Moll Flanders

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I must repeat it again, that the fate of this poor woman troubled
me exceedingly, and I began to be very pensive, knowing that
I was really the instrument of her disaster; but the preservation
of my own life, which was so evidently in danger, took off all
my tenderness; and seeing that she was not put to death, I was
very easy at her transportation, because she was then out of
the way of doing me any mischief, whatever should happen.

The disaster of this woman was some months before that of
the last-recited story, and was indeed partly occasion of my
governess proposing to dress me up in men's clothes, that I
might go about unobserved, as indeed I did; but I was soon
tired of that disguise, as I have said, for indeed it exposed me
to too many difficulties.

I was now easy as to all fear of witnesses against me, for all
those that had either been concerned with me, or that knew
me by the name of Moll Flanders, were either hanged or
transported; and if I should have had the misfortune to be
taken, I might call myself anything else, as well as Moll Flanders,
and no old sins could be placed into my account; so I began
to run a-tick again with the more freedom, and several
successful adventures I made, though not such as I had made
before.

We had at that time another fire happened not a great way off
from the place where my governess lived, and I made an attempt
there, as before, but as I was not soon enough before the crowd
of people came in, and could not get to the house I aimed at,
instead of a prize, I got a mischief, which had almost put a period
to my life and all my wicked doings together; for the fire being
very furious, and the people in a great fright in removing their
goods, and throwing them out of window, a wench from out
of a window threw a feather-bed just upon me. It is true, the
bed being soft, it broke no bones; but as the weight was great,
and made greater by the fall, it beat me down, and laid me
dead for a while. Nor did the people concern themselves much
to deliver me from it, or to recover me at all; but I lay like one
dead and neglected a good while, till somebody going to
remove the bed out of the way, helped me up. It was indeed
a wonder the people in the house had not thrown other goods
out after it, and which might have fallen upon it, and then I
had been inevitably killed; but I was reserved for further
afflictions.

This accident, however, spoiled my market for that time, and
I came home to my governess very much hurt and bruised,
and frighted to the last degree, and it was a good while before
she could set me upon my feet again.

It was now a merry time of the year, and Bartholomew Fair
was begun. I had never made any walks that way, nor was
the common part of the fair of much advantage to me; but I
took a turn this year into the cloisters, and among the rest I
fell into one of the raffling shops. It was a thing of no great
consequence to me, nor did I expect to make much of it; but
there came a gentleman extremely well dressed and very rich,
and as 'tis frequent to talk to everybody in those shops, he
singled me out, and was very particular with me. First he told
me he would put in for me to raffle, and did so; and some
small matter coming to his lot, he presented it to me (I think
it was a feather muff); then he continued to keep talking to
me with a more than common appearance of respect, but still
very civil, and much like a gentleman.

He held me in talk so long, till at last he drew me out of the
raffling place to the shop-door, and then to a walk in the cloister,
still talking of a thousand things cursorily without anything to
the purpose. At last he told me that, without compliment, he
was charmed with my company, and asked me if I durst trust
myself in a coach with him; he told me he was a man of honour,
and would not offer anything to me unbecoming him as such.
I seemed to decline it a while, but suffered myself to be
importuned a little, and then yielded.

I was at a loss in my thoughts to conclude at first what this
gentleman designed; but I found afterwards he had had some
drink in his head, and that he was not very unwilling to have
some more. He carried me in the coach to the Spring Garden,
at Knightsbridge, where we walked in the gardens, and he
treated me very handsomely; but I found he drank very freely.
He pressed me also to drink, but I decline it.

Hitherto he kept his word with me, and offered me nothing
amiss. We came away in the coach again, and he brought me
into the streets, and by this time it was near ten o'clock at
night, and he stopped the coach at a house where, it seems,
he was acquainted, and where they made no scruple to show
us upstairs into a room with a bed in it. At first I seemed to
be unwilling to go up, but after a few words I yielded to that
too, being willing to see the end of it, and in hope to make
something of it at last. As for the bed, etc., I was not much
concerned about that part.

