and they are very great, I assure you;" and the first he said was a
black article of 8000 pistoles, which he had a lawsuit about at Paris,
but had it awarded against him, which was the loss he had told me of,
and which made him leave Paris in disgust; that in other accounts he
owed about £5300 sterling; but after all this, upon the whole, he had
still £17,000 clear stock in money, and £1320 a year in rent.
After some pause, it came to my turn to speak. "Well," says I, "'tis
very hard a gentleman with such a fortune as this should come over to
England, and marry a wife with nothing; it shall never," says I, "be
said, but what I have, I'll bring into the public stock;" so I began to
produce.
First, I pulled out the mortgage which good Sir Robert had procured for
me, the annual rent £700 per annum; the principal money £14,000.
Secondly, I pulled out another mortgage upon land, procured by the same
faithful friend, which at three times had advanced £12,000.
Thirdly, I pulled him out a parcel of little securities, procured by
several hands, by fee-farm rents, and such petty mortgages as those
times afforded, amounting to £10,800 principal money, and paying six
hundred and thirty-six pounds a-year. So that in the whole there was two
thousand and fifty-six pounds a year ready money constantly coming in.
When I had shown him all these, I laid them upon the table, and bade him
take them, that he might be able to give me an answer to the second
question. What fortune he had with his wife? And laughed a little at it.
He looked at them awhile, and then handed them all back again to me: "I
will not touch them," says he, "nor one of them, till they are all
settled in trustees' hands for your own use, and the management wholly
your own."
I cannot omit what happened to me while all this was acting; though it
was cheerful work in the main, yet I trembled every joint of me, worse
for aught I know than ever Belshazzar did at the handwriting on the
wall, and the occasion was every way as just. "Unhappy wretch," said I
to myself, "shall my ill-got wealth, the product of prosperous lust, and
of a vile and vicious life of whoredom and adultery, be intermingled
with the honest well-gotten estate of this innocent gentleman, to be a
moth and a caterpillar among it, and bring the judgments of heaven upon
him, and upon what he has, for my sake? Shall my wickedness blast his
comforts? Shall I be fire in his flax? and be a means to provoke heaven
to curse his blessings? God forbid! I'll keep them asunder if it be
possible."
This is the true reason why I have been so particular in the account of
my vast acquired stock; and how his estate, which was perhaps the
product of many years' fortunate industry, and which was equal if not
superior to mine at best, was, at my request, kept apart from mine, as
is mentioned above.
I have told you how he gave back all my writings into my own hands
again. "Well," says I, "seeing you will have it be kept apart, it shall
be so, upon one condition, which I have to propose, and no other." "And
what is the condition?" says he. "Why," says I, "all the pretence I can
have for the making over my own estate to me is, that in case of your
mortality, I may have it reserved for me, if I outlive you." "Well,"
says he, "that is true" "But then," said I, "the annual income is always
received by the husband, during his life, as 'tis supposed, for the
mutual subsistence of the family; now," says I, "here is £2000 a year,
which I believe is as much as we shall spend, and I desire none of it
may be saved; and all the income of your own estate, the interest of the
£17,000 and the £1320 a year, may be constantly laid by for the increase
of your estate; and so," added I, "by joining the interest every year to
the capital you will perhaps grow as rich as you would do if you were to
trade with it all, if you were obliged to keep house out of it too."
He liked the proposal very well, and said it should be so; and this way
I, in some measure, satisfied myself that I should not bring my husband
under the blast of a just Providence, for mingling my cursed ill-gotten
wealth with his honest estate. This was occasioned by the reflections
which, at some certain intervals of time, came into my thoughts of the
justice of heaven, which I had reason to expect would some time or other
still fall upon me or my effects, for the dreadful life I had lived.
And let nobody conclude from the strange success I met with in all my
wicked doings, and the vast estate which I had raised by it, that
therefore I either was happy or easy. No, no, there was a dart struck
into the liver; there was a secret hell within, even all the while, when
our joy was at the highest; but more especially now, after it was all
over, and when, according to all appearance, I was one of the happiest
women upon earth; all this while, I say, I had such constant terror upon
my mind, as gave me every now and then very terrible shocks, and which
made me expect something very frightful upon every accident of life.
