الفصل الفصل 2 · 第2章

MOLL FLANDERS

My true name is so well known in the records or registers at Newgate,

and in the Old Bailey, and there are some things of such consequence

still depending there, relating to my particular conduct, that it is

not be expected I should set my name or the account of my family to

this work; perhaps, after my death, it may be better known; at present

it would not be proper, no not though a general pardon should be

issued, even without exceptions and reserve of persons or crimes.

It is enough to tell you, that as some of my worst comrades, who are

out of the way of doing me harm (having gone out of the world by the

steps and the string, as I often expected to go), knew me by the name

of Moll Flanders, so you may give me leave to speak of myself under

that name till I dare own who I have been, as well as who I am.

I have been told that in one of our neighbour nations, whether it be in

France or where else I know not, they have an order from the king, that

when any criminal is condemned, either to die, or to the galleys, or to

be transported, if they leave any children, as such are generally

unprovided for, by the poverty or forfeiture of their parents, so they

are immediately taken into the care of the Government, and put into a

hospital called the House of Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed,

fed, taught, and when fit to go out, are placed out to trades or to

services, so as to be well able to provide for themselves by an honest,

industrious behaviour.

Had this been the custom in our country, I had not been left a poor

desolate girl without friends, without clothes, without help or helper

in the world, as was my fate; and by which I was not only exposed to

very great distresses, even before I was capable either of

understanding my case or how to amend it, but brought into a course of

life which was not only scandalous in itself, but which in its ordinary

course tended to the swift destruction both of soul and body.

But the case was otherwise here. My mother was convicted of felony for

a certain petty theft scarce worth naming, viz. having an opportunity

of borrowing three pieces of fine holland of a certain draper in

Cheapside. The circumstances are too long to repeat, and I have heard

them related so many ways, that I can scarce be certain which is the

right account.

However it was, this they all agree in, that my mother pleaded her

belly, and being found quick with child, she was respited for about

seven months; in which time having brought me into the world, and being

about again, she was called down, as they term it, to her former

judgment, but obtained the favour of being transported to the

plantations, and left me about half a year old; and in bad hands, you

may be sure.

This is too near the first hours of my life for me to relate anything

of myself but by hearsay; it is enough to mention, that as I was born

in such an unhappy place, I had no parish to have recourse to for my

nourishment in my infancy; nor can I give the least account how I was

kept alive, other than that, as I have been told, some relation of my

mother’s took me away for a while as a nurse, but at whose expense, or

by whose direction, I know nothing at all of it.

The first account that I can recollect, or could ever learn of myself,

was that I had wandered among a crew of those people they call gypsies,

or Egyptians; but I believe it was but a very little while that I had

been among them, for I had not had my skin discoloured or blackened, as

they do very young to all the children they carry about with them; nor

can I tell how I came among them, or how I got from them.

It was at Colchester, in Essex, that those people left me; and I have a

notion in my head that I left them there (that is, that I hid myself

and would not go any farther with them), but I am not able to be

particular in that account; only this I remember, that being taken up

by some of the parish officers of Colchester, I gave an account that I

came into the town with the gypsies, but that I would not go any

farther with them, and that so they had left me, but whither they were

gone that I knew not, nor could they expect it of me; for though they

send round the country to inquire after them, it seems they could not

be found.

I was now in a way to be provided for; for though I was not a parish

charge upon this or that part of the town by law, yet as my case came

to be known, and that I was too young to do any work, being not above

three years old, compassion moved the magistrates of the town to order

some care to be taken of me, and I became one of their own as much as

if I had been born in the place.

In the provision they made for me, it was my good hap to be put to

nurse, as they call it, to a woman who was indeed poor but had been in

better circumstances, and who got a little livelihood by taking such as

I was supposed to be, and keeping them with all necessaries, till they

were at a certain age, in which it might be supposed they might go to

service or get their own bread.

This woman had also had a little school, which she kept to teach

children to read and to work; and having, as I have said, lived before

that in good fashion, she bred up the children she took with a great

deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.

