Moll Flanders

by Daniel Defoe

  It might perhaps be carried farther than was needful, but it was an error of the right hand if it was an error, for by this she kept up the reputation, such as it was, of her business and obtained this character: that though she did take care of the women when they were debauched, yet she was not instrumental to their being debauched at all; and yet it was a wicked trade she drove too.

  While I was here, and before I was brought to bed, I received a letter from my trustee at the bank, full of kind, obliging things and earnestly pressing me to return to London; it was near a fortnight old when it came to me because it had first been sent into Lancashire and then returned to me. He concludes with telling me that he had obtained a decree against his wife and that he would be ready to make good his engagement to me if I would accept of him, adding a great many protestations of kindness and affection, such as he would have been far from offering if he had known the circumstances I had been in, and which, as it was, I had been very far from deserving.

  I returned an answer to this letter and dated it at Liverpool, but sent it by a messenger, alleging that it came in cover to a friend in town. I gave him joy of his deliverance, but raised some scruples at the lawfulness of his marrying again, and told him I supposed he would consider very seriously upon that point before he resolved on it, the consequence being too great for a man of his judgement to venture rashly upon; so concluded wishing him very well in whatever he resolved without letting him into anything of my own mind or giving any answer to his proposal of my coming to London to him, but mentioned at a distance my intention to return the latter end of the year, this being dated in April.

  I was brought to bed about the middle of May, and had another brave boy, and myself in as good condition as usual on such occasions. My governess did her part as a midwife with the greatest art and dexterity imaginable, and far beyond all that ever I had had any experience of before.

  Her care of me in my travail, and after in my lying in, was such that if she had been my own mother, it could not have been better. Let none be encouraged in their loose practices from this dexterous lady’s management, for she is gone to her place and I dare say has left nothing behind her that can or will come up to it.

  I think I had been brought to bed about twenty days when I received another letter from my friend at the bank, with the surprising news that he had obtained a final sentence of divorce against his wife and had served her with it on such a day, and that he had such an answer to give to all my scruples about his marrying again as I could not expect and as he had no desire of; for that his wife, who had been under some remorse before for her usage of him, as soon as she heard that he had gained his point, had very unhappily destroyed herself that same evening.

  He expressed himself very handsomely as to his being concerned at her disaster, but cleared himself of having any hand in it and that he had only done himself justice in a case in which he was notoriously injured and abused. However, he said that he was extremely afflicted at it and had no view of any satisfaction left in this world but only in the hope that I would come and relieve him by my company; and then he pressed me violently indeed to give him some hopes that I would at least come up to town and let him see me, when he would farther enter into discourse about it.

  I was exceedingly surprised at the news and began now seriously to reflect on my circumstances and the inexpressible misfortune it was to have a child upon my hands; and what to do in it I knew not. At last I opened my case at a distance to my governess; I appeared melancholy for several days, and she lay at me continually to know what troubled me. I could not for my life tell her that I had an offer of marriage after I had so often told her that I had a husband, so that I really knew not what to say to her. I owned I had something which very much troubled me, but at the same time told her I could not speak of it to any one alive.

  She continued importuning me several days, but it was impossible, I told her, for me to commit the secret to anybody. This, instead of being an answer to her, increased her importunities; she urged her having been trusted with the greatest secrets of this nature, that it was her business to conceal everything, and that to discover things of that nature would be her ruin. She asked me if ever I had found her tattling of other people’s affairs, and how could I suspect her? She told me to unfold myself to her was telling it to nobody; that she was silent as death; that it must be a very strange case indeed that she could not help me out of; but to conceal it was to deprive myself of all possible help or means of help, and to deprive her of the opportunity of serving me. In short, she had such a bewitching eloquence and so great a power of persuasion that there was no concealing anything from her.

  So I resolved to unbosom myself to her. I told her the history of my Lancashire marriage and how both of us had been disappointed; how we came together and how we parted; how he discharged me, as far as lay in him, and gave me free liberty to marry again, protesting that if he knew it he would never claim me or disturb or expose me; that I thought I was free, but was dreadfully afraid to venture for fear of the consequences that might follow in case of a discovery.

  Then I told her what a good offer I had, showed her my friend’s letters inviting me to London, and with what affection they were written, but blotted out the name and also the story about the disaster of his wife, only that she was dead.

  She fell a-laughing at my scruples about marrying and told me the other was no marriage but a cheat on both sides, and that as we were parted by mutual consent, the nature of the contract was destroyed and the obligation was mutually discharged. She had arguments for this at the tip of her tongue and, in short, reasoned me out of my reason; not but that it was too by the help of my own inclination.

  But then came the great and main difficulty, and that was the child; this, she told me, must be removed, and that so as that it should never be possible for any one to discover it. I knew there was no marrying without concealing that I had had a child, for he would soon have discovered by the age of it that it was born, nay, and gotten too, since my parley with him, and that would have destroyed all the affair.

