Chapter
9
Well, I pitied him, and
wished him well rid of her, and still would have talked of my business, but it
would not do. At last he looks steadily at me. ‘Look you, madam,’ says
he, ‘you came to ask advice of me, and I will serve you as faithfully as if
you were my own sister; but I must turn the tables, since you oblige me to do
it, and are so friendly to me, and I think I must ask advice of you. Tell
me, what must a poor abused fellow do with a whore? What can I do to do
myself justice upon her?’
‘Alas! Sir,’ says
I, ‘’tis a case too nice for me to advise in, but it seems she has run away
from you, so you are rid of her fairly; what can you desire more?’ ‘Ay, she is
gone indeed,’ said he, ‘but I am not clear of her for all that.’
‘That’s true,’ says I;
‘she may indeed run you into debt, but the law has furnished you with methods
to prevent that also; you may cry her down, as they call it.’
‘No, no,’ says he,
‘that is not the case neither; I have taken care of all that; ‘tis not that
part that I speak of, but I would be rid of her so that I might marry again.’
‘Well, sir,’ says I,
‘then you must divorce her. If you can prove what you say, you may certainly
get that done, and then, I suppose, you are free.’
‘That’s very tedious and
expensive,’ says he.
‘Why,’ says I,
‘if you can get any woman you like to take your word, I suppose your wife would
not dispute the liberty with you that she takes herself.’
‘Ay,’ says he,
‘but ‘twould be hard to bring an honest woman to do that; and for the other
sort,’ says he, ‘I have had enough of her to meddle with any more
whores.’
It occurred to me
presently, ‘I would have taken your word with all my heart, if you had but
asked me the question’; but that was to myself. To him I replied, ‘Why,
you shut the door against any honest woman accepting you, for you condemn all
that should venture upon you at once, and conclude, that really a woman that
takes you now can’t be honest.’
‘Why,’ says he,
‘I wish you would satisfy me that an honest woman would take me; I’d venture
it’; and then turns short upon me, ‘Will you take me, madam?’
‘That’s not a fair
question,’ says I, ‘after what you have said; however, lest you should
think I wait only for a recantation of it, I shall answer you plainly, No, not
I; my business is of another kind with you, and I did not expect you would have
turned my serious application to you, in my own distracted case, into a
comedy.’
‘Why, madam,’ says he,
‘my case is as distracted as yours can be, and I stand in as much need of
advice as you do, for I think if I have not relief somewhere, I shall be made
myself, and I know not what course to take, I protest to you.’
‘Why, sir,’ says I,
‘’tis easy to give advice in your case, much easier than it is in mine.’ ‘Speak
then,’ says he, ‘I beg of you, for now you encourage me.’
‘Why,’ says I,
‘if your case is so plain as you say it is, you may be legally divorced, and
then you may find honest women enough to ask the question of fairly; the sex is
not so scarce that you can want a wife.’
‘Well, then,’ said he,
‘I am in earnest; I’ll take your advice; but shall I ask you one question
seriously beforehand?’
‘Any question,’ said
I, ‘but that you did before.’
‘No, that answer will
not do,’ said he, ‘for, in short, that is the question I shall ask.’
‘You may ask what questions
you please, but you have my answer to that already,’ said
‘Well, well,’ says he,
‘I do not banter you, I am in earnest; consider of it.’
‘But, sir,’ says I, a
little gravely, ‘I came to you about my own business; I beg of you to let
me know, what you will advise me to do?’
‘I will be prepared,’ says
he, ‘against you come again.’
‘Nay,’ says I,
‘you have forbid my coming any more.’
‘Why so?’ said he,
and looked a little surprised.
‘Because,’ said I,
‘you can’t expect I should visit you on the account you talk of.’
‘Well,’ says he,
‘you shall promise me to come again, however, and I will not say any more of it
till I have gotten the divorce, but I desire you will prepare to be better
conditioned when that’s done, for you shall be the woman, or I will not be
divorced at all; why, I owe it to your unlooked-for kindness, if it were to
nothing else, but I have other reasons too.’
