Chapter Chapter 1 · 第1章

Chapter 1. 摩尔·弗兰德斯

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c.

Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu’d Variety for

Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five

times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief,

Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d

Honest, and dies a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums . . .

by Daniel Defoe

THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The world is so taken up of late with novels and romances, that it will

be hard for a private history to be taken for genuine, where the names

and other circumstances of the person are concealed, and on this

account we must be content to leave the reader to pass his own opinion

upon the ensuing sheet, and take it just as he pleases.

The author is here supposed to be writing her own history, and in the

very beginning of her account she gives the reasons why she thinks fit

to conceal her true name, after which there is no occasion to say any

more about that.

It is true that the original of this story is put into new words, and

the style of the famous lady we here speak of is a little altered;

particularly she is made to tell her own tale in modester words that

she told it at first, the copy which came first to hand having been

written in language more like one still in Newgate than one grown

penitent and humble, as she afterwards pretends to be.

The pen employed in finishing her story, and making it what you now see

it to be, has had no little difficulty to put it into a dress fit to be

seen, and to make it speak language fit to be read. When a woman

debauched from her youth, nay, even being the offspring of debauchery

and vice, comes to give an account of all her vicious practices, and

even to descend to the particular occasions and circumstances by which

she ran through in threescore years, an author must be hard put to it

wrap it up so clean as not to give room, especially for vicious

readers, to turn it to his disadvantage.

All possible care, however, has been taken to give no lewd ideas, no

immodest turns in the new dressing up of this story; no, not to the

worst parts of her expressions. To this purpose some of the vicious

part of her life, which could not be modestly told, is quite left out,

and several other parts are very much shortened. What is left ’tis

hoped will not offend the chastest reader or the modest hearer; and as

the best use is made even of the worst story, the moral ’tis hoped will

keep the reader serious, even where the story might incline him to be

otherwise. To give the history of a wicked life repented of,

necessarily requires that the wicked part should be make as wicked as

the real history of it will bear, to illustrate and give a beauty to

the penitent part, which is certainly the best and brightest, if

related with equal spirit and life.

It is suggested there cannot be the same life, the same brightness and

beauty, in relating the penitent part as is in the criminal part. If

there is any truth in that suggestion, I must be allowed to say ’tis

because there is not the same taste and relish in the reading, and

indeed it is too true that the difference lies not in the real worth of

the subject so much as in the gust and palate of the reader.

But as this work is chiefly recommended to those who know how to read

it, and how to make the good uses of it which the story all along

recommends to them, so it is to be hoped that such readers will be more

pleased with the moral than the fable, with the application than with

the relation, and with the end of the writer than with the life of the

person written of.

There is in this story abundance of delightful incidents, and all of

them usefully applied. There is an agreeable turn artfully given them

in the relating, that naturally instructs the reader, either one way or

other. The first part of her lewd life with the young gentleman at

Colchester has so many happy turns given it to expose the crime, and

warn all whose circumstances are adapted to it, of the ruinous end of

such things, and the foolish, thoughtless, and abhorred conduct of both

the parties, that it abundantly atones for all the lively description

she gives of her folly and wickedness.

The repentance of her lover at the Bath, and how brought by the just

alarm of his fit of sickness to abandon her; the just caution given

there against even the lawful intimacies of the dearest friends, and

how unable they are to preserve the most solemn resolutions of virtue

without divine assistance; these are parts which, to a just

discernment, will appear to have more real beauty in them, than all the

amorous chain of story which introduces it.

In a word, as the whole relation is carefully garbled of all the levity

and looseness that was in it, so it all applied, and with the utmost

care, to virtuous and religious uses. None can, without being guilty of

manifest injustice, cast any reproach upon it, or upon our design in

publishing it.