Here he began to be a little freer with me than he had promised;
and I by little and little yielded to everything, so that, in a word,
he did what he pleased with me; I need say no more. All this
while he drank freely too, and about one in the morning we
went into the coach again. The air and the shaking of the
coach made the drink he had get more up in his head than it
was before, and he grew uneasy in the coach, and was for
acting over again what he had been doing before; but as I
thought my game now secure, I resisted him, and brought him
to be a little still, which had not lasted five minutes but he fell
fast asleep.

I took this opportunity to search him to a nicety. I took a
gold watch, with a silk purse of gold, his fine full-bottom
periwig and silver-fringed gloves, his sword and fine snuff-box,
and gently opening the coach door, stood ready to jump out
while the coach was going on; but the coach stopped in the
narrow street beyond Temple Bar to let another coach pass,
I got softly out, fastened the door again, and gave my gentleman
and the coach the slip both together, and never heard more
of them.

This was an adventure indeed unlooked for, and perfectly
undesigned by me; though I was not so past the merry part
of life, as to forget how to behave, when a fop so blinded by
his appetite should not know an old woman from a young. I
did not indeed look so old as I was by ten or twelve years; yet
I was not a young wench of seventeen, and it was easy enough
to be distinguished. There is nothing so absurd, so surfeiting,
so ridiculous, as a man heated by wine in his head, and wicked
gust in his inclination together; he is in the possession of two
devils at once, and can no more govern himself by his reason
than a mill can grind without water; his vice tramples upon all
that was in him that had any good in it, if any such thing there
was; nay, his very sense is blinded by its own rage, and he acts
absurdities even in his views; such a drinking more, when he
is drunk already; picking up a common woman, without regard
to what she is or who she is, whether sound or rotten, clean
or unclean, whether ugly or handsome, whether old or young,
and so blinded as not really to distinguish. Such a man is worse
than a lunatic; prompted by his vicious, corrupted head, he no
more knows what he is doing than this wretch of mine knew
when I picked his pocket of his watch and his purse of gold.

These are the men of whom Solomon says, 'They go like an
ox to the slaughter, till a dart strikes through their liver'; an
admirable description, by the way, of the foul disease, which
is a poisonous deadly contagion mingling with the blood,
whose centre or foundation is in the liver; from whence, by
the swift circulation of the whole mass, that dreadful nauseous
plague strikes immediately through his liver, and his spirits are
infected, his vitals stabbed through as with a dart.

It is true this poor unguarded wretch was in no danger from
me, though I was greatly apprehensive at first of what danger
I might be in from him; but he was really to be pitied in one
respect, that he seemed to be a good sort of man in himself;
a gentleman that had no harm in his design; a man of sense,
and of a fine behaviour, a comely handsome person, a sober
solid countenance, a charming beautiful face, and everything
that could be agreeable; only had unhappily had some drink
the night before, had not been in bed, as he told me when we
were together; was hot, and his blood fired with wine, and in
that condition his reason, as it were asleep, had given him up.

As for me, my business was his money, and what I could make
of him; and after that, if I could have found out any way to
have done it, I would have sent him safe home to his house
and to his family, for 'twas ten to one but he had an honest,
virtuous wife and innocent children, that were anxious for his
safety, and would have been glad to have gotten him home,
and have taken care of him till he was restored to himself.
And then with what shame and regret would he look back
upon himself! how would he reproach himself with associating
himself with a whore! picked up in the worst of all holes, the
cloister, among the dirt and filth of all the town! how would
he be trembling for fear he had got the pox, for fear a dart had
struck through his liver, and hate himself every time he looked
back upon the madness and brutality of his debauch! how
would he, if he had any principles of honour, as I verily believe
he had--I say, how would he abhor the thought of giving any
ill distemper, if he had it, as for aught he knew he might, to
his modest and virtuous wife, and thereby sowing the contagion
in the life-blood of his prosterity.

Would such gentlemen but consider the contemptible thoughts
which the very women they are concerned with, in such cases
as these, have of them, it would be a surfeit to them. As I
said above, they value not the pleasure, they are raised by no
inclination to the man, the passive jade thinks of no pleasure
but the money; and when he is, as it were, drunk in the
ecstasies of his wicked pleasure, her hands are in his pockets
searching for what she can find there, and of which he can no
more be sensible in the moment of his folly that he can forethink
of it when he goes about it.

