by Daniel Defoe
Upon the whole, I mourn’d thus for her, for above a Month; but finding Amy still come not near me, and that I must put my Affairs in a Posture that I might go to Holland, I open’d all my Affairs to my dear trusty Friend, the QUAKER, and plac’d her, in Matters of Trust, in the room of Amy, and with a heavy, bleeding Heart for my poor Girl, I embark’d with my Spouse, and all our Equipage and Goods, on-board another Holland’s-Trader, not a Packet-Boat, and went over to Holland; where I arriv’d as I have said.
I must put in a Caution however, here, that you must not understand me as if I let my Friend the QUAKER into any Part of the Secret History of my former Life; nor did I commit the Grand reserv’d Article of all, to her, viz. That I was really the Girl’s Mother, and the Lady Roxana; there was no need of that Part being expos’d; and it was always a Maxim with me, That Secrets shou’d never be open’d, without evident Utility: It cou’d be of no manner of Use to me, or her, to communicate that Part to her, besides she was too honest herself, to make it safe to me; for tho’ she lov’d me very sincerely, and it was plain, by many Circumstances, that she did so, yet she wou’d not Lye for me upon Occasion, as Amy wou’d, and therefore it was not advisable on any Terms to communicate that Part; for if the Girl, or any one else, shou’d have come to her afterwards, and put it home to her, Whether she knew that I was the Girl’s Mother or not; or was the same as the Lady Roxana, or not, she either wou’d not have denied it, or wou’d have done it with so ill a Grace, such Blushing, such Hesitations, and Faultrings in her Answers, as wou’d have put the Matter out of doubt, and betray’d herself and the Secret too.
For this Reason, I say, I did not discover anything of that kind to her; but I plac’d her, as I have said, in Amy’s stead, in the other Affairs of receiving Money, Interests, Rents, and the like, and she was as faithful as Amy cou’d be, and as diligent.
But there fell out a great Difficulty here, which I knew not how to get over; and this was, how to convey the usual Supply, or Provision and Money, to the Uncle and the other Sister, who depended, especially the Sister, upon the said Supply, for her Support; and indeed, tho’ Amy had said rashly, that she wou’d not take any more Notice of the Sister, and wou’d leave her to perish, as above, yet it was neither in my Nature, or Amy’s either, much less was it in my Design; and therefore I resolv’d to leave the Management of what I had reserv’d for that Work, with my faithful QUAKER, but how to direct her to manage them, was the great Difficulty.
Amy had told them in so many Words, That she was not their Mother, but that she was the Maid Amy, that carried them to their Aunt’s; that she and their Mother went over to the East-Indies to seek their Fortune, and that there good Things had befallen them; and that their Mother was very rich and happy; that she (Amy) had married in the Indies, but being now a Widow, and resolving to come over to England, their Mother had oblig’d her to enquire them out, and do for them as she had done; and that now she was resolv’d to go back to the Indies again; but that she had Orders from their Mother to do very handsomely by them; and, in a word, told them, She had 2000 l. a-piece for them, upon Condition that they prov’d sober, and married suitably to themselves, and did not throw themselves away upon Scoundrels.
The good Family in whose Care they had been, I had resolv’d to take more than ordinary Notice of; and Amy, by my Order, had acquainted them with it, and oblig’d my Daughters to promise to submit to their Government, as formerly, and to be rul’d by the honest Man, as by a Father and Counsellor; and engag’d him to treat them as his Children; and to oblige him effectually to take Care of them, and to make his Old-Age comfortable both to him and his Wife, who had been so good to the Orphans: I had order’d her to settle the other 2000 l. that is to say, the Interest of it, which was 120 l. a Year, upon them; to be theirs for both their Lives; but to come to my two Daughters after them: This was so just, and was so prudently manag’d by Amy, that nothing she ever did for me, pleas’d me better: And in this Posture, leaving my two Daughters with their ancient Friend, and so coming away to me, (as they thought to the East-Indies) she had prepar’d everything in order to her going over with me to Holland; and in this Posture that Matter stood when that unhappy Girl, who I have said so much of, broke in upon all our Measures, as you have heard; and by an Obstinacy never to be conquer’d or pacify’d, either with Threats or Perswasions, pursu’d her Search after me (her Mother) as I have said, till she brought me even to the Brink of Destruction, and wou’d, in all Probability, have trac’d me out at last, if Amy had not by the Violence of her Passion, and by a Way which I had no Knowledge of, and indeed abhorr’d, put a Stop to her; of which I cannot enter into the Particulars here.
