I help to make a sister unhappy!—It is false, Miss!—It is all her own doings!—except, indeed, what she may owe to somebody’s advice—you know who can best answer for that.
Let us know your mind as soon as you please: as we shall know it to be your mind, we shall judge what attention to give it. That’s all, from, etc.
Letter 355
Miss Howe, to Miss Arabella Harlowe
Sat.
It may be the misfortune of some people to engage everybody’s notice: others may be the happier, though they may be the more envious, for nobody’s thinking them worthy of any. But one would be glad people had the sense to be thankful for that want of consequence, which subject them not to hazards they would heartily have been able to manage under.
I own to you, that had it not been for the prudent advice of that admirable somebody (whose principal fault is the superiority of her talents, and whose misfortune to be brother’d and sister’d by a couple of creatures, who are not able to comprehend her excellencies) I might at one time have been plunged into difficulties. But pert as the superlatively pert may think me, I thought not myself wiser, because I was older; nor for that poor reason qualified to prescribe to, much less to maltreat, a genius so superior.
I repeat it with gratitude, that the dear creature’s advice was of very great service to me—and this before my mother’s watchfulness became necessary. But how it would have fared with me, I cannot say, had I had a brother or sister, who had deemed it their interest, as well as a gratification of their sordid envy, to misrepresent me.
Your admirable sister, in effect, saved you, Miss, as well as me—with this difference—you, against your will—me with mine: and but for your own brother, and his own sister, would not have been lost herself.
Would to Heaven both sisters had been obliged with their own wills!—the most admirable of her sex would never then have been out of her father’s house!—you, Miss—I don’t know what had become of you.—But, let what would have happened, you would have met with the humanity you have not shown, whether you had deserved it or not:—nor, at the worst, lost either a kind sister, or a pitying friend, in the most excellent of sisters.
But why run I into length to such a poor thing? why push I so weak an adversary? whose first letter is all low malice, and whose next is made up of falsehood and inconsistence, as well as spite and ill-manners! yet I was willing to give you a part of my mind. Call for more of it; it shall be at your service: from one, who, though she thanks God she is not your sister, is not your enemy: but that she is not the latter, is withheld but by two considerations; one that you bear, though unworthily, a relation to a sister so excellent; the other, that you are not of consequence enough to engage anything but the pity and contempt of
Letter 356
Mrs. Harlowe, to Mrs. Howe
Sat.
Dear Madam,
I send you, enclosed, copies of five letters that have passed between Miss Howe and my Arabella. You are a person of so much prudence and good sense, and (being a mother yourself) can so well enter into the distresses of all our family, upon the rashness and ingratitude of a child we once doted upon, that, I dare say, you will not countenance the strange freedoms your daughter has taken with us all. These are not the only ones we have to complain of; but we were silent on the others, as they did not, as these have done, spread themselves out upon paper. We only beg, that we may not be reflected upon by a young lady who knows not what we have suffered, and do suffer by the rashness of a naughty creature who has brought ruin upon herself, and disgrace upon a family which she had robbed of all comfort. I offer not to prescribe to your known wisdom in this case; but leave it to you to do as you think most proper. I am, Madam,
Letter 357
Mrs. Howe
[In answer]
Sat.
Dear Madam,
I am highly offended with my daughter’s letters to Miss Harlowe. I knew nothing at all of her having taken such a liberty. These young creatures have such romantic notions, some of love, some of friendship, that there is no governing them in either. Nothing but time, and dear experience, will convince them of their absurdities in both. I have chidden Miss Howe very severely. I had before so just a notion of what your whole family’s distress must be, that, as I told your brother, Mr. Antony Harlowe, I had often forbid her corresponding with the poor fallen angel—for surely never did young lady more resemble what we imagine of angels, both in person and mind. But, tired out with her headstrong ways, (I am sorry to say this of my own child), I was forced to give way to it again. And, indeed, so sturdy was she in her will, that I was afraid it would end in a fit of sickness, as too often it did in fits of sullens.
None but parents know the trouble that children give. They are happiest, I have often thought,
