Moll Flanders (35 page)

After a full hearing, the alderman gave it as his opinion that his neighbour was under a mistake, and that I was innocent, and the goldsmith acquiesced in it too and his wife, and so I was dismissed; but as I was going to depart, Mr. Alderman said, “But hold, madam, if you were designing to buy spoons, I hope you will not let my friend here lose his customer by the mistake.” I readily answered, “No, sir, I’ll buy the spoons still if he can match my odd spoon, which I brought for a pattern”; and the goldsmith showed me some of the very same fashion. So he weighed the spoons, and they came to five-and-thirty shillings; so I pulls out my purse to pay him, in which I had near twenty guineas, for I never went without such a sum about me, whatever might happen, and I found it of use at other times as well as now.

When Mr. Alderman saw my money, he said, “Well, madam, now I am satisfied you were wronged, and it was for this reason that I moved you should buy the spoons and stayed till you had bought them, for if you had not had money to pay for them, I should have suspected that you did not come into the shop to buy, for the sort of people who come upon those designs that you have been charged with are seldom troubled with much gold in their pockets, as I see you are.”

I smiled and told his worship that then I owed something of his favour to my money, but I hoped he saw reason also in the justice he had done me before. He said yes, he had, but this had confirmed his opinion, and he was fully satisfied now of my having been injured. So I came well off from an affair in which I was at the very brink of destruction.

It was but three days after this that, not at all made cautious by my former danger, as I used to be, and still pursuing the art which I had so long been employed in, I ventured into a house where I saw the doors open, and furnished myself, as I thought verily without being perceived, with two pieces of flowered silks, such as they call brocaded silk, very rich. It was not a mercer’s shop nor a warehouse of a mercer, but looked like a private dwelling-house, and was, it seems, inhabited by a man that sold goods for a weaver to the mercers, like a broker, or factor.

That I may make short of the black part of this story, I was attacked by two wenches that came open-mouthed at me just as I was going out at the door, and one of them pulled me back into the room while the other shut the door upon me. I would have given them good words, but there was no room for it—two fiery dragons could not have been more furious; they tore my clothes, bullied and roared as if they would have murdered me; the mistress of the house came next, and then the master, and all outrageous.

I gave the master very good words, told him the door was open and things were a temptation to me, that I was poor and distressed, and poverty was what many could not resist, and begged him with tears to have pity on me. The mistress of the house was moved with compassion and inclined to have let me go, and had almost persuaded her husband to it also but the saucy wenches were run even before they were sent and had fetched a constable, and then the master said he could not go back, I must go before a justice, and answered his wife that he might come into trouble himself if he should let me go.

The sight of a constable, indeed, struck me, and I thought I should have sunk into the ground. I fell into faintings, and indeed the people themselves thought I would have died, when the woman argued again for me and entreated her husband, seeing they had lost nothing, to let me go. I offered him to pay for the two pieces, whatever the value was, though I had not got them, and argued that as he had his goods and had really lost nothing, it would be cruel to pursue me to death and have my blood for the bare attempt of taking them. I put the constable in mind, too, that I had broke no doors nor carried anything away; and when I came to the justice and pleaded there that I had neither broken anything to get in nor carried anything out, the justice was inclined to have released me; but the first saucy jade that stopped me, affirming that I was going out with the goods but that she stopped me and pulled me back, the justice upon that point committed me, and I was carried to Newgate, that horrid place! My very blood chills at the mention of its name; the place where so many of my comrades had been locked up and from whence they went to the fatal tree; the place where my mother suffered so deeply, where I was brought into the world and from whence I expected no redemption but by an infamous death—to conclude, the place that had so long expected me, and which with so much art and success I had so long avoided.

I was now fixed indeed; ’tis impossible to describe the terror of my mind when I was first brought in and when I looked round upon all the horrors of that dismal place. I looked on myself as lost, and that I had nothing to think of but of going out of the world, and that with the utmost infamy: the hellish noise, the roaring, swearing, and clamour, the stench and nastiness, and all the dreadful afflicting things that I saw there joined to make the place seem an emblem of hell itself, and a kind of an entrance into it.

