MY true name is so well known in the records or registers
at Newgate, and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of
such consequence still depending there, relating to my particular
conduct, that it is not to be expected I should set my name or the
account of my family to this work; perhaps after my death it may be
better known; at present it would not be proper, no, not though a
general pardon should be issued, even without exceptions of persons
or crimes.
It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst
comrades, who are out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out
of the world by the steps and the string, as I often expected to
go), knew me by the name of Moll Flanders, so you may give me leave
to go under that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as
who I am.
I have been told, that in one of our neighbour nations,
whether it be in France, or where else I know not, they have an
order from the king, that when any criminal is condemned, either to
die, or to the galleys, or to be transported, if they leave any
children, as such are generally unprovided for, by the forfeiture
of their parents, so they are immediately taken into the care of
the government, and put into an hospital called the House of
Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed, fed, taught, and when fit
to go out, are placed to trades, or to services, so as to be well
able to provide for themselves by an honest, industrious behaviour.
Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been
left a poor desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without
help or helper, as was my fate; and by which I was not only exposed
to very great distresses, even before I was capable either of
understanding my case, or how to amend it, but brought into a
course of life, scandalous in itself, and which in its ordinary
course tended to the swift destruction both of soul and body.
But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted of
felony for a petty theft, scarce worth naming, viz., borrowing
three pieces of fine holland of a certain draper in Cheapside. The
circumstances are too long to repeat, and I have heard them related
so many ways, that I can scarce tell which is the right account.
However it was, they all agree in this, that my mother
pleaded her belly, and, being found quick with child, she was
respited for about seven months; after which she was called down,
as they term it, to her former judgment, but obtained the favour
afterward of being transported to the plantations, and left me
about half a year old, and in bad hands you may be sure.
This is too near the first hours of my life for me to
relate anything of myself but by hearsay; 'tis enough to mention,
that, as I was born in such an unhappy place, I had no parish to
have recourse to for my nourishment in my infancy; nor can I give
the least account how I was kept alive, other than that, as I have
been told, some relation of my mother took me away, but at whose
expense, or by whose direction, I know nothing at all of it.
The first account that I can recollect, or could ever
learn, of myself, was that I had wandered among a crew of those
people they call gipsies, or Egyptians; but I believe it was but a
little while that I had been among them, for I had not had my skin
discoloured, as they do to all children they carry about with them;
nor can I tell how I came among them, or how I got from them.
It was at Colchester, in Essex, that those people left me,
and I have a notion in my head that I left them there (that is,
that I hid myself and would not go any farther with them), but I am
not able to be particular in that account; only this I remember,
that being taken up by some of the parish officers of Colchester, I
gave an account that I came into the town with the gipsies, but
that I would not go any farther with them, and that so they had
left me, but whither they were gone, that I knew not; for though
they sent round the country to inquire after them, it seems they
could not be found.
I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not
a parish charge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet, as
my case came to be known, and that I was too young to do any work,
being not above three years old, compassion moved the magistrates
of the town to take care of me, and I became one of their own as
much as if I had been born in the place.
In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be
put to nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor, but
had been in better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood
by taking such as I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all
necessaries, till they were at a certain age, in which it might be
supposed they might go to service, or get their own bread.
This woman had also a little school, which she kept to
teach children to read and to work; and having, I say, lived before
that in good fashion, she bred up the children with a great deal of
art, as well as with a great deal of care.
But, which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very
religiously also, being herself a very sober, pious woman;
secondly, very housewifely and clean; and, thirdly, very mannerly,
and with good behaviour. So that, excepting a plain diet, coarse
lodging, and mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly as if we
had been at the dancing-school.
I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was
terrified with news that the magistrates (as I think they called
them) had ordered that, I should go to service. I was able to do
but very little, wherever I was to go, except it was to run of
errands, and be a drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me
often, which put me into a great fright; for I had a thorough
aversion to going to service, as they called it, though I was so
young; and I told my nurse, that I believed I could get my living
without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had
taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the
chief trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me,
I would work for her, and I would work very hard.
I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in
short, I did nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the
good, kind woman so much, that at last she began to be concerned
for me, for she loved me very well.
