Section 1

EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST RHYS
FICTION
THE FORTUNES AND MISFOR-
TUNES OF THE FAMOUS MOLL
FLANDERS - BY DANIEL DEFOE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY Ge TALI KEN
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THIS Is NO. 837 or EVERY MANS LIBRARY. THE PUBLISHERS WILL BE PLEASED TO SEND FREELY TO ALL APPLICANTS A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED AND PROJECTED VOLUMES ARRANGED UNDER THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS:
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First PUBLISHED IN THIS EDITION
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1930
INTRODUCTION
DEFOE seems to have published only one pamphlet during 1721, though he was no doubt busy writing books, which were to appear in the following year. The first edition of Moll Flanders is dated-1721, but it was not issued by the pub- lishers, Chetwood and others, until 27 January, 1722. Its popularity is shown by the appearance of a “second edition, corrected” (printed for John Brotherton) in July, and of a . third edition, again published by Chetwood, in December. By January 1723, Thomas Edlin, as we learn from an entry 9 at Stationers’ Hall, was proprietor of the whole copyright; + and in July 1723 an abridged pocket edition was issued by _ J. Read. ¢ ‘The full title of this remarkable book ran as follows: “The . Fortunes and Misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders, &c., ‘ who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continued variety, for threescore years, besides her childhood, was twelve years a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own brother), twelve years a Thief, eight years a transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew rich, lived honest, and died a > Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.” To take ” this last point first, Defoe says that from prudential motives » Moll Flanders could not publish her real name; and that the — Original narrative had been put into new words, and the = style a little altered by “the pen employed in finishing her , Story”; and he admitted that, owing to the number of novels and romances before the public, it would “be hard é “for a private history to be taken for genuine” where the real > names are concealed. “On this account we must be content } to leave the reader to pass his own opinion upon the ensuing sheets, and take it just as he pleases.” It will be seen that Defoe’s testimony to the authenticity of the narrative is rather half-hearted, and efforts to trace ~ the original of Moll Flanders have been unsuccessful. A while vu
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chap-book appeared at Dublin in 1730 called “Fortune’s Fickle Distribution: In Three Parts. Containing, First, The Life and Death of Moll Flanders. Secondly, The Life of Jane Hackabout, her Governess. Thirdly, The Life of James MacFaul, Moll Flanders’s Lancashire Husband.” The compiler of this book made Moll Flanders say that, as she was drawing near her end, she would now give particulars of her birth and parentage. Her grandfather was born at Carrickfergus; her father, James Fitzpatrick, was driven to vice by want, and subsequently met Moll’s mother, Mary _ Flanders, in Whetstone Park. He took to highway robbery, and was executed. As for the close of Moll Flanders’s life, we are told that she and her husband settled ultimately in Galway, and bought property there. On 30 March, 1722, she made a will, in the name of Elizabeth Atkins, her late husband being called William Carroll; and she died on ro April, 1723, in her seventy-fifth year, being very penitent. She had been attended by Mr. Price, master of the Free School at Galway, and she was buried at St. Nicholas’s Church, with much ceremony.
Defoe himself says that the life of Moll Flanders’s husband had been written by another hand; but unfortunately for the circumstantial account in the Dublin volume, Mr. J. Digges la Touche, of the Dublin Record Office, who has been good enough to make inquiry, cannot find the alleged Galway will, or any other information respecting a woman of the name given. The Rev. J. F. Berry, of Galway, states that the St. Nicholas registers reach back only to 1790. In the absence of further proof, we must, then, regard the supposed identification of Moll Flanders as imagination; though the story was repeated, many years later—in 1776—in a worth- less compilation entitled, “The History of Laetitia Atkins, vulgarly called Moll Flanders. Published by Mr. Daniel — Defoe; and from papers found since his decease it appears greatly altered by himself; and from the said papers the present work is produced.” At the end of this little book there is the will of Laetitia Atkins, widow of James Carrol, of Galway, dated 30 March, 1722; and we are told that this woman died on ro December, 1722, in her seventy-fifth year. According to Defoe, however, Moll Flanders was dead when he wrote his preface, at the end of 1721; and the “papers”
INTRODUCTION 1 edie
used by the editor of this volume are certainly imaginary. ‘But in spite of the difficulties of identification, the idea of Defoe’s story was probably taken from the life of some real criminal, and it is quite possible that this person’s name will some day be traced. For the present, we must consider the tale merely as a work of fiction; it is evident that the whole _ book was written by Defoe, and that he did not merely revise the narrative told by the woman herself.