I knew a woman that was so dexterous with a fellow, who
indeed deserved no better usage, that while he was busy with
her another way, conveyed his purse with twenty guineas in
it out of his fob-pocket, where he had put it for fear of her,
and put another purse with gilded counters in it into the room
of it. After he had done, he says to her, 'Now han't you picked
my pocket?' She jested with him, and told him she supposed
he had not much to lose; he put his hand to his fob, and with
his fingers felt that his purse was there, which fully satisfied
him, and so she brought off his money. And this was a trade
with her; she kept a sham gold watch, that is, a watch of silver
gilt, and a purse of counters in her pocket to be ready on all
such occasions, and I doubt not practiced it with success.

I came home with this last booty to my governess, and really
when I told her the story, it so affected her that she was hardly
able to forbear tears, to know how such a gentleman ran a
daily risk of being undone every time a glass of wine got into
his head.

But as to the purchase I got, and how entirely I stripped him,
she told me it please her wonderfully. 'Nay child,' says she,
'the usage may, for aught I know, do more to reform him than
all the sermons that ever he will hear in his life.' And if the
remainder of the story be true, so it did.

I found the next day she was wonderful inquisitive about this
gentleman; the description I had given her of him, his dress,
his person, his face, everything concurred to make her think
of a gentleman whose character she knew, and family too.
She mused a while, and I going still on with the particulars,
she starts up; says she, 'I'll lay #100 I know the gentleman.'

'I am sorry you do,' says I, 'for I would not have him exposed
on any account in the world; he has had injury enough already
by me, and I would not be instrumental to do him any more.'
'No, no,' says she, 'I will do him no injury, I assure you, but
you may let me satisfy my curiosity a little, for if it is he, I
warrant you I find it out.' I was a little startled at that, and
told her, with an apparent concern in my face, that by the same
rule he might find me out, and then I was undone. She returned
warmly, 'Why, do you think I will betray you, child? No, no,'
says she, 'not for all he is worth in the world. I have kept your
counsel in worse things than these; sure you may trust me in
this.' So I said no more at that time.

She laid her scheme another way, and without acquainting me
of it, but she was resolved to find it out if possible. So she
goes to a certain friend of hers who was acquainted in the
family that she guessed at, and told her friend she had some
extraordinary business with such a gentleman (who, by the
way, was no less than a baronet, and of a very good family),
and that she knew not how to come at him without somebody
to introduce her. Her friend promised her very readily to do
it, and accordingly goes to the house to see if the gentleman
was in town.

The next day she come to my governess and tells her that
Sir ---- was at home, but that he had met with a disaster and
was very ill, and there was no speaking with him. 'What
disaster?' says my governess hastily, as if she was surprised
at it. 'Why,' says her friend, 'he had been at Hampstead to
visit a gentleman of his acquaintance, and as he came back
again he was set upon and robbed; and having got a little drink
too, as they suppose, the rogues abused him, and he is very ill.'
'Robbed!' says my governess, 'and what did they take from
him?' 'Why,' says her friend, 'they took his gold watch and
his gold snuff-box, his fine periwig, and what money he had
in his pocket, which was considerable, to be sure, for Sir ----
never goes without a purse of guineas about him.'

'Pshaw!' says my old governess, jeering, 'I warrant you he
has got drunk now and got a whore, and she has picked his
pocket, and so he comes home to his wife and tells her he has
been robbed. That's an old sham; a thousand such tricks are
put upon the poor women every day.'

'Fie!' says her friend, 'I find you don't know Sir ----; why he
is a civil a gentleman, there is not a finer man, nor a soberer,
graver, modester person in the whole city; he abhors such things;
there's nobody that knows him will think such a thing of him.'
'Well, well,' says my governess, 'that's none of my business;
if it was, I warrant I should find there was something of that
kind in it; your modest men in common opinion are sometimes
no better than other people, only they keep a better character,
or, if you please, are the better hypocrites.'