In a word, it never lightened or thundered, but I expected the next
flash would penetrate my vitals, and melt the sword (soul) in this
scabbard of flesh; it never blew a storm of wind, but I expected the
fall of some stack of chimneys, or some part of the house, would bury me
in its ruins; and so of other things.
But I shall perhaps have occasion to speak of all these things again
by-and-by; the case before us was in a manner settled; we had full four
thousand pounds per annum for our future subsistence, besides a vast sum
in jewels and plate; and besides this, I had about eight thousand pounds
reserved in money which I kept back from him, to provide for my two
daughters, of whom I have much yet to say.
With this estate, settled as you have heard, and with the best husband
in the world, I left England again; I had not only, in human prudence,
and by the nature of the thing, being now married and settled in so
glorious a manner,--I say, I had not only abandoned all the gay and
wicked course which I had gone through before, but I began to look back
upon it with that horror and that detestation which is the certain
companion, if not the forerunner, of repentance.
Sometimes the wonders of my present circumstances would work upon me,
and I should have some raptures upon my soul, upon the subject of my
coming so smoothly out of the arms of hell, that I was not ingulfed in
ruin, as most who lead such lives are, first or last; but this was a
flight too high for me; I was not come to that repentance that is raised
from a sense of Heaven's goodness; I repented of the crime, but it was
of another and lower kind of repentance, and rather moved by my fears of
vengeance, than from a sense of being spared from being punished, and
landed safe after a storm.
The first thing which happened after our coming to the Hague (where we
lodged for a while) was, that my spouse saluted me one morning with the
title of countess, as he said he intended to do, by having the
inheritance to which the honour was annexed made over to him. It is
true, it was a reversion, but it soon fell, and in the meantime, as all
the brothers of a count are called counts, so I had the title by
courtesy, about three years before I had it in reality.
I was agreeably surprised at this coming so soon, and would have had my
spouse have taken the money which it cost him out of my stock, but he
laughed at me, and went on.
I was now in the height of my glory and prosperity, and I was called the
Countess de ----; for I had obtained that unlooked for, which I secretly
aimed at, and was really the main reason of my coming abroad. I took now
more servants, lived in a kind of magnificence that I had not been
acquainted with, was called "your honour" at every word, and had a
coronet behind my coach; though at the same time I knew little or
nothing of my new pedigree.
The first thing that my spouse took upon him to manage, was to declare
ourselves married eleven years before our arriving in Holland; and
consequently to acknowledge our little son, who was yet in England, to
be legitimate; order him to be brought over, and added to his family,
and acknowledge him to be our own.
This was done by giving notice to his people at Nimeguen, where his
children (which were two sons and a daughter) were brought up, that he
was come over from England, and that he was arrived at the Hague with
his wife, and should reside there some time, and that he would have his
two sons brought down to see him; which accordingly was done, and where
I entertained them with all the kindness and tenderness that they could
expect from their mother-in-law; and who pretended to be so ever since
they were two or three years old.
This supposing us to have been so long married was not difficult at all,
in a country where we had been seen together about that time, viz.,
eleven years and a half before, and where we had never been seen
afterwards till we now returned together: this being seen together was
also openly owned and acknowledged, of course, by our friend the
merchant at Rotterdam, and also by the people in the house where we both
lodged in the same city, and where our first intimacies began, and who,
as it happened, were all alive; and therefore, to make it the more
public, we made a tour to Rotterdam again, lodged in the same house, and
was visited there by our friend the merchant, and afterwards invited
frequently to his house, where he treated us very handsomely.
This conduct of my spouse, and which he managed very cleverly, was
indeed a testimony of a wonderful degree of honesty and affection to our
little son; for it was done purely for the sake of the child.
