I am very sorry that my cousin Morden has taken a resolution to see Mr. Lovelace.
My apprehensions on this intelligence are a great abatement to the pleasure I have in knowing that he still loves me.
My sister’s letter to me is a most affecting one—so needlessly, so ludicrously taunting!—But for that part of it that is so, I ought rather to pity her, than to be so much concerned at it as I am.
I wonder what I have done to Mr. Brand—I pray God to forgive both him and his informants, whoever they be. But if the scandal arise solely from Mr. Belford’s visits, a very little time will confute it. Meanwhile, the packet I shall send you, which I sent to Miss Howe, will, I hope, satisfy you, my dear Mrs. Norton, as to my reasons for admitting his visits.
My sister’s taunting letter, and the inflexibleness of my dearer friends—But how do remoter-begun subjects tend to the point which lies nearest the heart!—As new-caught bodily disorders all crowd to a fractured or distempered part.
I will break off, with requesting your prayers that I may be blessed with patience and due resignation; and with assuring you, that I am, and will be to the last hour of my life,
Letter 434
Miss Howe, to Miss Clarissa Harlowe
[In Reply to Hers of Friday, ]
Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, 347
My Dearest Friend,
I have read the letters and copies of letters you favoured me with: and I return them by a particular hand. I am extremely concerned at your indifferent state of health: but I approve of all your proceedings and precautions in relation to the appointment of Mr. Belford for an office, in which, I hope, neither he nor anybody else will be wanted to act, for many, very many years.
I admire, and so we do all, that greatness of mind which can make you so steadfastly despise (through such inducements as no other woman could resist, and in such desolate circumstances as you have been reduced to) the wretch that ought to be so heartily despised and detested.
What must the contents of those letters from your relations be, which you will not communicate to me!—Fie upon them! How my heart rises!—But I dare say no more—though you yourself now begin to think they use you with great severity.
Everybody here is so taken with Mr. Hickman (and the more from the horror they conceive at the character of the detestable Lovelace), that I have been teased to death almost to name a day. This has given him airs: and, did I not keep him to it, he would behave as carelessly and as insolently as if he were sure of me. I have been forced to mortify him no less than four times since we have been here.
I made him lately undergo a severe penance for some negligences that were not to be passed over. Not designed ones, he said: but that was a poor excuse, as I told him: for, had they been designed, he should never have come into my presence more: that they were not, showed his want of thought and attention; and those were inexcusable in a man only in his probatory state.
He hoped he had been more than in a probatory state, he said.
And therefore, Sir, might be more careless!—So you add ingratitude to negligence, and make what you plead as accident, that itself wants an excuse, design, which deserves none.
I would not see him for two days, and he was so penitent, and so humble, that I had like to have lost myself, to make him amends: for, as you have said, resentment carried too high, often ends in amends too humble.
I long to be nearer to you: but that must not yet be, it seems. Pray, my dear, let me hear from you as often as you can.
May Heaven increase your comforts, and restore your health, are the prayers of
Letter 435
Miss Clarissa Harlowe, to Miss Howe
Friday,
You are very obliging, my dear Miss Howe, to account to me for your silence. I was easy in it, as I doubted not that, among such near and dear friends as you are with, you was diverted from writing by some such agreeable excursion as that you mention.
I was in hopes that you had given over, at this time of day, those very sprightly airs, which I have taken the liberty to blame you for, as often as you have given me occasion to so do; and that has been very often.
I was always very grave with you upon this subject: and while your own and a worthy man’s future happiness are in the question, I must enter into it, whenever you forget yourself, although I had not a day to live: and indeed I am very ill.
I am sure it was not your intention to take your future husband with you to the little island to make him look weak and silly among those of your relations who never before had seen him. Yet do you think it possible for them (however prepared and resolved they may be to like him) to forbear smiling at him, when they see him suffering under your whimsical penances? A modest man should no more be made little in his own eyes, than in the eyes of others. If he be, he will have a diffidence, which will give an awkwardness to
