I take this last and solemn occasion to repeat to you my thanks for all
your kindness to me at a time when I most needed countenance and
protection.
A few considerations I beg leave, as now at your perusal of this, from
the dead, to press upon you, with all the warmth of a sincere friendship.
By the time you will see this, you will have had an instance, I humbly
trust, of the comfortable importance of a pacified conscience, in the
last hours of one, who, to the last hour, will wish your eternal welfare.
The great Duke of Luxemburgh, as I have heard, on his death-bed,
declared, that he would then much rather have had it to reflect upon,
that he had administered a cup of cold water to a worthy poor creature in
distress, than that he had won so many battles as he had triumphed for.
And, as one well observes, All the sentiments of worldly grandeur vanish
at that unavoidable moment which decides the destiny of men.
If then, Sir, at the tremendous hour it be thus with the conquerors of
armies, and the subduers of nations, let me in a very few words (many are
not needed,) ask, What, at that period, must be the reflection of those,
(if capable of reflection,) who have lived a life of sense and offence;
whose study and whose pride most ingloriously have been to seduce the
innocent, and to ruin the weak, the unguarded, and the friendless; made
still more friendless by their base seductions?--O Mr. Belford, weigh,
ponder, and reflect upon it, now that, in health, and in vigour of mind
and body, the reflections will most avail you--what an ungrateful, what
an unmanly, what a meaner than reptile pride is this!
In the next place, Sir, let me beg of you, for my sake, who AM, or, as
now you will best read it, have been, driven to the necessity of applying
to you to be the executor of my will, that you will bear, according to
that generosity which I think to be in you, with all my friends, and
particularly with my brother, (who is really a worthy young man, but
perhaps a little too headstrong in his first resentments and conceptions
of things,) if any thing, by reason of this trust, should fall out
disagreeably; and that you will study to make peace, and to reconcile all
parties; and more especially, that you, who seem to have a great
influence upon your still-more headstrong friend, will interpose, if
occasion be, to prevent farther mischief--for surely, Sir, that violent
spirit may sit down satisfied with the evils he has already wrought; and,
particularly, with the wrongs, the heinous and ignoble wrongs, he has in
me done to my family, wounded in the tenderest part of its honour.
For your compliance with this request I have already your repeated
promise. I claim the observance of it, therefore, as a debt from you:
and though I hope I need not doubt it, yet was I willing, on this solemn,
this last occasion, thus earnestly to re-inforce it.
I have another request to make to you; it is only, that you will be
pleased, by a particular messenger, to forward the enclosed letters as
directed.
And now, Sir, having the presumption to think that an useful member is
lost to society by means of the unhappy step which has brought my life so
soon to its period, let me hope that I may be an humble instrument, in
the hands of Providence, to reform a man of your abilities; and then I
shall think that loss will be more abundantly repaired to the world,
while it will be, by God's goodness, my gain; and I shall have this
farther hope, that once more I shall have an opportunity in a blessed
eternity to thank you, as I now repeatedly do, for the good you have done
to, and the trouble you will have taken for, Sir,
Your obliged servant,
CLARISSA HARLOWE.
***
The other letters are directed to her father, to her mother, one to her
two uncles, to her brother, to her sister, to her aunt Hervey, to her
cousin Morden, to Miss Howe, to Mrs. Norton, and lastly one to you, in
performance of her promise, that a letter should be sent you when she
arrived at her father's house!----I will withhold this last till I can
be assured that you will be fitter to receive it than Tourville tells me
you are at present.
Copies of all these are sealed up, and entitled, Copies of my ten
posthumous letters, for J. Belford, Esq.; and put in among the bundle of
papers left to my direction, which I have not yet had leisure to open.
No wonder, while able, that she was always writing, since thus only of
late could she employ that time, which heretofore, from the long days she
made, caused so many beautiful works to spring from her fingers. It is
my opinion, that there never was a woman so young, who wrote so much, and
with such celerity. Her thoughts keeping pace, as I have seen, with her
pen, she hardly ever stopped or hesitated; and very seldom blotted out,
or altered. It was a natural talent she was mistress of, among many
other extraordinary ones. I gave the Colonel his letter, and ordered
Harry instantly to get ready to carry the others. Mean time (retiring
into the next apartment) we opened the will. We were both so much
affected in perusing it, that at one time the Colonel, breaking off, gave
it to me to read on; at another I gave it back to him to proceed with;
neither of us being able to read it through without such tokens of
sensibility as affected the voice of each.
Mrs. Lovick, Mrs. Smith, and her nurse, were still more touched, when we
read those articles in which they are respectively remembered: but I will
avoid mentioning the particulars, (except in what relates to the thread
of my narration,) as in proper time I shall send you a copy of it.
The Colonel told me, he was ready to account with me for the money and
bills brought up from Harlowe-place; which would enable me, as he said,
directly to execute the legacy parts of the will; and he would needs at
the instant force into my hands a paper relating to that subject. I put
it into my pocket-book, without looking into it; telling him, that as I
hoped he would do all in his power to promote a literal performance of
the will, I must beg his advice and assistance in the execution of it.
Her request to be buried with her ancestors, made a letter of the
following import necessary, which I prevailed upon the Colonel to write;
being unwilling myself (so early at least,) to appear officious in the
eye of a family which probably wishes not any communication with me.