Moll Flanders

by Daniel Defoe

  With that she told him what she had heard, or rather raised herself by my means, of his character; his not having paid for the part he pretended to own of the ship he commanded; of the resolution of his owners to put him out of the command and to put his mate in his stead; and of the scandal raised on his morals; his having been reproached with such-and-such women, and his having a wife at Plymouth and another in the West Indies, and the like; and she asked him whether she had not good reason, if these things were not cleared up, to refuse him and to insist upon having satisfaction in points so significant as they were.

  He was so confounded at her discourse that he could not answer a word, and she began to believe that all was true, by his disorder, though she knew that she had been the raiser of these reports herself.

  After some time he recovered a little, and from that time was the most humble, modest, and importunate man alive in his courtship.

  She asked him if he thought she was so at her last shift that she could or ought to bear such treatment, and if he did not see that she did not want those who thought it worth their while to come farther to her than he did, meaning the gentleman whom she had brought to visit her by way of sham.

  She brought him by these tricks to submit to all possible measures to satisfy her, as well of his circumstances as of his behaviour. He brought her undeniable evidence of his having paid for his part of the ship; he brought her certificates from his owners that the report of their intending to remove him from the command of the ship was false and groundless; in short, he was quite the reverse of what he was before.

  Thus I convinced her that if the men made their advantage of our sex in the affair of marriage, upon the supposition of there being such a choice to be had and of the women being so easy, it was only owing to this: that the women wanted courage to maintain their ground and that according to my Lord Rochester:

  A woman’s ne’er so ruined but she can

  Revenge herself on her undoer, man.

  After these things this young lady played her part so well that though she resolved to have him, and that indeed having him was the main bent of her design, yet she made his obtaining her to be to him the most difficult thing in the world; and this she did not by a haughty, reserved carriage, but by a just policy, playing back upon him his own game; for as he pretended by a kind of lofty carriage to place himself above the occasion of a character, she broke with him upon that subject, and at the same time that she made him submit to all possible inquiry after his affairs, she apparently shut the door against his looking into her own.

  It was enough to him to obtain her for a wife. As to what she had, she told him plainly that as he knew her circumstances, it was but just she should know his; and though at the same time he had only known her circumstances by common fame, yet he had made so many protestations of his passion for her that he could ask no more but her hand to his grand request, and the like ramble according to the custom of lovers. In short, he left himself no room to ask any more questions about her estate, and she took the advantage of it, for she placed part of her fortune so in trustees, without letting him know anything of it, that it was quite out of his reach, and made him be very well contented with the rest.

  It is true she was pretty well besides, that is to say, she had about £1400 in money, which she gave him; and the other after some time she brought to light as a perquisite to herself, which he was to accept as a mighty favour, seeing, though it was not to be his, it might ease him in the article of her particular expenses; and I must add that by this conduct, the gentleman himself became not only more humble in his applications to her to obtain her but also was much the more an obliging husband when he had her. I cannot but remind the ladies how much they place themselves below the common station of a wife, which, if I may be allowed not to be partial, is low enough already; I say, they place themselves below their common station and prepare their own mortifications by their submitting so to be insulted by the men beforehand, which I confess I see no necessity of.

  This relation may serve, therefore, to let the ladies see that the advantage is not so much on the other side as the men think it is; and that though it may be true, the men have but too much choice among us, and that some women may be found who will dishonour themselves, be cheap, and too easy to come at, yet if they will have women worth having, they may find them as un-come-at-able as ever, and that those that are otherwise have often such deficiencies when had as rather recommend the ladies that are difficult than encourage the men to go on with their easy courtship and expect wives equally valuable that will come at first call.

