“She loves enough that does not hate.”
This he took for a favour, and so laid down the cudgels, that is to
say, the pen; I say, he took if for a favour, and a mighty one it was,
if he had known all. However, he took it as I meant it, that is, to let
him think I was inclined to go on with him, as indeed I had all the
reason in the world to do, for he was the best-humoured, merry sort of
a fellow that I ever met with, and I often reflected on myself how
doubly criminal it was to deceive such a man; but that necessity, which
pressed me to a settlement suitable to my condition, was my authority
for it; and certainly his affection to me, and the goodness of his
temper, however they might argue against using him ill, yet they
strongly argued to me that he would better take the disappointment than
some fiery-tempered wretch, who might have nothing to recommend him but
those passions which would serve only to make a woman miserable all her
days.
Besides, though I jested with him (as he supposed it) so often about my
poverty, yet, when he found it to be true, he had foreclosed all manner
of objection, seeing, whether he was in jest or in earnest, he had
declared he took me without any regard to my portion, and, whether I
was in jest or in earnest, I had declared myself to be very poor; so
that, in a word, I had him fast both ways; and though he might say
afterwards he was cheated, yet he could never say that I had cheated
him.
He pursued me close after this, and as I saw there was no need to fear
losing him, I played the indifferent part with him longer than prudence
might otherwise have dictated to me. But I considered how much this
caution and indifference would give me the advantage over him, when I
should come to be under the necessity of owning my own circumstances to
him; and I managed it the more warily, because I found he inferred from
thence, as indeed he ought to do, that I either had the more money or
the more judgment, and would not venture at all.
I took the freedom one day, after we had talked pretty close to the
subject, to tell him that it was true I had received the compliment of
a lover from him, namely, that he would take me without inquiring into
my fortune, and I would make him a suitable return in this, viz. that I
would make as little inquiry into his as consisted with reason, but I
hoped he would allow me to ask a few questions, which he would answer
or not as he thought fit; and that I would not be offended if he did
not answer me at all; one of these questions related to our manner of
living, and the place where, because I had heard he had a great
plantation in Virginia, and that he had talked of going to live there,
and I told him I did not care to be transported.
He began from this discourse to let me voluntarily into all his
affairs, and to tell me in a frank, open way all his circumstances, by
which I found he was very well to pass in the world; but that great
part of his estate consisted of three plantations, which he had in
Virginia, which brought him in a very good income, generally speaking,
to the tune of £300, a year, but that if he was to live upon them,
would bring him in four times as much. “Very well,” thought I; “you
shall carry me thither as soon as you please, though I won’t tell you
so beforehand.”
I jested with him extremely about the figure he would make in Virginia;
but I found he would do anything I desired, though he did not seem glad
to have me undervalue his plantations, so I turned my tale. I told him
I had good reason not to go there to live, because if his plantations
were worth so much there, I had not a fortune suitable to a gentleman
of £1200 a year, as he said his estate would be.
He replied generously, he did not ask what my fortune was; he had told
me from the beginning he would not, and he would be as good as his
word; but whatever it was, he assured me he would never desire me to go
to Virginia with him, or go thither himself without me, unless I was
perfectly willing, and made it my choice.
All this, you may be sure, was as I wished, and indeed nothing could
have happened more perfectly agreeable. I carried it on as far as this
with a sort of indifferency that he often wondered at, more than at
first, but which was the only support of his courtship; and I mention
it the rather to intimate again to the ladies that nothing but want of
courage for such an indifferency makes our sex so cheap, and prepares
them to be ill-used as they are; would they venture the loss of a
pretending fop now and then, who carries it high upon the point of his
own merit, they would certainly be less slighted, and courted more. Had
I discovered really and truly what my great fortune was, and that in
all I had not full £500 when he expected £1500, yet I had hooked him so
fast, and played him so long, that I was satisfied he would have had me
in my worst circumstances; and indeed it was less a surprise to him
when he learned the truth than it would have been, because having not
the least blame to lay on me, who had carried it with an air of
indifference to the last, he would not say one word, except that indeed
he thought it had been more, but that if it had been less he did not
repent his bargain; only that he should not be able to maintain me so
well as he intended.
In short, we were married, and very happily married on my side, I
assure you, as to the man; for he was the best-humoured man that every
woman had, but his circumstances were not so good as I imagined, as, on
the other hand, he had not bettered himself by marrying so much as he
expected.
When we were married, I was shrewdly put to it to bring him that little
stock I had, and to let him see it was no more; but there was a
necessity for it, so I took my opportunity one day when we were alone,
to enter into a short dialogue with him about it. “My dear,” said I,
“we have been married a fortnight; is it not time to let you know
whether you have got a wife with something or with nothing?” “Your own
time for that, my dear,” says he; “I am satisfied that I have got the
wife I love; I have not troubled you much,” says he, “with my inquiry
after it.”
“That’s true,” says I, “but I have a great difficulty upon me about it,
which I scarce know how to manage.”
“What’s that, my dear?” says he.
“Why,” says I, “’tis a little hard upon me, and ’tis harder upon you. I
am told that Captain ——” (meaning my friend’s husband) “has told you I
had a great deal more money than I ever pretended to have, and I am
sure I never employed him to do so.”
“Well,” says he, “Captain —— may have told me so, but what then? If you
have not so much, that may lie at his door, but you never told me what
you had, so I have no reason to blame you if you have nothing at all.”
“That’s is so just,” said I, “and so generous, that it makes my having
but a little a double affliction to me.”
“The less you have, my dear,” says he, “the worse for us both; but I
hope your affliction you speak of is not caused for fear I should be
unkind to you, for want of a portion. No, no, if you have nothing, tell
me plainly, and at once; I may perhaps tell the captain he has cheated
me, but I can never say you have cheated me, for did you not give it
under your hand that you were poor? and so I ought to expect you to
be.”
“Well,” said I, “my dear, I am glad I have not been concerned in
deceiving you before marriage. If I deceive you since, ’tis ne’er the
worse; that I am poor is too true, but not so poor as to have nothing
neither”; so I pulled out some bank bills, and gave him about £160.
“There’s something, my dear,” said I, “and not quite all neither.”
I had brought him so near to expecting nothing, by what I had said
before, that the money, though the sum was small in itself, was doubly
welcome to him; he owned it was more than he looked for, and that he
did not question by my discourse to him, but that my fine clothes, gold
watch, and a diamond ring or two, had been all my fortune.