He could not have said
anything in the world that pleased me better; however, I knew that the way to
secure him was to stand off while the thing was so remote, as it appeared to
be, and that it was time enough to accept of it when he was able to perform it;
so I said very respectfully to him, it was time enough to consider of these
things when he was in a condition to talk of them; in the meantime, I told him,
I was going a great way from him, and he would find objects enough to please
him better. We broke off here for the present, and he made me promise him to
come again the next day, for his resolutions upon my own business, which after
some pressing I did; though had he seen farther into me, I wanted no pressing
on that account.
I came the next evening,
accordingly, and brought my maid with me, to let him see that I kept a
maid, but I sent her away as soon as I was gone in. He would have had me let
the maid have stayed, but I would not, but ordered her aloud to come for me
again about nine o’clock. But he forbade that, and told me he would see me safe
home, which, by the way, I was not very well please with, supposing he might do
that to know where I lived and inquire into my character and circumstances.
However, I ventured that, for all that the people there or thereabout knew of
me, was to my advantage; and all the character he had of me, after he had
inquired, was that I was a woman of fortune, and that I was a very
modest, sober body; which, whether true or not in the main, yet you may see how
necessary it is for all women who expect anything in the world, to preserve the
character of their virtue, even when perhaps they may have sacrificed the thing
itself.
I found, and was not
a little please with it, that he had provided a supper for me. I found also
he lived very handsomely, and had a house very handsomely furnished; all of
which I was rejoiced at indeed, for I looked upon it as all my own.
We had now a second
conference upon the subject-matter of the last conference. He laid his business
very home indeed; he protested his affection to me, and indeed I had no room to
doubt it; he declared that it began from the first moment I talked with him,
and long before I had mentioned leaving my effects with him. ‘’Tis no matter
when it began,’ thought I; ‘if it will but hold, ‘twill be well enough.’
He then told me how much the offer I had made of trusting him with my
effects, and leaving them to him, had enraged him. ‘So I intended it should,’ thought
I, ‘but then I thought you had been a single man too.’ After we had supped,
I observed he pressed me very hard to drink two or three glasses of wine,
which, however, I declined, but drank one glass or two. He then told me he had
a proposal to make to me, which I should promise him I would not take ill if I
should not grant it. I told him I hoped he would make no dishonourable proposal
to me, especially in his own house, and that if it was such, I desired he would
not propose it, that I might not be obliged to offer any resentment to him that
did not become the respect I professed for him, and the trust I had placed in
him in coming to his house; and begged of him he would give me leave to go
away, and accordingly began to put on my gloves and prepare to be gone, though
at the same time I no more intended it than he intended to let me.
Well, he importuned me
not to talk of going; he assured me he had no dishonourable thing in his
thoughts about me, and was very far from offering anything to me that was
dishonourable, and if I thought so, he would choose to say no more of it.
That part I did not
relish at all. I told him I was ready to hear anything that he had to say,
depending that he would say nothing unworthy of himself, or unfit for me to
hear. Upon this, he told me his proposal was this: that I would marry him,
though he had not yet obtained the divorce from the whore his wife; and to
satisfy me that he meant honourably, he would promise not to desire me to live
with him, or go to bed with him till the divorce was obtained. My heart said
yet to this offer at first word, but it was necessary to play the hypocrite a
little more with him; so I seemed to decline the motion with some warmth, and
besides a little condemning the thing as unfair, told him that such a proposal
could be of no signification, but to entangle us both in great difficulties;
for if he should not at last obtain the divorce, yet we could not dissolve the
marriage, neither could we proceed in it; so that if he was disappointed in the
divorce, I left him to consider what a condition we should both be in.
In short, I carried on
the argument against this so far, that I convinced him it was not a proposal
that had any sense in it. Well, then he went from it to another, and that was,
that I would sign and seal a contract with him, conditioning to marry him as
soon as the divorce was obtained, and to be void if he could not obtain it.
