Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 by Samuel Richardson

S >> Samuel Richardson >> Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23

When thou receivest the letter I am now writing, thou wilt see what will
soon be the end of all thy injuries to this divine lady. I say when thou
receivest it; for I will delay it for some little time, lest thou
shouldest take it into thy head (under pretence of resenting the
disappointment her letter must give thee) to molest her again.

This letter having detained me by its length, I shall not now set out for
Epsom till to-morrow.

I should have mentioned that the lady explained to me what the one thing
was that she was afraid might happen to ruffle her. It was the
apprehension of what may result from a visit which Col. Morden, as she is
informed, designs to make you.

LETTER XXIV

THE REV. DR. LEWEN, TO MISS CL. HARLOWE
FRIDAY, AUG. 18.

Presuming, dearest and ever-respectable young lady, upon your former
favour, and upon your opinion of my judgment and sincerity, I cannot help
addressing you by a few lines on your present unhappy situation.

I will not look back upon the measures into which you have either been
led or driven. But will only say as to those, that I think you are the
least to blame of any young lady that was ever reduced from happy to
unhappy circumstances; and I have not been wanting to say as much, where
I hoped my freedom would have been better received than I have had the
mortification to find it to be.

What I principally write for now is, to put you upon doing a piece of
justice to yourself, and to your sex, in the prosecuting for his life (I
am assured his life is in your power) the most profligate and abandoned
of men, as he must be, who could act so basely, as I understand Mr.
Lovelace has acted by you.

I am very ill; and am now forced to write upon my pillow; my thoughts
confused; and incapable of method: I shall not therefore aim at method:
but to give you in general my opinion--and that is, that your religion,
your duty to your family, the duty you owe to your honour, and even
charity to your sex, oblige you to give public evidence against this very
wicked man.

And let me add another consideration: The prevention, by this means, of
the mischiefs that may otherwise happen between your brother and Mr.
Lovelace, or between the latter and your cousin Morden, who is now, I
hear, arrived, and resolves to have justice done you.

A consideration which ought to affect your conscience, [forgive me,
dearest young lady, I think I am now in the way of my duty;] and to be
of more concern to you, than that hard pressure upon your modesty which
I know the appearance against him in an open court must be of to such a
lady as you; and which, I conceive, will be your great difficulty. But I
know, Madam, that you have dignity enough to become the blushes of the
most naked truth, when necessity, justice, and honour, exact it from you.
Rakes and ravishers would meet with encouragement indeed, and most from
those who had the greatest abhorrence of their actions, if violated
modesty were never to complain of the injury it received from the
villanous attempters of it.

In a word, the reparation of your family dishonour now rests in your own
bosom: and which only one of these two alternatives can repair; to wit,
either to marry the offender, or to prosecute him at law. Bitter
expedients for a soul so delicate as your's!

He, and all his friends, I understand, solicit you to the first: and it
is certainly, now, all the amends within his power to make. But I am
assured that you have rejected their solicitations, and his, with the
indignation and contempt that his foul actions have deserved: but yet,
that you refuse not to extend to him the christian forgiveness he has so
little reason to expect, provided he will not disturb you farther.

But, Madam, the prosecution I advise, will not let your present and
future exemption from fresh disturbance from so vile a molester depend
upon his courtesy: I should think so noble and so rightly-guided a spirit
as your's would not permit that it should, if you could help it.

And can indignities of any kind be properly pardoned till we have it in
our power to punish them? To pretend to pardon, while we are labouring
under the pain or dishonour of them, will be thought by some to be but
the vaunted mercy of a pusillanimous heart, trembling to resent them.
The remedy I propose is a severe one: But what pain can be more severe
than the injury? Or how will injuries be believed to grieve us, that are
never honourably complained of?

I am sure Miss Clarissa Harlowe, however injured and oppressed, remains
unshaken in her sentiments of honour and virtue: and although she would
sooner die than deserve that her modesty should be drawn into question;
yet she will think no truth immodest that is to be uttered in the
vindicated cause of innocence and chastity. Little, very little
difference is there, my dear young lady, between a suppressed evidence,
and a false one.

It is a terrible circumstance, I once more own, for a young lady of your
delicacy to be under the obligation of telling so shocking a story in
public court: but it is still a worse imputation, that she should pass
over so mortal an injury unresented.