I let him please himself with that £160 two or three days, and then,
having been abroad that day, and as if I had been to fetch it, I
brought him £100 more home in gold, and told him there was a little
more portion for him; and, in short, in about a week more I brought him
£180 more, and about £60 in linen, which I made him believe I had been
obliged to take with the £100 which I gave him in gold, as a
composition for a debt of £600, being little more than five shillings
in the pound, and overvalued too.
“And now, my dear,” says I to him, “I am very sorry to tell you, that
there is all, and 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
£1000 to him, but that as it was, I had been faithful to him, 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 cheating a man into marrying me on
pretence of a fortune; 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 hazard
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 this 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; and I added, 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 him amends, than tell him that I was very
willing to go over 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 however 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, and he was more than satisfied
on the whole when the particulars were put together, 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, that it was well furnished, that his mother was
alive and lived in it, and one sister, which was all the relations he
had; that as soon as he came there, his mother 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 all this to be exactly
as he had said.
To make this part of the story short, 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 to go along with them, 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 demonstrations of tenderness and affection,
by my husband’s mother, that were possible to 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 as 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, if not the most miserable, in the world.
My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman—I may call her
old woman, 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 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 the colony came thither in very indifferent
circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two
sorts; either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships to
be sold as servants. “Such as we call them, my dear,” says she, “but
they are more properly called slaves.” Or, secondly, such as are
transported from Newgate and other prisons, after having been found
guilty of felony and other 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 tradesmen and merchants will trust them with tools and clothes
and other 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, “man 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, pulling off her glove, “look ye here,” says she, turning up
the palm of her hand, and showed 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 a thing strange, daughter, for as I told you, some of
the best men in this 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, occasioned by her mother
sending her frequently to carry victuals and other relief to a
kinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, and who lay in a
miserable starving condition, was afterwards condemned to be hanged,
but having got respite by pleading her belly, dies afterwards in the
prison.
Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked practices
in that dreadful place, and how it ruined more young people than all
the town besides. “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 peopled 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, and the terrible things she had gone
through, that it had overcome me, and I begged of 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 very luckily 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 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, which I did soon
after; and let any one 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 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. Oh! had the story
never been told me, all had been well; it had been no crime to have
lain with my husband, since as to his being my relation I had known
nothing of it.
I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually waking; to
reveal it, which would have been some ease to me, 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 of it in my sleep,
and tell my husband of it whether I would or no. If I discovered it,
the least thing I could expect was to lose 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
insufferable 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, who
would have been neither a husband nor a brother; 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, as he thought himself, 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 more, but had no more children.
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
easily understand, joined with what I had heard myself, of my first
tutors, that in her younger days she had been both whore and thief; but
I verily believed 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, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everything
went wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husband
grew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind, and I was as
impatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage was unreasonable and
unjust. These things proceeded so far, that 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, viz. that if I found the country not to agree with me, or
that 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 in the world 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 pretense 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 as a husband.
I loathed the thoughts of bedding with him, and used a thousand
pretenses of illness and humour to prevent his touching me, fearing
nothing more than to be with child by him, 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; in short, I should not go to England; and though he
had promised me, yet it was an unreasonable thing for me to desire it;
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 work
of laying up an estate for his children, 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, nor did it seem possible.
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 to be brought up by
strangers, 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 to myself, while I knew that the
whole relation was unnatural in the highest degree in the world.
However, it was plain there was no bringing my husband to anything; he
would neither go with me nor let me go without him, and it was quite
out of my power to stir without his consent, as any one that knows the
constitution of the country I was in, knows very well.
We had many family quarrels about it, and they began in time to grow up
to a dangerous height; for as I was quite estranged from my husband (as
he was called) in affection, so I took no heed to my words, but
sometimes gave him language that was provoking; and, in short, strove
all I could to bring him to a parting with me, which was what above all
things in the world 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 madhouse. 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 madhouse, which would at once have destroyed all the
possibility of breaking the truth out, whatever the occasion might be;
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, and took me many months to resolve. In the
meantime, another quarrel with my husband happened, which came up to
such a mad 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 loth to use violence with me, but 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, though I knew what he had said
was very true, and nothing could appear more provoked. I told him, for
his fair means and his foul, they were equally contemned 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, for his further consideration, 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 thunderstruck, 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 run and fetch something
for him 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, as he had been indeed all night, 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 the real particulars of
it; all that ran in his brain was, that I had another husband alive,
which I could not say in fact might not be true, but I assured him,
however, there was not the least of that in it; and indeed, as to my
other husband, he was effectually dead in law 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 these words
only as the effect of my passion, 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, but it was
all to no purpose.
At length he tells all this story to his mother, and sets her upon me
to get the main secret out of me, and she used her utmost skill with me
indeed; but I put her to a full stop at once by telling her that the
reason and mystery of the whole matter lay in herself, and that it was
my respect to her that 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 dared 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
the same 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 to 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 own
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 for ever! Miserable family! what will
become of us? What is to be said? What is to be done?” And thus she ran
on for 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 on our thoughts 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 to me at parting, 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 and set her to rights 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, nor see 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 expose my mother and me to the last degree; 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; the
children would be ruined too, having no legal claim to any of his
effects; 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.
My mother was as sensible of this as I; and, upon the whole, we knew
not what to do. After some time we came to more sober resolutions, but
then it was with this misfortune too, that my mother’s opinion and mine
were quite different from one another, and indeed inconsistent with one
another; for my mother’s opinion was, that I should bury the whole
thing entirely, and continue to live with him as my husband till some
other event should make the discovery of it more convenient; and that
in the meantime she would endeavour to reconcile us together again, and
restore our mutual comfort and family peace; that we might lie as we
used to do together, and so let the whole matter remain a secret as
close as death. “For, child,” says she, “we are both undone if it comes
out.”
To encourage me to this, she promised to make me easy in my
circumstances, as far as she was able, and to leave me what she could
at her death, secured for me separately from my husband; so that if it
should come out afterwards, I should not be left destitute, but be able
to stand on my own feet and procure justice from him.
This proposal did not agree at all with my judgment of the thing,
though it was very fair and kind in my mother; but my thoughts ran
quite another way.
As to keeping the thing in our own breasts, and letting it all remain
as it was, I told her it was impossible; and I asked her how she could
think I could bear the thoughts of lying with my own brother. In the
next place, I told her that her being alive was the only support of the
discovery, and that while she owned me for her child, and saw reason to
be satisfied that I was so, nobody else would doubt it; but that if she
should die before the discovery, I should be taken for an impudent
creature that had forged such a thing to go away from my husband, or
should be counted crazed and distracted. Then I told her how he had
threatened already to put me into a madhouse, and what concern I had
been in about it, and how that was the thing that drove me to the
necessity of discovering it to her as I had done.