  But it touched my heart so forcibly to think of parting entirely with the child and, for aught I knew, of having it murdered or starved by neglect and ill usage, which was much the same, that I could not think of it without horror. I wish all those women who consent to the disposing their children out of the way, as it is called for decency sake, would consider that ’tis only a contrived method for murder, that is to say, killing their children with safety.

  It is manifest to all that understand anything of children that we are born into the world helpless and uncapable either to supply our own wants or so much as make them known, and that without help we must perish; and this help requires not only an assisting hand, whether of the mother or somebody else, but there are two things necessary in that assisting hand, that is, care and skill; without both which, half the children that are born would die, nay, though they were not to be denied food, and one-half more of those that remained would be cripples or fools, lose their limbs and perhaps their sense. I question not but that these are partly the reasons why affection was placed by nature in the hearts of mothers to their children; without which they would never be able to give themselves up, as ’tis necessary they should, to the care and waking pains needful to the support of children.

  Since this care is needful to the life of children, to neglect them is to murder them; again, to give them up to be managed by those people who have none of that needful affection placed by nature in them is to neglect them in the highest degree; nay, in some it goes farther, and is in order to their being lost; so that ’tis an intentional murder, whether the child lives or dies.

  All those things represented themselves to my view, and that in the blackest and most frightful form; and as I was very free with my governess, who I had now learnt to call mother, I represented to her all the dark thoughts which I had about it and told her what distress I was in. She seemed graver by much at this part than at t
he other; but as she was hardened in these things beyond all possibility of being touched with the religious part and the scruples about the murder, so she was equally impenetrable in that part which related to affection. She asked me if she had not been careful and tender of me in my lying in as if I had been her own child. I told her I owned she had. “Well, my dear,” says she, “and when you are gone, what are you to me? And what would it be to me if you were to be hanged? Do you think there are not women who, as it is their trade and they get their bread by it, value themselves upon their being as careful of children as their own mothers? Yes, yes, child,” says she, “fear it not. How were we nursed ourselves? Are you sure you was nursed up by your own mother? And yet you look fat and fair, child,” says the old beldam; and with that she stroked me over the face. “Never be concerned, child,” says she, going on in her drolling way; “I have no murderers about me; I employ the best nurses that can be had, and have as few children miscarry under their hands as there would if they were all nursed by mothers; we want neither care nor skill.”

  She touched me to the quick when she asked if I was sure that I was nursed by my own mother; on the contrary, I was sure I was not; and I trembled and looked pale at the very expression. “Sure,” said I to myself, “this creature cannot be a witch or have any conversation with a spirit that can inform her what I was before I was able to know it myself”; and I looked at her as if I had been frighted; but reflecting that it could not be possible for her to know anything about me, that went off and I began to be easy, but it was not presently.

  She perceived the disorder I was in, but did not know the meaning of it; so she run on in her wild talk upon the weakness of my supposing that children were murdered because they were not all nursed by the mother, and to persuade me that the children she disposed of were as well used as if the mothers had the nursing of them themselves.

  “It may be true, Mother,” says I, “for aught I know, but my doubts are very strongly grounded.” “Come, then,” says she, “let’s hear some of them.” “Why, first,” says I, “you give a piece of money to these people to take the child off the parent’s hands and to take care of it as long as it lives. Now we know, Mother,” said I, “that those are poor people, and their gain consists in being quit of the charge as soon as they can; how can I doubt but that as it is best for them to have the child die, they are not oversolicitous about its life?”

  “This is all vapours and fancy,” says she; “I tell you their credit depends upon the child’s life, and they are as careful as any mother of you all.”

  “Oh, Mother,” says I, “if I was but sure my little baby would be carefully looked to and have justice done it, I should be happy; but it is impossible I can be satisfied in that point unless I saw it, and to see it would be ruin and destruction as my case now stands; so what to do I know not.”

  “A fine story!” says the governess. “You would see the child and you would not see the child; you would be concealed and discovered both together. These are things impossible, my dear, and so you must e’en do as other conscientious mothers have done before you and be contented with things as they must be though not as you wish them to be.”

  I understood what she meant by conscientious mothers; she would have said conscientious whores, but she was not willing to disoblige me, for really in this case I was not a whore because legally married, the force of my former marriage excepted.

  However, let me be what I would, I was not come up to that pitch of hardness common to the profession; I mean, to be unnatural and regardless of the safety of my child; and I preserved this honest affection so long that I was upon the point of giving up my friend at the bank, who lay so hard at me to come to him and marry him that there was hardly any room to deny him.

  At last my old governess came to me with her usual assurance. “Come, my dear,” says she, “I have found out a way how you shall be at a certainty that your child shall be used well, and yet the people that take care of it shall never know you.”

