Whether Pitt wished for a reconciliation because his sister had become Privy Purse to the Princess of Wales must be judged by the light of his character. It seems more probable that it was because she had returned from abroad, and that he would now meet her constantly in society. In any case, here are the letters. Whatever Pitt's motives may have been, it is clear that Ann, had she not been a vixen, would have gladly accepted the olive-branch offered by her brother, who, still unmarried, wished to be restored to the companionship which had been the joy of his life, 'that friendship which was my very existence for so many years,' 'a harmony between brother and sister unexampled almost all that time.'
Dear Sister!--As you had been so good to tell me in your note of Monday that you would write to me again soon _in a manner capable, you hoped, of effacing every impression of any thing painfull that may have passed from me to you_, I did not expect such a letter as I found late last night, and which I have now before me to answer: without any compliment to you, I find myself in point of writing unequal enough to the task; nor have I the slightest desire to sharpen my pen. I have well weighed your letter, and deeply examined your picture of me, for some years past; and indeed, Sister, I still find something within, that firmly assures me I am not that thing which your interpretations of my life (if I can ever be brought to think them all your own) would represent me to be. I have infirmities of temper, blemishes, and faults, if you please, of nature, without end; but the Eye that can't be deceived must judge between us, whether that friendship, which was my very existence for so many years, could ever have received the least flaw, but from umbrages and causes which the quickest sensibility and tenderest jealousy of friendship alone, at first, suggested. It is needless to mark the unhappy epoque, so fatal to a harmony between sister and brother unexampled almost all that time, the loss of which has embitter'd much of my life and will always be an affliction to me. But I will avoid running into vain retrospects and unseasonable effusions of heart, in order to hasten to some particular points of your letter, upon which it is necessary for me to trouble you with a few words. _Absolute_ deference and _blind submission to my will_, you tell me I have often declared to you in the strongest and most mortifying terms cou'd alone satisfy me. I must here beseech you cooly to reconsider these precise terms, with their epithets; and I will venture to make the appeal to the sacred testimony of your breast, whether there be not exaggeration in them. I have often, too often reproached you, and from warmth of temper, in strong and plain terms, that I found no longer the same consent of minds and agreement of sentiments: and I have certainly declared to you that I cou'd not be satisfy'd with you, and I could no longer find in you _any degree of deference towards me_. I was never so drunk with presumption as to expect _absolute_ deference and _blind submission to my will_. A degree of deference to me and to my situation, I frankly own, I did not think too much for me to expect from you, with all the high opinion I really have of your parts. What I expected was too much (as perhaps might be). In our former days friendship had led me into the error. That error is at an end, and you may rest assured, that I can never be so unreasonable as to expect from you, now, anything like deference to me or my opinions. I come next to the small pecuniary assistance which you accepted from me, and which was exactly as you state it, two hundred pounds a year. I declare, upon my honour, I never gave the least foundation for those exaggerations which you say have been spread concerning it. I also declare as solemnly, before God and man, that no consideration cou'd ever have extorted from my lips the least mention of the trifling assistance you accepted from me, but the cruel reports, industriously propagated, and circulating from various quarters round to me, of the state you was left to live in. As to the repayment of this wretched money, allow me, dear Sister, to entreat you to think no more of it. The bare thought of it may surely suffice for your own dignity and for my humiliation, without taxing your present income, merely to mortify me: the demonstration of a blow is, in honour, a blow, and let me conjure you to rest it here. When I want and you abound, I promise you to afford you a better and abler triumph over me, by asking the assistance of your purse.
