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The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe

'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 know 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.'
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