From all which I told her, that I had, on the most serious reflections
I was able to make in the case, come to this resolution, which I hoped
she would like, as a medium between both, viz. that she should use her
endeavours with her son to give me leave to go to England, as I had
desired, and to furnish me with a sufficient sum of money, either in
goods along with me, or in bills for my support there, all along
suggesting that he might one time or other think it proper to come over
to me.
That when I was gone, she should then, in cold blood, and after first
obliging him in the solemnest manner possible to secrecy, discover the
case to him, doing it gradually, and as her own discretion should guide
her, so that he might not be surprised with it, and fly out into any
passions and excesses on my account, or on hers; and that she should
concern herself to prevent his slighting the children, or marrying
again, unless he had a certain account of my being dead.
This was my scheme, and my reasons were good; I was really alienated
from him in the consequences of these things; indeed, I mortally hated
him as a husband, and it was impossible to remove that riveted aversion
I had to him. At the same time, it being an unlawful, incestuous
living, added to that aversion, and though I had no great concern about
it in point of conscience, yet everything added to make cohabiting with
him the most nauseous thing to me in the world; and I think verily it
was come to such a height, that I could almost as willingly have
embraced a dog as have let him offer anything of that kind to me, for
which reason I could not bear the thoughts of coming between the sheets
with him. I cannot say that I was right in point of policy in carrying
it such a length, while at the same time I did not resolve to discover
the thing to him; but I am giving an account of what was, not of what
ought or ought not to be.
In their directly opposite opinion to one another my mother and I
continued a long time, and it was impossible to reconcile our
judgments; many disputes we had about it, but we could never either of
us yield our own, or bring over the other.
I insisted on my aversion to lying with my own brother, and she
insisted upon its being impossible to bring him to consent to my going
from him to England; and in this uncertainty we continued, not
differing so as to quarrel, or anything like it, but so as not to be
able to resolve what we should do to make up that terrible breach that
was before us.
At last I resolved on a desperate course, and told my mother my
resolution, viz. that, in short, I would tell him of it myself. My
mother was frighted to the last degree at the very thoughts of it; but
I bid her be easy, told her I would do it gradually and softly, and
with all the art and good-humour I was mistress of, and time it also as
well as I could, taking him in good-humour too. I told her I did not
question but, if I could be hypocrite enough to feign more affection to
him than I really had, I should succeed in all my design, and we might
part by consent, and with a good agreement, for I might love him well
enough for a brother, though I could not for a husband.
All this while he lay at my mother to find out, if possible, what was
the meaning of that dreadful expression of mine, as he called it, which
I mentioned before: namely, that I was not his lawful wife, nor my
children his legal children. My mother put him off, told him she could
bring me to no explanations, but found there was something that
disturbed me very much, and she hoped she should get it out of me in
time, and in the meantime recommended to him earnestly to use me more
tenderly, and win me with his usual good carriage; told him of his
terrifying and affrighting me with his threats of sending me to a
madhouse, and the like, and advised him not to make a woman desperate
on any account whatever.
He promised her to soften his behaviour, and bid her assure me that he
loved me as well as ever, and that he had no such design as that of
sending me to a madhouse, whatever he might say in his passion; also he
desired my mother to use the same persuasions to me too, that our
affections might be renewed, and we might lie together in a good
understanding as we used to do.
I found the effects of this treaty presently. My husband’s conduct was
immediately altered, and he was quite another man to me; nothing could
be kinder and more obliging than he was to me upon all occasions; and I
could do no less than make some return to it, which I did as well as I
could, but it was but in an awkward manner at best, for nothing was
more frightful to me than his caresses, and the apprehensions of being
with child again by him was ready to throw me into fits; and this made
me see that there was an absolute necessity of breaking the case to him
without any more delay, which, however, I did with all the caution and
reserve imaginable.
He had continued his altered carriage to me near a month, and we began
to live a new kind of life with one another; and could I have satisfied
myself to have gone on with it, I believe it might have continued as
long as we had continued alive together. One evening, as we were
sitting and talking very friendly together under a little awning, which
served as an arbour at the entrance from our house into the garden, he
was in a very pleasant, agreeable humour, and said abundance of kind
things to me relating to the pleasure of our present good agreement,
and the disorders of our past breach, and what a satisfaction it was to
him that we had room to hope we should never have any more of it.
I fetched a deep sigh, and told him there was nobody in the world could
be more delighted than I was in the good agreement we had always kept
up, or more afflicted with the breach of it, and should be so still;
but I was sorry to tell him that there was an unhappy circumstance in
our case, which lay too close to my heart, and which I knew not how to
break to him, that rendered my part of it very miserable, and took from
me all the comfort of the rest.
He importuned me to tell him what it was. I told him I could not tell
how to do it; that while it was concealed from him I alone was unhappy,
but if he knew it also, we should be both so; and that, therefore, to
keep him in the dark about it was the kindest thing that I could do,
and it was on that account alone that I kept a secret from him, the
very keeping of which, I thought, would first or last be my
destruction.
It is impossible to express his surprise at this relation, and the
double importunity which he used with me to discover it to him. He told
me I could not be called kind to him, nay, I could not be faithful to
him if I concealed it from him. I told him I thought so too, and yet I
could not do it. He went back to what I had said before to him, and
told me he hoped it did not relate to what I had said in my passion,
and that he had resolved to forget all that as the effect of a rash,
provoked spirit. I told him I wished I could forget it all too, but
that it was not to be done, the impression was too deep, and I could
not do it: it was impossible.
He then told me he was resolved not to differ with me in anything, and
that therefore he would importune me no more about it, resolving to
acquiesce in whatever I did or said; only begged I should then agree,
that whatever it was, it should no more interrupt our quiet and our
mutual kindness.
This was the most provoking thing he could have said to me, for I
really wanted his further importunities, that I might be prevailed with
to bring out that which indeed it was like death to me to conceal; so I
answered him plainly that I could not say I was glad not to be
importuned, thought I could not tell how to comply. “But come, my
dear,” said I, “what conditions will you make with me upon the opening
this affair to you?”
“Any conditions in the world,” said he, “that you can in reason desire
of me.” “Well,” said I, “come, give it me under your hand, that if you
do not find I am in any fault, or that I am willingly concerned in the
causes of the misfortune that is to follow, you will not blame me, use
me the worse, do me any injury, or make me be the sufferer for that
which is not my fault.”
“That,” says he, “is the most reasonable demand in the world: not to
blame you for that which is not your fault. Give me a pen and ink,”
says he; so I ran in and fetched a pen, ink, and paper, and he wrote
the condition down in the very words I had proposed it, and signed it
with his name. “Well,” says he, “what is next, my dear?”
