MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 22.
O my best, my only friend! Now indeed is my heart broken! It has received a blow it never will recover. Think not of corresponding with a wretch who now seems absolutely devoted. How can it be otherwise, if a parent’s curses have the weight I always attributed to them, and have heard so many instances in confirmation of that weight!—Yes, my dear Miss Howe, superadded to all my afflictions, I have the consequences of a father’s curse to struggle with! How shall I support this reflection!—My past and my present situation so much authorizing my apprehensions!
I have, at last, a letter from my unrelenting sister. Would to Heaven I had not provoked it by my second letter to my aunt Hervey! It lay ready for me, it seems. The thunder slept, till I awakened it. I enclose the letter itself. Transcribe it I cannot. There is no bearing the thoughts of it: for [shocking reflection!] the curse extends to the life beyond this.
I am in the depth of vapourish despondency. I can only repeat—shun, fly, correspond not with a wretch so devoted as
CL. HARLOWE.