Now I reproached myself with the many hints I had had, as I have mentioned above, from my own reason, from the sense of my good circumstances, and of the many dangers I had escaped, to leave off while I was well, and how I had withstood them all and hardened my thoughts against all fear. It seemed to me that I was hurried on by an inevitable fate to this day of misery, and that now I was to expiate all my offences at the gallows; that I was now to give satisfaction to justice with my blood, and that I was to come to the last hour of my life and of my wickedness together. These things poured themselves in upon my thoughts in a confused manner and left me overwhelmed with melancholy and despair.

Then I repented heartily of all my life past, but that repentance yielded me no satisfaction, no peace, no, not in the least, because, as I said to myself, it was repenting after the power of farther sinning was taken away. I seemed not to mourn that I had committed such crimes, and for the fact as it was an offence against God and my neighbour, but that I was to be punished for it. I was a penitent, as I thought, not that I had sinned, but that I was to suffer, and this took away all the comfort of my repentance in my own thoughts.

I got no sleep for several nights or days after I came into that wretched place, and glad I would have been for some time to have died there, though I did not consider dying as it ought to be considered neither; indeed, nothing could be filled with more horror to my imagination than the very place, nothing was more odious to me than the company that was there. Oh! if I had but been sent to any place in the world and not to Newgate, I should have thought myself happy.

In the next place, how did the hardened wretches that were there before me triumph over me! What! Mrs. Flanders come to Newgate at last? What! Mrs. Mary, Mrs. Molly, and after that plain Moll Flanders! They thought the devil had helped me, they said, that I had reigned so long; they expected me there many years ago, they said, and was I come at last? Then they flouted me with dejections, welcomed me to the place, wished me joy, bid me have a good heart, not be cast down, things might not be so bad as I feared, and the like; then called for brandy and drank to me, but put it all up to my score, for they told me I was but just come to the college, as they called it, and sure I had money in my pocket, though they had none.

I asked one of this crew how long she had been there. She said four months. I asked her how the place looked to her when she first came into it. Just as it did now to me, says she, dreadful and frightful; that she thought she was in hell; “and I believe so still,” adds she, “but it is natural to me now; I don’t disturb myself about it.” “I suppose,” says I, “you are in no danger of what is to follow?” “Nay,” says she, “you are mistaken there, I am sure, for I am under sentence, only I pleaded my belly, but am no more with child than the judge that tried me, and I expect to be called down next session.” This “calling down” is calling down to their former judgement, when a woman has been respited for her belly but proves not to be with child, or if she has been with child and has been brought to bed. “Well,” says I, “and are you thus easy?” “Aye,” says she, “I can’t help myself. What signifies being sad? If I am hanged, there’s an end of me.” And away she turned, dancing, and sings as she goes, the following piece of Newgate wit:

“If I swing by the string,

I shall hear the bell ring,
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And then there’s an end of poor Jenny.”

I mention this because it would be worth the observation of any prisoner who shall hereafter fall into the same misfortune and come to that dreadful place of Newgate—how time, necessity, and conversing with the wretches that are there familiarizes the place to them, how at last they become reconciled to that which at first was the greatest dread upon their spirits in the world, and are as impudently cheerful and merry in their misery as they were when out of it.

I cannot say, as some do, this devil is not so black as he is painted; for indeed no colours can represent that place to the life nor any soul conceive aright of it but those who have been sufferers there. But how hell should become by degrees so natural, and not only tolerable but even agreeable, is a thing unintelligible but by those who have experienced it, as I have.

The same night that I was sent to Newgate I sent the news of it to my old governess, who was surprised at it, you may be sure, and spent the night almost as ill out of Newgate as I did in it.

The next morning she came to see me; she did what she could to comfort me, but she saw that was to no purpose; however, as she said, to sink under the weight was but to increase the weight; she immediately applied herself to all the proper methods to prevent the effects of it, which we feared, and first she found out the two fiery jades that had surprised me. She tampered with them, persuaded them, offered them money, and, in a word, tried all imaginable ways to prevent a prosecution; she offered one of the wenches £100 to go away from her mistress and not to appear against me, but she was so resolute that though she was but a servant-maid at £3 a year wages or thereabouts, she refused it, and would have refused, as my governess said she believed, if she had offered her £500. Then she attacked the other maid; she was not so hard-hearted as the other, and sometimes seemed inclined to be merciful; but the first wench kept her up and would not so much as let my governess talk with her, but threatened to have her up for tampering with the evidence.