Conscience, honour, justice, are on your side: and modesty would, by
some, be thought but an empty name, should you refuse to obey their
dictates.

I have been consulted, I own, on this subject. I have given it as my
opinion, that you ought to prosecute the abandoned man--but without my
reasons. These I reserved, with a resolution to lay them before you
unknown to any body, that the result, if what I wish, may be your own.

I will only add that the misfortunes which have befallen you, had they
been the lot of a child of my own, could not have affected me more than
your's have done. My own child I love: but I both love and honour you:
since to love you, is to love virtue, good sense, prudence, and every
thing that is good and noble in woman.

Wounded as I think all these are by the injuries you have received, you
will believe that the knowledge of your distresses must have afflicted,
beyond what I am able to express,

Your sincere admirer, and humble servant,
ARTHUR LEWEN.

I just now understand that your sister will, by proper authority, propose
this prosecution to you. I humbly presume that the reason why you
resolved not upon this step from the first, was, that you did not
know that it would have the countenance and support of your
relations.

LETTER XXV

MISS CL. HARLOWE, TO THE REV. DR. LEWEN
SAT. AUG. 19.

REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,

I thought, till I received your affectionate and welcome letter, that I
had neither father, uncle, brother left; nor hardly a friend among my
former favourers of your sex. Yet, knowing you so well, and having no
reason to upbraid myself with a faulty will, I was to blame, (even
although I had doubted the continuance of your good opinion,) to decline
the trial whether I had forfeited it or not; and if I had, whether I
could not honourably reinstate myself in it.

But, Sir, it was owing to different causes that I did not; partly to
shame, to think how high, in my happier days, I stood in your esteem, and
how much I must be sunk in it, since those so much nearer in relation to
me gave me up; partly to deep distress, which makes the humbled heart
diffident; and made mine afraid to claim the kindred mind in your's,
which would have supplied to me in some measure all the dear and lost
relations I have named.

Then, so loth, as I sometimes was, to be thought to want to make a party
against those whom both duty and inclination bid me reverence: so long
trailed on between hope and doubt: so little my own mistress at one time;
so fearful of making or causing mischief at another; and not being
encouraged to hope, by your kind notice, that my application to you would
be acceptable:--apprehending that my relations had engaged your silence
at least*--THESE--But why these unavailing retrospections now?--I was to
be unhappy--in order to be happy; that is my hope!--Resigning therefore
to that hope, I will, without any further preamble, write a few lines,
(if writing to you, I can write but a few,) in answer to the subject of
your kind letter.

* The stiff visit this good divine was prevailed upon to make her, as
mentioned in Vol. II. Letter XXXI. (of which, however, she was too
generous to remind him) might warrant the lady to think that he had
rather inclined to their party, as to the parental side, than to her's.

Permit me, then, to say, That I believe your arguments would have been
unanswerable in almost every other case of this nature, but in that of
the unhappy Clarissa Harlowe.

It is certain that creatures who cannot stand the shock of public shame,
should be doubly careful how they expose themselves to the danger of
incurring private guilt, which may possibly bring them to it. But as to
myself, suppose there were no objections from the declining way I am in
as to my health; and supposing I could have prevailed upon myself to
appear against this man; were there not room to apprehend that the end so
much wished for by my friends, (to wit, his condign punishment,) would
not have been obtained, when it came to be seen that I had consented to
give him a clandestine meeting; and, in consequence of that, had been
weakly tricked out of living under one roof with him for several weeks;
which I did, (not only without complaint, but) without cause of
complaint?

Little advantage in a court, (perhaps, bandied about, and jested
profligately with,) would some of those pleas in my favour have been,
which out of court, and to a private and serious audience, would have
carried the greatest weight against him--Such, particularly, as the
infamous methods to which he had recourse--

It would, no doubt, have been a ready retort from every mouth, that I
ought not to have thrown myself into the power of such a man, and that I
ought to take for my pains what had befallen me.

But had the prosecution been carried on to effect, and had he even been
sentenced to death, can it be supposed that his family would not have had
interest enough to obtain his pardon, for a crime thought too lightly of,
though one of the greatest that can be committed against a creature
valuing her honour above her life?--While I had been censured as pursuing
with sanguinary views a man who offered me early all the reparation in
his power to make?