  Nothing is more certain than that the ladies always gain of the men by keeping their ground and letting their pretended lovers see they can resent being slighted, and that they are not afraid of saying no. They insult us mightily with telling us of the number of women; that the wars and the sea and trade and other incidents have carried the men so much away; that there is no proportion between the numbers of the sexes; but I am far from granting that the number of the women is so great or the number of the men so small; but if they will have me tell the truth, the disadvantage of the women is a terrible scandal upon the men, and it lies here only; namely, that the age is so wicked and the sex so debauched that, in short, the number of such men as an honest woman ought to meddle with is small indeed, and it is but here and there that a man is to be found who is fit for an honest woman to venture upon.

  But the consequence even of that too amounts to no more than this: that women ought to be the more nice; for how do we know the just character of the man that makes the offer? To say that the woman should be the more easy on this occasion is to say we should be the forwarder to venture because of the greatness of the danger, which is very absurd.

  On the contrary, the women have ten thousand times the more reason to be wary and backward, by how much the hazard of being betrayed is the greater; and would the ladies act the wary part, they would discover every cheat that offered; for, in short, the lives of very few men now-a-days will bear a character; and if the ladies do but make a little inquiry, they would soon be able to distinguish the men and deliver themselves. As for women that do not think their own safety worth their own thought, that, impatient of their present state, run into matrimony as a horse rushes into the battle, I can say nothing to them but this: that they are a sort of ladies that are to be prayed for among the rest of distempered people, and they look like people that venture their estates in a lottery where there is a hundred thousand blanks to one prize.

  No man of common sense will value a woman the less for not giving up herself at the first attack or for not accepting his proposal without inquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities that, having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once and make matrimony, like death, be a leap in the dark.

  I would fain have the conduct of my sex a little regulated in this particular, which is the same thing in which, of all the parts of life, I think at this time we suffer most in; ’tis nothing but lack of courage, the fear of not being married at all and of that frightful state of life called an old maid. This, I say, is the woman’s snare; but would the ladies once but get above that fear and manage rightly, they would more certainly avoid it by standing their ground in a case so absolutely necessary to their felicity than by exposing themselves as they do; and if they did not marry so soon, they would make themselves amends by marrying safer. She is always married too soon who gets a bad husband, and she is never married too late who gets a good one; in a word, there is no woman, deformity or lost reputation excepted, but if she manages well may be married safely one time or other; but if she precipitates herself, it is ten thousand to one but she is undone.

  But I come now to my own case, in which there was at this time no little nicety. The circumstances I was in made the offer of a good husband the most necessary th
ing in the world to me, but I found soon that to be made cheap and easy was not the way. It soon began to be found that the widow had no fortune, and to say this was to say all that was ill of me, being well bred, handsome, witty, modest, and agreeable; all which I had allowed to my character, whether justly or no is not to the purpose; I say, all these would not do without the dross. In short, the widow, they said, had no money!

  I resolved, therefore, that it was necessary to change my station and make a new appearance in some other place, and even to pass by another name if I found occasion.

  I communicated my thoughts to my intimate friend, the captain’s lady, who I had so faithfully served in her case with the captain and who was as ready to serve me in the same kind as I could desire. I made no scruple to lay my circumstances open to her; my stock was but low, for I had made but about £540 at the close of my last affair, and I had wasted some of that; however, I had about £460 left, a great many very rich clothes, a gold watch, and some jewels, though of no extraordinary value, and about £30 or £40 left in linen not disposed of.

  My dear and faithful friend, the captain’s wife, was so sensible of the service I had done her in the affair above that she was not only a steady friend to me but, knowing my circumstances, she frequently made me presents as money came into her hands, such as fully amounted to a maintenance, so that I spent none of my own; and at last she made this unhappy proposal to me, viz., that as we had observed, as above, how the men made no scruple to set themselves out as persons meriting a woman of fortune of their own, it was but just to deal with them in their own way and, if it was possible, to deceive the deceiver.

  The captain’s lady, in short, put this project into my head and told me if I would be ruled by her, I should certainly get a husband of fortune without leaving him any room to reproach me with want of my own. I told her that I would give up myself wholly to her directions and that I would have neither tongue to speak or feet to step in that affair but as she should direct me, depending that she would extricate me out of every difficulty that she brought me into, which she said she would answer for.

