THE REV. DR. LEWEN, TO MISS CL. HARLOWE
FRIDAY, AUG. 18.
Presuming, dearest and ever-respectable young lady, upon your former
favour, and upon your opinion of my judgment and sincerity, I cannot help
addressing you by a few lines on your present unhappy situation.
I will not look back upon the measures into which you have either been
led or driven. But will only say as to those, that I think you are the
least to blame of any young lady that was ever reduced from happy to
unhappy circumstances; and I have not been wanting to say as much, where
I hoped my freedom would have been better received than I have had the
mortification to find it to be.
What I principally write for now is, to put you upon doing a piece of
justice to yourself, and to your sex, in the prosecuting for his life (I
am assured his life is in your power) the most profligate and abandoned
of men, as he must be, who could act so basely, as I understand Mr.
Lovelace has acted by you.
I am very ill; and am now forced to write upon my pillow; my thoughts
confused; and incapable of method: I shall not therefore aim at method:
but to give you in general my opinion--and that is, that your religion,
your duty to your family, the duty you owe to your honour, and even
charity to your sex, oblige you to give public evidence against this very
wicked man.
And let me add another consideration: The prevention, by this means, of
the mischiefs that may otherwise happen between your brother and Mr.
Lovelace, or between the latter and your cousin Morden, who is now, I
hear, arrived, and resolves to have justice done you.
A consideration which ought to affect your conscience, [forgive me,
dearest young lady, I think I am now in the way of my duty;] and to be
of more concern to you, than that hard pressure upon your modesty which
I know the appearance against him in an open court must be of to such a
lady as you; and which, I conceive, will be your great difficulty. But I
know, Madam, that you have dignity enough to become the blushes of the
most naked truth, when necessity, justice, and honour, exact it from you.
Rakes and ravishers would meet with encouragement indeed, and most from
those who had the greatest abhorrence of their actions, if violated
modesty were never to complain of the injury it received from the
villanous attempters of it.
In a word, the reparation of your family dishonour now rests in your own
bosom: and which only one of these two alternatives can repair; to wit,
either to marry the offender, or to prosecute him at law. Bitter
expedients for a soul so delicate as your's!
He, and all his friends, I understand, solicit you to the first: and it
is certainly, now, all the amends within his power to make. But I am
assured that you have rejected their solicitations, and his, with the
indignation and contempt that his foul actions have deserved: but yet,
that you refuse not to extend to him the christian forgiveness he has so
little reason to expect, provided he will not disturb you farther.
But, Madam, the prosecution I advise, will not let your present and
future exemption from fresh disturbance from so vile a molester depend
upon his courtesy: I should think so noble and so rightly-guided a spirit
as your's would not permit that it should, if you could help it.
And can indignities of any kind be properly pardoned till we have it in
our power to punish them? To pretend to pardon, while we are labouring
under the pain or dishonour of them, will be thought by some to be but
the vaunted mercy of a pusillanimous heart, trembling to resent them.
The remedy I propose is a severe one: But what pain can be more severe
than the injury? Or how will injuries be believed to grieve us, that are
never honourably complained of?
I am sure Miss Clarissa Harlowe, however injured and oppressed, remains
unshaken in her sentiments of honour and virtue: and although she would
sooner die than deserve that her modesty should be drawn into question;
yet she will think no truth immodest that is to be uttered in the
vindicated cause of innocence and chastity. Little, very little
difference is there, my dear young lady, between a suppressed evidence,
and a false one.
It is a terrible circumstance, I once more own, for a young lady of your
delicacy to be under the obligation of telling so shocking a story in
public court: but it is still a worse imputation, that she should pass
over so mortal an injury unresented.
Conscience, honour, justice, are on your side: and modesty would, by
some, be thought but an empty name, should you refuse to obey their
dictates.
I have been consulted, I own, on this subject. I have given it as my
opinion, that you ought to prosecute the abandoned man--but without my
reasons. These I reserved, with a resolution to lay them before you
unknown to any body, that the result, if what I wish, may be your own.
I will only add that the misfortunes which have befallen you, had they
been the lot of a child of my own, could not have affected me more than
your's have done. My own child I love: but I both love and honour you:
since to love you, is to love virtue, good sense, prudence, and every
thing that is good and noble in woman.
Wounded as I think all these are by the injuries you have received, you
will believe that the knowledge of your distresses must have afflicted,
beyond what I am able to express,
Your sincere admirer, and humble servant,
ARTHUR LEWEN.
I just now understand that your sister will, by proper authority, propose
this prosecution to you. I humbly presume that the reason why you
resolved not upon this step from the first, was, that you did not
know that it would have the countenance and support of your
relations.