And had he been pardoned, would he not then have been at liberty to do as
much mischief as ever?

I dare say, Sir, such is the assurance of the man upon whom my unhappy
destiny threw me; and such his inveteracy to my family, (which would then
have appeared to be justified by their known inveteracy to him, and by
their earnest endeavours to take away his life;) that he would not have
been sorry to have had an opportunity to confront me, and my father,
uncles, and brother, at the bar of a court of justice, on such an
occasion. In which case, would not (on his acquittal, or pardon)
resentments have been reciprocally heightened? And then would my
brother, or my cousin Morden, have been more secure than now?

How do these conditions aggravate my fault! My motives, at first, were
not indeed blamable: but I had forgotten the excellent caution, which yet
I was not ignorant of, That we ought not to do evil that good may come of
it.

In full conviction of the purity of my heart, and of the firmness of my
principles, [Why may I not, thus called upon, say what I am conscious of,
and yet without the imputation of faulty pride; since all is but a duty,
and I should be utterly inexcusable, could I not justly say what I do?--
In this full conviction,] he has offered me marriage. He has avowed his
penitence: a sincere penitence I have reason to think it, though perhaps
not a christian one. And his noble relations, (kinder to the poor
sufferer than her own,) on the same conviction, and his own not
ungenerous acknowledgements, have joined to intercede with me to forgive
and accept of him. Although I cannot comply with the latter part of
their intercession, have not you, Sir, from the best rules, and from the
divinest example, taught me to forgive injuries?

The injury I have received from him is indeed of the highest nature, and
it was attended with circumstances of unmanly baseness and premeditation;
yet, I bless God, it has not tainted my mind; it has not hurt my morals.
No thanks indeed to the wicked man that it has not. No vile courses have
followed it. My will is unviolated. The evil, (respecting myself, and
not my friends,) is merely personal. No credulity, no weakness, no want
of vigilance, have I to reproach myself with. I have, through grace,
triumphed over the deepest machinations. I have escaped from him. I
have renounced him. The man whom once I could have loved, I have been
enabled to despise: And shall not charity complete my triumph? and shall
I not enjoy it?--And where would be my triumph if he deserved my
forgiveness?--Poor man! he has had a loss in losing me! I have the pride
to think so, because I think I know my own heart. I have had none in
losing him.

But I have another plea to make, which alone would have been enough (as I
presume) to answer the contents of your very kind and friendly letter.

I know, my dear and reverend friend, the spiritual guide and director of
my happier days! I know, that you will allow of my endeavour to bring
myself to this charitable disposition, when I tell you how near I think
myself to that great and awful moment, in which, and even in the ardent
preparation to which, every sense of indignity or injury that concerns
not the immortal soul, ought to be absorbed in higher and more important
contemplations.

Thus much for myself.

And for the satisfaction of my friends and favourers, Miss Howe is
solicitous to have all those letters and materials preserved, which will
set my whole story in a true light. The good Dr. Lewen is one of the
principal of those friends and favourers.

The warning that may be given from those papers to all such young
creatures as may have known or heard of me, may be of more efficacy to
the end wished for, as I humbly presume to think, than my appearance
could have been in a court of justice, pursuing a doubtful event, under
the disadvantages I have mentioned. And if, my dear and good Sir, you
are now, on considering every thing, of this opinion, and I could know
it, I should consider it as a particular felicity; being as solicitous
as ever to be justified in what I may in your eyes.

I am sorry, Sir, that your indisposition has reduced you to the necessity
of writing upon your pillow. But how much am I obliged to that kind and
generous concern for me, which has impelled you, as I may say, to write a
letter, containing so many paternal lines, with such inconvenience to
yourself!

May the Almighty bless you, dear and reverend Sir, for all your goodness
to me of long time past, as well as for that which engaged my present
gratitude! Continue to esteem me to the last, as I do and will venerate
you! And let me bespeak your prayers, the continuance, I should say, of
your prayers; for I doubt not, that I have always had them: and to them,
perhaps, has in part been owing (as well as to your pious precepts
instilled through my earlier youth) that I have been able to make the
stand I have made; although every thing that you prayed for has not been
granted to me by that Divine Wisdom, which knows what is best for its
poor creatures.

