LETTER XLV MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE.[IN ANSWER TO LETTER XLIII.]SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL 9.
Do not think, my beloved friend, although you have given me in yours of yesterday a severer instance of what, nevertheless, I must cal your impartial love, than ever yet I received from you, that I would be displeased with you for it. That would be to put myself into the inconvenient situation of royalty: that is to say, out of the way of ever being told of my faults; of ever mending them: and in the way of making the sincerest and warmest friendship useless to me.
And then how brightly, how nobly glows in your bosom the sacred flame of friendship; since it can make you ready to impute to the unhappy sufferer a less degree of warmth in her own cause, than you have for her, because of the endeavours to divest herself of self so far as to leave others to the option which they have a right to make!--Ought I, my dear, to blame, ought I not rather to admire you for this ardor?
But nevertheless, lest you should think that there is any foundation for a surmise which (although it owe its rise to your friendship) would, if there were, leave me utterly inexcusable, I must, in justice to myself, declare, that I know not my own heart if I have any of that latent or unowned inclination, which you would impute to any other but me. Nor does the important alternative sit lightly on my mind. And yet I must excuse your mother, were it but on this single consideration, that I could not presume to reckon upon her favour, as I could upon her daughter's, so as to make the claim of friendship upon her, to whom, as the mother of my dearest friend, a veneration is owing, which can hardly be compatible with that sweet familiarity which is one of the indispensable requisites of the sacred tie by which your heart and mine are bound in one.
What therefore I might expect from my Anna Howe, I ought not from her mother; for would it not be very strange, that a person of her experience should be reflected upon because she gave not up her own judgment, where the consequence of her doing so would be to embroil herself, as she apprehends, with a family she has lived well with, and in behalf of a child against her parents?--as she has moreover a daughter of her own:--a daughter too, give me leave to say, of whose vivacity and charming spirits she is more apprehensive than she need to be, because her truly maternal cares make her fear more from her youth, than she hopes for her prudence; which, nevertheless, she and all the world know to be beyond her years.
And here let me add, that whatever you may generously, and as the result of an ardent affection for your unhappy friend, urge on this head, in my behalf, or harshly against any one who may refuse me protection in the extraordinary circumstances I find myself in, I have some pleasure in being able to curb undue expectations upon my indulgent friends, whatever were to befal myself from those circumstances, for I should be extremely mortified, were I by my selfish forwardness to give occasion for such a check, as to be told, that I had encouraged an unreasonable hope, or, according to the phrase you mention, wished to take a thorn out of my own foot, and to put in to that of my friend. Nor should I be better pleased with myself, if, having been taught by my good Mrs. Norton, that the best of schools is that of affliction, I should rather learn impatience than the contrary, by the lessons I am obliged to get by heart in it; and if I should judge of the merits of others, as they were kind to me; and that at the expense of their own convenience or peace of mind. For is not this to suppose myself ever in the right; and all who do not act as I would have them act, perpetually in the wrong? In short, to make my sake God's sake, in the sense of Mr. Solmes's pitiful plea to me?