One day after this, as she came into the room, where all
the poor children were at work, she sat down just over against me,
not in her usual place as mistress, but as if she had set herself
on purpose to observe me and see me work. I was doing something she
had set me to, as I remember it was marking some shirts, which she
had taken to make, and after a while she began to talk to me. 'Thou
foolish child', says she, 'thou art always crying' (for I was
crying then). 'Prithee, what dost cry for?' 'Because they will take
me away', says I, 'and put me to service, and I can't work
house-work.' 'Well, child', says she, 'but though you can't work
house-work, you will learn it in time, and they won't put you to
hard things at first.' 'Yes, they will', says I; 'and if I can't do
it they will beat me, and the maids will beat me to make me do
great work, and I am but a little girl, and I can't do it'; and
then I cried again, till I could not speak any more.
This moved my good, motherly nurse, so that she resolved I
should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would
speak to Mr Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was
bigger.
Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to
service at all was such a frightful thing to me, that if she had
assured me I should not have gone till I was twenty years old, it
would have been the same to me; I should have cried all the time,
with the very apprehension of its being to be so at last.
When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be
angry with me. 'And what would you have?' says she. 'Don't I tell
you that you shall not go to service till you are bigger?' 'Ay',
says I, 'but then I must go at last.' 'Why, what', said she, 'is
the girl mad? What! Would you be a gentlewoman?' 'Yes', says I, and
cried heartily till I roared out again.
This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may
be sure it would. 'Well, madam, forsooth', says she, gibing at me,
'you would be a gentlewoman; and how will you come to be a
gentlewoman? What! will you do it by your fingers' ends?'
'Yes', says I again, very innocently.
'Why, what can you earn', says she; 'what can you get a day
at your work?'
'Threepence', said I, 'when I spin, and fourpence when I
work plain work.'
'Alas! poor gentlewoman', said she again, laughing, 'what
will that do for thee?'
'It will keep me', says I, 'if you will let me live with
you'; and this I said in such a poor, petitioning tone, that it
made the poor woman's heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.
'But', says she, 'that will not keep you and buy you
clothes too; and who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?' says
she, and smiled all the while at me.
'I will work harder then', says I, 'and you shall have it
all.'
'Poor child! it won't keep you', said she; 'it will hardly
find you in victuals.'
'Then I would have no victuals', says I again, very
innocently; 'let me but live with you.'
'Why, can you live without victuals?' says she. 'Yes',
again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still I
cried heartily.
I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all
nature; but it was joined with so much innocence and so much
passion that, in short, it set the good, motherly creature
a-weeping too, and at last she cried as fast as I did, and then
took me and led me out of the teaching-room. 'Come', says she, 'you
shan't go to service; you shall live with me'; and this pacified me
for the present.
After this, she going to wait on the Mayor, my story came
up, and my good nurse told Mr Mayor the whole tale; he was so
pleased with it, that he would call his lady and his two daughters
to hear it, and it made mirth enough among them, you may be sure.
However, not a week had passed over, but on a sudden comes
Mrs Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my old
nurse, and to see her school and the children. When they had looked
about them a little, 'Well, Mrs
--', says the Mayoress to my nurse, 'and pray which is
the little lass that is to be a gentlewoman?' I heard her, and I
was terribly frighted, though I did not know why neither; but Mrs
Mayoress comes up to me, 'Well, miss', says she, 'and what are you
at work upon?' The word miss was a language that had hardly been
heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she
called me; however, I stood up, made a curtsey, and she took my
work out of my hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then
she looked upon one of my hands. 'Nay, she may come to be a
gentlewoman', says she, 'for aught I know; she has a lady's hand, I
assure you.' This pleased me mightily; but Mrs Mayoress did not
stop there, but put her hand in her pocket, gave me a shilling, and
bid me mind my work, and learn to work well, and I might be a
gentlewoman for aught she knew.
All this while my good old nurse, Mrs Mayoress, and all the
rest of them, did not understand me at all, for they meant one sort
of thing by the word gentlewoman, and I meant quite another; for,
alas! all I understood by being a gentlewoman, was to be able to
work for myself, and get enough to keep me without going to
service, whereas they meant to live great and high, and I know not
what.
