Chapter 23
Letter XXIII. Miss Howe to Miss Clarissa Harlow, Wednesday, May 10th. I will write. No man shall write for me. No woman shall hinder me from writing. Surely I am of age to distinguish between reason and caprice. I am not writing to a man, am I?
If I were carrying on a correspondence with a fellow of whom my mother disapproved, and whom it might be improper for me to encourage, my own honour and my duty would engage my obedience. But as the case is so widely different, not a word more on this subject, I beseech you. I much approve of your resolution to leave this wretch, if you can make it up with your uncle.
I hate the man, most heartily do I hate him, for his teasing ways. The very reading of your account of them teases me almost as much as they can you. May you have encouragement to fly the foolish wretch. I have other reasons to wish you may, for I have just made an acquaintance with one who knows a vast deal of his private history.
The man is really a villain, my dear, an execrable one, if all be true that I have heard. And yet I am promised other particulars. I do assure you, my dear friend, that had he a dozen lives, he might have forfeited them all, and been dead twenty crimes ago. If ever ye condescend to talk familiarly with him again, ask him after Miss Betterton, and what became of her. And if he shuffle and prevaricate as to her, question him about Miss Lockyer.
Oh, my dear, the man's of villain! I will have your uncle sounded as you desire, and that out of hand. But yet I am afraid of the success, and this for several reasons. "'Tis hard to say what the sacrifice of your estate would do with some people, "'and yet I must not, when it comes to the test, permit you to make it.
"'As Johanna continues ill, "'I would advise you to try to attach Dorcas to your interest. "'Have you not been impolitically shy of her? "'I wish you could come at some of his letters. "'Surely a man of his negligent character cannot be always guarded.
"'If he be, and if you cannot engage your servant, "'I shall suspect them both. Let him be called upon at a short warning when he is writing, or when he has papers lying about, and so surprise him into negligence. Such inquiries, I know, are of the same nature with those we make at an inn in travelling,
when we look into every corner and closet for fear of a villain, yet should we fight it out of our wits were we to find one. But it is better to detect such a one when awake and up, than to be attacked by him when in bed and asleep. I am glad you have your clothes, but no money. No books but a spira, a dracilius, and a practice of piety.
Those who sent the latter ought to have kept it for themselves. But I must tarry myself from this subject. You have exceedingly alarmed me by what you hint of his attempt to get one of my letters. I am assured by my new informant that he is the head of a gang of wretched, those he brought to you among no doubt for some of them,
who join together to betray innocent creatures, and to support one another afterwards by violence. And were he to come at the knowledge of the freedoms I take with him, I should be afraid to stir out without a guard. I am sorry to tell you,
that I have reason to think that your brother has not laid aside his foolish plot. A sunburned, sailor-looking fellow was with me just now, pretending great service to you from Captain Singleton.
Could he be admitted to your speech? I pleaded ignorance as to the place of your abode. The fellow was too well-instructed for me to get anything out of him. I wept for two hours incessantly
on reading yours, which enclosed that from your cousin Morden. My dearest creature, do not desert yourself. Let your Anahau obey the call of that friendship which has united us as one soul, and endeavour to give you consolation. I wonder not at the melancholy reflections you so often cast upon yourself in your letters,
for the step you have been forced upon on one hand, and tricked into on the other. A strange fatality, as if it were designed to show the vanity of all human prudence. I wish, my dear, as you hint, that both you and I have not too much prided ourselves in a perhaps too conscious superiority over others. But I will stop. How apt are weak minds to look out for judgments in any extraordinary event.
Tis so far right that it is better and safer and juster to arraign ourselves or our dearest friends than Providence, which must always have wise ends to answer its dispensations. But do not talk, as if one of your former, of being a warning only. You will be as excellent an example as ever you hope to be,
as well as a warning, and that will make your story, to all that shall come to know it, of double efficacy. For were it that such a merit as yours could not ensure to herself noble and generous usage from a libertine heart, who will expect any tolerable behaviour from men of his character?