I call it an honest affection, because it was from a principle of
honesty that he so earnestly concerned himself to prevent the scandal
which would otherwise have fallen upon the child, who was itself
innocent; and as it was from this principle of justice that he so
earnestly solicited me, and conjured me by the natural affections of a
mother, to marry him when it was yet young within me and unborn, that
the child might not suffer for the sin of its father and mother; so,
though at the same time he really loved me very well, yet I had reason
to believe that it was from this principle of justice to the child that
he came to England again to seek me with design to marry me, and, as he
called it, save the innocent lamb from infamy worse than death.
It was with a just reproach to myself that I must repeat it again, that
I had not the same concern for it, though it was the child of my own
body; nor had I ever the hearty affectionate love to the child that he
had. What the reason of it was I cannot tell; and, indeed, I had shown a
general neglect of the child through all the gay years of my London
revels, except that I sent Amy to look upon it now and then, and to pay
for its nursing; as for me, I scarce saw it four times in the first four
years of its life, and often wished it would go quietly out of the
world; whereas a son which I had by the jeweller, I took a different
care of, and showed a different concern for, though I did not let him
know me; for I provided very well for him, had him put out very well to
school, and when he came to years fit for it, let him go over with a
person of honesty and good business, to the Indies; and after he had
lived there some time, and began to act for himself, sent him over the
value of £2000, at several times, with which he traded and grew rich;
and, as 'tis to be hoped, may at last come over again with forty or
fifty thousand pounds in his pocket, as many do who have not such
encouragement at their beginning.
I also sent him over a wife, a beautiful young lady, well-bred, an
exceeding good-natured pleasant creature; but the nice young fellow did
not like her, and had the impudence to write to me, that is, to the
person I employed to correspond with him, to send him another, and
promised that he would marry her I had sent him, to a friend of his, who
liked her better than he did; but I took it so ill, that I would not
send him another, and withal, stopped another article of £1000 which I
had appointed to send him. He considered of it afterwards, and offered
to take her; but then truly she took so ill the first affront he put
upon her, that she would not have him, and I sent him word I thought she
was very much in the right. However, after courting her two years, and
some friends interposing, she took him, and made him an excellent wife,
as I knew she would, but I never sent him the thousand pounds cargo, so
that he lost that money for misusing me, and took the lady at last
without it.
My new spouse and I lived a very regular, contemplative life; and, in
itself, certainly a life filled with all human felicity. But if I looked
upon my present situation with satisfaction, as I certainly did, so, in
proportion, I on all occasions looked back on former things with
detestation, and with the utmost affliction; and now, indeed, and not
till now, those reflections began to prey upon my comforts, and lessen
the sweets of my other enjoyments. They might be said to have gnawed a
hole in my heart before; but now they made a hole quite through it: now
they ate into all my pleasant things, made bitter every sweet, and mixed
my sighs with every smile.
Not all the affluence of a plentiful fortune; not a hundred thousand
pounds estate (for, between us, we had little less); not honour and
titles, attendants and equipages; in a word, not all the things we call
pleasure, could give me any relish, or sweeten the taste of things to
me; at least, not so much but I grew sad, heavy, pensive, and
melancholy; slept little, and ate little; dreamed continually of the
most frightful and terrible things imaginable: nothing but apparitions
of devils and monsters, falling into gulfs, and off from steep and high
precipices, and the like; so that in the morning, when I should rise,
and be refreshed with the blessing of rest, I was hag-ridden with
frights and terrible things formed merely in the imagination, and was
either tired and wanted sleep, or overrun with vapours, and not fit for
conversing with my family, or any one else.
My husband, the tenderest creature in the world, and particularly so to
me, was in great concern for me, and did everything that lay in his
power to comfort and restore me; strove to reason me out of it; then
tried all the ways possible to divert me: but it was all to no purpose,
or to but very little.
My only relief was sometimes to unbosom myself to poor Amy, when she and
I was alone; and she did all she could to comfort me. But all was to
little effect there; for, though Amy was the better penitent before,
when we had been in the storm, Amy was just where she used to be now, a
wild, gay, loose wretch, and not much the graver for her age; for Amy
was between forty and fifty by this time too.