“Why,” says I, “the next is, that you will not blame me for not
discovering the secret of it to you before I knew it.”
“Very just again,” says he; “with all my heart”; so he wrote down that
also, and signed it.
“Well, my dear,” says I, “then I have but one condition more to make
with you, and that is, that as there is nobody concerned in it but you
and I, you shall not discover it to any person in the world, except
your own mother; and that in all the measures you shall take upon the
discovery, as I am equally concerned in it with you, though as innocent
as yourself, you shall do nothing in a passion, nothing to my prejudice
or to your mother’s prejudice, without my knowledge and consent.”
This a little amazed him, and he wrote down the words distinctly, but
read them over and over before he signed them, hesitating at them
several times, and repeating them: “My mother’s prejudice! and your
prejudice! What mysterious thing can this be?” However, at last he
signed it.
“Well,” says I, “my dear, I’ll ask you no more under your hand; but as
you are to hear the most unexpected and surprising thing that perhaps
ever befell any family in the world, I beg you to promise me you will
receive it with composure and a presence of mind suitable to a man of
sense.”
“I’ll do my utmost,” says he, “upon condition you will keep me no
longer in suspense, for you terrify me with all these preliminaries.”
“Well, then,” says I, “it is this: as I told you before in a heat, that
I was not your lawful wife, and that our children were not legal
children, so I must let you know now in calmness and in kindness, but
with affliction enough, that I am your own sister, and you my own
brother, and that we are both the children of our mother now alive, and
in the house, who is convinced of the truth of it, in a manner not to
be denied or contradicted.”
I saw him turn pale and look wild; and I said, “Now remember your
promise, and receive it with presence of mind; for who could have said
more to prepare you for it than I have done?” However, I called a
servant, and got him a little glass of rum (which is the usual dram of
that country), for he was just fainting away. When he was a little
recovered, I said to him, “This story, you may be sure, requires a long
explanation, and therefore, have patience and compose your mind to hear
it out, and I’ll make it as short as I can”; and with this, I told him
what I thought was needful of the fact, and particularly how my mother
came to discover it to me, as above. “And now, my dear,” says I, “you
will see reason for my capitulations, and that I neither have been the
cause of this matter, nor could be so, and that I could know nothing of
it before now.”
“I am fully satisfied of that,” says he, “but ’tis a dreadful surprise
to me; however, I know a remedy for it all, and a remedy that shall put
an end to your difficulties, without your going to England.” “That
would be strange,” said I, “as all the rest.” “No, no,” says he, “I’ll
make it easy; there’s nobody in the way of it but myself.” He looked a
little disordered when he said this, but I did not apprehend anything
from it at that time, believing, as it used to be said, that they who
do those things never talk of them, or that they who talk of such
things never do them.
But things were not come to their height with him, and I observed he
became pensive and melancholy; and in a word, as I thought, a little
distempered in his head. I endeavoured to talk him into temper, and to
reason him into a kind of scheme for our government in the affair, and
sometimes he would be well, and talk with some courage about it; but
the weight of it lay too heavy upon his thoughts, and, in short, it
went so far that he made attempts upon himself, and in one of them had
actually strangled himself and had not his mother come into the room in
the very moment, he had died; but with the help of a Negro servant she
cut him down and recovered him.
Things were now come to a lamentable height in the family. My pity for
him now began to revive that affection which at first I really had for
him, and I endeavoured sincerely, by all the kind carriage I could, to
make up the breach; but, in short, it had gotten too great a head, it
preyed upon his spirits, and it threw him into a long, lingering
consumption, though it happened not to be mortal. In this distress I
did not know what to do, as his life was apparently declining, and I
might perhaps have married again there, very much to my advantage; it
had been certainly my business to have stayed in the country, but my
mind was restless too, and uneasy; I hankered after coming to England,
and nothing would satisfy me without it.
In short, by an unwearied importunity, my husband, who was apparently
decaying, as I observed, was at last prevailed with; and so my own fate
pushing me on, the way was made clear for me, and my mother concurring,
I obtained a very good cargo for my coming to England.
When I parted with my brother (for such I am now to call him), we
agreed that after I arrived he should pretend to have an account that I
was dead in England, and so might marry again when he would. He
promised, and engaged to me to correspond with me as a sister, and to
assist and support me as long as I lived; and that if he died before
me, he would leave sufficient to his mother to take care of me still,
in the name of a sister, and he was in some respects careful of me,
when he heard of me; but it was so oddly managed that I felt the
disappointments very sensibly afterwards, as you shall hear in its
time.
I came away for England in the month of August, after I had been eight
years in that country; and now a new scene of misfortunes attended me,
which perhaps few women have gone through the life of.
We had an indifferent good voyage till we came just upon the coast of
England, and where we arrived in two-and-thirty days, but were then
ruffled with two or three storms, one of which drove us away to the
coast of Ireland, and we put in at Kinsdale. We remained there about
thirteen days, got some refreshment on shore, and put to sea again,
though we met with very bad weather again, in which the ship sprung her
mainmast, as they called it, for I knew not what they meant. But we got
at last into Milford Haven, in Wales, where, though it was remote from
our port, yet having my foot safe upon the firm ground of my native
country, the isle of Britain, I resolved to venture it no more upon the
waters, which had been so terrible to me; so getting my clothes and
money on shore, with my bills of loading and other papers, I resolved
to come for London, and leave the ship to get to her port as she could;
the port whither she was bound was to Bristol, where my brother’s chief
correspondent lived.
I got to London in about three weeks, where I heard a little while
after that the ship was arrived in Bristol, but at the same time had
the misfortune to know that by the violent weather she had been in, and
the breaking of her mainmast, she had great damage on board, and that a
great part of her cargo was spoiled.
I had now a new scene of life upon my hands, and a dreadful appearance
it had. I was come away with a kind of final farewell. What I brought
with me was indeed considerable, had it come safe, and by the help of
it, I might have married again tolerably well; but as it was, I was
reduced to between two or three hundred pounds in the whole, and this
without any hope of recruit. I was entirely without friends, nay, even
so much as without acquaintance, for I found it was absolutely
necessary not to revive former acquaintances; and as for my subtle
friend that set me up formerly for a fortune, she was dead, and her
husband also; as I was informed, upon sending a person unknown to
inquire.
The looking after my cargo of goods soon after obliged me to take a
journey to Bristol, and during my attendance upon that affair I took
the diversion of going to the Bath, for as I was still far from being
old, so my humour, which was always gay, continued so to an extreme;
and being now, as it were, a woman of fortune though I was a woman
without a fortune, I expected something or other might happen in my way
that might mend my circumstances, as had been my case before.
