Madam,
I sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my con-
sidering your desires as indispensable orders. Ungracious
then as the task may be, I shall recall to view those scan-
dalous stages of my life, out of which I emerg'd, at length,
to the enjoyment of every blessing in the power of love,
health, and fortune to bestow; whilst yet in the flower of
youth, and not too late to employ the leisure afforded me by
great ease and affluence, to cultivate an understanding,
naturally not a despicable one, and which had, even amidst
the whirl of loose pleasures I had been tost in, exerted
more observation on the characters and manners of the world
than what is common to those of my unhappy profession, who
looking on all thought or reflection as their capital enemy,
keep it at as great a distance as they can, or destroy it
without mercy.
Hating, as I mortally do, all long unnecessary preface,
I shall give you good quarter in this, and use no farther
apology, than to prepare you for seeing the loose part of my
life, wrote with the same liberty that I led it.
Truth! stark, naked truth, is the word; and I will not
so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze
wrapper on it, but paint situations such as they actually
rose to me in nature, careless of violating those laws of
decency that were never made for such unreserved intimacies
as ours; and you have too much sense, too much knowledge of
the ORIGINALS themselves, to sniff prudishly and out of
character at the PICTURES of them. The greatest men, those
of the first and most leading taste, will not scruple adorning
their private closets with nudities, though, in compliance
with vulgar prejudices, they may not think them decent deco-
rations of the staircase, or salon.
This, and enough, premised, I go souse into my personal
history. My maiden name was Frances Hill. I was born at a
small village near Liverpool, in Lancashire, of parents ex-
tremely poor, and, I piously believe, extremely honest.
My father, who had received a maim on his limbs that
disabled him from following the more laborious branches of
country-drudgery, got, by making of nets, a scanty subsis-
tence, which was not much enlarg'd by my mother's keeping
a little day-school for the girls in her neighbourhood.
They had had several children; but none lived to any age
except myself, who had received from nature a constitution
perfectly healthy.
My education, till past fourteen, was no better than
very vulgar; reading, or rather spelling, an illegible
scrawl, and a little ordinary plain work composed the whole
system of it; and then all my foundation in virtue was no
other than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity
general to our sex, in the tender stage of life when objects
alarm or frighten more by their novelty than anything else.
But then, this is a fear too often cured at the expence of
innocence, when Miss, by degrees, begins no longer to look
on a man as a creature of prey that will eat her.
My poor mother had divided her time so entirely be-
tween her scholars and her little domestic cares, that she
had spared very little of it to my instruction, having,
from her own innocence from all ill, no hint or thought of
guarding me against any.
I was now entering on my fifteenth year, when the
worst of ills befell me in the loss of my tender fond par-
ents, who were both carried off by the small-pox, within a
few days of each other; my father dying first, and thereby
hastening the death of my mother; so that I was now left an
unhappy friendless orphan (for my father's coming to settle
there was accidental, he being originally a Kentishman).
That cruel distemper which had proved so fatal to them, had
indeed seized me, but with such mild and favourable symptoms,
that I was presently out of danger, and, what I then did not
know the value of, was entirely unmark'd. I skip over here
an account of the natural grief and affliction which I felt
on this melancholy occasion. A little time, and the giddi-
ness of that age dissipated, too soon, my reflections on
that irreparable loss; but nothing contributed more to recon-
cile me to it, than the notions that were immediately put
into my head, of going to London, and looking out for a
service, in which I was promised all assistance and advice
from one Esther Davis, a young woman that had been down to
see her friends, and who, after the stay of a few days, was
to return to her place.
As I had now nobody left alive in the village who had
concern enough about what should become of me to start any
objections to this scheme, and the woman who took care of
me after my parents; death rather encouraged me to pursue
it, I soon came to a resolution of making this launch into
the wide world, by repairing to London, in order to SEEK
MY FORTUNE, a phrase which, by the bye, has ruined more
adventurers of both sexes, from the country, than ever it
made or advanced.
Nor did Esther Davis a little comfort and inspirit me
to venture with her, by piquing my childish curiosity with
the fine sights that were to be seen in London: the Tombs,
the Lions, the King, the Royal Family, the fine Plays and
Operas, and, in short, all the diversions which fell within
her sphere of life to come at; the detail of all which per-
fectly turn'd the little head of me.
