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The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

by Daniel Defoe · English · Gutenberg #370 · 724,454 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Author: Daniel Defoe


        
Release date: December 1, 1995 [eBook #370]
                Most recently updated: September 3, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/370


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF THE FAMOUS MOLL FLANDERS ***




The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c.


Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu’d Variety for
Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five
times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief,
Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d
Honest, and dies a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums . . .

by Daniel Defoe




THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE


The world is so taken up of late with novels and romances, that it will
be hard for a private history to be taken for genuine, where the names
and other circumstances of the person are concealed, and on this
account we must be content to leave the reader to pass his own opinion
upon the ensuing sheet, and take it just as he pleases.

The author is here supposed to be writing her own history, and in the
very beginning of her account she gives the reasons why she thinks fit
to conceal her true name, after which there is no occasion to say any
more about that.

It is true that the original of this story is put into new words, and
the style of the famous lady we here speak of is a little altered;
particularly she is made to tell her own tale in modester words that
she told it at first, the copy which came first to hand having been
written in language more like one still in Newgate than one grown
penitent and humble, as she afterwards pretends to be.

The pen employed in finishing her story, and making it what you now see
it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it into a dress fit to be
seen, and to make it speak language fit to be read. When a woman
debauched from her youth, nay, even being the offspring of debauchery
and vice, comes to give an account of all her vicious practices, and
even to descend to the particular occasions and circumstances by which
she ran through in threescore years, an author must be hard put to it
wrap it up so clean as not to give room, especially for vicious
readers, to turn it to his disadvantage.

All possible care, however, has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no
immodest turns in the new dressing up of this story; no, not to the
worst parts of her expressions. To this purpose some of the vicious
part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out,
and several other parts are very much shortened. What is left ’tis
hoped will not offend the chastest reader or the modest hearer; and as
the best use is made even of the worst story, the moral ’tis hoped will
keep the reader serious, even where the story might incline him to be
otherwise. To give the history of a wicked life repented of,
necessarily requires that the wicked part should be make as wicked as
the real history of it will bear, to illustrate and give a beauty to
the penitent part, which is certainly the best and brightest, if
related with equal spirit and life.

It is suggested there cannot be the same life, the same brightness and
beauty, in relating the penitent part as is in the criminal part. If
there is any truth in that suggestion, I must be allowed to say ’tis
because there is not the same taste and relish in the reading, and
indeed it is too true that the difference lies not in the real worth of
the subject so much as in the gust and palate of the reader.

But as this work is chiefly recommended to those who know how to read
it, and how to make the good uses of it which the story all along
recommends to them, so it is to be hoped that such readers will be more
pleased with the moral than the fable, with the application than with
the relation, and with the end of the writer than with the life of the
person written of.

There is in this story abundance of delightful incidents, and all of
them usefully applied. There is an agreeable turn artfully given them
in the relating, that naturally instructs the reader, either one way or
other. The first part of her lewd life with the young gentleman at
Colchester has so many happy turns given it to expose the crime, and
warn all whose circumstances are adapted to it, of the ruinous end of
such things, and the foolish, thoughtless, and abhorred conduct of both
the parties, that it abundantly atones for all the lively description
she gives of her folly and wickedness.

The repentance of her lover at the Bath, and how brought by the just
alarm of his fit of sickness to abandon her; the just caution given
there against even the lawful intimacies of the dearest friends, and
how unable they are to preserve the most solemn resolutions of virtue
without divine assistance; these are parts which, to a just
discernment, will appear to have more real beauty in them, than all the
amorous chain of story which introduces it.

In a word, as the whole relation is carefully garbled of all the levity
and looseness that was in it, so it all applied, and with the utmost
care, to virtuous and religious uses. None can, without being guilty of
manifest injustice, cast any reproach upon it, or upon our design in
publishing it.

The advocates for the stage have, in all ages, made this the great
argument to persuade people that their plays are useful, and that they
ought to be allowed in the most civilised and in the most religious
government; namely, that they are applied to virtuous purposes, and
that by the most lively representations, they fail not to recommend
virtue and generous principles, and to discourage and expose all sorts
of vice and corruption of manners; and were it true that they did so,
and that they constantly adhered to that rule, as the test of their
acting on the theatre, much might be said in their favour.

Throughout the infinite variety of this book, this fundamental is most
strictly adhered to; there is not a wicked action in any part of it,
but is first and last rendered unhappy and unfortunate; there is not a
superlative villain brought upon the stage, but either he is brought to
an unhappy end, or brought to be a penitent; there is not an ill thing
mentioned but it is condemned, even in the relation, nor a virtuous,
just thing but it carries its praise along with it. What can more
exactly answer the rule laid down, to recommend even those
representations of things which have so many other just objections
leaving against them? namely, of example, of bad company, obscene
language, and the like.

Upon this foundation this book is recommended to the reader as a work
from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and
religious inference is drawn, by which the reader will have something
of instruction, if he pleases to make use of it.

All the exploits of this lady of fame, in her depredations upon
mankind, stand as so many warnings to honest people to beware of them,
intimating to them by what methods innocent people are drawn in,
plundered and robbed, and by consequence how to avoid them. Her robbing
a little innocent child, dressed fine by the vanity of the mother, to
go to the dancing-school, is a good memento to such people hereafter,
as is likewise her picking the gold watch from the young lady’s side in
the Park.

Her getting a parcel from a hare-brained wench at the coaches in St.
John Street; her booty made at the fire, and again at Harwich, all give
us excellent warnings in such cases to be more present to ourselves in
sudden surprises of every sort.

Her application to a sober life and industrious management at last in
Virginia, with her transported spouse, is a story fruitful of
instruction to all the unfortunate creatures who are obliged to seek
their re-establishment abroad, whether by the misery of transportation
or other disaster; letting them know that diligence and application
have their due encouragement, even in the remotest parts of the world,
and that no case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of prospect,
but that an unwearied industry will go a great way to deliver us from
it, will in time raise the meanest creature to appear again in the
world, and give him a new case for his life.

There are a few of the serious inferences which we are led by the hand
to in this book, and these are fully sufficient to justify any man in
recommending it to the world, and much more to justify the publication
of it.

There are two of the most beautiful parts still behind, which this
story gives some idea of, and lets us into the parts of them, but they
are either of them too long to be brought into the same volume, and
indeed are, as I may call them, whole volumes of themselves, viz.: 1.
The life of her governess, as she calls her, who had run through, it
seems, in a few years, all the eminent degrees of a gentlewoman, a
whore, and a bawd; a midwife and a midwife-keeper, as they are called;
a pawnbroker, a childtaker, a receiver of thieves, and of thieves’
purchase, that is to say, of stolen goods; and in a word, herself a
thief, a breeder up of thieves and the like, and yet at last a
penitent.

The second is the life of her transported husband, a highwayman, who it
seems, lived a twelve years’ life of successful villainy upon the road,
and even at last came off so well as to be a volunteer transport, not a
convict; and in whose life there is an incredible variety.

But, as I have said, these are things too long to bring in here, so
neither can I make a promise of the coming out by themselves.

We cannot say, indeed, that this history is carried on quite to the end
of the life of this famous Moll Flanders, as she calls herself, for
nobody can write their own life to the full end of it, unless they can
write it after they are dead. But her husband’s life, being written by
a third hand, gives a full account of them both, how long they lived
together in that country, and how they both came to England again,
after about eight years, in which time they were grown very rich, and
where she lived, it seems, to be very old, but was not so extraordinary
a penitent as she was at first; it seems only that indeed she always
spoke with abhorrence of her former life, and of every part of it.

In her last scene, at Maryland and Virginia, many pleasant things
happened, which makes that part of her life very agreeable, but they
are not told with the same elegancy as those accounted for by herself;
so it is still to the more advantage that we break off here.




 MOLL FLANDERS


My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate,
and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence
still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is
not be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to
this work; perhaps, after my death, it may be better known; at present
it would not be proper, no not though a general pardon should be
issued, even without exceptions and reserve of persons or crimes.

It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades, who are
out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out of the world by the
steps and the string, as I often expected to go), knew me by the name
of Moll Flanders, so you may give me leave to speak of myself under
that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.

I have been told that in one of our neighbour nations, whether it be in
France or where else I know not, they have an order from the king, that
when any criminal is condemned, either to die, or to the galleys, or to
be transported, if they leave any children, as such are generally
unprovided for, by the poverty or forfeiture of their parents, so they
are immediately taken into the care of the Government, and put into a
hospital called the House of Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed,
fed, taught, and when fit to go out, are placed out to trades or to
services, so as to be well able to provide for themselves by an honest,
industrious behaviour.

Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been left a poor
desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without help or helper
in the world, as was my fate; and by which I was not only exposed to
very great distresses, even before I was capable either of
understanding my case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of
life which was not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary
course tended to the swift destruction both of soul and body.

But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted of felony for
a certain petty theft scarce worth naming, viz. having an opportunity
of borrowing three pieces of fine holland of a certain draper in
Cheapside. The circumstances are too long to repeat, and I have heard
them related so many ways, that I can scarce be certain which is the
right account.

However it was, this they all agree in, that my mother pleaded her
belly, and being found quick with child, she was respited for about
seven months; in which time having brought me into the world, and being
about again, she was called down, as they term it, to her former
judgment, but obtained the favour of being transported to the
plantations, and left me about half a year old; and in bad hands, you
may be sure.

This is too near the first hours of my life for me to relate anything
of myself but by hearsay; it is enough to mention, that as I was born
in such an unhappy place, I had no parish to have recourse to for my
nourishment in my infancy; nor can I give the least account how I was
kept alive, other than that, as I have been told, some relation of my
mother’s took me away for a while as a nurse, but at whose expense, or
by whose direction, I know nothing at all of it.

The first account that I can recollect, or could ever learn of myself,
was that I had wandered among a crew of those people they call gypsies,
or Egyptians; but I believe it was but a very little while that I had
been among them, for I had not had my skin discoloured or blackened, as
they do very young to all the children they carry about with them; nor
can I tell how I came among them, or how I got from them.

It was at Colchester, in Essex, that those people left me; and I have a
notion in my head that I left them there (that is, that I hid myself
and would not go any farther with them), but I am not able to be
particular in that account; only this I remember, that being taken up
by some of the parish officers of Colchester, I gave an account that I
came into the town with the gypsies, but that I would not go any
farther with them, and that so they had left me, but whither they were
gone that I knew not, nor could they expect it of me; for though they
send round the country to inquire after them, it seems they could not
be found.

I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a parish
charge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet as my case came
to be known, and that I was too young to do any work, being not above
three years old, compassion moved the magistrates of the town to order
some care to be taken of me, and I became one of their own as much as
if I had been born in the place.

In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to
nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor but had been in
better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such as
I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till they
were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to
service or get their own bread.

This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teach
children to read and to work; and having, as I have said, lived before
that in good fashion, she bred up the children she took with a great
deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.

But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very
religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-wifely
and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a
word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were
brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the
dancing-school.

I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified
with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had
ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little
service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a
drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me
into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service,
as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young;
and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my
living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had
taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief
trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would
work for her, and I would work very hard.

I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did
nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so
much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me
very well.

One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor
children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her
usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on purpose to
observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to; as
I remember, it was marking some shirts which she had taken to make, and
after a while she began to talk to me. “Thou foolish child,” says she,
“thou art always crying” (for I was crying then); “prithee, what dost
cry for?” “Because they will take me away,” says I, “and put me to
service, and I can’t work housework.” “Well, child,” says she, “but
though you can’t work housework, as you call it, you will learn it in
time, and they won’t put you to hard things at first.” “Yes, they
will,” says I, “and if I can’t do it they will beat me, and the maids
will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl and I
can’t do it”; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more
to her.

This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she from that time resolved
I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would
speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger.

Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service was
such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not
have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to
me; I should have cried, I believe, all the time, with the very
apprehension of its being to be so at last.

When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with
me. “And what would you have?” says she; “don’t I tell you that you
shall not go to service till your are bigger?” “Ay,” said I, “but then
I must go at last.” “Why, what?” said she; “is the girl mad? What would
you be—a gentlewoman?” “Yes,” says I, and cried heartily till I roared
out again.

This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it
would. “Well, madam, forsooth,” says she, gibing at me, “you would be a
gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What! will
you do it by your fingers’ end?”

“Yes,” says I again, very innocently.

“Why, what can you earn?” says she; “what can you get at your work?”

“Threepence,” said I, “when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain
work.”

“Alas! poor gentlewoman,” said she again, laughing, “what will that do
for thee?”

“It will keep me,” says I, “if you will let me live with you.” And this
I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor woman’s
heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.

“But,” says she, “that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and
who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?” says she, and smiled all
the while at me.

“I will work harder, then,” says I, “and you shall have it all.”

“Poor child! it won’t keep you,” says she; “it will hardly keep you in
victuals.”

“Then I will have no victuals,” says I, again very innocently; “let me
but live with you.”

“Why, can you live without victuals?” says she.

“Yes,” again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still
I cried heartily.

I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all nature; but
it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion that, in
short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too, and she cried
at last as fast as I did, and then took me and led me out of the
teaching-room. “Come,” says she, “you shan’t go to service; you shall
live with me”; and this pacified me for the present.

Some time after this, she going to wait on the Mayor, and talking of
such things as belonged to her business, at last my story came up, and
my good nurse told Mr. Mayor the whole tale. He was so pleased with it,
that he would call his lady and his two daughters to hear it, and it
made mirth enough among them, you may be sure.

However, not a week had passed over, but on a sudden comes Mrs.
Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my old nurse, and to
see her school and the children. When they had looked about them a
little, “Well, Mrs. ——,” says the Mayoress to my nurse, “and pray which
is the little lass that intends to be a gentlewoman?” I heard her, and
I was terribly frighted at first, though I did not know why neither;
but Mrs. Mayoress comes up to me. “Well, miss,” says she, “and what are
you at work upon?” The word miss was a language that had hardly been
heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she called
me. However, I stood up, made a curtsy, and she took my work out of my
hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she took up one of
the hands. “Nay,” says she, “the child may come to be a gentlewoman for
aught anybody knows; she has a gentlewoman’s hand,” says she. This
pleased me mightily, you may be sure; but Mrs. Mayoress did not stop
there, but giving me my work again, she put her hand in her pocket,
gave me a shilling, and bid me mind my work, and learn to work well,
and I might be a gentlewoman for aught she knew.

Now all this while my good old nurse, Mrs. Mayoress, and all the rest
of them did not understand me at all, for they meant one sort of thing
by the word gentlewoman, and I meant quite another; for alas! all I
understood by being a gentlewoman was to be able to work for myself,
and get enough to keep me without that terrible bugbear going to
service, whereas they meant to live great, rich and high, and I know
not what.

Well, after Mrs. Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came in, and they
called for the gentlewoman too, and they talked a long while to me, and
I answered them in my innocent way; but always, if they asked me
whether I resolved to be a gentlewoman, I answered Yes. At last one of
them asked me what a gentlewoman was? That puzzled me much; but,
however, I explained myself negatively, that it was one that did not go
to service, to do housework. They were pleased to be familiar with me,
and like my little prattle to them, which, it seems, was agreeable
enough to them, and they gave me money too.

As for my money, I gave it all to my mistress-nurse, as I called her,
and told her she should have all I got for myself when I was a
gentlewoman, as well as now. By this and some other of my talk, my old
tutoress began to understand me about what I meant by being a
gentlewoman, and that I understood by it no more than to be able to get
my bread by my own work; and at last she asked me whether it was not
so.

I told her, yes, and insisted on it, that to do so was to be a
gentlewoman; “for,” says I, “there is such a one,” naming a woman that
mended lace and washed the ladies’ laced-heads; “she,” says I, “is a
gentlewoman, and they call her madam.”

“Poor child,” says my good old nurse, “you may soon be such a
gentlewoman as that, for she is a person of ill fame, and has had two
or three bastards.”

I did not understand anything of that; but I answered, “I am sure they
call her madam, and she does not go to service nor do housework”; and
therefore I insisted that she was a gentlewoman, and I would be such a
gentlewoman as that.

The ladies were told all this again, to be sure, and they made
themselves merry with it, and every now and then the young ladies, Mr.
Mayor’s daughters, would come and see me, and ask where the little
gentlewoman was, which made me not a little proud of myself.

This held a great while, and I was often visited by these young ladies,
and sometimes they brought others with them; so that I was known by it
almost all over the town.

I was now about ten years old, and began to look a little womanish, for
I was mighty grave and humble, very mannerly, and as I had often heard
the ladies say I was pretty, and would be a very handsome woman, so you
may be sure that hearing them say so made me not a little proud.
However, that pride had no ill effect upon me yet; only, as they often
gave me money, and I gave it to my old nurse, she, honest woman, was so
just to me as to lay it all out again for me, and gave me head-dresses,
and linen, and gloves, and ribbons, and I went very neat, and always
clean; for that I would do, and if I had rags on, I would always be
clean, or else I would dabble them in water myself; but, I say, my good
nurse, when I had money given me, very honestly laid it out for me, and
would always tell the ladies this or that was bought with their money;
and this made them oftentimes give me more, till at last I was indeed
called upon by the magistrates, as I understood it, to go out to
service; but then I was come to be so good a workwoman myself, and the
ladies were so kind to me, that it was plain I could maintain
myself—that is to say, I could earn as much for my nurse as she was
able by it to keep me—so she told them that if they would give her
leave, she would keep the gentlewoman, as she called me, to be her
assistant and teach the children, which I was very well able to do; for
I was very nimble at my work, and had a good hand with my needle,
though I was yet very young.

But the kindness of the ladies of the town did not end here, for when
they came to understand that I was no more maintained by the public
allowance as before, they gave me money oftener than formerly; and as I
grew up they brought me work to do for them, such as linen to make, and
laces to mend, and heads to dress up, and not only paid me for doing
them, but even taught me how to do them; so that now I was a
gentlewoman indeed, as I understood that word, I not only found myself
clothes and paid my nurse for my keeping, but got money in my pocket
too beforehand.

The ladies also gave me clothes frequently of their own or their
children’s; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns, some one
thing, some another, and these my old woman managed for me like a mere
mother, and kept them for me, obliged me to mend them, and turn them
and twist them to the best advantage, for she was a rare housewife.

At last one of the ladies took so much fancy to me that she would have
me home to her house, for a month, she said, to be among her daughters.

Now, though this was exceeding kind in her, yet, as my old good woman
said to her, unless she resolved to keep me for good and all, she would
do the little gentlewoman more harm than good. “Well,” says the lady,
“that’s true; and therefore I’ll only take her home for a week, then,
that I may see how my daughters and she agree together, and how I like
her temper, and then I’ll tell you more; and in the meantime, if
anybody comes to see her as they used to do, you may only tell them you
have sent her out to my house.”

This was prudently managed enough, and I went to the lady’s house; but
I was so pleased there with the young ladies, and they so pleased with
me, that I had enough to do to come away, and they were as unwilling to
part with me.

