Clarissa, Volume 6 - The History Of A Young Lady

Clarissa, Volume 6 − The History Of A Young Lady 154
blunder; being obliged to follow her lead, and vary from his first design; which was to have the people of the
house spoken well of, in order to induce her to return to it, were it but on pretence to direct her clothes to be
carried to Hampstead.
The pretended lady went on, saying, she had taken upon herself to inquire after the people, on hearing that I
had left the house in disgust; and though she heard not any thing much amiss, yet she heard enough to make
her wonder that he could carry his spouse, a person of so much delicacy, to a house, that, if it had not a bad
fame, had not a good one.
You must think, my dear, that I liked the pretended Lady Betty the better for this. I suppose it was designed
that I should.
He was surprised, he said, that her Ladyship should hear a bad character of the people. It was what he had
never before heard that they deserved. It was easy, indeed, to see, that they had not very great delicacy, though
they were not indelicate. The nature of their livelihood, letting lodgings, and taking people to board, (and yet
he had understood that they were nice in these particulars,) led them to aim at being free and obliging: and it
was difficult, he said, for persons of cheerful dispositions, so to behave as to avoid censure: openness of heart
and countenance in the sex (more was the pity) too often subjected good people, whose fortunes did not set
them above the world, to uncharitable censure.
He wished, however, that her Ladyship would tell what she had heard: although now it signified but little,
because he would never ask me to set foot within their doors again: and he begged she would not mince the
matter.
Nay, no great matter, she said. But she had been informed, that there were more women−lodgers in the house
than men: yet that their visiters were more men than women. And this had been hinted to her (perhaps by
ill−wishers, she could not answer for that) in such a way, as if somewhat further were meant by it than was
spoken.
This, he said, was the true innuendo−way of characterizing, used by detractors. Every body and every thing
had a black and a white side, of which well wishers and ill wishers may make their advantage. He had
observed that the front house was well let, and he believed more to the one sex than to the other; for he had
seen, occasionally passing to or fro, several genteel modest looking women; and who, it was very probable,
were not so ill−beloved, but they might have visiters and relations of both sexes: but they were none of them
any thing to us, or we to them: we were not once in any of their companies: but in the genteelest and most
retired house of the two, which we had in a manner to ourselves, with the use of a parlour to the street, to
serve us for a servants' hall, or to receive common visiters, or our traders only, whom we admitted not up
stairs.
He always loved to speak as he found. No man in the world had suffered more from calumny than he himself
had done.
Women, he owned, ought to be more scrupulous than men needed to be where they lodged. Nevertheless he
wished that fact, rather than surmise, were to be the foundation of their judgments, especially when they spoke
of one another.
He meant no reflection upon her Ladyship's informants, or rather surmisants, (as he might call them,) be they
who they would: nor did he think himself obliged to defend characters impeached, or not thought well of, by
women of virtue and honour. Neither were these people of importance enough to have so much said about
them.
The pretended Lady Betty said, all who knew her, would clear her of censoriousness: that it gave her some