Clarissa Harlowe; or the history of a young lady — Volume 7

by Samuel Richardson

  LETTER LV

  MISS HOWE, TO THE TWO MISSES MONTAGUESAT. JULY 29.

  DEAR LADIES,

  I have not bee wanting to use all my interest with my beloved friend, toinduce her to forgive and be reconciled to your kinsman, (though he hasso ill deserved it;) and have even repeated my earnest advice to her onthis head. This repetition, and the waiting for her answer, having takenup time, have bee the cause that I could not sooner do myself the honourof writing to you on this subject.

  You will see, by the enclosed, her immovable resolution, grounded onnoble and high-souled motives, which I cannot but regret and applaud atthe same time: applaud, for the justice of her determination, which willconfirm all your worthy house in the opinion you had conceived of herunequalled merit; and regret, because I have but too much reason toapprehend, as well by that, as by the report of a gentleman just comefrom her, that she is in a declining way, as to her health, that herthoughts are very differently employed than on a continuance here.

  The enclosed letter she thought fit to send to me unsealed, that, afterI had perused it, I might forward it to you: and this is the reason it issuperscribed by myself, and sealed with my seal. It is very full andperemptory; but as she had been pleased, in a letter to me, dated the 23dinstant, (as soon as she could hold a pen,) to give me more ample reasonswhy she could not comply with your pressing requests, as well as mine, Iwill transcribe some of the passages in that letter, which will give oneof the wickedest men in the world, (if he sees them,) reason to thinkhimself one of the most unhappy, in the loss of so incomparable a wife ashe might have gloried in, had he not been so superlatively wicked. Theseare the passages.

  [See, for these passages, Miss Harlowe's letter, No. XLI. of this volume, dated July 23, marked with a turned comma, thus ']

  And now, Ladies, you have before you my beloved friend's reasons for herrefusal of a man unworthy of the relation he bears to so many excellentpersons: and I will add, [for I cannot help it,] that the merit and rankof the person considered, and the vile manner of his proceedings, therenever was a greater villany committed: and since she thinks her first andonly fault cannot be expiated but by death, I pray to God daily, and willhourly from the moment I shall hear of that sad catastrophe, that He willbe pleased to make him the subject of His vengeance, in some such way, asthat all who know of his perfidious crime, may see the hand of Heaven inthe punishment of it!

  You will forgive me, Ladies: I love not mine own soul better than I doMiss Clarissa Harlowe. And the distresses she has gone through; thepersecution she suffers from all her friends; the curse she lies under,for his sake, from her implacable father; her reduced health andcircumstances, from high health and affluence; and that execrable arrestand confinement, which have deepened all her other calamities, [and whichmust be laid at his door, as it was the act of his vile agents, that,whether from his immediate orders or not, naturally flowed from hispreceding baseness;] the sex dishonoured in the eye of the world, in theperson of one of the greatest ornaments of it; the unmanly methods,whatever they were, [for I know not all as yet,] by which he compassedher ruin; all these considerations join to justify my warmth, and myexecrations of a man whom I think excluded by his crimes from the benefiteven of christian forgiveness--and were you to see all she writes, and toknow the admirable talents she is mistress of, you yourselves would joinwith me to admire her, and execrate him.

  Believe me to be, with a high sense of your merits,

  Dear Ladies,Your most obedient and humble servant,ANNA HOWE.