manner. He assured me that I misunderstood him; that he had more manners
as well as more kindness for me, and more justice than to reproach me
with what he had been the aggressor in, and had surprised me into; that
what he spoke referred to my words above, that the woman, if she thought
fit, might entertain a man, as a man did a mistress; and that I seemed
to mention that way of living as justifiable, and setting it as a lawful
thing, and in the place of matrimony.
Well, we strained some compliments upon those points, not worth
repeating; and I added, I supposed when he got to bed to me he thought
himself sure of me; and, indeed, in the ordinary course of things, after
he had lain with me he ought to think so, but that, upon the same foot
of argument which I had discoursed with him upon, it was just the
contrary; and when a woman had been weak enough to yield up the last
point before wedlock, it would be adding one weakness to another to take
the man afterwards, to pin down the shame of it upon herself all the
days of her life, and bind herself to live all her time with the only
man that could upbraid her with it; that in yielding at first, she must
be a fool, but to take the man is to be sure to be called fool; that to
resist a man is to act with courage and vigour, and to cast off the
reproach, which, in the course of things, drops out of knowledge and
dies. The man goes one way and the woman another, as fate and the
circumstances of living direct; and if they keep one another's counsel,
the folly is heard no more of. "But to take the man," says I, "is the
most preposterous thing in nature, and (saving your presence) is to
befoul one's self, and live always in the smell of it. No, no," added I;
"after a man has lain with me as a mistress, he ought never to lie with
me as a wife. That's not only preserving the crime in memory, but it is
recording it in the family. If the woman marries the man afterwards, she
bears the reproach of it to the last hour. If her husband is not a man
of a hundred thousand, he some time or other upbraids her with it. If he
has children, they fail not one way or other to hear of it. If the
children are virtuous, they do their mother the justice to hate her for
it; if they are wicked, they give her the mortification of doing the
like, and giving her for the example. On the other hand, if the man and
the woman part, there is an end of the crime and an end of the clamour;
time wears out the memory of it, or a woman may remove but a few
streets, and she soon outlives it, and hears no more of it."
He was confounded at this discourse, and told me he could not say but I
was right in the main. That as to that part relating to managing
estates, it was arguing _à la cavalier_; it was in some sense right, if
the women were able to carry it on so, but that in general the sex were
not capable of it; their heads were not turned for it, and they had
better choose a person capable and honest, that knew how to do them
justice as women, as well as to love them; and that then the trouble was
all taken off of their hands.
I told him it was a dear way of purchasing their ease, for very often
when the trouble was taken off of their hands, so was their money too;
and that I thought it was far safer for the sex not to be afraid of the
trouble, but to be really afraid of their money; that if nobody was
trusted, nobody would be deceived, and the staff in their own hands was
the best security in the world.
He replied, that I had started a new thing in the world; that however I
might support it by subtle reasoning, yet it was a way of arguing that
was contrary to the general practice, and that he confessed he was much
disappointed in it; that, had he known I would have made such a use of
it, he would never have attempted what he did, which he had no wicked
design in, resolving to make me reparation, and that he was very sorry
he had been so unhappy; that he was very sure he should never upbraid me
with it hereafter, and had so good an opinion of me as to believe I did
not suspect him; but seeing I was positive in refusing him,
notwithstanding what had passed, he had nothing to do but secure me from
reproach by going back again to Paris, that so, according to my own way
of arguing, it might die out of memory, and I might never meet with it
again to my disadvantage.
I was not pleased with this part at all, for I had no mind to let him go
neither, and yet I had no mind to give him such hold of me as he would
have had; and thus I was in a kind of suspense, irresolute, and doubtful
what course to take.
I was in the house with him, as I have observed, and I saw evidently
that he was preparing to go back to Paris; and particularly I found he
was remitting money to Paris, which was, as I understood afterwards, to
pay for some wines which he had given order to have bought for him at
Troyes, in Champagne, and I knew not what course to take; and, besides
that, I was very loth to part with him. I found also that I was with
child by him, which was what I had not yet told him of, and sometimes I
thought not to tell him of it at all; but I was in a strange place, and
had no acquaintance, though I had a great deal of substance, which
indeed, having no friends there, was the more dangerous to me.
