When your mother sees, how much I suffer in my reputation from the step I have taken, from whom she and all the world expected better things, how much reason has she to be watchful over you! One evil draws on another after it; and how knows she, or anybody, where it may stop?
Does not the person who will vindicate, or seek to extenuate, a faulty step in another (in this light must your mother look upon the matter in question between her and you) give an indication either of a culpable will, or a weak judgment; and may not she apprehend, that the censorious will think, that such a one might probably have equally failed under the same inducements
and provocations
, to use your own words, as applied to me in a former letter?
Can there be a stronger instance in human life than mine has so early furnished, within a few months past, (not to mention the uncommon provocations to it, which I have met with), of the necessity of the continuance of a watchful parent’s care over a daughter: let that daughter have obtained ever so great a reputation for her prudence?
Is not the space from sixteen to twenty-one that which requires this care, more than at any time of a young woman’s life? For in that period do we not generally attract the eyes of the other sex, and become the subject of their addresses, and not seldom of their attempts? And is not that the period in which our conduct or misconduct gives us a reputation or disreputation, that almost inseparably accompanies us throughout our whole future lives?
Are we not likewise then most in danger from ourselves, because of the distinction with which we are apt to behold particulars of that sex.
And when our dangers multiply, both from within and without, do not our parents know, that their vigilance ought to be doubled? And shall that necessary increase of care sit uneasy upon us, because we are grown up to stature and womanhood?
Will you tell me, if so, what is the precise stature and age at which a good child shall conclude herself absolved from the duty she owes to a parent?—And at which a parent, after the example of the dams of the brute creation, is to lay aside all care and tenderness for her offspring?
Is it so hard for you, my dear, to be treated like a child? And can you not think it is hard for a good parent to imagine herself under the unhappy necessity of so treating her woman-grown daughter?
Do you think, if your mother had been you, and you your mother, and your daughter had struggled with you, as you did with her, that you would not have been as apt as your mother was to have slapped your daughter’s hands, to have made her quit her hold, and give up the prohibited letter?
Your mother told you, with great truth, that you provoked her to this harshness; and it was a great condescension in her (and not taken notice of by you as it deserved) to say that she was sorry for it
.
At every age on this side matrimony (for then we come under another sort of protection, though that is far from abrogating the filial duty) it will be found, that the wings of our parents are our most necessary and most effectual safeguard from the vultures, the hawks, the kites, and other villainous birds of prey, that hover over us with a view to seize and destroy us the first time we are caught wandering out of the eye or care of our watchful and natural guardians and protectors.
Hard as you may suppose it, to be denied the continuance of a correspondence once so much approved, even by the venerable denier; yet, if your mother think my fault to be of such a nature, as that a correspondence with me will cast a shade upon your reputation, all my own friends having given me up—that hardship is to be submitted to. And must it not make her the more strenuous to support her own opinion, when she sees the first fruits of this tenaciousness on your side is to be gloriously in the sullens
, as you call it, and in a disobedient opposition?
I know that you have a humorous meaning in that expression, and that this turn, in most cases, gives a delightful poignancy both to your conversation and correspondence; but indeed, my dear, this case will not bear humour.
Will you give me leave to add to this tedious expostulation, that I by no means approve of some of the things you write, in relation to the manner in which your father and mother lived—at times lived—only at times, I dare say, though perhaps too often.
Your mother is answerable to anybody, rather than to her child, for whatever was wrong in her conduct, if anything was wrong, towards Mr. Howe: a gentleman, of whose memory I will only say, that it ought to be revered by you—But yet, should you not examine yourself, whether your displeasure at your mother had no part in your revived reverence for your father at the time you wrote?
No one is perfect: and although your mother may not be right to remember disagreeableness against the departed, yet should you not want to be reminded on whose account, and on what occasion, she remembered them. You cannot judge, nor ought you to attempt to judge, of what might have passed between both, to embitter and keep awake disagreeable remembrances in the survivor.
Letter 134
Miss Clarissa Harlowe
[In continuation]
But this subject must not be pursued. Another might, with more pleasure, (though not with more approbation), upon one of your lively excursions. It is upon the high airs you give yourself upon the word approve.
How comes it about, I wonder, that a young lady so noted for predominating