However, I did come away, and lived almost a year more with my honest
old woman, and began now to be very helpful to her; for I was almost
fourteen years old, was tall of my age, and looked a little womanish;
but I had such a taste of genteel living at the lady’s house that I was
not so easy in my old quarters as I used to be, and I thought it was
fine to be a gentlewoman indeed, for I had quite other notions of a
gentlewoman now than I had before; and as I thought, I say, that it was
fine to be a gentlewoman, so I loved to be among gentlewomen, and
therefore I longed to be there again.

About the time that I was fourteen years and a quarter old, my good
nurse, mother I rather to call her, fell sick and died. I was then in a
sad condition indeed, for as there is no great bustle in putting an end
to a poor body’s family when once they are carried to the grave, so the
poor good woman being buried, the parish children she kept were
immediately removed by the church-wardens; the school was at an end,
and the children of it had no more to do but just stay at home till
they were sent somewhere else; and as for what she left, her daughter,
a married woman with six or seven children, came and swept it all away
at once, and removing the goods, they had no more to say to me than to
jest with me, and tell me that the little gentlewoman might set up for
herself if she pleased.

I was frighted out of my wits almost, and knew not what to do, for I
was, as it were, turned out of doors to the wide world, and that which
was still worse, the old honest woman had two-and-twenty shillings of
mine in her hand, which was all the estate the little gentlewoman had
in the world; and when I asked the daughter for it, she huffed me and
laughed at me, and told me she had nothing to do with it.

It was true the good, poor woman had told her daughter of it, and that
it lay in such a place, that it was the child’s money, and had called
once or twice for me to give it me, but I was, unhappily, out of the
way somewhere or other, and when I came back she was past being in a
condition to speak of it. However, the daughter was so honest
afterwards as to give it me, though at first she used me cruelly about
it.

Now was I a poor gentlewoman indeed, and I was just that very night to
be turned into the wide world; for the daughter removed all the goods,
and I had not so much as a lodging to go to, or a bit of bread to eat.
But it seems some of the neighbours, who had known my circumstances,
took so much compassion of me as to acquaint the lady in whose family I
had been a week, as I mentioned above; and immediately she sent her
maid to fetch me away, and two of her daughters came with the maid
though unsent. So I went with them, bag and baggage, and with a glad
heart, you may be sure. The fright of my condition had made such an
impression upon me, that I did not want now to be a gentlewoman, but
was very willing to be a servant, and that any kind of servant they
thought fit to have me be.

But my new generous mistress, for she exceeded the good woman I was
with before, in everything, as well as in the matter of estate; I say,
in everything except honesty; and for that, though this was a lady most
exactly just, yet I must not forget to say on all occasions, that the
first, though poor, was as uprightly honest as it was possible for any
one to be.

I was no sooner carried away, as I have said, by this good gentlewoman,
but the first lady, that is to say, the Mayoress that was, sent her two
daughters to take care of me; and another family which had taken notice
of me when I was the little gentlewoman, and had given me work to do,
sent for me after her, so that I was mightily made of, as we say; nay,
and they were not a little angry, especially madam the Mayoress, that
her friend had taken me away from her, as she called it; for, as she
said, I was hers by right, she having been the first that took any
notice of me. But they that had me would not part with me; and as for
me, though I should have been very well treated with any of the others,
yet I could not be better than where I was.

Here I continued till I was between seventeen and eighteen years old,
and here I had all the advantages for my education that could be
imagined; the lady had masters home to the house to teach her daughters
to dance, and to speak French, and to write, and other to teach them
music; and I was always with them, I learned as fast as they; and
though the masters were not appointed to teach me, yet I learned by
imitation and inquiry all that they learned by instruction and
direction; so that, in short, I learned to dance and speak French as
well as any of them, and to sing much better, for I had a better voice
than any of them. I could not so readily come at playing on the
harpsichord or spinet, because I had no instrument of my own to
practice on, and could only come at theirs in the intervals when they
left it, which was uncertain; but yet I learned tolerably well too, and
the young ladies at length got two instruments, that is to say, a
harpsichord and a spinet too, and then they taught me themselves. But
as to dancing, they could hardly help my learning country-dances,
because they always wanted me to make up even number; and, on the other
hand, they were as heartily willing to learn me everything that they
had been taught themselves, as I could be to take the learning.

By this means I had, as I have said above, all the advantages of
education that I could have had if I had been as much a gentlewoman as
they were with whom I lived; and in some things I had the advantage of
my ladies, though they were my superiors; but they were all the gifts
of nature, and which all their fortunes could not furnish. First, I was
apparently handsomer than any of them; secondly, I was better shaped;
and, thirdly, I sang better, by which I mean I had a better voice; in
all which you will, I hope, allow me to say, I do not speak my own
conceit of myself, but the opinion of all that knew the family.

I had with all these the common vanity of my sex, viz. that being
really taken for very handsome, or, if you please, for a great beauty,
I very well knew it, and had as good an opinion of myself as anybody
else could have of me; and particularly I loved to hear anybody speak
of it, which could not but happen to me sometimes, and was a great
satisfaction to me.

Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell of myself, and in all this
part of my life I not only had the reputation of living in a very good
family, and a family noted and respected everywhere for virtue and
sobriety, and for every valuable thing; but I had the character too of
a very sober, modest, and virtuous young woman, and such I had always
been; neither had I yet any occasion to think of anything else, or to
know what a temptation to wickedness meant.

But that which I was too vain of was my ruin, or rather my vanity was
the cause of it. The lady in the house where I was had two sons, young
gentlemen of very promising parts and of extraordinary behaviour, and
it was my misfortune to be very well with them both, but they managed
themselves with me in a quite different manner.

The eldest, a gay gentleman that knew the town as well as the country,
and though he had levity enough to do an ill-natured thing, yet had too
much judgment of things to pay too dear for his pleasures; he began
with the unhappy snare to all women, viz. taking notice upon all
occasions how pretty I was, as he called it, how agreeable, how
well-carriaged, and the like; and this he contrived so subtly, as if he
had known as well how to catch a woman in his net as a partridge when
he went a-setting; for he would contrive to be talking this to his
sisters when, though I was not by, yet when he knew I was not far off
but that I should be sure to hear him. His sisters would return softly
to him, “Hush, brother, she will hear you; she is but in the next
room.” Then he would put it off and talk softlier, as if he had not
known it, and begin to acknowledge he was wrong; and then, as if he had
forgot himself, he would speak aloud again, and I, that was so well
pleased to hear it, was sure to listen for it upon all occasions.

After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough the method
how to lay it in my way, he played an opener game; and one day, going
by his sister’s chamber when I was there, doing something about
dressing her, he comes in with an air of gaiety. “Oh, Mrs. Betty,” said
he to me, “how do you do, Mrs. Betty? Don’t your cheeks burn, Mrs.
Betty?” I made a curtsy and blushed, but said nothing. “What makes you
talk so, brother?” says the lady. “Why,” says he, “we have been talking
of her below-stairs this half-hour.” “Well,” says his sister, “you can
say no harm of her, that I am sure, so ’tis no matter what you have
been talking about.” “Nay,” says he, “’tis so far from talking harm of
her, that we have been talking a great deal of good, and a great many
fine things have been said of Mrs. Betty, I assure you; and
particularly, that she is the handsomest young woman in Colchester;
and, in short, they begin to toast her health in the town.”

“I wonder at you, brother,” says the sister. “Betty wants but one
thing, but she had as good want everything, for the market is against
our sex just now; and if a young woman have beauty, birth, breeding,
wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all these to an extreme, yet if she
have not money, she’s nobody, she had as good want them all for nothing
but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their
own hands.”

Her younger brother, who was by, cried, “Hold, sister, you run too
fast; I am an exception to your rule. I assure you, if I find a woman
so accomplished as you talk of, I say, I assure you, I would not
trouble myself about the money.”

“Oh,” says the sister, “but you will take care not to fancy one, then,
without the money.”

“You don’t know that neither,” says the brother.

“But why, sister,” says the elder brother, “why do you exclaim so at
the men for aiming so much at the fortune? You are none of them that
want a fortune, whatever else you want.”

“I understand you, brother,” replies the lady very smartly; “you
suppose I have the money, and want the beauty; but as times go now, the
first will do without the last, so I have the better of my neighbours.”

“Well,” says the younger brother, “but your neighbours, as you call
them, may be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband sometimes
in spite of money, and when the maid chances to be handsomer than the
mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a coach
before her.”

I thought it was time for me to withdraw and leave them, and I did so,
but not so far but that I heard all their discourse, in which I heard
abundance of the fine things said of myself, which served to prompt my
vanity, but, as I soon found, was not the way to increase my interest
in the family, for the sister and the younger brother fell grievously
out about it; and as he said some very disobliging things to her upon
my account, so I could easily see that she resented them by her future
conduct to me, which indeed was very unjust to me, for I had never had
the least thought of what she suspected as to her younger brother;
indeed, the elder brother, in his distant, remote way, had said a great
many things as in jest, which I had the folly to believe were in
earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes of what I ought to have
supposed he never intended, and perhaps never thought of.

It happened one day that he came running upstairs, towards the room
where his sisters used to sit and work, as he often used to do; and
calling to them before he came in, as was his way too, I, being there
alone, stepped to the door, and said, “Sir, the ladies are not here,
they are walked down the garden.” As I stepped forward to say this,
towards the door, he was just got to the door, and clasping me in his
arms, as if it had been by chance, “Oh, Mrs. Betty,” says he, “are you
here? That’s better still; I want to speak with you more than I do with
them”; and then, having me in his arms, he kissed me three or four
times.

I struggled to get away, and yet did it but faintly neither, and he
held me fast, and still kissed me, till he was almost out of breath,
and then, sitting down, says, “Dear Betty, I am in love with you.”

His words, I must confess, fired my blood; all my spirits flew about my
heart and put me into disorder enough, which he might easily have seen
in my face. He repeated it afterwards several times, that he was in
love with me, and my heart spoke as plain as a voice, that I liked it;
nay, whenever he said, “I am in love with you,” my blushes plainly
replied, “Would you were, sir.”

However, nothing else passed at that time; it was but a surprise, and
when he was gone I soon recovered myself again. He had stayed longer
with me, but he happened to look out at the window and see his sisters
coming up the garden, so he took his leave, kissed me again, told me he
was very serious, and I should hear more of him very quickly, and away
he went, leaving me infinitely pleased, though surprised; and had there
not been one misfortune in it, I had been in the right, but the mistake
lay here, that Mrs. Betty was in earnest and the gentleman was not.

From this time my head ran upon strange things, and I may truly say I
was not myself; to have such a gentleman talk to me of being in love
with me, and of my being such a charming creature, as he told me I was;
these were things I knew not how to bear, my vanity was elevated to the
last degree. It is true I had my head full of pride, but, knowing
nothing of the wickedness of the times, I had not one thought of my own
safety or of my virtue about me; and had my young master offered it at
first sight, he might have taken any liberty he thought fit with me;
but he did not see his advantage, which was my happiness for that time.

After this attack it was not long but he found an opportunity to catch
me again, and almost in the same posture; indeed, it had more of design
in it on his part, though not on my part. It was thus: the young ladies
were all gone a-visiting with their mother; his brother was out of
town; and as for his father, he had been in London for a week before.
He had so well watched me that he knew where I was, though I did not so
much as know that he was in the house; and he briskly comes up the
stairs and, seeing me at work, comes into the room to me directly, and
began just as he did before, with taking me in his arms, and kissing me
for almost a quarter of an hour together.

It was his younger sister’s chamber that I was in, and as there was
nobody in the house but the maids below-stairs, he was, it may be, the
ruder; in short, he began to be in earnest with me indeed. Perhaps he
found me a little too easy, for God knows I made no resistance to him
while he only held me in his arms and kissed me; indeed, I was too well
pleased with it to resist him much.

However, as it were, tired with that kind of work, we sat down, and
there he talked with me a great while; he said he was charmed with me,
and that he could not rest night or day till he had told me how he was
in love with me, and, if I was able to love him again, and would make
him happy, I should be the saving of his life, and many such fine
things. I said little to him again, but easily discovered that I was a
fool, and that I did not in the least perceive what he meant.

Then he walked about the room, and taking me by the hand, I walked with
him; and by and by, taking his advantage, he threw me down upon the
bed, and kissed me there most violently; but, to give him his due,
offered no manner of rudeness to me, only kissed a great while. After
this he thought he had heard somebody come upstairs, so got off from
the bed, lifted me up, professing a great deal of love for me, but told
me it was all an honest affection, and that he meant no ill to me; and
with that he put five guineas into my hand, and went away downstairs.

I was more confounded with the money than I was before with the love,
and began to be so elevated that I scarce knew the ground I stood on. I
am the more particular in this part, that if my story comes to be read
by any innocent young body, they may learn from it to guard themselves
against the mischiefs which attend an early knowledge of their own
beauty. If a young woman once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts
the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she
believes herself charming enough to captivate him, ’tis natural to
expect the effects of it.

This young gentleman had fired his inclination as much as he had my
vanity, and, as if he had found that he had an opportunity and was
sorry he did not take hold of it, he comes up again in half an hour or
thereabouts, and falls to work with me again as before, only with a
little less introduction.

And first, when he entered the room, he turned about and shut the door.
“Mrs. Betty,” said he, “I fancied before somebody was coming upstairs,
but it was not so; however,” adds he, “if they find me in the room with
you, they shan’t catch me a-kissing of you.” I told him I did not know
who should be coming upstairs, for I believed there was nobody in the
house but the cook and the other maid, and they never came up those
stairs. “Well, my dear,” says he, “’tis good to be sure, however”; and
so he sits down, and we began to talk. And now, though I was still all
on fire with his first visit, and said little, he did as it were put
words in my mouth, telling me how passionately he loved me, and that
though he could not mention such a thing till he came to this estate,
yet he was resolved to make me happy then, and himself too; that is to
say, to marry me, and abundance of such fine things, which I, poor
fool, did not understand the drift of, but acted as if there was no
such thing as any kind of love but that which tended to matrimony; and
if he had spoke of that, I had no room, as well as no power, to have
said no; but we were not come that length yet.

We had not sat long, but he got up, and, stopping my very breath with
kisses, threw me upon the bed again; but then being both well warmed,
he went farther with me than decency permits me to mention, nor had it
been in my power to have denied him at that moment, had he offered much
more than he did.

However, though he took these freedoms with me, it did not go to that
which they call the last favour, which, to do him justice, he did not
attempt; and he made that self-denial of his a plea for all his
freedoms with me upon other occasions after this. When this was over,
he stayed but a little while, but he put almost a handful of gold in my
hand, and left me, making a thousand protestations of his passion for
me, and of his loving me above all the women in the world.

It will not be strange if I now began to think, but alas! it was but
with very little solid reflection. I had a most unbounded stock of
vanity and pride, and but a very little stock of virtue. I did indeed
case sometimes with myself what young master aimed at, but thought of
nothing but the fine words and the gold; whether he intended to marry
me, or not to marry me, seemed a matter of no great consequence to me;
nor did my thoughts so much as suggest to me the necessity of making
any capitulation for myself, till he came to make a kind of formal
proposal to me, as you shall hear presently.

Thus I gave up myself to a readiness of being ruined without the least
concern and am a fair memento to all young women whose vanity prevails
over their virtue. Nothing was ever so stupid on both sides. Had I
acted as became me, and resisted as virtue and honour require, this
gentleman had either desisted his attacks, finding no room to expect
the accomplishment of his design, or had made fair and honourable
proposals of marriage; in which case, whoever had blamed him, nobody
could have blamed me. In short, if he had known me, and how easy the
trifle he aimed at was to be had, he would have troubled his head no
farther, but have given me four or five guineas, and have lain with me
the next time he had come at me. And if I had known his thoughts, and
how hard he thought I would be to be gained, I might have made my own
terms with him; and if I had not capitulated for an immediate marriage,
I might for a maintenance till marriage, and might have had what I
would; for he was already rich to excess, besides what he had in
expectation; but I seemed wholly to have abandoned all such thoughts as
these, and was taken up only with the pride of my beauty, and of being
beloved by such a gentleman. As for the gold, I spent whole hours in
looking upon it; I told the guineas over and over a thousand times a
day. Never a poor vain creature was so wrapt up with every part of the
story as I was, not considering what was before me, and how near my
ruin was at the door; indeed, I think I rather wished for that ruin
than studied to avoid it.

In the meantime, however, I was cunning enough not to give the least
room to any in the family to suspect me, or to imagine that I had the
least correspondence with this young gentleman. I scarce ever looked
towards him in public, or answered if he spoke to me when anybody was
near us; but for all that, we had every now and then a little
encounter, where we had room for a word or two, and now and then a
kiss, but no fair opportunity for the mischief intended; and especially
considering that he made more circumlocution than, if he had known my
thoughts, he had occasion for; and the work appearing difficult to him,
he really made it so.

But as the devil is an unwearied tempter, so he never fails to find
opportunity for that wickedness he invites to. It was one evening that
I was in the garden, with his two younger sisters and himself, and all
very innocently merry, when he found means to convey a note into my
hand, by which he directed me to understand that he would to-morrow
desire me publicly to go of an errand for him into the town, and that I
should see him somewhere by the way.

Accordingly, after dinner, he very gravely says to me, his sisters
being all by, “Mrs. Betty, I must ask a favour of you.” “What’s that?”
says his second sister. “Nay, sister,” says he very gravely, “if you
can’t spare Mrs. Betty to-day, any other time will do.” Yes, they said,
they could spare her well enough, and the sister begged pardon for
asking, which they did but of mere course, without any meaning. “Well,
but, brother,” says the eldest sister, “you must tell Mrs. Betty what
it is; if it be any private business that we must not hear, you may
call her out. There she is.” “Why, sister,” says the gentleman very
gravely, “what do you mean? I only desire her to go into the High
Street” (and then he pulls out a turnover), “to such a shop”; and then
he tells them a long story of two fine neckcloths he had bid money for,
and he wanted to have me go and make an errand to buy a neck to the
turnover that he showed, to see if they would take my money for the
neckcloths; to bid a shilling more, and haggle with them; and then he
made more errands, and so continued to have such petty business to do,
that I should be sure to stay a good while.

When he had given me my errands, he told them a long story of a visit
he was going to make to a family they all knew, and where was to be
such-and-such gentlemen, and how merry they were to be, and very
formally asks his sisters to go with him, and they as formally excused
themselves, because of company that they had notice was to come and
visit them that afternoon; which, by the way, he had contrived on
purpose.

He had scarce done speaking to them, and giving me my errand, but his
man came up to tell him that Sir W—— H——’s coach stopped at the door;
so he runs down, and comes up again immediately. “Alas!” says he aloud,
“there’s all my mirth spoiled at once; sir W—— has sent his coach for
me, and desires to speak with me upon some earnest business.” It seems
this Sir W—— was a gentleman who lived about three miles out of town,
to whom he had spoken on purpose the day before, to lend him his
chariot for a particular occasion, and had appointed it to call for
him, as it did, about three o’clock.