This obliged me to take him one morning when I saw him, as I thought, a
little anxious about his going, and irresolute. Says I to him, "I fancy
you can hardly find in your heart to leave me now." "The more unkind is
it in you," said he, "severely unkind, to refuse a man that knows not
how to part with you."
"I am so far from being unkind to you," said I, "that I will go over all
the world with you if you desire me to, except to Paris, where you know
I can't go."
"It is a pity so much love," said he, "on both sides should ever
separate."
"Why, then," said I, "do you go away from me?"
"Because," said he, "you won't take me."
"But if I won't take you," said I, "you may take me anywhere but to
Paris."
He was very loth to go anywhere, he said, without me, but he must go to
Paris or the East Indies.
I told him I did not use to court, but I durst venture myself to the
East Indies with him, if there was a necessity of his going.
He told me, God be thanked he was in no necessity of going anywhere, but
that he had a tempting invitation to go to the Indies.
I answered, I would say nothing to that, but that I desired he would go
anywhere but to Paris, because there he knew I must not go.
He said he had no remedy but to go where I could not go, for he could
not bear to see me if he must not have me.
I told him that was the unkindest thing he could say of me, and that I
ought to take it very ill, seeing I knew how very well to oblige him to
stay, without yielding to what he knew I could not yield to.
This amazed him, and he told me I was pleased to be mysterious, but that
he was sure it was in nobody's power to hinder him going, if he
resolved upon it, except me, who had influence enough upon him to make
him do anything.
Yes, I told him, I could hinder him, because I knew he could no more do
an unkind thing by me than he could do an unjust one; and to put him out
of his pain, I told him I was with child.
He came to me, and taking me in his arms and kissing me a thousand times
almost, said, why would I be so unkind not to tell him that before?
I told him 'twas hard, that to have him stay, I should be forced to do
as criminals do to avoid the gallows, plead my belly; and that I thought
I had given him testimonies enough of an affection equal to that of a
wife, if I had not only lain with him, been with child by him, shown
myself unwilling to part with him, but offered to go to the East Indies
with him; and except one thing that I could not grant, what could he ask
more?
He stood mute a good while, but afterwards told me he had a great deal
more to say if I could assure him that I would not take ill whatever
freedom he might use with me in his discourse.
I told him he might use any freedom in words with me; for a woman who
had given leave to such other freedoms as I had done had left herself no
room to take anything ill, let it be what it would.
"Why, then," he said, "I hope you believe, madam, I was born a
Christian, and that I have some sense of sacred things upon my mind.
When I first broke in upon my own virtue and assaulted yours; when I
surprised and, as it were, forced you to that which neither you intended
or I designed but a few hours before, it was upon a presumption that you
would certainly marry me, if once I could go that length with you, and
it was with an honest resolution to make you my wife.
"But I have been surprised with such a denial that no woman in such
circumstances ever gave to a man; for certainly it was never known that
any woman refused to marry a man that had first lain with her, much less
a man that had gotten her with child. But you go upon different notions
from all the world, and though you reason upon it so strongly that a man
knows hardly what to answer, yet I must own there is something in it
shocking to nature, and something very unkind to yourself. But, above
all, it is unkind to the child that is yet unborn, who, if we marry,
will come into the world with advantage enough, but if not, is ruined
before it is born; must bear the eternal reproach of what it is not
guilty of; must be branded from its cradle with a mark of infamy, be
loaded with the crimes and follies of its parents, and suffer for sins
that it never committed. This I take to be very hard, and, indeed, cruel
to the poor infant not yet born, who you cannot think of with any
patience, if you have the common affection of a mother, and not do that
for it which should at once place it on a level with the rest of the
world, and not leave it to curse its parents for what also we ought to
be ashamed of. I cannot, therefore," says he, "but beg and entreat you,
as you are a Christian and a mother, not to let the innocent lamb you go
with be ruined before it is born, and leave it to curse and reproach us
hereafter for what may be so easily avoided.