Then she applied to the master, that is to say, the man whose goods had been stolen, and particularly to his wife, who was inclined at first to have some compassion for me; she found the woman the same still, but the man alleged he was bound to prosecute, and that he should forfeit his recognizance.

My governess offered to find friends that should get his recognizances off of the file, as they call it, and that he should not suffer; but it was not possible to convince him that he could be safe any way in the world but by appearing against me; so I was to have three witnesses of fact against me, the master and his two maids; that is to say, I was as certain to be cast for my life as I was that I was alive, and I had nothing to do but to think of dying. I had but a sad foundation to build upon for that, as I said before, for all my repentance appeared to me to be only the effect of my fear of death, not a sincere regret for the wicked life that I had lived, and which had brought this misery upon me, or for the offending my Creator, who was now suddenly to be my judge.

I lived many days here under the utmost horror; I had death, as it were, in view, and thought of nothing night or day but of gibbets and halters, evil spirits and devils; it is not to be expressed how I was harassed between the dreadful apprehensions of death and the terror of my conscience reproaching me with my past horrible life.

The ordinary of Newgate came to me and talked a little in his way, but all his divinity run upon confessing my crime, as he called it (though he knew not what I was in for), making a full discovery, and the like, without which he told me God would never forgive me; and he said so little to the purpose that I had no manner of consolation from him; and then to observe the poor creature preaching confession and repentance to me in the morning and find him drunk with brandy by noon—this had something in it so shocking that I began to nauseate the man and his work too by degrees for the sake of the man; so that I desired him to trouble me no more.

I know not how it was, but by the indefatigable application of my diligent governess I had no bill preferred against me the first sessions, I mean to the grand jury, at Guildhall; so I had another month or five weeks before me, and without doubt this ought to have been accepted by me as so much time given me for reflection upon what was past and preparation for what was to come. I ought to have esteemed it as a space given me for repentance and have employed it as such, but it was not in me. I was sorry, as before, for being in Newgate, but had few signs of repentance about me.

On the contrary, like the water in the hollows of mountains, which petrifies and turns into stone whatever they are suffered to drop upon, so the continual conversing with such a crew of hell-hounds had the same common operation upon me as upon other people. I degenerated into stone; I turned first stupid and senseless, and then brutish and thoughtless, and at last raving mad as any of them were; in short, I became as naturally pleased and easy with the place as if indeed I had been born there.

It is scarce possible to imagine that our natures should be capable of so much degeneracy as to make that pleasant and agreeable that in itself is the most complete misery. Here was a circumstance that I think it is scarce possible to mention a worse: I was as exquisitely miserable as it was possible for any one to be that had life and health and money to help them, as I had.

I had a weight of guilt upon me, enough to sink any creature who had the least power of reflection left and had any sense upon them of the happiness of this life or the misery of another. I had at first some remorse indeed, but no repentance; I had now neither remorse or repentance. I had a crime charged on me, the punishment of which was death; the proof so evident that there was no room for me so much as to plead not guilty. I had the name of an old offender, so that I had nothing to expect but death, neither had I myself any thoughts of escaping; and yet a certain strange lethargy of soul possessed me. I had no trouble, no apprehensions, no sorrow about me; the first surprise was gone; I was, I may well say, I know not how; my senses, my reason, nay, my conscience, were all asleep; my course of life for forty years had been a horrid complication of wickedness, whoredom, adultery, incest, lying, theft; and in a word, everything but murder and treason had been my practice from the age of eighteen or thereabouts to threescore; and now I was engulfed in the misery of punishment and had an infamous death at the door; and yet I had no sense of my condition, no thought of heaven or hell, at least that went any farther than a bare flying touch, like the stitch or pain that gives a hint and goes off. I neither had a heart to ask God’s mercy or indeed to think of it. And in this, I think, I have given a brief description of the completest misery on earth.