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<h2> LETTER XII </h2>
<h3> MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE SATURDAY, MARCH 25. </h3>
<p>What can I advise you to do, my noble creature? Your merit is your crime.
You can no more change your nature, than your persecutors can theirs. Your
distress is owing to the vast disparity between you and them. What would
you have of them? Do they not act in character?—And to whom? To an
alien. You are not one of them. They have two dependencies in their hope
to move you to compliance.—Upon their impenetrableness one [I'd give
it a more proper name, if I dared]; the other, on the regard you have
always had for your character, [Have they not heretofore owned as much?]
and upon your apprehensions from that of Lovelace, which would discredit
you, should you take any step by his means to extricate yourself. Then
they know, that resentment and unpersuadableness are not natural to you;
and that the anger they have wrought you up to, will subside, as all
extraordinaries soon do; and that once married, you will make the best of
it.</p>
<p>But surely your father's son and eldest daughter have a view (by
communicating to so narrow a soul all they know of your just aversion to
him) to entail unhappiness for life upon you, were you to have the man who
is already more nearly related to them, than ever he can be to you,
although the shocking compulsion should take place.</p>
<p>As to that wretch's perseverance, those only, who know not the man, will
wonder at it. He has not the least delicacy. His principal view in
marriage is not to the mind. How shall those beauties be valued, which
cannot be comprehended? Were you to be his, and shew a visible want of
tenderness to him, it is my opinion, he would not be much concerned at it.
I have heard you well observe, from your Mrs. Norton, That a person who
has any over-ruling passion, will compound by giving up twenty secondary
or under-satisfactions, though more laudable ones, in order to have that
gratified.</p>
<p>I'll give you the substance of a conversation [no fear you can be made to
like him worse than you do already] that passed between Sir Harry Downeton
and this Solmes, but three days ago, as Sir Harry told it but yesterday to
my mother and me. It will confirm to you that what your sister's insolent
Betty reported he should say, of governing by fear, was not of her own
head.</p>
<p>Sir Harry told her, he wondered he should wish to obtain you so much
against you inclination as every body knew it would be, if he did.</p>
<p>He matter'd not that, he said: coy maids made the fondest wives: [A sorry
fellow!] It would not at all grieve him to see a pretty woman make wry
faces, if she gave him cause to vex her. And your estate, by the
convenience of its situation, would richly pay him for all he could bear
with your shyness.</p>
<p>He should be sure, he said, after a while, of your complaisance, if not of
your love: and in that should be happier than nine parts in ten of his
married acquaintance.</p>
<p>What a wretch is this!</p>
<p>For the rest, your known virtue would be as great a security to him, as he
could wish for.</p>
<p>She will look upon you, said Sir Harry, if she be forced to marry you, as
Elizabeth of France did upon Philip II. of Spain, when he received her on
his frontiers as her husband, who was to have been but her father-in-law:
that is, with fear and terror, rather than with complaisance and love: and
you will perhaps be as surly to her, as that old monarch was to his young
bride.</p>
<p>Fear and terror, the wretch, the horrid wretch! said, looked pretty in a
bride as well as in a wife: and, laughing, [yes, my dear, the hideous
fellow laughed immoderately, as Sir Harry told us, when he said it,] it
should be his care to perpetuate the occasion for that fear, if he could
not think he had the love. And, truly, he was of opinion, that if LOVE and
FEAR must be separated in matrimony, the man who made himself feared,
fared best.</p>
<p>If my eyes would carry with them the execution which the eyes of the
basilisk are said to do, I would make it my first business to see this
creature.</p>
<p>My mother, however, says, it would be a prodigious merit in you, if you
could get over your aversion to him. Where, asks she [as you have been
asked before], is the praise-worthiness of obedience, if it be only paid
in instance where we give up nothing?</p>
<p>What a fatality, that you have no better an option—either a Scylla
or a Charybdis.</p>
<p>Were it not you, I should know how (barbarously as you are used) to advise
you in a moment. But such a noble character to suffer from a (supposed)
rashness and indiscretion of such a nature, would, as I have heretofore
observed, be a wound to the sex.</p>
<p>While I was in hope, that the asserting of your own independence would
have helped you, I was pleased that you had one resource, as I thought.
