MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE MONDAY, MARCH 20.
Your last so sensibly affects me, that I must postpone every other
consideration, however weighty, to reply to it: and this I will do
very distinctly, and with all the openness of heart which our mutual
friendship demands.
But let me observe, in the first place, gratefully observe, that if I
have in fifty passages of my letters given you such undoubted proofs
of my value for Mr. Lovelace, that you have spared me for the sake of
my explicitness, it is acting by me with a generosity worthy of
yourself.
But lives the man, think you, who is so very bad, that he does not
give even a doubting mind reason at one time to be better pleased with
him than at another? And when that reason offers, is it not just to
express one's self accordingly? I would do the man who addresses me
as much justice, as if he did not address me: it has such a look of
tyranny, it appears so ungenerous, methinks, in our sex, to use a man
worse for his respect to us, (no other cause for disrespect
occurring,) that I would not by any means be that person who should do
so.
But, although I may intend no more than justice, it will perhaps be
difficult to hinder those who know the man's views, from construing it
as a partial favour: and especially if the eager-eyed observer has
been formerly touched herself, and would triumph that her friend had
been no more able to escape than she. Noble minds, emulative of
perfection, (and yet the passion properly directed, I do not take to
be an imperfection neither,) may be allowed a little generous envy, I
think.
If I meant by this a reflection, by way of revenge, it is but a
revenge, my dear, in the soft sense of the word. I love, as I have
told you, your pleasantry. Although at the time your reproof may pain
me a little; yet, on recollection, when I find it more of the
cautioning friend than of the satirizing observer, I shall be all
gratitude upon it. All the business will be this; I shall be sensible
of the pain in the present letter perhaps; but I shall thank you in
the next, and ever after.
In this way, I hope, my dear, you will account for a little of that
sensibility which you find above, and perhaps still more, as I
proceed.--You frequently remind me, by an excellent example, your own
to me, that I must not spare you!
I am not conscious, that I have written any thing of this man, that
has not been more in his dispraise than in his favour. Such is the
man, that I think I must have been faulty, and ought to take myself to
account, if I had not. But you think otherwise, I will not put you
upon labouring the proof, as you call it. My conduct must then have a
faulty appearance at least, and I will endeavour to rectify it. But
of this I assure you, that whatever interpretation my words were
capable of, I intended not any reserve to you. I wrote my heart at
the time: if I had had thought of disguising it, or been conscious
that there was reason for doing so, perhaps I had not given you the
opportunity of remarking upon my curiosity after his relations' esteem
for me; nor upon my conditional liking, and such-like. All I intended
by the first, I believe, I honestly told you at the time. To that
letter I therefore refer, whether it make for me, or against me: and
by the other, that I might bear in mind, what it became a person of my
sex and character to be and to do, in such an unhappy situation, where
the imputed love is thought an undutiful, and therefore a criminal
passion; and where the supported object of it is a man of faulty
morals too. And I am sure you will excuse my desire of appearing at
those times the person I ought to be; had I no other view in it but to
merit the continuance of your good opinion.
But that I may acquit myself of having reserves--O, my dear, I must
here break off!--
