AMUSING ANECDOTE OF HIS LORDSHIP. 165 had gone on. It would be diverting to set down here in what manner I repulsed these sort of people; how in some I resented it as an affront, and told them that I was sorry they should oblige me to vindicate myself from the scandal of such suggestions, by telling them that I could see them no more, and by desiring them not to give themselves the trouble of visiting me, who, though I was not willing to be uncivil, yet thought myself obliged never to receive any visit from any gentleman after he had made such proposals as those to me. But these things would be too tedious to bring in here; it was on this account I proposed to his lordship my taking new lodgings for privacy; besides, I considered that as I might live very handsomely, and yet not so publicly, so I needed not spend so much money by a great deal; and if I made 500l. a year of this generous person, it was more than I had any occasion to spend by a great deal. My lord came readily into this proposal, and went farther than I expected, for he found out a lodging for me in a very handsome house, where yet he was not known; I suppose he had employed somebody to find it out for him; and where he had a convenient way to come into the garden, by a door that opened into the park, a thing very rarely allowed in those times. By this key he could come in at what time of night or day he pleased; and as we had also a little door in the lower part of the house, which was always left upon a lock, and his was the master-key, so if it was twelve, one, or two o'clock at night, he could come directly into my bedchamber. N.B.-I was not afraid I should be found a-bed with anybody else, for, in a word, I conversed with nobody at all. It happened pleasantly enough one night, his lordship had stayed late, and I not expecting him that night, had taken Amy to bed with me, and when my lord came into the chamber we were both fast asleep. I think it was near three o'clock when he came in, and a little merry, but not at all fuddled, or what they call in drink; and he came at once into the room. Amy was frighted out of her wits, and cried out; I said calmly, Indeed, my lord, I did not expect you to-night, and we have been a little frighted to-night with fire. O! says he, I see you have got a bedfellow with you. I began to make an apology: No, no, says my lord, you need no excuse, 'tis not a man bedfellow I see; but then, talking merrily enough, he catched his words back, But, hark ye, says he, now I think on't, how shall I be satisfied it is not a man bedfellow? O, says I, I dare say your lordship is satisfied 'tis poor Amy; Yes, says he, 'tis Mrs. Amy, but how do I know what Amy is? it may be Mr. Amy, for aught I know: I hope you'll give me leave to be satisfied. I told him, Yes, by all means, I would have his lordship satisfied, but I supposed he knew who she was. Well, he fell foul of poor Amy, and indeed I thought once he would have carried the jest on before my face, as was once done in a like case: but his lordship was not so hot neither, but he would know whether Amy was Mr. Amy or Mrs. Amy, and so I suppose he did, and then being satisfied in that doubtful case, he walked to the farther end of the room, and went into a little closet and sat down. In the mean time Amy and I got up, and I bid her run and make the bed in another chamber for my lord, and I gave her sheets to put into it; which she did immediately, and I put my lord to bed there; and when I had done, at his desire, went to bed to him. I was backward at first to come to bed to him, and made my excuse because I had been in bed with Amy, and had not shifted me, but he was past those niceties at that time; and as long as he was sure it was Mrs. Amy and not Mr. Amy, he was very well satisfied, and so the jest passed over; but Amy appeared no more all that night, or the next day, and when she did, my lord was so merry with upon his eclaircissement, as he called it, that Amy did not know what to do with herself. her Not that Amy was such a nice lady in the main, if she had been fairly dealt with, as has appeared in the former part of this work; but now she was surprised, and a little hurried, that she scarce knew where she was; and besides, she was, as to his lordship, as nice a lady as any in the world, and for anything he knew of her, she appeared as such. The rest was to us only that knew of it. I held this wicked scene of life out eight years, reckoning from my first coming to England; and though my lord found no fault, yet I found without much examining, that any one who looked in my face might see I was above twenty years old, and yet, without flattering myself, I carried my age. which was above fifty, very well too. AMY COMMISSIONED TO FIND OUT MY CHILDREN. 165 Ι may venture to say that no woman ever lived a life like me, of six-and-twenty years of wickedness, without the least signals of remorse, without any signs of repentance, or without so much as a wish to put an end to it; I had so long habituated myself to a life of vice, that really it appeared to be no vice to me. I went on smooth and pleasant, I wallowed in wealth, and it flowed in upon me at such a rate, having taken the frugal measures that the good knight directed, so that I had at the end of the eight years two thousand eight hundred pounds coming yearly in, of which I did not spend one penny, being maintained by my allowance from my Lord and more than maintained by above 2007. per annum; for though he did not contract for 500l. a year, as I made dumb signs to have it be, yet he gave me money so often, and that in such large parcels, that I had seldom so little as seven to eight hundred pounds a year of him, one year with another. I must go back here, after telling openly the wicked things I did, to mention something, which, however, had the face of doing good; I remembered that when I went from England, which was fifteen