Chapter
5
I accepted her offer,
and was with her half a year, and should have been longer, but in that interval
what she proposed to me happened to herself, and she married very much to her
advantage. But whose fortune soever was upon the
increase, mine seemed to be upon the wane, and I found nothing present, except
two or three Boatswains, or such fellows, but as for the commanders, they were
generally of two sorts: 1. Such as, having good business, that is to say,
a good ship, resolved not to marry but with advantage, that is, with a good
fortune; 2. Such as, being out of employ, wanted a wife to help them to a ship;
I mean (1) a wife who, having some money, could enable them to hold, as they
call it, a good part of a ship themselves, so to encourage owners to come in;
or (2) a wife who, if she had not money, had friends who were concerned in
shipping, and so could help to put the young man into a good ship, which to
them is as good as a portion; and neither of these was my case, so I looked
like one that was to lie on hand.
This knowledge I soon
learned by experience, viz. that the state of things was altered as to
matrimony, and that I was not to expect at London what I had found in
the country: that marriages were here the consequences of politic schemes for
forming interests, and carrying on business, and that Love had no share, or but
very little, in the matter.
That as my sister-in-law
at Colchester had said, beauty, wit, manners, sense, good humour, good
behaviour, education, virtue, piety, or any other qualification, whether of
body or mind, had no power to recommend; that money only made a woman
agreeable; that men chose mistresses indeed by the gust of their affection, and
it was requisite to a whore to be handsome, well-shaped, have a good mien and a
graceful behaviour; but that for a wife, no deformity would shock the fancy, no
ill qualities the judgment; the money was the thing; the portion was neither
crooked nor monstrous, but the money was always agreeable, whatever the wife
was.
On the other hand, as
the market ran very unhappily on the men’s side, I found the women had lost the
privilege of saying No; that it was a favour now for a woman to have the
Question asked, and if any young lady had so much arrogance as to counterfeit a
negative, she never had the opportunity given her of denying twice, much less
of recovering that false step, and accepting what she had but seemed to
decline. The men had such choice everywhere, that the case of the women was
very unhappy; for they seemed to ply at every door, and if the man was by great
chance refused at one house, he was sure to be received at the next.
Besides this, I observed
that the men made no scruple to set themselves out, and to go a fortune
hunting, as they call it, when they had really no fortune themselves to
demand it, or merit to deserve it; and that they carried it so high, that a
woman was scarce allowed to inquire after the character or estate of the person
that pretended to her. This I had an example of, in a young lady in the next
house to me, and with whom I had contracted an intimacy; she was courted by a
young captain, and though she had near
I fortified her mind
against such a meanness, as I called it; I told her, that as low
as I was in the world, I would have despised a man that should think I ought to
take him upon his own recommendation only, without having the liberty to inform
myself of his fortune and of his character; also I told her, that as she had a
good fortune, she had no need to stoop to the disaster of the time; that it was
enough that the men could insult us that had but little money to recommend us,
but if she suffered such an affront to pass upon her without resenting it, she
would be rendered low-prized upon all occasions, and would be the contempt of
all the women in that part of the town; that a woman can never want an
opportunity to be revenged of a man that has used her ill, and that there were
ways enough to humble such a fellow as that, or else certainly women were the
most unhappy creatures in the world.
I found she was very
well pleased with the discourse, and she told me seriously that she would be
very glad to make him sensible of her just resentment, and either to bring him
on again, or have the satisfaction of her revenge being as public as possible.
I told her, that if she would take my advice, I would tell her how she should
obtain her wishes in both those things, and that I would engage I would bring
the man to her door again, and make him beg to be let in. She smiled at that,
and soon let me see, that if he came to her door, her resentment was not so
great as to give her leave to let him stand long there.
However, she listened
very willingly to my offer of advice; so I told her that the first thing
she ought to do was a piece of justice to herself, namely, that whereas she had
been told by several people that he had reported among the ladies that he had
left her, and pretended to give the advantage of the negative to himself, she
should take care to have it well spread among the women—which she could not
fail of an opportunity to do in a neighbourhood so addicted to family news as
that she live in was—that she had inquired into his circumstances, and found he
was not the man as to estate he pretended to be. ‘Let them be told, madam,’ said
I, ‘that you had been well informed that he was not the man that you
expected, and that you thought it was not safe to meddle with him; that you
heard he was of an ill temper, and that he boasted how he had used the women
ill upon many occasions, and that particularly he was debauched in his morals’,
etc. The last of which, indeed, had some truth in it; but at the same time I did
not find that she seemed to like him much the worse for that part.
As I had put this into
her head, she came most readily into it. Immediately she went to work to find
instruments, and she had very little difficulty in the search, for telling her
story in general to a couple of gossips in the neighbourhood, it was the chat
of the tea-table all over that part of the town, and I met with it wherever I
visited; also, as it was known that I was acquainted with the young lady
herself, my opinion was asked very often, and I confirmed it with all the
necessary aggravations, and set out his character in the blackest colours; but
then as a piece of secret intelligence, I added, as what the other gossips knew
nothing of, viz. that I had heard he was in very bad circumstances; that
he was under a necessity of a fortune to support his interest with the owners
of the ship he commanded; that his own part was not paid for, and if it was not
paid quickly, his owners would put him out of the ship, and his chief mate was
likely to command it, who offered to buy that part which the captain had
promised to take.
I added, for I confess I was heartily piqued at the rogue, as I called him,
that I had heard a rumour, too, that he had a wife alive at
This worked as we both
desire it, for presently the young lady next door, who had a father and
mother that governed both her and her fortune, was shut up, and her father
forbid him the house. Also in one place more where he went, the woman had the
courage, however strange it was, to say No; and he could try nowhere but
he was reproached with his pride, and that he pretended not to give the women
leave to inquire into his character, and the like.
