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 sheets, 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 than 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 first became wicked, and of all the progressions of crime which she run through in threescore years, an author must be hard put to it to 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 part 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 modestest hearer; and as the best use is to be 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 made 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 much 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 another. 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 is 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 civilized 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 or 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 lying 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 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 hairbrained wench at the coaches in St. John’s Street; her booty at the fire, and also at Harwich; all give us excellent warning 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 part 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 cast for his life.

These 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 child-taker, a receiver of thieves, and 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 said, these are things too long to bring in here, so neither can I make a promise of their 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, 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 came both 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.

CHAPTER 1 The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous 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 to 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 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 go 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 forfeiture of their parents, so they are immediately taken into the care of the government, and put into an hospital called the House of Orphans, where they are bred up, clothed, fed, taught, and when fit to go out, are placed 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, 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, scandalous in itself, and 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 petty theft scarce worth naming, viz., 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 tell which is the right account.

However it was, they all agree in this, that my mother pleaded her belly, and being found quick with child, she was respited for about seven months; after which she was called down, as they term it, to her former judgement, but obtained the favour afterwards 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 my self 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 took me away, 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 little while that I had been among them, for I had not had my skin discoloured, as they do to all 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, for though they sent round the country to enquire 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 take care 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 a little school, which she kept to teach children to read and to work; and having, I say, lived before that in good fashion, she bred up the children with a great deal of art, as well as with a great deal of care.

But which was worth all the rest, she bred them up very religiously also, being herself a very sober, pious woman, (2) very housewifely and clean, and, (3) very mannerly, and with good behaviour: so that excepting a plain diet, coarse lodging, and mean clothes, we were brought up as mannerly 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 wherever I was to go, except it was to run of errands, and be a drudge to some cook-maid, 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, though I was so young; and I told my nurse, 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 the poor children were at work, she sat down just over against me, not in her usual place as mistress, but as if she had 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 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.

This moved my good motherly nurse, so that she 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 at all 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 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 you are bigger?”

“Ay,” says 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 how will you come to be a gentlewoman? What, will you do it by your fingers’ ends?”

“Yes,” says I again, very innocently.

“Why, what can you earn,” says she, “what can you get a day 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,” said she, “it will hardly find you victuals.”

“Then I would 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 at last she cried 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.

After this, she going to wait on the Mayor, my story came up, and my good nurse told Mr. Mayor the whole tale: he was so pleased with it, that he would call his lady and his two daughters to hear it, and it made mirth enough among them, you may be sure.

However, not a week had passed over, but on a sudden comes Mrs. Mayoress and her two daughters to the house to see my old nurse, and to see her school and the children: when they had looked about them a little: “Well, Mrs.—,” says the Mayoress to my nurse; “and pray which is the little lass that is to be a gentlewoman?” I heard her, and I was terrible frighted, though I did not know why neither; but Mrs. Mayoress comes up to me, “Well, Miss,” says she, “and what are you at work upon?”

The word “Miss” was a language that had hardly been heard of in our school, and I wondered what sad name it was she called me; however, I stood up, made a curtsy, and she took my work out of my hand, looked on it, and said it was very well; then she looked upon one of my hands. “Nay, she may come to be a gentlewoman,” says she, “for ought I know; she has a lady’s hand, I assure you.” This pleased me mightily; but Mrs. Mayoress did not stop there, but put her hand in her pocket, gave me a shilling, and bid me mind my work, and learn to work well, and I might be a gentlewoman for ought she knew.

All this while, my good old nurse, Mrs. Mayoress, and all the rest of them, did not understand me at all, for they meant one sort of thing by the word gentlewoman, and I meant quite another: for alas, all I understood by being a gentlewoman, was to be able to work for myself, and get enough to keep me without going to service, whereas they meant to live great and high, and I know not what.

Well, after Mrs. Mayoress was gone, her two daughters came in, and they called for the gentlewoman too, and they talked a long while to me, and I answered them in my innocent way; but always if they asked whether I resolved to be a gentlewoman, I answered, “Yes.” At last they asked me, what a gentlewoman was? That puzzled me much; however, I explained myself negatively, that it was one that did not go to service, to do housework; they were mightily pleased, and liked my little prattle to them, which it seems was agreeable enough to them, and they gave me money too.

As for my money, I gave it all to my Mistress Nurse, as I called her, and told her, she should have all I got when I was a gentlewoman, as well as now; by this and some other of my talk, my old tutoress began to understand what I meant by being a gentlewoman; and that it was no more than to be able to get my bread by my own work, and at last, she asked me whether it was not so.

I told her, “Yes,” and insisted on it, that to do so, was to be a gentlewoman; “for,” says I, “there is such a one,” naming a woman that mended lace, and washed the ladies’ laced-heads; “she,” says I, “is a gentlewoman, and they call her madam.”

“Poor child,” says my good old nurse, “you may soon be such a gentlewoman as that, for she is a person of ill fame, and has had two bastards.”