The Bath is a place of gallantry enough; expensive, and full of snares.
I went thither, indeed, in the view of taking anything that might
offer, but I must do myself justice, as to protest I knew nothing
amiss; I meant nothing but in an honest way, nor had I any thoughts
about me at first that looked the way which afterwards I suffered them
to be guided.
Here I stayed the whole latter season, as it is called there, and
contracted some unhappy acquaintances, which rather prompted the
follies I fell afterwards into than fortified me against them. I lived
pleasantly enough, kept good company, that is to say, gay, fine
company; but had the discouragement to find this way of living sunk me
exceedingly, and that as I had no settled income, so spending upon the
main stock was but a certain kind of bleeding to death; and this gave
me many sad reflections in the interval of my other thoughts. However,
I shook them off, and still flattered myself that something or other
might offer for my advantage.
But I was in the wrong place for it. I was not now at Redriff, where,
if I had set myself tolerably up, some honest sea captain or other
might have talked with me upon the honourable terms of matrimony; but I
was at the Bath, where men find a mistress sometimes, but very rarely
look for a wife; and consequently all the particular acquaintances a
woman can expect to make there must have some tendency that way.
I had spent the first season well enough; for though I had contracted
some acquaintance with a gentleman who came to the Bath for his
diversion, yet I had entered into no felonious treaty, as it might be
called. I had resisted some casual offers of gallantry, and had managed
that way well enough. I was not wicked enough to come into the crime
for the mere vice of it, and I had no extraordinary offers made me that
tempted me with the main thing which I wanted.
However, I went this length the first season, viz. I contracted an
acquaintance with a woman in whose house I lodged, who, though she did
not keep an ill house, as we call it, yet had none of the best
principles in herself. I had on all occasions behaved myself so well as
not to get the least slur upon my reputation on any account whatever,
and all the men that I had conversed with were of so good reputation
that I had not given the least reflection by conversing with them; nor
did any of them seem to think there was room for a wicked
correspondence, if they had any of them offered it; yet there was one
gentleman, as above, who always singled me out for the diversion of my
company, as he called it, which, as he was pleased to say, was very
agreeable to him, but at that time there was no more in it.
I had many melancholy hours at the Bath after the company was gone; for
though I went to Bristol sometime for the disposing my effects, and for
recruits of money, yet I chose to come back to Bath for my residence,
because being on good terms with the woman in whose house I lodged in
the summer, I found that during the winter I lived rather cheaper there
than I could do anywhere else. Here, I say, I passed the winter as
heavily as I had passed the autumn cheerfully; but having contracted a
nearer intimacy with the said woman in whose house I lodged, I could
not avoid communicating to her something of what lay hardest upon my
mind and particularly the narrowness of my circumstances, and the loss
of my fortune by the damage of my goods at sea. I told her also, that I
had a mother and a brother in Virginia in good circumstances; and as I
had really written back to my mother in particular to represent my
condition, and the great loss I had received, which indeed came to
almost £500, so I did not fail to let my new friend know that I
expected a supply from thence, and so indeed I did; and as the ships
went from Bristol to York River, in Virginia, and back again generally
in less time from London, and that my brother corresponded chiefly at
Bristol, I thought it was much better for me to wait here for my
returns than to go to London, where also I had not the least
acquaintance.
My new friend appeared sensibly affected with my condition, and indeed
was so very kind as to reduce the rate of my living with her to so low
a price during the winter, that she convinced me she got nothing by me;
and as for lodging, during the winter I paid nothing at all.
When the spring season came on, she continued to be as kind to me as
she could, and I lodged with her for a time, till it was found
necessary to do otherwise. She had some persons of character that
frequently lodged in her house, and in particular the gentleman who, as
I said, singled me out for his companion the winter before; and he came
down again with another gentleman in his company and two servants, and
lodged in the same house. I suspected that my landlady had invited him
thither, letting him know that I was still with her; but she denied it,
and protested to me that she did not, and he said the same.
In a word, this gentleman came down and continued to single me out for
his peculiar confidence as well as conversation. He was a complete
gentleman, that must be confessed, and his company was very agreeable
to me, as mine, if I might believe him, was to him. He made no
professions to me but of an extraordinary respect, and he had such an
opinion of my virtue, that, as he often professed, he believed if he
should offer anything else, I should reject him with contempt. He soon
understood from me that I was a widow; that I had arrived at Bristol
from Virginia by the last ships; and that I waited at Bath till the
next Virginia fleet should arrive, by which I expected considerable
effects. I understood by him, and by others of him, that he had a wife,
but that the lady was distempered in her head, and was under the
conduct of her own relations, which he consented to, to avoid any
reflections that might (as was not unusual in such cases) be cast on
him for mismanaging her cure; and in the meantime he came to the Bath
to divert his thoughts from the disturbance of such a melancholy
circumstance as that was.
My landlady, who of her own accord encouraged the correspondence on all
occasions, gave me an advantageous character of him, as a man of honour
and of virtue, as well as of great estate. And indeed I had a great
deal of reason to say so of him too; for though we lodged both on a
floor, and he had frequently come into my chamber, even when I was in
bed, and I also into his when he was in bed, yet he never offered
anything to me further than a kiss, or so much as solicited me to
anything till long after, as you shall hear.
I frequently took notice to my landlady of his exceeding modesty, and
she again used to tell me, she believed it was so from the beginning;
however, she used to tell me that she thought I ought to expect some
gratification from him for my company, for indeed he did, as it were,
engross me, and I was seldom from him. I told her I had not given him
the least occasion to think I wanted it, or that I would accept of it
from him. She told me she would take that part upon her, and she did
so, and managed it so dexterously, that the first time we were together
alone, after she had talked with him, he began to inquire a little into
my circumstances, as how I had subsisted myself since I came on shore,
and whether I did not want money. I stood off very boldly. I told him
that though my cargo of tobacco was damaged, yet that it was not quite
lost; that the merchant I had been consigned to had so honestly managed
for me that I had not wanted, and that I hoped, with frugal management,
I should make it hold out till more would come, which I expected by the
next fleet; that in the meantime I had retrenched my expenses, and
whereas I kept a maid last season, now I lived without; and whereas I
had a chamber and a dining-room then on the first floor, as he knew, I
now had but one room, two pair of stairs, and the like. “But I live,”
said I, “as well satisfied now as I did then”; adding, that his company
had been a means to make me live much more cheerfully than otherwise I
should have done, for which I was much obliged to him; and so I put off
all room for any offer for the present. However, it was not long before
he attacked me again, and told me he found that I was backward to trust
him with the secret of my circumstances, which he was sorry for;
assuring me that he inquired into it with no design to satisfy his own
curiosity, but merely to assist me, if there was any occasion; but
since I would not own myself to stand in need of any assistance, he had
but one thing more to desire of me, and that was, that I would promise
him that when I was any way straitened, or like to be so, I would
frankly tell him of it, and that I would make use of him with the same
freedom that he made the offer; adding, that I should always find I had
a true friend, though perhaps I was afraid to trust him.
