Clarissa Harlowe Samuel Richardson (most important books to read TXT) 📖
- Author: Samuel Richardson
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The restraint your mother lays you under would not have appeared heavy to you but on my account. Would you had once thought it a hardship to be admitted to a part of her bed?—How did I use to be delighted with such a favour from my mother! how did I love to work in her presence!—So did you in the presence of yours once. And to read to her in winter evenings I know was one of your joys.—Do not give me cause to reproach myself on the reason that may be assigned for the change in you.
Learn, my dear, I beseech you, learn to subdue your own passions. Be the motives what they will, excess is excess. Those passions in our sex, which we take pains to subdue, may have one and the same source with those infinitely-blacker passions, which we used so often to condemn in the violent and headstrong of the other sex; and which may only be heightened in them by custom, and their freer education. Let us both, my dear, ponder well this thought: look into ourselves, and fear.
If I write, as I find I must, I insist upon your forbearing to write. Your silence to this shall be the sign to me that you will not think of the rashness you threaten me with: and that you will obey your mother as to your own part of the correspondence, however; especially as you can inform or advise me in every weighty case by Mr. Hickman’s pen.
My trembling writing will show you, my dear impetuous creature, what a trembling heart you have given to
Your ever obliged,
Or, if you take so rash a step,
Your forever disobliged,
Clarissa Harlowe.
My clothes were brought to me just now. But you have so much discomposed me, that I have no heart to look into the trunks. Why, why, my dear, will you fright me with your flaming love? discomposure gives distress to a weak heart, whether it arise from friendship or enmity.
A servant of Mr. Lovelace carries this to Mr. Hickman for dispatch-sake. Let that worthy man’s pen relieve my heart from this new uneasiness.
Letter 166 Mr. Hickman, to Miss Clarissa Harlowe[Sent to Wilson’s by a particular hand]
Friday, May 5
Madam,
I have the honour of dear Miss Howe’s commands to acquaint you, without knowing the occasion, “That she is excessively concerned for the concern she has given you in her last letter: and that, if you will but write to her, under cover as before, she will have no thoughts of what you are so very apprehensive about.”—Yet she bid me write, “That if she had but the least imagination that she can serve you, and save you,” those are her words, “all the censures of the world will be but of second consideration with her.” I have great temptations, on this occasion, to express my own resentments upon your present state; but not being fully apprised of what that is—only conjecturing from the disturbance upon the mind of the dearest lady in the world to me, and the most sincere of friends to you, that that is not altogether so happy as were to be wished; and being, moreover, forbid to enter into the cruel subject; I can only offer, as I do, my best and faithfullest services! and wish you a happy deliverance from all your troubles. For I am,
Most excellent young lady,
Your faithful and most obedient servant,
Ch. Hickman.
Letter 167 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.Tuesday, May 2
Mercury, as the fabulist tells us, having the curiosity to know the estimation he stood in among mortals, descended in disguise, and in a statuary’s shop cheapened a Jupiter, then a Juno, then one, then another, of the dii majores; and, at last, asked, What price that same statue of Mercury bore? O Sir, says the artist, buy one of the others, and I’ll throw you in that for nothing.
How sheepish must the god of thieves look upon this rebuff to his vanity!
So thou! a thousand pounds wouldst thou give for the good opinion of this single lady—to be only thought tolerably of, and not quite unworthy of her conversation, would make thee happy. And at parting last night, or rather this morning, thou madest me promise a few lines to Edgware, to let thee know what she thinks of thee, and of thy brethren.
Thy thousand pounds, Jack, is all thy own: for most heartily does she dislike ye all—thee as much as any of the rest.
I am sorry for it too, as to thy part; for two reasons—one, that I think thy motive for thy curiosity was fear of consciousness: whereas that of the arch-thief was vanity, intolerable vanity: and he was therefore justly sent away with a blush upon his cheeks to heaven, and could not brag—the other, that I am afraid, if she dislikes thee, she dislikes me: for are we not birds of a feather?
I must never talk of reformation, she told me, having such companions, and taking such delight, as I seemed to take, in their frothy conversation.
I, no more than you, Jack, imagined she could possibly like ye: but then, as my friends, I thought a person of her education would have been more sparing of her censures.
I don’t know how it is, Belford; but women think themselves entitled to take any freedoms with us; while we are unpolite, forsooth, and I can’t tell what, if we don’t tell a pack of cursed lies, and make black white, in their favour—teaching us to be hypocrites, yet stigmatizing us, at other times, for deceivers.
I defended ye all as well as I could: but you know there was no attempting aught but a palliative defence, to one of her principles.
I will summarily give thee
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