world."
All this, and more you have deserved from him, and from all of us: But what have you done to this abandoned libertine, to deserve what you have met with at his hands?--I fear, I fear, Sister!--But no more!--A blessed four months" work have you made of it.
My brother is now at Edinburgh, sent thither by my father, [though he knows not this to be the motive,] that he may not meet your triumphant deluder.
We are told he would be glad to marry you: But why, then, did he abandon you? He had kept you till he was tired of you, no question; and it is not likely he would wish to have you but upon the terms you have already without all doubt been his.
You ought to advise your friend Miss Howe to concern herself less in your matters than she does, except she could do it with more decency. She has written three letters to me: very insolent ones. Your favourer, poor Mrs. Norton, thinks you know nothing of the pert creature"s writing. I hope you don"t. But then the more impertinent the writer. But, believing the fond woman, I sat down the more readily to answer your letter; and I write with less severity, I can tell you, than otherwise I should have done, if I had answered it all.
Monday last was your birth-day. Think, poor ungrateful wretch, as you are! how we all used to keep it; and you will not wonder to be told, that we ran away from one another that day. But G.o.d give you true penitence, if you have it not already! and it will be true, if it be equal to the shame and the sorrow you have given us all.
Your afflicted sister, ARABELLA HARLOWE.
Your cousin Morden is every day expected in England. He, as well as others of the family, when he comes to hear what a blessed piece of work you have made of it, will wish you never had had a being.
LETTER LXI
MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE SUNDAY, JULY 30.
You have given me great pleasure, my dearest friend, by your approbation of my reasonings, and of my resolution founded upon them, never to have Mr. Lovelace. This approbation is so right a thing, give me leave to say, from the nature of the case, and from the strict honour and true dignity of mind, which I always admired in my Anna Howe, that I could hardly tell to what, but to my evil destiny, which of late would not let me please any body, to attribute the advice you gave me to the contrary.
But let not the ill state of my health, and what that may naturally tend to, sadden you. I have told you, that I will not run away from life, nor avoid the means that may continue it, if G.o.d see fit: and if He do not, who shall repine at His will!
If it shall be found that I have not acted unworthy of your love, and of my own character, in my greater trials, that will be a happiness to both on reflection.
The shock which you so earnestly advise me to try to get above, was a shock, the greatest that I could receive. But, my dear, as it was not occasioned by my fault, I hope I am already got above it. I hope I am.
I am more grieved (at times however) for others, than for myself. And so I ought. For as to myself, I cannot but reflect that I have had an escape, rather than a loss, in missing Mr. Lovelace for a husband--even had he not committed the vilest of all outrages.
Let any one, who knows my story, collect his character from his behaviour to me before that outrage; and then judge whether it was in the least probable that such a man should make me happy. But to collect his character from his principles with regard to the s.e.x in general, and from his enterprizes upon many of them, and to consider the cruelty of his nature, and the sportiveness of his invention, together with the high opinion he has of himself, it will not be doubted that a wife of his must have been miserable; and more miserable if she loved him, than she could have been were she to be indifferent to him.
A twelvemonth might very probably have put a period to my life; situated as I was with my friends; persecuted and hara.s.sed as I had been by my brother and sister; and my very heart torn in pieces by the wilful, and (as it is now apparent) premeditated suspenses of the man, whose grat.i.tude I wished to engage, and whose protection I was the more ent.i.tled to expect, as he had robbed me of every other, and reduced me to an absolute dependence upon himself. Indeed I once thought that it was all his view to bring me to this, (as he hated my family;) and uncomfortable enough for me, if it had been all.
Can it be thought, my dear, that my heart was not more than half broken (happy as I was before I knew Mr. Lovelace) by a grievous change in my circ.u.mstances?--Indeed it was. Nor perhaps was the wicked violence wanting to have cut short, though possibly not so very short, a life that he has sported with.