But to go on with my own story. As I had no comforter, so I had no
counsellor; it was well, as I often thought, that I was not a Roman
Catholic; for what a piece of work should I have made, to have gone to a
priest with such a history as I had to tell him; and what penance would
any father confessor have obliged me to perform, especially if he had
been honest, and true to his office!
However, as I had none of the recourse, so I had none of the absolution,
by which the criminal confessing goes away comforted; but I went about
with a heart loaded with crime, and altogether in the dark as to what I
was to do; and in this condition I languished near two years. I may well
call it languishing, for if Providence had not relieved me, I should
have died in little time. But of that hereafter.
I must now go back to another scene, and join it to this end of my
story, which will complete all my concern with England, at least all
that I shall bring into this account.
I have hinted at large what I had done for my two sons, one at Messina,
and the other in the Indies; but I have not gone through the story of my
two daughters. I was so in danger of being known by one of them, that I
durst not see her, so as to let her know who I was; and for the other, I
could not well know how to see her, and own her, and let her see me,
because she must then know that I would not let her sister know me,
which would look strange; so that, upon the whole, I resolved to see
neither of them at all. But Amy managed all that for me; and when she
had made gentlewomen of them both, by giving them a good, though late
education, she had like to have blown up the whole case, and herself and
me too, by an unhappy discovery of herself to the last of them, that is,
to her who was our cook-maid, and who, as I said before, Amy had been
obliged to turn away, for fear of the very discovery which now happened.
I have observed already in what manner Amy managed her by a third
person; and how the girl, when she was set up for a lady, as above, came
and visited Amy at my lodgings; after which, Amy going, as was her
custom, to see the girl's brother (my son) at the honest man's house in
Spitalfields, both the girls were there, merely by accident, at the same
time; and the other girl unawares discovered the secret, namely, that
this was the lady that had done all this for them.
Amy was greatly surprised at it; but as she saw there was no remedy, she
made a jest of it, and so after that conversed openly, being still
satisfied that neither of them could make much of it, as long as they
knew nothing of me. So she took them together one time, and told them
the history, as she called it, of their mother, beginning at the
miserable carrying them to their aunt's; she owned she was not their
mother herself, but described her to them. However, when she said she
was not their mother, one of them expressed herself very much surprised,
for the girl had taken up a strong fancy that Amy was really her mother,
and that she had, for some particular reasons, concealed it from her;
and therefore, when she told her frankly that she was not her mother,
the girl fell a-crying, and Amy had much ado to keep life in her. This
was the girl who was at first my cook-maid in the Pall Mall. When Amy
had brought her to again a little, and she had recovered her first
disorder, Amy asked what ailed her? The poor girl hung about her, and
kissed her, and was in such a passion still, though she was a great
wench of nineteen or twenty years old, that she could not be brought to
speak a great while. At last, having recovered her speech, she said
still, "But oh! Do not say you a'n't my mother! I'm sure you are my
mother;" and then the girl cried again like to kill herself. Amy could
not tell what to do with her a good while; she was loth to say again she
was not her mother, because she would not throw her into a fit of
crying again; but she went round about a little with her. "Why, child,"
says she, "why would you have me be your mother? If it be because I am
so kind to you, be easy, my dear," says Amy; "I'll be as kind to you
still, as if I was your mother."
"Ay, but," says the girl, "I am sure you are my mother too; and what
have I done that you won't own me, and that you will not be called my
mother? Though I am poor, you have made me a gentlewoman," says she,
"and I won't do anything to disgrace you; besides," added she, "I can
keep a secret, too, especially for my own mother, sure;" then she calls
Amy her dear mother, and hung about her neck again, crying still
vehemently.
This last part of the girl's words alarmed Amy, and, as she told me,
frighted her terribly; nay, she was so confounded with it, that she was
not able to govern herself, or to conceal her disorder from the girl
herself, as you shall hear. Amy was at a full stop, and confused to the
last degree; and the girl, a sharp jade, turned it upon her. "My dear
mother," says she, "do not be uneasy about it; I know it all; but do not
be uneasy, I won't let my sister know a word of it, or my brother
either, without you giving me leave; but don't disown me now you have
found me; don't hide yourself from me any longer; I can't bear that,"
says she, "it will break my heart."
