Miss Howe, to miss Clarissa
Harlowe
[in answer to letters IX.
XV.]
Do not be so much concerned, my dearest friend, at
the bickerings between my mother and me. We
love one another dearly notwithstanding. If my
mother had not me to find fault with, she must find
fault with somebody else. And as to me, I am
a very saucy girl; and were not this occasion, there
would be some other, to shew it.
You have heard me say, that this was always the case
between us. You could not otherwise have known
it. For when you was with us, you harmonized
us both; and, indeed, I was always more afraid of you
than of my mother. But then that awe is accompanied
with love. Your reproofs, as I have always found,
are so charmingly mild and instructive; so evidently
calculated to improve, and not to provoke; that a generous
temper must be amended by them. But hear now,
mind my good mamma, when you are not with us—You
shall, I tell you, Nancy. I will have it so.
Don’t I know best, I won’t be disobeyed.
How can a daughter of spirits bear such language;
such looks too with the language; and not have a longing
mind to disobey?
Don’t advise me, my dear, to subscribe to my
mother’s prohibition of correspondence with
you. She has no reason for it. Nor would
she of her own judgment have prohibited it.
That odd old ambling soul your uncle, (whose visits
are frequenter than ever,) instigated by your malicious
and selfish brother and sister in the occasion.
And they have only borrowed my mother’s lips,
at the distance they are from you, for a sort of speaking
trumpet for them. The prohibition, once more
I say, cannot come from her heart: But if it
did, is so much danger to be apprehended from my continuing
to write to one of my own sex, as if I wrote to one
of the other? Don’t let dejection and
disappointment, and the course of oppression which
you have run through, weaken your mind, my dearest
creature, and make you see inconveniencies where there
possibly cannot be any. If your talent is scribbling,
as you call it; so is mine—and I will scribble
on, at all opportunities; and to you; let them say
what they will. Nor let your letters be filled
with the self-accusations you mention: there
is no cause for them. I wish that your Anna Howe,
who continues in her mother’s house, were but
half so good as Miss Clarissa Harlowe, who has been
driven out of her father’s.
I will say nothing upon your letter to your sister
till I see the effect it will have. You hope,
you tell me, that you shall have your money and clothes
sent you, notwithstanding my opinion to the contrary—I
am sorry to have it to acquaint you, that I have just
now heard, that they have sat in council upon your
letter; and that your mother was the only person who
was for sending you your things, and was overruled.
I charge you therefore to accept of my offer, as
by my last: and give me particular directions
for what you want, that I can supply you with besides.