I told him such a thing
was more rational than the other; but as this was the first time that ever I
could imagine him weak enough to be in earnest in this affair, I did not use to
say Yes at first asking; I would consider of it.
I played with this lover
as an angler does with a trout. I found I had him fast on the hook, so I jested
with his new proposal, and put him off. I told him he knew little of me, and
bade him inquire about me; I let him also go home with me to my lodging, though
I would not ask him to go in, for I told him it was not decent.
In short, I ventured to
avoid signing a contract of marriage, and the reason why I did it was because
the lady that had invited me so earnestly to go with her into Lancashire
insisted so positively upon it, and promised me such great fortunes, and such
fine things there, that I was tempted to go and try. ‘Perhaps,’ said I,
‘I may mend myself very much’; and then I made no scruple in my thoughts of
quitting my honest citizen, whom I was not so much in love with as not to leave
him for a richer.
In a word, I avoided a
contract; but told him I would go into the North, that he should know
where to write to me by the consequence of the business I had entrusted with
him; that I would give him a sufficient pledge of my respect for him, for I
would leave almost all I had in the world in his hands; and I would thus far give
him my word, that as soon as he had sued out a divorce from his first wife, he
would send me an account of it, I would come up to London, and that then
we would talk seriously of the matter.
It was a base design I
went with, that I must confess, though I was invited thither with a
design much worse than mine was, as the sequel will discover. Well, I went with
my friend, as I called her, into
We came, however, to a
gentleman’s seat, where was a numerous family, a large park, extraordinary
company indeed, and where she was called cousin. I told her if she had resolved
to bring me into such company as this, she should have let me have prepared
myself, and have furnished myself with better clothes. The ladies took notice
of that, and told me very genteelly they did not value people in their country
so much by their clothes as they did in London; that their cousin had
fully informed them of my quality, and that I did not want clothes to set me
off; in short, they entertained me, not like what I was, but like what they
thought I had been, namely, a widow lady of a great fortune.
The first discovery I
made here was, that the family were all Roman Catholics, and the cousin
too, whom I called my friend; however, I must say that nobody in the
world could behave better to me, and I had all the civility shown me that I
could have had if I had been of their opinion. The truth is, I had not so much
principle of any kind as to be nice in point of religion, and I presently
learned to speak favourably of the Romish Church; particularly, I told
them I saw little but the prejudice of education in all the difference that
were among Christians about religion, and if it had so happened that my father
had been a Roman Catholic, I doubted not but I should have been as well
pleased with their religion as my own.
This obliged them in the
highest degree, and as I was besieged day and night with good company and
pleasant discourse, so I had two or three old ladies that lay at me upon the
subject of religion too. I was so complaisant, that though I would not
completely engage, yet I made no scruple to be present at their mass, and to
conform to all their gestures as they showed me the pattern, but I would not
come too cheap; so that I only in the main encouraged them to expect that I
would turn Roman Catholic, if I was instructed in the Catholic Doctrine
as they called it, and so the matter rested.
I stayed here about six
weeks; and then my conductor led me back to a country village, about six miles
from Liverpool, where her brother (as she called him) came to visit me
in his own chariot, and in a very good figure, with two footmen in a good
livery; and the next thing was to make love to me. As it had happened to me,
one would think I could not have been cheated, and indeed I thought so myself,
having a safe card at home, which I resolved not to quit unless I could mend
myself very much. However, in all appearance this brother was a match worth my
listening to, and the least his estate was valued at was
That was a great
fortune, and passed for such, was above being asked how much my estate was; and
my false friend taking it upon a foolish hearsay, had raised it from
He never so much as
asked me about my fortune or estate, but assured me that when we came to
This was such language
indeed as I had not been used to, and I was here beaten out of all my measures;
I had a she-devil in my bosom, every hour telling me how great her brother
lived. One time she would come for my orders, how I would have my coaches painted,
and how lined; and another time what clothes my page should wear; in short, my
eyes were dazzled. I had now lost my power of saying No, and, to cut the story
short, I consented to be married; but to be the more private, we were carried
farther into the country, and married by a Romish clergyman, who I was assured
would marry us as effectually as a Church of England parson.
