LETTER 46: MISS HOWE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE [Commentary]
Wednesday Night, March 22
Angry! —What should I be angry for? — I am mightily pleased with your freedom, as you call it. I only wonder at your patience with me; that's all. I am sorry I gave you the trouble of so long a letter upon the occasion ; notwithstanding the pleasure I received in reading it.
I believe, you did not intend reserves to me: For two reasons, I believe you did not: First, because you say, you did not: Next, because you have not, as yet, been able to convince yourself, how it is to be with you; and, persecuted as you are, how so to separate the effects that spring from the two causes (persecution and love), as to give to each its particular due. But this I believe I hinted to you once before. And so will say no more upon that subject at present.
Robin says, you had but just deposited your last parcel when he took it: For he was there, but half an hour before, and found nothing. He had seen my impatience; and loitered about, being willing to bring me something from you, if possible.
My cousin Jenny Fynnett is here, and desires to be my bedfellow tonight. So I shall not have an opportunity to sit down with that seriousness and attention, which the subjects of yours require. For, she is all prate, you know, and loves to set me a-prating: Yet comes upon a very grave occasion: —on purpose to procure my mamma to go with her to her grandmother Larkin, who has been long bed-ridden; and, at last, has taken it into her head, that she is mortal; and therefore will make her will; a work she was, till now, extremely averse to; but it must be upon condition, that my mamma, who is her distant relation, will go to her, and advise her, as to the particulars of it: For, she has a high opinion, as every one else has, of my mamma's judgment in all matters relating to wills, settlements, and such-like notable affairs.
Mrs. Larkin lives about seventeen miles off; and as my mamma cannot abide to lie out of her own house, she proposes to set out early in the morning, in order to get back again at night. So, tomorrow I shall be at your devotion from day-light to day-light; nor will I be at home to any-body.
As to the impertinent man, I have put him upon escorting the two ladies, in order to attend my mamma home at night: Such expeditions as these, and to give our sex a little air of vanity and assuredness at public places, is all that I know these dangling fellows are good for.
I have hinted before, that I could almost wish my mamma and Mr. Hickman would make a match of it: And I here repeat my wishes. What signifies a difference of fifteen or twenty years; especially when the Lady has spirits that will make her young a long time, and the gentleman is a mighty sober man? —I think verily, I could like him better for a papa, than for a nearer relation: And they are strange admirers of one another.
But allow me a perhaps still better (and, as to years, more suitable and happier) disposal; for the man at least: —What think you, my dear, of compromising with your friends, by rejecting both your men, and encouraging my parader? —If your liking of one of the two go no farther than conditional, I believe it will do. —A rich thought, if it obtain your approbation. In this light, I should have a prodigious respect for Mr. Hickman; more by half than I can have in the other. The vein is open's—shall I let it flow? —how difficult to withstand constitutional foibles!—
Hickman, is certainly a man more in your taste, than any of those who have hitherto been brought to address you. He is might sober! mighty grave! and all that. Then you have told me, that he is your favourite! —But that is, because he is my mamma's, perhaps. —The man would certainly rejoice at the transfer: Or he must be a greater fool than I take him to be.
Oh but your fierce lover would knock him o' the head—I forgot that! —What makes me incapable of seriousness when I write about this Hickman? — Yet the man so good a sort of man in the main? — But who is perfect? This is one of my foibles. And something for you to chide me for.
You believe me very happy in my prospects, in relation to him: Because you are so very unhappy in the foolish usage you meet with, you are apt (as I suspect) to think that tolerable which otherwise would be far from being so. I dare say, you would not with all your grave airs, like him for yourself; except being addressed by Solmes and him, you were obliged to have one of them. I have given you a test; let me see what you'll say to it.
For my own part, I confess to you, that I have great exceptions to Hickman. He and wedlock never yet once entered into my head at one time. Shall I give you my free thoughts of him? —Of his best and his worst; and that as if I were writing to one, who knows him not? I think I will. Yet it is impossible I should do it gravely. The subject won't bear to be so treated, in my opinion. We are not come so far as that yet, if ever we shall? And to do it in another strain, ill becomes my present real concern for you.
HERE I was interrupted on the honest man's account. He has been here these two hours—courting my mamma for her daughter, I suppose—Yet she wants no courting neither: ‘tis well one of us does; else the man would have nothing but halcyon; and be remiss, and saucy of course.
He was going. His horses at the door.
My mamma sent for me down, pretending to want to say something to me.
Something she said when I came, that signified nothing—Evidently, for no reason called me, but to give me an opportunity to see what a fine bow he could make; and that he might wish me a good-night. She knows I am not over-ready to oblige him with my presence, if I happen to be otherwise engaged. I could not help an air a little upon the fretful, when I found she had nothing of moment to say to me, and when I saw her end.
She smiled off the visible fretfulness, that the man might go away in good humour with himself.
He bow'd to the ground, and would have taken my hand, his whip in the other: I did not like to be so companioned: I withdrew my hand, but touched his elbow with a motion, as if from his low bow I had supposed him falling, and would have helped him up. A sad slip, it might have been, said I!
A mad girl, smiled it off my mamma!
He was put quite out; took his horse-bridle, stumped back, back, back, bowing, till he run against his servant: I laughed; he mounted his horse; rid away: I mounted up stairs, after a little lecture. —And my head is so filled with him, that I must resume my intention; in hopes to divert you for a few moments.
Take it then—his best, and his worst, as I said before.