"Then, dear madam," said he, with a world of tenderness (and I thought I
saw tears in his eyes), "allow me to repeat it, that I am a Christian,
and consequently I do not allow what I have rashly, and without due
consideration, done; I say, I do not approve of it as lawful, and
therefore, though I did, with the view I have mentioned, one
unjustifiable action, I cannot say that I could satisfy myself to live
in a continual practice of what in judgment we must both condemn; and
though I love you above all the women in the world, and have done enough
to convince you of it by resolving to marry you after what has passed
between us, and by offering to quit all pretensions to any part of your
estate, so that I should, as it were, take a wife after I had lain with
her, and without a farthing portion, which, as my circumstances are, I
need not do; I say, notwithstanding my affection to you, which is
inexpressible, yet I cannot give up soul as well as body, the interest
of this world and the hopes of another; and you cannot call this my
disrespect to you."
If ever any man in the world was truly valuable for the strictest
honesty of intention, this was the man; and if ever woman in her senses
rejected a man of merit on so trivial and frivolous a pretence, I was
the woman; but surely it was the most preposterous thing that ever woman
did.
He would have taken me as a wife, but would not entertain me as a whore.
Was ever woman angry with any gentleman on that head? And was ever woman
so stupid to choose to be a whore, where she might have been an honest
wife? But infatuations are next to being possessed of the devil. I was
inflexible, and pretended to argue upon the point of a woman's liberty
as before, but he took me short, and with more warmth than he had yet
used with me, though with the utmost respect, replied, "Dear madam, you
argue for liberty, at the same time that you restrain yourself from that
liberty which God and nature has directed you to take, and, to supply
the deficiency, propose a vicious liberty, which is neither honourable
or religious. Will you propose liberty at the expense of modesty?"
I returned, that he mistook me; I did not propose it; I only said that
those that could not be content without concerning the sexes in that
affair might do so indeed; might entertain a man as men do a mistress,
if they thought fit, but he did not hear me say I would do so; and
though, by what had passed, he might well censure me in that part, yet
he should find, for the future, that I should freely converse with him
without any inclination that way.
He told me he could not promise that for himself, and thought he ought
not to trust himself with the opportunity, for that, as he had failed
already, he was loth to lead himself into the temptation of offending
again, and that this was the true reason of his resolving to go back to
Paris; not that he could willingly leave me, and would be very far from
wanting my invitation; but if he could not stay upon terms that became
him, either as an honest man or a Christian, what could he do? And he
hoped, he said, I could not blame him that he was unwilling anything
that was to call him father should upbraid him with leaving him in the
world to be called bastard; adding that he was astonished to think how I
could satisfy myself to be so cruel to an innocent infant not yet born;
professed he could neither bear the thoughts of it, much less bear to
see it, and hoped I would not take it ill that he could not stay to see
me delivered, for that very reason.
I saw he spoke this with a disturbed mind, and that it was with some
difficulty that he restrained his passion, so I declined any farther
discourse upon it; only said I hoped he would consider of it. "Oh,
madam!" says he, "do not bid me consider; 'tis for you to consider;" and
with that he went out of the room, in a strange kind of confusion, as
was easy to be seen in his countenance.
If I had not been one of the foolishest as well as wickedest creatures
upon earth, I could never have acted thus. I had one of the honestest,
completest gentlemen upon earth at my hand. He had in one sense saved my
life, but he had saved that life from ruin in a most remarkable manner.
