it shall not be long before I see you, now I understand you are returned from your Kentish expedition.
We have been exceedingly diverted with your papers. You have given us, by their means, many a delightful hour, that otherwise would have hung heavy upon us; and we are all charmed with you. Lady Betty, and her noble mamma, has been of our party, whenever we have read your accounts. She is a dear generous lady, and has shed with us many a tear over them; and my lord has not been unmoved, nor Jackey neither, at some of your distresses and reflections. Indeed, Pamela, you are a charming creature, and an ornament to your sex. We wanted to have had you among us a hundred times, as we read, that we might have loved, and kissed, and thanked you.
But after all, my brother, generous and noble as he seemed, when your trials were over, was a strange wicked young fellow; and happy it was for you both, that he was so cleverly caught in the trap he had laid for your virtue.
I can assure you, my lord longs to see you, and will accompany me; for, he says, he has but a faint idea of your person. I tell him, and them all, that you are the finest girl, and the most improved in person and mind, I ever beheld; and I am not afraid although they should imagine all they can in your favour, from my account, that they will be disappointed when they see and converse with you. But one thing more you must do, and then we will love you still more; and that is, send us the rest of your papers, down to your marriage at least; and farther, it you have written farther; for we all long to see the rest, as you relate it, though we know in general what has passed.
You leave off with an account of an angry letter I wrote to my brother, to persuade him to give you your liberty, and a sum of money; not doubting but his designs would end in your ruin, and, I own, not wishing he would marry you; for little did I know of your merit and excellence, nor could I, but for your letters so lately sent me, have had any notion of either. I don't question, but if you have recited my passionate behaviour to you, when at the hall, I shall make a ridiculous figure enough; but I will forgive all that, for the sake of the pleasure you have given me, and will still farther give me, if you comply with my request.
Lady Betty says, it is the best story she has heard, and the most instructive; and she longs to have the conclusion of it in your own words. She says now and then, "What a hopeful brother you have, Lady Davers! O these intriguing gentlemen!—What rogueries do they not commit! I should have had a fine husband of him, had I received your proposal! The dear Pamela would have run in his head, and had I been the first lady in the kingdom, I should have stood but a poor chance in his esteem; for, you see, his designs upon her began early."
She says, you had a good heart to go back again to him, when the violent wretch had driven you from him on such a slight occasion: but yet, she thinks the reasons you give in your relation, and your love for him (which then you began to discover was your case), as well as the event, shewed you did right.
But we'll tell you all our judgments, when we have read the rest of your accounts. So pray send them as soon as you can, to (I won't write myself sister till then) your affectionate, &c.
B. DAVERS.
LETTER VII
My good dear Lady,
You have done me great honour in the letter your ladyship has been pleased to send me; and it is a high pleasure to me, now all is so happily over, that my poor papers in the least diverted you, and such honourable and worthy persons as your ladyship mentions. I could wish I might be favoured with such remarks on my conduct, so nakedly set forth (without any imagination that they would ever appear in such an assembly), as may be of use to me in my future life, and thus make me more worthy than it is otherwise possible I can be, of the honour to which I am raised. Do, dearest lady, favour me so far. I am prepared to receive blame, and to benefit by it, and cannot expect praise so much from my actions as from my intentions; for indeed, these were always just and honourable: but why, even for these do I talk of praise, since, being prompted by impulses I could not resist, it can be no merit in me to have been governed by them?
As to the papers following those in your hands, when I say, that they must needs appear impertinent to such judges, after what you know, I dare say, your ladyship will not insist upon them: yet I will not scruple briefly to mention what they contain.
All my dangers and trials were happily at an end: so that they only contain the conversations that passed between your ladyship's generous brother and me; his kind assurances of honourable love to me; my acknowledgments of unworthiness to him; Mrs. Jewkes's respectful change of behaviour towards me; Mr. B.'s reconciliation to Mr. Williams; his introducing me to the good families in the neighbourhood, and avowing before them his honourable intentions. A visit from my honest father, who (not knowing what to conclude from my letter to him before I returned to your honoured brother, desiring my papers from him) came in great anxiety of heart to know the worst, doubting I had at last been caught by a stratagem, ending in my ruin. His joyful surprise to find how happy I was likely to be. All the hopes given me, answered by the private celebration of our nuptials—an honour so much above all that my utmost ambition could make me aspire to, and which I never can deserve! Your ladyship's arrival, and anger, not knowing I was actually married, but supposing me a vile wicked creature; in which case I should have deserved the worst of usage. Mr. B.'s angry lessons to me, for daring to interfere; though I thought in the tenderest and most dutiful manner, between your ladyship and himself. The most acceptable goodness and favour of your ladyship afterwards to me, of which, as becomes me, I shall ever retain the most grateful sense. My return to this sweet mansion in a manner so different from my quitting it, where I had been so happy for four years, in paying my duty to the best of mistresses, your ladyship's excellent mother, to whose goodness, in taking me from my poor honest parents, and giving me what education I have, I owe, under God, my happiness. The joy of good Mrs. Jervis, Mr. Longman, and all the servants, on this occasion. Mr. B.'s acquainting me with Miss Godfrey's affair, and presenting to me the pretty Miss Goodwin, at the dairy-house. Our appearance at church; the favour of the gentry in the neighbourhood, who, knowing your ladyship had not disdained to look upon me, and to be favourable to me, came the more readily into a neighbourly intimacy with me, and still so much the more readily, as the continued kindness of my dear benefactor, and his condescending deportment to me before them (as if I had been worthy of the honour done me), did credit to his own generous act.
These, my lady, down to my good parents setting out to this place, in order to be settled, by my honoured benefactor's bounty, in the Kentish farm, are the most material contents of my remaining papers: and though they might be the most agreeable to those for whom only they were written, yet, as they were principally matters of course, after what your ladyship has with you; as the joy of my fond heart can be better judged of by your ladyship than described by me; and as you are acquainted with all the particulars that can be worthy of any other person's notice but my dear parents: I am sure your ladyship will dispense with your commands; and I make it my humble request that you will.
For, Madam, you must needs think, that when my doubts were dispelled; when confident all my trials were over; when I had a prospect of being so abundantly rewarded for what I suffered: when every hour rose upon me with new delight, and fraught with fresh instances of generous kindness from such a dear gentleman, my master, my benefactor, the son of my honoured lady: your ladyship must needs think, I say, that I must be too much affected, my heart too much opened; and especially as it then (relieved from its past anxieties and fears, which had kept down and damped the latent flame) first discovered impressions of which before I hardly thought it susceptible.—So that it is scarce possible, that my joy and my prudence, if I were to be tried by such judges of delicacy and decorum as Lord and Lady Davers, the honoured countess, and Lady Betty, could be so intimately, so laudably coupled, as were to be wished: although the continued sense of my unworthiness, and the disgrace the dear gentleman would bring upon himself by his generous goodness to me, always went hand in hand with my joy and my prudence; and what these considerations