Moll Flanders’s mother was transported after conviction of a petty theft, and the baby fell into the hands of the gipsies, who deserted Moll, when she was three years old, at Colchester—a town which was familiar to Defoe. In due time the girl obtained a situation, but was ruined by her mistress’s eldest son. An honourable suit by the second son afforded a means of escape from her troubles, and she married this young man. After five years, however, he died, and Moll married a draper of extravagant habits. For a time they lived as gentlefolk and then the draper became bank- rupt, absconded to France, and dropped out of his wife’s life. Moll Flanders next took lodgings in the Mint, passing for a widow with some means, by which device she was enabled to secure as her husband a sea-captain, with whom she went to Virginia. There she was distressed at discovering that she had married her own half-brother; and she agreed with her husband that she would return to England, when he could pretend she had died, and marry again if he wished.
For some time Moll Flanders lived in Bath, where she made the acquaintance of a man of means whose wife was insane, nursed him in his illness, lived with him, and ultimately | became his mistress. He gave her plenty of money, but she secretly took care to lay up as much as she could for a rainy day. In due time this gentleman repented of his conduct, and parted with Moll Flanders, who was now “left desolate, and void of counsel.’”’ However, she met with a banker’s clerk, who wished to marry her, but she put him off on account of a Roman Catholic gentleman in Lancashire, who was stated to be rich. She married this man, only to find that he, like herself, was a fortune-hunter. Both parties had been deceived, and they agreed to separate, the man to return to highway robbery, the woman to go to London, where her child was born at a midwife’s, and placed out to
x MOLL FLANDERS
nurse. The bank clerk now came forward again, and was gladly accepted, after ‘an abominable life of twenty-four ears.” ° Five years of happiness ensued, when Moll’s husband died, leaving her, aged forty-eight, with two children by him, and quite friendless. After two years’ struggle, she was tempted to steal by the devil: “’Twas like a voice spoken over my shoulder, ‘Take the bundle; be quick; do it this moment.’”’ She became an expert thief, but after twelve years’ good luck she was caught, and in Newgate met the highwayman she had married in Lancashire. She was tried for stealing “two pieces of brocaded silk, the goods of Anthony Johnson, and for breaking open the doors”; and was convicted of the larceny, and sentenced to death. The kindly ministrations of a clergyman “broke into” the woman’s very soul, and led to genuine repentance; and the same friend obtained for her a reprieve, the capital sentence being commuted to transpor- tation. Moll Flanders went to Virginia in company with her Lancashire husband; but there she was thrown into much confusion by finding that her brother (whom she had married so long before) was alive, though very feeble, as well as her son.
She moved to Maryland, settled there, and then went back on a visit to the river Potomac, where she made herself known to her son, who received her with affection, and told her that her mother had left to her a plantation which would bring in {106 a year. After a visit of some weeks, Moll Flanders returned to her husband in Maryland, who was now a thoroughly reformed man, and they became pros- perous. The death of her brother enabled Moll to acknow- ledge her Lancashire husband, and to tell him the story of her former marriage. Afterwards they lived very happily, and in due time Moll Flanders, then nearly seventy, visited England, having performed much more than the limited term of her transportation. Her husband afterwards joined her in this country, where, as she wrote in 1683, “we resolve to spend the remainder of our years in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived.”
In the preface, Defoe adds that it was stated that Moll lived to be very old, “and was not so extraordinary a penitent as she was at first ; it seems only that indeed she always spoke — with abhorrence of her former life, and every part of it.”
} ty!
INTRODUCTION xi
_ Such are the bald facts of a story which is filled in by Defoe with all his usual skill, so that the minutest details of Moll Flanders’s robberies, or of the charges made by the woman—her ‘“‘governess”—at whose house she lived for a time, are of interest to the reader, and give an air of truthful- ness to the whole narrative. The book is one of the most remarkable examples of true realism in the whole range of fiction, and, looking to Zola’s popularity, it is not surpnsing to hear that one of the most successful books of the last season in Paris has been M. Marcel Schwob’s translation of this novel. The details, however, belong to the eighteenth century rather than to the seventeenth, as the author represents; and not the least interesting aspect of the book is the excellent view it gives us of t classes funder Olese- Rise and of the state of the Mint and of Newgate, with their glaring bribery and corruption.
