The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

by Daniel Defoe

indifferentcircumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of twosorts; either, first, such as were brought over by masters of ships tobe sold as servants. 'Such as we call them, my dear,' says she, 'butthey are more properly called slaves.' Or, secondly, such as aretransported from Newgate and other prisons, after having been foundguilty of felony and other crimes punishable with death.

  'When they come here,' says she, 'we make no difference; the plantersbuy them, and they work together in the field till their time is out.When 'tis expired,' said she, 'they have encouragement given them toplant for themselves; for they have a certain number of acres of landallotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure theland, and then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; andas the tradesmen and merchants will trust them with tools and clothesand other necessaries, upon the credit of their crop before it isgrown, so they again plant every year a little more than the yearbefore, 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, andwe have,' continued she, 'several justices of the peace, officers ofthe trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that havebeen burnt in the hand.'

  She was going on with that part of the story, when her own part in itinterrupted her, and with a great deal of good-humoured confidence shetold me she was one of the second sort of inhabitants herself; that shecame away openly, having ventured too far in a particular case, so thatshe was become a criminal. 'And here's the mark of it, child,' saysshe; and, pulling off her glove, 'look ye here,' says she, turning upthe palm of her hand, and showed me a very fine white arm and hand, butbranded 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, 'Youneed not think a thing strange, daughter, for as I told you, some ofthe best men in this country are burnt in the hand, and they are notashamed to own it. There's Major ----,' says she, 'he was an eminentpickpocket; there's Justice Ba----r, was a shoplifter, and both of themwere 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 shegave me of the like. After some time, as she was telling some storiesof one that was transported but a few weeks ago, I began in an intimatekind of way to ask her to tell me something of her own story, which shedid with the utmost plainness and sincerity; how she had fallen intovery ill company in London in her young days, occasioned by her mothersending her frequently to carry victuals and other relief to akinswoman of hers who was a prisoner in Newgate, and who lay in amiserable starving condition, was afterwards condemned to be hanged,but having got respite by pleading her belly, dies afterwards in theprison.

  Here my mother-in-law ran out in a long account of the wicked practicesin that dreadful place, and how it ruined more young people than allthe town besides. 'And child,' says my mother, 'perhaps you may knowlittle of it, or, it may be, have heard nothing about it; but dependupon it,' says she, 'we all know here that there are more thieves androgues made by that one prison of Newgate than by all the clubs andsocieties of villains in the nation; 'tis that cursed place,' says mymother, 'that half peopled this colony.'

  Here she went on with her own story so long, and in so particular amanner, that I began to be very uneasy; but coming to one particularthat required telling her name, I thought I should have sunk down inthe place. She perceived I was out of order, and asked me if I was notwell, and what ailed me. I told her I was so affected with themelancholy story she had told, and the terrible things she had gonethrough, that it had overcome me, and I begged of her to talk no moreof it. 'Why, my dear,' says she very kindly, 'what need these thingstrouble you? These passages were long before your time, and they giveme no trouble at all now; nay, I look back on them with a particularsatisfaction, 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 goodfamily, where, behaving herself well, and her mistress dying, hermaster married her, by whom she had my husband and his sister, and thatby her diligence and good management after her husband's death, she hadimproved the plantations to such a degree as they then were, so thatmost of the estate was of her getting, not her husband's, for she hadbeen a widow upwards of sixteen years.

  I heard this part of the story with very little attention, because Iwanted much to retire and give vent to my passions, which I did soonafter; and let any one judge what must be the anguish of my mind, whenI came to reflect that this was certainly no more or less than my ownmother, and I had now had two children, and was big with another by myown brother, and lay with him still every night.

  I was now the most unhappy of all women in the world. Oh! had thestory never been told me, all had been well; it had been no crime tohave lain with my husband, since as to his being my relation I hadknown nothing of it.

  I had now such a load on my mind that it kept me perpetually waking; toreveal it, which would have been some ease to me, I could not findwould be to any purpose, and yet to conceal it would be next toimpossible; 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 toonice and too honest a man to have continued my husband after he hadknown 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 thereturn to me unpassable. I lived very well, but in a circumstanceinsufferable in itself. If I had discovered myself to my mother, itmight be difficult to convince her of the particulars, and I had no wayto prove them. On the other hand, if she had questioned or doubted me,I had been undone, for the bare suggestion would have immediatelyseparated me from my husband, without gaining my mother or him, whowould have been neither a husband nor a brother; so that between thesurprise on one hand, and the uncertainty on the other, I had been sureto be undone.

  In the meantime, as I was but too sure of the fact, I lived thereforein open avowed incest and whoredom, and all under the appearance of anhonest 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 myhusband, as he thought himself, even nauseous to me.

  However, upon the most sedate consideration, I resolved that it wasabsolutely necessary to conceal it all and not make the least discoveryof it either to mother or husband; and thus I lived with the greatestpressure imaginable for three years more, but had no more children.

  During this time my mother used to be frequently telling me old storiesof 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 couldeasily understand, joined with what I had heard myself, of my firsttutors, that in her younger days she had been both whore and thief; butI verily believed she had lived to repent sincerely of both, and thatshe was then a very pious, sober, and religious woman.

  Well, let her life have been what it would then, it was certain that mylife was very uneasy to me; for I lived, as I have said, but in theworst sort of whoredom, and as I could expect no good of it, so reallyno good issue came of it, and all my seeming prosperity wore off, andended in misery and destruction. It was some time, indeed, before itcame to this, for, but I know not by what ill fate guided, everythingwent wrong with us afterwards, and that which was worse, my husbandgrew strangely altered, forward, jealous, and unkind, and I was asimpatient of bearing his carriage, as the carriage was unreasonable andunjust. These things proceeded so far, that we came at last to be insuch ill terms with one another, that I claimed a promise of him, whichhe entered willingly into with me when I consented to come from Englandwith him, viz. that if I found the country not to agree with me, orthat I did not like to live there, I should come away to England againwhen I pleased, giving him a year's warning to settle his affairs.

  I say, I now claime
d this promise of him, and I must confess I did itnot in the most obliging terms that could be in the world neither; butI 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 forit, 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 apoint, either to keep his word with me or to break it; and this,notwithstanding he used all the skill he was master of, and employedhis 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 hisendeavours fruitless, for my heart was alienated from him as a husband.I loathed the thoughts of bedding with him, and used