Immediately he calls for his best wig, hat, and sword, and ordering his
man to go to the other place to make his excuse— that was to say, he
made an excuse to send his man away—he prepares to go into the coach.
As he was going, he stopped a while, and speaks mighty earnestly to me
about his business, and finds an opportunity to say very softly to me,
“Come away, my dear, as soon as ever you can.” I said nothing, but made
a curtsy, as if I had done so to what he said in public. In about a
quarter of an hour I went out too; I had no dress other than before,
except that I had a hood, a mask, a fan, and a pair of gloves in my
pocket; so that there was not the least suspicion in the house. He
waited for me in the coach in a back-lane, which he knew I must pass
by, and had directed the coachman whither to go, which was to a certain
place, called Mile End, where lived a confidant of his, where we went
in, and where was all the convenience in the world to be as wicked as
we pleased.

When we were together he began to talk very gravely to me, and to tell
me he did not bring me there to betray me; that his passion for me
would not suffer him to abuse me; that he resolved to marry me as soon
as he came to his estate; that in the meantime, if I would grant his
request, he would maintain me very honourably; and made me a thousand
protestations of his sincerity and of his affection to me; and that he
would never abandon me, and as I may say, made a thousand more
preambles than he need to have done.

However, as he pressed me to speak, I told him I had no reason to
question the sincerity of his love to me after so many protestations,
but—and there I stopped, as if I left him to guess the rest. “But what,
my dear?” says he. “I guess what you mean: what if you should be with
child? Is not that it? Why, then,” says he, “I’ll take care of you and
provide for you, and the child too; and that you may see I am not in
jest,” says he, “here’s an earnest for you,” and with that he pulls out
a silk purse, with an hundred guineas in it, and gave it me. “And I’ll
give you such another,” says he, “every year till I marry you.”

My colour came and went, at the sight of the purse and with the fire of
his proposal together, so that I could not say a word, and he easily
perceived it; so putting the purse into my bosom, I made no more
resistance to him, but let him do just what he pleased, and as often as
he pleased; and thus I finished my own destruction at once, for from
this day, being forsaken of my virtue and my modesty, I had nothing of
value left to recommend me, either to God’s blessing or man’s
assistance.

But things did not end here. I went back to the town, did the business
he publicly directed me to, and was at home before anybody thought me
long. As for my gentleman, he stayed out, as he told me he would, till
late at night, and there was not the least suspicion in the family
either on his account or on mine.

We had, after this, frequent opportunities to repeat our crime—chiefly
by his contrivance—especially at home, when his mother and the young
ladies went abroad a-visiting, which he watched so narrowly as never to
miss; knowing always beforehand when they went out, and then failed not
to catch me all alone, and securely enough; so that we took our fill of
our wicked pleasure for near half a year; and yet, which was the most
to my satisfaction, I was not with child.

But before this half-year was expired, his younger brother, of whom I
have made some mention in the beginning of the story, falls to work
with me; and he, finding me alone in the garden one evening, begins a
story of the same kind to me, made good honest professions of being in
love with me, and in short, proposes fairly and honourably to marry me,
and that before he made any other offer to me at all.

I was now confounded, and driven to such an extremity as the like was
never known; at least not to me. I resisted the proposal with
obstinacy; and now I began to arm myself with arguments. I laid before
him the inequality of the match; the treatment I should meet with in
the family; the ingratitude it would be to his good father and mother,
who had taken me into their house upon such generous principles, and
when I was in such a low condition; and, in short, I said everything to
dissuade him from his design that I could imagine, except telling him
the truth, which would indeed have put an end to it all, but that I
durst not think of mentioning.

But here happened a circumstance that I did not expect indeed, which
put me to my shifts; for this young gentleman, as he was plain and
honest, so he pretended to nothing with me but what was so too; and,
knowing his own innocence, he was not so careful to make his having a
kindness for Mrs. Betty a secret in the house, as his brother was. And
though he did not let them know that he had talked to me about it, yet
he said enough to let his sisters perceive he loved me, and his mother
saw it too, which, though they took no notice of it to me, yet they did
to him, an immediately I found their carriage to me altered, more than
ever before.

I saw the cloud, though I did not foresee the storm. It was easy, I
say, to see that their carriage to me was altered, and that it grew
worse and worse every day; till at last I got information among the
servants that I should, in a very little while, be desired to remove.

I was not alarmed at the news, having a full satisfaction that I should
be otherwise provided for; and especially considering that I had reason
every day to expect I should be with child, and that then I should be
obliged to remove without any pretences for it.

After some time the younger gentleman took an opportunity to tell me
that the kindness he had for me had got vent in the family. He did not
charge me with it, he said, for he know well enough which way it came
out. He told me his plain way of talking had been the occasion of it,
for that he did not make his respect for me so much a secret as he
might have done, and the reason was, that he was at a point, that if I
would consent to have him, he would tell them all openly that he loved
me, and that he intended to marry me; that it was true his father and
mother might resent it, and be unkind, but that he was now in a way to
live, being bred to the law, and he did not fear maintaining me
agreeable to what I should expect; and that, in short, as he believed I
would not be ashamed of him, so he was resolved not to be ashamed of
me, and that he scorned to be afraid to own me now, whom he resolved to
own after I was his wife, and therefore I had nothing to do but to give
him my hand, and he would answer for all the rest.

I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I repented heartily
my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any reflection of
conscience, but from a view of the happiness I might have enjoyed, and
had now made impossible; for though I had no great scruples of
conscience, as I have said, to struggle with, yet I could not think of
being a whore to one brother and a wife to the other. But then it came
into my thoughts that the first brother had promised to made me his
wife when he came to his estate; but I presently remembered what I had
often thought of, that he had never spoken a word of having me for a
wife after he had conquered me for a mistress; and indeed, till now,
though I said I thought of it often, yet it gave me no disturbance at
all, for as he did not seem in the least to lessen his affection to me,
so neither did he lessen his bounty, though he had the discretion
himself to desire me not to lay out a penny of what he gave me in
clothes, or to make the least show extraordinary, because it would
necessarily give jealousy in the family, since everybody know I could
come at such things no manner of ordinary way, but by some private
friendship, which they would presently have suspected.

But I was now in a great strait, and knew not what to do. The main
difficulty was this: the younger brother not only laid close siege to
me, but suffered it to be seen. He would come into his sister’s room,
and his mother’s room, and sit down, and talk a thousand kind things of
me, and to me, even before their faces, and when they were all there.
This grew so public that the whole house talked of it, and his mother
reproved him for it, and their carriage to me appeared quite altered.
In short, his mother had let fall some speeches, as if she intended to
put me out of the family; that is, in English, to turn me out of doors.
Now I was sure this could not be a secret to his brother, only that he
might not think, as indeed nobody else yet did, that the youngest
brother had made any proposal to me about it; but as I easily could see
that it would go farther, so I saw likewise there was an absolute
necessity to speak of it to him, or that he would speak of it to me,
and which to do first I knew not; that is, whether I should break it to
him or let it alone till he should break it to me.

Upon serious consideration, for indeed now I began to consider things
very seriously, and never till now; I say, upon serious consideration,
I resolved to tell him of it first; and it was not long before I had an
opportunity, for the very next day his brother went to London upon some
business, and the family being out a-visiting, just as it had happened
before, and as indeed was often the case, he came according to his
custom, to spend an hour or two with Mrs. Betty.

When he came and had sat down a while, he easily perceived there was an
alteration in my countenance, that I was not so free and pleasant with
him as I used to be, and particularly, that I had been a-crying; he was
not long before he took notice of it, and asked me in very kind terms
what was the matter, and if anything troubled me. I would have put it
off if I could, but it was not to be concealed; so after suffering many
importunities to draw that out of me which I longed as much as possible
to disclose, I told him that it was true something did trouble me, and
something of such a nature that I could not conceal from him, and yet
that I could not tell how to tell him of it neither; that it was a
thing that not only surprised me, but greatly perplexed me, and that I
knew not what course to take, unless he would direct me. He told me
with great tenderness, that let it be what it would, I should not let
it trouble me, for he would protect me from all the world.

I then began at a distance, and told him I was afraid the ladies had
got some secret information of our correspondence; for that it was easy
to see that their conduct was very much changed towards me for a great
while, and that now it was come to that pass that they frequently found
fault with me, and sometimes fell quite out with me, though I never
gave them the least occasion; that whereas I used always to lie with
the eldest sister, I was lately put to lie by myself, or with one of
the maids; and that I had overheard them several times talking very
unkindly about me; but that which confirmed it all was, that one of the
servants had told me that she had heard I was to be turned out, and
that it was not safe for the family that I should be any longer in the
house.

He smiled when he heard all this, and I asked him how he could make so
light of it, when he must needs know that if there was any discovery I
was undone for ever, and that even it would hurt him, though not ruin
him as it would me. I upbraided him, that he was like all the rest of
the sex, that, when they had the character and honour of a woman at
their mercy, oftentimes made it their jest, and at least looked upon it
as a trifle, and counted the ruin of those they had had their will of
as a thing of no value.

He saw me warm and serious, and he changed his style immediately; he
told me he was sorry I should have such a thought of him; that he had
never given me the least occasion for it, but had been as tender of my
reputation as he could be of his own; that he was sure our
correspondence had been managed with so much address, that not one
creature in the family had so much as a suspicion of it; that if he
smiled when I told him my thoughts, it was at the assurance he lately
received, that our understanding one another was not so much as known
or guessed at; and that when he had told me how much reason he had to
be easy, I should smile as he did, for he was very certain it would
give me a full satisfaction.

“This is a mystery I cannot understand,” says I, “or how it should be
to my satisfaction that I am to be turned out of doors; for if our
correspondence is not discovered, I know not what else I have done to
change the countenances of the whole family to me, or to have them
treat me as they do now, who formerly used me with so much tenderness,
as if I had been one of their own children.”

“Why, look you, child,” says he, “that they are uneasy about you, that
is true; but that they have the least suspicion of the case as it is,
and as it respects you and I, is so far from being true, that they
suspect my brother Robin; and, in short, they are fully persuaded he
makes love to you; nay, the fool has put it into their heads too
himself, for he is continually bantering them about it, and making a
jest of himself. I confess I think he is wrong to do so, because he
cannot but see it vexes them, and makes them unkind to you; but ’tis a
satisfaction to me, because of the assurance it gives me, that they do
not suspect me in the least, and I hope this will be to your
satisfaction too.”

“So it is,” says I, “one way; but this does not reach my case at all,
nor is this the chief thing that troubles me, though I have been
concerned about that too.” “What is it, then?” says he. With which I
fell to tears, and could say nothing to him at all. He strove to pacify
me all he could, but began at last to be very pressing upon me to tell
what it was. At last I answered that I thought I ought to tell him too,
and that he had some right to know it; besides, that I wanted his
direction in the case, for I was in such perplexity that I knew not
what course to take, and then I related the whole affair to him. I told
him how imprudently his brother had managed himself, in making himself
so public; for that if he had kept it a secret, as such a thing ought
to have been, I could but have denied him positively, without giving
any reason for it, and he would in time have ceased his solicitations;
but that he had the vanity, first, to depend upon it that I would not
deny him, and then had taken the freedom to tell his resolution of
having me to the whole house.

I told him how far I had resisted him, and told him how sincere and
honourable his offers were. “But,” says I, “my case will be doubly
hard; for as they carry it ill to me now, because he desires to have
me, they’ll carry it worse when they shall find I have denied him; and
they will presently say, there’s something else in it, and then out it
comes that I am married already to somebody else, or that I would never
refuse a match so much above me as this was.”

This discourse surprised him indeed very much. He told me that it was a
critical point indeed for me to manage, and he did not see which way I
should get out of it; but he would consider it, and let me know next
time we met, what resolution he was come to about it; and in the
meantime desired I would not give my consent to his brother, nor yet
give him a flat denial, but that I would hold him in suspense a while.

I seemed to start at his saying I should not give him my consent. I
told him he knew very well I had no consent to give; that he had
engaged himself to marry me, and that my consent was the same time
engaged to him; that he had all along told me I was his wife, and I
looked upon myself as effectually so as if the ceremony had passed; and
that it was from his own mouth that I did so, he having all along
persuaded me to call myself his wife.

“Well, my dear,” says he, “don’t be concerned at that now; if I am not
your husband, I’ll be as good as a husband to you; and do not let those
things trouble you now, but let me look a little farther into this
affair, and I shall be able to say more next time we meet.”

He pacified me as well as he could with this, but I found he was very
thoughtful, and that though he was very kind to me and kissed me a
thousand times, and more I believe, and gave me money too, yet he
offered no more all the while we were together, which was above two
hours, and which I much wondered at indeed at that time, considering
how it used to be, and what opportunity we had.

His brother did not come from London for five or six days, and it was
two days more before he got an opportunity to talk with him; but then
getting him by himself he began to talk very close to him about it, and
the same evening got an opportunity (for we had a long conference
together) to repeat all their discourse to me, which, as near as I can
remember, was to the purpose following. He told him he heard strange
news of him since he went, viz. that he made love to Mrs. Betty. “Well,”
says his brother a little angrily, “and so I do. And what then? What
has anybody to do with that?” “Nay,” says his brother, “don’t be angry,
Robin; I don’t pretend to have anything to do with it; nor do I pretend
to be angry with you about it. But I find they do concern themselves
about it, and that they have used the poor girl ill about it, which I
should take as done to myself.” “Whom do you mean by _they_?” says
Robin. “I mean my mother and the girls,” says the elder brother. “But
hark ye,” says his brother, “are you in earnest? Do you really love
this girl? You may be free with me, you know.” “Why, then,” says Robin,
“I will be free with you; I do love her above all the women in the
world, and I will have her, let them say and do what they will. I
believe the girl will not deny me.”

It struck me to the heart when he told me this, for though it was most
rational to think I would not deny him, yet I knew in my own conscience
I must deny him, and I saw my ruin in my being obliged to do so; but I
knew it was my business to talk otherwise then, so I interrupted him in
his story thus.

“Ay!” said I, “does he think I cannot deny him? But he shall find I can
deny him, for all that.”

“Well, my dear,” says he, “but let me give you the whole story as it
went on between us, and then say what you will.”

Then he went on and told me that he replied thus: “But, brother, you
know she has nothing, and you may have several ladies with good
fortunes.”

“’Tis no matter for that,” said Robin; “I love the girl, and I will
never please my pocket in marrying, and not please my fancy.” “And so,
my dear,” adds he, “there is no opposing him.”

“Yes, yes,” says I, “you shall see I can oppose him; I have learnt to
say No, now though I had not learnt it before; if the best lord in the
land offered me marriage now, I could very cheerfully say No to him.”

“Well, but, my dear,” says he, “what can you say to him? You know, as
you said when we talked of it before, he will ask you many questions
about it, and all the house will wonder what the meaning of it should
be.”

“Why,” says I, smiling, “I can stop all their mouths at one clap by
telling him, and them too, that I am married already to his elder
brother.”

He smiled a little too at the word, but I could see it startled him,
and he could not hide the disorder it put him into. However, he
returned, “Why, though that may be true in some sense, yet I suppose
you are but in jest when you talk of giving such an answer as that; it
may not be convenient on many accounts.”

“No, no,” says I pleasantly, “I am not so fond of letting the secret
come out without your consent.”

“But what, then, can you say to him, or to them,” says he, “when they
find you positive against a match which would be apparently so much to
your advantage?”

“Why,” says I, “should I be at a loss? First of all, I am not obliged
to give me any reason at all; on the other hand, I may tell them I am
married already, and stop there, and that will be a full stop too to
him, for he can have no reason to ask one question after it.”

“Ay,” says he; “but the whole house will tease you about that, even to
father and mother, and if you deny them positively, they will be
disobliged at you, and suspicious besides.”

“Why,” says I, “what can I do? What would you have me do? I was in
straight enough before, and as I told you, I was in perplexity before,
and acquainted you with the circumstances, that I might have your
advice.”

“My dear,” says he, “I have been considering very much upon it, you may
be sure, and though it is a piece of advice that has a great many
mortifications in it to me, and may at first seem strange to you, yet,
all things considered, I see no better way for you than to let him go
on; and if you find him hearty and in earnest, marry him.”

I gave him a look full of horror at those words, and, turning pale as
death, was at the very point of sinking down out of the chair I sat in;
when, giving a start, “My dear,” says he aloud, “what’s the matter with
you? Where are you a-going?” and a great many such things; and with
jogging and called to me, fetched me a little to myself, though it was
a good while before I fully recovered my senses, and was not able to
speak for several minutes more.

When I was fully recovered he began again. “My dear,” says he, “what
made you so surprised at what I said? I would have you consider
seriously of it? You may see plainly how the family stand in this case,
and they would be stark mad if it was my case, as it is my brother’s;
and for aught I see, it would be my ruin and yours too.”

“Ay!” says I, still speaking angrily; “are all your protestations and
vows to be shaken by the dislike of the family? Did I not always object
that to you, and you made light thing of it, as what you were above,
and would value; and is it come to this now?” said I. “Is this your
faith and honour, your love, and the solidity of your promises?”

He continued perfectly calm, notwithstanding all my reproaches, and I
was not sparing of them at all; but he replied at last, “My dear, I
have not broken one promise with you yet; I did tell you I would marry
you when I was come to my estate; but you see my father is a hale,
healthy man, and may live these thirty years still, and not be older
than several are round us in town; and you never proposed my marrying
you sooner, because you knew it might be my ruin; and as to all the
rest, I have not failed you in anything, you have wanted for nothing.”

I could not deny a word of this, and had nothing to say to it in
general. “But why, then,” says I, “can you persuade me to such a horrid
step as leaving you, since you have not left me? Will you allow no
affection, no love on my side, where there has been so much on your
side? Have I made you no returns? Have I given no testimony of my
sincerity and of my passion? Are the sacrifices I have made of honour
and modesty to you no proof of my being tied to you in bonds too strong
to be broken?”

“But here, my dear,” says he, “you may come into a safe station, and
appear with honour and with splendour at once, and the remembrance of
what we have done may be wrapt up in an eternal silence, as if it had
never happened; you shall always have my respect, and my sincere
affection, only then it shall be honest, and perfectly just to my
brother; you shall be my dear sister, as now you are my dear——” and
there he stopped.

“Your dear whore,” says I, “you would have said if you had gone on, and
you might as well have said it; but I understand you. However, I desire
you to remember the long discourses you have had with me, and the many
hours’ pains you have taken to persuade me to believe myself an honest
woman; that I was your wife intentionally, though not in the eyes of
the world, and that it was as effectual a marriage that had passed
between us as if we had been publicly wedded by the parson of the
parish. You know and cannot but remember that these have been your own
words to me.”

I found this was a little too close upon him, but I made it up in what
follows. He stood stock-still for a while and said nothing, and I went
on thus: “You cannot,” says I, “without the highest injustice, believe
that I yielded upon all these persuasions without a love not to be
questioned, not to be shaken again by anything that could happen
afterward. If you have such dishonourable thoughts of me, I must ask
you what foundation in any of my behaviour have I given for such a
suggestion?

