The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

by Daniel Defoe

quarters,whether they were at the east end of the town or the west; and thiswariness was my safety upon all these occasions.

  I kept close a great while upon the occasion of this woman's disaster.I knew that if I should do anything that should miscarry, and should becarried to prison, she would be there and ready to witness against me,and perhaps save her life at my expense. I considered that I began tobe very well known by name at the Old Bailey, though they did not knowmy face, and that if I should fall into their hands, I should betreated as an old offender; and for this reason I was resolved to seewhat this poor creature's fate should be before I stirred abroad,though several times in her distress I conveyed money to her for herrelief.

  At length she came to her trial. She pleaded she did not steal thething, but that one Mrs. Flanders, as she heard her called (for she didnot know her), gave the bundle to her after they came out of the shop,and bade her carry it home to her lodging. They asked her where thisMrs. Flanders was, but she could not produce her, neither could shegive the least account of me; and the mercer's men swearing positivelythat she was in the shop when the goods were stolen, that theyimmediately missed them, and pursued her, and found them upon her,thereupon the jury brought her in guilty; but the Court, consideringthat she was really not the person that stole the goods, an inferiorassistant, and that it was very possible she could not find out thisMrs. Flanders, meaning me, though it would save her life, which indeedwas true--I say, considering all this, they allowed her to betransported, which was the utmost favour she could obtain, only thatthe Court told her that if she could in the meantime produce the saidMrs. Flanders, they would intercede for her pardon; that is to say, ifshe could find me out, and hand me, she should not be transported.This I took care to make impossible to her, and so she was shipped offin pursuance of her sentence a little while after.

  I must repeat it again, that the fate of this poor woman troubled meexceedingly, and I began to be very pensive, knowing that I was reallythe instrument of her disaster; but the preservation of my own life,which was so evidently in danger, took off all my tenderness; andseeing that she was not put to death, I was very easy at hertransportation, because she was then out of the way of doing me anymischief, whatever should happen.

  The disaster of this woman was some months before that of thelast-recited story, and was indeed partly occasion of my governessproposing to dress me up in men's clothes, that I might go aboutunobserved, as indeed I did; but I was soon tired of that disguise, asI have said, for indeed it exposed me to too many difficulties.

  I was now easy as to all fear of witnesses against me, for all thosethat had either been concerned with me, or that knew me by the name ofMoll Flanders, were either hanged or transported; and if I should havehad the misfortune to be taken, I might call myself anything else, aswell as Moll Flanders, and no old sins could be placed into my account;so I began to run a-tick again with the more freedom, and severalsuccessful adventures I made, though not such as I had made before.

  We had at that time another fire happened not a great way off from theplace where my governess lived, and I made an attempt there, as before,but as I was not soon enough before the crowd of people came in, andcould not get to the house I aimed at, instead of a prize, I got amischief, which had almost put a period to my life and all my wickeddoings together; for the fire being very furious, and the people in agreat fright in removing their goods, and throwing them out of window,a wench from out of a window threw a feather-bed just upon me. It istrue, the bed being soft, it broke no bones; but as the weight wasgreat, and made greater by the fall, it beat me down, and laid me deadfor a while. Nor did the people concern themselves much to deliver mefrom it, or to recover me at all; but I lay like one dead and neglecteda good while, till somebody going to remove the bed out of the way,helped me up. It was indeed a wonder the people in the house had notthrown other goods out after it, and which might have fallen upon it,and then I had been inevitably killed; but I was reserved for furtherafflictions.

  This accident, however, spoiled my market for that time, and I camehome to my governess very much hurt and bruised, and frighted to thelast degree, and it was a good while before she could set me upon myfeet again.

  It was now a merry time of the year, and Bartholomew Fair was begun. Ihad never made any walks that way, nor was the common part of the fairof much advantage to me; but I took a turn this year into thecloisters, and among the rest I fell into one of the raffling shops.It was a thing of no great consequence to me, nor did I expect to makemuch of it; but there came a gentleman extremely well dressed and veryrich, and as 'tis frequent to talk to everybody in those shops, hesingled me out, and was very particular with me. First he told me hewould put in for me to raffle, and did so; and some small matter comingto his lot, he presented it to me (I think it was a feather muff); thenhe continued to keep talking to me with a more than common appearanceof respect, but still very civil, and much like a gentleman.

