The Father and Daughter 1

The Father and Daughter 1

The Father and Daughter

A Tale, in Prose

 

Author: Amelia Opie

 

DEAR SIR,

 

In dedicating this Publication to you, I follow in some measure the

example of those nations who devoted to their gods the first fruits of

the genial seasons which they derived from their bounty.

 

To you I owe whatever of cultivation my mind has received; and the first

fruits of that mind to you I dedicate.

 

Besides, having endeavoured in "THE FATHER AND DAUGHTER" to exhibit a

picture of the most perfect parental affection, to whom could I dedicate

it with so much propriety as to you, since, in describing a good father,

I had only to delineate my own?

 

Allow me to add, full of gratitude for years of tenderness and

indulgence on your part, but feebly repaid even by every possible

sentiment of filial regard on mine, that the satisfaction I shall

experience if my Publication be favourably received by the world, will

not proceed from the mere gratification of my self-love, but from the

conviction I shall feel that my success as an Author is productive of

pleasure to you.

 

AMELIA OPIE.

 

_Berners Street_,

1800.

 

 

 

 

THE FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

 

BY MRS. OPIE.

 

 

 

 

TO THE READER.

 

 

It is not without considerable apprehension that I offer myself as an

avowed Author at the bar of public opinion,--and that apprehension is

heightened by its being the general custom to give indiscriminately the

name of NOVEL to every thing in Prose that comes in the shape of a

Story, however simple it be in its construction, and humble in its

pretensions.

 

By this means, the following Publication is in danger of being tried by

a standard according to which it was never intended to be made, and to

be criticized for wanting those merits which it was never meant to

possess.

 

I therefore beg leave to say, in justice to myself, that I know "THE

FATHER AND DAUGHTER" is wholly devoid of those attempts at strong

character, comic situation, bustle, and variety of incident, which

constitute a NOVEL, and that its highest pretensions are, to be a

SIMPLE, MORAL TALE.

 

 

 

 

THE FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

 

A TALE.

 

 

The night was dark,--the wind blew keenly over the frozen and rugged

heath, when Agnes, pressing her moaning child to her bosom, was

travelling on foot to her father's habitation.

 

"Would to God I had never left it!" she exclaimed, as home and all its

enjoyments rose in fancy to her view:--and I think my readers will be

ready to join in the exclamation, when they hear the poor wanderer's

history.

 

Agnes Fitzhenry was the only child of a respectable merchant in a

country town, who, having lost his wife when his daughter was very

young, resolved for her sake to form no second connection. To the

steady, manly affection of a father, Fitzhenry joined the fond anxieties

and endearing attentions of a mother; and his parental care was amply

repaid by the love and amiable qualities of Agnes. He was not rich; yet

the profits of his trade were such as to enable him to bestow every

possible expense on his daughter's education, and to lay up a

considerable sum yearly for her future support: whatever else he could

spare from his own absolute wants, he expended in procuring comforts and

pleasures for her.--"What an excellent father that man is!" was the

frequent exclamation among his acquaintance--"And what an excellent

child he has! well may he be proud of her!" was as commonly the answer

to it.

 

Nor was this to be wondered at:--Agnes united to extreme beauty of face

and person every accomplishment that belongs to her own sex, and a great

degree of that strength of mind and capacity for acquiring knowledge

supposed to belong exclusively to the other.

 

For this combination of rare qualities Agnes was admired;--for

her sweetness of temper, her willingness to oblige, her seeming

unconsciousness of her own merits, and her readiness to commend the

merits of others,--for these still rarer qualities, Agnes was beloved:

and she seldom formed an acquaintance without at the same time securing

a friend.

 

Her father thought he loved her (and perhaps he was right) as never

father loved a child before; and Agnes thought she loved him as child

never before loved father.--"I will not marry, but live single for my

father's sake," she often said;--but she altered her determination when

her heart, hitherto unmoved by the addresses of the other sex, was

assailed by an officer in the guards who came to recruit in the town in

which she resided.