“If, then, I have yielded to the importunities of my affection, and if
I have been persuaded to believe that I am really, and in the essence
of the thing, your wife, shall I now give the lie to all those
arguments and call myself your whore, or mistress, which is the same
thing? And will you transfer me to your brother? Can you transfer my
affection? Can you bid me cease loving you, and bid me love him? It is
in my power, think you, to make such a change at demand? No, sir,” said
I, “depend upon it ’tis impossible, and whatever the change of your
side may be, I will ever be true; and I had much rather, since it is
come that unhappy length, be your whore than your brother’s wife.”

He appeared pleased and touched with the impression of this last
discourse, and told me that he stood where he did before; that he had
not been unfaithful to me in any one promise he had ever made yet, but
that there were so many terrible things presented themselves to his
view in the affair before me, and that on my account in particular,
that he had thought of the other as a remedy so effectual as nothing
could come up to it. That he thought this would not be entire parting
us, but we might love as friends all our days, and perhaps with more
satisfaction than we should in the station we were now in, as things
might happen; that he durst say, I could not apprehend anything from
him as to betraying a secret, which could not but be the destruction of
us both, if it came out; that he had but one question to ask of me that
could lie in the way of it, and if that question was answered in the
negative, he could not but think still it was the only step I could
take.

I guessed at his question presently, namely, whether I was sure I was
not with child? As to that, I told him he need not be concerned about
it, for I was not with child. “Why, then, my dear,” says he, “we have
no time to talk further now. Consider of it, and think closely about
it; I cannot but be of the opinion still, that it will be the best
course you can take.” And with this he took his leave, and the more
hastily too, his mother and sisters ringing at the gate, just at the
moment that he had risen up to go.

He left me in the utmost confusion of thought; and he easily perceived
it the next day, and all the rest of the week, for it was but Tuesday
evening when we talked; but he had no opportunity to come at me all
that week, till the Sunday after, when I, being indisposed, did not go
to church, and he, making some excuse for the like, stayed at home.

And now he had me an hour and a half again by myself, and we fell into
the same arguments all over again, or at least so near the same, as it
would be to no purpose to repeat them. At last I asked him warmly, what
opinion he must have of my modesty, that he could suppose I should so
much as entertain a thought of lying with two brothers, and assured him
it could never be. I added, if he was to tell me that he would never
see me more, than which nothing but death could be more terrible, yet I
could never entertain a thought so dishonourable to myself, and so base
to him; and therefore, I entreated him, if he had one grain of respect
or affection left for me, that he would speak no more of it to me, or
that he would pull his sword out and kill me. He appeared surprised at
my obstinacy, as he called it; told me I was unkind to myself, and
unkind to him in it; that it was a crisis unlooked for upon us both,
and impossible for either of us to foresee, but that he did not see any
other way to save us both from ruin, and therefore he thought it the
more unkind; but that if he must say no more of it to me, he added with
an unusual coldness, that he did not know anything else we had to talk
of; and so he rose up to take his leave. I rose up too, as if with the
same indifference; but when he came to give me as it were a parting
kiss, I burst out into such a passion of crying, that though I would
have spoke, I could not, and only pressing his hand, seemed to give him
the adieu, but cried vehemently.

He was sensibly moved with this; so he sat down again, and said a great
many kind things to me, to abate the excess of my passion, but still
urged the necessity of what he had proposed; all the while insisting,
that if I did refuse, he would notwithstanding provide for me; but
letting me plainly see that he would decline me in the main point—nay,
even as a mistress; making it a point of honour not to lie with the
woman that, for aught he knew, might come to be his brother’s wife.

The bare loss of him as a gallant was not so much my affliction as the
loss of his person, whom indeed I loved to distraction; and the loss of
all the expectations I had, and which I always had built my hopes upon,
of having him one day for my husband. These things oppressed my mind so
much, that, in short, I fell very ill; the agonies of my mind, in a
word, threw me into a high fever, and long it was, that none in the
family expected my life.

I was reduced very low indeed, and was often delirious and
light-headed; but nothing lay so near me as the fear that, when I was
light-headed, I should say something or other to his prejudice. I was
distressed in my mind also to see him, and so he was to see me, for he
really loved me most passionately; but it could not be; there was not
the least room to desire it on one side or other, or so much as to make
it decent.

It was near five weeks that I kept my bed and though the violence of my
fever abated in three weeks, yet it several times returned; and the
physicians said two or three times, they could do no more for me, but
that they must leave nature and the distemper to fight it out, only
strengthening the first with cordials to maintain the struggle. After
the end of five weeks I grew better, but was so weak, so altered, so
melancholy, and recovered so slowly, that the physicians apprehended I
should go into a consumption; and which vexed me most, they gave it as
their opinion that my mind was oppressed, that something troubled me,
and, in short, that I was in love. Upon this, the whole house was set
upon me to examine me, and to press me to tell whether I was in love or
not, and with whom; but as I well might, I denied my being in love at
all.

They had on this occasion a squabble one day about me at table, that
had like to have put the whole family in an uproar, and for some time
did so. They happened to be all at table but the father; as for me, I
was ill, and in my chamber. At the beginning of the talk, which was
just as they had finished their dinner, the old gentlewoman, who had
sent me somewhat to eat, called her maid to go up and ask me if I would
have any more; but the maid brought down word I had not eaten half what
she had sent me already.

“Alas,” says the old lady, “that poor girl! I am afraid she will never
be well.”

“Well!” says the elder brother, “how should Mrs. Betty be well? They
say she is in love.”

“I believe nothing of it,” says the old gentlewoman.

“I don’t know,” says the eldest sister, “what to say to it; they have
made such a rout about her being so handsome, and so charming, and I
know not what, and that in her hearing too, that has turned the
creature’s head, I believe, and who knows what possessions may follow
such doings? For my part, I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Why, sister, you must acknowledge she is very handsome,” says the
elder brother.

“Ay, and a great deal handsomer than you, sister,” says Robin, “and
that’s your mortification.”

“Well, well, that is not the question,” says his sister; “that girl is
well enough, and she knows it well enough; she need not be told of it
to make her vain.”

“We are not talking of her being vain,” says the elder brother, “but of
her being in love; it may be she is in love with herself; it seems my
sisters think so.”

“I would she was in love with me,” says Robin; “I’d quickly put her out
of her pain.”

“What d’ye mean by that, son,” says the old lady; “how can you talk
so?”

“Why, madam,” says Robin, again, very honestly, “do you think I’d let
the poor girl die for love, and of one that is near at hand to be had,
too?”

“Fie, brother!”, says the second sister, “how can you talk so? Would
you take a creature that has not a groat in the world?”

“Prithee, child,” says Robin, “beauty’s a portion, and good-humour with
it is a double portion; I wish thou hadst half her stock of both for
thy portion.” So there was her mouth stopped.

“I find,” says the eldest sister, “if Betty is not in love, my brother
is. I wonder he has not broke his mind to Betty; I warrant she won’t
say No.”

“They that yield when they’re asked,” says Robin, “are one step before
them that were never asked to yield, sister, and two steps before them
that yield before they are asked; and that’s an answer to you, sister.”

This fired the sister, and she flew into a passion, and said, things
were come to that pass that it was time the wench, meaning me, was out
of the family; and but that she was not fit to be turned out, she hoped
her father and mother would consider of it as soon as she could be
removed.

Robin replied, that was business for the master and mistress of the
family, who where not to be taught by one that had so little judgment
as his eldest sister.

It ran up a great deal farther; the sister scolded, Robin rallied and
bantered, but poor Betty lost ground by it extremely in the family. I
heard of it, and I cried heartily, and the old lady came up to me,
somebody having told her that I was so much concerned about it. I
complained to her, that it was very hard the doctors should pass such a
censure upon me, for which they had no ground; and that it was still
harder, considering the circumstances I was under in the family; that I
hoped I had done nothing to lessen her esteem for me, or given any
occasion for the bickering between her sons and daughters, and I had
more need to think of a coffin than of being in love, and begged she
would not let me suffer in her opinion for anybody’s mistakes but my
own.

She was sensible of the justice of what I said, but told me, since
there had been such a clamour among them, and that her younger son
talked after such a rattling way as he did, she desired I would be so
faithful to her as to answer her but one question sincerely. I told her
I would, with all my heart, and with the utmost plainness and
sincerity. Why, then, the question was, whether there was anything
between her son Robert and me. I told her with all the protestations of
sincerity that I was able to make, and as I might well, do, that there
was not, nor ever had been; I told her that Mr. Robert had rattled and
jested, as she knew it was his way, and that I took it always, as I
supposed he meant it, to be a wild airy way of discourse that had no
signification in it; and again assured her, that there was not the
least tittle of what she understood by it between us; and that those
who had suggested it had done me a great deal of wrong, and Mr. Robert
no service at all.

The old lady was fully satisfied, and kissed me, spoke cheerfully to
me, and bid me take care of my health and want for nothing, and so took
her leave. But when she came down she found the brother and all his
sisters together by the ears; they were angry, even to passion, at his
upbraiding them with their being homely, and having never had any
sweethearts, never having been asked the question, and their being so
forward as almost to ask first. He rallied them upon the subject of
Mrs. Betty; how pretty, how good-humoured, how she sung better than
they did, and danced better, and how much handsomer she was; and in
doing this he omitted no ill-natured thing that could vex them, and
indeed, pushed too hard upon them. The old lady came down in the height
of it, and to put a stop it to, told them all the discourse she had had
with me, and how I answered, that there was nothing between Mr. Robert
and I.

“She’s wrong there,” says Robin, “for if there was not a great deal
between us, we should be closer together than we are. I told her I
loved her hugely,” says he, “but I could never make the jade believe I
was in earnest.” “I do not know how you should,” says his mother;
“nobody in their senses could believe you were in earnest, to talk so
to a poor girl, whose circumstances you know so well.

“But prithee, son,” adds she, “since you tell me that you could not
make her believe you were in earnest, what must we believe about it?
For you ramble so in your discourse, that nobody knows whether you are
in earnest or in jest; but as I find the girl, by your own confession,
has answered truly, I wish you would do so too, and tell me seriously,
so that I may depend upon it. Is there anything in it or no? Are you in
earnest or no? Are you distracted, indeed, or are you not? ’Tis a
weighty question, and I wish you would make us easy about it.”

“By my faith, madam,” says Robin, “’tis in vain to mince the matter or
tell any more lies about it; I am in earnest, as much as a man is
that’s going to be hanged. If Mrs. Betty would say she loved me, and
that she would marry me, I’d have her tomorrow morning fasting, and
say, ‘To have and to hold,’ instead of eating my breakfast.”

“Well,” says the mother, “then there’s one son lost”; and she said it
in a very mournful tone, as one greatly concerned at it.

“I hope not, madam,” says Robin; “no man is lost when a good wife has
found him.”

“Why, but, child,” says the old lady, “she is a beggar.”

“Why, then, madam, she has the more need of charity,” says Robin; “I’ll
take her off the hands of the parish, and she and I’ll beg together.”

“It’s bad jesting with such things,” says the mother.

“I don’t jest, madam,” says Robin. “We’ll come and beg your pardon,
madam; and your blessing, madam, and my father’s.”

“This is all out of the way, son,” says the mother. “If you are in
earnest you are undone.”

“I am afraid not,” says he, “for I am really afraid she won’t have me;
after all my sister’s huffing and blustering, I believe I shall never
be able to persuade her to it.”

“That’s a fine tale, indeed; she is not so far out of her senses
neither. Mrs. Betty is no fool,” says the younger sister. “Do you think
she has learnt to say No, any more than other people?”

“No, Mrs. Mirth-wit,” says Robin, “Mrs. Betty’s no fool; but Mrs. Betty
may be engaged some other way, and what then?”

“Nay,” says the eldest sister, “we can say nothing to that. Who must it
be to, then? She is never out of the doors; it must be between you.”

“I have nothing to say to that,” says Robin. “I have been examined
enough; there’s my brother. If it must be between us, go to work with
him.”

This stung the elder brother to the quick, and he concluded that Robin
had discovered something. However, he kept himself from appearing
disturbed. “Prithee,” says he, “don’t go to shame your stories off upon
me; I tell you, I deal in no such ware; I have nothing to say to Mrs.
Betty, nor to any of the Mrs. Bettys in the parish”; and with that he
rose up and brushed off.

“No,” says the eldest sister, “I dare answer for my brother; he knows
the world better.”

Thus the discourse ended, but it left the elder brother quite
confounded. He concluded his brother had made a full discovery, and he
began to doubt whether I had been concerned in it or not; but with all
his management he could not bring it about to get at me. At last he was
so perplexed that he was quite desperate, and resolved he would come
into my chamber and see me, whatever came of it. In order to do this,
he contrived it so, that one day after dinner, watching his eldest
sister till he could see her go upstairs, he runs after her. “Hark ye,
sister,” says he, “where is this sick woman? May not a body see her?”
“Yes,” says the sister, “I believe you may; but let me go first a
little, and I’ll tell you.” So she ran up to the door and gave me
notice, and presently called to him again. “Brother,” says she, “you
may come if you please.” So in he came, just in the same kind of rant.
“Well,” says he at the door as he came in, “where is this sick body
that’s in love? How do ye do, Mrs. Betty?” I would have got up out of
my chair, but was so weak I could not for a good while; and he saw it,
and his sister too, and she said, “Come, do not strive to stand up; my
brother desires no ceremony, especially now you are so weak.” “No, no,
Mrs. Betty, pray sit still,” says he, and so sits himself down in a
chair over against me, and appeared as if he was mighty merry.

He talked a lot of rambling stuff to his sister and to me, sometimes of
one thing, sometimes of another, on purpose to amuse his sister, and
every now and then would turn it upon the old story, directing it to
me. “Poor Mrs. Betty,” says he, “it is a sad thing to be in love; why,
it has reduced you sadly.” At last I spoke a little. “I am glad to see
you so merry, sir,” says I; “but I think the doctor might have found
something better to do than to make his game at his patients. If I had
been ill of no other distemper, I know the proverb too well to have let
him come to me.” “What proverb?” says he, “Oh! I remember it now. What—

“Where love is the case,
The doctor’s an ass.”


Is not that it, Mrs. Betty?” I smiled and said nothing. “Nay,” says he,
“I think the effect has proved it to be love, for it seems the doctor
has been able to do you but little service; you mend very slowly, they
say. I doubt there’s somewhat in it, Mrs. Betty; I doubt you are sick
of the incurables, and that is love.” I smiled and said, “No, indeed,
sir, that’s none of my distemper.”

We had a deal of such discourse, and sometimes others that signified as
little. By and by he asked me to sing them a song, at which I smiled,
and said my singing days were over. At last he asked me if he should
play upon his flute to me; his sister said she believe it would hurt
me, and that my head could not bear it. I bowed, and said, No, it would
not hurt me. “And, pray, madam,” said I, “do not hinder it; I love the
music of the flute very much.” Then his sister said, “Well, do, then,
brother.” With that he pulled out the key of his closet. “Dear sister,”
says he, “I am very lazy; do step to my closet and fetch my flute; it
lies in such a drawer,” naming a place where he was sure it was not,
that she might be a little while a-looking for it.

As soon as she was gone, he related the whole story to me of the
discourse his brother had about me, and of his pushing it at him, and
his concern about it, which was the reason of his contriving this visit
to me. I assured him I had never opened my mouth either to his brother
or to anybody else. I told him the dreadful exigence I was in; that my
love to him, and his offering to have me forget that affection and
remove it to another, had thrown me down; and that I had a thousand
times wished I might die rather than recover, and to have the same
circumstances to struggle with as I had before, and that his
backwardness to life had been the great reason of the slowness of my
recovering. I added that I foresaw that as soon as I was well, I must
quit the family, and that as for marrying his brother, I abhorred the
thoughts of it after what had been my case with him, and that he might
depend upon it I would never see his brother again upon that subject;
that if he would break all his vows and oaths and engagements with me,
be that between his conscience and his honour and himself; but he
should never be able to say that I, whom he had persuaded to call
myself his wife, and who had given him the liberty to use me as a wife,
was not as faithful to him as a wife ought to be, whatever he might be
to me.

He was going to reply, and had said that he was sorry I could not be
persuaded, and was a-going to say more, but he heard his sister
a-coming, and so did I; and yet I forced out these few words as a
reply, that I could never be persuaded to love one brother and marry
another. He shook his head and said, “Then I am ruined,” meaning
himself; and that moment his sister entered the room and told him she
could not find the flute. “Well,” says he merrily, “this laziness won’t
do”; so he gets up and goes himself to go to look for it, but comes
back without it too; not but that he could have found it, but because
his mind was a little disturbed, and he had no mind to play; and,
besides, the errand he sent his sister on was answered another way; for
he only wanted an opportunity to speak to me, which he gained, though
not much to his satisfaction.

I had, however, a great deal of satisfaction in having spoken my mind
to him with freedom, and with such an honest plainness, as I have
related; and though it did not at all work the way I desired, that is
to say, to oblige the person to me the more, yet it took from him all
possibility of quitting me but by a downright breach of honour, and
giving up all the faith of a gentleman to me, which he had so often
engaged by, never to abandon me, but to make me his wife as soon as he
came to his estate.

It was not many weeks after this before I was about the house again,
and began to grow well; but I continued melancholy, silent, dull, and
retired, which amazed the whole family, except he that knew the reason
of it; yet it was a great while before he took any notice of it, and I,
as backward to speak as he, carried respectfully to him, but never
offered to speak a word to him that was particular of any kind
whatsoever; and this continued for sixteen or seventeen weeks; so that,
as I expected every day to be dismissed the family, on account of what
distaste they had taken another way, in which I had no guilt, so I
expected to hear no more of this gentleman, after all his solemn vows
and protestations, but to be ruined and abandoned.

At last I broke the way myself in the family for my removing; for being
talking seriously with the old lady one day, about my own circumstances
in the world, and how my distemper had left a heaviness upon my
spirits, that I was not the same thing I was before, the old lady said,
“I am afraid, Betty, what I have said to you about my son has had some
influence upon you, and that you are melancholy on his account; pray,
will you let me know how the matter stands with you both, if it may not
be improper? For, as for Robin, he does nothing but rally and banter
when I speak of it to him.” “Why, truly, madam,” said I, “that matter
stands as I wish it did not, and I shall be very sincere with you in
it, whatever befalls me for it. Mr. Robert has several times proposed
marriage to me, which is what I had no reason to expect, my poor
circumstances considered; but I have always resisted him, and that
perhaps in terms more positive than became me, considering the regard
that I ought to have for every branch of your family; but,” said I,
“madam, I could never so far forget my obligation to you and all your
house, to offer to consent to a thing which I know must needs be
disobliging to you, and this I have made my argument to him, and have
positively told him that I would never entertain a thought of that kind
unless I had your consent, and his father’s also, to whom I was bound
by so many invincible obligations.”