I did not understand anything of that; but I answered, “I am sure they call her madam, and she does not go to service nor do housework,” and therefore I insisted, that she was a gentlewoman, and I would be such a gentlewoman as that.

The ladies were told all this again, and they made themselves merry with it, and every now and then Mr. Mayor’s daughters would come and see me, and ask where the little gentlewoman was, which made me not a little proud of myself besides. I was often visited by these young ladies, and sometimes they brought others with them; so that I was known by it almost all over the town.

I was now about ten years old, and began to look a little womanish, for I was mighty grave, very mannerly, and as I had often heard the ladies say I was pretty, and would be very handsome, you may be sure it made me not a little proud: however, that pride had no ill effect upon me yet, only as they often gave me money, and I gave it my old nurse, she, honest woman, was so just as to lay it out again for me, and gave me head-dresses, and linen, and gloves, and I went very neat, for if I had rags on, I would always be clean, or else I would dabble them in water myself; but I say, my good nurse, when I had money given me, very honestly laid it out for me, and would always tell the ladies this, or that, was bought with their money; and this made them give me more, till at last, I was indeed called upon by the magistrates to go out to service; but then I was become so good a workwoman myself, and the ladies were so kind to me, that I was past it; for I could earn as much for my nurse as was enough to keep me; so she told them, that if they would give her leave, she would keep the gentlewoman, as she called me, to be her assistant, and teach the children, which I was very well able to do; for I was very nimble at my work, though I was yet very young.

But the kindness of the ladies did not end here, for when they understood that I was no more maintained by the town as before, they gave me money oftener; and as I grew up, they brought me work to do for them; such as linen to make, laces to mend, and heads to dress up, and not only paid me for doing them, but even taught me how to do them; so that I was a gentlewoman indeed, as I understood that word; for before I was twelve years old, I not only found myself clothes, and paid my nurse for my keeping, but got money in my pocket too.

The ladies also gave me clothes frequently of their own or their children’s; some stockings, some petticoats, some gowns, some one thing, some another, and these my old woman managed for me like a mother, and kept them for me, obliged me to mend them, and turn them to the best advantage, for she was a rare housewife.

At last one of the ladies took such a fancy to me, that she would have me home to her house, for a month, she said, to be among her daughters.

Now though this was exceeding kind in her, yet as my good woman said to her, unless she resolved to keep me for good and all, she would do the little gentlewoman more harm than good.

“Well,” says the lady, “that’s true, I’ll only take her home for a week then, that I may see how my daughters and she agree, and how I like her temper, and then I’ll tell you more; and in the meantime, if anybody comes to see her as they used to do, you may only tell them, you have sent her out to my house.”

This was prudently managed enough, and I went to the lady’s house, but I was so pleased there with the young ladies, and they so pleased with me, that I had enough to do to come away, and they were so unwilling to part with me.

However, I did come away, and lived almost a year more with my honest old woman, and began now to be very helpful to her; for I was almost fourteen years old, was tall of my age, and looked a little womanish; but I had such a taste of genteel living at the lady’s house, that I was not so easy in my old quarters as I used to be, and I thought it was fine to be a gentlewoman indeed, for I had quite other notions of a gentlewoman now, than I had before; and as I thought that it was fine to be a gentlewoman, so I loved to be among gentlewomen, and therefore I longed to be there again.

When I was about fourteen years and a quarter old, my good old nurse, mother, I ought to call her, fell sick and died; I was then in a sad condition indeed, for as there is no great bustle in putting an end to a poor body’s family, when once they are carried to the grave; so the poor good woman being buried, the parish children were immediately removed by the churchwardens; the school was at an end, and the day children of it had no more to do but just stay at home, till they were sent somewhere else; as for what she left, a daughter, a married woman, came and swept it all away, and removing the goods, they had no more to say to me than to jest with me, and tell me, that the little gentlewoman might set up for herself, if she pleased.

I was frighted out of my wits almost, and knew not what to do; for I was, as it were, turned out of doors to the wide world, and that which was still worse, the old honest woman had two-and-twenty shillings of mine in her hand, which was all the estate the little gentlewoman had in the world; and when I asked the daughter for it, she huffed me, and told me she had nothing to do with it.

It was true the good poor woman had told her daughter of it, and that it lay in such a place, that it was the child’s money, and had called once or twice for me to give it me, but I was unhappily out of the way, and when I came back she was past being in a condition to speak of it: however, the daughter was so honest afterwards as to give it me, though at first she used me cruelly about it.

Now was I a poor gentlewoman indeed, and I was just that very night to be turned into the wide world; for the daughter removed all the goods, and I had not so much as a lodging to go to, or a bit of bread to eat: but it seems some of the neighbours took so much compassion of me, as to acquaint the lady in whose family I had been; and immediately she sent her maid to fetch me; and away I went with them bag and baggage, and with a glad heart you may be sure: the fright of my condition had made such an impression upon me, that I did not want now to be a gentlewoman, but was very willing to be a servant, and that any kind of servant they thought fit to have me be.

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Moll Flanders

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Contents

Author’s Preface

CHAPTER 1 The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

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