The Fortunate Mistress Part 13

"But if I won't take you," said I, "you may take me anywhere but to Paris."

He was very loth to go anywhere, he said, without me, but he must go to Paris or the East Indies.

I told him I did not use to court, but I durst venture myself to the East Indies with him, if there was a necessity of his going.

He told me, G.o.d be thanked he was in no necessity of going anywhere, but that he had a tempting invitation to go to the Indies.

I answered, I would say nothing to that, but that I desired he would go anywhere but to Paris, because there he knew I must not go.

He said he had no remedy but to go where I could not go, for he could not bear to see me if he must not have me.

I told him that was the unkindest thing he could say of me, and that I ought to take it very ill, seeing I knew how very well to oblige him to stay, without yielding to what he knew I could not yield to.

This amazed him, and he told me I was pleased to be mysterious, but that he was sure it was in n.o.body's power to hinder him going, if he resolved upon it, except me, who had influence enough upon him to make him do anything.

Yes, I told him, I could hinder him, because I knew he could no more do an unkind thing by me than he could do an unjust one; and to put him out of his pain, I told him I was with child.

He came to me, and taking me in his arms and kissing me a thousand times almost, said, why would I be so unkind not to tell him that before?

I told him 'twas hard, that to have him stay, I should be forced to do as criminals do to avoid the gallows, plead my belly; and that I thought I had given him testimonies enough of an affection equal to that of a wife, if I had not only lain with him, been with child by him, shown myself unwilling to part with him, but offered to go to the East Indies with him; and except one thing that I could not grant, what could he ask more?

He stood mute a good while, but afterwards told me he had a great deal more to say if I could a.s.sure him that I would not take ill whatever freedom he might use with me in his discourse.

I told him he might use any freedom in words with me; for a woman who had given leave to such other freedoms as I had done had left herself no room to take anything ill, let it be what it would.

"Why, then," he said, "I hope you believe, madam, I was born a Christian, and that I have some sense of sacred things upon my mind.

When I first broke in upon my own virtue and a.s.saulted yours; when I surprised and, as it were, forced you to that which neither you intended or I designed but a few hours before, it was upon a presumption that you would certainly marry me, if once I could go that length with you, and it was with an honest resolution to make you my wife.

"But I have been surprised with such a denial that no woman in such circ.u.mstances ever gave to a man; for certainly it was never known that any woman refused to marry a man that had first lain with her, much less a man that had gotten her with child. But you go upon different notions from all the world, and though you reason upon it so strongly that a man knows hardly what to answer, yet I must own there is something in it shocking to nature, and something very unkind to yourself. But, above all, it is unkind to the child that is yet unborn, who, if we marry, will come into the world with advantage enough, but if not, is ruined before it is born; must bear the eternal reproach of what it is not guilty of; must be branded from its cradle with a mark of infamy, be loaded with the crimes and follies of its parents, and suffer for sins that it never committed. This I take to be very hard, and, indeed, cruel to the poor infant not yet born, who you cannot think of with any patience, if you have the common affection of a mother, and not do that for it which should at once place it on a level with the rest of the world, and not leave it to curse its parents for what also we ought to be ashamed of. I cannot, therefore," says he, "but beg and entreat you, as you are a Christian and a mother, not to let the innocent lamb you go with be ruined before it is born, and leave it to curse and reproach us hereafter for what may be so easily avoided.

"Then, dear madam," said he, with a world of tenderness (and I thought I saw tears in his eyes), "allow me to repeat it, that I am a Christian, and consequently I do not allow what I have rashly, and without due consideration, done; I say, I do not approve of it as lawful, and therefore, though I did, with the view I have mentioned, one unjustifiable action, I cannot say that I could satisfy myself to live in a continual practice of what in judgment we must both condemn; and though I love you above all the women in the world, and have done enough to convince you of it by resolving to marry you after what has pa.s.sed between us, and by offering to quit all pretensions to any part of your estate, so that I should, as it were, take a wife after I had lain with her, and without a farthing portion, which, as my circ.u.mstances are, I need not do; I say, notwithstanding my affection to you, which is inexpressible, yet I cannot give up soul as well as body, the interest of this world and the hopes of another; and you cannot call this my disrespect to you."