Nor can I remember, without laughing, the innocent ad-
miration, not without a spice of envy, with which we poor
girls, whose church-going clothes did not rise above dowlass
shifts and stuff gowns, beheld Esther's scowered satin gowns,
caps border'd with an inch of lace, taudry ribbons, and shoes
belaced with silver: all which we imagined grew in London,
and entered for a great deal into my determination of trying
to come in for my share of them.
The idea however of having the company of a townswoman
with her, was the trivial, and all the motives that engaged
Esther to take charge of me during my journey to town, where
she told me, after her manner and style, "as how several
maids out of the country had made themselves and all their
kin for ever: that by preserving their VIRTUE, some had taken
so with their masters, that they had married them, and kept
them coaches, and lived vastly grand and happy; and some,
may-hap, came to be Duchesses; luck was all, and why not I,
as well as another?"; with other almanacs to this purpose,
which set me a tip-toe to begin this promising journey, and
to leave a place which, though my native one, contained no
relations that I had reason to regret, and was grown insup-
portable to me, from the change of the tenderest usage into
a cold air of charity, with which I was entertain'd even at
the only friend's house that I had the least expectation of
care and protection from. She was, however, so just to me,
as to manage the turning into money of the little matters
that remained to me after the debts and burial charges were
accounted for, and, at my departure, put my whole fortune
into my hands; which consisted of a very slender wardrobe,
pack'd up in a very portable box, and eight guineas, with
seventeen shillings in silver; stowed up in a spring-pouch,
which was a greater treasure than ever I had yet seen to-
gether, and which I could not conceive there was a possi-
bility of running out; and indeed, I was so entirely taken
up with the joy of seeing myself mistress of such an im-
mense sum, that I gave very little attention to a world of
good advice which was given me with it.
Places, then, being taken for Esther and me in the
London waggon, I pass over a very immaterial scene of
leavetaking, at which I dropt a few tears betwixt grief and
joy; and, for the same reasons of insignificance, skip over
all that happened to me on the road, such as the waggoner's
looking liquorish on me, the schemes laid for me by some of
the passengers, which were defeated by the vigilance of my
guardian Esther; who, to do her justice, took a motherly
care of me, at the same time that she taxed me for her pro-
tection by making me bear all travelling charges, which I
defrayed with the utmost cheerfulness, and thought myself
much obliged to her into the bargain.
She took indeed great care that we were not over-rated,
or imposed on, as well as of managing as frugally as possible;
expensiveness was not her vice.
It was pretty late in a summer evening when we reached
London-town, in our slow conveyance, though drawn by six at
length. As we passed through the greatest streets that led
to our inn, the noise of the coaches, the hurry, the crowds
of foot passengers, in short, the new scenery of the shops
and houses, at once pleased and amazed me.
But guess at my mortification and surprize when we
came to the inn, and our things were landed and deliver'd
to us, when my fellow traveller and protectress, Esther
Davis, who had used me with the utmost tenderness during
the journey, and prepared me by no preceding signs for the
stunning blow I was to receive, when I say, my only depend-
ence and friend, in this strange place, all of a sudden
assumed a strange and cool air towards me, as if she dreaded
my becoming a burden to her.
Instead, then, of proffering me the continuance of her
assistance and good offices, which I relied upon, and never
more wanted, she thought herself, it seems, abundantly ac-
quitted of her engagements to me, by having brought me safe
to my journey's end; and seeing nothing in her procedure
towards me but what was natural and in order, began to em-
brace me by way of taking leave, whilst I was so confounded,
so struck, that I had not spirit or sense enough so much as
to mention my hopes or expectations from her experience, and
knowledge of the place she had brought me to.
Whilst I stood thus stupid and mute, which she doubt-
less attributed to nothing more than a concern at parting,
this idea procured me perhaps a slight alleviation of it,
in the following harangue: That now we were got safe to
London, and that she was obliged to go to her place, she
advised me by all means to get into one as soon as possible;
that I need not fear getting one; there were more places
than parish-churches; that she advised me to go to an
intelligence office; that if she heard of any thing stirring,
she would find me out and let me know; that in the meantime,
I should take a private lodging, and acquaint her where to
send to me; that she wish'd me good luck, and hoped I should
always have the grace to keep myself honest, and not bring a
disgrace on my parentage. With this, she took her leave of
me, and left me, as it were, on my own hands, full as
lightly as I had been put into hers.