My prayers for you are, that it will please God to restore you to your
affectionate flock; and after as many years of life as shall be for his
service, and to your own comfort, give us a happy meeting in those
regions of blessedness, which you have taught me, as well by example, as
by precept, to aspire to!

CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER XXVI

MISS ARAB. HARLOWE, TO MISS CL. HARLOWE
[IN ANSWER TO HER'S TO HER UNCLE ANTONY OF AUG. 13.*]
MONDAY, AUG. 21.

* See Letter IV. of this volume.

SISTER CLARY,

I find by your letters to my uncles, that they, as well as I, are in
great disgrace with you for writing our minds to you.

We can't help it, sister Clary.

You don't think it worth your while, I find, a second time to press for
the blessing you pretend to be so earnest about. You think, no doubt,
that you have done your duty in asking for it: so you'll sit down
satisfied with that, I suppose, and leave it to your wounded parents to
repent hereafter that they have not done theirs, in giving it to you, at
the first word; and in making such inquiries about you, as you think
ought to have been made. Fine encouragement to inquire after a run-away
daughter! living with her fellow as long as he would live with her! You
repent also (with your full mind, as you modestly call it) that you wrote
to me.

So we are not likely to be applied to any more, I find, in this way.

Well then, since this is the case, sister Clary, let me, with all
humility, address myself with a proposal or two to you; to which you will
be graciously pleased to give an answer.

Now you must know, that we have had hints given us, from several
quarters, that you have been used in such a manner by the villain you ran
away with, that his life would be answerable for his crime, if it were
fairly to be proved. And, by your own hints, something like it appears
to us.

If, Clary, there be any thing but jingle and affected period in what
proceeds from your full mind, and your dutiful consciousness; and if
there be truth in what Mrs. Norton and Mrs. Howe have acquainted us with;
you may yet justify your character to us, and to the world, in every
thing but your scandalous elopement; and the law may reach the villain:
and, could we but bring him to the gallows, what a meritorious revenge
would that be to our whole injured family, and to the innocents he has
deluded, as well as the saving from ruin many others!

Let me, therefore, know (if you please) whether you are willing to appear
to do yourself, and us, and your sex, this justice? If not, sister
Clary, we shall know what to think of you; for neither you nor we can
suffer more than we have done from the scandal of your fall: and, if you
will, Mr. Ackland and counselor Derham will both attend you to make
proper inquiries, and to take minutes of your story, to found a process
upon, if it will bear one with as great a probability of success as we
are told it may be prosecuted with.

But, by what Mrs. Howe intimates, this is not likely to be complied with;
for it is what she hinted to you, it seems, by her lively daughter, but
not without effect;* so prudently in some certain points, as to entitle
yourself to public justice; which, if true, the Lord have mercy upon you!

* See Vol. VI. Letter LXXII.

One word only more as to the above proposal:--Your admirer, Dr. Lewen, is
clear, in his opinion, that you should prosecute the villain.

But if you will not agree to this, I have another proposal to make to
you, and that in the name of every one in the family; which is, that you
will think of going to Pensylvania to reside there for some few years
till all is blown over: and, if it please God to spare you, and your
unhappy parents, till they can be satisfied that you behave like a true
and uniform penitent; at least till you are one-and-twenty; you may then
come back to your own estate, or have the produce of it sent you thither,
as you shall choose. A period which my father fixes, because it is the
custom; and because he thinks your grandfather should have fixed it; and
because, let me add, you have fully proved by your fine conduct, that you
were not at years of discretion at eighteen. Poor doting, though good
old man!--Your grandfather, he thought--But I would not be too severe.

Mr. Hartley has a widow-sister at Pensylvania, with whom he will
undertake you may board, and who is a sober, sensible, well-read woman.
And if you were once well there, it would rid your father and mother of
a world of cares, and fears, and scandal; and that I think is what you
should wish for of all things.

Mr. Hartley will engage for all accommodations in your passage suitable
to your rank and fortune; and he has a concern in a ship, which will sail
in a month; and you may take your secret-keeping Hannah with you, or whom
you will of your newer acquaintance. 'Tis presumed that your companions
will be of your own sex.

