Your ever obliged and affectionate,
CL. Harlowe.
To miss Arabella Harlowe [enclosed
to miss Howe in the preceding.]
St. Alban’s, Apr. 11.
I have, I confess, been guilty of an action which
carries with it a rash and undutiful appearance.
And I should have thought it an inexcusable one,
had I been used with less severity than I have been
of late; and had I not had too great reason to apprehend,
that I was to be made a sacrifice to a man I could
not bear to think of. But what is done, is done—perhaps
I could wish it had not; and that I had trusted to
the relenting of my dear and honourable parents.—Yet
this from no other motives but those of duty to them.—To
whom I am ready to return (if I may not be permitted
to retire to The Grove) on conditions which I before
offered to comply with.
Nor shall I be in any sort of dependence upon the
person by whose means I have taken this truly-reluctant
step, inconsistent with any reasonable engagement
I shall enter into, if I am not further precipitated.
Let me not have it to say, now at this important
crisis! that I have a sister, but not a friend in
that sister. My reputation, dearer to me than
life, (whatever you may imagine from the step I have
taken,) is suffering. A little lenity will,
even yet, in a great measure, restore it, and make
that pass for a temporary misunderstanding only, which
otherwise will be a stain as durable as life, upon
a creature who has already been treated with great
unkindness, to use no harsher a word.
For your own sake therefore, for my brother’s
sake, by whom (I must say) I have been thus precipitated,
and for all the family’s sake, aggravate not
my fault, if, on recollecting every thing, you think
it one; nor by widening the unhappy difference, expose
a sister for ever—prays
Your affectionate
CL. Harlowe.
I shall take it for a very great favour to have my
clothes directly sent me, together with fifty guineas,
which you will find in my escritoire (of which I enclose
the key); as also of the divinity and miscellany classes
of my little library; and, if it be thought fit, my
jewels—directed for me, to be left till
called for, at Mr. Osgood’s, near Soho-square.
Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford,
ESQ.
Mr. Lovelace, in continuation of his last letter,
(No. VII.) gives an
account to his friend (pretty much
to the same effect with the lady’s)
of all that passed between them
at the inns, in the journey, and till
their fixing at Mrs. Sorling’s;
to avoid repetition, those passages in
his narrative are extracted, which
will serve to embellish her’s; to
open his views; or to display the
humourous talent he was noted for.
