Moll Flanders

“And now, my dear,” says I to him, “I am very sorry to tell you, 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 a thousand pound to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful, 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 cheated a man into marrying me on pretence of it, 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 hazards 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 his 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; 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 amends, than tell him that I was very willing to go 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 though 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, 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 well furnished, that his mother lived in it and one sister, which was all the relations he had; that as soon as he came there they 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 it all exactly as he said.

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, 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 tenderness and affection (by my husband’s mother) that could 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 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 in the world.

My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman, I may call her so, 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 as 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 that Colony came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two sorts: either (I) such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants; or, (2) such as are transported after having been found guilty of 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 merchants will trust them with tools and 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, “many 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 shewed 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 such a thing strange, daughter, for some of the best men in the 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, occassioned by her mother sending her frequently to carry victuals to a kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, in a miserable starving condition, who was afterwards condemned to die, but having got respite by pleading her belly perished afterwards in the prison.

Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked practices in that dreadful place. “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 peoples 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 that it had overcome me, and I begged 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 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 of 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; and let anyone 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 that 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. O! had the story never been told me, all had been well; it had been no crime to have lain with my husband if I had known nothing of it.

I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually waking; to reveal it 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 in my sleep and tell my husband of it whether I would or no; if I discovered it, the least thing I could expect to lose was 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 unsufferable 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, 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 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 or more.

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 understand, joined with what I heard myself of my first tutors, that in her younger days she had been whore and thief; but I verily believe 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 everything went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband grew strangely altered, froward, jealous, and unkind, and I was as impatient of bearing his carriage as the carriage was unreasonable and unjust. These things proceeded so far, and 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, namely, that if 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 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 pretence 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. I loathed the thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand pretences of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing nothing more than to be with child again, 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, that in short I should not go to England; that though he had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable thing, 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, 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.

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 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 myself, while I knew that the whole relation was unnatural in the highest degree.

However, there was no bringing my husband to anything; he would neither go with me or let me go without him, and it was out of my power to stir without his consent, as anyone that is acquainted with the constitution of that country knows very well.

We had many family quarrels about it, and they began to grow up to a dangerous height; for as I was quite estranged from him in affection, so I took no heed to my words, but sometimes gave him language that was provoking: in short, I strove all I could to bring him to a parting with me, which was what above all things 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 mad-house. 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 mad-house, which would at once have destroyed all the possibility of bringing the truth out; 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; when another quarrel with my husband happened, which came up to such an 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 loath to use violence with me, and 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, and nothing could appear more provoked; I told him, for his fair means and his foul, they were equally condemned 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 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 thunder-struck, 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 fetch something 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 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 it; all that run in his brain was that I had another husband alive, but I assured him there was not the least of that in it; indeed as to my other husband, he was effectually dead 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 those words only 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.

At length he tells all this story to his mother, and sets her upon me to get it out of me, and she used her utmost skill indeed; but I put her to a full stop at once by telling her that the mystery of the whole matter lay in herself; that it was my respect to her 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 dare 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 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 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 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, miserable family! What will become of us? What is to be said? What is to be done?” And thus she run on 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 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 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 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, or 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 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; 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.