I omitted nothing that was fit to be said by one infinitely obliged, to
let him know that I had a due sense of his kindness; and indeed from
that time I did not appear so much reserved to him as I had done
before, though still within the bounds of the strictest virtue on both
sides; but how free soever our conversation was, I could not arrive to
that sort of freedom which he desired, viz. to tell him I wanted money,
though I was secretly very glad of his offer.
Some weeks passed after this, and still I never asked him for money;
when my landlady, a cunning creature, who had often pressed me to it,
but found that I could not do it, makes a story of her own inventing,
and comes in bluntly to me when we were together. “Oh, widow!” says
she, “I have bad news to tell you this morning.” “What is that?” said
I; “are the Virginia ships taken by the French?”—for that was my fear.
“No, no,” says she, “but the man you sent to Bristol yesterday for
money is come back, and says he has brought none.”
Now I could by no means like her project; I thought it looked too much
like prompting him, which indeed he did not want, and I clearly saw
that I should lose nothing by being backward to ask, so I took her up
short. “I can’t image why he should say so to you,” said I, “for I
assure you he brought me all the money I sent him for, and here it is,”
said I (pulling out my purse with about twelve guineas in it); and
added, “I intend you shall have most of it by and by.”
He seemed distasted a little at her talking as she did at first, as
well as I, taking it, as I fancied he would, as something forward of
her; but when he saw me give such an answer, he came immediately to
himself again. The next morning we talked of it again, when I found he
was fully satisfied, and, smiling, said he hoped I would not want money
and not tell him of it, and that I had promised him otherwise. I told
him I had been very much dissatisfied at my landlady’s talking so
publicly the day before of what she had nothing to do with; but I
supposed she wanted what I owed her, which was about eight guineas,
which I had resolved to give her, and had accordingly given it her the
same night she talked so foolishly.
He was in a mighty good humour when he heard me say I had paid her, and
it went off into some other discourse at that time. But the next
morning, he having heard me up about my room before him, he called to
me, and I answering, he asked me to come into his chamber. He was in
bed when I came in, and he made me come and sit down on his bedside,
for he said he had something to say to me which was of some moment.
After some very kind expressions, he asked me if I would be very honest
to him, and give a sincere answer to one thing he would desire of me.
After some little cavil at the word “sincere,” and asking him if I had
ever given him any answers which were not sincere, I promised him I
would. Why, then, his request was, he said, to let him see my purse. I
immediately put my hand into my pocket, and, laughing to him, pulled it
out, and there was in it three guineas and a half. Then he asked me if
there was all the money I had. I told him No, laughing again, not by a
great deal.
Well, then, he said, he would have me promise to go and fetch him all
the money I had, every farthing. I told him I would, and I went into my
chamber and fetched him a little private drawer, where I had about six
guineas more, and some silver, and threw it all down upon the bed, and
told him there was all my wealth, honestly to a shilling. He looked a
little at it, but did not tell it, and huddled it all into the drawer
again, and then reaching his pocket, pulled out a key, and bade me open
a little walnut-tree box he had upon the table, and bring him such a
drawer, which I did. In which drawer there was a great deal of money in
gold, I believe near two hundred guineas, but I knew not how much. He
took the drawer, and taking my hand, made me put it in and take a whole
handful. I was backward at that, but he held my hand hard in his hand,
and put it into the drawer, and made me take out as many guineas almost
as I could well take up at once.
When I had done so, he made me put them into my lap, and took my little
drawer, and poured out all my money among his, and bade me get me gone,
and carry it all home into my own chamber.
I relate this story the more particularly because of the good-humour
there was in it, and to show the temper with which we conversed. It was
not long after this but he began every day to find fault with my
clothes, with my laces and headdresses, and, in a word, pressed me to
buy better; which, by the way, I was willing enough to do, though I did
not seem to be so, for I loved nothing in the world better than fine
clothes. I told him I must housewife the money he had lent me, or else
I should not be able to pay him again. He then told me, in a few words,
that as he had a sincere respect for me, and knew my circumstances, he
had not lent me that money, but given it me, and that he thought I had
merited it from him by giving him my company so entirely as I had done.
After this he made me take a maid, and keep house, and his friend that
come with him to Bath being gone, he obliged me to diet him, which I
did very willingly, believing, as it appeared, that I should lose
nothing by it, nor did the woman of the house fail to find her account
in it too.
We had lived thus near three months, when the company beginning to wear
away at the Bath, he talked of going away, and fain he would have me to
go to London with him. I was not very easy in that proposal, not
knowing what posture I was to live in there, or how he might use me.
But while this was in debate he fell very sick; he had gone out to a
place in Somersetshire, called Shepton, where he had some business and
was there taken very ill, and so ill that he could not travel; so he
sent his man back to Bath, to beg me that I would hire a coach and come
over to him. Before he went, he had left all his money and other things
of value with me, and what to do with them I did not know, but I
secured them as well as I could, and locked up the lodgings and went to
him, where I found him very ill indeed; however, I persuaded him to be
carried in a litter to the Bath, where there was more help and better
advice to be had.
He consented, and I brought him to the Bath, which was about fifteen
miles, as I remember. Here he continued very ill of a fever, and kept
his bed five weeks, all which time I nursed him and tended him myself,
as much and as carefully as if I had been his wife; indeed, if I had
been his wife I could not have done more. I sat up with him so much and
so often, that at last, indeed, he would not let me sit up any longer,
and then I got a pallet-bed into his room, and lay in it just at his
bed’s feet.
I was indeed sensibly affected with his condition, and with the
apprehension of losing such a friend as he was, and was like to be to
me, and I used to sit and cry by him many hours together. However, at
last he grew better, and gave hopes that he would recover, as indeed he
did, though very slowly.
Were it otherwise than what I am going to say, I should not be backward
to disclose it, as it is apparent I have done in other cases in this
account; but I affirm, that through all this conversation, abating the
freedom of coming into the chamber when I or he was in bed, and abating
the necessary offices of attending him night and day when he was sick,
there had not passed the least immodest word or action between us. Oh
that it had been so to the last!
