by Daniel Defoe
“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 terrible 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 curtsy, 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 gentlewoman 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 live 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 learnt as fast as they; and though the masters were not appointed to teach me, yet I learnt by imitation and inquiry all that they learnt by instruction and direction; so that, in short, I learnt 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 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 learnt 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 judgement 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 when 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 curtsy and blushed, but said nothing. “What makes you talk so, brother?” says 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.
It happened one day that he came running upstairs, towards the room where his sisters used to sit and work, as he often used to do; and calling to them before he came in, as was his way too, I, being there alone, stepped to the door and said, “Sir, the ladies are not here; they are walked down the garden.” As I stepped forward to say this he was just got to the door, and clasping me in his arms as if it had been by chance, “Oh, Mrs. Betty,” says he, “are you here? That’s better still; I want to speak with you more than I do with them”; and then, having me in his arms, he kissed me three or four times.
