Chapter 53
letter fifty-three of clarissa harlowe vol four this is the librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox dot org recording by nicole lee clarissa harlowe vol four by samory richardson letter fifty-three mr lovelace to john belford esq thursday may twenty-fifth thou seest belford how we now drive before the wind The dear creature now comes onwards at the first word, whenever I desire the honour of her company. I told her last night that, apprehending delay from Pritchard's slowness, I was determined to leave it to my lord to make his compliments in his own way, and had actually that afternoon put
my writings into the hands of a very eminent lawyer, Councillor Williams, with directions for him to draw up settlements from my own estate, and conformably to those of my mother, which I put into his hands at the same time. It had been, I assured her, no small part of my concern, that her frequent displeasure and our mutual misapprehensions had hindered me from advising with her before on this subject. Indeed, indeed, my dearest life, said I, you have hitherto afforded
me but a very thorny courtship. She was silent, kindly silent, for well know I that she could have recriminated upon me with a vengeance. But I was willing to see if she were not loath to disoblige me now. I comforted myself, I said, with the hopes that all my difficulties were now over, and that every past disobligations would be buried in oblivion. Now, Belford, I have actually deposited these writings with Councillor Williams,
and I expect the drafts in a week at furthest. So shall be doubly armed, for if I attempt and fail, these shall be ready to throw in, to make have patience with me till I can try again. I have more contrivances still in embryo. I could tell thee of an hundred, and yet hold another hundred in petto,
to pop in as I go along, to excite thy surprise and to keep up thy attention. Nor rave thou at me, but, if thou art my friend, think of Miss Howe's letters, and of her smuggling scheme, all owing to my fair captive's information's incitements. Am I not a villain, a fool, a Beelzebub with them already? Yet no harm done by me, nor so much as attempted.
Everything of this nature, the dear creature answered, with a downcast eye and a blushing cheek, she left to me. I propose my Lord's Chapel for the celebration, where we might have the presence of Lady Betty, Lady Sarah, and my two cousins Montague. She seemed not to favour a public celebration, and waive this subject for the present. I doubted not, but she would be as willing as I to decline a public wedding, so I pressed not this matter further just then. But patterns I actually produced,
and a jeweller was to bring, as this day, several sets of jewels for her choice. But the patterns she would not open. She sighed at the mention of them. The second pattern, she said, that had been offered to her, and very peremptorily forbid the jewel is coming, as well as decline my offer of causing my mother's to be new set, at least for the present. I do assure thee, Belford, I was in earnest in all this. My whole estate is nothing to me, put in competition with her hoped-for favour.
She then told me that she had put into writing her opinion of my general proposals, and there had expressed her mind as to clothes and jewels, but on my strange behaviour to her, for no cause that she knew of on Sunday night, she had torn the paper in two. I earnestly pressed her to let me be favoured with the sight of this paper, torn as it was, and after some hesitation she withdrew, and sent it to me by Dorcas. I perused it again. It was in a manner new to me,
though I had read it so lately, and by my soul I could hardly stand it. An unadmirable creature so I called her to myself, but I charge thee, write not a word to me in her favour, if thou meanest her well, for if I spare her, it must be all ex meromotu. You may easily suppose, when I was readmitted to her presence, that I ran over in her praises, and in vows of gratitude and everlasting love. But here's the devil. She still receives all I say with reserve, or if it be not
with reserve. She receives it so much as her due, that she is not at all raised by it. Some women are undone by praise, by flattery. I myself, a man, am proud of praise. Perhaps thou wilt say that those are most proud of it who least deserve it, as those are of riches and grandeur who are not born to either. I own that to be superior to these foibles it requires a soul. Have I not then a soul? Surely I have. Let me then be considered as an exception to the rule. Now have I foundation
to go upon in my terms. My lord, in the exuberance of his generosity, mentions a thousand pounds a year penny rents. This I know, that were I to marry this lady, he would rather settle upon her all he has a mind to settle, than upon me. He has even threatened that if I prove not a good husband to her, he will leave all he can at his death from me to her. Yet considers not that a woman so perfect can never be displeased with her husband but to his disgrace, for who will blame her?
Another reason why a loveless should not wish to marry a Clarissa. But what a pretty fellow of an uncle is this foolish peer, to think of making a wife independent of her emperor, and a rebel, of course, yet smart at himself for an error of this kind. My beloved in her torn paper mentions but two hundred pounds a year, for her separate use. I insisted upon her naming a larger sum. She said it might be three, and I, for fear she should suspect very large offers,
named only five, but added the entire disposal of all arrears in her father's hands, for the benefit of Mrs. Norton, or whom she pleased. She said that the good woman would be uneasy if anything more than a competency were done for her. She was more for suiting all her dispositions of this kind, she said, to the usual way of life of the person. To go beyond it was but to put the benefited upon projects, or to make them awkward in a new state, when
they might shine in that to which they were accustomed, and to put her into so good a mother's power to give her son a beginning in his business at a proper time, yet to leave her something for herself to set her above want, or above the necessity of taking back from her child what she had been enabled to bestow upon him, would be the height of such a worthy parent's ambition.
Here's prudence. Here's judgment in so young a creature. How do I hate the Harlow's for producing such an angel? Oh, why, why did she refuse my sincere dress to tie the knot before we came to this house? But yet what mortifies my pride is that this exalted creature, if I were to marry her,
would not be governed in her behaviour to me by love, but by generosity merely, or by blind duty, and I'd rather live single than be mine. I cannot bear this. I would have the woman whom I honour with my name, if ever I confer this honour upon any, forego even her superior duties for me.
