LETTER LVII
MISS CL. HARLOWE, TO LADY BETTY LAWRANCETHURSDAY, JUNE 29.
MADAM,
I hope you'll excuse the freedom of this address, from one who has notthe honour to be personally known to you, although you must have heardmuch of Clarissa Harlowe. It is only to beg the favour of a line fromyour Ladyship's hand, (by the next post, if convenient,) in answer to thefollowing 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 Albemarle-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 Hampstead, on Monday, in a hired coach and four, your own being repairing, and took from thence to town with the young creature whom you visited there?
Your Ladyship will probably guess, that the questions are not asked forreasons favourable to your nephew Lovelace. But be the answer what itwill, it can do him no hurt, nor me any good; only that I think I owe itto my former hopes, (however deceived in them,) and even to charity, thata person, of whom I was once willing to think better, should not prove soegregiously abandoned, as to be wanting, in every instance, to thatveracity which is indispensable in the character of a gentleman.
Be pleased, Madam, to direct to me, (keeping the direction a secret forthe present,) to be left at the Belle-Savage, on Ludgate hill, tillcalled for. I am
Your Ladyship's most humble servant,CLARISSA HARLOWE.