The advocates for the stage have, in all ages, made this the great

argument to persuade people that their plays are useful, and that they

ought to be allowed in the most civilised and in the most religious

government; namely, that they are applied to virtuous purposes, and

that by the most lively representations, they fail not to recommend

virtue and generous principles, and to discourage and expose all sorts

of vice and corruption of manners; and were it true that they did so,

and that they constantly adhered to that rule, as the test of their

acting on the theatre, much might be said in their favour.

Throughout the infinite variety of this book, this fundamental is most

strictly adhered to; there is not a wicked action in any part of it,

but is first and last rendered unhappy and unfortunate; there is not a

superlative villain brought upon the stage, but either he is brought to

an unhappy end, or brought to be a penitent; there is not an ill thing

mentioned but it is condemned, even in the relation, nor a virtuous,

just thing but it carries its praise along with it. What can more

exactly answer the rule laid down, to recommend even those

representations of things which have so many other just objections

leaving against them? namely, of example, of bad company, obscene

language, and the like.

Upon this foundation this book is recommended to the reader as a work

from every part of which something may be learned, and some just and

religious inference is drawn, by which the reader will have something

of instruction, if he pleases to make use of it.

All the exploits of this lady of fame, in her depredations upon

mankind, stand as so many warnings to honest people to beware of them,

intimating to them by what methods innocent people are drawn in,

plundered and robbed, and by consequence how to avoid them. Her robbing

a little innocent child, dressed fine by the vanity of the mother, to

go to the dancing-school, is a good memento to such people hereafter,

as is likewise her picking the gold watch from the young lady’s side in

the Park.

Her getting a parcel from a hare-brained wench at the coaches in St.

John Street; her booty made at the fire, and again at Harwich, all give

us excellent warnings in such cases to be more present to ourselves in

sudden surprises of every sort.

Her application to a sober life and industrious management at last in

Virginia, with her transported spouse, is a story fruitful of

instruction to all the unfortunate creatures who are obliged to seek

their re-establishment abroad, whether by the misery of transportation

or other disaster; letting them know that diligence and application

have their due encouragement, even in the remotest parts of the world,

and that no case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of prospect,

but that an unwearied industry will go a great way to deliver us from

it, will in time raise the meanest creature to appear again in the

world, and give him a new case for his life.

There are a few of the serious inferences which we are led by the hand

to in this book, and these are fully sufficient to justify any man in

recommending it to the world, and much more to justify the publication

of it.

There are two of the most beautiful parts still behind, which this

story gives some idea of, and lets us into the parts of them, but they

are either of them too long to be brought into the same volume, and

indeed are, as I may call them, whole volumes of themselves, viz.: 1.

The life of her governess, as she calls her, who had run through, it

seems, in a few years, all the eminent degrees of a gentlewoman, a

whore, and a bawd; a midwife and a midwife-keeper, as they are called;

a pawnbroker, a childtaker, a receiver of thieves, and of thieves’

purchase, that is to say, of stolen goods; and in a word, herself a

thief, a breeder up of thieves and the like, and yet at last a

penitent.

The second is the life of her transported husband, a highwayman, who it

seems, lived a twelve years’ life of successful villainy upon the road,

and even at last came off so well as to be a volunteer transport, not a

convict; and in whose life there is an incredible variety.

But, as I have said, these are things too long to bring in here, so

neither can I make a promise of the coming out by themselves.

We cannot say, indeed, that this history is carried on quite to the end

of the life of this famous Moll Flanders, as she calls herself, for

nobody can write their own life to the full end of it, unless they can

write it after they are dead. But her husband’s life, being written by

a third hand, gives a full account of them both, how long they lived

together in that country, and how they both came to England again,

after about eight years, in which time they were grown very rich, and

where she lived, it seems, to be very old, but was not so extraordinary

a penitent as she was at first; it seems only that indeed she always

spoke with abhorrence of her former life, and of every part of it.

In her last scene, at Maryland and Virginia, many pleasant things

happened, which makes that part of her life very agreeable, but they

are not told with the same elegancy as those accounted for by herself;

so it is still to the more advantage that we break off here.