Moll Flanders

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.