The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

By this means I had, as I have said above, all the advantages of

education that I could have had if I had been as much a gentlewoman as

they were with whom I lived; and in some things I had the advantage of

my ladies, though they were my superiors; but they were all the gifts

of nature, and which all their fortunes could not furnish. First, I

was apparently handsomer than any of them; secondly, I was better

shaped; and, thirdly, I sang better, by which I mean I had a better

voice; in all which you will, I hope, allow me to say, I do not speak

my own conceit of myself, but the opinion of all that knew the family.

I had with all these the common vanity of my sex, viz. that being

really taken for very handsome, or, if you please, for a great beauty,

I very well knew it, and had as good an opinion of myself as anybody

else could have of me; and particularly I loved to hear anybody speak

of it, which could not but happen to me sometimes, and was a great

satisfaction to me.

Thus far I have had a smooth story to tell of myself, and in all this

part of my life I not only had the reputation of living in a very good

family, and a family noted and respected everywhere for virtue and

sobriety, and for every valuable thing; but I had the character too of

a very sober, modest, and virtuous young woman, and such I had always

been; neither had I yet any occasion to think of anything else, or to

know what a temptation to wickedness meant.

But that which I was too vain of was my ruin, or rather my vanity was

the cause of it. The lady in the house where I was had two sons, young

gentlemen of very promising parts and of extraordinary behaviour, and

it was my misfortune to be very well with them both, but they managed

themselves with me in a quite different manner.

The eldest, a gay gentleman that knew the town as well as the country,

and though he had levity enough to do an ill-natured thing, yet had too

much judgment of things to pay too dear for his pleasures; he began

with the unhappy snare to all women, viz. taking notice upon all

occasions how pretty I was, as he called it, how agreeable, how

well-carriaged, and the like; and this he contrived so subtly, as if he

had known as well how to catch a woman in his net as a partridge when

he went a-setting; for he would contrive to be talking this to his

sisters when, though I was not by, yet when he knew I was not far off

but that I should be sure to hear him. His sisters would return softly

to him, 'Hush, brother, she will hear you; she is but in the next

room.' Then he would put it off and talk softlier, as if he had not

know it, and begin to acknowledge he was wrong; and then, as if he had

forgot himself, he would speak aloud again, and I, that was so well

pleased to hear it, was sure to listen for it upon all occasions.