“And is this possible, Mrs. Betty?” says the old lady. “Then you have
been much juster to us than we have been to you; for we have all looked
upon you as a kind of snare to my son, and I had a proposal to make to
you for your removing, for fear of it; but I had not yet mentioned it
to you, because I thought you were not thorough well, and I was afraid
of grieving you too much, lest it should throw you down again; for we
have all a respect for you still, though not so much as to have it be
the ruin of my son; but if it be as you say, we have all wronged you
very much.”

“As to the truth of what I say, madam,” said I, “refer you to your son
himself; if he will do me any justice, he must tell you the story just
as I have told it.”

Away goes the old lady to her daughters and tells them the whole story,
just as I had told it her; and they were surprised at it, you may be
sure, as I believed they would be. One said she could never have
thought it; another said Robin was a fool; a third said she would not
believe a word of it, and she would warrant that Robin would tell the
story another way. But the old gentlewoman, who was resolved to go to
the bottom of it before I could have the least opportunity of
acquainting her son with what had passed, resolved too that she would
talk with her son immediately, and to that purpose sent for him, for he
was gone but to a lawyer’s house in the town, upon some petty business
of his own, and upon her sending he returned immediately.

Upon his coming up to them, for they were all still together, “Sit
down, Robin,” says the old lady, “I must have some talk with you.”
“With all my heart, madam,” says Robin, looking very merry. “I hope it
is about a good wife, for I am at a great loss in that affair.” “How
can that be?” says his mother; “did not you say you resolved to have
Mrs. Betty?” “Ay, madam,” says Robin, “but there is one has forbid the
banns.” “Forbid, the banns!” says his mother; “who can that be?” “Even
Mrs. Betty herself,” says Robin. “How so?” says his mother. “Have you
asked her the question, then?” “Yes, indeed, madam,” says Robin. “I
have attacked her in form five times since she was sick, and am beaten
off; the jade is so stout she won’t capitulate nor yield upon any
terms, except such as I cannot effectually grant.” “Explain yourself,”
says the mother, “for I am surprised; I do not understand you. I hope
you are not in earnest.”

“Why, madam,” says he, “the case is plain enough upon me, it explains
itself; she won’t have me, she says; is not that plain enough? I think
’tis plain, and pretty rough too.” “Well, but,” says the mother, “you
talk of conditions that you cannot grant; what does she want—a
settlement? Her jointure ought to be according to her portion; but what
fortune does she bring you?” “Nay, as to fortune,” says Robin, “she is
rich enough; I am satisfied in that point; but ’tis I that am not able
to come up to her terms, and she is positive she will not have me
without.”

Here the sisters put in. “Madam,” says the second sister, “’tis
impossible to be serious with him; he will never give a direct answer
to anything; you had better let him alone, and talk no more of it to
him; you know how to dispose of her out of his way if you thought there
was anything in it.” Robin was a little warmed with his sister’s
rudeness, but he was even with her, and yet with good manners too.
“There are two sorts of people, madam,” says he, turning to his mother,
“that there is no contending with; that is, a wise body and a fool;
’tis a little hard I should engage with both of them together.”

The younger sister then put in. “We must be fools indeed,” says she,
“in my brother’s opinion, that he should think we can believe he has
seriously asked Mrs. Betty to marry him, and that she has refused him.”

“Answer, and answer not, say Solomon,” replied her brother. “When your
brother had said to your mother that he had asked her no less than five
times, and that it was so, that she positively denied him, methinks a
younger sister need not question the truth of it when her mother did
not.” “My mother, you see, did not understand it,” says the second
sister. “There’s some difference,” says Robin, “between desiring me to
explain it, and telling me she did not believe it.”

“Well, but, son,” says the old lady, “if you are disposed to let us
into the mystery of it, what were these hard conditions?” “Yes, madam,”
says Robin, “I had done it before now, if the teasers here had not
worried me by way of interruption. The conditions are, that I bring my
father and you to consent to it, and without that she protests she will
never see me more upon that head; and to these conditions, as I said, I
suppose I shall never be able to grant. I hope my warm sisters will be
answered now, and blush a little; if not, I have no more to say till I
hear further.”

This answer was surprising to them all, though less to the mother,
because of what I had said to her. As to the daughters, they stood mute
a great while; but the mother said with some passion, “Well, I had
heard this before, but I could not believe it; but if it is so, then we
have all done Betty wrong, and she has behaved better than I ever
expected.” “Nay,” says the eldest sister, “if it be so, she has acted
handsomely indeed.” “I confess,” says the mother, “it was none of her
fault, if he was fool enough to take a fancy to her; but to give such
an answer to him, shows more respect to your father and me than I can
tell how to express; I shall value the girl the better for it as long
as I know her.” “But I shall not,” says Robin, “unless you will give
your consent.” “I’ll consider of that a while,” says the mother; “I
assure you, if there were not some other objections in the way, this
conduct of hers would go a great way to bring me to consent.” “I wish
it would go quite through it,” says Robin; “if you had as much thought
about making me easy as you have about making me rich, you would soon
consent to it.”

“Why, Robin,” says the mother again, “are you really in earnest? Would
you so fain have her as you pretend?” “Really, madam,” says Robin, “I
think ’tis hard you should question me upon that head after all I have
said. I won’t say that I will have her; how can I resolve that point,
when you see I cannot have her without your consent? Besides, I am not
bound to marry at all. But this I will say, I am in earnest in, that I
will never have anybody else if I can help it; so you may determine for
me. Betty or nobody is the word, and the question which of the two
shall be in your breast to decide, madam, provided only, that my
good-humoured sisters here may have no vote in it.”

All this was dreadful to me, for the mother began to yield, and Robin
pressed her home on it. On the other hand, she advised with the eldest
son, and he used all the arguments in the world to persuade her to
consent; alleging his brother’s passionate love for me, and my generous
regard to the family, in refusing my own advantages upon such a nice
point of honour, and a thousand such things. And as to the father, he
was a man in a hurry of public affairs and getting money, seldom at
home, thoughtful of the main chance, but left all those things to his
wife.

You may easily believe, that when the plot was thus, as they thought,
broke out, and that every one thought they knew how things were
carried, it was not so difficult or so dangerous for the elder brother,
whom nobody suspected of anything, to have a freer access to me than
before; nay, the mother, which was just as he wished, proposed it to
him to talk with Mrs. Betty. “For it may be, son,” said she, “you may
see farther into the thing than I, and see if you think she has been so
positive as Robin says she has been, or no.” This was as well as he
could wish, and he, as it were, yielding to talk with me at his
mother’s request, she brought me to him into her own chamber, told me
her son had some business with me at her request, and desired me to be
very sincere with him, and then she left us together, and he went and
shut the door after her.

He came back to me and took me in his arms, and kissed me very
tenderly; but told me he had a long discourse to hold with me, and it
was not come to that crisis, that I should make myself happy or
miserable as long as I lived; that the thing was now gone so far, that
if I could not comply with his desire, we would both be ruined. Then he
told the whole story between Robin, as he called him, and his mother
and sisters and himself, as it is above. “And now, dear child,” says
he, “consider what it will be to marry a gentleman of a good family, in
good circumstances, and with the consent of the whole house, and to
enjoy all that the world can give you; and what, on the other hand, to
be sunk into the dark circumstances of a woman that has lost her
reputation; and that though I shall be a private friend to you while I
live, yet as I shall be suspected always, so you will be afraid to see
me, and I shall be afraid to own you.”

He gave me no time to reply, but went on with me thus: “What has
happened between us, child, so long as we both agree to do so, may be
buried and forgotten. I shall always be your sincere friend, without
any inclination to nearer intimacy, when you become my sister; and we
shall have all the honest part of conversation without any reproaches
between us of having done amiss. I beg of you to consider it, and to
not stand in the way of your own safety and prosperity; and to satisfy
you that I am sincere,” added he, “I here offer you £500 in money, to
make you some amends for the freedoms I have taken with you, which we
shall look upon as some of the follies of our lives, which ’tis hoped
we may repent of.”

He spoke this in so much more moving terms than it is possible for me
to express, and with so much greater force of argument than I can
repeat, that I only recommend it to those who read the story, to
suppose, that as he held me above an hour and a half in that discourse,
so he answered all my objections, and fortified his discourse with all
the arguments that human wit and art could devise.

I cannot say, however, that anything he said made impression enough
upon me so as to give me any thought of the matter, till he told me at
last very plainly, that if I refused, he was sorry to add that he could
never go on with me in that station as we stood before; that though he
loved me as well as ever, and that I was as agreeable to him as ever,
yet sense of virtue had not so far forsaken him as to suffer him to lie
with a woman that his brother courted to make his wife; and if he took
his leave of me, with a denial in this affair, whatever he might do for
me in the point of support, grounded on his first engagement of
maintaining me, yet he would not have me be surprised that he was
obliged to tell me he could not allow himself to see me any more; and
that, indeed, I could not expect it of him.

I received this last part with some token of surprise and disorder, and
had much ado to avoid sinking down, for indeed I loved him to an
extravagance not easy to imagine; but he perceived my disorder. He
entreated me to consider seriously of it; assured me that it was the
only way to preserve our mutual affection; that in this station we
might love as friends, with the utmost passion, and with a love of
relation untainted, free from our just reproaches, and free from other
people’s suspicions; that he should ever acknowledge his happiness
owing to me; that he would be debtor to me as long as he lived, and
would be paying that debt as long as he had breath. Thus he wrought me
up, in short, to a kind of hesitation in the matter; having the dangers
on one side represented in lively figures, and indeed, heightened by my
imagination of being turned out to the wide world a mere cast-off
whore, for it was no less, and perhaps exposed as such, with little to
provide for myself, with no friend, no acquaintance in the whole world,
out of that town, and there I could not pretend to stay. All this
terrified me to the last degree, and he took care upon all occasions to
lay it home to me in the worst colours that it could be possible to be
drawn in. On the other hand, he failed not to set forth the easy,
prosperous life which I was going to live.

He answered all that I could object from affection, and from former
engagements, with telling me the necessity that was before us of taking
other measures now; and as to his promises of marriage, the nature of
things, he said, had put an end to that, by the probability of my being
his brother’s wife, before the time to which his promises all referred.

Thus, in a word, I may say, he reasoned me out of my reason; he
conquered all my arguments, and I began to see a danger that I was in,
which I had not considered of before, and that was, of being dropped by
both of them and left alone in the world to shift for myself.

This, and his persuasion, at length prevailed with me to consent,
though with so much reluctance, that it was easy to see I should go to
church like a bear to the stake. I had some little apprehensions about
me, too, lest my new spouse, who, by the way, I had not the least
affection for, should be skillful enough to challenge me on another
account, upon our first coming to bed together. But whether he did it
with design or not, I know not, but his elder brother took care to make
him very much fuddled before he went to bed, so that I had the
satisfaction of a drunken bedfellow the first night. How he did it I
know not, but I concluded that he certainly contrived it, that his
brother might be able to make no judgment of the difference between a
maid and a married woman; nor did he ever entertain any notions of it,
or disturb his thoughts about it.

I should go back a little here to where I left off. The elder brother
having thus managed me, his next business was to manage his mother, and
he never left till he had brought her to acquiesce and be passive in
the thing, even without acquainting the father, other than by post
letters; so that she consented to our marrying privately, and leaving
her to manage the father afterwards.

Then he cajoled with his brother, and persuaded him what service he had
done him, and how he had brought his mother to consent, which, though
true, was not indeed done to serve him, but to serve himself; but thus
diligently did he cheat him, and had the thanks of a faithful friend
for shifting off his whore into his brother’s arms for a wife. So
certainly does interest banish all manner of affection, and so
naturally do men give up honour and justice, humanity, and even
Christianity, to secure themselves.

I must now come back to brother Robin, as we always called him, who
having got his mother’s consent, as above, came big with the news to
me, and told me the whole story of it, with a sincerity so visible,
that I must confess it grieved me that I must be the instrument to
abuse so honest a gentleman. But there was no remedy; he would have me,
and I was not obliged to tell him that I was his brother’s whore,
though I had no other way to put him off; so I came gradually into it,
to his satisfaction, and behold we were married.

Modesty forbids me to reveal the secrets of the marriage-bed, but
nothing could have happened more suitable to my circumstances than
that, as above, my husband was so fuddled when he came to bed, that he
could not remember in the morning whether he had had any conversation
with me or no, and I was obliged to tell him he had, though in reality
he had not, that I might be sure he could make to inquiry about
anything else.

It concerns the story in hand very little to enter into the further
particulars of the family, or of myself, for the five years that I
lived with this husband, only to observe that I had two children by
him, and that at the end of five years he died. He had been really a
very good husband to me, and we lived very agreeably together; but as
he had not received much from them, and had in the little time he lived
acquired no great matters, so my circumstances were not great, nor was
I much mended by the match. Indeed, I had preserved the elder brother’s
bonds to me, to pay £500, which he offered me for my consent to marry
his brother; and this, with what I had saved of the money he formerly
gave me, about as much more by my husband, left me a widow with about
£1200 in my pocket.

My two children were, indeed, taken happily off my hands by my
husband’s father and mother, and that, by the way, was all they got by
Mrs. Betty.

I confess I was not suitably affected with the loss of my husband, nor
indeed can I say that I ever loved him as I ought to have done, or as
was proportionable to the good usage I had from him, for he was a
tender, kind, good-humoured man as any woman could desire; but his
brother being so always in my sight, at least while we were in the
country, was a continual snare to me, and I never was in bed with my
husband but I wished myself in the arms of his brother; and though his
brother never offered me the least kindness that way after our
marriage, but carried it just as a brother ought to do, yet it was
impossible for me to do so to him; in short, I committed adultery and
incest with him every day in my desires, which, without doubt, was as
effectually criminal in the nature of the guilt as if I had actually
done it.

Before my husband died his elder brother was married, and we, being
then removed to London, were written to by the old lady to come and be
at the wedding. My husband went, but I pretended indisposition, and
that I could not possibly travel, so I stayed behind; for, in short, I
could not bear the sight of his being given to another woman, though I
knew I was never to have him myself.

I was now, as above, left loose to the world, and being still young and
handsome, as everybody said of me, and I assure you I thought myself
so, and with a tolerable fortune in my pocket, I put no small value
upon myself. I was courted by several very considerable tradesmen, and
particularly very warmly by one, a linen-draper, at whose house, after
my husband’s death, I took a lodging, his sister being my acquaintance.
Here I had all the liberty and all the opportunity to be gay and appear
in company that I could desire, my landlord’s sister being one of the
maddest, gayest things alive, and not so much mistress of her virtue as
I thought at first she had been. She brought me into a world of wild
company, and even brought home several persons, such as she liked well
enough to gratify, to see her pretty widow, so she was pleased to call
me, and that name I got in a little time in public. Now, as fame and
fools make an assembly, I was here wonderfully caressed, had abundance
of admirers, and such as called themselves lovers; but I found not one
fair proposal among them all. As for their common design, that I
understood too well to be drawn into any more snares of that kind. The
case was altered with me: I had money in my pocket, and had nothing to
say to them. I had been tricked once by that cheat called love, but the
game was over; I was resolved now to be married or nothing, and to be
well married or not at all.

I loved the company, indeed, of men of mirth and wit, men of gallantry
and figure, and was often entertained with such, as I was also with
others; but I found by just observation, that the brightest men came
upon the dullest errand—that is to say, the dullest as to what I aimed
at. On the other hand, those who came with the best proposals were the
dullest and most disagreeable part of the world. I was not averse to a
tradesman, but then I would have a tradesman, forsooth, that was
something of a gentleman too; that when my husband had a mind to carry
me to the court, or to the play, he might become a sword, and look as
like a gentleman as another man; and not be one that had the mark of
his apron-strings upon his coat, or the mark of his hat upon his
periwig; that should look as if he was set on to his sword, when his
sword was put on to him, and that carried his trade in his countenance.

Well, at last I found this amphibious creature, this land-water thing
called a gentleman-tradesman; and as a just plague upon my folly, I was
catched in the very snare which, as I might say, I laid for myself. I
said for myself, for I was not trepanned, I confess, but I betrayed
myself.

This was a draper, too, for though my comrade would have brought me to
a bargain with her brother, yet when it came to the point, it was, it
seems, for a mistress, not a wife; and I kept true to this notion, that
a woman should never be kept for a mistress that had money to keep
herself.

Thus my pride, not my principle, my money, not my virtue, kept me
honest; though, as it proved, I found I had much better have been sold
by my she-comrade to her brother, than have sold myself as I did to a
tradesman that was rake, gentleman, shopkeeper, and beggar, all
together.

But I was hurried on (by my fancy to a gentleman) to ruin myself in the
grossest manner that every woman did; for my new husband coming to a
lump of money at once, fell into such a profusion of expense, that all
I had, and all he had before, if he had anything worth mentioning,
would not have held it out above one year.

He was very fond of me for about a quarter of a year, and what I got by
that was, that I had the pleasure of seeing a great deal of my money
spent upon myself, and, as I may say, had some of the spending it too.
“Come, my dear,” says he to me one day, “shall we go and take a turn
into the country for about a week?” “Ay, my dear,” says I, “whither
would you go?” “I care not whither,” says he, “but I have a mind to
look like quality for a week. We’ll go to Oxford,” says he. “How,” says
I, “shall we go? I am no horsewoman, and ’tis too far for a coach.”
“Too far!” says he; “no place is too far for a coach-and-six. If I
carry you out, you shall travel like a duchess.” “Hum,” says I, “my
dear, ’tis a frolic; but if you have a mind to it, I don’t care.” Well,
the time was appointed, we had a rich coach, very good horses, a
coachman, postillion, and two footmen in very good liveries; a
gentleman on horseback, and a page with a feather in his hat upon
another horse. The servants all called him my lord, and the
inn-keepers, you may be sure, did the like, and I was her honour the
Countess, and thus we traveled to Oxford, and a very pleasant journey
we had; for, give him his due, not a beggar alive knew better how to be
a lord than my husband. We saw all the rarities at Oxford, talked with
two or three Fellows of colleges about putting out a young nephew, that
was left to his lordship’s care, to the University, and of their being
his tutors. We diverted ourselves with bantering several other poor
scholars, with hopes of being at least his lordship’s chaplains and
putting on a scarf; and thus having lived like quality indeed, as to
expense, we went away for Northampton, and, in a word, in about twelve
days’ ramble came home again, to the tune of about £93 expense.

Vanity is the perfection of a fop. My husband had this excellence, that
he valued nothing of expense; and as his history, you may be sure, has
very little weight in it, ’tis enough to tell you that in about two
years and a quarter he broke, and was not so happy to get over into the
Mint, but got into a sponging-house, being arrested in an action too
heavy from him to give bail to, so he sent for me to come to him.

