Moll Flanders (21 page)

She replied that she should bring in an account of the expenses of it in two or three shapes; I should choose as I pleased; and I desired her to do so.

The next day she brought it, and the copy of her three bills was as follows:

I looked upon all the three bills and smiled, and told her I did not see but that she was very reasonable in her demands, and things considered, and I did not doubt but her accommodations were good.

She told me I should be a judge of that when I saw them. I told her I was sorry to tell her that I feared I must be her lowest-rated customer; “and perhaps, madam,” said I, “you will make me the less welcome upon that account.” “No, not at all,” said she; “for where I have one of the third sort, I have two of the second and four of the first, and I get as much by them in proportion as by any; but if you doubt my care of you, I will allow any friend you have to see if you are well waited on or no.”

Then she explained the particulars of her bill. “In the first place, madam,” said she, “I would have you observe that here is three months’ keeping you at but ten shillings a week; I undertake to say you will not complain of my table. I suppose,” says she, “you do not live cheaper where you are now?” “No, indeed,” said I, “nor so cheap, for I give six shillings per week for my chamber and find my own diet, which costs me a great deal more.”

“Then, madam,” says she, “if the child should not live, as it sometimes happens, there is the minister’s article saved; and if you have no friends to come, you may save the expense of a supper; so that take those articles out, madam,” says she, “your lying in will not cost you above five pounds three shillings more than your ordinary charge of living.”

This was the most reasonable thing that I ever heard of; so I smiled and told her I would come and be a customer; but I told her also that as I had two months and more to go, I might perhaps be obliged to stay longer with her than three months, and desired to know if she would not be obliged to remove me before it was proper. No, she said; her house was large, and besides, she never put anybody to remove that had lain in till they were willing to go; and if she had more ladies offered, she was not so ill-beloved among her neighbours but she could provide accommodation for twenty if there was occasion.

I found she was an eminent lady in her way, and in short, I agreed to put myself into her hands. She then talked of other things, looked about into my accommodations where I was, found fault with my wanting attendance and conveniences, and that I should not be used so at her house. I told her I was shy of speaking, for the woman of the house looked stranger, or at least I thought so, since I had been ill, because I was with child; and I was afraid she would put some affront or other upon me, supposing that I had been able to give but a slight account of myself.

“Oh, dear,” says she, “her ladyship is no stranger to these things; she has tried to entertain ladies in your condition, but could not secure the parish; and besides, such a nice lady, as you take her to be. However, since you are a-going, you shall not meddle with her, but I’ll see you are a little better looked after while you are here, and it shall not cost you the more neither.”

I did not understand her; however, I thanked her, so we parted. The next morning she sent me a chicken roasted and hot, and a bottle of sherry, and ordered the maid to tell me that she was to wait on me every day as long as I stayed there.

This was surprisingly good and kind, and I accepted it very willingly. At night she sent to me again, to know if I wanted anything and to order the maid to come to her in the morning for dinner. The maid had orders to make me some chocolate in the morning before she came away, and at noon she brought me the sweetbread of a breast of veal, whole, and a dish of soup for my dinner; and after this manner she nursed me up at a distance, so that I was mightily well pleased and quickly well, for indeed my dejections before were the principal part of my illness.

I expected, as is usually the case among such people, that the servant she sent me would have been some impudent brazen wench of Drury Lane breeding, and I was very uneasy upon that account; so I would not let her lie in the house the first night, but had my eyes about me as narrowly as if she had been a public thief.

My gentlewoman guessed presently what was the matter and sent her back with a short note that I might depend upon the honesty of her maid; that she would be answerable for her upon all accounts; and that she took no servants without very good security. I was then perfectly easy, and indeed the maid’s behaviour spoke for itself, for a modester, quieter, soberer girl never came into anybody’s family, and I found her so afterwards.

As soon as I was well enough to go abroad, I went with the maid to see the house and to see the apartment I was to have; and everything was so handsome and so clean that, in short, I had nothing to say, but was wonderfully pleased with what I had met with, which, considering the melancholy circumstances I was in, was beyond what I looked for.

It might be expected that I should give some account of the nature of the wicked practices of this woman in whose hands I was now fallen; but it would be but too much encouragement to the vice to let the world see what easy measures were here taken to rid the women’s burthen of a child clandestinely gotten. This grave matron had several sorts of practice, and this was one: that if a child was born, though not in her house (for she had the occasion to be called to many private labours), she had people always ready who for a piece of money would take the child off their hands and off from the hands of the parish too; and those children, as she said, were honestly taken care of. What should become of them all, considering so many as by her account she was concerned with, I cannot conceive.

I had many times discourses upon that subject with her; but she was full of this argument: that she saved the life of many an innocent lamb, as she called them, which would perhaps have been murdered; and of many a woman who, made desperate by the misfortune, would otherwise be tempted to destroy their children. I granted her that this was true and a very commendable thing, provided the poor children fell into good hands afterwards and were not abused and neglected by the nurses. She answered that she always took care of that, and had no nurses in her business but what were very good people and such as might be depended upon.