  The first step she put me upon was to call her cousin and go to a relation’s house of hers in the country, where she directed me and where she brought her husband to visit me; and calling me cousin, she worked matters so about that her husband and she together invited me most passionately to come to town and live with them, for they now lived in a quite different place from where they were before. In the next place, she tells her husband that I had at least £1500 fortune and that I was like to have a great deal more.

  It was enough to tell her husband this; there needed nothing on my side. I was but to sit still and wait the event, for it presently went all over the neighbourhood that the young widow at Captain ——’s was a fortune, that she had at least £1500 and perhaps a great deal more, and that the captain said so; and if the captain was asked at any time about me, he made no scruple to affirm it though he knew not one word of the matter other than that his wife had told him so; and in this he thought no harm, for he really believed it to be so. With the reputation of this fortune, I presently found myself blessed with admirers enough (and that I had my choice of men), as they said they were, which, by the way, confirms what I was saying before. This being my case, I, who had a subtle game to play, had nothing now to do but to single out from them all the properest man that might be for my purpose; that is to say, the man who was most likely to depend upon the hearsay of fortune and not inquire too far into the particulars; and unless I did this I did nothing, for my case would not bear much inquiry.

  I picked out my man without much difficulty by the judgement I made of his way of courting me. I had let him run on with his protestations that he loved me above all the world; that if I would make him happy, that was enough; all which I knew was upon supposition that I was very rich, though I never told him a word of it myself.

  This was my man; but I was to try him to the bottom; and indeed in that consisted my safety, for if he balked, I knew I was undone, as surely as he was undone if he took me; and if I did not make some scruple about his fortune, it was the way to lead him to raise some about mine; and first, therefore, I pretended on all occasions to doubt his sincerity and told him perhaps he only courted me for my fortune. He stopped my mouth in that part with the thunder of his protestations as above, but still I pretended to doubt.

  One morning he pulls off his diamond ring and writes upon the glass of the sash in my chamber this line:

  You I love and you alone.

  I read it and asked him to lend me the ring, with which I wrote under it thus:

  And so in love says every one.

  He takes his ring again and writes another line thus:

  Virtue alone is an estate.

  I borrowed it again, and I wrote under it:

  But money’s virtue, gold is fate.

  He coloured as red as fire to see me turn so quick upon him, and in a kind of rage told me he would conquer me, and wrote again thus:

  I scorn your gold, and yet I love.

  I ventured all upon the last cast of poetry, as you’ll see, for I wrote boldly under his last:

  I’m poor; let’s see how kind you’ll prove.

  This was a sad truth to me; whether he believed me or no I could not tell; I supposed then that he did not. However, he flew to me, took me in his arms, and kissing me very eagerly and with the greatest passion imaginable, he held me fast till he called for a pen and ink and told me he could not wait the tedious writing on a glass, but pulling out a piece of paper, he began and wrote again:

  Be mine with all your poverty.

  I took his pen and followed immediately thus:

  Yet secretly you hope I lie.

  He told me that was unkind because it was not just, and that I put him upon contradicting me, which did not consist with good manners, and, therefore, since I had insensibly drawn him into this poetical scribble, he begged I would not oblige him to break it off. So he writes again:

  Let love alone be our debate.

  I wrote again:

  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 it 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 reason to do, for he was the best-humoured merry sort of a fellow that I ever met with; and I often reflected 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.

  Besides, though I had 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 own my circumstances to him; and I managed it the more warily because I found he inferred from thence that I had either the more money or the more judgement, and would not venture at all.

  I took the freedom one day 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 hi
m 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 some questions, which he should answer or not as he thought fit; 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 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 of about £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, then, as soon as you please, though I won’t tell you so beforehand.”

  I jested with him about the figure he would make in Virginia, but found he would do anything I desired, so I turned my tale. I told him I had good reason not to desire 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 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 made it my choice.