The lessons thus begun continued all through the period of the composer’s first London visit, and the correspondence soon begins to reveal a growing attachment between the lonely, unhappily married Haydn and, in his own simple words, “the English widow in London who loved me.” The letters, quaint, formal, tender, are couched in the vocabulary of “Evelina” and “Clarissa Harlowe;” their “fair author,” as one feels impelled to call her, might have been, with her funny little abbreviations, her odd admixture of grandiloquence and impulsive feeling, and her constant underscoring of unimportant words, Clarissa herself. A note of April 12, 1792, will perhaps sufficiently show her way of writing: “M. D. [My dear.] I am so _truly anxious_ about _you_. I must write to beg to know _how you do_? I was very sorry I _had_ not the pleasure of Seeing you this Evening, my thoughts have been _constantly_ with you and indeed my D. L. [dear love], no words can express half the tenderness and _affection I feel for you_. I thought you seemed out of spirits this morning. I wish I could always remove every trouble from your mind, be assured my D: I partake with the most perfect sympathy in _all your sensations_ and my regard for you is _Stronger every day_. My best wishes attend you and I am ever my D. H. [dear Haydn] most sincerely your Faithful, etc.” Thus tenderly and innocently the friendship progresses, with constant protestations of regard, with continual solicitude to know “_how you do_” and “whether you have _Slept well_,” with little discreet panegyrics over “your sweet compositions and your excellent performance,” and with many fears “lest you fatigue yourself with such close application”; until, with Haydn’s departure for home, it suddenly and abruptly closes, never to be resumed. Did these two meet again when Haydn returned to London in 1794? Did the letters recommence? We do not know. The story ends with a letter of Mistress Shroeter’s, written just before Haydn’s departure in 1792, beginning with the hope that he has “Slept well,” and ending with a protestation of “inviolable attachment.”