But one thing let me add, to comfort you in relation to Harriet’s difficulties:  I intend to make her shine by her cordial approbation, as she goes along, of every good action of her beloved.  She is humbled by her love (suspense in love is a mortifier) to think herself inferior to his sisters; but I intend to raise her above them, even in her own just opinion; and when she shines out the girl worthy of a man, not exalt, but reward her, and at the same time make him think himself highly rewarded by the love of so frank and so right an heart.

There now!—­Will that do, my Miss Mulso?

I laid indeed a heavy hand on the good Clarissa.  But I had begun with her, with a view to the future saint in her character; and could she, but by sufferings, shine as she does?

Do you, my dear child, look upon me as your paternal friend.

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU

1689-1762

TO THE COUNTESS OF MAR

The Viennese court

Vienna, 14 Sept. o.s. [1716].

Though I have so lately troubled you, my dear sister, with a long letter, yet I will keep my promise in giving you an account of my first going to court.

In order to that ceremony, I was squeezed up in a gown, and adorned with a gorget and the other implements thereunto belonging:  a dress very inconvenient, but which certainly shews the neck and shape to great advantage.  I cannot forbear in this place giving you some description of the fashions here, which are more monstrous and contrary to all common sense and reason, than ’tis possible for you to imagine.  They build certain fabrics of gauze on their heads about a yard high, consisting of three or four stories, fortified with numberless yards of heavy ribbon.  The foundation of this structure is a thing they call a Bourle, which is exactly of the same shape and kind, but about four times as big, as those rolls our prudent milk-maids make use of to fix their pails upon.  This machine they cover with their own hair, which they mix with a great deal of false, it being a particular beauty to have their heads too large to go into a moderate tub.  Their hair is prodigiously powdered, to conceal the mixture, and set out with three or four rows of bodkins (wonderfully large, that stick two or three inches from their hair), made of diamonds, pearls, red, green, and yellow stones, that it certainly requires as much art and experience to carry the load upright, as to dance upon May-day with the garland.  Their whalebone petticoats outdo ours by several yards circumference, and cover some acres of ground.