Daniel Defoe

“ 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. ”

“ He perceived the disorder, but said nothing till I spoke; when, shaking my head, “Oh, sir!” said I, “death in any shape has some terror in it, but in the frightful figure of a storm at sea and a sinking ship it comes with a double, a treble, and indeed an inexpressible horror, and if I were that saint you think me to be, which, God knows, I am not, ’tis still very dismal; I desire to die in a calm if I can.” He said a great many good things, and very prettily ordered his discourse between serious reflection and compliment ”

“ 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 passed 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 circumstances 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 ”

“ But thus it is when men run into wicked measures to bring their designs about. I, that was infinitely obliged to him before, began to talk to him as if I had balanced accounts with him now, and that the favour of lying with a whore was equal, not to the thousand pistoles only, but to all the debt I owed him for saving my life and all my effects. ”

“ How often have I seen a woman living in all the splendour that a plentiful fortune ought to allow her: with her coaches and equipages, her family and rich furniture, her attendants and friends, her visitors and good company, all about her to-day, to-morrow surprised with disaster, turned out of all by a commission of bankrupt, stripped to the clothes on her back ”

“ You, that are now upon even terms with me, and I with you,” says I, “are the next hour set up upon the throne, and the humble wife placed at your footstool; all the rest, all that you call oneness of interest, mutual auction, and the like, is courtesy and kindness, then, and a woman is indeed infinitely obliged where she meets with it, but can’t help herself where it fails.” ”

“ Oh! ’tis pleasant to be free, The sweetest miss is liberty.
I added that whoever the woman was that had an estate and would give it up to be the slave of a great man, that woman was a fool, and must be fit for nothing but a beggar; that it was my opinion a woman was as fit to govern and enjoy her own estate without a man as a man was without a woman, and that if she had a mind to gratify herself as to sexes, she might entertain a man as a man does a mistress ”

“ 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. ”

“ He assured me that I misunderstood him; that he had more manners, as well as more kindness for me, and more justice than to reproach me with what he had been the aggressor in and had surprised me into; that what he spoke referred to my words above; that the woman, if she thought fit, might entertain a man as the man did a mistress; and that I seemed to mention that way of living as justifiable, and setting it as a lawful thing and in the place of matrimony. ”

“ I told him I had perhaps differing notions of matrimony from what the received custom had given us of it; that I thought a woman was a free agent as well as a man, and was born free, and, could she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that liberty to as much purpose as the men do; that the laws of matrimony were indeed otherwise, and mankind at this time acted quite upon other principles ”

“ I told him ’twas hard that, to have him stay, I should be forced 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? ”

“ If the woman marries the man afterwards she bears the reproach of it to the last hour; if her husband is not a man of a hundred thousand he some time or other upbraids her with it; if he has children they fail not one way or other to hear of it; if the children are virtuous they do their mother the justice to hate her for it, if they are wicked they give her the mortification of doing the like, and giving her for the example. On the other hand, if the man and the woman part, there is an end of the crime, and an end of the clamour. ”

“ For, in general, the women had only the care of managing, that is, spending what their husbands get; and that a woman had the name of subjection indeed, but that they generally commanded not the men only, but all they had, managed all for themselves, and where the man did his duty the woman’s life was all ease and tranquillity, and that she had nothing to do but to be easy and to make all that were about her both easy and merry. ”

“ That the very nature of the marriage contract was, in short, nothing but giving up liberty, estate, authority, and everything to the man, and the woman was indeed a mere woman ever after, that is to say, a slave. ”

“ But I have been surprised with such a denial that no woman in such circumstances 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. ”

“ I told him it was a dear way of purchasing their ease, for very often when the trouble was taken off their hands, so was their money too, and that I thought it was far safer for the sex not to be afraid of the trouble, but to be really afraid of their money; that if nobody was trusted, nobody would be deceived, and the staff in their own hands was the best security in the world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All his arguments he could urge upon the subject of matrimony were at an end, for I positively declined marrying him; and as he had refused the thousand pistoles which I had offered him in compensation for his expenses and loss at Paris with the Jew, and had done it upon the hopes he had of marrying me, so when he found his way difficult still he was amazed, and, I had some reason to believe, repented that he had refused the money. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He first hinted that marriage was decreed by Heaven, that it was the fixed state of life which God had appointed for man’s felicity and for establishing a legal posterity, that there could be no legal claim of estates by inheritance but by children born in wedlock, that all the rest was sunk under scandal and illegitimacy ”

“ For where is the man that cares to marry a whore, though of his own making? And as I knew him to be no fool, so I did him no wrong when I supposed that, but for the money, he would not have had any thoughts of me that way, especially after my yielding as I had done ”

“ He laughed at my simile. “No,” says he, “you shall be pilot, then, you shall conn the ship.” “Ay,” says I, “as long as you please, but you can take the helm out of my hand when you please and bid me go spin. It is not you,” says I, “that I suspect, but the law of matrimony puts the power into your hands, bids you do it, commands you to command, and binds me, forsooth, to obey. ”

“ Why then, my dear, it must be that either you are already engaged and married to some other man, or you are not willing to dispose of your money to me, and expect to advance yourself higher with your fortune. ”

“ Upon which thought I broke the silence and told him that as he knew I had, by obligation, more kindness for him than to deny any favour to him that I could grant, and that he seemed backward to mention his case, I begged leave of him to give me leave to ask him whether anything lay upon his mind with respect to his business and effects in the world; that if it did, he knew what I had in the world as well as I did, and that if he wanted money I would let him have any sum for his occasion as far as five or six thousand pistoles, and he should pay me as his own affairs would permit ”

“ First I gave him a particular account of everything that happened material upon my voyage, and how we were driven into Harwich by a very terrible storm; how I had left my woman behind me, so frighted with the danger she had been in that she durst not venture to set her foot into a ship again any more; and that I had not come myself if the bills I had of him had not been payable in Holland, but that money, he might see, would make a woman go anywhere. ”

“ When he, seeing evidently what I was going about, interrupted me with some warmth, and told me he would have nothing of me on that account, and desired I would not pull out my bills and papers on that score; that he had not told me the story on that account or with any such view; that it had been his misfortune first to bring that ugly rogue to me, which though it was with a good design, yet he would punish himself with the expense he had been at for his being so unlucky to me ”

“ That these things indeed might happen where men ran into hazardous things in trade, and without prudence or due consideration launched their fortunes in a degree beyond their strength, grasping at adventures beyond their stocks, and the like ”