And that’s all I will give myself time to say further, lest I offend you when I cannot serve you. Only this, that I am

Your truly affectionate friend and servant

ANNA HOWE

Letter 28: MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE

Friday, Mar. 10

You will permit me, my dear, to touch upon a few passages in your last favour, that affect me sensibly.

In the first place, you must allow me to say, low as I am in spirits, that I am very angry with you for your reflections on my relations, particularly on my father, and on the memory of my grandfather. Nor, my dear, does your own mamma always escape the keen edge of vivacity.

As to the advice you give, to resume my estate, I am determined not to litigate with my papa, let what will be the consequence to myself. I may give you, at another time, a more particular answer to your reasonings on this subject: but at present will only observe, that it is my opinion that Lovelace himself would hardly think me worth addressing, were he to know this to be my resolution.

You very ingeniously account for the love we bear to one another, from the difference in our tempers. I own, I should not have thought of that. There may possibly be something in it: but whether there be, or not, whenever I am cool, and give myself time to reflect, I will love you the better for the correction you give me, be as severe as you will upon me. Spare me not therefore, my dear friend, whenever you think me in the least faulty. I love your agreeable raillery: you know I always did: nor, however over-serious you think me, did I ever think you flippant, as you harshly call it. One of the first conditions of our mutual friendship was that each should say or write to the other whatever was upon her mind, without any offence to be taken; a condition that is indeed an indispensable in all friendship.

I should be very blameable to endeavour to hide any the least bias upon my mind from you: and I cannot but say—that this man—this Lovelace—is a person that might be liked well enough if he bore such a character as Mr Hickman bears; and even if there were hopes of reclaiming him: but LOVE, methinks, as short a word as it is, has a broad sound with it. Yet do I find that one may be driven by violent measures step by step, as it were, into something that may be called—I don’t know what to call it—a conditional kind of liking, or so. But as to the word LOVE—justifiable and charming as it is in some cases (that is to say, in all the relative, in all the social and, what is still beyond both, in all our superior duties, in which it may be properly called divine), it has, methinks, in this narrow, circumscribed, selfish, peculiar sense, no very pretty sound with it. Treat me as freely as you will in all other respects, I will love you, as I have said, the better for your friendly freedom: but, methinks, I could be glad, for SEX’S sake, that you would not let this imputation pass so glibly from your pen, or your lips, as attributable to one of your own sex, whether I be the person or not: since the other must have a double triumph, when a person of your delicacy (armed with such contempts of them all, as you would have one think) can give up a friend, with an exultation over her weakness, as a silly, love-sick creature!

I will not acquaint you with all proceedings here; but these shall be the subject of another letter.

Letter 30: MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE TO MISS HOWE

Sunday night, March 12

This man, this Lovelace, gives me great uneasiness. He is extremely bold and rash. He was this afternoon at our church: in hopes to see me, I suppose: and yet, if he had such hopes, his usual intelligence must have failed him.

Shorey was at church; and a principal part of her observation was upon his haughty and proud behaviour when he turned round in the pew where he sat to our family pew. My papa and both my uncles were there; so were my mamma and sister. My brother happily was not! They all came home in disorder. Nor did the congregation mind anybody but him; it being his first appearance there since the unhappy rencounter.

What did the man come for, if he intended to look challenge and defiance, as Shorey says he did, and as others observed it seems as well as she? Did he come for my sake; and, by behaving in such a manner to those present of my family, imagine he was doing me either service or pleasure? He knows how they hate him: nor will he take pains, would pains do, to obviate their hatred.

You and I, my dear, have often taken notice of his pride, and you have rallied him upon it; and instead of exculpating himself, he has owned it; and, by owning it, has thought he has done enough.

He has talents, indeed: but those talents, and his personal advantages, have been snares to him. It is plain they have. And this shows that, weighed in an equal balance, he would be found greatly wanting.

Had my friends confided, as they did at first, in that discretion which they do not accuse me of being defective in, I dare say I should have found him out: and then should have been as resolute to dismiss him as I was to dismiss others, and as I am never to have Mr Solmes. Oh that they did but know my heart! It shall sooner burst, than voluntarily, uncompelled, undriven, dictate a measure that shall cast a slur either upon them, my sex, or myself.

Excuse me, my dear friend, for these grave soliloquies, as I may call them. How have I run from reflection to reflection! But the occasion is recent! They are all in commotion below upon it!

Shorey says that he watched my mamma’s eye, and bowed to her: and she returned the compliment. He always admired my mamma. She would not, I believe, have hated him had she not been bid to hate him; and had it not been for the rencounter between him and her only son.

My father it seems is more and more incensed against me. And so are my uncles.

They are angry, it seems, at my mamma, for returning his compliment. What an enemy is hatred, even to the common forms of civility!

I am extremely apprehensive that this worse than ghost-like appearance of his bodes some still bolder step. If he come hither (and very desirous he is of my leave to come), I am afraid there will be murder. To avoid that, if there were no other way, I would most willingly be buried alive.

CL. H.

Letter 31: MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

Monday, March 13

In vain dost thou and thy compeers press me to go to town, while I am in such an uncertainty as I am at present with this proud beauty. All the ground I have hitherto gained with her is entirely owing to her concern for the safety of people whom I have reason to hate.

Write then, thou biddest me, if I will not come.