Well, by this time he
began to be sensible of his mistake; and having alarmed all the women on that
side of the water, he went over to Ratcliff, and got access to some of
the ladies there; but though the young women there too were, according to the
fate of the day, pretty willing to be asked, yet such was his ill- luck, that
his character followed him over the water and his good name was much the same
there as it was on our side; so that though he might have had wives enough, yet
it did not happen among the women that had good fortunes, which was what he
wanted.
But this was not all;
she very ingeniously managed another thing herself, for she got a young
gentleman, who as a relation, and was indeed a married man, to come and visit
her two or three times a week in a very fine chariot and good liveries, and her
two agents, and I also, presently spread a report all over, that this gentleman
came to court her; that he was a gentleman of a
This took immediately.
The captain was laughed at in all companies, and was ready to hang himself. He
tried all the ways possible to come at her again, and wrote the most passionate
letters to her in the world, excusing his former rashness; and in short, by
great application, obtained leave to wait on her again, as he said, to
clear his reputation.
At this meeting she had
her full revenge of him; for she told him she wondered what he took her
to be, that she should admit any man to a treaty of so much consequence as that
to marriage, without inquiring very well into his circumstances; that if he
thought she was to be huffed into wedlock, and that she was in the same
circumstances which her neighbours might be in, viz. to take up with the
first good Christian that came, he was mistaken; that, in a word, his character
was really bad, or he was very ill beholden to his neighbours; and that unless
he could clear up some points, in which she had justly been prejudiced, she had
no more to say to him, but to do herself justice, and give him the satisfaction
of knowing that she was not afraid to say No, either to him or any man else.
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 having a wife at Plymouth and
in the West Indies, and the like; and she asked him whether he could
deny that she had good reason, if these things were not cleared up, to refuse
him, and in the meantime to insist upon having satisfaction in points to
significant as they were.
He was so confounded at
her discourse that he could not answer a word, and she almost began to believe
that all was true, by his disorder, though at the same time she knew that she
had been the raiser of all those reports herself.
After some time he
recovered himself a little, and from that time became the most humble, the most
modest, and most importunate man alive in his courtship.
She carried her jest on
a great way. 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 and put his chief mate in 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 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 to play their part; and that, according to my Lord Rochester,
A woman’s ne’er so ruined but she can
Revenge herself on her undoer,
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 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, turning the
tables upon him, and 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, and to make inquiring into his character a kind of an affront to
him, she broke with him upon that subject, and at the same time that she make
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 like a prudent woman, 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 content with
the rest.
It is true she was
pretty well besides, that is to say, she had about
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 though it may be true that the men have but
too much choice among us, and that some women may be found who will dishonour
themselves, be cheap, and easy to come at, and will scarce wait to be asked,
yet if they will have women, as I may say, worth having, they may find
them as uncomeatable as ever and that those that are
otherwise are a sort of people that have 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, I observe,
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, and therefore the
women have the disadvantage; but I am far from granting that the number of
women is so great, or the number of 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, and 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 a 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, in my way of reasoning, 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 consider
this, and act the wary part, they would discover every cheat that offered; for,
in short, the lives of very few men nowadays will bear a character; and if the
ladies do but make a little inquiry, they will soon be able to distinguish the
men and deliver themselves. As for women that do not think they own safety
worth their though, that, impatient of their perfect state, resolve, as they
call it, to take the first good Christian that comes, that 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 to me they look like people that venture their whole
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 accepting his proposal without inquiring into his person or character; on
the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as
the rate of men now goes. In short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of
her capacities, nay, every of her understanding, that, having but one case of
her life, shall call 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 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, of which I have a story to
tell by itself. 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,
that by exposing themselves as they do; and if they did not marry so soon as
they may do otherwise, 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 thing 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, for I began to be dropped in all the discourses of
matrimony. Being well-bred, handsome, witty, modest, and agreeable; all which I
had allowed to my character—whether justly or no is not the purpose—I say, all
these would not do without the dross, which way now become more valuable than
virtue itself. In
short, the widow,
they said, had no money.
I resolved, therefore,
as to the state of my present circumstances, that it was absolutely necessary
to change my station, and make a new appearance in some other place where I was
not known, and even to pass by another name if I found occasion.
I communicated my
thoughts to my intimate friend, the captain’s lady, whom 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
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, when they had really no 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, as I had reason to do, that I
would give up myself wholly to her directions, and that I would have neither
tongue to speak nor feet to step in that affair but as she should direct me,
depending that she would extricate me out of every difficulty 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 be with them, for
they now live in a quite different place from where they were before. In the
next place, she tells her husband that I had at least
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 neighborhood
that the young widow at Captain —’s was a fortune, that she had at least
I picked out my man
without much difficulty, by the judgment I made of his way of courting me. I
had let him run on with his protestations and oaths 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, nay, it was upon a full satisfaction, 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
baulked, 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 his 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 a rage told me he would
conquer me, and writes 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 then told me he could not wait the tedious writing on
the 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 him 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, any more than with his affection; 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 if 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 all the reason in the world to
do, for he was the best-humoured, merry sort of a fellow that I ever met with,
and I often reflected on myself 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 all her days.
Besides, though I 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 be under the necessity of owning my
own circumstances to him; and I managed it the more warily, because I found he
inferred from thence, as indeed he ought to do, that I either had the more
money or the more judgment, and would not venture at all.
I took the freedom one
day, after we had talked pretty close to the subject, 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 him 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 a few questions,
which he would answer or not as he thought fit; and that I would not be
offended if he did not answer me at all; 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 that he had talked of going to live there, 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, generally speaking, to the tune of
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