'No, no,' says her friend, 'I can assure you Sir ---- is no
hypocrite, he is really an honest, sober gentleman, and he has
certainly been robbed.' 'Nay,' says my governess, 'it may be
he has; it is no business of mine, I tell you; I only want to
speak with him; my business is of another nature.' 'But,' says
her friend, 'let your business be of what nature it will, you
cannot see him yet, for he is not fit to be seen, for he is very
ill, and bruised very much,' 'Ay,' says my governess, 'nay,
then he has fallen into bad hands, to be sure,' And then she
asked gravely, 'Pray, where is he bruised?' 'Why, in the head,'
says her friend, 'and one of his hands, and his face, for they
used him barbarously.' 'Poor gentleman,' says my governess,
'I must wait, then, till he recovers'; and adds, 'I hope it will
not be long, for I want very much to speak with him.'

Away she comes to me and tells me this story. 'I have found
out your fine gentleman, and a fine gentleman he was,' says
she; 'but, mercy on him, he is in a sad pickle now. I wonder
what the d--l you have done to him; why, you have almost
killed him.' I looked at her with disorder enough. 'I killed
him!' says I; 'you must mistake the person; I am sure I did
nothing to him; he was very well when I left him,' said I, 'only
drunk and fast asleep.' 'I know nothing of that,' says she,
'but he is in a sad pickle now'; and so she told me all that her
friend had said to her. 'Well, then,' says I, 'he fell into bad
hands after I left him,for I am sure I left him safe enough.'

About ten days after, or a little more, my governess goes again
to her friend, to introduce her to this gentleman; she had
inquired other ways in the meantime, and found that he was
about again, if not abroad again, so she got leave to speak
with him.

She was a woman of a admirable address, and wanted nobody
to introduce her; she told her tale much better than I shall be
able to tell it for her, for she was a mistress of her tongue, as
I have said already. She told him that she came, though a
stranger, with a single design of doing him a service and he
should find she had no other end in it; that as she came purely
on so friendly an account, she begged promise from him, that
if he did not accept what she should officiously propose he
would not take it ill that she meddled with what was not her
business. She assured him that as what she had to say was a
secret that belonged to him only, so whether he accepted her
offer or not, it should remain a secret to all the world, unless
he exposed it himself; nor should his refusing her service in it
make her so little show her respect as to do him the least injury,
so that he should be entirely at liberty to act as he thought fit.

He looked very shy at first, and said he knew nothing that
related to him that required much secrecy; that he had never
done any man any wrong, and cared not what anybody might
say of him; that it was no part of his character to be unjust to
anybody, nor could he imagine in what any man could render
him any service; but that if it was so disinterested a service as
she said, he could not take it ill from any one that they should
endeavour to serve him; and so, as it were, left her a liberty
either to tell him or not to tell, as she thought fit.

She found him so perfectly indifferent, that she was almost
afraid to enter into the point with him; but, however, after
some other circumlocutions she told him that by a strange and
unaccountable accident she came to have a particular knowledge
of the late unhappy adventure he had fallen into, and that in such
a manner, that there was nobody in the world but herself and
him that were acquainted with it, no, not the very person that
was with him.

He looked a little angrily at first. 'What adventure?' said he.
'Why,' said she, 'of your being robbed coming from Knightbr----;
Hampstead, sir, I should say,' says she. 'Be not surprised, sir,'
says she, 'that I am able to tell you every step you took that
day from the cloister in Smithfield to the Spring Garden at
Knightsbridge, and thence to the ---- in the Strand, and how
you were left asleep in the coach afterwards. I say, let not
this surprise you, for, sir, I do not come to make a booty of
you, I ask nothing of you, and I assure you the woman that
was with you knows nothing who you are, and never shall;
and yet perhaps I may serve you further still, for I did not come
barely to let you know that I was informed of these things, as
if I wanted a bride to conceal them; assure yourself, sir,' said
she, 'that whatever you think fit to do or say to me, it shall be
all a secret as it is, as much as if I were in my grave.'

He was astonished at her discourse, and said gravely to her,
'Madam, you are a stranger to me, but it is very unfortunate
that you should be let into the secret of the worst action of
my life, and a thing that I am so justly ashamed of, that the
only satisfaction of it to me was, that I thought it was known
only to God any my own conscience.' 'Pray, sir,' says she,
'do not reckon the discovery of it to me to be any part of your
misfortune. It was a thing, I believe, you were surprised into,
and perhaps the woman used some art to prompt you to it;
however, you will never find any just cause,' said she, 'to
repent that I came to hear of it; nor can your own mouth be
more silent in it that I have been, and ever shall be.'