Well, after Mrs Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came
in, and they called for the gentlewoman too, and they talked a long
while to me, and I answered them in my innocent way; but always, if
they asked me whether I resolved to be a gentlewoman, I answered,
'Yes'. At last they asked me what a gentlewoman was? That puzzled
me much. However, I explained myself negatively, that it was one
that did not go to service, to do house-work; they were mightily
pleased, and liked my little prattle to them, which, it seems, was
agreeable enough to them, and they gave me money too.
As for my money, I gave it all to my mistress-nurse, as I
called her, and told her she should have all I got when I was a
gentlewoman as well as now. By this and some other of my talk, my
old tutoress began to understand what I meant by being a
gentlewoman, and that it was no more than to be able to get my
bread by my own work; and at last she asked me whether it was not
so.
I told her, yes, and insisted on it, that to do so was to
be a gentlewoman; 'for', says I, 'there is such a one', naming a
woman that mended lace and washed the ladies' laced heads; 'she',
says I, 'is a gentlewoman, and they call her madam.'
'Poor child', says my good old nurse, 'you may soon be such
a gentle woman as that, for she is a person of ill fame, and has
had two bastards.'
I did not understand anything of that; but I answered, 'I
am sure they call her madam, and she does not go to service, nor do
house-work'; and therefore I insisted that she was a gentlewoman,
and I would be such a gentlewoman as that.
The ladies were told all this again, and they made
themselves merry with it, and every now and then Mr Mayor's
daughters would come and see me, and ask where the little
gentlewoman was, which made me not a little proud of myself
besides. I was often visited by these young ladies, and sometimes
they brought others with them; so that I was known by it almost all
over the town.
I was now about ten years old, and began to look a little
womanish, for I was mighty grave, very mannerly, and as I had often
heard the ladies say I was pretty, and would be very handsome, you
may be sure it made me not a little proud. However, that pride had
no ill effect upon me yet; only, as they often gave me money, and I
gave it my old nurse, she, honest woman, was so just as to lay it
out again for me, and gave me head dresses, and linen, and gloves,
and I went very neat, for if I had rags on, I would always be
clean, or else I would dabble them in water myself; but, I say, my
good nurse, when I had money given me, very honestly laid it out
for me, and would always tell the ladies this or that was bought
with their money; and this made them give me more, till at last I
was indeed called upon by the magistrates to go out to service. But
then I was become so good a workwoman myself, and the ladies were
so kind to me, that I was past it; for I could earn as much for my
nurse as was enough to keep me; so she told them, that if they
would give her leave, she would keep the gentlewoman, as she called
me, to be her assistant, and teach the children, which I was very
well able to do; for I was very nimble at my work, though I was yet
very young.
But the kindness of the ladies did not end here, for when
they understood that I was no more maintained by the town as
before, they gave me money oftener; and, as I grew up, they brought
me work to do for them, such as linen to make, laces to mend, and
heads to dress up, and not only paid me for doing them, but even
taught me how to do them; so that I was a gentlewoman indeed, as I
understood that word; for before I was twelve years old, I not only
found myself clothes, and paid my nurse for my keeping, but got
money in my pocket too.
The ladies also gave me clothes frequently of their own, or
their children's; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns, some
one thing, some another; and these my old woman managed for me like
a mother, and kept them for me, obliged me to mend them, and turn
them to the best advantage, for she was a rare housewife.
At last one of the ladies took such a fancy to me that she
would have me home to her house, for a month, she said, to be among
her daughters.
Now, though this was exceeding kind in her, yet, as my good
woman said to her, unless she resolved to keep me for good and all,
she would do the little gentlewoman more harm than good. 'Well',
says the lady, 'that's true; I'll only take her home for a week,
then, that I may see how my daughters and she agree, and how I like
her temper, and then I'll tell you more; and in the meantime, if
anybody comes to see her as they used to do, you may only tell them
you have sent her out to my house.'
This was prudently managed enough, and I went to the lady's
house; but I was so pleased there with the young ladies, and they
so pleased with me, that I had enough to do to come away, and they
were as unwilling to part with me.
However, I did come away, and lived almost a year more with
my honest old woman, and began now to be very helpful to her; for I
was almost fourteen years old, was tall of my age, and looked a
little womanish; but I had such a taste of genteel living at the
lady's house that I was not so easy in my old quarters as I used to
be, and I thought it was fine to be a gentlewoman indeed, for I had
quite other notions of a gentlewoman now than I had before; and as
I thought that it was fine to be a gentlewoman, so I loved to be
among gentlewomen, and therefore I longed to be there again.