If you think yourself inexcusable for taking a step that put you into the way of delusion, without any intention to go off with him, what must those giddy creatures think of themselves who, without half your provocations and inducements, and without any regard to decorum, leap walls, drop from windows, and steal away from their parents' house, to the seducer's bed, in the same day. Again, if you are so ready to accuse yourself for dispensing with the
prohibitions of the most unreasonable parents, which yet were but half prohibitions at first, what ought those to do who willfully shut their ears to the advice of the most reasonable, and that perhaps were apparent ruin or undoubted inconvenience, is the consequence of the predetermined rashness? And lastly, to all who will know your story, you will be an excellent example of watchfulness, and of that caution and reserve by which a prudent person, who has been
supposed to be a little misled, endeavours to mend her error, and ever once losing sight of her duty does all in her power to recover the path she has been rather driven out of than chosen to swerve from. Come, come, my dearest friend, consider but these things, and steadily, without responding, pursue your earnest purposes to amend what you think has been amiss, and it may not be
a misfortune in the end that you have erred, especially as so little of your own will was in your error. And indeed I must say that I use the words misled and error and such like only in compliment to your own too-ready self-accusations, and to the opinion of one to whom I owe duty, for I think in my conscience that every part of your conduct is defensible, and that those
only are blamable who have no other way to clear themselves but by condemning you. I expect, however, that such melancholy reflections as dropped from your pen, but too often will mingle with all your future pleasures, were you to marry loveless, and were he to make the best of husbands. You was immensely happy, above the happiness of a mortal creature, before you knew him.
Everybody almost worshipped you. Envy itself, which has of late reared up its venomous head against you, was awed, by your superior worthiness, into silence and admiration. He was the soul of every company where you visited. Your elders have I seen declining to offer their opinions upon a subject,
till you had delivered yours, often to save themselves the mortification of retracting theirs, when they heard yours. Yet in all this your sweetness of manners, your humility and affability, caused the subscription everyone made to your sentiments and to your superiority to be equally unfeigned and unhesitating,
for they saw that their applause and the preference they gave you to themselves subjected not themselves to insults, nor exalted you into any visible triumph over them, for you had always something to say on every point you carried that raised the yielding heart, and left everyone pleased and satisfied with themselves, though they carried not off the palm. Your works were showed or referred to wherever fine works were talked of.
Nobody had any but an inferior and second-hand praise for diligence, for economy, for reading, for writing, for memory, for facility in learning everything laudable, and even for the more enried graces of person and dress, and an all-surpassing elegance in both,
where you were known and those subjects talked of. The poor blessed you every step you trod, the rich thought you their honour, and took a pride that they were not obliged to descend from their own class, for an example that did credit to it.
Though all men wished for you and sought you young as you were, yet had not those who were brought to address you been encouraged out of sordid and spiteful views, not one of them would have dared to lift up his eyes to you. Thus happy in all about you, thus making happy all within your circle,
could you think that nothing would happen to you to convince you that you are not to be exempted from the common lot, to convince you that you are not absolutely perfect, and that you must not expect to pass through life without trial, temptation, and misfortune,
Indeed, it must be owned that no trial, no temptation worthy of your virtue and of your prudence could well have attacked you sooner because of your tender years, and more effectually than those heavy ones under which you struggle, since it must be allowed that your equanimity and foresight made you superior to common accidents. For are not most of the troubles that fall to the lot of common mortals brought upon themselves,
either by their too large desires or too little deserts? Cases both from which you still exempt. It was therefore to be some man or some worse spirit in the shape of one that found on purpose, was to be sent to invade you, while as many other such spirits, as there are persons in your family, were permitted to take possession, severally, in one dark hour, of the heart of every one of it, there to sit perching, perhaps, and directing every motion to the motions of the seducer without, in order to irritate, to provoke, to push you forward, to meet him. upon the whole there seems as i have often said to have been a kind of fate in your error if it were an error and this perhaps admitted for the sake of a better example to be collected
from your sufferings then could have been given had you never erred for my dear the time of adversity is your shining time i see it evidently that adversity must call forth graces and beauties which could not have been brought to light in a run of that prosperous fortune which attended you from your cradles till now, admirably as you became, and as we all thought greatly as you deserve that prosperity. All the matter is, the trial must be grievous to you. It
is to me, it is to all who love you, and looked upon you as one set aloft to be admired and imitated, and not as a mark, as you have lately found, for envy to shoot its shafts at. Let what I have written above have its due weight with you, my dear, and then, as warm imaginations are not without a mixture of enthusiasm, your Anna Howe, who, on reperusal of it, imagines it to be in a style superior to her usual style, will be ready to flatter herself that
she has been in a manner inspired with the hints that have comforted and raised the dejected heart of her suffering friend, who, from such hard trials, in a bloom so tender, may find at times her spirit sunk too low to enable her to pervade the surrounding darkness, which conceals from her the hopeful dawning of the better day which awaits her. I will add no more at present than that I am your ever faithful and affectionate Anna Howe.
End of letter 23