He loved me even to distraction, and had come from Paris to Rotterdam on
purpose to seek me. He had offered me marriage even after I was with
child by him, and had offered to quit all his pretensions to my estate,
and give it up to my own management, having a plentiful estate of his
own. Here I might have settled myself out of the reach even of disaster
itself; his estate and mine would have purchased even then above two
thousand pounds a year, and I might have lived like a queen--nay, far
more happy than a queen; and, which was above all, I had now an
opportunity to have quitted a life of crime and debauchery, which I had
been given up to for several years, and to have sat down quiet in plenty
and honour, and to have set myself apart to the great work which I have
since seen so much necessity of and occasion for--I mean that of
repentance.
But my measure of wickedness was not yet full. I continued obstinate
against matrimony, and yet I could not bear the thoughts of his going
away neither. As to the child, I was not very anxious about it. I told
him I would promise him it should never come to him to upbraid him with
its being illegitimate; that if it was a boy, I would breed it up like
the son of a gentleman, and use it well for his sake; and after a little
more such talk as this, and seeing him resolved to go, I retired, but
could not help letting him see the tears run down my cheeks. He came to
me and kissed me, entreated me, conjured me by the kindness he had shown
me in my distress, by the justice he had done me in my bills and money
affairs, by the respect which made him refuse a thousand pistoles from
me for his expenses with that traitor the Jew, by the pledge of our
misfortunes--so he called it--which I carried with me, and by all that
the sincerest affection could propose to do, that I would not drive him
away.
But it would not do. I was stupid and senseless, deaf to all his
importunities, and continued so to the last. So we parted, only desiring
me to promise that I would write him word when I was delivered, and how
he might give me an answer; and this I engaged my word I would do. And
upon his desiring to be informed which way I intended to dispose of
myself, I told him I resolved to go directly to England, and to London,
where I proposed to lie in; but since he resolved to leave me, I told
him I supposed it would be of no consequence to him what became of me.
He lay in his lodgings that night, but went away early in the morning,
leaving me a letter in which he repeated all he had said, recommended
the care of the child, and desired of me that as he had remitted to me
the offer of a thousand pistoles which I would have given him for the
recompense of his charges and trouble with the Jew, and had given it me
back, so he desired I would allow him to oblige me to set apart that
thousand pistoles, with its improvement, for the child, and for its
education; earnestly pressing me to secure that little portion for the
abandoned orphan when I should think fit, as he was sure I would, to
throw away the rest upon something as worthless as my sincere friend at
Paris. He concluded with moving me to reflect, with the same regret as
he did, on our follies we had committed together; asked me forgiveness
for being the aggressor in the fact, and forgave me everything, he said,
but the cruelty of refusing him, which he owned he could not forgive me
so heartily as he should do, because he was satisfied it was an injury
to myself, would be an introduction to my ruin, and that I would
seriously repent of it. He foretold some fatal things which, he said, he
was well assured I should fall into, and that at last I would be ruined
by a bad husband; bid me be the more wary, that I might render him a
false prophet; but to remember that, if ever I came into distress, I had
a fast friend at Paris, who would not upbraid me with the unkind things
past, but would be always ready to return me good for evil.
This letter stunned me. I could not think it possible for any one that
had not dealt with the devil to write such a letter, for he spoke of
some particular things which afterwards were to befall me with such an
assurance that it frighted me beforehand; and when those things did come
to pass, I was persuaded he had some more than human knowledge. In a
word, his advices to me to repent were very affectionate, his warnings
of evil to happen to me were very kind, and his promises of assistance,
if I wanted him, were so generous that I have seldom seen the like; and
though I did not at first set much by that part because I looked upon
them as what might not happen, and as what was improbable to happen at
that time, yet all the rest of his letter was so moving that it left me
very melancholy, and I cried four-and-twenty hours after, almost without
ceasing, about it; and yet even all this while, whatever it was that
bewitched me, I had not one serious wish that I had taken him. I wished
heartily, indeed, that I could have kept him with me, but I had a mortal
aversion to marrying him, or indeed anybody else, but formed a thousand
wild notions in my head that I was yet gay enough, and young and
handsome enough, to please a man of quality, and that I would try my
fortune at London, come of it what would.