 

Clifford, as I shall call him, had not only a fine figure and graceful

address, but talents rare and various, and powers of conversation so

fascinating, that the woman he had betrayed forgot her wrongs in his

presence, and the creditor, who came to dun him for the payment of debts

already incurred, went away eager to oblige him by letting him incur

still more.

 

Fatal perversion of uncommon abilities! This man, who might have taught

a nation to look up to him as its best pride in prosperity and its best

hope in adversity, made no other use of his talents than to betray

the unwary of both sexes, the one to shame, the other to pecuniary

difficulties; and he whose mind was capacious enough to have imagined

schemes to aggrandize his native country, the slave of sordid

selfishness, never looked beyond his own temporary and petty benefit,

and sat down contented with the achievements of the day, if he had

overreached a credulous tradesman, or beguiled an unsuspecting woman.

 

But, to accomplish even these paltry triumphs, great knowledge of the

human heart was necessary,--a power of discovering the prevailing foible

in those on whom he had designs, and of converting their imagined

security into their real danger. He soon discovered that Agnes, who was

rather inclined to doubt her possessing in an uncommon degree the good

qualities which she really had, valued herself, with not unusual

blindness, on those which she had not. She thought herself endowed with

great power to read the characters of those with whom she associated,

when she had even not discrimination enough to understand her own: and,

while she imagined that it was not in the power of others to deceive

her, she was constantly in the habit of deceiving herself.

 

Clifford was not slow to avail himself of this weakness in his intended

victim; and, while he taught her to believe that none of his faults had

escaped her observation, with hers he had made himself thoroughly

acquainted.--But not content with making her faults subservient to his

views, he pressed her virtues also into his service; and her affection

for her father, that strong hold, secure in which Agnes would have

defied the most violent assaults of temptation, he contrived should be

the means of her defeat.

 

I have been thus minute in detailing the various and seducing powers

which Clifford possessed, not because he will be a principal figure in

my narrative,--for, on the contrary, the chief characters in it are the

Father and Daughter,--but in order to excuse as much as possible the

strong attachment which he excited in Agnes.

 

"Love," says Mrs. Inchbald, whose knowledge of human nature can be

equalled only by the humour with which she describes its follies, and

the unrivalled pathos with which she exhibits its distresses--"Love,

however rated by many as the chief passion of the heart, is but a poor

dependent, a retainer on the other passions--admiration, gratitude,

respect, esteem, pride in the object; divest the boasted sensation

of these, and it is no more than the impression of a twelvemonth,

by courtesy, or vulgar error, called love[1]."--And of all these

ingredients was the passion of Agnes composed. For the graceful person

and manner of Clifford she felt admiration; and her gratitude was

excited by her observing that, while he was an object of attention to

every one wherever he appeared, his attentions were exclusively directed

to herself; and that he who, from his rank and accomplishments, might

have laid claim to the hearts even of the brightest daughters of fashion

in the gayest scenes of the metropolis, seemed to have no higher

ambition than to appear amiable in the eyes of Agnes, the humble toast

of an obscure country town. While his superiority of understanding, and

brilliancy of talents, called forth her respect, and his apparent

virtues her esteem; and when to this high idea of the qualities of the

man was added a knowledge of his high birth and great expectations, it

is no wonder that she also felt the last-mentioned, and often perhaps

the greatest, excitement to love, "pride in the object."

 

[Footnote 1: Nature and Art, vol. i. p. 142.]

 

When Clifford began to pay those marked attentions to Agnes, which ought

always on due encouragement from the woman to whom they are addressed to

be followed by an offer of marriage, he contrived to make himself as

much disliked by the father as admired by the daughter: yet his

management was so artful, that Fitzhenry could not give a sufficient

reason for his dislike; he could only declare its existence; and for the

first time in her life Agnes learned to think her father unjust and capricious.