  “Oh, Mother,” says I, “if you can do so, you will engage me to you forever.” “Well,” says she, “are you willing to be at some small annual expense, more than what we usually give to the people we contract with?” “Aye,” says I, “with all my heart, provided I may be concealed.” “As to that,” says she, “you shall be secure, for the nurse shall never dare to inquire about you; and you shall once or twice a year go with me and see your child and see how ’tis used, and be satisfied that it is in good hands, nobody knowing who you are.”

  “Why,” said I, “do you think that when I come to see my child I shall be able to conceal my being the mother of it? Do you think that possible?”

  “Well,” says she, “if you discover it, the nurse shall be never the wiser; she shall be forbid to take any notice. If she offers it, she shall lose the money which you are to be supposed to give her, and the child be taken from her too.”

  I was very well pleased with this. So the next week a country-woman was brought from Hertford or thereabouts, who was to take the child off our hands entirely for £10 in money. But if I would allow £5 a year more to her, she would be obliged to bring the child to my governess’ house as often as we desired, or we should come down and look at it and see how well she used it.

  The woman was a very wholesome-looked, likely woman, a cottager’s wife, but she had very good clothes and linen and everything well about her; and with a heavy heart and many a tear I let her have my child. I had been down at Hertford and looked at her and at her dwelling, which I liked well enough; and I promised her great things if she would be kind to the child, so she knew at first word that I was the child’s mother. But she seemed to be so much out of the way and to have no room to inquire after me that I thought I was safe enough. So, in short, I consented to let her have the child and I gave her £10; that is to say, I gave it to my governess, who gave it the poor woman before my face, she agreeing never to return the child back to me or to claim anything more for its keeping or bringing up; only that I promised if she took a great deal of care of it, I would give her something more as often as I came to see it; so that I was not bound to pay the £5, only that I promised my governess I would do it. And thus my great care was over, after a manner, which, though it did not at all satisfy my mind, yet was the most convenient for me, as my affairs then stood, of any that could be thought of at that time.

  I then began to write to my friend at the bank in a more kindly style, and particularly about the beginning of July I sent him a letter that I purposed to be in town some time in August. He returned me an answer in the most passionate terms imaginable, and desired me to let him have timely notice and he would come and meet me two days’ journey. This puzzled me scurvily, and I did not know what answer to make to it. Once I was resolved to take the stage-coach to West Chester, on purpose only to have the satisfaction of coming back, that he might see me really come in the same coach; for I had a jealous thought, though I had no ground for it at all, lest he should think I was not really in the country.

  I endeavoured to reason myself out of it, but it was in vain; the impression lay so strong on my mind that it was not to be resisted. At last it came as an addition to my new design of going into the country that it would be an excellent blind to my old governess and would cover entirely all my other affairs, for she did not know in the least whether my new lover lived in London or in Lancashire; and when I told her my resolution, she was fully persuaded it was in Lancashire.

  Having taken my measures for this journey, I let her know it and sent the maid that tended me from the beginning to take a place for me in the coach. She would have had me let the maid have waited on me down to the last stage and come up again in the waggon, but I convinced her it would not be convenient. When I went away, she told me she would enter into no measures for correspondence, for she saw evidently that my affection to my child would cause me to write to her and to visit her too when I came to town again. I assured her it would and so took my leave, well sati
sfied to have been freed from such a house, however good my accommodations there had been.

  I took the place in the coach not to its full extent, but to a place called Stone, in Cheshire, where I not only had no manner of business but not the least acquaintance with any person in the town. But I knew that with money in the pocket one is at home anywhere; so I lodged there two or three days till, watching my opportunity, I found room in another stage-coach and took passage back again for London, sending a letter to my gentleman that I should be such a certain day at Stony-Stratford, where the coachman told me he was to lodge.

  It happened to be a chance coach that I had taken up, which, having been hired on purpose to carry some gentlemen to West Chester who were going for Ireland, was now returning, and did not tie itself up to exact times or places, as the stages did; so that having been obliged to lie still on Sunday, he had time to get himself ready to come out, which otherwise he could not have done.

  His warning was so short that he could not reach Stony-Stratford time enough to be with me at night, but he met me at a place called Brickhill the next morning, just as we were coming into the town.

  I confess I was very glad to see him, for I thought myself a little disappointed overnight. He pleased me doubly too by the figure he came in, for he brought a very handsome (gentleman’s) coach and four horses, with a servant to attend him.

  He took me out of the stage-coach immediately, which stopped at an inn in Brickhill; and putting into the same inn, he set up his own coach and bespoke his dinner. I asked him what he meant by that, for I was for going forward with the journey. He said no, I had need of a little rest upon the road, and that was a very good sort of a house, though it was but a little town; so we would go no farther that night, whatever came of it.