Your papa takes upon himself to be answerable for all consequences. You must not therefore apply to me for any favour. I shall endeavour to be only an observer; happy, if I could be an unconcerned one! While I had power, you would not let me use it as I would have used it.

I charge you, let not this letter be found. Burn it. There is too much of the mother in it, to a daughter so unaccountably obstinate.

Write not another letter to me. I can do nothing for you. But you can do everything for yourself.

Letter 26: MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE

Thursd. morn. Mar. 9

I have another letter from Mr Lovelace, although I had not answered his former.

This man, somehow or other, knows everything that passes in our family: my confinement; Hannah’s dismission; and more of the resentments and resolutions of my father, uncles, and brother, than I can possibly know, and almost as soon as things happen. He cannot come at these intelligences fairly.

He is excessively uneasy upon what he hears; and his expressions both of love to me and resentment to them are very fervent. He solicits me much ‘To engage my honour to him, never to have Mr Solmes.’ I think I may fairly promise him that I will not.

He begs, ‘That I will not think he is endeavouring to make to himself a merit at any man’s expense, since he hopes to obtain my favour on the foot of his own; nor that he seeks to intimidate me into a consideration for him. But declares that the treatment he meets with from my family is so intolerable that he is perpetually reproached for not resenting it; and that as well by Lord M. and his two aunts, as by all his other friends: and if he must have no hope from me, he cannot answer for what his despair will make him do.’

Indeed, he says, his relations, the ladies particularly, advise him to have recourse to a legal remedy: ‘But how, he asks, can a man of honour go to law for verbal abuses, given by people entitled to wear swords?’

You see, my dear, that my mamma seems as apprehensive of mischief as I, and has indirectly offered to let Shorey carry my answer to the letter he sent me before.

He is full of the favour of the ladies of his family to me: to whom, nevertheless, I am personally a stranger.

It is natural, I believe, for a person to be the more desirous of making new friends in proportion as she loses the favour of old ones, yet had I rather appear amiable in the eyes of my own relations and in your eyes than in those of all the world besides: but these four ladies of his family have such excellent characters that one cannot but wish to be thought well of by them. I cannot, for my own part, think so well of myself as to imagine that they can wish him to persevere in his views with regard to me, through such contempts and discouragements.

Curiosity at present is all my motive: nor will there ever, I hope, be a stronger, notwithstanding your questionable throbs; even were Mr Lovelace to be less exceptionable than he is.

•   •   •

I have answered his letters. This is the substance of my letter:

‘I express my surprise at his knowing (and so early) all that passes here. I assure him, that were there not such a man in the world as himself, I would not have Mr Solmes.’

I tell him, ‘That to return, as I understand he does, defiances for defiances, to my relations, is far from being a proof with me, either of his politeness or of the consideration he pretends to have for me.

‘On all these accounts, I desire that the one more letter which I will allow him to deposit in the usual place may be the very last; and that only to acquaint me with his acquiescence that it shall be so; at least till happier times!’

This last I put in, that he may not be quite desperate. But if he take me at my word, I shall be rid of one of my tormentors.

I have promised to lay before you all his letters and my answers. I repeat that promise; and am the less solicitous for that reason to amplify upon the contents of either. But I cannot too often express my vexation to be driven to such straits and difficulties, here at home, as oblige me to answer letters (from a man I had not absolutely intended to encourage and had really great objections to) filled as his are with such warm protestations, and written to me with a spirit of expectation.

For, my dear, you never knew so bold a supposer. In short, my dear, like a restive horse he pains one’s hands, and half disjoints one’s arms to rein him in. And when you see his letters, you must form no judgement upon them, till you have read my answers: if you do, you will indeed think you have cause to attribute self-deceit, and throbs, and glows to your friend. If he has a design by this conduct (sometimes complaining of my shyness, at others exulting in my imaginary favours) to induce me at one time to acquiesce with his compliments, at another to be more complaisant for his complaints; and if the contradiction be not the effect of his inattention and giddiness; I shall think him as deep and as artful (too probably, as practised) a creature as ever lived; and were I to be sure of it, should hate him, if possible, worse than I do Solmes.

But enough for the present of a creature so very various!

Letter 27: MISS HOWE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE

Thursday night, March 9

I have no patience with any of the people you are with. I know not what to advise you to do. How do you know that you are not punishable for being the cause, though to your own loss, that the will of your grandfather is not complied with? Wills are sacred things, child. You see that they, even they, think so, who imagine they suffer by a will through the distinction paid you in it.

Your grandfather knew the family-failing: he knew what a noble spirit you had to do good. He himself, perhaps (excuse me, my dear), had done too little in his lifetime; and therefore he put it in your power to make up for the defects of the whole family. Were it to me, I would resume it [the estate bequeathed her]. Indeed I would.

You will say, you cannot do it, while you are with them. I don’t know that.