I would have her look after me when I go out, as far as she can see me, as my rosebud after her johnny, and meet me at my return with rapture. I would be the subject of her dreams, as well as of her waking thoughts. I would have her think every moment lost that is not passed with me, sing to me, read to me, play to me when I pleased, no joy so great as in obeying me. When I should be inclined to love, overwhelm me with it, when to be serious or solitary,
if apprehensive of intrusion, retiring at a nod, approaching me only by smiled encouragement, steal into my presence with silence, out of it, if not noticed, on tiptoe. Be a lady easy to all my pleasures, and valuing those most who most contributed to them, only sighing in private that it was not herself at the time. Thus of all did the contending wives of the honest patriarchs, each recommending her handmaid to her lord, as she thought it would oblige him, and looking upon
the genial product as her own. The gentle waller says, women are born to be controlled. Gentle as he was, he knew that. A tyrant husband makes a dutiful wife. And why do the sex love rakes but because they know how to direct their uncertain wills and manage them? Another agreeable conversation. The day of day is the subject. As to fixing a particular one, that need not be done, my charmer says, till the settlements are completed. As to
marrying at my lord's chapel the ladies of my family present, that would be making a public affair of it, and the dear creature observed, with regret, that it seemed to be my lord's intention to make it so. It could not be imagined, I said, but that his lordship setting out in a litter and coming to town, as well as his taste for glare, and the joy he would take to see me married at last, and to her dear self, would give it as much the air of a public marriage,
as if the ceremony were performed at his own chapel, all the ladies present. I cannot, said she, endure the thoughts of a public day. It will carry with it an air of insult upon my whole family, and for my part, if my lord will not take it amiss. And perhaps he will not, as the motion came not from himself but from you, Mr. Loveless. I will very willingly dispense with his lordship's presence, though rather as dress and appearance will then be unnecessary, for I cannot bear to
think of decking my person while my parents are in tears. How excellent this! Yet do not her parents richly deserve to be in tears? See, Belford, with so charming a niceness, we might have been a long time ago upon the verge of the state, and yet found a great deal to do before we entered into it. All obedience, all resignation, no will but hers. I withdrew, and wrote directly to my lord, and she not disapproving of it, I sent it away, the purport as follows, for
I took no copy, that I was much obliged to his lordship for his intended goodness to me, on an occasion the most solemn of my life, that the admirable lady whom he so justly praised thought his lordship's proposals in her favour too high, that she chose not to make a public appearance if, without disobliging my friends, she could avoid it, till a reconciling reconciliation with her own could be effected, that, although she expressed a grateful sense
of his lordship's consent to give her to me with his own hand, yet presuming that the motive to this kind intention was rather to do her honour than it otherwise would have been his own choice, especially as travelling would be at this time so inconvenient to him, she thought it advisable to save his lordship trouble on this occasion, and hoped he would take as meant her declining the favour, that the lawn will be most acceptable to us both to retire to, and the rather, as it is so,
to his lordship. But if he pleases, the jointure may be made from my own estate, leaving to his lordship's goodness the alternative. I conclude with telling him that I had offered to present the lady his lordship's bill, but on her declining to accept of it, having myself no present occasion for it, I return it enclosed with my thanks, etc. And is not this going a plaguey length? What a figure should I make in rakish annals, if at last I should be caught in my own gin?
The sex may say what they will, but a poor innocent fellow had need to take great care of himself when he dances upon the edge of the matrimonial precipice. Many a faint-hearted man, when he began to jest, or only designed to ape gallantry, has been forced into earnest
by being over-prompt and taken at his word, not knowing how to own that he meant less than the lady supposed he meant. I am the better enabled to judge that this must have been the case
of many a sneaking violet, because I, who know the female world as well as any man in it of my standing, am so frequently in doubt of myself and know not what to make of the matter.
than these little sly rogues. How they like Couchon, ready to spring upon us harmless fellows the moment we are in their reach. When the ice is once broken for them,
how swiftly can they make to port? Meantime, the subject they can least speak to they most think of. Nor can you talk of the ceremony before they have laid out in their minds
how it is all to be. Little saucy-faced designers, how first they draw themselves in, then us. But be all these things as they will,
Lord M never in his life received so handsome a letter as this, from his nephew lovelace the lady after having given to miss howe on the particulars contained in mr lovelace's last letter thus expresses herself a principal consolation arising from these favourable appearances is that i who have now but one only friend shall most probably and if it be not my own fault have as many new ones as their persons in mr lovelace's family and this whether mr lovelace treat me kindly or not and who knows but that by degrees those new friends by their rank and merit "'may have weight enough to get me restored to the favour of my relations. "'Till which can be effected, I shall not be tolerably easy.
"'Happy I never expect to be. "'Mr. Lovelace's mind and mine are vastly different in essentials. "'But as matters are at present circumstance, I pray you, my dear friend, "'to keep to yourself everything that might bring discredit to him, if revealed. "'Better anybody expose a man than a wife, if I am to be his,
"'and what is said by you will be thought to come from me. "'It shall be my constant prayer that all the Philisties, which this world can afford may be yours, and that the Almighty will never suffer you nor yours to the remotest posterity to once such a friend as my Anna Howe has been to her Clarissa Harlow.
End of letter 53