However, notwithstanding this, I cou’d not think of going away, and leaving this Work so unfinish’d as Amy had threatn’d to do, and for the Folly of one Child, to leave the other to starve; or to stop my determin’d Bounty to the good Family I have mention’d: So, in a word, I committed the finishing it all, to my faithful Friend the QUAKER, to whom I communicated as much of the old Story, as was needful to empower her to perform what Amy had promis’d; and to make her talk so much to the Purpose, as one emply’d more remotely than Amy had been, needed to do.
To this Purpose, she had first of all a full Possession of the Money; and went first to the Honest Man and his Wife, and settl’d all the Matter with them; when she talk’d of Mrs Amy, she talk’d of her as one that had been empower’d by the Mother of the Girls, in the Indies, but was oblig’d to go back to the Indies, and had settl’d all sooner, if she had not been hinder’d by the obstinate Humour of the other Daughter; that she had left Instructions with her for the rest; but that the other had affronted her so much, that she was gone away without doing any-thing for her; and that now, if any-thing was done, it must be by fresh Orders from the East-Indies.
I need not say how punctually my new Agent acted; but which was more, she brought the Old-Man and his Wife, and my other Daughter, several times to her House, by which I had an Opportunity, being there only as a Lodger, and a Stranger, to see my other Girl, which I had never done before, since she was a little Child.
The Day I contriv’d to see them, I was dress’d-up in a Quaker’s Habit, and look’d so like a Quaker, that it was impossible for them, who had never seen me before, to suppose I had ever been anything else; also my Way of talking was suitable enough to it, for I had learn’d that long before.
I have not Time here to take Notice what a Surprize it was to me, to see my Child; how it work’d upon my Affections; with what infinite Struggle I master’d a strong Inclination that I had to discover myself to her; how the Girl was the very Counterpart of myself, only much handsomer; and how sweetly and modestly she behav’d; how on that Occasion I resolv’d to do more for her, than I had appointed by Amy, and the like.
’Tis enough to mention here, that as the settling this Affair made Way for my going on-board, notwithstanding the Absence of my old Agent Amy; so however, I left some Hints for Amy too, for I did not yet despair of my hearing from her; and that if my good QUAKER shou’d ever see her again, she should let her see them; wherein particularly ordering her to leave the Affair of Spittle-Fields just as I had done, in the Hands of my Friend, she shou’d come away to me, upon this Condition nevertheless, that she gave full Satisfaction to my Friend the QUAKER, that she had not murther’d my Child; for if she had, I told her, I wou’d never see her Face more: How, notwithstanding this, she came over afterwards, without giving my Friend any of that Satisfaction, or any Account that she intended to come over.
I can say no more now, but that, as above, being arriv’d in Holland, with my Spouse and his Son, formerly mention’d, I appear’d there with all the Splendor and Equipage suitable to our new Prospect, as I have already observ’d.
Here, after some few Years of flourishing, and outwardly happy Circumstances, I fell into a dreadful Course of Calamities, and Amy also; the very Reverse of our former Good Days; the Blast of Heaven seem’d to follow the Injury done the poor Girl,
by us both; and I was brought so low again, that my Repentance seem’d to be only the Consequence of my Misery, as my Misery was of my Crime.