It was no surprise to me, for I had foreseen some time that all was
going to wreck, and had been taking care to reserve something if I
could, though it was not much, for myself. But when he sent for me, he
behaved much better than I expected, and told me plainly he had played
the fool, and suffered himself to be surprised, which he might have
prevented; that now he foresaw he could not stand it, and therefore he
would have me go home, and in the night take away everything I had in
the house of any value, and secure it; and after that, he told me that
if I could get away one hundred or two hundred pounds in goods out of
the shop, I should do it; “only,” says he, “let me know nothing of it,
neither what you take nor whither you carry it; for as for me,” says
he, “I am resolved to get out of this house and be gone; and if you
never hear of me more, my dear,” says he, “I wish you well; I am only
sorry for the injury I have done you.” He said some very handsome
things to me indeed at parting; for I told you he was a gentleman, and
that was all the benefit I had of his being so; that he used me very
handsomely and with good manners upon all occasions, even to the last,
only spent all I had, and left me to rob the creditors for something to
subsist on.

However, I did as he bade me, that you may be sure; and having thus
taken my leave of him, I never saw him more, for he found means to
break out of the bailiff’s house that night or the next, and go over
into France, and for the rest of the creditors scrambled for it as well
as they could. How, I knew not, for I could come at no knowledge of
anything, more than this, that he came home about three o’clock in the
morning, caused the rest of his goods to be removed into the Mint, and
the shop to be shut up; and having raised what money he could get
together, he got over, as I said, to France, from whence I had one or
two letters from him, and no more. I did not see him when he came home,
for he having given me such instructions as above, and I having made
the best of my time, I had no more business back again at the house,
not knowing but I might have been stopped there by the creditors; for a
commission of bankrupt being soon after issued, they might have stopped
me by orders from the commissioners. But my husband, having so
dexterously got out of the bailiff’s house by letting himself down in a
most desperate manner from almost the top of the house to the top of
another building, and leaping from thence, which was almost two
storeys, and which was enough indeed to have broken his neck, he came
home and got away his goods before the creditors could come to seize;
that is to say, before they could get out the commission, and be ready
to send their officers to take possession.

My husband was so civil to me, for still I say he was much of a
gentleman, that in the first letter he wrote me from France, he let me
know where he had pawned twenty pieces of fine holland for £30, which
were really worth £90, and enclosed me the token and an order for the
taking them up, paying the money, which I did, and made in time above
£100 of them, having leisure to cut them and sell them, some and some,
to private families, as opportunity offered.

However, with all this, and all that I had secured before, I found,
upon casting things up, my case was very much altered, any my fortune
much lessened; for, including the hollands and a parcel of fine
muslins, which I carried off before, and some plate, and other things,
I found I could hardly muster up £500; and my condition was very odd,
for though I had no child (I had had one by my gentleman draper, but it
was buried), yet I was a widow bewitched; I had a husband and no
husband, and I could not pretend to marry again, though I knew well
enough my husband would never see England any more, if he lived fifty
years. Thus, I say, I was limited from marriage, what offer might
soever be made me; and I had not one friend to advise with in the
condition I was in, least not one I durst trust the secret of my
circumstances to, for if the commissioners were to have been informed
where I was, I should have been fetched up and examined upon oath, and
all I have saved be taken away from me.

Upon these apprehensions, the first thing I did was to go quite out of
my knowledge, and go by another name. This I did effectually, for I
went into the Mint too, took lodgings in a very private place, dressed
up in the habit of a widow, and called myself Mrs. Flanders.

Here, however, I concealed myself, and though my new acquaintances knew
nothing of me, yet I soon got a great deal of company about me; and
whether it be that women are scarce among the sorts of people that
generally are to be found there, or that some consolations in the
miseries of the place are more requisite than on other occasions, I
soon found an agreeable woman was exceedingly valuable among the sons
of affliction there, and that those that wanted money to pay half a
crown on the pound to their creditors, and that run in debt at the sign
of the Bull for their dinners, would yet find money for a supper, if
they liked the woman.

However, I kept myself safe yet, though I began, like my Lord
Rochester’s mistress, that loved his company, but would not admit him
farther, to have the scandal of a whore, without the joy; and upon this
score, tired with the place, and indeed with the company too, I began
to think of removing.

It was indeed a subject of strange reflection to me to see men who were
overwhelmed in perplexed circumstances, who were reduced some degrees
below being ruined, whose families were objects of their own terror and
other people’s charity, yet while a penny lasted, nay, even beyond it,
endeavouring to drown themselves, labouring to forget former things,
which now it was the proper time to remember, making more work for
repentance, and sinning on, as a remedy for sin past.

But it is none of my talent to preach; these men were too wicked, even
for me. There was something horrid and absurd in their way of sinning,
for it was all a force even upon themselves; they did not only act
against conscience, but against nature; they put a rape upon their
temper to drown the reflections, which their circumstances continually
gave them; and nothing was more easy than to see how sighs would
interrupt their songs, and paleness and anguish sit upon their brows,
in spite of the forced smiles they put on; nay, sometimes it would
break out at their very mouths when they had parted with their money
for a lewd treat or a wicked embrace. I have heard them, turning about,
fetch a deep sigh, and cry, “What a dog am I! Well, Betty, my dear,
I’ll drink thy health, though”; meaning the honest wife, that perhaps
had not a half-crown for herself and three or four children. The next
morning they are at their penitentials again; and perhaps the poor
weeping wife comes over to him, either brings him some account of what
his creditors are doing, and how she and the children are turned out of
doors, or some other dreadful news; and this adds to his
self-reproaches; but when he has thought and pored on it till he is
almost mad, having no principles to support him, nothing within him or
above him to comfort him, but finding it all darkness on every side, he
flies to the same relief again, viz. to drink it away, debauch it away,
and falling into company of men in just the same condition with
himself, he repeats the crime, and thus he goes every day one step
onward of his way to destruction.

I was not wicked enough for such fellows as these yet. On the contrary,
I began to consider here very seriously what I had to do; how things
stood with me, and what course I ought to take. I knew I had no
friends, no, not one friend or relation in the world; and that little I
had left apparently wasted, which when it was gone, I saw nothing but
misery and starving was before me. Upon these considerations, I say,
and filled with horror at the place I was in, and the dreadful objects
which I had always before me, I resolved to be gone.

I had made an acquaintance with a very sober, good sort of a woman, who
was a widow too, like me, but in better circumstances. Her husband had
been a captain of a merchant ship, and having had the misfortune to be
cast away coming home on a voyage from the West Indies, which would
have been very profitable if he had come safe, was so reduced by the
loss, that though he had saved his life then, it broke his heart, and
killed him afterwards; and his widow, being pursued by the creditors,
was forced to take shelter in the Mint. She soon made things up with
the help of friends, and was at liberty again; and finding that I
rather was there to be concealed, than by any particular prosecutions
and finding also that I agreed with her, or rather she with me, in a
just abhorrence of the place and of the company, she invited to go home
with her till I could put myself in some posture of settling in the
world to my mind; withal telling me, that it was ten to one but some
good captain of a ship might take a fancy to me, and court me, in that
part of the town where she lived.

I accepted her offer, and was with her half a year, and should have
been longer, but in that interval what she proposed to me happened to
herself, and she married very much to her advantage. But whose fortune
soever was upon the increase, mine seemed to be upon the wane, and I
found nothing present, except two or three boatswains, or such fellows,
but as for the commanders, they were generally of two sorts: 1. Such
as, having good business, that is to say, a good ship, resolved not to
marry but with advantage, that is, with a good fortune; 2. Such as,
being out of employ, wanted a wife to help them to a ship; I mean (1) a
wife who, having some money, could enable them to hold, as they call
it, a good part of a ship themselves, so to encourage owners to come
in; or (2) a wife who, if she had not money, had friends who were
concerned in shipping, and so could help to put the young man into a
good ship, which to them is as good as a portion; and neither of these
was my case, so I looked like one that was to lie on hand.

This knowledge I soon learned by experience, viz. that the state of
things was altered as to matrimony, and that I was not to expect at
London what I had found in the country: that marriages were here the
consequences of politic schemes for forming interests, and carrying on
business, and that Love had no share, or but very little, in the
matter.

That as my sister-in-law at Colchester had said, beauty, wit, manners,
sense, good humour, good behaviour, education, virtue, piety, or any
other qualification, whether of body or mind, had no power to
recommend; that money only made a woman agreeable; that men chose
mistresses indeed by the gust of their affection, and it was requisite
to a whore to be handsome, well-shaped, have a good mien and a graceful
behaviour; but that for a wife, no deformity would shock the fancy, no
ill qualities the judgment; the money was the thing; the portion was
neither crooked nor monstrous, but the money was always agreeable,
whatever the wife was.

On the other hand, as the market ran very unhappily on the men’s side,
I found the women had lost the privilege of saying No; that it was a
favour now for a woman to have the Question asked, and if any young
lady had so much arrogance as to counterfeit a negative, she never had
the opportunity given her of denying twice, much less of recovering
that false step, and accepting what she had but seemed to decline. The
men had such choice everywhere, that the case of the women was very
unhappy; for they seemed to ply at every door, and if the man was by
great chance refused at one house, he was sure to be received at the
next.

Besides this, I observed that the men made no scruple to set themselves
out, and to go a-fortunehunting, as they call it, when they had really
no fortune themselves to demand it, or merit to deserve it; and that
they carried it so high, that a woman was scarce allowed to inquire
after the character or estate of the person that pretended to her. This
I had an example of, in a young lady in the next house to me, and with
whom I had contracted an intimacy; she was courted by a young captain,
and though she had near £2000 to her fortune, she did but inquire of
some of his neighbours about his character, his morals, or substance,
and he took occasion at the next visit to let her know, truly, that he
took it very ill, and that he should not give her the trouble of his
visits any more. I heard of it, and I had begun my acquaintance with
her, I went to see her upon it. She entered into a close conversation
with me about it, and unbosomed herself very freely. I perceived
presently that though she thought herself very ill used, yet she had no
power to resent it, and was exceedingly piqued that she had lost him,
and particularly that another of less fortune had gained him.

I fortified her mind against such a meanness, as I called it; I told
her, that as low as I was in the world, I would have despised a man
that should think I ought to take him upon his own recommendation only,
without having the liberty to inform myself of his fortune and of his
character; also I told her, that as she had a good fortune, she had no
need to stoop to the disaster of the time; that it was enough that the
men could insult us that had but little money to recommend us, but if
she suffered such an affront to pass upon her without resenting it, she
would be rendered low-prized upon all occasions, and would be the
contempt of all the women in that part of the town; that a woman can
never want an opportunity to be revenged of a man that has used her
ill, and that there were ways enough to humble such a fellow as that,
or else certainly women were the most unhappy creatures in the world.

I found she was very well pleased with the discourse, and she told me
seriously that she would be very glad to make him sensible of her just
resentment, and either to bring him on again, or have the satisfaction
of her revenge being as public as possible.

I told her, that if she would take my advice, I would tell her how she
should obtain her wishes in both these things; and that I would engage
to bring the man to her door again, and make him beg to be let in. She
smiled at that, and plainly let me see, that if he came to her door,
her resentment was not so great as to give her leave to let him stand
long there.

However, she listened very willingly to my offer of advice; so I told
her that the first thing she ought to do was a piece of justice to
herself, namely, that whereas she had been told by several people that
he had reported among the ladies that he had left her, and pretended to
give the advantage of the negative to himself, she should take care to
have it well spread among the women—which she could not fail of an
opportunity to do in a neighbourhood so addicted to family news as that
she live in was—that she had inquired into his circumstances, and found
he was not the man as to estate he pretended to be. “Let them be told,
madam,” said I, “that you had been well informed that he was not the
man that you expected, and that you thought it was not safe to meddle
with him; that you heard he was of an ill temper, and that he boasted
how he had used the women ill upon many occasions, and that
particularly he was debauched in his morals”, etc. The last of which,
indeed, had some truth in it; but at the same time I did not find that
she seemed to like him much the worse for that part.

As I had put this into her head, she came most readily into it.
Immediately she went to work to find instruments, and she had very
little difficulty in the search, for telling her story in general to a
couple of gossips in the neighbourhood, it was the chat of the
tea-table all over that part of the town, and I met with it wherever I
visited; also, as it was known that I was acquainted with the young
lady herself, my opinion was asked very often, and I confirmed it with
all the necessary aggravations, and set out his character in the
blackest colours; but then as a piece of secret intelligence, I added,
as what the other gossips knew nothing of, viz. that I had heard he was
in very bad circumstances; that he was under a necessity of a fortune
to support his interest with the owners of the ship he commanded; that
his own part was not paid for, and if it was not paid quickly, his
owners would put him out of the ship, and his chief mate was likely to
command it, who offered to buy that part which the captain had promised
to take.

I added, for I confess I was heartily piqued at the rogue, as I called
him, that I had heard a rumour, too, that he had a wife alive at
Plymouth, and another in the West Indies, a thing which they all knew
was not very uncommon for such kind of gentlemen.

This worked as we both desire it, for presently the young lady next
door, who had a father and mother that governed both her and her
fortune, was shut up, and her father forbid him the house. Also in one
place more where he went, the woman had the courage, however strange it
was, to say No; and he could try nowhere but he was reproached with his
pride, and that he pretended not to give the women leave to inquire
into his character, and the like.

Well, by this time he began to be sensible of his mistake; and having
alarmed all the women on that side of the water, he went over to
Ratcliff, and got access to some of the ladies there; but though the
young women there too were, according to the fate of the day, pretty
willing to be asked, yet such was his ill-luck, that his character
followed him over the water and his good name was much the same there
as it was on our side; so that though he might have had wives enough,
yet it did not happen among the women that had good fortunes, which was
what he wanted.

But this was not all; she very ingeniously managed another thing
herself, for she got a young gentleman, who as a relation, and was
indeed a married man, to come and visit her two or three times a week
in a very fine chariot and good liveries, and her two agents, and I
also, presently spread a report all over, that this gentleman came to
court her; that he was a gentleman of a £1000 a year, and that he was
fallen in love with her, and that she was going to her aunt’s in the
city, because it was inconvenient for the gentleman to come to her with
his coach in Redriff, the streets being so narrow and difficult.

This took immediately. The captain was laughed at in all companies, and
was ready to hang himself. He tried all the ways possible to come at
her again, and wrote the most passionate letters to her in the world,
excusing his former rashness; and in short, by great application,
obtained leave to wait on her again, as he said, to clear his
reputation.

At this meeting she had her full revenge of him; for she told him she
wondered what he took her to be, that she should admit any man to a
treaty of so much consequence as that to marriage, without inquiring
very well into his circumstances; that if he thought she was to be
huffed into wedlock, and that she was in the same circumstances which
her neighbours might be in, viz. to take up with the first good
Christian that came, he was mistaken; that, in a word, his character
was really bad, or he was very ill beholden to his neighbours; and that
unless he could clear up some points, in which she had justly been
prejudiced, she had no more to say to him, but to do herself justice,
and give him the satisfaction of knowing that she was not afraid to say
No, either to him or any man else.

With that she told him what she had heard, or rather raised herself by
my means, of his character; his not having paid for the part he
pretended to own of the ship he commanded; of the resolution of his
owners to put him out of the command, and to put his mate in his stead;
and of the scandal raised on his morals; his having been reproached
with such-and-such women, and having a wife at Plymouth and in the West
Indies, and the like; and she asked him whether he could deny that she
had good reason, if these things were not cleared up, to refuse him,
and in the meantime to insist upon having satisfaction in points to
significant as they were.

He was so confounded at her discourse that he could not answer a word,
and she almost began to believe that all was true, by his disorder,
though at the same time she knew that she had been the raiser of all
those reports herself.

After some time he recovered himself a little, and from that time
became the most humble, the most modest, and most importunate man alive
in his courtship.

She carried her jest on a great way. She asked him, if he thought she
was so at her last shift that she could or ought to bear such
treatment, and if he did not see that she did not want those who
thought it worth their while to come farther to her than he did;
meaning the gentleman whom she had brought to visit her by way of sham.

She brought him by these tricks to submit to all possible measures to
satisfy her, as well of his circumstances as of his behaviour. He
brought her undeniable evidence of his having paid for his part of the
ship; he brought her certificates from his owners, that the report of
their intending to remove him from the command of the ship and put his
chief mate in was false and groundless; in short, he was quite the
reverse of what he was before.

Thus I convinced her, that if the men made their advantage of our sex
in the affair of marriage, upon the supposition of there being such
choice to be had, and of the women being so easy, it was only owing to
this, that the women wanted courage to maintain their ground and to
play their part; and that, according to my Lord Rochester,

“A woman’s ne’er so ruined but she can
Revenge herself on her undoer, Man.”


After these things this young lady played her part so well, that though
she resolved to have him, and that indeed having him was the main bent
of her design, yet she made his obtaining her be to him the most
difficult thing in the world; and this she did, not by a haughty
reserved carriage, but by a just policy, turning the tables upon him,
and playing back upon him his own game; for as he pretended, by a kind
of lofty carriage, to place himself above the occasion of a character,
and to make inquiring into his character a kind of an affront to him,
she broke with him upon that subject, and at the same time that she
make him submit to all possible inquiry after his affairs, she
apparently shut the door against his looking into her own.

It was enough to him to obtain her for a wife. As to what she had, she
told him plainly, that as he knew her circumstances, it was but just
she should know his; and though at the same time he had only known her
circumstances by common fame, yet he had made so many protestations of
his passion for her, that he could ask no more but her hand to his
grand request, and the like ramble according to the custom of lovers.
In short, he left himself no room to ask any more questions about her
estate, and she took the advantage of it like a prudent woman, for she
placed part of her fortune so in trustees, without letting him know
anything of it, that it was quite out of his reach, and made him be
very well content with the rest.

It is true she was pretty well besides, that is to say, she had about
£1400 in money, which she gave him; and the other, after some time, she
brought to light as a perquisite to herself, which he was to accept as
a mighty favour, seeing though it was not to be his, it might ease him
in the article of her particular expenses; and I must add, that by this
conduct the gentleman himself became not only the more humble in his
applications to her to obtain her, but also was much the more an
obliging husband to her when he had her. I cannot but remind the ladies
here how much they place themselves below the common station of a wife,
which, if I may be allowed not to be partial, is low enough already; I
say, they place themselves below their common station, and prepare
their own mortifications, by their submitting so to be insulted by the
men beforehand, which I confess I see no necessity of.

This relation may serve, therefore, to let the ladies see that the
advantage is not so much on the other side as the men think it is; and
though it may be true that the men have but too much choice among us,
and that some women may be found who will dishonour themselves, be
cheap, and easy to come at, and will scarce wait to be asked, yet if
they will have women, as I may say, worth having, they may find them as
uncomeatable as ever and that those that are otherwise are a sort of
people that have such deficiencies, when had, as rather recommend the
ladies that are difficult than encourage the men to go on with their
easy courtship, and expect wives equally valuable that will come at
first call.