Hickman is a sort of fiddling, busy, yet to borrow a word from you, un-busy man: Has a great deal to do, and seems to me to dispatch nothing. Irresolute, and changeable in every thing, but in teazing me with his nonsense; which yet, it is evident, he must continue upon my mamma's interest, more than his own hopes; for none have I given him.
Then I have a quarrel against his face, though in his person, for a well-thriven man, tolerably genteel: —not to his features so much neither—for what, as you have often observed, are features in a man? —But Hickman, with strong lines, and big cheek and chin bones, has not the manliness in his aspect, which Lovelace has with the most regular and agreeable features.
Then what a set and formal mortal is he in some things! —I have not been able yet to laugh him out of his long bib and beads: Indeed, that is, because my mamma thinks it becomes him; and I would not be so free with him, as to own I should choose to have him leave it off. If he did, so particular is the man, he would certainly, if left to himself, fall into a King William cravat, or some such antique chin-cushion, as, by the pictures of that Prince, one sees was then the fashion.
As to his dress, in general, he cannot, indeed, be called a sloven, but sometimes he is too gaudy, at other times too plain, to be uniformly elegant. And for his manners, he makes such a bustle with them, and about them, as would induce one to suspect that they are more strangers to him, than familiars. You, I know, lay this to his fearfulness of disobliging, or offending. Indeed your over-does generally give the offence they endeavour to avoid.
The man, however, is honest: Is of family: Has a clear and good estate; and may one day be a Baronet, and please you. He is humane and benevolent, tolerably generous, as people say; and as I might say too, if I would accept of his bribes; which he offers in hopes of having them all back again, and the bribed into the bargain: A method taken by all corruptors, from old Satan, to the lowest of his servants. —Yet, to speak in the language of a person I am bound to honour, he is deemed a prudent man; that is, a good manager .
Then, I cannot say, that now I like any-body better, whatever I did once.
He is no fox-hunter: Keeps a pack indeed, but prefers not his hounds to his fellow-creatures. No bad sign for a wife, I own. Loves his horse, but dislikes racing in a gaming way, as well as all sorts of gaming. Then he is sober; modest; They say, virtuous; in short, has qualities that mothers would be fond of in a husband for their daughters; and for which, perhaps, their daughters would be the happier could they judge as well for themselves, as experience, possibly, may teach them to judge for their future daughters.
Nevertheless, to own the truth, I cannot say I love the man; nor ever shall, I believe.
Strange! that these sober fellows cannot have a decent sprightliness, a modest assurance with them! Something debonnair; which need not be separated from that awe and reverence, when they address a woman, which should show the ardor of their passion, rather than the sheepishness of their nature; for who knows not, that lve delights in taming the lion-hearted? That those of the sex, who are most conscious of their own defect, in point of courage, naturally require, and therefore as naturally prefer, the man who has most of it, as the most able to give them the requisite protection? That the greater their own cowardice, as it would be called in a man, the greater is their delight in subjects of heroism? As may be observed in their reading; which turns upon difficulties encounter'd, battles fought, and enemies overcome, 4 or 500 by the prowess of one single hero, the more improbable the better : In short, that their man should be a hero to every one living but themselves; and to them know no bound to his humility. A woman has some glory in subduing a heart no man living can appall; and hence too often the bravo, assuming the hero, and making himself pass for one, succeeds as only a hero should.
But as for honest Hickman, the good man is so generally meek, as I imagine, that I know not whether I have any preference paid me in his obsequiousness. And then, when I rate him, he seems to be so naturally fitted for rebuke, and so much expects it, that I know not how to disappoint him, whether he just then deserve it, or not. I am sure, he has puzzled me many a time when I have seen him look penitent for faults he has not committed, whether to pity or laugh at him.
You and I have often retrospected the faces and minds of grown people; that is to say, have formed images from their present appearances, outside and in, (as far as the manners of the persons would justify us in the latter) what sort of figures they made when boys and girls. And I'll tell you the lights in which Hickman, Solmes, and Lovelace, our three heroes, have appeared to me, supposing them boys at school.
Solmes I have imagined to be, a little, sordid, pilfering rogue, who would purloin from every-body, and beg every boy's bread and butter from him; while, as I have heard a reptile brag, he would in a winter-morning, spit upon his thumbs, and spread his own with it, that he might keep it all to himself.
Hickman, a great over-grown, lank-haired, chubby boy, who would be hunched and punched by everybody; and go home, with his finger in his eye, and tell his mother.
While Lovelace I have supposed a curl-pated villain, full of fire, fancy, and mischief; an orchard-robber, a wall-climber, a horse-rider without saddle or bridle, neck or nothing: A sturdy rogue, in short, who would kick and cuff, and do not right, and take no wrong of any-body; would get his head broke, then a plaister for it, or let it heal of itself; while he went on to do more mischief, and if not to get, to deserve, broken bones. And the same dispositions have grown up with them, and distinguish the men, with no very material alteration.
Only, that all men are monkeys more or less, or else that you and I should have such baboons as these too choose out of, is a mortifying thing, my dear.
I am sensible, that I am not a little out of season in treating thus ludicrously the subject I am upon, while you are so unhappy; and if my manner does not divert you, as my flightiness used to do, I am inexcusable both to you, and to my own heart: Which, I do assure you, notwithstanding my seeming levity, is wholly in your case.
As this letter is entirely whimsical, I will not send it until I can accompany it with something more solid and better suited to your unhappy circumstances; that is to say, to the present subject of our correspondence. Tomorrow, as I told you, will be wholly yours, and of consequence, your
ANNA HOWE’S