Pamela, Volume II

LETTER XII

From Lady Davers to Mrs. B.

My dear Pamela,

You very much oblige me by your cheerful compliance with my request: I leave it entirely to you to write as you shall be in the humour, when you take up your pen; and then I shall have you write with less restraint: for, you must know, that what we admire in you, are truth and nature, not studied or elaborate epistles. We can hear at church, or read in our closets, fifty good things that we expect not from you: but we cannot receive from any body else the pleasure of sentiments flowing with that artless ease, which so much affects us when we read your letters. Then, my sweet girl, your gratitude, prudence, integrity of heart, your humility, shine so much in all your letters and thoughts, that no wonder my brother loves you as he does.

But I shall make you proud, I doubt, and so by praise ruin those graces which we admire, and, but for that, cannot praise you too much. In my conscience, if thou canst hold as thou hast begun, I believe thou wilt have him all to thyself; and that was more than I once thought any woman on this side the seventieth year of his age would ever be able to say. The letters to and from your parents, we are charmed with, and the communicating of them to me, I take to be as great an instance of your confidence in me, as it is of your judgment and prudence; for you cannot but think, that we, his relations, are a little watchful over your conduct, and have our eyes upon you, to observe what use you are likely to make of your power over your man, with respect to your own relations.

Hitherto all is unexampled prudence, and you take the right method to reconcile even the proudest of us to your marriage, and make us not only love you, but respect your parents: for their honesty will, I perceive, be their distinguishing character, and they will not forget themselves, nor their former condition.

I can tell you, you are exactly right; for if you were to be an encroacher, as the good old man calls it, my brother would be the first to see it, and would gradually think less and less of you, till possibly he might come to despise you, and to repent of his choice: for the least shadow of an imposition, or low cunning, or mere selfishness, he cannot bear.

In short, you are a charming girl; and Lady Betty says so too; and moreover adds, that if he makes you not the best and faithfullest of husbands, he cannot deserve you, for all his fortune and birth. And in my heart, I begin to think so too.

But won't you oblige me with the sequel of your letter to your father? For, you promise, my dear charming scribbler, in that you sent me, to write again to his letter; and I long to see how you answer the latter part of it, about your relations desiring already to come and live with him. I know what I expect from you. But let it be what it will, send it to me exactly as you wrote it; and I shall see whether I have reason to praise or reprove you. For surely, Pamela, you must leave one room to blame you for something. Indeed I can hardly bear the thought, that you should so much excel as you do, and have more prudence, by nature, as it were, than the best of us get in a course of the genteelest educations and with fifty advantages, at least, in conversation, that you could not have, by reason of my mother's retired life, while you were with her, and your close attendance on her person.

But I'll tell you what has been a great improvement to you; it is your own writings. This itch of scribbling has been a charming help. For here, having a natural fund of good sense, and prudence above your years, you have, with the observations these have enabled you to make, been flint and steel too, as I may say, to yourself: so that you have struck fire when you pleased, wanting nothing but a few dry leaves, like the first pair in old Du Bartas, to serve as tinder to catch your animating sparks. So that reading constantly, and thus using yourself to write, and enjoying besides a good memory, every thing you heard and read became your own; and not only so, but was improved by passing through more salubrious ducts and vehicles; like some fine fruit grafted upon a common free-stock, whose more exuberant juices serve to bring to quicker and greater perfection the downy peach, or the smooth nectarine, with its crimson blush.

Really, Pamela, I believe, I, too, shall improve by writing to you-Why, you dear saucy-face, at this rate, you'll make every one that converses with you, better, and wiser, and wittier too, as far as I know, than they ever before thought there was room for 'em to be.

