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The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe

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Section 1 of 33
The Fortunes & 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 to 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 leased 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 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 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.






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 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.'
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