These are what I had to communicate to you; and if you'll oblige me with
an answer, (which the hand that conveys this will call for on Wednesday
morning,) it will be very condescending.

ARABELLA HARLOWE.

LETTER XXVII

MISS CL. HARLOWE, TO MISS ARAB. HARLOWE
TUESDAY, AUG. 22.

Write to me, my hard-hearted Sister, in what manner you please, I shall
always be thankful to you for your notice. But (think what you will of
me) I cannot see Mr. Ackland and the counselor on such a business as you
mention.

The Lord have mercy upon me indeed! for none else will.

Surely I am believed to a creature past all shame, or it could not be
thought of sending two gentlemen to me on such an errand.

Had my mother required of me (or would modesty have permitted you to
inquire into) the particulars of my sad story, or had Mrs. Norton been
directed to receive them from me, methinks it had been more fit: and I
presume to think that it would have been more in every one's character
too, had they been required of me before such heavy judgment had been
passed upon me as has been passed.

I know that this is Dr. Lewen's opinion. He has been so good as to
enforce it in a kind letter to me. I have answered his letter; and given
such reasons as I hope will satisfy him. I could wish it were thought
worth while to request of him a sight of my answer.*

* Her letter, containing the reasons she refers to, was not asked for;
and Dr. Lewen's death, which fell out soon after he had received it, was
the reason that it was not communicated to the family, till it was too
late to do the service that might have been hoped for from it.

To your other proposal, of going to Pensylvania; this is my answer--If
nothing happen within a month which may full as effectually rid my
parents and friends of that world of cares, and fears, and scandals,
which you mention, and if I am then able to be carried on board of ship,
I will cheerfully obey my father and mother, although I were sure to die
in the passage. And, if I may be forgiven for saying so (for indeed it
proceeds not from a spirit of reprisal) you shall set over me, instead of
my poor obliging, but really-unculpable, Hannah, your Betty Barnes; to
whom I will be answerable for all my conduct. And I will make it worth
her while to accompany me.

I am equally surprised and concerned at the hints which both you and my
uncle Antony give of new points of misbehaviour in me!--What can be meant
by them?

I will not tell you, Miss Harlowe, how much I am afflicted at your
severity, and how much I suffer by it, and by your hard-hearted levity of
style, because what I shall say may be construed into jingle and period,
and because I know it is intended, very possibly for kind ends, to
mortify me. All I will therefore say is, that it does not lose its end,
if that be it.

But, nevertheless, (divesting myself as much as possible of all
resentment,) I will only pray that Heaven will give you, for your own
sake, a kinder heart than at present you seem to have; since a kind
heart, I am convinced, is a greater blessing to its possessor than it can
be to any other person. Under this conviction I subscribe myself, my
dear Bella,

Your ever-affectionate sister,
CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER XXVIII

MRS. NORTON, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
[IN ANSWER TO HER'S OF THURSDAY, AUG. 17.*]
TUESDAY, AUG. 22.

* See Letter VI. of this volume.

MY DEAREST YOUNG LADY,

The letters you sent me I now return by the hand that brings you this.

It is impossible for me to express how much I have been affected by them,
and by your last of the 17th. Indeed, my dear Miss Clary, you are very
harshly used; indeed you are! And if you should be taken from us, what
grief and what punishment are not treasuring up against themselves in the
heavy reflections which their rash censures and unforgivingness will
occasion them!

But I find to what your uncle Antony's cruel letter is owing, as well as
one you will be still more afflicted by, [God help you, my poor dear
child!] when it comes to your hand, written by your sister, with
proposals to you.*

* See Letter XXVI. ibid.

It was finished to send you yesterday, I know; and I apprize you of it,
that you should fortify your heart against the contents of it.

The motives which incline them all to this severity, if well grounded,
would authorize any severity they could express, and which, while they
believe them to be so, both they and you are to be equally pitied.

They are owning to the information of that officious Mr. Brand, who has
acquainted them (from some enemy of your's in the neighbourhood about
you) that visits are made you, highly censurable, by a man of a free
character, and an intimate of Mr. Lovelace; who is often in private with
you; sometimes twice or thrice a day.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23