her breast, if she would engage solemnly not to acquaint her
son with it without my consent.
She was long in promising this part, but rather than not come
at the main secret, she agreed to that too, and after a great
many other preliminaries, I began, and told her the whole story.
First I told her how much she was concerned in all the unhappy
breach which had happened between her son and me, by telling
me her own story and her London name; and that the surprise
she saw I was in was upon that occasion. The I told her my
own story, and my name, and assured her, by such other tokens
as she could not deny, that I was no other, nor more or less,
than her own child, her daughter, born of her body in Newgate;
the same that had saved her from the gallows by being in her
belly, and the same that she left in such-and-such hands when
she was transported.
It is impossible to express the astonishment she was in; she
was not inclined to believe the story, or to remember the
particulars, for she immediately foresaw the confusion that
must follow in the family upon it. But everything concurred
so exactly with the stories she had told me of herself, and which,
if she had not told me, she would perhaps have been content
to have denied, that she had stopped her own mouth, and she
had nothing to do but to take me about the neck and kiss me,
and cry most vehemently over me, without speaking one word
for a long time together. At last she broke out: ‘Unhappy child!’
says she, ‘what miserable chance could bring thee hither? and
in the arms of my own son, too! Dreadful girl,’ says she, ‘why,
we are all undone! Married to thy own brother! Three children,
and two alive, all of the same flesh and blood! My son and my
daughter lying together as husband and wife! All confusion
and distraction for ever! Miserable family! what will become
of us? What is to be said? What is to be done?’ And thus she
ran on for a great while; nor had I any power to speak, or if
I had, did I know what to say, for every word wounded me to
the soul. With this kind of amazement on our thoughts we
parted for the first time, though my mother was more surprised
than I was, because it was more news to her than to me.
However, she promised again to me at parting, that she would
say nothing of it to her son, till we had talked of it again.
It was not long, you may be sure, before we had a second
conference upon the same subject; when, as if she had been
willing to forget the story she had told me of herself, or to
suppose that I had forgot some of the particulars, she began
to tell them with alterations and omissions; but I refreshed her
memory and set her to rights in many things which I supposed
she had forgot, and then came in so opportunely with the
whole history, that it was impossible for her to go from it; and
then she fell into her rhapsodies again, and exclamations at the
severity of her misfortunes. When these things were a little
over with her, we fell into a close debate about what should
be first done before we gave an account of the matter to my
husband. But to what purpose could be all our consultations?
We could neither of us see our way through it, nor see how it
could be safe to open such a scene to him. It was impossible
to make any judgment, or give any guess at what temper he
would receive it in, or what measures he would take upon it;
and if he should have so little government of himself as to make
it public, we easily foresaw that it would be the ruin of the
whole family, and expose my mother and me to the last degree;
and if at last he should take the advantage the law would give