"I think the girl's mad," says Amy; "why, child, I tell thee, if I was
thy mother I would not disown thee; don't you see I am as kind to you
as if I was your mother?" Amy might as well have sung a song to a
kettledrum, as talk to her. "Yes," says the girl, "you are very good to
me indeed;" and that was enough to make anybody believe she was her
mother too; but, however, that was not the case, she had other reasons
to believe, and to know, that she was her mother; and it was a sad thing
she would not let her call her mother, who was her own child.
Amy was so heart-full with the disturbance of it, that she did not enter
farther with her into the inquiry, as she would otherwise have done; I
mean, as to what made the girl so positive; but comes away, and tells me
the whole story.
I was thunderstruck with the story at first, and much more afterwards,
as you shall hear; but, I say, I was thunderstruck at first, and amazed,
and said to Amy, "There must be something or other in it more than we
know of." But, having examined farther into it, I found the girl had no
notion of anybody but of Amy; and glad I was that I was not concerned in
the pretence, and that the girl had no notion of me in it. But even this
easiness did not continue long; for the next time Amy went to see her,
she was the same thing, and rather more violent with Amy than she was
before. Amy endeavoured to pacify her by all the ways imaginable: first,
she told her she took it ill that she would not believe her; and told
her, if she would not give over such a foolish whimsey, she would leave
her to the wide world as she found her.
This put the girl into fits, and she cried ready to kill herself, and
hung about Amy again like a child. "Why," says Amy, "why can you not be
easy with me, then, and compose yourself, and let me go on to do you
good, and show you kindness, as I would do, and as I intend to do? Can
you think that if I was your mother, I would not tell you so? What
whimsey is this that possesses your mind?" says Amy. Well, the girl told
her in a few words (but those few such as frighted Amy out of her wits,
and me too) that she knew well enough how it was. "I know," says she,
"when you left ----," naming the village, "where I lived when my father
went away from us all, that you went over to France; I know that too,
and who you went with," says the girl; "did not my Lady Roxana come back
again with you? I know it all well enough; though I was but a child, I
have heard it all." And thus she run on with such discourse as put Amy
out of all temper again; and she raved at her like a bedlam, and told
her she would never come near her any more; she might go a-begging again
if she would; she'd have nothing to do with her. The girl, a passionate
wench, told her she knew the worst of it, she could go to service again,
and if she would not own her own child, she must do as she pleased; then
she fell into a passion of crying again, as if she would kill herself.
In short, this girl's conduct terrified Amy to the last degree, and me
too; and was it not that we knew the girl was quite wrong in some
things, she was yet so right in some other, that it gave me a great deal
of perplexity; but that which put Amy the most to it, was that the girl
(my daughter) told her that she (meaning me, her mother) had gone away
with the jeweller, and into France too; she did not call him the
jeweller, but with the landlord of the house; who, after her mother fell
into distress, and that Amy had taken all the children from her, made
much of her, and afterwards married her.
In short, it was plain the girl had but a broken account of things, but
yet that she had received some accounts that had a reality in the bottom
of them, so that, it seems, our first measures, and the amour with the
jeweller, were not so concealed as I thought they had been; and, it
seems, came in a broken manner to my sister-in-law, who Amy carried the
children to, and she made some bustle, it seems, about it. But, as good
luck was, it was too late, and I was removed and gone, none knew
whither, or else she would have sent all the children home to me again,
to be sure.
This we picked out of the girl's discourse, that is to say, Amy did, at
several times; but it all consisted of broken fragments of stories, such
as the girl herself had heard so long ago, that she herself could make
very little of it; only that in the main, that her mother had played the
whore; had gone away with the gentleman that was landlord of the house;
that he married her; that she went into France. And, as she had learned
in my family, where she was a servant, that Mrs. Amy and her Lady Roxana
had been in France together, so she put all these things together, and
joining them with the great kindness that Amy now showed her, possessed
the creature that Amy was really her mother, nor was it possible for Amy
to conquer it for a long time.