But now, that you have so well proved, that such a step would not avail
you, I am entirely at a loss what to say.</p>
<p>I will lay down my pen, and think.</p>
<hr />
<p>I have considered, and considered again; but, I protest, I know no more
what to say now, than before. Only this: That I am young, like yourself;
and have a much weaker judgment, and stronger passions, than you have.</p>
<p>I have heretofore said, that you have offered as much as you ought, in
offering to live single. If you were never to marry, the estate they are
so loth should go out of their name, would, in time, I suppose, revert to
your brother: and he or his would have it, perhaps, much more certainly
this way, than by the precarious reversions which Solmes makes them hope
for. Have you put this into their odd heads, my dear?—The tyrant
word AUTHORITY, as they use it, can be the only objection against this
offer.</p>
<p>One thing you must consider, that, if you leave your parents, your duty
and love will not suffer you to justify yourself by an appeal against
them; and so you'll have the world against you. And should Lovelace
continue his wild life, and behave ungratefully to you, will not his
baseness seem to justify their cruel treatment of you, as well as their
dislike of him?</p>
<p>May heaven direct you for the best!—I can only say, that for my own
part, I would do any thing, go any where, rather than be compelled to
marry the man I hate; and (were he such a man as Solmes) must always hate.
Nor could I have borne what you have borne, if from father and uncles, not
from brother and sister.</p>
<p>My mother will have it, that after they have tried their utmost efforts to
bring you into their measures, and find them ineffectual, they will
recede. But I cannot say I am of her mind. She does not own, she has any
authority for this, but her own conjecture. I should otherwise have hoped,
that your uncle Antony and she had been in on one secret, and that
favourable to you. Woe be to one of them at least [to you uncle to be sure
I mean] if they should be in any other!</p>
<p>You must, if possible, avoid being carried to that uncle's. The man, the
parson, your brother and sister present!—They'll certainly there
marry you to the wretch. Nor will your newly-raised spirit support you in
your resistance on such an occasion. Your meekness will return; and you
will have nothing for it but tears [tears despised by them all] and
ineffectual appeals and lamentations: and these tears when the ceremony is
profaned, you must suddenly dry up; and endeavour to dispose of yourself
to such a humble frame of mind, as may induce your new-made lord to
forgive all your past declarations of aversion.</p>
<p>In short, my dear, you must then blandish him over with a confession, that
all your past behaviour was maidenly reserve only: and it will be your
part to convince him of the truth of his imprudent sarcasm, that the
coyest maids make the fondest wives. Thus will you enter the state with a
high sense of obligation to his forgiving goodness: and if you will not be
kept to it by that fear, by which he proposes to govern, I am much
mistaken.</p>
<p>Yet, after all, I must leave the point undetermined, and only to be
determined, as you find they recede from their avowed purpose, or resolve
to remove you to your uncle Antony's. But I must repeat my wishes, that
something may fall out, that neither of these men may call you his!—And
may you live single, my dearest friend, till some man shall offer, that
may be as worthy of you, as man can be!</p>
<p>But yet, methinks, I would not, that you, who are so admirably qualified
to adorn the married state, should be always single. You know I am
incapable of flattery; and that I always speak and write the sincerest
dictates of my heart. Nor can you, from what you must know of your own
merit (taken only in a comparative light with others) doubt my sincerity.
For why should a person who delight to find out and admire every thing
that is praise-worthy in another, be supposed ignorant of like perfections
in herself, when she could not so much admire them in another, if she had
them not herself? And why may not I give her those praises, which she
would give to any other, who had but half of her excellencies?—Especially
when she is incapable of pride and vain-glory; and neither despises others
for the want of her fine qualities, nor overvalues herself upon them?—Over-values,
did I say!—How can that be?</p>
<p>Forgive me, my beloved friend. My admiration of you (increased, as it is,
by every letter you write) will not always be held down in silence;
although, in order to avoid offending you, I generally endeavour to keep
it from flowing to my pen, when I write to you, or to my lips, whenever I
have the happiness to be in your company.</p>
<p>I will add nothing (though I could add a hundred things on account of your
latest communications) but that I am</p>
<p>Your ever affectionate and faithful ANNA HOWE.</p>
<p>I hope I have pleased you with my dispatch. I wish I had been able to
please you with my requested advice.</p>
<p>You have given new beauties to the charming Ode which you have transmitted
to me. What pity that the wretches you have to deal with, put you out of
your admirable course; in the pursuit of which, like the sun, you was wont
to cheer and illuminate all you shone upon!</p>
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