years before, I had left five little children, turned out as it were to the wide world, and to the charity of their father's relations; the eldest was not six years old, for we had not been married full seven years when their father went away. After my coming to England, I was greatly desirous to hear how things stood with them; and whether they were all alive or not, and in what manner they had been maintained; and yet I resolved not to discover myself to them in the least, or to let any of the people that had the breeding of them up know that there was such a body left in the world as their mother. Amy was the only body I could trust with such a commission, and I sent her into Spitalfields, to the old aunt and to the poor woman that were so instrumental in disposing the relations to take some care of the children, but they were both gone, dead and buried some years. The next inquiry she made was at the house where she carried the poor children, and turned them in at the door; when she came there she found the house inhabited by other people, so that she could make little or nothing of her inquiries, and came back with an answer that indeed was no answer to me, for it gave me no satisfaction at all. I sent her back to inquire in the neigh bourhood, what was become of the family that lived in that house? and if they were removed, where they lived? and what circumstances they were in? and withal, if she could, what became of the poor children, and how they lived, and where? how they had been treated? and the like. She brought me back word upon this second going, that she heard, as to the family, that the husband, who though but uncle-in-law to the children, had yet been kindest to them, was dead; and that the widow was left but in mean circumstances, that is to say, she did not want, but that she was not so well in the world as she was thought to be when her husband was alive. That, as to the poor children, two of them, it seems, had been kept by her, that is to say, by her husband, while he lived, tor that it was against her will, that we all knew ; but the honest neighbours pitied the poor children, they said, heartily; for that their aunt used them barbarously, and made them little better than servants in the house to wait upon her and her children, and scarce allowed them clothes fit to wear. These were, it seems, my eldest and third, which were daughters; the second was a son, the fourth a daughter, and the youngest a son. To finish the melancholy part of this history of my two unhappy girls, she brought me word that as soon as they were able to go out and get any work they went from her, and some said she had turned them out of doors; but it seems she had not done so, but she used them so cruelly that they left her, and one of them went to service to a neighbour's a little way off, who knew her, an honest substantial weaver's wife, to whom she was chambermaid, and in a little time she took her sister out of the Bridewell of her aunt's house, and got her a place too. This was all melancholy and dull. I sent her then to the weaver's house, where the eldest had lived, but found that, her mistress being dead, she was gone, and nobody knew there whither she went, only that they heard she had lived with a great lady at the other end of the town; but they did not know who that lady was. These inquiries took us up three or four weeks, and I was not one jot the better for it, for I could hear nothing to my satisfaction. I sent her next to find out the honest man, YOUNGEST DAUGHTER AND ELDEST SON DEAD. 167 who, as in the beginning of my story I observed, made them be entertained, and caused the youngest to be fetched from the town where we lived, and where the parish officers had taken care of him. This gentleman was still alive; and there she heard that my youngest daughter and eldest son was dead also; but that my youngest son was alive, and was at that time about seventeen years old, and that he was put out apprentice by the kindness and charity of his uncle, but to a mean trade, and at which he was obliged to work very hard. Amy was so curious in this part that she went immediately to see him, and found him all dirty, and hard at work. She had no remembrance at all of the youth, for she had not seen him since he was about two years old; and it was evident he could have no knowledge of her. However, she talked with him, and found him a good, sensible, mannerly youth; that he knew little of the story of his father or mother, and had no view of anything but to work hard for his living; and she did not think fit to put any great things into his head, lest it should take him off of his business, and perhaps make him turn giddy-headed, and be good for nothing; but she went and found out that kind man, his benefactor, who had put him out; and finding him a plain, well meaning, honest, and kind-hearted man, she opened her tale to him the easier. She made a long story, how she had a prodigious kindness for the child, because she had the same for his father and mother; told him that she was the servant-maid that brought all of them to their aunt's door, and run away and left them; that their poor mother wanted bread, and what came of her after she would have been glad to know. She added, that her circumstances had happened to mend in the world, and that, as she was in condition, so she was disposed to shew some kindness to the children if she could find them out. He received her with all the civility that so kind a proposal demanded, gave her an account of what he had done for the child, how he had maintained him, fed and clothed him, put him to school, and at last put him out to a trade. She said he had indeed been a father to the child. But, sir, says she, 'tis a very laborious hard-working trade, and he is but a thin weak boy. That's true, says he; but the boy chose the trade, and I assure you I gave 207. with him, and am to find |