When I was about fourteen years and a quarter old, my good
old nurse, mother I ought to call her, fell sick and died. I was
then in a sad condition indeed, for, as there is no great bustle in
putting an end to a poor body's family when once they are carried
to the grave, so the poor good woman being buried, the parish
children were immediately removed by the churchwardens; the school
was at an end, and the day children of it had no more to do but
just stay at home till they were sent somewhere else. As for what
she left, a daughter, a married woman, came and swept it all away,
and removing the goods, they had no more to say to me than to jest
with me, and tell me that the little gentlewoman might set up for
herself if she pleased.
I was frighted out of my wits almost, and knew not what to
do; for I was, as it were, turned out of doors to the wide world,
and that which was still worse, the old, honest woman had
two-and-twenty shillings of mine in her hand, which was all the
estate the little gentlewoman had in the world; and, when I asked
the daughter for it, she huffed me, and told me she had nothing to
do with it.
It was true the good, poor woman had told her daughter of
it, and that it lay in such a place, that it was the child's money,
and had called once or twice for me to give it me, but I was
unhappily out of the way, and, when I came back, she was past being
in a condition to speak of it. However, the daughter was so honest
afterwards as to give it me, though at first she used me cruelly
about it.
Now was I a poor gentlewoman indeed, and I was just that
very night to be turned into the wide world; for the daughter
removed all the goods, and I had not so much as a lodging to go to,
or a bit of bread to eat. But it seems some of the neighbours took
so much compassion of me as to acquaint the lady in whose family I
had been; and immediately she sent her maid to fetch me, and away I
went with them bag and baggage, and with a glad heart, you may be
sure. The fright of my condition had made such an impression upon
me that I did not want now to be a gentlewoman, but was very
willing to be a servant, and that any kind of servant they thought
fit to have me be.
But my new generous mistress had better thoughts for me. I
call her generous, for she exceeded the good woman I was with
before in everything, as in estate; I say, in everything except
honesty; and for that, though this was a lady most exactly just,
yet I must not forget to say on all occasions, that the first,
though poor, was as uprightly honest as it was possible.
I was no sooner carried away, as I have said, by this good
gentlewoman, but the first lady, that is to say, the Mayoress that
was, sent her daughters to take care of me; and another family
which had taken notice of me when I was the little gentlewoman sent
for me after her, so that I was mightily made of; nay, and they
were not a little angry, especially the Mayoress, that her friend
had taken me away from her; for, as she said, I was hers by right,
she having been the first that took any notice of me. But they that
had me would not part with me; and as for me, I could not be better
than where I was.
Here I continued till I was between seventeen and eighteen
years old, and here I had all the advantages for my education that
could be imagined; the lady had masters home to teach her daughters
to dance, and to speak French, and to write, and others to teach
them music; and, as I was always with them, I learned as fast as
they; and though the masters were not appointed to teach me, yet I
learned by imitation and inquiry all that they learned by
instruction and direction; so that, in short, I learned to dance
and speak French as well as any of them, and to sing much better,
for I had a better voice than any of them. I could not so readily
come at playing the harpsichord or the spinet, because I had no
instrument of my own to practise on, and could only come at theirs
in the intervals when they left it; but yet I learned tolerably
well, and the young ladies at length got two instruments, that is
to say, a harpsichord and a spinet too, and then they taught me
themselves. But as to dancing, they could hardly help my learning
country-dances, because they always wanted me to make up even
number; and, on the other hand, they were as heartily willing to
learn me everything that they had been taught themselves as I could
be to take the learning.
By this means I had, as I have said, all the advantages of
education that I could have had if I had been as much a gentlewoman
as they were with whom I lived; and in some things I had the
advantage of my ladies, though they were my superiors, viz., that
mine were all the gifts of nature, and which all their fortunes
could not furnish. First, I was apparently handsomer than any of
them; secondly, I was better shaped; and, thirdly, I sang better,
by which I mean, I had a better voice; in all which you will, I
hope, allow me to say, I do not speak my own conceit, but the
opinion of all that knew the family.
I had, with all these, the common vanity of my sex, viz.,
that being really taken for very handsome, or, if you please, for a
great beauty, I very well knew it, and had as good an opinion of
myself as anybody else could have of me, and particularly I loved
to hear anybody speak of it, which happened often, and was a great
satisfaction to me.
Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell of myself, and
in all this part of my life I not only had the reputation of living
in a very good family, and a family noted and respected everywhere
for virtue and sobriety, and for every valuable thing, but I had
the character too of a very sober, modest, and virtuous young
woman, and such I had always been; neither had I yet any occasion
to think of anything else, or to know what a temptation to
wickedness meant.
But that which I was too vain of, was my ruin, or rather my
vanity was the cause of it. The lady in the house where I was had
two sons, young gentlemen of extraordinary parts and behaviour, and
it was my misfortune to be very well with them both, but they
managed themselves with me in a quite different manner.
The eldest, a gay gentleman, that knew the town as well as
the country, and, though he had levity enough to do an ill-natured
thing, yet had too much judgment of things to pay too dear for his
pleasures; he began with that unhappy snare to all women, viz.
taking notice upon all occasions how pretty I was, as he called it,
how agreeable, how well-carriaged, and the like; and this he
contrived so subtly, as if he had known as well how to catch a
woman in his net as a partridge when he went a-setting, for he
would contrive to be talking this to his sisters, when, though I
was not by, yet he knew I was not so far off but that I should be
sure to hear him. His sisters would return softly to him, 'Hush,
brother, she will hear you; she is but in the next room.' Then he
would put it off and talk softlier, as if he had not known it, and
begin to acknowledge he was wrong; and then, as if he had forgot
himself, he would speak aloud again, and I, that was so well
pleased to hear it, was sure to listen for it upon all occasions.
After he had thus baited his hook, and found easily enough
the method how to lay it in my way, he played an open game; and one
day, going by his sister's chamber when I was there, he comes in
with an air of gaiety. 'Oh, Mrs Betty', said he to me, 'how do you
do, Mrs Betty? Don't your cheeks burn, Mrs Betty?' I made a curtsey
and blushed, but said nothing. 'What makes you talk so, brother?'
said the lady. 'Why', says he, 'we have been talking of her
below-stairs this half-hour.'Well', says his sister, 'you can say
no harm of her, that I am sure, so 'tis no matter what you have
been talking about.' 'Nay', says he, ''tis so far from talking harm
of her, that we have been talking a great deal of good, and a great
many fine things have been said of Mrs Betty, I assure you; and
particularly, that she is the handsomest young woman in Colchester;
and, in short, they begin to toast her health in the town.'
'I wonder at you, brother', says the sister. 'Betty wants
but one thing, but she had as good want everything, for the market
is against our sex just now; and if a young woman has beauty,
birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all to an
extreme, yet if she has not money she's nobody, she had as good
want them all; nothing but money now recommends a woman; the men
play the game all into their own hands.'
Her younger brother, who was by, cried, 'Hold, sister, you
run too fast; I am an exception to your rule. I assure you, if I
find a woman so accomplished as you talk of, I won't trouble myself
about the money.' 'Oh', says the sister, 'but you will take care
not to fancy one then without the money.'
'You don't know that neither', says the brother.
'But why, sister', says the elder brother, 'why do you
exclaim so about the fortune? You are none of them that want a
fortune, whatever else you want.'
'I understand you, brother', replies the lady very smartly;
'you suppose I have the money, and want the beauty; but as times go
now, the first will do, so I have the better of my neighbours.'
'Well', says the younger brother, 'but your neighbours may
be even with you, for beauty will steal a husband sometimes in
spite of money, and, when the maid chances to be handsomer than the
mistress, she oftentimes makes as good a market, and rides in a
coach before her.'
I thought it was time for me to withdraw, and I did so, but
not so far but that I heard all their discourse, in which I heard
abundance of fine things said of myself, which prompted my vanity,
but, as I soon found, was not the way to increase my interest in
the family, for the sister and the younger brother fell grievously
out about it; and as he said some very disobliging things to her,
upon my account, so I could easily see that she resented them by
her future conduct to me, which indeed was very unjust, for I had
never had the least thought of what she suspected as to her younger
brother; indeed, the elder brother, in his distant, remote way, had
said a great many things as in jest, which I had the folly to
believe were in earnest, or to flatter myself with the hopes of
what I ought to have supposed he never intended.
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