Nothing is more certain than that the ladies always gain of the men by
keeping their ground, and letting their pretended lovers see they can
resent being slighted, and that they are not afraid of saying No. They,
I observe, insult us mightily with telling us of the number of women;
that the wars, and the sea, and trade, and other incidents have carried
the men so much away, that there is no proportion between the numbers
of the sexes, and therefore the women have the disadvantage; but I am
far from granting that the number of women is so great, or the number
of men so small; but if they will have me tell the truth, the
disadvantage of the women is a terrible scandal upon the men, and it
lies here, and here only; namely, that the age is so wicked, and the
sex so debauched, that, in short, the number of such men as an honest
woman ought to meddle with is small indeed, and it is but here and
there that a man is to be found who is fit for a woman to venture upon.

But the consequence even of that too amounts to no more than this, that
women ought to be the more nice; for how do we know the just character
of the man that makes the offer? To say that the woman should be the
more easy on this occasion, is to say we should be the forwarder to
venture because of the greatness of the danger, which, in my way of
reasoning, is very absurd.

On the contrary, the women have ten thousand times the more reason to
be wary and backward, by how much the hazard of being betrayed is the
greater; and would the ladies consider this, and act the wary part,
they would discover every cheat that offered; for, in short, the lives
of very few men nowadays will bear a character; and if the ladies do
but make a little inquiry, they will soon be able to distinguish the
men and deliver themselves. As for women that do not think their own
safety worth their thought, that, impatient of their perfect state,
resolve, as they call it, to take the first good Christian that comes,
that run into matrimony as a horse rushes into the battle, I can say
nothing to them but this, that they are a sort of ladies that are to be
prayed for among the rest of distempered people, and to me they look
like people that venture their whole estates in a lottery where there
is a hundred thousand blanks to one prize.

No man of common-sense will value a woman the less for not giving up
herself at the first attack, or for accepting his proposal without
inquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think
her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now
goes. In short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her
capacities, nay, every of her understanding, that, having but one case
of her life, shall call that life away at once, and make matrimony,
like death, be a leap in the dark.

I would fain have the conduct of my sex a little regulated in this
particular, which is the thing in which, of all the parts of life, I
think at this time we suffer most in; ’tis nothing but lack of courage,
the fear of not being married at all, and of that frightful state of
life called an old maid, of which I have a story to tell by itself.
This, I say, is the woman’s snare; but would the ladies once but get
above that fear and manage rightly, they would more certainly avoid it
by standing their ground, in a case so absolutely necessary to their
felicity, that by exposing themselves as they do; and if they did not
marry so soon as they may do otherwise, they would make themselves
amends by marrying safer. She is always married too soon who gets a bad
husband, and she is never married too late who gets a good one; in a
word, there is no woman, deformity or lost reputation excepted, but if
she manages well, may be married safely one time or other; but if she
precipitates herself, it is ten thousand to one but she is undone.

But I come now to my own case, in which there was at this time no
little nicety. The circumstances I was in made the offer of a good
husband the most necessary thing in the world to me, but I found soon
that to be made cheap and easy was not the way. It soon began to be
found that the widow had no fortune, and to say this was to say all
that was ill of me, for I began to be dropped in all the discourses of
matrimony. Being well-bred, handsome, witty, modest, and agreeable; all
which I had allowed to my character—whether justly or no is not the
purpose—I say, all these would not do without the dross, which was now
become more valuable than virtue itself. In short, the widow, they
said, had no money.

I resolved, therefore, as to the state of my present circumstances,
that it was absolutely necessary to change my station, and make a new
appearance in some other place where I was not known, and even to pass
by another name if I found occasion.

I communicated my thoughts to my intimate friend, the captain’s lady,
whom I had so faithfully served in her case with the captain, and who
was as ready to serve me in the same kind as I could desire. I made no
scruple to lay my circumstances open to her; my stock was but low, for
I had made but about £540 at the close of my last affair, and I had
wasted some of that; however, I had about £460 left, a great many very
rich clothes, a gold watch, and some jewels, though of no extraordinary
value, and about £30 or £40 left in linen not disposed of.

My dear and faithful friend, the captain’s wife, was so sensible of the
service I had done her in the affair above, that she was not only a
steady friend to me, but, knowing my circumstances, she frequently made
me presents as money came into her hands, such as fully amounted to a
maintenance, so that I spent none of my own; and at last she made this
unhappy proposal to me, viz. that as we had observed, as above, how the
men made no scruple to set themselves out as persons meriting a woman
of fortune, when they had really no fortune of their own, it was but
just to deal with them in their own way and, if it was possible, to
deceive the deceiver.

The captain’s lady, in short, put this project into my head, and told
me if I would be ruled by her I should certainly get a husband of
fortune, without leaving him any room to reproach me with want of my
own. I told her, as I had reason to do, that I would give up myself
wholly to her directions, and that I would have neither tongue to speak
nor feet to step in that affair but as she should direct me, depending
that she would extricate me out of every difficulty she brought me
into, which she said she would answer for.

The first step she put me upon was to call her cousin, and go to a
relation’s house of hers in the country, where she directed me, and
where she brought her husband to visit me; and calling me cousin, she
worked matters so about, that her husband and she together invited me
most passionately to come to town and be with them, for they now live
in a quite different place from where they were before. In the next
place, she tells her husband that I had at least £1500 fortune, and
that after some of my relations I was like to have a great deal more.

It was enough to tell her husband this; there needed nothing on my
side. I was but to sit still and wait the event, for it presently went
all over the neighbourhood that the young widow at Captain ——’s was a
fortune, that she had at least £1500, and perhaps a great deal more,
and that the captain said so; and if the captain was asked at any time
about me, he made no scruple to affirm it, though he knew not one word
of the matter, other than that his wife had told him so; and in this he
thought no harm, for he really believed it to be so, because he had it
from his wife: so slender a foundation will those fellows build upon,
if they do but think there is a fortune in the game. With the
reputation of this fortune, I presently found myself blessed with
admirers enough, and that I had my choice of men, as scarce as they
said they were, which, by the way, confirms what I was saying before.
This being my case, I, who had a subtle game to play, had nothing now
to do but to single out from them all the properest man that might be
for my purpose; that is to say, the man who was most likely to depend
upon the hearsay of a fortune, and not inquire too far into the
particulars; and unless I did this I did nothing, for my case would not
bear much inquiry.

I picked out my man without much difficulty, by the judgment I made of
his way of courting me. I had let him run on with his protestations and
oaths that he loved me above all the world; that if I would make him
happy, that was enough; all which I knew was upon supposition, nay, it
was upon a full satisfaction, that I was very rich, though I never told
him a word of it myself.

This was my man; but I was to try him to the bottom, and indeed in that
consisted my safety; for if he baulked, I knew I was undone, as surely
as he was undone if he took me; and if I did not make some scruple
about his fortune, it was the way to lead him to raise some about mine;
and first, therefore, I pretended on all occasions to doubt his
sincerity, and told him, perhaps he only courted me for my fortune. He
stopped my mouth in that part with the thunder of his protestations, as
above, but still I pretended to doubt.

One morning he pulls off his diamond ring, and writes upon the glass of
the sash in my chamber this line—

“You I love, and you alone.”


I read it, and asked him to lend me his ring, with which I wrote under
it, thus—

“And so in love says every one.”


He takes his ring again, and writes another line thus—

“Virtue alone is an estate.”


I borrowed it again, and I wrote under it—

“But money’s virtue, gold is fate.”


He coloured as red as fire to see me turn so quick upon him, and in a
kind of a rage told me he would conquer me, and writes again thus—

“I scorn your gold, and yet I love.”


I ventured all upon the last cast of poetry, as you’ll see, for I wrote
boldly under his last—

“I’m poor: let’s see how kind you’ll prove.”


This was a sad truth to me; whether he believed me or no, I could not
tell; I supposed then that he did not. However, he flew to me, took me
in his arms, and, kissing me very eagerly, and with the greatest
passion imaginable, he held me fast till he called for a pen and ink,
and then told me he could not wait the tedious writing on the glass,
but, pulling out a piece of paper, he began and wrote again—

“Be mine, with all your poverty.”


I took his pen, and followed him immediately, thus—

“Yet secretly you hope I lie.”


He told me that was unkind, because it was not just, and that I put him
upon contradicting me, which did not consist with good manners, any
more than with his affection; and therefore, since I had insensibly
drawn him into this poetical scribble, he begged I would not oblige him
to break it off; so he writes again—

“Let love alone be our debate.”


I wrote again—

“She loves enough that does not hate.”



This he took for a favour, and so laid down the cudgels, that is to
say, the pen; I say, he took if for a favour, and a mighty one it was,
if he had known all. However, he took it as I meant it, that is, to let
him think I was inclined to go on with him, as indeed I had all the
reason in the world to do, for he was the best-humoured, merry sort of
a fellow that I ever met with, and I often reflected on myself how
doubly criminal it was to deceive such a man; but that necessity, which
pressed me to a settlement suitable to my condition, was my authority
for it; and certainly his affection to me, and the goodness of his
temper, however they might argue against using him ill, yet they
strongly argued to me that he would better take the disappointment than
some fiery-tempered wretch, who might have nothing to recommend him but
those passions which would serve only to make a woman miserable all her
days.

Besides, though I jested with him (as he supposed it) so often about my
poverty, yet, when he found it to be true, he had foreclosed all manner
of objection, seeing, whether he was in jest or in earnest, he had
declared he took me without any regard to my portion, and, whether I
was in jest or in earnest, I had declared myself to be very poor; so
that, in a word, I had him fast both ways; and though he might say
afterwards he was cheated, yet he could never say that I had cheated
him.

He pursued me close after this, and as I saw there was no need to fear
losing him, I played the indifferent part with him longer than prudence
might otherwise have dictated to me. But I considered how much this
caution and indifference would give me the advantage over him, when I
should come to be under the necessity of owning my own circumstances to
him; and I managed it the more warily, because I found he inferred from
thence, as indeed he ought to do, that I either had the more money or
the more judgment, and would not venture at all.

I took the freedom one day, after we had talked pretty close to the
subject, to tell him that it was true I had received the compliment of
a lover from him, namely, that he would take me without inquiring into
my fortune, and I would make him a suitable return in this, viz. that I
would make as little inquiry into his as consisted with reason, but I
hoped he would allow me to ask a few questions, which he would answer
or not as he thought fit; and that I would not be offended if he did
not answer me at all; one of these questions related to our manner of
living, and the place where, because I had heard he had a great
plantation in Virginia, and that he had talked of going to live there,
and I told him I did not care to be transported.

He began from this discourse to let me voluntarily into all his
affairs, and to tell me in a frank, open way all his circumstances, by
which I found he was very well to pass in the world; but that great
part of his estate consisted of three plantations, which he had in
Virginia, which brought him in a very good income, generally speaking,
to the tune of £300, a year, but that if he was to live upon them,
would bring him in four times as much. “Very well,” thought I; “you
shall carry me thither as soon as you please, though I won’t tell you
so beforehand.”

I jested with him extremely about the figure he would make in Virginia;
but I found he would do anything I desired, though he did not seem glad
to have me undervalue his plantations, so I turned my tale. I told him
I had good reason not to go there to live, because if his plantations
were worth so much there, I had not a fortune suitable to a gentleman
of £1200 a year, as he said his estate would be.

He replied generously, he did not ask what my fortune was; he had told
me from the beginning he would not, and he would be as good as his
word; but whatever it was, he assured me he would never desire me to go
to Virginia with him, or go thither himself without me, unless I was
perfectly willing, and made it my choice.

All this, you may be sure, was as I wished, and indeed nothing could
have happened more perfectly agreeable. I carried it on as far as this
with a sort of indifferency that he often wondered at, more than at
first, but which was the only support of his courtship; and I mention
it the rather to intimate again to the ladies that nothing but want of
courage for such an indifferency makes our sex so cheap, and prepares
them to be ill-used as they are; would they venture the loss of a
pretending fop now and then, who carries it high upon the point of his
own merit, they would certainly be less slighted, and courted more. Had
I discovered really and truly what my great fortune was, and that in
all I had not full £500 when he expected £1500, yet I had hooked him so
fast, and played him so long, that I was satisfied he would have had me
in my worst circumstances; and indeed it was less a surprise to him
when he learned the truth than it would have been, because having not
the least blame to lay on me, who had carried it with an air of
indifference to the last, he would not say one word, except that indeed
he thought it had been more, but that if it had been less he did not
repent his bargain; only that he should not be able to maintain me so
well as he intended.

In short, we were married, and very happily married on my side, I
assure you, as to the man; for he was the best-humoured man that every
woman had, but his circumstances were not so good as I imagined, as, on
the other hand, he had not bettered himself by marrying so much as he
expected.

When we were married, I was shrewdly put to it to bring him that little
stock I had, and to let him see it was no more; but there was a
necessity for it, so I took my opportunity one day when we were alone,
to enter into a short dialogue with him about it. “My dear,” said I,
“we have been married a fortnight; is it not time to let you know
whether you have got a wife with something or with nothing?” “Your own
time for that, my dear,” says he; “I am satisfied that I have got the
wife I love; I have not troubled you much,” says he, “with my inquiry
after it.”

“That’s true,” says I, “but I have a great difficulty upon me about it,
which I scarce know how to manage.”

“What’s that, my dear?” says he.

“Why,” says I, “’tis a little hard upon me, and ’tis harder upon you. I
am told that Captain ——” (meaning my friend’s husband) “has told you I
had a great deal more money than I ever pretended to have, and I am
sure I never employed him to do so.”

“Well,” says he, “Captain —— may have told me so, but what then? If you
have not so much, that may lie at his door, but you never told me what
you had, so I have no reason to blame you if you have nothing at all.”

“That’s is so just,” said I, “and so generous, that it makes my having
but a little a double affliction to me.”

“The less you have, my dear,” says he, “the worse for us both; but I
hope your affliction you speak of is not caused for fear I should be
unkind to you, for want of a portion. No, no, if you have nothing, tell
me plainly, and at once; I may perhaps tell the captain he has cheated
me, but I can never say you have cheated me, for did you not give it
under your hand that you were poor? and so I ought to expect you to
be.”

“Well,” said I, “my dear, I am glad I have not been concerned in
deceiving you before marriage. If I deceive you since, ’tis ne’er the
worse; that I am poor is too true, but not so poor as to have nothing
neither”; so I pulled out some bank bills, and gave him about £160.
“There’s something, my dear,” said I, “and not quite all neither.”

I had brought him so near to expecting nothing, by what I had said
before, that the money, though the sum was small in itself, was doubly
welcome to him; he owned it was more than he looked for, and that he
did not question by my discourse to him, but that my fine clothes, gold
watch, and a diamond ring or two, had been all my fortune.

I let him please himself with that £160 two or three days, and then,
having been abroad that day, and as if I had been to fetch it, I
brought him £100 more home in gold, and told him there was a little
more portion for him; and, in short, in about a week more I brought him
£180 more, and about £60 in linen, which I made him believe I had been
obliged to take with the £100 which I gave him in gold, as a
composition for a debt of £600, being little more than five shillings
in the pound, and overvalued too.

“And now, my dear,” says I to him, “I am very sorry to tell you, that
there is all, and that I have given you my whole fortune.” I added,
that if the person who had my £600 had not abused me, I had been worth
£1000 to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful to him, and
reserved nothing to myself, but if it had been more he should have had
it.

He was so obliged by the manner, and so pleased with the sum, for he
had been in a terrible fright lest it had been nothing at all, that he
accepted it very thankfully. And thus I got over the fraud of passing
for a fortune without money, and cheating a man into marrying me on
pretence of a fortune; which, by the way, I take to be one of the most
dangerous steps a woman can take, and in which she runs the most hazard
of being ill-used afterwards.

My husband, to give him his due, was a man of infinite good nature, but
he was no fool; and finding his income not suited to the manner of
living which he had intended, if I had brought him what he expected,
and being under a disappointment in his return of his plantations in
Virginia, he discovered many times his inclination of going over to
Virginia, to live upon his own; and often would be magnifying the way
of living there, how cheap, how plentiful, how pleasant, and the like.

I began presently to understand this meaning, and I took him up very
plainly one morning, and told him that I did so; that I found his
estate turned to no account at this distance, compared to what it would
do if he lived upon the spot, and that I found he had a mind to go and
live there; and I added, that I was sensible he had been disappointed
in a wife, and that finding his expectations not answered that way, I
could do no less, to make him amends, than tell him that I was very
willing to go over to Virginia with him and live there.

He said a thousand kind things to me upon the subject of my making such
a proposal to him. He told me, that however he was disappointed in his
expectations of a fortune, he was not disappointed in a wife, and that
I was all to him that a wife could be, and he was more than satisfied
on the whole when the particulars were put together, but that this
offer was so kind, that it was more than he could express.

To bring the story short, we agreed to go. He told me that he had a
very good house there, that it was well furnished, that his mother was
alive and lived in it, and one sister, which was all the relations he
had; that as soon as he came there, his mother would remove to another
house, which was her own for life, and his after her decease; so that I
should have all the house to myself; and I found all this to be exactly
as he had said.

To make this part of the story short, we put on board the ship which we
went in, a large quantity of good furniture for our house, with stores
of linen and other necessaries, and a good cargo for sale, and away we
went.

To give an account of the manner of our voyage, which was long and full
of dangers, is out of my way; I kept no journal, neither did my
husband. All that I can say is, that after a terrible passage, frighted
twice with dreadful storms, and once with what was still more terrible,
I mean a pirate who came on board and took away almost all our
provisions; and which would have been beyond all to me, they had once
taken my husband to go along with them, but by entreaties were
prevailed with to leave him;—I say, after all these terrible things, we
arrived in York River in Virginia, and coming to our plantation, we
were received with all the demonstrations of tenderness and affection,
by my husband’s mother, that were possible to be expressed.

We lived here all together, my mother-in-law, at my entreaty,
continuing in the house, for she was too kind a mother to be parted
with; my husband likewise continued the same as at first, and I thought
myself the happiest creature alive, when an odd and surprising event
put an end to all that felicity in a moment, and rendered my condition
the most uncomfortable, if not the most miserable, in the world.

My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman—I may call her
old woman, for her son was above thirty; I say she was very pleasant,
good company, and used to entertain me, in particular, with abundance
of stories to divert me, as well of the country we were in as of the
people.

Among the rest, she often told me how the greatest part of the
inhabitants of the colony came thither in very indifferent
circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two
sorts; either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships to
be sold as servants. “Such as we call them, my dear,” says she, “but
they are more properly called slaves.” Or, secondly, such as are
transported from Newgate and other prisons, after having been found
guilty of felony and other crimes punishable with death.

“When they come here,” says she, “we make no difference; the planters
buy them, and they work together in the field till their time is out.
When ’tis expired,” said she, “they have encouragement given them to
plant for themselves; for they have a certain number of acres of land
allotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure the
land, and then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; and
as the tradesmen and merchants will trust them with tools and clothes
and other necessaries, upon the credit of their crop before it is
grown, so they again plant every year a little more than the year
before, and so buy whatever they want with the crop that is before
them.

“Hence, child,” says she, “man a Newgate-bird becomes a great man, and
we have,” continued she, “several justices of the peace, officers of
the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have
been burnt in the hand.”