FINIS
NOTES
The notes have been made primarily to help the reader understand Defoe’s text, and only secondarily to direct his attention to considerations of related themes in Defoe’s other works. Historical, biblical, and other references are explained, unfamiliar place-names identified, and obsolete words glossed. When such words recur a second explanation has been given only when the recurrence is much later. I have relied heavily on such standard reference works as The Oxford English Dictionary, The Dictionary of National Biography, The Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh edition), and relevant volumes of The Oxford History of England. Early dictionaries, such as Edward Phillips’s (seventh edition, 1720) and Nathan Bailey’s (1730), were sometimes useful, and Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1775) was an occasional but indispensable supplement to the OED. For details about the buildings, place-names, and topography of London and neighbouring towns I found Edward Hatton, A New View of London, 2 vols. (1708), John Stow, A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, ed. John Strype, 2 vols. (1720), Defoe’s own A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–6), Henry B. Wheatley, London Past and Present, 3 vols. (1891), and Hugh Phillips, Mid-Georgian London (1964) especially useful. On social conditions in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the following works were most valuable: John Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, 2 vols. (1882), Sir George Nicholls, A History of the English Poor Law, 3 vols. (1898), M. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (1925), Dorothy Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century (1926), and Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: The Old Poor Law (1927). For historical information about mental disease I consulted Gregory Zilboorg, A History of Medical Psychology (1941), Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine, Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry, 1535–1860(1963), and Michael V. De Porte, Nightmares and Hobbyhorses; Swift, Sterne, and Augustan Ideas of Madness (1974). The most useful works of reference on English dress were C. Willett and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Seventeenth Century 1955) and the companion volume for the eighteenth century (1957). Two works are in a class by themselves for they have no competitors; M. P. Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Sevententh Centuries (1950) and John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America 1660–1775: A Handbook (1978). In many cases information was gleaned not from books but from correspondence with scholars who generously supplied me from their stores of specialized knowledge and who are thanked at the beginning of the book.
Titlepage. THE FORTUNATE MISTRESS: The original title of Defoe’s novel, now generally called Roxana, appears to have been adapted from Mrs Haywood’s Idalia; Or, The Unfortunate Mistress published in 1723, the year before Roxana.
Preface
1. (p. 35) not a Story, but a History: Although ‘History’ was used of any narration true or imaginary, here the writer is distinguishing between a narrative of fact and a ‘Story’, which Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary defines as ‘an idle or trifling tale’.
2. (p. 35) discover’d: revealed.
3. (p. 36) Excursions: digressions, additional comments.
4. (p. 36) Equipages: coaches and footmen.
5. (p. 36) Profit and Delight: The idea that the end of poetry – and by extension creative writing – is to inform and delight had become a critical commonplace. It received its classic formulation in Horace’s Ars poetica.
The Fortunate Mistress
1. (p. 37) the Protestants were Banish’d from France: The Edict of Nantes (1598), granting religious liberty to French Protestants, was not revoked until 1685, but systematic persecution began about 1660 and was stepped up in 1681. The persecutions were particularly severe in the heavily Protestant province of Poitou, where the Marquis de Louvois, Louis XIV’s war minister, first introduced the dragonnades (billeting of unruly dragoons) in Protestant households. In 1681 Charles II, in response to public opinion, signed a Bill granting privileges to French Protestant refugees who sought asylum in England.
2. (p. 37) or something else: The attitude of Roxana and her father towards the refugees – that they were undeserving financial opportunists – is utterly out of line with Defoe’s own attitude. In The True-Born Englishman (1701) and elsewhere he vehemently defends immigration on the ground that the strength and prosperity of the country depends on the number of its inhabitants.
3. (p. 38) Spittle-Fields: originally open fields in the east of London belonging to the Priory and Hospital of St Mary Spital and by Defoe’s day a built-up area, well-known as a major centre of cloth manufacture. At the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes there was a considerable influx of French emigrants, who established silk weaving there.
4. (p. 38) Canterbury: Like Spitalfields, Canterbury was a cloth-weaving centre which received a large number of French Protestant refugees, especially around 1685.
5. (p. 38) merely: entirely.
6. (p. 38) Conversation: social intercourse.
7. (p. 39) Livres: The livre (strictly, the livre tournois) was a money of account (i.e., not a coin or bill) in the French monetary system from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. It declined in value against sterling throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1700 £1 was equivalent to 15.62 livres.
8. (p. 39) Portion: dowry, the money and property a woman brings to a marriage.