'Well,' says he, 'but let me do some justice to the woman too;
whoever she is, I do assure you she prompted me to nothing,
she rather declined me. It was my own folly and madness that
brought me into it all, ay, and brought her into it too; I must
give her her due so far. As to what she took from me, I could
expect no less from her in the condition I was in, and to this
hour I know not whether she robbed me or the coachman; if
she did it, I forgive her, and I think all gentlemen that do so
should be used in the same manner; but I am more concerned
for some other things that I am for all that she took from me.'

My governess now began to come into the whole matter, and
he opened himself freely to her. First she said to him, in answer
to what he had said about me, 'I am glad, sir, you are so just
to the person that you were with; I assure you she is a
gentlewoman, and no woman of the town; and however you
prevailed with her so far as you did, I am sure 'tis not her
practice. You ran a great venture indeed, sir; but if that be
any part of your care, I am persuaded you may be perfectly
easy, for I dare assure you no man has touched her, before
you, since her husband, and he has been dead now almost
eight years.'

It appeared that this was his grievance, and that he was in a
very great fright about it; however, when my governess said
this to him, he appeared very well pleased, and said, 'Well,
madam, to be plain with you, if I was satisfied of that, I should
not so much value what I lost; for, as to that, the temptation
was great, and perhaps she was poor and wanted it.' 'If she
had not been poor, sir ----,' says my governess, 'I assure you
she would never have yielded to you; and as her poverty first
prevailed with her to let you do as you did, so the same poverty
prevailed with her to pay herself at last, when she saw you
was in such a condition, that if she had not done it, perhaps
the next coachman might have done it.'

'Well,' says he, 'much good may it do her. I say again, all the
gentlemen that do so ought to be used in the same manner,
and then they would be cautious of themselves. I have no
more concern about it, but on the score which you hinted at
before, madam.' Here he entered into some freedoms with
her on the subject of what passed between us, which are not
so proper for a woman to write, and the great terror that was
upon his mind with relation to his wife, for fear he should have
received any injury from me, and should communicate if farther;
and asked her at last if she could not procure him an opportunity
to speak with me. My governess gave him further assurances
of my being a woman clear from any such thing, and that he
was as entirely save in that respect as he was with his own
lady; but as for seeing me, she said it might be of dangerous
consequence; but, however, that she would talk with me, and
let him know my answer, using at the same time some arguments
to persuade him not to desire it, and that it could be of no
service to him, seeing she hoped he had no desire to renew a
correspondence with me, and that on my account it was a kind
of putting my life in his hands.

He told her he had a great desire to see me, that he would
give her any assurances that were in his power, not to take
any advantages of me, and that in the first place he would give
me a general release from all demands of any kind. She insisted
how it might tend to a further divulging the secret, and might
in the end be injurious to him, entreating him not to press for
it; so at length he desisted.

They had some discourse upon the subject of the things he had
lost, and he seemed to be very desirous of his gold watch, and
told her if she could procure that for him, he would willingly
give as much for it as it was worth. She told him she would
endeavour to procure it for him, and leave the valuing it to
himself.

Accordingly the next day she carried the watch, and he gave
her thirty guineas for it, which was more than I should have
been able to make of it, though it seems it cost much more.
He spoke something of his periwig, which it seems cost him
threescore guineas, and his snuff-box, and in a few days more
she carried them too; which obliged him very much, and he
gave her thirty more. The next day I sent him his fine sword
and cane gratis, and demanded nothing of him, but I had no
mind to see him, unless it had been so that he might be satisfied
I knew who he was, which he was not willing to.

Then he entered into a long talk with her of the manner how
she came to know all this matter. She formed a long tale of
that part; how she had it from one that I had told the whole
story to, and that was to help me dispose of the goods; and
this confidante brought the things to her, she being by profession
a pawnbroker; and she hearing of his worship's disaster, guessed
at the thing in general; that having gotten the things into her
hands, she had resolved to come and try as she had done. She
then gave him repeated assurances that it should never go out
of her mouth, and though she knew the woman very well, yet
she had not let her know, meaning me, anything of it; that is
to say, who the person was, which, by the way, was false; but,
however, it was not to his damage, for I never opened my
mouth of it to anybody.

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