I have not been wanting to use all my interest with my beloved friend, to
induce her to forgive and be reconciled to your kinsman, (though he has
so ill deserved it;) and have even repeated my earnest advice to her on
this head. This repetition, and the waiting for her answer, having taken
up time, have been the cause that I could not sooner do myself the honour
of writing to you on this subject.
You will see, by the enclosed, her immovable resolution, grounded on
noble and high-souled motives, which I cannot but regret and applaud at
the same time: applaud, for the justice of her determination, which will
confirm all your worthy house in the opinion you had conceived of her
unequalled merit; and regret, because I have but too much reason to
apprehend, as well by that, as by the report of a gentleman just come
from her, that she is in a declining way, as to her health, that her
thoughts are very differently employed than on a continuance here.
The enclosed letter she thought fit to send to me unsealed, that, after
I had perused it, I might forward it to you: and this is the reason it is
superscribed by myself, and sealed with my seal. It is very full and
peremptory; but as she had been pleased, in a letter to me, dated the 23d
instant, (as soon as she could hold a pen,) to give me more ample reasons
why she could not comply with your pressing requests, as well as mine, I
will transcribe some of the passages in that letter, which will give one
of the wickedest men in the world, (if he sees them,) reason to think
himself one of the most unhappy, in the loss of so incomparable a wife as
he might have gloried in, had he not been so superlatively wicked. These
are 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 her
refusal of a man unworthy of the relation he bears to so many excellent
persons: and I will add, [for I cannot help it,] that the merit and rank
of the person considered, and the vile manner of his proceedings, there
never was a greater villany committed: and since she thinks her first and
only fault cannot be expiated but by death, I pray to God daily, and will
hourly from the moment I shall hear of that sad catastrophe, that He will
be pleased to make him the subject of His vengeance, in some such way, as
that all who know of his perfidious crime, may see the hand of Heaven in
the punishment of it!
You will forgive me, Ladies: I love not mine own soul better than I do
Miss Clarissa Harlowe. And the distresses she has gone through; the
persecution she suffers from all her friends; the curse she lies under,
for his sake, from her implacable father; her reduced health and
circumstances, from high health and affluence; and that execrable arrest
and confinement, which have deepened all her other calamities, [and which
must 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 his
preceding baseness;] the sex dishonoured in the eye of the world, in the
person of one of the greatest ornaments of it; the unmanly methods,
whatever they were, [for I know not all as yet,] by which he compassed
her ruin; all these considerations join to justify my warmth, and my
execrations of a man whom I think excluded by his crimes from the benefit
even of christian forgiveness--and were you to see all she writes, and to
know the admirable talents she is mistress of, you yourselves would join
with 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.