I cannot say but I had
some reflections in this affair upon the dishonourable forsaking my faithful
citizen, who loved me sincerely, and who was endeavouring to quit himself of a
scandalous whore by whom he had been indeed barbarously used, and promised
himself infinite happiness in his new choice; which choice was now giving up
herself to another in a manner almost as scandalous as hers could be.
But the glittering shoe
of a great estate, and of fine things, which the deceived creature that was now
my deceiver represented every hour to my imagination, hurried me away, and gave
me no time to think of London, or of anything there, much less of the
obligation I had to a person of infinitely more real merit than what was now
before me.
But the thing was done;
I was now in the arms of my new spouse, who appeared still the same as before;
great even to magnificence, and nothing less than
After we had been
married about a month, he began to talk of my going to West-chester in
order to embark for
Here my spouse, talking
of my going to
I seemed to look strange
at it, and told him I knew not what he meant; that I had no effects in the Bank
of
I was surprised at this
talk, and began to consider very seriously what the meaning of it must be; and
it presently occurred to me that my friend, who called him brother, had
represented me in colours which were not my due; and I thought, since it was
come to that pitch, that I would know the bottom of it before I went out of England,
and before I should put myself into I knew not whose hands in a strange
country.
Upon this I called his
sister into my chamber the next morning, and letting her know the discourse her
brother and I had been upon the evening before, I conjured her to tell me what
she had said to him, and upon what foot it was that she had made this marriage.
She owned that she had told him that I was a great fortune, and said that she
was told so at
He looked a little
disturbed at the assurance with which I seemed to speak it, and came and sat
down by me, having first shut the door; upon which I began, for I was very much
provoked, and turning myself to him, ‘I am afraid,’ says I, ‘my dear’
(for I spoke with kindness on his side), ‘that you have a very great abuse put
upon you, and an injury done you never to be repaired in your marrying me,
which, however, as I have had no hand in it, I desire I may be fairly acquitted
of it, and that the blame may lie where it ought to lie, and nowhere else, for
I wash my hands of every part of it.’
‘What injury can be done
me, my dear,’ says he, ‘in marrying you. I hope it is to my honour and
advantage every way.’ ‘I will soon explain it to you,’ says I, ‘and I fear you
will have no reason to think yourself well used; but I will convince you, my
dear,’ says I again, ‘that I have had no hand in it’; and there I
stopped a while.
He looked now scared and
wild, and began, I believe, to suspect what followed; however, looking towards
me, and saying only, ‘Go on,’ he sat silent, as if to hear what I had
more to say; so I went on. ‘I asked you last night,’ said I, speaking to him,
‘if ever I made any boast to you of my estate, or ever told you I had any
estate in the Bank of England or anywhere else, and you owned I had not,
as is most true; and I desire you will tell me here, before your sister, if
ever I gave you any reason from me to think so, or that ever we had any
discourse about it’; and he owned again I had not, but said I had
appeared always as a woman of fortune, and he depended on it that I was so, and
hoped he was not deceived. ‘I am not inquiring yet whether you have been
deceived or not,’ said I; ‘I fear you have, and I too; but I am
clearing myself from the unjust charge of being concerned in deceiving you.
‘I have been now asking
your sister if ever I told her of any fortune or estate I had, or gave her any
particulars of it; and she owns I never did. Any pray, madam,’ said I,
turning myself to her, ‘be so just to me, before your brother, to charge
me, if you can, if ever I pretended to you that I had an estate; and why, if I
had, should I come down into this country with you on purpose to spare that
little I had, and live cheap?’ She could not deny one word, but said she
had been told in
‘And now, Dear Sir,’
said I, turning myself to my new spouse again, ‘be so just to me as to
tell me who has abused both you and me so much as to make you believe I was a
fortune, and prompt you to court me to this marriage?’ He could not speak a
word, but pointed to her; and, after some more pause, flew out in the most
furious passion that ever I saw a man in my life, cursing her, and calling her
all the whores and hard names he could think of; and that she had ruined him,
declaring that she had told him I had
I was confounded now as
much as he, and knew not what to say. I thought many ways that I had the worst
of it, but his saying he was undone, and that he had no estate neither, put me
into a mere distraction. ‘Why,’ says I to him, ‘this has been a hellish
juggle, for we are married here upon the foot of a double fraud; you are undone
by the disappointment, it seems; and if I had had a fortune I had been cheated
too, for you say you have nothing.’