As to my own part, I begin to like what I have written myself, I think; and your correspondence may revive the poetical ideas that used to fire my mind, before I entered into the drowsy married life; for my good Lord Davers's turn happens not to be to books; and so by degrees my imagination was in a manner quenched, and I, as a dutiful wife should, endeavoured to form my taste by that of the man I chose.—But, after all, Pamela, you are not to be a little proud of my correspondence; and I could not have thought it ever would have come to this; but you will observe, that I am the more free and unreserved, to encourage you to write without restraint: for already you have made us a family of writers and readers; so that Lord Davers himself is become enamoured of your letters, and desires of all things he may hear read every one that passes between us. Nay, Jackey, for that matter, who was the most thoughtless, whistling, sauntering fellow you ever knew, and whose delight in a book ran no higher than a song or a catch, now comes in with an enquiring face, and vows he'll set pen to paper, and turn letter-writer himself; and intends (if my brother won't take it amiss, he says) to begin to you, provided he could be sure of an answer.

I have twenty things still to say; for you have unlocked all our bosoms. And yet I intended not to write above ten or a dozen lines when I began; only to tell you, that I would have you take your own way, in your subjects, and in your style. And if you will but give me hope, that you are in the way I so much wish to have you in, I will then call myself your affectionate sister; but till then, it shall only barely be your correspondent,

B. DAVERS. You'll proceed with the account of your Kentish affair, I doubt not.

LETTER XIII

MY DEAR GOOD LADY,

What kind, what generous things are you pleased to say of your happy correspondent! And what reason have I to value myself on such an advantage as is now before me, if I am capable of improving it as I ought, from a correspondence with so noble and so admired a lady! To be praised by such a genius, and my honoured benefactor's worthy sister, whose favour, next to his, it was always my chief ambition to obtain, is what would be enough to fill with vanity a steadier and a more equal mind than mine.

I have heard from my late honoured lady, what a fine pen her beloved daughter was mistress of, when she pleased to take it up. But I never could have presumed, but from your ladyship's own motion, to hope to be in any manner the subject of it, much less to be called your correspondent.

Indeed, Madam, I am very proud of this honour, and consider it as such a heightening to my pleasures, as only that could give; and I will set about obeying your ladyship without reserve.

But, first, permit me to disclaim any merit, from my own poor writings, to that improvement which your goodness imputes to me. What I have to boast, of that sort, is owing principally, if it deserves commendation, to my late excellent lady.

It is hard to be imagined what pains her ladyship took with her poor servant. Besides making me keep a book of her charities dispensed by me, I always set down, in my way, the cases of the distressed, their griefs from misfortunes, and their joys of her bountiful relief; and so I entered early into the various turns that affected worthy hearts, and was taught the better to regulate my own, especially by the help of her fine observations, when I read what I wrote. For many a time has her generous heart overflowed with pleasure at my remarks, and with praises; and I was her good girl, her dear Pamela, her hopeful maiden; and she would sometimes snatch my hand with transport, and draw me to her, and vouchsafe to kiss me; and always was saying, what she would do for me, if God spared her, and I continued to be deserving.

O my dear lady! you cannot think what an encouragement this condescending behaviour and goodness was to me. Madam, you cannot think it.

I used to throw myself at her feet, and embrace her knees; and, my eyes streaming with tears of joy, would often cry, "O continue to me, my dearest lady, the blessing of your favour, and kind instructions, and it is all your happy Pamela can wish for."

But I will proceed to obey your ladyship, and write with as much freedom as I possibly can: for you must not expect, that I can entirely divest myself of that awe which will necessarily lay me under a greater restraint, than if writing to my parents, whose partiality for their daughter made me, in a manner, secure of their good opinions.

To shorten the work before me, in the account I am to give of the sweet fortnight that we passed in Kent, I enclose not only the copy of the letter your ladyship requested, but my father's answer to it.

The letters I sent before, and those I now send, will afford several particulars; such as a brief description of the house and farm, and your honoured brother's intentions of retiring thither now-and-then; of the happiness and gratitude of my dear parents, and their wishes to be able to deserve the comfort his goodness has heaped upon them; and that in stronger lights than I am able to set them; I will only, in a summary manner, mention the rest; and, particularly, the behaviour of my dear benefactor to me, and my parents. He seemed always to delight in being particularly kind to them before strangers, and before the tenants, and before Mr. Sorby, Mr. Bennet, and Mr. Shepherd, three of the principal gentlemen in the neighbourhood, who, with their ladies, came to visit us, and whose visits we all returned; for your dear brother would not permit my father and mother to decline the invitation of those worthy families.