But that which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very

religiously, being herself a very sober, pious woman, very house-wifely

and clean, and very mannerly, and with good behaviour. So that in a

word, expecting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were

brought up as mannerly and as genteelly as if we had been at the

dancing-school.

I was continued here till I was eight years old, when I was terrified

with news that the magistrates (as I think they called them) had

ordered that I should go to service. I was able to do but very little

service wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands and be a

drudge to some cookmaid, and this they told me of often, which put me

into a great fright; for I had a thorough aversion to going to service,

as they called it (that is, to be a servant), though I was so young;

and I told my nurse, as we called her, that I believed I could get my

living without going to service, if she pleased to let me; for she had

taught me to work with my needle, and spin worsted, which is the chief

trade of that city, and I told her that if she would keep me, I would

work for her, and I would work very hard.

I talked to her almost every day of working hard; and, in short, I did

nothing but work and cry all day, which grieved the good, kind woman so

much, that at last she began to be concerned for me, for she loved me

very well.

One day after this, as she came into the room where all we poor

children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her

usual place as mistress, but as if she set herself on purpose to

observe me and see me work. I was doing something she had set me to; as

I remember, it was marking some shirts which she had taken to make, and

after a while she began to talk to me. “Thou foolish child,” says she,

“thou art always crying” (for I was crying then); “prithee, what dost

cry for?” “Because they will take me away,” says I, “and put me to

service, and I can’t work housework.” “Well, child,” says she, “but

though you can’t work housework, as you call it, you will learn it in

time, and they won’t put you to hard things at first.” “Yes, they

will,” says I, “and if I can’t do it they will beat me, and the maids

will beat me to make me do great work, and I am but a little girl and I

can’t do it”; and then I cried again, till I could not speak any more

to her.

This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she from that time resolved

I should not go to service yet; so she bid me not cry, and she would

speak to Mr. Mayor, and I should not go to service till I was bigger.

Well, this did not satisfy me, for to think of going to service was

such a frightful thing to me, that if she had assured me I should not

have gone till I was twenty years old, it would have been the same to

me; I should have cried, I believe, all the time, with the very

apprehension of its being to be so at last.

When she saw that I was not pacified yet, she began to be angry with

me. “And what would you have?” says she; “don’t I tell you that you

shall not go to service till your are bigger?” “Ay,” said I, “but then

I must go at last.” “Why, what?” said she; “is the girl mad? What would

you be—a gentlewoman?” “Yes,” says I, and cried heartily till I roared

out again.

This set the old gentlewoman a-laughing at me, as you may be sure it

would. “Well, madam, forsooth,” says she, gibing at me, “you would be a

gentlewoman; and pray how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What! will

you do it by your fingers’ end?”

“Yes,” says I again, very innocently.

“Why, what can you earn?” says she; “what can you get at your work?”

“Threepence,” said I, “when I spin, and fourpence when I work plain

work.”

“Alas! poor gentlewoman,” said she again, laughing, “what will that do

for thee?”

“It will keep me,” says I, “if you will let me live with you.” And this

I said in such a poor petitioning tone, that it made the poor woman’s

heart yearn to me, as she told me afterwards.

“But,” says she, “that will not keep you and buy you clothes too; and

who must buy the little gentlewoman clothes?” says she, and smiled all

the while at me.

“I will work harder, then,” says I, “and you shall have it all.”

“Poor child! it won’t keep you,” says she; “it will hardly keep you in

victuals.”

“Then I will have no victuals,” says I, again very innocently; “let me

but live with you.”

“Why, can you live without victuals?” says she.

“Yes,” again says I, very much like a child, you may be sure, and still

I cried heartily.

I had no policy in all this; you may easily see it was all nature; but

it was joined with so much innocence and so much passion that, in

short, it set the good motherly creature a-weeping too, and she cried

at last as fast as I did, and then took me and led me out of the

teaching-room. “Come,” says she, “you shan’t go to service; you shall

live with me”; and this pacified me for the present.