The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2)

by Daniel Defoe

tour to Rotterdam again, lodged in the same house, andwas visited there by our friend the merchant, and afterwards invitedfrequently to his house, where he treated us very handsomely.

  This conduct of my spouse, and which he managed very cleverly, wasindeed a testimony of a wonderful degree of honesty and affection to ourlittle son; for it was done purely for the sake of the child.

  I call it an honest affection, because it was from a principle ofhonesty that he so earnestly concerned himself to prevent the scandalwhich would otherwise have fallen upon the child, who was itselfinnocent; and as it was from this principle of justice that he soearnestly solicited me, and conjured me by the natural affections of amother, to marry him when it was yet young within me and unborn, thatthe child might not suffer for the sin of its father and mother; so,though at the same time he really loved me very well, yet I had reasonto believe that it was from this principle of justice to the child thathe came to England again to seek me with design to marry me, and, as hecalled it, save the innocent lamb from infamy worse than death.

  It was with a just reproach to myself that I must repeat it again, thatI had not the same concern for it, though it was the child of my ownbody; nor had I ever the hearty affectionate love to the child that hehad. What the reason of it was I cannot tell; and, indeed, I had shown ageneral neglect of the child through all the gay years of my Londonrevels, except that I sent Amy to look upon it now and then, and to payfor its nursing; as for me, I scarce saw it four times in the first fouryears of its life, and often wished it would go quietly out of theworld; whereas a son which I had by the jeweller, I took a differentcare of, and showed a different concern for, though I did not let himknow me; for I provided very well for him, had him put out very well toschool, and when he came to years fit for it, let him go over with aperson of honesty and good business, to the Indies; and after he hadlived there some time, and began to act for himself, sent him over thevalue of L2000, at several times, with which he traded and grew rich;and, as 'tis to be hoped, may at last come over again with forty orfifty thousand pounds in his pocket, as many do who have not suchencouragement at their beginning.

  I also sent him over a wife, a beautiful young lady, well-bred, anexceeding good-natured pleasant creature; but the nice young fellow didnot like her, and had the impudence to write to me, that is, to theperson I employed to correspond with him, to send him another, andpromised that he would marry her I had sent him, to a friend of his, wholiked her better than he did; but I took it so ill, that I would notsend him another, and withal, stopped another article of L1000 which Ihad appointed to send him. He considered of it afterwards, and offeredto take her; but then truly she took so ill the first affront he putupon her, that she would not have him, and I sent him word I thought shewas very much in the right. However, after courting her two years, andsome friends interposing, she took him, and made him an excellent wife,as I knew she would, but I never sent him the thousand pounds cargo, sothat he lost that money for misusing me, and took the lady at lastwithout it.

  My new spouse and I lived a very regular, contemplative life; and, initself, certainly a life filled with all human felicity. But if I lookedupon my present situation with satisfaction, as I certainly did, so, inproportion, I on all occasions looked back on former things withdetestation, and with the utmost affliction; and now, indeed, and nottill now, those reflections began to prey upon my comforts, and lessenthe sweets of my other enjoyments. They might be said to have gnawed ahole in my heart before; but now they made a hole quite through it: nowthey ate into all my pleasant things, made bitter every sweet, and mixedmy sighs with every smile.

  Not all the affluence of a plentiful fortune; not a hundred thousandpounds estate (for, between us, we had little less); not honour andtitles, attendants and equipages; in a word, not all the things we callpleasure, could give me any relish, or sweeten the taste of things tome; at least, not so much but I grew sad, heavy, pensive, andmelancholy; slept little, and ate little; dreamed continually of themost frightful and terrible things imaginable: nothing but apparitionsof devils and monsters, falling into gulfs, and off from steep and highprecipices, and the like; so that in the morning, when I should rise,and be refreshed with the blessing of rest, I was hag-ridden withfrights and terrible things formed merely in the imagination, and waseither tired and wanted sleep, or overrun with vapours, and not fit forconversing with my family, or any one else.

