When I began this letter, I did not think I could have run to such a length. But ’tis to you, my dearest friend, and you have a title to the spirits you raise and support; for they are no longer mine, and will subside the moment I cease writing to you.
But what do you bid me hope for, when you tell me that, if your mother’s health will permit, you will see me in town? I hope your mother’s health will be perfected as you wish; but I dare not promise myself so great a favour; so great a blessing, I will call it—and indeed I know not if I should be able to bear it now!
Yet one comfort it is in your power to give me; and that is, let me know, and very speedily it must be, if you wish to oblige me, that all matters are made up between you and Mr. Hickman; to whom, I see, you are resolved, with all your bravery of spirit, to owe a multitude of obligations for his patience with your flightiness. Think of this, my dear proud friend! and think, likewise, of what I have often told you, that pride, in man or woman, is an extreme that hardly ever fails, sooner or later, to bring forth its mortifying contrary.
May you, my dear Miss Howe, have no discomforts but what you make to yourself! as it will be in your own power to lessen such as these, they ought to be your punishment if you do not. There is no such thing as perfect happiness here, since the busy mind will make to itself evils, were it to find none. You will, therefore, pardon this limited wish, strange as it may appear, till you consider it: for to wish you no infelicity, either within or without you, were to wish you what can never happen in this world; and what perhaps ought not to be wished for, if by a wish one could give one’s friend such an exemption; since we are not to live here always.
We must not, in short, expect that our roses will grow without thorns: but then they are useful and instructive thorns: which, by pricking the fingers of the too-hasty plucker, teach future caution. And who knows not that difficulty gives poignancy to our enjoyments; which are apt to lose their relish with us when they are over easily obtained?
I must conclude—
God forever bless you, and all you love and honour, and reward you here and hereafter for your kindness to
Letter 459
Mrs. Norton, to Miss Clarissa Harlowe
[In answer to hers of . See Letter 433]
Thursday,
I had written sooner, my dearest young lady, but that I have been endeavouring, ever since the receipt of your last letter, to obtain a private audience of your mother, in hopes of leave to communicate it to her. But last night I was surprised by an invitation to breakfast at Harlowe-place this morning; and the chariot came early to fetch me—an honour I did not expect.
When I came, I found there was to be a meeting of all your family with Col. Morden, at Harlowe-place; and it was proposed by your mother, and consented to, that I should be present. Your cousin, I understand, had with difficulty brought this meeting to bear; for your brother had before industriously avoided all conversation with him on the affecting subject; urging that it was not necessary to talk to Mr. Morden upon it, who, being a remoter relation than themselves, had no business to make himself a judge of their conduct to their daughter, their niece, and their sister; especially as he had declared himself in her favour; adding, that he should hardly have patience to be questioned by Mr. Morden on that head.
I was in hopes that your mother would have given me an opportunity of talking with her alone before the company met; but she seemed studiously to avoid it; I dare say, however, not with her inclination.
I was ordered in just before Mr. Morden came; and was bid to sit down—which I did in the window.
The Colonel, when he came, began the discourse, by renewing, as he called it, his solicitations in your favour. He set before them your penitence; your ill health; your virtue, though once betrayed, and basely used; he then read to them Mr. Lovelace’s letter, a most contrite one indeed,373 and your high-souled answer;374 for that was what he justly called it; and he treated as it deserved Mr. Brand’s officious information, (of which I had before heard he had made them ashamed), by representations founded upon inquiries made by Mr. Alston,375 whom he had procured to go up on purpose to acquaint himself with your manner of life, and what was meant by the visits of that Mr. Belford.
He then told them, that he had the day before waited upon Miss Howe, and had been shown a letter from you to her,376 and permitted to take some memorandums from it, in which you appeared, both by handwriting, and the contents, to be so very ill, that it seemed doubtful to him, if it were possible for you to get over it. And when he read to them that passage, where you ask Miss Howe, “What can be done for you now, were your friends to be ever so favourable? and wish for their sakes, more than for your own, that they would still relent;” and then
