LETTER XXXIV.
Miss Cl. Harlowe, To Lady Betty Lawrance.
Thursday, June 29.
Madam,
I hope you'll excuse the freedom of this address, from one who has not the honour to be personally known to you, although you must have heard much
[Page 120]
of Clarissa Harlowe. It is only to beg the favour of a line from your Ladyship's hand (by the next post, if convenient) in answer to the following questions.
1. Whether you wrote a Letter, dated, as I have a memorandum, Wedn. June 7. congratulating your Nephew Lovelace on his supposed Nuptials, as reported to you by Mr. Spurrier, your Ladyship's Steward, as from one Captain Tomlinson:---And in it reproaching Mr. Lovelace, as guilty of slight, &c. in not having acquainted your Ladyship and the family with his Marriage?
2. Whether your Ladyship wrote to Miss Montague to meet you at Reading, in order to attend you to your Cousin Leeson's in Albermarle-street; on your being obliged to be in town on your old Chancery-affair, I remember are the words? And whether you bespoke your Nephew's attendance there on Sunday night the 11th?
3. Whether your Ladyship and Miss Montague did come to town at that time? And whether you went to Hamstead, on Monday, in a hired coach and four, your own being repairing; and took from thence to town the young creature whom you visited there?
Your Ladyship will probably guess, that these questions are not asked for reasons favourable to your Nephew Lovelace. But be the answer what it will, it can do him no hurt, nor me any good; only that I think I owe it to my former hopes (however deceived in them) and even to Charity, that a person, of whom I was once willing to think better, should not prove so egregiously abandoned, as to be wanting, in every instance, to that veracity which is an indispensable in the character of a gentleman.
Be pleased, Madam, to direct to me (keeping the direction a secret for the present) to be left at the Belle-Savage on Ludgate-hill, till called for. I am
Your Ladyship's most humble Servant,
Clarissa Harlowe.