Thus blinded by my own vanity, I threw away the only opportunity I then
had to have effectually settled my fortunes, and secured them for this
world; and I am a memorial to all that shall read my story, a standing
monument of the madness and distraction which pride and infatuations
from hell run us into, how ill our passions guide us, and how
dangerously we act when we follow the dictates of an ambitious mind.
I was rich, beautiful, and agreeable, and not yet old. I had known
something of the influence I had had upon the fancies of men even of the
highest rank. I never forgot that the Prince de ---- had said, with an
ecstasy, that I was the finest woman in France. I knew I could make a
figure at London, and how well I could grace that figure. I was not at a
loss how to behave, and having already been adored by princes, I thought
of nothing less than of being mistress to the king himself. But I go
back to my immediate circumstances at that time.
I got over the absence of my honest merchant but slowly at first. It was
with infinite regret that I let him go at all; and when I read the
letter he left I was quite confounded. As soon as he was out of call
and irrecoverable I would have given half I had in the world for him
back again; my notion of things changed in an instant, and I called
myself a thousand fools for casting myself upon a life of scandal and
hazard, when, after the shipwreck of virtue, honour, and principle, and
sailing at the utmost risk in the stormy seas of crime and abominable
levity, I had a safe harbour presented, and no heart to cast anchor in
it.
His predictions terrified me; his promises of kindness if I came to
distress melted me into tears, but frighted me with the apprehensions of
ever coming into such distress, and filled my head with a thousand
anxieties and thoughts how it should be possible for me, who had now
such a fortune, to sink again into misery.
Then the dreadful scene of my life, when I was left with my five
children, &c., as I have related, represented itself again to me, and I
sat considering what measures I might take to bring myself to such a
state of desolation again, and how I should act to avoid it.
But these things wore off gradually. As to my friend the merchant, he
was gone, and gone irrecoverably, for I durst not follow him to Paris,
for the reasons mentioned above. Again, I was afraid to write to him to
return, lest he should have refused, as I verily believed he would; so
I sat and cried intolerably for some days--nay, I may say for some
weeks; but, I say, it wore off gradually, and as I had a pretty deal of
business for managing my effects, the hurry of that particular part
served to divert my thoughts, and in part to wear out the impressions
which had been made upon my mind.
I had sold my jewels, all but the diamond ring which my gentleman the
jeweller used to wear, and this, at proper times, I wore myself; as also
the diamond necklace which the prince had given me, and a pair of
extraordinary earrings worth about 600 pistoles; the other, which was a
fine casket, he left with me at his going to Versailles, and a small
case with some rubies and emeralds, &c. I say I sold them at the Hague
for 7600 pistoles. I had received all the bills which the merchant had
helped me to at Paris, and with the money I brought with me, they made
up 13,900 pistoles more; so that I had in ready money, and in account in
the bank at Amsterdam, above one-and-twenty thousand pistoles, besides
jewels; and how to get this treasure to England was my next care.
The business I had had now with a great many people for receiving such
large sums and selling jewels of such considerable value gave me
opportunity to know and converse with several of the best merchants of
the place, so that I wanted no direction now how to get my money
remitted to England. Applying, therefore, to several merchants, that I
might neither risk it all on the credit of one merchant, nor suffer any
single man to know the quantity of money I had; I say, applying myself
to several merchants, I got bills of exchange payable in London for all
my money. The first bills I took with me; the second bills I left in
trust (in case of any disaster at sea) in the hands of the first
merchant, him to whom I was recommended by my friend from Paris.
Having thus spent nine months in Holland, refused the best offer ever
woman in my circumstances had, parted unkindly, and indeed barbarously,
with the best friend and honestest man in the world, got all my money in
my pocket, and a bastard in my belly, I took shipping at the Brill in
the packet-boat, and arrived safe at Harwich, where my woman Amy was
come by my direction to meet me.
I would willingly have given ten thousand pounds of my money to have
been rid of the burthen I had in my belly, as above; but it could not
be, so I was obliged to bear with that part, and get rid of it by the
ordinary method of patience and a hard travail.