She was going on with that part of the story, when her own part in it
interrupted her, and with a great deal of good-humoured confidence she
told me she was one of the second sort of inhabitants herself; that she
came away openly, having ventured too far in a particular case, so that
she was become a criminal. “And here’s the mark of it, child,” says
she; and, pulling off her glove, “look ye here,” says she, turning up
the palm of her hand, and showed me a very fine white arm and hand, but
branded in the inside of the hand, as in such cases it must be.

This story was very moving to me, but my mother, smiling, said, “You
need not think a thing strange, daughter, for as I told you, some of
the best men in this country are burnt in the hand, and they are not
ashamed to own it. There’s Major ——,” says she, “he was an eminent
pickpocket; there’s Justice Ba——r, was a shoplifter, and both of them
were burnt in the hand; and I could name you several such as they are.”

We had frequent discourses of this kind, and abundance of instances she
gave me of the like. After some time, as she was telling some stories
of one that was transported but a few weeks ago, I began in an intimate
kind of way to ask her to tell me something of her own story, which she
did with the utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen into
very ill company in London in her young days, occasioned by her mother
sending her frequently to carry victuals and other relief to a
kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, and who lay in a
miserable starving condition, was afterwards condemned to be hanged,
but having got respite by pleading her belly, dies afterwards in the
prison.

Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked practices
in that dreadful place, and how it ruined more young people than all
the town besides. “And child,” says my mother, “perhaps you may know
little of it, or, it may be, have heard nothing about it; but depend
upon it,” says she, “we all know here that there are more thieves and
rogues made by that one prison of Newgate than by all the clubs and
societies of villains in the nation; ’tis that cursed place,” says my
mother, “that half peopled this colony.”

Here she went on with her own story so long, and in so particular a
manner, that I began to be very uneasy; but coming to one particular
that required telling her name, I thought I should have sunk down in
the place. She perceived I was out of order, and asked me if I was not
well, and what ailed me. I told her I was so affected with the
melancholy story she had told, and the terrible things she had gone
through, that it had overcome me, and I begged of her to talk no more
of it. “Why, my dear,” says she very kindly, “what need these things
trouble you? These passages were long before your time, and they give
me no trouble at all now; nay, I look back on them with a particular
satisfaction, as they have been a means to bring me to this place.”
Then she went on to tell me how she very luckily fell into a good
family, where, behaving herself well, and her mistress dying, her
master married her, by whom she had my husband and his sister, and that
by her diligence and good management after her husband’s death, she had
improved the plantations to such a degree as they then were, so that
most of the estate was of her getting, not her husband’s, for she had
been a widow upwards of sixteen years.

I heard this part of the story with very little attention, because I
wanted much to retire and give vent to my passions, which I did soon
after; and let any one judge what must be the anguish of my mind, when
I came to reflect that this was certainly no more or less than my own
mother, and I had now had two children, and was big with another by my
own brother, and lay with him still every night.

I was now the most unhappy of all women in the world. Oh! had the story
never been told me, all had been well; it had been no crime to have
lain with my husband, since as to his being my relation I had known
nothing of it.

I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually waking; to
reveal it, which would have been some ease to me, I could not find
would be to any purpose, and yet to conceal it would be next to
impossible; nay, I did not doubt but I should talk of it in my sleep,
and tell my husband of it whether I would or no. If I discovered it,
the least thing I could expect was to lose my husband, for he was too
nice and too honest a man to have continued my husband after he had
known I had been his sister; so that I was perplexed to the last
degree.

I leave it to any man to judge what difficulties presented to my view.
I was away from my native country, at a distance prodigious, and the
return to me unpassable. I lived very well, but in a circumstance
insufferable in itself. If I had discovered myself to my mother, it
might be difficult to convince her of the particulars, and I had no way
to prove them. On the other hand, if she had questioned or doubted me,
I had been undone, for the bare suggestion would have immediately
separated me from my husband, without gaining my mother or him, who
would have been neither a husband nor a brother; so that between the
surprise on one hand, and the uncertainty on the other, I had been sure
to be undone.

In the meantime, as I was but too sure of the fact, I lived therefore
in open avowed incest and whoredom, and all under the appearance of an
honest wife; and though I was not much touched with the crime of it,
yet the action had something in it shocking to nature, and made my
husband, as he thought himself, even nauseous to me.

However, upon the most sedate consideration, I resolved that it was
absolutely necessary to conceal it all and not make the least discovery
of it either to mother or husband; and thus I lived with the greatest
pressure imaginable for three years more, but had no more children.

During this time my mother used to be frequently telling me old stories
of her former adventures, which, however, were no ways pleasant to me;
for by it, though she did not tell it me in plain terms, yet I could
easily understand, joined with what I had heard myself, of my first
tutors, that in her younger days she had been both whore and thief; but
I verily believed she had lived to repent sincerely of both, and that
she was then a very pious, sober, and religious woman.

Well, let her life have been what it would then, it was certain that my
life was very uneasy to me; for I lived, as I have said, but in the
worst sort of whoredom, and as I could expect no good of it, so really
no good issue came of it, and all my seeming prosperity wore off, and
ended in misery and destruction. It was some time, indeed, before it
came to this, for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything
went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband
grew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind, and I was as
impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage was unreasonable and
unjust. These things proceeded so far, that we came at last to be in
such ill terms with one another, that I claimed a promise of him, which
he entered willingly into with me when I consented to come from England
with him, viz. that if I found the country not to agree with me, or
that I did not like to live there, I should come away to England again
when I pleased, giving him a year’s warning to settle his affairs.

I say, I now claimed this promise of him, and I must confess I did it
not in the most obliging terms that could be in the world neither; but
I insisted that he treated me ill, that I was remote from my friends,
and could do myself no justice, and that he was jealous without cause,
my conversation having been unblamable, and he having no pretense for
it, and that to remove to England would take away all occasion from
him.

I insisted so peremptorily upon it, that he could not avoid coming to a
point, either to keep his word with me or to break it; and this,
notwithstanding he used all the skill he was master of, and employed
his mother and other agents to prevail with me to alter my resolutions;
indeed, the bottom of the thing lay at my heart, and that made all his
endeavours fruitless, for my heart was alienated from him as a husband.
I loathed the thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand
pretenses of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing
nothing more than to be with child by him, which to be sure would have
prevented, or at least delayed, my going over to England.

However, at last I put him so out of humour, that he took up a rash and
fatal resolution; in short, I should not go to England; and though he
had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable thing for me to desire it;
that it would be ruinous to his affairs, would unhinge his whole
family, and be next to an undoing him in the world; that therefore I
ought not to desire it of him, and that no wife in the world that
valued her family and her husband’s prosperity would insist upon such a
thing.

This plunged me again, for when I considered the thing calmly, and took
my husband as he really was, a diligent, careful man in the main work
of laying up an estate for his children, and that he knew nothing of
the dreadful circumstances that he was in, I could not but confess to
myself that my proposal was very unreasonable, and what no wife that
had the good of her family at heart would have desired.

But my discontents were of another nature; I looked upon him no longer
as a husband, but as a near relation, the son of my own mother, and I
resolved somehow or other to be clear of him, but which way I did not
know, nor did it seem possible.

It is said by the ill-natured world, of our sex, that if we are set on
a thing, it is impossible to turn us from our resolutions; in short, I
never ceased poring upon the means to bring to pass my voyage, and came
that length with my husband at last, as to propose going without him.
This provoked him to the last degree, and he called me not only an
unkind wife, but an unnatural mother, and asked me how I could
entertain such a thought without horror, as that of leaving my two
children (for one was dead) without a mother, and to be brought up by
strangers, and never to see them more. It was true, had things been
right, I should not have done it, but now it was my real desire never
to see them, or him either, any more; and as to the charge of
unnatural, I could easily answer it to myself, while I knew that the
whole relation was unnatural in the highest degree in the world.

However, it was plain there was no bringing my husband to anything; he
would neither go with me nor let me go without him, and it was quite
out of my power to stir without his consent, as any one that knows the
constitution of the country I was in, knows very well.

We had many family quarrels about it, and they began in time to grow up
to a dangerous height; for as I was quite estranged from my husband (as
he was called) in affection, so I took no heed to my words, but
sometimes gave him language that was provoking; and, in short, strove
all I could to bring him to a parting with me, which was what above all
things in the world I desired most.

He took my carriage very ill, and indeed he might well do so, for at
last I refused to bed with him, and carrying on the breach upon all
occasions to extremity, he told me once he thought I was mad, and if I
did not alter my conduct, he would put me under cure; that is to say,
into a madhouse. I told him he should find I was far enough from mad,
and that it was not in his power, or any other villain’s, to murder me.
I confess at the same time I was heartily frighted at his thoughts of
putting me into a madhouse, which would at once have destroyed all the
possibility of breaking the truth out, whatever the occasion might be;
for that then no one would have given credit to a word of it.

This therefore brought me to a resolution, whatever came of it, to lay
open my whole case; but which way to do it, or to whom, was an
inextricable difficulty, and took me many months to resolve. In the
meantime, another quarrel with my husband happened, which came up to
such a mad extreme as almost pushed me on to tell it him all to his
face; but though I kept it in so as not to come to the particulars, I
spoke so much as put him into the utmost confusion, and in the end
brought out the whole story.

He began with a calm expostulation upon my being so resolute to go to
England; I defended it, and one hard word bringing on another, as is
usual in all family strife, he told me I did not treat him as if he was
my husband, or talk of my children as if I was a mother; and, in short,
that I did not deserve to be used as a wife; that he had used all the
fair means possible with me; that he had argued with all the kindness
and calmness that a husband or a Christian ought to do, and that I made
him such a vile return, that I treated him rather like a dog than a
man, and rather like the most contemptible stranger than a husband;
that he was very loth to use violence with me, but that, in short, he
saw a necessity of it now, and that for the future he should be obliged
to take such measures as should reduce me to my duty.

My blood was now fired to the utmost, though I knew what he had said
was very true, and nothing could appear more provoked. I told him, for
his fair means and his foul, they were equally contemned by me; that
for my going to England, I was resolved on it, come what would; and
that as to treating him not like a husband, and not showing myself a
mother to my children, there might be something more in it than he
understood at present; but, for his further consideration, I thought
fit to tell him thus much, that he neither was my lawful husband, nor
they lawful children, and that I had reason to regard neither of them
more than I did.

I confess I was moved to pity him when I spoke it, for he turned pale
as death, and stood mute as one thunderstruck, and once or twice I
thought he would have fainted; in short, it put him in a fit something
like an apoplex; he trembled, a sweat or dew ran off his face, and yet
he was cold as a clod, so that I was forced to run and fetch something
for him to keep life in him. When he recovered of that, he grew sick
and vomited, and in a little after was put to bed, and the next morning
was, as he had been indeed all night, in a violent fever.

However, it went off again, and he recovered, though but slowly, and
when he came to be a little better, he told me I had given him a mortal
wound with my tongue, and he had only one thing to ask before he
desired an explanation. I interrupted him, and told him I was sorry I
had gone so far, since I saw what disorder it put him into, but I
desired him not to talk to me of explanations, for that would but make
things worse.

This heightened his impatience, and, indeed, perplexed him beyond all
bearing; for now he began to suspect that there was some mystery yet
unfolded, but could not make the least guess at the real particulars of
it; all that ran in his brain was, that I had another husband alive,
which I could not say in fact might not be true, but I assured him,
however, there was not the least of that in it; and indeed, as to my
other husband, he was effectually dead in law to me, and had told me I
should look on him as such, so I had not the least uneasiness on that
score.

But now I found the thing too far gone to conceal it much longer, and
my husband himself gave me an opportunity to ease myself of the secret,
much to my satisfaction. He had laboured with me three or four weeks,
but to no purpose, only to tell him whether I had spoken these words
only as the effect of my passion, to put him in a passion, or whether
there was anything of truth in the bottom of them. But I continued
inflexible, and would explain nothing, unless he would first consent to
my going to England, which he would never do, he said, while he lived;
on the other hand, I said it was in my power to make him willing when I
pleased—nay, to make him entreat me to go; and this increased his
curiosity, and made him importunate to the highest degree, but it was
all to no purpose.

At length he tells all this story to his mother, and sets her upon me
to get the main secret out of me, and she used her utmost skill with me
indeed; but I put her to a full stop at once by telling her that the
reason and mystery of the whole matter lay in herself, and that it was
my respect to her that had made me conceal it; and that, in short, I
could go no farther, and therefore conjured her not to insist upon it.

She was struck dumb at this suggestion, and could not tell what to say
or to think; but, laying aside the supposition as a policy of mine,
continued her importunity on account of her son, and, if possible, to
make up the breach between us two. As to that, I told her that it was
indeed a good design in her, but that it was impossible to be done; and
that if I should reveal to her the truth of what she desired, she would
grant it to be impossible, and cease to desire it. At last I seemed to
be prevailed on by her importunity, and told her I dared trust her with
a secret of the greatest importance, and she would soon see that this
was so, and that I would consent to lodge it in her breast, if she
would engage solemnly not to acquaint her son with it without my
consent.

She was long in promising this part, but rather than not come at the
main secret, she agreed to that too, and after a great many other
preliminaries, I began, and told her the whole story. First I told her
how much she was concerned in all the unhappy breach which had happened
between her son and me, by telling me her own story and her London
name; and that the surprise she saw I was in was upon that occasion.
Then I told her my own story, and my name, and assured her, by such
other tokens as she could not deny, that I was no other, nor more or
less, than her own child, her daughter, born of her body in Newgate;
the same that had saved her from the gallows by being in her belly, and
the same that she left in such-and-such hands when she was transported.

It is impossible to express the astonishment she was in; she was not
inclined to believe the story, or to remember the particulars, for she
immediately foresaw the confusion that must follow in the family upon
it. But everything concurred so exactly with the stories she had told
me of herself, and which, if she had not told me, she would perhaps
have been content to have denied, that she had stopped her own mouth,
and she had nothing to do but to take me about the neck and kiss me,
and cry most vehemently over me, without speaking one word for a long
time together. At last she broke out: “Unhappy child!” says she, “what
miserable chance could bring thee hither? and in the arms of my own
son, too! Dreadful girl,” says she, “why, we are all undone! Married to
thy own brother! Three children, and two alive, all of the same flesh
and blood! My son and my daughter lying together as husband and wife!
All confusion and distraction for ever! Miserable family! what will
become of us? What is to be said? What is to be done?” And thus she ran
on for a great while; nor had I any power to speak, or if I had, did I
know what to say, for every word wounded me to the soul. With this kind
of amazement on our thoughts we parted for the first time, though my
mother was more surprised than I was, because it was more news to her
than to me. However, she promised again to me at parting, that she
would say nothing of it to her son, till we had talked of it again.

It was not long, you may be sure, before we had a second conference
upon the same subject; when, as if she had been willing to forget the
story she had told me of herself, or to suppose that I had forgot some
of the particulars, she began to tell them with alterations and
omissions; but I refreshed her memory and set her to rights in many
things which I supposed she had forgot, and then came in so opportunely
with the whole history, that it was impossible for her to go from it;
and then she fell into her rhapsodies again, and exclamations at the
severity of her misfortunes. When these things were a little over with
her, we fell into a close debate about what should be first done before
we gave an account of the matter to my husband. But to what purpose
could be all our consultations? We could neither of us see our way
through it, nor see how it could be safe to open such a scene to him.
It was impossible to make any judgment, or give any guess at what
temper he would receive it in, or what measures he would take upon it;
and if he should have so little government of himself as to make it
public, we easily foresaw that it would be the ruin of the whole
family, and expose my mother and me to the last degree; and if at last
he should take the advantage the law would give him, he might put me
away with disdain and leave me to sue for the little portion that I
had, and perhaps waste it all in the suit, and then be a beggar; the
children would be ruined too, having no legal claim to any of his
effects; and thus I should see him, perhaps, in the arms of another
wife in a few months, and be myself the most miserable creature alive.

My mother was as sensible of this as I; and, upon the whole, we knew
not what to do. After some time we came to more sober resolutions, but
then it was with this misfortune too, that my mother’s opinion and mine
were quite different from one another, and indeed inconsistent with one
another; for my mother’s opinion was, that I should bury the whole
thing entirely, and continue to live with him as my husband till some
other event should make the discovery of it more convenient; and that
in the meantime she would endeavour to reconcile us together again, and
restore our mutual comfort and family peace; that we might lie as we
used to do together, and so let the whole matter remain a secret as
close as death. “For, child,” says she, “we are both undone if it comes
out.”

To encourage me to this, she promised to make me easy in my
circumstances, as far as she was able, and to leave me what she could
at her death, secured for me separately from my husband; so that if it
should come out afterwards, I should not be left destitute, but be able
to stand on my own feet and procure justice from him.

This proposal did not agree at all with my judgment of the thing,
though it was very fair and kind in my mother; but my thoughts ran
quite another way.

As to keeping the thing in our own breasts, and letting it all remain
as it was, I told her it was impossible; and I asked her how she could
think I could bear the thoughts of lying with my own brother. In the
next place, I told her that her being alive was the only support of the
discovery, and that while she owned me for her child, and saw reason to
be satisfied that I was so, nobody else would doubt it; but that if she
should die before the discovery, I should be taken for an impudent
creature that had forged such a thing to go away from my husband, or
should be counted crazed and distracted. Then I told her how he had
threatened already to put me into a madhouse, and what concern I had
been in about it, and how that was the thing that drove me to the
necessity of discovering it to her as I had done.

From all which I told her, that I had, on the most serious reflections
I was able to make in the case, come to this resolution, which I hoped
she would like, as a medium between both, viz. that she should use her
endeavours with her son to give me leave to go to England, as I had
desired, and to furnish me with a sufficient sum of money, either in
goods along with me, or in bills for my support there, all along
suggesting that he might one time or other think it proper to come over
to me.

That when I was gone, she should then, in cold blood, and after first
obliging him in the solemnest manner possible to secrecy, discover the
case to him, doing it gradually, and as her own discretion should guide
her, so that he might not be surprised with it, and fly out into any
passions and excesses on my account, or on hers; and that she should
concern herself to prevent his slighting the children, or marrying
again, unless he had a certain account of my being dead.

This was my scheme, and my reasons were good; I was really alienated
from him in the consequences of these things; indeed, I mortally hated
him as a husband, and it was impossible to remove that riveted aversion
I had to him. At the same time, it being an unlawful, incestuous
living, added to that aversion, and though I had no great concern about
it in point of conscience, yet everything added to make cohabiting with
him the most nauseous thing to me in the world; and I think verily it
was come to such a height, that I could almost as willingly have
embraced a dog as have let him offer anything of that kind to me, for
which reason I could not bear the thoughts of coming between the sheets
with him. I cannot say that I was right in point of policy in carrying
it such a length, while at the same time I did not resolve to discover
the thing to him; but I am giving an account of what was, not of what
ought or ought not to be.

In their directly opposite opinion to one another my mother and I
continued a long time, and it was impossible to reconcile our
judgments; many disputes we had about it, but we

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