If ever any man in the world was truly valuable for the strictest honesty of intention, this was the man; and if ever woman in her senses rejected a man of merit on so trivial and frivolous a pretence, I was the woman; but surely it was the most preposterous thing that ever woman did.

He would have taken me as a wife, but would not entertain me as a wh.o.r.e.

Was ever woman angry with any gentleman on that head? And was ever woman so stupid to choose to be a wh.o.r.e, where she might have been an honest wife? But infatuations are next to being possessed of the devil. I was inflexible, and pretended to argue upon the point of a woman's liberty as before, but he took me short, and with more warmth than he had yet used with me, though with the utmost respect, replied, "Dear madam, you argue for liberty, at the same time that you restrain yourself from that liberty which G.o.d and nature has directed you to take, and, to supply the deficiency, propose a vicious liberty, which is neither honourable or religious. Will you propose liberty at the expense of modesty?"

I returned, that he mistook me; I did not propose it; I only said that those that could not be content without concerning the s.e.xes in that affair might do so indeed; might entertain a man as men do a mistress, if they thought fit, but he did not hear me say I would do so; and though, by what had pa.s.sed, he might well censure me in that part, yet he should find, for the future, that I should freely converse with him without any inclination that way.

He told me he could not promise that for himself, and thought he ought not to trust himself with the opportunity, for that, as he had failed already, he was loth to lead himself into the temptation of offending again, and that this was the true reason of his resolving to go back to Paris; not that he could willingly leave me, and would be very far from wanting my invitation; but if he could not stay upon terms that became him, either as an honest man or a Christian, what could he do? And he hoped, he said, I could not blame him that he was unwilling anything that was to call him father should upbraid him with leaving him in the world to be called b.a.s.t.a.r.d; adding that he was astonished to think how I could satisfy myself to be so cruel to an innocent infant not yet born; professed he could neither bear the thoughts of it, much less bear to see it, and hoped I would not take it ill that he could not stay to see me delivered, for that very reason.

I saw he spoke this with a disturbed mind, and that it was with some difficulty that he restrained his pa.s.sion, so I declined any farther discourse upon it; only said I hoped he would consider of it. "Oh, madam!" says he, "do not bid me consider; 'tis for you to consider;" and with that he went out of the room, in a strange kind of confusion, as was easy to be seen in his countenance.

If I had not been one of the foolishest as well as wickedest creatures upon earth, I could never have acted thus. I had one of the honestest, completest gentlemen upon earth at my hand. He had in one sense saved my life, but he had saved that life from ruin in a most remarkable manner.

He loved me even to distraction, and had come from Paris to Rotterdam on purpose to seek me. He had offered me marriage even after I was with child by him, and had offered to quit all his pretensions to my estate, and give it up to my own management, having a plentiful estate of his own. Here I might have settled myself out of the reach even of disaster itself; his estate and mine would have purchased even then above two thousand pounds a year, and I might have lived like a queen--nay, far more happy than a queen; and, which was above all, I had now an opportunity to have quitted a life of crime and debauchery, which I had been given up to for several years, and to have sat down quiet in plenty and honour, and to have set myself apart to the great work which I have since seen so much necessity of and occasion for--I mean that of repentance.

But my measure of wickedness was not yet full. I continued obstinate against matrimony, and yet I could not bear the thoughts of his going away neither. As to the child, I was not very anxious about it. I told him I would promise him it should never come to him to upbraid him with its being illegitimate; that if it was a boy, I would breed it up like the son of a gentleman, and use it well for his sake; and after a little more such talk as this, and seeing him resolved to go, I retired, but could not help letting him see the tears run down my cheeks. He came to me and kissed me, entreated me, conjured me by the kindness he had shown me in my distress, by the justice he had done me in my bills and money affairs, by the respect which made him refuse a thousand pistoles from me for his expenses with that traitor the Jew, by the pledge of our misfortunes--so he called it--which I carried with me, and by all that the sincerest affection could propose to do, that I would not drive him away.

But it would not do. I was stupid and senseless, deaf to all his importunities, and continued so to the last. So we parted, only desiring me to promise that I would write him word when I was delivered, and how he might give me an answer; and this I engaged my word I would do. And upon his desiring to be informed which way I intended to dispose of myself, I told him I resolved to go directly to England, and to London, where I proposed to lie in; but since he resolved to leave me, I told him I supposed it would be of no consequence to him what became of me.