After some time he gathered strength and grew well apace, and I would
have removed my pallet-bed, but he would not let me, till he was able
to venture himself without anybody to sit up with him, and then I
removed to my own chamber.
He took many occasions to express his sense of my tenderness and
concern for him; and when he grew quite well, he made me a present of
fifty guineas for my care and, as he called it, for hazarding my life
to save his.
And now he made deep protestations of a sincere inviolable affection
for me, but all along attested it to be with the utmost reserve for my
virtue and his own. I told him I was fully satisfied of it. He carried
it that length that he protested to me, that if he was naked in bed
with me, he would as sacredly preserve my virtue as he would defend it
if I was assaulted by a ravisher. I believed him, and told him I did
so; but this did not satisfy him, he would, he said, wait for some
opportunity to give me an undoubted testimony of it.
It was a great while after this that I had occasion, on my own
business, to go to Bristol, upon which he hired me a coach, and would
go with me, and did so; and now indeed our intimacy increased. From
Bristol he carried me to Gloucester, which was merely a journey of
pleasure, to take the air; and here it was our hap to have no lodging
in the inn but in one large chamber with two beds in it. The master of
the house going up with us to show his rooms, and coming into that
room, said very frankly to him, “Sir, it is none of my business to
inquire whether the lady be your spouse or no, but if not, you may lie
as honestly in these two beds as if you were in two chambers,” and with
that he pulls a great curtain which drew quite across the room and
effectually divided the beds. “Well,” says my friend, very readily,
“these beds will do, and as for the rest, we are too near akin to lie
together, though we may lodge near one another”; and this put an honest
face on the thing too. When we came to go to bed, he decently went out
of the room till I was in bed, and then went to bed in the bed on his
own side of the room, but lay there talking to me a great while.
At last, repeating his usual saying, that he could lie naked in the bed
with me and not offer me the least injury, he starts out of his bed.
“And now, my dear,” says he, “you shall see how just I will be to you,
and that I can keep my word,” and away he comes to my bed.
I resisted a little, but I must confess I should not have resisted him
much if he had not made those promises at all; so after a little
struggle, as I said, I lay still and let him come to bed. When he was
there he took me in his arms, and so I lay all night with him, but he
had no more to do with me, or offered anything to me, other than
embracing me, as I say, in his arms, no, not the whole night, but rose
up and dressed him in the morning, and left me as innocent for him as I
was the day I was born.
This was a surprising thing to me, and perhaps may be so to others, who
know how the laws of nature work; for he was a strong, vigorous, brisk
person; nor did he act thus on a principle of religion at all, but of
mere affection; insisting on it, that though I was to him the most
agreeable woman in the world, yet, because he loved me, he could not
injure me.
I own it was a noble principle, but as it was what I never understood
before, so it was to me perfectly amazing. We traveled the rest of the
journey as we did before, and came back to the Bath, where, as he had
opportunity to come to me when he would, he often repeated the
moderation, and I frequently lay with him, and he with me, and although
all the familiarities between man and wife were common to us, yet he
never once offered to go any farther, and he valued himself much upon
it. I do not say that I was so wholly pleased with it as he thought I
was, for I own much wickeder than he, as you shall hear presently.
We lived thus near two years, only with this exception, that he went
three times to London in that time, and once he continued there four
months; but, to do him justice, he always supplied me with money to
subsist me very handsomely.
Had we continued thus, I confess we had had much to boast of; but as
wise men say, it is ill venturing too near the brink of a command, so
we found it; and here again I must do him the justice to own that the
first breach was not on his part. It was one night that we were in bed
together warm and merry, and having drunk, I think, a little more wine
that night, both of us, than usual, although not in the least to
disorder either of us, when, after some other follies which I cannot
name, and being clasped close in his arms, I told him (I repeat it with
shame and horror of soul) that I could find in my heart to discharge
him of his engagement for one night and no more.
He took me at my word immediately, and after that there was no
resisting him; neither indeed had I any mind to resist him any more,
let what would come of it.
Thus the government of our virtue was broken, and I exchanged the place
of friend for that unmusical, harsh-sounding title of whore. In the
morning we were both at our penitentials; I cried very heartily, he
expressed himself very sorry; but that was all either of us could do at
that time, and the way being thus cleared, and the bars of virtue and
conscience thus removed, we had the less difficult afterwards to
struggle with.
It was but a dull kind of conversation that we had together for all the
rest of that week; I looked on him with blushes, and every now and then
started that melancholy objection, “What if I should be with child now?
What will become of me then?” He encouraged me by telling me, that as
long as I was true to him, he would be so to me; and since it was gone
such a length (which indeed he never intended), yet if I was with
child, he would take care of that, and of me too. This hardened us
both. I assured him if I was with child, I would die for want of a
midwife rather than name him as the father of it; and he assured me I
should never want if I should be with child. These mutual assurances
hardened us in the thing, and after this we repeated the crime as often
as we pleased, till at length, as I had feared, so it came to pass, and
I was indeed with child.
After I was sure it was so, and I had satisfied him of it too, we began
to think of taking measures for the managing it, and I proposed
trusting the secret to my landlady, and asking her advice, which he
agreed to. My landlady, a woman (as I found) used to such things, made
light of it; she said she knew it would come to that at last, and made
us very merry about it. As I said above, we found her an experienced
old lady at such work; she undertook everything, engaged to procure a
midwife and a nurse, to satisfy all inquiries, and bring us off with
reputation, and she did so very dexterously indeed.
When I grew near my time she desired my gentleman to go away to London,
or make as if he did so. When he was gone, she acquainted the parish
officers that there was a lady ready to lie in at her house, but that
she knew her husband very well, and gave them, as she pretended, an
account of his name, which she called Sir Walter Cleve; telling them he
was a very worthy gentleman, and that she would answer for all
inquiries, and the like. This satisfied the parish officers presently,
and I lay in with as much credit as I could have done if I had really
been my Lady Cleve, and was assisted in my travail by three or four of
the best citizens’ wives of Bath who lived in the neighbourhood, which,
however, made me a little the more expensive to him. I often expressed
my concern to him about it, but he bid me not be concerned at it.
As he had furnished me very sufficiently with money for the
extraordinary expenses of my lying in, I had everything very handsome
about me, but did not affect to be gay or extravagant neither; besides,
knowing my own circumstances, and knowing the world as I had done, and
that such kind of things do not often last long, I took care to lay up
as much money as I could for a wet day, as I called it; making him
believe it was all spent upon the extraordinary appearance of things in
my lying in.
By this means, and including what he had given me as above, I had at
the end of my lying in about two hundred guineas by me, including also
what was left of my own.