9. (p. 39) to Church, or otherways, as my Husband and I cou’d agree about it: One of the major themes of Defoe’s writings on marriage and the family is the necessity for harmony of religious belief and practice between husband and wife. Lack of agreement is seen as a prime cause of marital discord. See Religious Courtship (1727).
10. (p. 39) ungentile: ungenteel, loutish.
11. (p. 39) lay: laid.
12. (p. 40) Never, Ladies, marry a Fool: advice that Defoe frequently gave his female readers. See Good Advice to the Ladies (1702), pp. 7–8; Reformation of Manners (1702), reprinted in A True Collection of the Writings of the True Born English-man, (1703), pp. 103–4 and the Review, IV (4 October 1707), 404.
13. (p. 40) a wise Fool: one who says little or nothing, after the proverbial expression that fools are wise as long as they are silent.
14. (p. 41) Tout Opiniatre: utterly fixed in his opinions.
15. (p. 42) abundance Broke in his Debt: extravagance had resulted in his becoming indebted.
16. (p. 42) extended for: seized by law to satisfy.
17. (p. 44) Belch: poor beer (slang).
18. (p. 44) Words of Course: words to be expected.
19. (p. 46) Broke: became bankrupt.
20. (p. 46) Composition: partial payment in settlement of a debt.
21. (p. 46) Plate: silver coins, utensils, or ornaments.
22. (p. 47) Dryden’s Countryman: ‘Cymon and Iphigenia, from Boccace’, II.84–5, in Dryden’s Fables Ancient and Modern (1700).
23. (p. 47) Guineas: The guinea, originally made of gold from Guinea (West Africa), was current in England from 1661 to 1817. It varied in value from twenty shillings to thirty shillings, until fixed at twenty-one shillings in 1717.
24. (p. 47) in a handsome Furniture: with handsome riding equipment (including an outfit, harness and trappings for the horse, and arms).
25. (p. 50) Posture: situation, condition.
26. (p. 50) like Job’s three Comforters: Job 2:11 – 13.
27. (p. 50) Peir-Glasses: pier-glasses, or large mirrors, so-called because designed to fill the pier, the space between a pair of windows.
28. (p. 51) the pitiful Women of Jerusalem: Lamentations 2:20. But the allusion may owe something to Josephus’s account of the woman who ate her child during Titus’s seige of Jerusalem. See his History of the Jewish War, Book VI, Chapter 3.
29. (p. 51) where were these Children born?: Responsibility for d
eserted children and the poor, by the Law for the Better Relief of the Poor (1662, also called the Law of Settlement and Removal), lay with the parish in which they had a legal settlement, that is, an established residence (generally, where they were born). Consequently, children and paupers were often sent back to their birthplaces for maintenance. Before 1662 all poor people were entitled to relief wherever they were living. See also note 37.
30. (p. 52) for want of being taken care of: The care of children by the parish officers was notoriously callous. It is thought that in the seventeenth century less than a quarter of all ‘parish’ children survived, but even this rate of survival was better than the rate of survival of workhouse children in the eighteenth century.
31. (p. 55) he that gives to the Poor, lends to the Lord: Proverbs 19:17; cf. Matthew 19:21.
32. (p. 56) Allegories: figurative language (as in the preceding paragraph).
33. (p. 56) your Bowels of Compassion: 1 John 3:17.
34. (p. 56) give them no Bread: echoes Lamentations 4:14.
35. (p. 56) Prethee: prithee, pray.
36. (p. 57) pretend: intend.
37. (p. 57) by the Justice’s Warrant: Under the terms of the Law for the Better Relief of the Poor (1662) the Church Wardens and parish Overseers could apply to two local Justices of the Peace for a warrant of removal, by which the children could be returned to the parish from whence they came on the grounds that the legal settlement of the parents had been established there. The dispute in the preceding paragraphs is over the responsibility for poor relief – that is, whether the parish in which the children were born, or the parish in which their father had settled, is responsible. Throughout the hundred and thirty years or so that this law was enforced there was a great deal of inter-parochial litigation over the question of what constituted ‘settlement’.