‘You would indeed have
been cheated, my dear,’ says he, ‘but you would not have been undone,
for
This was very honest
indeed, and I really believe he spoke as he intended, and that he was a man
that was as well qualified to make me happy, as to his temper and behaviour, as
any man ever was; but his having no estate, and being run into debt on this
ridiculous account in the country, made all the prospect dismal and dreadful,
and I knew not what to say, or what to think of myself.
I told him it was very
unhappy that so much love, and so much good nature as I discovered in him,
should be thus precipitated into misery; that I saw nothing before us but ruin;
for as to me, it was my unhappiness that what little I had was not able to
relieve us week, and with that I pulled out a bank bill of
He told me with a great
concern, and I thought I saw tears stand in his eyes, that he would not touch
it; that he abhorred the thoughts of stripping me and make me miserable; that,
on the contrary, he had fifty guineas left, which was all he had in the world,
and he pulled it out and threw it down on the table, bidding me take it, though
he were to starve for want of it.
I returned, with the
same concern for him, that I could not bear to hear him talk so; that, on the
contrary, if he could propose any probable method of living, I would do
anything that became me on my part, and that I would live as close and as
narrow as he could desire.
He begged of me to talk
no more at that rate, for it would make him distracted; he said he was bred a
gentleman, though he was reduced to a low fortune, and that there was but one
way left which he could think of, and that would not do, unless I could answer
him one question, which, however, he said he would not press me to. I told him
I would answer it honestly; whether it would be to his satisfaction or not,
that I could not tell.
‘Why, then, my dear,
tell me plainly,’ says he, ‘will the little you have keep us together in
any figure, or in any station or place, or will it not?’
It was my happiness
hitherto that I had not discovered myself or my circumstances at all—no, not so
much as my name; and seeing these was nothing to be expected from him, however
good-humoured and however honest he seemed to be, but to live on what I knew
would soon be wasted, I resolved to conceal everything but the bank bill
and the eleven guineas which I had owned; and I would have been very glad to
have lost that and have been set down where he took me up. I had indeed another
bank bill about me of
But to return to his
question, I told him I never willingly deceived him, and I never would. I was
very sorry to tell him that the little I had would not subsist us; that it was
not sufficient to subsist me alone in the south country, and that this
was the reason that made me put myself into the hands of that woman who called
him brother, she having assured me that I might board very handsomely at a town
called Manchester, where I had not yet been, for about
He shook his head and
remained silent, and a very melancholy evening we had; however, we supped
together, and lay together that night, and when we had almost supped he looked
a little better and more cheerful, and called for a bottle of wine. ‘Come,
my dear,’ says he, ‘ though the case is bad, it is to no purpose to be
dejected. come, be as easy as you can; I will endeavour to find out some way or
other to live; if you can but subsist yourself, that is better than nothing. I
must try the world again; a man ought to think like a man; to be discouraged is
to yield to the misfortune.’ With this he filled a glass and drank to me,
holding my hand and pressing it hard in his hand all the while the wine went
down, and protesting afterwards his main concern was for me.
It was really a true,
gallant spirit he was of, and it was the more grievous to me. ‘Tis something of
relief even to be undone by a man of honour, rather than by a scoundrel; but
here the greatest disappointment was on his side, for he had really spent a
great deal of money, deluded by this Madam the Procuress; and it was very
remarkable on what poor terms he proceeded. First the baseness of the creature
herself is to be observed, who, for the getting
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