  My husband, the tenderest creature in the world, and particularly so tome, was in great concern for me, and did everything that lay in hispower to comfort and restore me; strove to reason me out of it; thentried all the ways possible to divert me: but it was all to no purpose,or to but very little.

  My only relief was sometimes to unbosom myself to poor Amy, when she andI was alone; and she did all she could to comfort me. But all was tolittle effect there; for, though Amy was the better penitent before,when we had been in the storm, Amy was just where she used to be now, awild, gay, loose wretch, and not much the graver for her age; for Amywas between forty and fifty by this time too.

  But to go on with my own story. As I had no comforter, so I had nocounsellor; it was well, as I often thought, that I was not a RomanCatholic; for what a piece of work should I have made, to have gone to apriest with such a history as I had to tell him; and what penance wouldany father confessor have obliged me to perform, especially if he hadbeen honest, and true to his office!

  However, as I had none of the recourse, so I had none of the absolution,by which the criminal confessing goes away comforted; but I went aboutwith a heart loaded with crime, and altogether in the dark as to what Iwas to do; and in this condition I languished near two years. I may wellcall it languishing, for if Providence had not relieved me, I shouldhave died in little time. But of that hereafter.

  I must now go back to another scene, and join it to this end of mystory, which will complete all my concern with England, at least allthat I shall bring into this account.

  I have hinted at large what I had done for my two sons, one at Messina,and the other in the Indies; but I have not gone through the story of mytwo daughters. I was so in danger of being known by one of them, that Idurst not see her, so as to let her know who I was; and for the other, Icould not well know how to see her, and own her, and let her see me,because she must then know that I would not let her sister know me,which would look strange; so that, upon the whole, I resolved to seeneither of them at all. But Amy managed all that for me; and when shehad made gentlewomen of them both, by giving them a good, though lateeducation, she had like to have blown up the whole case, and herself andme too, by an unhappy discovery of herself to the last of them, that is,to her who was our cook-maid, and who, as I said before, Amy had beenobliged to turn away, for fear of the very discovery which now happened.I have observed already in what manner Amy managed her by a thirdperson; and how the girl, when she was set up for a lady, as above, cameand visited Amy at my lodgings; after which, Amy going, as was hercustom, to see the girl's brother (my son) at the honest man's house inSpitalfields, both the girls were there, merely by accident, at the sametime; and the other girl unawares discovered the secret, namely, thatthis was the lady that had done all this for them.

  Amy was greatly surprised at it; but as she saw there was no remedy, shemade a jest of it, and so after that conversed openly, being stillsatisfied that neither of them could make much of it, as long as theyknew nothing of me. So she took them together one time, and told themthe history, as she called it, of their mother, beginning at themiserable carrying them to their aunt's; she owned she was not theirmother herself, but described her to them. However, when she said shewas not their mother, one of them expressed herself very much surprised,for the girl had taken up a strong fancy that Amy was really her mother,and that she had, for some particular reasons, concealed it from her;and therefore, when she told her frankly that she was not her mother,the girl fell a-crying, and Amy had much ado to keep life in her. Thiswas the girl who was at first my cook-maid in the Pall Mall. W
hen Amyhad brought her to again a little, and she had recovered her firstdisorder, Amy asked what ailed her? The poor girl hung about her, andkissed her, and was in such a passion still, though she was a greatwench of nineteen or twenty years old, that she could not be brought tospeak a great while. At last, having recovered her speech, she saidstill, "But oh! Do not say you a'n't my mother! I'm sure you are mymother;" and then the girl cried again like to kill herself. Amy couldnot tell what to do with her a good while; she was loth to say again shewas not her mother, because she would not throw her into a fit ofcrying again; but she went round about a little with her. "Why, child,"says she, "why would you have me be your mother? If it be because I amso kind to you, be easy, my dear," says Amy; "I'll be as kind to youstill, as if I was your mother."

  "Ay, but," says the girl, "I am sure you are my mother too; and whathave I done that you won't own me,