He lay in his lodgings that night, but went away early in the morning, leaving me a letter in which he repeated all he had said, recommended the care of the child, and desired of me that as he had remitted to me the offer of a thousand pistoles which I would have given him for the recompense of his charges and trouble with the Jew, and had given it me back, so he desired I would allow him to oblige me to set apart that thousand pistoles, with its improvement, for the child, and for its education; earnestly pressing me to secure that little portion for the abandoned orphan when I should think fit, as he was sure I would, to throw away the rest upon something as worthless as my sincere friend at Paris. He concluded with moving me to reflect, with the same regret as he did, on our follies we had committed together; asked me forgiveness for being the aggressor in the fact, and forgave me everything, he said, but the cruelty of refusing him, which he owned he could not forgive me so heartily as he should do, because he was satisfied it was an injury to myself, would be an introduction to my ruin, and that I would seriously repent of it. He foretold some fatal things which, he said, he was well a.s.sured I should fall into, and that at last I would be ruined by a bad husband; bid me be the more wary, that I might render him a false prophet; but to remember that, if ever I came into distress, I had a fast friend at Paris, who would not upbraid me with the unkind things past, but would be always ready to return me good for evil.

This letter stunned me. I could not think it possible for any one that had not dealt with the devil to write such a letter, for he spoke of some particular things which afterwards were to befall me with such an a.s.surance that it frighted me beforehand; and when those things did come to pa.s.s, I was persuaded he had some more than human knowledge. In a word, his advices to me to repent were very affectionate, his warnings of evil to happen to me were very kind, and his promises of a.s.sistance, if I wanted him, were so generous that I have seldom seen the like; and though I did not at first set much by that part because I looked upon them as what might not happen, and as what was improbable to happen at that time, yet all the rest of his letter was so moving that it left me very melancholy, and I cried four-and-twenty hours after, almost without ceasing, about it; and yet even all this while, whatever it was that bewitched me, I had not one serious wish that I had taken him. I wished heartily, indeed, that I could have kept him with me, but I had a mortal aversion to marrying him, or indeed anybody else, but formed a thousand wild notions in my head that I was yet gay enough, and young and handsome enough, to please a man of quality, and that I would try my fortune at London, come of it what would.

Thus blinded by my own vanity, I threw away the only opportunity I then had to have effectually settled my fortunes, and secured them for this world; and I am a memorial to all that shall read my story, a standing monument of the madness and distraction which pride and infatuations from h.e.l.l run us into, how ill our pa.s.sions guide us, and how dangerously we act when we follow the dictates of an ambitious mind.

I was rich, beautiful, and agreeable, and not yet old. I had known something of the influence I had had upon the fancies of men even of the highest rank. I never forgot that the Prince de ---- had said, with an ecstasy, that I was the finest woman in France. I knew I could make a figure at London, and how well I could grace that figure. I was not at a loss how to behave, and having already been adored by princes, I thought of nothing less than of being mistress to the king himself. But I go back to my immediate circ.u.mstances at that time.

I got over the absence of my honest merchant but slowly at first. It was with infinite regret that I let him go at all; and when I read the letter he left I was quite confounded. As soon as he was out of call and irrecoverable I would have given half I had in the world for him back again; my notion of things changed in an instant, and I called myself a thousand fools for casting myself upon a life of scandal and hazard, when, after the s.h.i.+pwreck of virtue, honour, and principle, and sailing at the utmost risk in the stormy seas of crime and abominable levity, I had a safe harbour presented, and no heart to cast anchor in it.

His predictions terrified me; his promises of kindness if I came to distress melted me into tears, but frighted me with the apprehensions of ever coming into such distress, and filled my head with a thousand anxieties and thoughts how it should be possible for me, who had now such a fortune, to sink again into misery.

Then the dreadful scene of my life, when I was left with my five children, &c., as I have related, represented itself again to me, and I sat considering what measures I might take to bring myself to such a state of desolation again, and how I should act to avoid it.

But these things wore off gradually. As to my friend the merchant, he was gone, and gone irrecoverably, for I durst not follow him to Paris, for the reasons mentioned above. Again, I was afraid to write to him to return, lest he should have refused, as I verily believed he would; so I sat and cried intolerably for some days--nay, I may say for some weeks; but, I say, it wore off gradually, and as I had a pretty deal of business for managing my effects, the hurry of that particular part served to divert my thoughts, and in part to wear out the impressions which had been made upon my mind.

