Daniel Defoe

“ 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 incumbrances, sisters’ portions, and the like—and then the woman is prisoner for life and may live as they please to give her leave. ”

“ The upshot of all this was to recommend to me rather the bestowing my fortune upon some eminent merchant who lived already in the first figure of a merchant, and who, not being in want or scarcity of money, but having a flourishing business and a flowing cash, would at the first word settle all my fortune on myself and children and maintain me like a queen. ”

“ This was certainly right, and had I taken his advice I had been really happy; but my heart was bent upon an independency of fortune, and I told him I knew no state of matrimony but what was at best a state of inferiority, if not of bondage; that I had no notion of it, that I lived a life of absolute liberty now, was free as I was born, and, having a plentiful fortune, I did not understand what coherence the words Honour and Obey had with the liberty of a free woman ”

“ That an estate is a pond, but that a trade was a spring; that if the first is once mortgaged it seldom gets clear, but embarrasses the person for ever; but the merchant had his estate continually flowing ”

“ 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 quantity 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 circumstances 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 bastard in my belly, I took shipping at the Briel, in the packet-boat, and arrived safe at Harwich, where my woman Amy was come, by my direction, to meet me. ”

“ He went on to tell me that even the tradesmen in London, speaking of the better sort of trades, could spend more money in their families and yet give better fortunes to their children than, generally speaking, the gentry of England from £1,000 a year downward could do, and yet grow rich too. ”

“ However, in some time I got a substantial safe mortgage for £14,000 by the assistance of the famous Sir Robert Clayton, for which I had an estate of £1,800 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 £1,000 a year, enough, one would think, to keep any woman in England from being a whore. ”

“ I had sold my jewels, all but the fine 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 ear-rings, worth about 600 pistoles ”