Every day we rode out, or walked a little about the grounds; and while we were there, he employed hands to cut a vista through a coppice, as they call it, or rather a little wood, to a rising ground, which, fronting an old-fashioned balcony, in the middle of the house, he ordered it to be planted like a grove, and a pretty alcove to be erected on its summit, of which he has sent them a draught, drawn by his own hand. This and a few other alterations, mentioned in my letter to my father, are to be finished against we go down next.

The dear gentleman was every hour pressing me, while there, to take one diversion or other, frequently upbraiding me, that I seemed not to choose any thing, urging me to propose sometimes what I could wish he should oblige me in, and not always to leave it to him to choose for me: saying, he was half afraid that my constant compliance with every thing he proposed, laid me sometimes under a restraint: and he would have me have a will of my own, since it was impossible, that it could be such as he should not take a delight in conforming to it.

I will not trouble your ladyship with any further particulars relating to this happy fortnight, which was made up all of white and unclouded days, to the very last; and your ladyship will judge better than I can describe, of the parting between my dear parents, and their honoured benefactor and me.

We set out, attended with the good wishes of crowds of persons of all degrees; for your dear brother left behind him noble instances of his bounty; it being the first time, as he bid Mr. Longman say, that he had been down among them since that estate had been in his hands.

But permit me to observe, that I could not forbear often, very often, in this happy period, to thank God in private, for the blessed terms upon which I was there, to what I should have been, had I gracelessly accepted of those which formerly were tendered to me; for your ladyship will remember, that the Kentish estate was to be part of the purchase of my infamy.

We returned through London, by the like easy journeys, but tarried not to see any thing of that vast metropolis, any more than we did in going through it before; your beloved brother only stopping at his banker's, and desiring him to look out for a handsome house, which he proposes to take for his winter residence. He chooses it to be about the new buildings called Hanover Square; and he left Mr. Longman there to see one, which his banker believed would be fit for him.

And thus, my dear lady, I have answered your first commands, by the help of the letters which passed between my dear parents and me; and conclude this with the assurance that I am, with high respect, your ladyship's most obliged and faithful servant,

P.B.

LETTER XIV

MY DEAREST LADY,

I now set myself to obey your ladyship's second command, which is, to give an account in what manner your dear brother broke to me the affair of the unfortunate Miss Godfrey, with my behaviour upon it; and this I cannot do better, than by transcribing scribing the relation I gave at that time, in letters to my dear parents, which your ladyship has not seen, in these very words.

[See Vol. I, p. 431, beginning "My dear Mr. B.," down to p. 441.]

Thus far, my dear lady, the relation I gave to my parents, at the time of my being first acquainted with this melancholy affair.

It is a great pleasure to me, that I can already flatter myself, from the hints you kindly gave me, that I behaved as you wished I should behave. Indeed, Madam, I could not help it, for I pitied most sincerely the unhappy lady; and though I could not but rejoice, that I had had the grace to escape the dangerous attempts of the dear intriguer, yet never did the story of any unfortunate lady make such an impression upon me as hers did: she loved him, and believed, no doubt, he loved her too well to take ungenerous advantages of her soft passion for him: and so, by degrees, put herself into his power; and too seldom, alas I have the noblest-minded of the seducing sex the mercy or the goodness to spare the poor creatures that do!

Then 'tis another misfortune of people in love; they always think highly of the beloved object, and lowly of themselves, such a dismal mortifier is love!

I say not this, Madam, to excuse the poor lady's fall; nothing can do that; because virtue is, and ought to be, preferable to all considerations, and to life itself. But, methinks, I love this dear lady so well for the sake of her edifying penitence, that I would fain extenuate her crime, if I could; and the rather, as in all probability, it was a first love on both sides; and so he could not appear to her as a practised deceiver.