I was brought to bed of a fine boy indeed, and a charming child it was;
and when he heard of it he wrote me a very kind, obliging letter about
it, and then told me, he thought it would look better for me to come
away for London as soon as I was up and well; that he had provided
apartments for me at Hammersmith, as if I came thither only from
London; and that after a little while I should go back to the Bath, and
he would go with me.
I liked this offer very well, and accordingly hired a coach on purpose,
and taking my child, and a wet-nurse to tend and suckle it, and a
maid-servant with me, away I went for London.
He met me at Reading in his own chariot, and taking me into that, left
the servant and the child in the hired coach, and so he brought me to
my new lodgings at Hammersmith; with which I had abundance of reason to
be very well pleased, for they were very handsome rooms, and I was very
well accommodated.
And now I was indeed in the height of what I might call my prosperity,
and I wanted nothing but to be a wife, which, however, could not be in
this case, there was no room for it; and therefore on all occasions I
studied to save what I could, as I have said above, against a time of
scarcity, knowing well enough that such things as these do not always
continue; that men that keep mistresses often change them, grow weary
of them, or jealous of them, or something or other happens to make them
withdraw their bounty; and sometimes the ladies that are thus well used
are not careful by a prudent conduct to preserve the esteem of their
persons, or the nice article of their fidelity, and then they are
justly cast off with contempt.
But I was secured in this point, for as I had no inclination to change,
so I had no manner of acquaintance in the whole house, and so no
temptation to look any farther. I kept no company but in the family
when I lodged, and with the clergyman’s lady at next door; so that when
he was absent I visited nobody, nor did he ever find me out of my
chamber or parlour whenever he came down; if I went anywhere to take
the air, it was always with him.
The living in this manner with him, and his with me, was certainly the
most undesigned thing in the world; he often protested to me, that when
he became first acquainted with me, and even to the very night when we
first broke in upon our rules, he never had the least design of lying
with me; that he always had a sincere affection for me, but not the
least real inclination to do what he had done. I assured him I never
suspected him; that if I had I should not so easily have yielded to the
freedom which brought it on, but that it was all a surprise, and was
owing to the accident of our having yielded too far to our mutual
inclinations that night; and indeed I have often observed since, and
leave it as a caution to the readers of this story, that we ought to be
cautious of gratifying our inclinations in loose and lewd freedoms,
lest we find our resolutions of virtue fail us in the junction when
their assistance should be most necessary.
It is true, and I have confessed it before, that from the first hour I
began to converse with him, I resolved to let him lie with me, if he
offered it; but it was because I wanted his help and assistance, and I
knew no other way of securing him than that. But when we were that
night together, and, as I have said, had gone such a length, I found my
weakness; the inclination was not to be resisted, but I was obliged to
yield up all even before he asked it.
However, he was so just to me that he never upbraided me with that; nor
did he ever express the least dislike of my conduct on any other
occasion, but always protested he was as much delighted with my company
as he was the first hour we came together: I mean, came together as
bedfellows.
It is true that he had no wife, that is to say, she was as no wife to
him, and so I was in no danger that way, but the just reflections of
conscience oftentimes snatch a man, especially a man of sense, from the
arms of a mistress, as it did him at last, though on another occasion.
On the other hand, though I was not without secret reproaches of my own
conscience for the life I led, and that even in the greatest height of
the satisfaction I ever took, yet I had the terrible prospect of
poverty and starving, which lay on me as a frightful spectre, so that
there was no looking behind me. But as poverty brought me into it, so
fear of poverty kept me in it, and I frequently resolved to leave it
quite off, if I could but come to lay up money enough to maintain me.
But these were thoughts of no weight, and whenever he came to me they
vanished; for his company was so delightful, that there was no being
melancholy when he was there; the reflections were all the subject of
those hours when I was alone.
I lived six years in this happy but unhappy condition, in which time I
brought him three children, but only the first of them lived; and
though I removed twice in those six years, yet I came back the sixth
year to my first lodgings at Hammersmith. Here it was that I was one
morning surprised with a kind but melancholy letter from my gentleman,
intimating that he was very ill, and was afraid he should have another
fit of sickness, but that his wife’s relations being in the house with
him, it would not be practicable to have me with him, which, however,
he expressed his great dissatisfaction in, and that he wished I could
be allowed to tend and nurse him as I did before.
I was very much concerned at this account, and was very impatient to
know how it was with him. I waited a fortnight or thereabouts, and
heard nothing, which surprised me, and I began to be very uneasy
indeed. I think, I may say, that for the next fortnight I was near to
distracted. It was my particular difficulty that I did not know
directly where he was; for I understood at first he was in the lodgings
of his wife’s mother; but having removed myself to London, I soon
found, by the help of the direction I had for writing my letters to
him, how to inquire after him, and there I found that he was at a house
in Bloomsbury, whither he had, a little before he fell sick, removed
his whole family; and that his wife and wife’s mother were in the same
house, though the wife was not suffered to know that she was in the
same house with her husband.
Here I also soon understood that he was at the last extremity, which
made me almost at the last extremity too, to have a true account. One
night I had the curiosity to disguise myself like a servant-maid, in a
round cap and straw hat, and went to the door, as sent by a lady of his
neighbourhood, where he lived before, and giving master and mistress’s
service, I said I was sent to know how Mr. —— did, and how he had
rested that night. In delivering this message I got the opportunity I
desired; for, speaking with one of the maids, I held a long gossip’s
tale with her, and had all the particulars of his illness, which I
found was a pleurisy, attended with a cough and a fever. She told me
also who was in the house, and how his wife was, who, by her relation,
they were in some hopes might recover her understanding; but as to the
gentleman himself, in short she told me the doctors said there was very
little hopes of him, that in the morning they thought he had been
dying, and that he was but little better then, for they did not expect
that he could live over the next night.
This was heavy news for me, and I began now to see an end of my
prosperity, and to see also that it was very well I had played to good
housewife, and secured or saved something while he was alive, for that
now I had no view of my own living before me.
It lay very heavy upon my mind, too, that I had a son, a fine lovely
boy, about five years old, and no provision made for it, at least that
I knew of. With these considerations, and a sad heart, I went home that
evening, and began to cast with myself how I should live, and in what
manner to bestow myself, for the residue of my life.
You may be sure I could not rest without inquiring again very quickly
what was become of him; and not venturing to go myself, I sent several
sham messengers, till after a fortnight’s waiting longer, I found that
there was hopes of his life, though he was still very ill; then I
abated my sending any more to the house, and in some time after I
learned in the neighbourhood that he was about house, and then that he
was abroad again.