I had sold my jewels, all but the diamond ring which my gentleman the jeweller used to wear, and this, at proper times, I wore myself; as also the diamond necklace which the prince had given me, and a pair of extraordinary earrings worth about 600 pistoles; the other, which was a fine casket, he left with me at his going to Versailles, and a small case with some rubies and emeralds, &c. I say I sold them at the Hague for 7600 pistoles. I had received all the bills which the merchant had helped me to at Paris, and with the money I brought with me, they made up 13,900 pistoles more; so that I had in ready money, and in account in the bank at Amsterdam, above one-and-twenty thousand pistoles, besides jewels; and how to get this treasure to England was my next care.

The business I had had now with a great many people for receiving such large sums and selling jewels of such considerable value gave me opportunity to know and converse with several of the best merchants of the place, so that I wanted no direction now how to get my money remitted to England. Applying, therefore, to several merchants, that I might neither risk it all on the credit of one merchant, nor suffer any single man to know the quant.i.ty of money I had; I say, applying myself to several merchants, I got bills of exchange payable in London for all my money. The first bills I took with me; the second bills I left in trust (in case of any disaster at sea) in the hands of the first merchant, him to whom I was recommended by my friend from Paris.

Having thus spent nine months in Holland, refused the best offer ever woman in my circ.u.mstances had, parted unkindly, and indeed barbarously, with the best friend and honestest man in the world, got all my money in my pocket, and a b.a.s.t.a.r.d in my belly, I took s.h.i.+pping at the Brill in the packet-boat, and arrived safe at Harwich, where my woman Amy was come by my direction to meet me.

I would willingly have given ten thousand pounds of my money to have been rid of the burthen I had in my belly, as above; but it could not be, so I was obliged to bear with that part, and get rid of it by the ordinary method of patience and a hard travail.

I was above the contemptible usage that women in my circ.u.mstances oftentimes meet with. I had considered all that beforehand; and having sent Amy beforehand, and remitted her money to do it, she had taken me a very handsome house in ---- Street, near Charing Cross; had hired me two maids and a footman, who she had put in a good livery; and having hired a gla.s.s coach and four horses, she came with them and the man-servant to Harwich to meet me, and had been there near a week before I came, so I had nothing to do but to go away to London to my own house, where I arrived in very good health, and where I pa.s.sed for a French lady, by the t.i.tle of ----.

My first business was to get all my bills accepted, which, to cut the story short, was all both accepted and currently paid; and I then resolved to take me a country lodging somewhere near the town, to be incognito, till I was brought to bed; which, appearing in such a figure and having such an equipage, I easily managed without anybody's offering the usual insults of parish inquiries. I did not appear in my new house for some time, and afterwards I thought fit, for particular reasons, to quit that house, and not to come to it at all, but take handsome large apartments in the Pall Mall, in a house out of which was a private door into the king's garden, by the permission of the chief gardener, who had lived in the house.

I had now all my effects secured; but my money being my great concern at that time, I found it a difficulty how to dispose of it so as to bring me in an annual interest. However, in some time I got a substantial safe mortgage for 14,000 by the a.s.sistance of the famous Sir Robert Clayton, for which I had an estate of 1800 a year bound to me, and had 700 per annum interest for it.

This, with some other securities, made me a very handsome estate of above a thousand pounds a year; enough, one would think, to keep any woman in England from being a wh.o.r.e.

I lay in at ----, about four miles from London, and brought a fine boy into the world, and, according to my promise, sent an account of it to my friend at Paris, the father of it; and in the letter told him how sorry I was for his going away, and did as good as intimate that, if he would come once more to see me, I should use him better than I had done.

He gave me a very kind and obliging answer, but took not the least notice of what I had said of his coming over, so I found my interest lost there for ever. He gave me joy of the child, and hinted that he hoped I would make good what he had begged for the poor infant as I had promised, and I sent him word again that I would fulfil his order to a t.i.ttle; and such a fool and so weak I was in this last letter, notwithstanding what I have said of his not taking notice of my invitation, as to ask his pardon almost for the usage I gave him at Rotterdam, and stooped so low as to expostulate with him for not taking notice of my inviting him to come to me again, as I had done; and, which was still more, went so far as to make a second sort of an offer to him, telling him, almost in plain words, that if he would come over now I would have him; but he never gave me the least reply to it at all, which was as absolute a denial to me as he was ever able to give; so I sat down, I cannot say contented, but vexed heartily that I had made the offer at all, for he had, as I may say, his full revenge of me in scorning to answer, and to let me twice ask that of him which he with so much importunity begged of me before.