I could say nothing to the contrary, and so was obliged to say, “Madam, I do not question but you do your part, but what those people do is the main question”; and she stopped my mouth again with saying she took the utmost care about it.

The only thing I found in all her conversation on these subjects that gave me any distaste was that one time in discoursing about my being so far gone with child, she said something that looked as if she could help me off with my burthen sooner if I was willing; or, in English, that she could give me something to make me miscarry if I had a desire to put an end to my troubles that way; but I soon let her see that I abhorred the thoughts of it; and to do her justice, she put it off so cleverly that I could not say she really intended it or whether she only mentioned the practice as a horrible thing; for she couched her words so well and took my meaning so quickly that she gave her negative before I could explain myself.

To bring this part into as narrow a compass as possible, I quitted my lodging at St. Jones’s and went to my new governess, for so they called her in the house, and there I was indeed treated with so much courtesy, so carefully looked to, and everything so well that I was surprised at it and could not at first see what advantage my governess made of it; but I found afterwards that she professed to make no profit of the lodgers’ diet, nor indeed could she get much by it, but that her profit lay in the other articles of her management, and she made enough that way, I assure you; for ’tis scarce credible what practice she had, as well abroad as at home, and yet all upon the private account, or, in plain English, the whoring account.

While I was in her house, which was near four months, she had no less than twelve ladies of pleasure brought to bed within doors, and I think she had two-and-thirty or thereabouts under her conduct without doors; whereof one, as nice as she was with me, was lodged with my old landlady at St. Jones’s.

This was a strange testimony of the growing vice of the age, and as bad as I had been myself, it shocked my very senses; I began to nauseate the place I was in and, above all, the practice; and yet I must say that I never saw, or do I believe there was to be seen, the least indecency in the house the whole time I was there.

Not a man was ever seen to come upstairs except to visit the lying-in ladies within their month, nor then without the old lady with them, who made it a piece of the honour of her management that no man should touch a woman, no, not his own wife, within the month; nor would she permit any man to lie in the house upon any pretence whatever, no, not though it was with his own wife; and her saying for it was that she cared not how many children were born in her house, but she would have none got there if she could help it.

It might perhaps be carried farther than was needful, but it was an error of the right hand if it was an error, for by this she kept up the reputation, such as it was, of her business and obtained this character: that though she did take care of the women when they were debauched, yet she was not instrumental to their being debauched at all; and yet it was a wicked trade she drove too.

While I was here, and before I was brought to bed, I received a letter from my trustee at the bank, full of kind, obliging things and earnestly pressing me to return to London; it was near a fortnight old when it came to me because it had first been sent into Lancashire and then returned to me. He concludes with telling me that he had obtained a decree against his wife and that he would be ready to make good his engagement to me if I would accept of him, adding a great many protestations of kindness and affection, such as he would have been far from offering if he had known the circumstances I had been in, and which, as it was, I had been very far from deserving.

I returned an answer to this letter and dated it at Liverpool, but sent it by a messenger, alleging that it came in cover to a friend in town. I gave him joy of his deliverance, but raised some scruples at the lawfulness of his marrying again, and told him I supposed he would consider very seriously upon that point before he resolved on it, the consequence being too great for a man of his judgement to venture rashly upon; so concluded wishing him very well in whatever he resolved without letting him into anything of my own mind or giving any answer to his proposal of my coming to London to him, but mentioned at a distance my intention to return the latter end of the year, this being dated in April.

I was brought to bed about the middle of May, and had another brave boy, and myself in as good condition as usual on such occasions. My governess did her part as a midwife with the greatest art and dexterity imaginable, and far beyond all that ever I had had any experience of before.

Her care of me in my travail, and after in my lying in, was such that if she had been my own mother, it could not have been better. Let none be encouraged in their loose practices from this dexterous lady’s management, for she is gone to her place and I dare say has left nothing behind her that can or will come up to it.

I think I had been brought to bed about twenty days when I received another letter from my friend at the bank, with the surprising news that he had obtained a final sentence of divorce against his wife and had served her with it on such a day, and that he had such an answer to give to all my scruples about his marrying again as I could not expect and as he had no desire of; for that his wife, who had been under some remorse before for her usage of him, as soon as she heard that he had gained his point, had very unhappily destroyed herself that same evening.

He expressed himself very handsomely as to his being concerned at her disaster, but cleared himself of having any hand in it and that he had only done himself justice in a case in which he was notoriously injured and abused. However, he said that he was extremely afflicted at it and had no view of any satisfaction left in this world but only in the hope that I would come and relieve him by my company; and then he pressed me violently indeed to give him some hopes that I would at least come up to town and let him see me, when he would farther enter into discourse about it.