None of the characters drawn by Defoe surpass that of Moll Flanders in subtlety of delineation; and they who speak of the perfunctory nature of the moral tags entirely miss the point of the book, which has but a superficial resemblance to the old picaresque novels of the school of Head’s English Rogue, or even to Le Sage’s Gil Blas. It is true that most of Moll Flanders’s intrigues or marriages were Drgught about brought about by the desire for money, but she was not without passion or ‘generosity, and-she-hac-a- genuine affection for her Lancashire hu: mu Orne in Mind, too, in extenuation of
her “conduct, that her mother was a ‘criminal; that she had
been deserted in her infancy; that she was corrupted in her youth; and that she was led to commit some of worst actions by the necessity of obtaining money wep off starvation. If we cannot sympathise with Defoe’s heroine, she was certainly sufficiently human to enable us at least to pity her.
“The publishing this account of my life,’ Defoe makes his
1 One curious passage is confirmed by an Bpeode in the life of Lady Steele. At Bath, Moll Flanders had a fellow-lodger on the same floor (p. 93), and they often went into each other’s bedroom, without sense of impropriety. Mary Scurlock, before she knew Steele, was pestered by a gentleman who brought against her an action for breach of contract of marriage; and one of his allegations was that, being in the same lodgings, she would come to his room, and admit him to hers,
late at night. The reply was that this was true, but that they were
old acquaintances (Life of Steele, 1889, i. 180-1).
wf
xii MOLL FLANDERS
heroine say, “is for the sake of the just moral of every part of it, and for instruction, caution, warning, and improvement to every reader.” In the preface, Defoe meets at length the charge that the story was of a corrupting nature. Every care had been taken to remove immodest ideas from the narrative: “What is left ’tis hoped will not offend the chastest reader, or the modestest hearer.” “To give the history of a wicked life repented of,”’ Defoe continues, “necessarily requires that the wicked part should be made as wicked as the real history of it will bear, to illustrate and give a beauty to the penitent part, which is certainly the best and brightest, if related with equal spirit and life.” The warnings that would be drawn by those who knew how to make good use of the story atoned for any lively description of folly and wickedness in the hook. The whole relation had been freed from the levity that was in it originally, and applied to virtuous ends; so that no one could justly cast any reproach upon it, or upon the editor’s design in publishing it. Every wicked action was rendered unhappy and unfortunate; every villain was brought to an unhappy end, or became penitent; every ill thing mentioned was condemned; every virtuous thing carried its praise along with it, All the heroine’s exploits were warnings to honest people; and her ultimate reformation was a story full of instruction to the unfortunate or criminal classes, who would see that nobody could have fallen so low as to be without hope of relief by unwearied industry.
This is Defoe’s argument in support of his contention that he was justified in recommending the book to the world; and there is not the slightest reason for doubting his sincerity. It has generally been held, however, and rightly so, that he was mistaken in his view, because such stories are read, not for instruction, but for amusement. But it does not follow that we need censure Defoe. So far as his narrative is coarse, it is in accordance with the common practice of an age in which there was a singular lack of delicacy, accompanied by gross immorality among both rich and poor. It was usual, even among those who were themselves blameless, to speak in startlingly plain language of matters relating to morals; and from certain of his avowedly didactic works, it would seem that Defoe had a peculiar bluntness of perception as regards what is admissible in books intended for @weneral
INTRODUCTION i
circulation. As a matter of fact, there are but two passages in Moll Flanders in which Defoe dwells upon the heroine’s
_ lapses into immorality, and both those incidents are pointed out in the preface, where Defoe indicates the useful lessons
_ to be drawn from them.
No doubt the motives which led to the writing of these stories of criminals were varied. Defoe was interested in all phases of the life he saw around him, and he recognised that the struggles and adventures of a Moll Flanders or Colonel Jack would form a thrilling story, which would command a wide circle of readers. But beyond all this, he saw that the town was flooded with two streams of literature which were undoubtedly harmful. The crimes—notably highway rob- bery, theft, piracy—which were so prevalent under George the First, gave rise to a number of books and pamphlets in which the criminals were treated as heroes, or the subject was dealt with in a would-be humorous manner, without the slightest attempt at reprobation.!_ By the side of this thieves’ literature was a series of novels of intrigue, whose chief interest often consisted in the fact that the scandalous amours which they chronicled were attributed, under thinly
‘veiled names, to real persons. Defoe had had personal experience of Newgate, and was acquainted with all classes of society; and he aimed at reaching the persons who read these books by publishing stories in which’ they would be interested, but which would show that vice led to ruin instead of to the pleasures represented by: those whose methods he followed to some extent for his own purpose.
We have seen Defoe’s defence of the course he took; it is certainly the best which has been put forward; and perhaps more apologies than were necessary have been made by his