  He held me in talk so long, till at last he drew me out of the rafflingplace to the shop-door, and then to a walk in the cloister, stilltalking of a thousand things cursorily without anything to the purpose.At last he told me that, without compliment, he was charmed with mycompany, and asked me if I durst trust myself in a coach with him; hetold me he was a man of honour, and would not offer anything to meunbecoming him as such. I seemed to decline it a while, but sufferedmyself to be importuned a little, and then yielded.

  I was at a loss in my thoughts to conclude at first what this gentlemandesigned; but I found afterwards he had had some drink in his head, andthat he was not very unwilling to have some more. He carried me in thecoach to the Spring Garden, at Knightsbridge, where we walked in thegardens, and he treated me very handsomely; but I found he drank veryfreely. He pressed me also to drink, but I declined it.

  Hitherto he kept his word with me, and offered me nothing amiss. Wecame away in the coach again, and he brought me into the streets, andby this time it was near ten o'clock at night, and he stopped the coachat a house where, it seems, he was acquainted, and where they made noscruple to show us upstairs into a room with a bed in it. At first Iseemed to be unwilling to go up, but after a few words I yielded tothat too, being willing to see the end of it, and in hope to makesomething of it at last. As for the bed, etc., I was not muchconcerned about that part.

  Here he began to be a little freer with me than he had promised; and Iby little and little yielded to everything, so that, in a word, he didwhat he pleased with me; I need say no more. All this while he drankfreely too, and about one in the morning we went into the coach again.The air and the shaking of the coach made the drink he had get more upin his head than it was before, and he grew uneasy in the coach, andwas for acting over again what he had been doing before; but as Ithought my game now secure, I resisted him, and brought him to be alittle still, which had not lasted five minutes but he fell fast asleep.

  I took this opportunity to search him to a nicety. I took a goldwatch, with a silk purse of gold, his fine full-bottom periwig andsilver-fringed gloves, his sword and fine snuff-box, and gently openingthe coach door, stood ready to jump out while the coach was going on;but the coach stopped in the narrow street beyond Temple Bar to letanother coach pass, I got softly out, fastened the door again, and gavemy gentleman and the coach the slip both together, and never heard moreof them.

  This was an adventure indeed unlooked for, and perfectly undesigned byme; though I was not so past the merry part of life, as to forget howto behave, when a fop so blinded by his appetite should not know an oldwoman from a young. I did not indeed look so old as I was by ten ortwelve years; yet I was not a young wench of seventeen, and it was easyenough to be distinguished. There is nothing so absurd, so surfeiting,so ridiculous, as a man heated by wine in his head, and wicked gust inhis inclination together; he is in the possession of two devils atonce, and can no more govern himself by his reason than a mill cangrind without water; his vice tramples upon all that was in him thathad any good in it, if
any such thing there was; nay, his very sense isblinded by its own rage, and he acts absurdities even in his views;such a drinking more, when he is drunk already; picking up a commonwoman, without regard to what she is or who she is, whether sound orrotten, clean or unclean, whether ugly or handsome, whether old oryoung, and so blinded as not really to distinguish. Such a man isworse than a lunatic; prompted by his vicious, corrupted head, he nomore knows what he is doing than this wretch of mine knew when I pickedhis pocket of his watch and his purse of gold.

  These are the men of whom Solomon says, 'They go like an ox to theslaughter, till a dart strikes through their liver'; an admirabledescription, by the way, of the foul disease, which is a poisonousdeadly contagion mingling with the blood, whose centre or foundation isin the liver; from whence, by the swift circulation of the whole mass,that dreadful nauseous plague strikes immediately through his liver,and his spirits are infected, his vitals stabbed through