Clarissa Harlowe, or the History of a Young Lady - Volume 3 — Letter XXXVII

LETTER XXXVII

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE WEDN.

MORNING, APRIL 19.

I am glad, my dear friend, that you approve of my removal to London.

The disagreement between your mother and you gives me inexpressible affliction.

I hope I think you both more unhappy than you are.

But I beseech you let me know the particulars of the debate you call a very pretty one.

I am well acquainted with your dialect.

When I am informed of the whole, let your mother have been ever so severe upon me, I shall be easier a great deal.

--Faulty people should rather deplore the occasion they have given for anger than resent it.

If I am to be obliged to any body in England for money, it shall be to you.

Your mother need not know of your kindness to me, you say--but she must know it, if it be done, and if she challenge my beloved friend upon it; for would you either falsify or prevaricate?

--I wish your mother could be made easy on this head--forgive me, my dear,--but I know--Yet once she had a better opinion of me.

--O my inconsiderate rashness!

--Excuse me once more, I pray you.

--Pride, when it is native, will shew itself sometimes in the midst of mortifications--but my stomach is down already.

***** I am unhappy that I cannot have my worthy Hannah.

I am sorry for the poor creature's illness as for my own disappointment by it.

Come, my dear Miss Howe, since you press me to be beholden to you: and would think me proud if I absolutely refused your favour; pray be so good as to send her two guineas in my name.

If I have nothing for it, as you say, but matrimony, it yields little comfort, that his relations do not despise the fugitive, as persons of their rank and quality-pride might be supposed to do, for having been a fugitive.

But O my cruel, thrice cruel uncle!

to suppose--but my heart checks my pen, and will not let it proceed, on an intimation so extremely shocking as that which he supposes!

--Yet, if thus they have been persuaded, no wonder if they are irreconcilable.

This is all my hard-hearted brother's doings!

--His surmisings:--God forgive him--prays his injured sister!

LETTER XXXVIII