Your ladyship will see, by what I have transcribed, how I behaved myself to the dear Miss Goodwin; and I am so fond of the little charmer, as well for the sake of her unhappy mother, though personally unknown to me, as for the relation she bears to the dear gentleman whom I am bound to love and honour, that I must beg your ladyship's interest to procure her to be given up to my care, when it shall be thought proper. I am sure I shall act by her as tenderly as if I was her own mother. And glad I am, that the poor unfaulty baby is so justly beloved by Mr. B.

But I will here conclude this letter, with assuring your ladyship, and

I am your obliged and humble servant,

P.B.

LETTER XV

MY GOOD LADY,

I now come to your ladyship's remarks on my conduct to Mrs. Jewkes: which you are pleased to think too kind and forgiving considering the poor woman's baseness.

Your ladyship says, that I ought not to have borne her in my sight, after the impudent assistance she gave to his lewd attempts; much less to have left her in her place, and rewarded her. Alas! my dear lady, what could I do? a poor prisoner as I was made, for weeks together, in breach of all the laws of civil society; without a soul who durst be my friend; and every day expecting to be ruined and undone, by one of the haughtiest and most determined spirits in the world!—and when it pleased God to turn his heart, and incline him to abandon his wicked attempts, and to profess honourable love to me, his poor servant, can it be thought I was to insist upon conditions with such a gentleman, who had me in his power; and who, if I had provoked him, might have resumed all his wicked purposes against me?

Indeed, I was too much overjoyed, after all my dangers past (which were so great, that I could not go to rest, nor rise, but with such apprehensions, that I wished for death rather than life), to think of refusing any terms that I could yield to, and keep my honour.

And though such noble ladies, as your ladyship and Lady Betty, who are born to independency, and are hereditarily, as I may say, on a foot with the highest-descended gentleman in the land, might have exerted a spirit, and would have a right to choose your own servants, and to distribute rewards and punishments to the deserving and undeserving, at your own good pleasure; yet what had I, a poor girl, who owed even my title to common notice, to the bounty of my late good lady, and had only a kind of imputed sightliness of person, though enough to make me the subject of vile attempts; who, from a situation of terror and apprehension, was lifted up to an hope, beyond my highest ambition, and was bid to pardon the bad woman, as an instance, that I could forgive his own hard usage of me; who had experienced so often the violence and impetuosity of his temper, which even his beloved mother never ventured to oppose till it began to subside, and then, indeed, he was all goodness and acknowledgment; of which I could give your ladyship more than one instance.

What, I say, had I to do, to take upon me lady-airs, and to resent? But, my dear ladies (let me, in this instance, bespeak the attention of you both), I should be inexcusable, if I did not tell you all the truth; and that is, that I not only forgave the poor wretch, in regard to his commands, but from my own inclination also. If I am wrong in saying this, I must submit it to your ladyships; and, as I pretend not to perfection, am ready to take the blame I deserve in your ladyships' judgments: but indeed, were it to be again, I verily think, I could not help forgiving her.—And were I not able to say this, I should be thought to have made a mean court to my master's passions, and to have done a wrong thing with my eyes open: which I humbly conceive, no one should do.

When full power was given me over this poor creature (seemingly at least, though it might possibly have been resumed, and I might have been re-committed to hers, had I given him reason to think I made an arrogant use of it), you cannot imagine what a triumph I had in my mind over the mortified guilt, which (from the highest degree of insolence and imperiousness, that before had hardened her masculine features) appeared in her countenance, when she found the tables likely to be soon turned upon her.

This change of behaviour, which at first discovered itself in a sullen awe, and afterwards in a kind of silent respect, shewed me, what an influence power had over her: and that when she could treat her late prisoner, when taken into favour, so obsequiously, it was the less wonder the bad woman could think it her duty to obey commands so unjust, when her obedience to them was required from her master.