I was now up again, and soon came to my City lodging in the Pall Mall, and here I began to make a figure suitable to my estate, which was very great; and I shall give you an account of my equipage in a few words, and of myself too.

I paid 60 a year for my new apartments, for I took them by the year; but then they were handsome lodgings indeed, and very richly furnished.

I kept my own servants to clean and look after them, found my own kitchen ware and firing. My equipage was handsome, but not very great; I had a coach, a coachman, a footman, my woman Amy, who I now dressed like a gentlewoman and made her my companion, and three maids; and thus I lived for a time. I dressed to the height of every mode, went extremely rich in clothes, and as for jewels, I wanted none. I gave a very good livery, laced with silver, and as rich as anybody below the n.o.bility could be seen with; and thus I appeared, leaving the world to guess who or what I was, without offering to put myself forward.

I walked sometimes in the Mall with my woman Amy, but I kept no company and made no acquaintances, only made as gay a show as I was able to do, and that upon all occasions. I found, however, the world was not altogether so unconcerned about me as I seemed to be about them; and first I understood that the neighbours began to be mighty inquisitive about me, as who I was, and what my circ.u.mstances were.

Amy was the only person that could answer their curiosity or give any account of me; and she, a tattling woman and a true gossip, took care to do that with all the art that she was mistress of. She let them know that I was the widow of a person of quality in France, that I was very rich, that I came over hither to look after an estate that fell to me by some of my relations who died here, that I was worth 40,000 all in my own hands, and the like.

This was all wrong in Amy, and in me too, though we did not see it at first, for this recommended me indeed to those sort of gentlemen they call fortune-hunters, and who always besieged ladies, as they called it--on purpose to take them prisoners, as I called it--that is to say, to marry the women and have the spending of their money. But if I was wrong in refusing the honourable proposals of the Dutch merchant, who offered me the disposal of my whole estate, and had as much of his own to maintain me with, I was right now in refusing those offers which came generally from gentlemen of good families and good estates, but who, living to the extent of them, were always needy and necessitous, and wanted a sum of money to make themselves easy, as they call it--that is to say, to pay off enc.u.mbrances, sisters' portions, and the like; and then the woman is prisoner for life, and may live as they give her leave. This life I had seen into clearly enough, and therefore I was not to be catched that way. However, as I said, the reputation of my money brought several of those sort of gentry about me, and they found means, by one stratagem or other, to get access to my ladys.h.i.+p; but, in short, I answered them well enough, that I lived single and was happy; that as I had no occasion to change my condition for an estate, so I did not see that by the best offer that any of them could make me I could mend my fortune; that I might be honoured with t.i.tles indeed, and in time rank on public occasions with the peeresses (I mention that because one that offered at me was the eldest son of a peer), but that I was as well without the t.i.tle as long as I had the estate, and while I had 2000 a year of my own I was happier than I could be in being prisoner of state to a n.o.bleman, for I took the ladies of that rank to be little better.

As I have mentioned Sir Robert Clayton, with whom I had the good fortune to become acquainted, on account of the mortgage which he helped me to, it is necessary to take notice that I had much advantage in my ordinary affairs by his advice, and therefore I called it my good fortune; for as he paid me so considerable an annual income as 700 a year, so I am to acknowledge myself much a debtor, not only to the justice of his dealings with me, but to the prudence and conduct which he guided me to, by his advice, for the management of my estate. And as he found I was not inclined to marry, he frequently took occasion to hint how soon I might raise my fortune to a prodigious height if I would but order my family economy so far within my revenue as to lay up every year something to add to the capital.

I was convinced of the truth of what he said, and agreed to the advantages of it. You are to take it as you go that Sir Robert supposed by my own discourse, and especially by my woman Amy, that I had 2000 a year income. He judged, as he said, by my way of living that I could not spend above one thousand, and so, he added, I might prudently lay by 1000 every year to add to the capital; and by adding every year the additional interest or income of the money to the capital, he proved to me that in ten years I should double the 1000 per annum that I laid by.