Left thus alone, absolutely destitute and friendless,
I began then to feel most bitterly the severity of this
separation, the scene of which had passed in a little room
in the inn; and no sooner was her back turned, but the af-
fliction I felt at my helpless strange circumstances burst
out into a flood of tears, which infinitely relieved the
oppression of my heart; though I still remained stupefied,
and most perfectly perplex'd how to dispose of myself.
One of the waiters coming in, added yet more to my
uncertainty by asking me, in a short way, if I called for
anything? to which I replied innocently: "No." But I
wished him to tell me where I might get a lodging for that
night. He said he would go and speak to his mistress, who
accordingly came, and told me drily, without entering in
the least into the distress she saw me in, that I might have
a bed for a shilling, and that, as she supposed I had some
friends in town (here I fetched a deep sigh in vain!) I
might provide for myself in the morning.
'Tis incredible what trifling consolations the human
mind will seize in its greatest afflictions. The assurance
of nothing more than a bed to lie on that night, calmed my
agonies; and being asham'd to acquaint the mistress of the
inn that I had no friends to apply to in town, I proposed
to myself to proceed, the very next morning, to an intelli-
gence office, to which I was furnish'd with written direc-
tions on the back of a ballad Esther had given me. There I
counted on getting information of any place that such a
country girl as I might be fit for, and where I could get
into any sort of being, before my little stock should be
consumed; and as to a character, Esther had often repeated
to me that I might depend on her managing me one; nor, how-
ever affected I was at her leaving me thus, did I entirely
cease to rely on her, as I began to think, good-naturedly,
that her procedure was all in course, and that it was only
my ignorance of life that had made me take it in the light
I at first did.
Accordingly, the next morning I dress'd myself as clean
and as neat as my rustic wardrobe would permit me; and
having left my box, with special recommendation, with the
landlady, I ventured out by myself, and without any more
difficulty than can be supposed of a young country girl,
barely fifteen, and to whom every sign or shop was a gazing
trap, I got to the wish'd-for intelligence office.
It was kept by an elderly woman, who sat at the
receipt of custom, with a book before her in great form and
order, and several scrolls, ready made out, of directions
for places.
I made up then to this important personage, without
lifting up my eyes or observing any of the people round me,
who were attending there on the same errand as myself, and
dropping her curtsies nine-deep, just made a shift to
stammer out my business to her.
Madam having heard me out, with all the gravity and
brow of a petty minister of State, and seeing at one glance
over my figure what I was, made me no answer, but to ask
me the preliminary shilling, on receipt of which she told
me places for women were exceedingly scarce, especially as
I seemed too slight built for hard work; but that she
would look over her book, and see what was to be done for
me, desiring me to stay a little till she had dispatched
some other customers.
On this I drew back a little, most heartily mortified
at a declaration which carried with it a killing uncertainty
that my circumstances could not well endure.
Presently, assuming more courage, and seeking some di-
version from my uneasy thoughts, I ventured to lift up my
head a little, and sent my eyes on a course round the room,
wherein they met full tilt with those of a lady (for such
my extreme innocence pronounc'd her) sitting in a corner of
the room, dress'd in a velvet mantle (nota bene, in the
midst of summer), with her bonnet off; squab-fat, red-faced,
and at least fifty.
She look'd as if she would devour me with her eyes,
staring at me from head to foot, without the least regard
to the confusion and blushes her eyeing me so fixedly put
me to, and which were to her, no doubt, the strongest re-
commendation and marks of my being fit for her purpose.
After a little time, in which my air, person and whole
figure had undergone a strict examination, which I had, on
my part, tried to render favourable to me, by primming,
drawing up my neck, and setting my best looks, she advanced
and spoke to me with the greatest demureness:
"Sweet-heart, do you want a place?"
"Yes, and please you" (with a curtsy down to the
ground).
