And here I cannot but reflect upon the unhappy consequence
of too great freedoms between persons stated as we were,
upon the pretence of innocent intentions, love of friendship,
and the like; for the flesh has generally so great a share in those
friendships, that is great odds but inclination prevails at last
over the most solemn resolutions; and that vice breaks in at
the breaches of decency, which really innocent friendship ought
to preserve with the greatest strictness. But I leave the readers
of these things to their own just reflections, which they will be
more able to make effectual than I, who so soon forgot myself,
and am therefore but a very indifferent monitor.
I was now a single person again, as I may call myself; I was
loosed from all the obligations either of wedlock or mistress-ship
in the world, except my husband the linen-draper, whom, I having
not now heard from in almost fifteen years, nobody could
blame me for thinking myself entirely freed from; seeing also he
had at his going away told me, that if I did not hear frequently
from him, I should conclude he was dead, and I might freely
marry again to whom I pleased.
I now began to cast up my accounts. I had by many letters
and much importunity, and with the intercession of my mother
too, had a second return of some goods from my brother (as I
now call him) in Virginia, to make up the damage of the cargo
I brought away with me, and this too was upon the condition
of my sealing a general release to him, and to send it him by
his correspondent at Bristol, which, though I thought hard of,
yet I was obliged to promise to do. However, I managed so
well in this case, that I got my goods away before the release
was signed, and then I always found something or other to say
to evade the thing, and to put off the signing it at all; till at
length I pretended I must write to my brother, and have his
answer, before I could do it.
Including this recruit, and before I got the last #50, I found
my strength to amount, put all together, to about #400, so
that with that I had about #450. I had saved above #100 more,
but I met with a disaster with that, which was this–that a
goldsmith in whose hands I had trusted it, broke, so I lost #70
of my money, the man’s composition not making above #30
out of his #100. I had a little plate, but not much, and was
well enough stocked with clothes and linen.
With this stock I had the world to begin again; but you are to
consider that I was not now the same woman as when I lived
at Redriff; for, first of all, I was near twenty years older, and
did not look the better for my age, nor for my rambles to
Virginia and back again; and though I omitted nothing that
might set me out to advantage, except painting, for that I never
stooped to, and had pride enough to think I did not want it, yet
there would always be some difference seen between five-and-twenty
and two-and-forty.
I cast about innumerable ways for my future state of life, and
began to consider very seriously what I should do, but nothing
offered. I took care to make the world take me for something
more than I was, and had it given out that I was a fortune, and
that my estate was in my own hands; the last of which was
very true, the first of it was as above. I had no acquaintance,
which was one of my worst misfortunes, and the consequence
of that was, I had no adviser, at least who could assist and
advise together; and above all, I had nobody to whom I could
in confidence commit the secret of my circumstances to, and
could depend upon for their secrecy and fidelity; and I found
by experience, that to be friendless in the worst condition,
next to being in want that a woman can be reduced to: I say