Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress. Даниэль Дефо
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done my endeavour to have worked for them with my needle, and should only have come to them to beg them to help me to some work, that I might get our bread by my labour; but to think of one single woman not bred to work, and at a loss where to get employment, to get the bread of five children, that was not possible, some of my children being young too, and none of them big enough to help one another.
It was all one; I received not one farthing of assistance from anybody, was hardly asked to sit down at the two sisters' houses, nor offered to eat or drink at two more near relations. The fifth, an ancient gentlewoman, aunt-in-law to my husband, a widow, and the least able also of any of the rest, did indeed ask me to sit down, gave me a dinner, and refreshed me with a kinder treatment than any of the rest, but added the melancholy part, viz. that she would have helped me, but that indeed she was not able; which, however, I was satisfied was very true.
Here I relieved myself with the constant assistant of the afflicted, I mean tears; for, relating to her how I was received by the other of my husband's relations, it made me burst into tears, and I cried vehemently for a great while together, till I made the good old gentlewoman cry too several times.
However, I came home from them all without any relief, and went on at home till I was reduced to such inexpressible distress, that it is not to be described. I had been several times after this at the old aunt's, for I prevailed with her to promise me to go and talk with the other relations; at least, that if possible she could bring some of them to take off the children or to contribute something towards their maintenance; and to do her justice, she did use her endeavour with them, but all was to no purpose, they would do nothing, at least that way. I think, with much entreaty, she obtained by a kind of collection among them all, about eleven or twelve shillings in money, which, though it was a present comfort, was yet not to be named as capable to deliver me from any part of the load that lay upon me.
There was a poor woman that had been a kind of a dependent upon our family, and who I had often, among the rest of the relations, been very kind to. My maid put it into my head one morning to send to this poor woman and to see whether she might not be able to help in this dreadful case.
I must remember it here, to the praise of this poor girl, my maid, that though I was not able to give her any wages, and had told her so, nay, I was not able to pay her the wages that I was in arrears to her, yet she would not leave me; nay, and as long as she had any money when I had none, she would help me out of her own; for which, though I acknowledged her kindness and fidelity, yet it was but a bad coin that she was paid in at last, as will appear in its place.
Amy (for that was her name) put it into my thoughts to send for this poor woman to come to me, for I was now in great distress, and I resolved to do so; but just the very morning that I intended it, the old aunt, with the poor woman in her company, came to see me. The good old gentlewoman was, it seems, heartily concerned for me, and had been talking again among those people, to see what she could do for me, but to very little purpose.
You shall judge a little of my present distress by the posture she found me in. I had five little children, the eldest was under ten years old, and I had not a shilling in the house to buy them victuals, but had sent Amy out with a silver spoon to sell it and bring home something from the butcher's, and I was in a parlour, sitting on the ground with a great heap of old rags, linen, and other things about me, looking them over to see if I had anything among them that would sell or pawn for a little money, and had been crying ready to burst myself to think what I should do next.
At this juncture they knocked at the door. I thought it had been Amy, so I did not rise up, but one of the children opened the door and they came directly into the room where I was, and where they found me in that posture and crying vehemently, as above. I was surprised at their coming, you may be sure, especially seeing the person I had but just before resolved to send for. But when they saw me, how I looked, for my eyes were swelled with crying, and what a condition I was in as to the house and the heaps of things that were about me, and especially when I told them what I was doing and on what occasion, they sat down, like Job's three comforters, and said not one word to me for a great while, but both of them cried as fast and as heartily as I did.
The truth was, there was no need of much discourse in the case, the thing spoke for itself. They saw me in rags and dirt, who was but a little before riding in my coach; thin, and looking almost like one starved, who was before fat and beautiful. The house, that was before handsomely furnished with pictures and ornaments, cabinets, pier-glasses, and everything suitable, was now stripped and naked, most of the goods having been seized by the landlord for rent or sold to buy necessaries. In a word, all was misery and distress, the face of ruin was everywhere to be seen; we had eaten up almost everything, and little remained, unless, like one of the pitiful women of Jerusalem, I should eat up my very children themselves.
After these two good creatures had sat, as I say, in silence some time, and had then looked about them, my maid Amy came in and brought with her a small breast of mutton and two great bunches of turnips, which she intended to stew for our dinner. As for me, my heart was so overwhelmed at seeing these two friends, for such they were, though poor, and at their seeing me in such a condition, that I fell into another violent fit of crying; so that, in short, I could not speak to them again for a great while longer.
During my being in such an agony they went to my maid Amy at another part of the same room, and talked with her. Amy told them all my circumstances, and set them forth in such moving terms and so to the life, that I could not upon any terms have done it like her myself; and, in a word, affected them both with it in such a manner, that the old aunt came to me, and though hardly able to speak for tears, "Look ye, cousin," said she in a few words, "things must not stand thus; some course must be taken, and that forthwith. Pray, where were these children born?" I told her the parish where we lived before; that four of them were born there and one in the house where I now was, where the landlord, after having seized my goods for the rent past, not then knowing my circumstances, had now given me leave to live for a whole year more without any rent, being moved with compassion, but that this year was now almost expired.
Upon hearing this account they came to this resolution: that the children should be all carried by them to the door of one of the relations mentioned above and be set down there by the maid Amy, and that I, the mother, should remove for some days, shut up the doors, and be gone; that the people should be told that if they did not think fit to take some care of the children, they might send for the churchwardens if they thought that better, for that they were born in that parish and there they must be provided for; as for the other child which was born in the parish of ----, that was already taken care of by the parish officers there, for indeed they were so sensible of the distress of the family, that they had at first word done what was their part to do.
This was what these good women proposed, and bade me leave the rest to them. I was at first sadly afflicted at the thoughts of parting with my children, and especially at that terrible thing their being taken into the parish keeping; and then a hundred terrible things came into my thoughts, viz. of parish children being starved at nurse, of their being ruined, let grow crooked, lamed, and the like for want of being taken care of, and this sank my very heart within me.
But the misery of my own circumstances hardened my heart against my own flesh and blood, and when I considered they must inevitably be starved, and I too, if I continued to keep them about me, I began to be reconciled to parting with them all, anyhow and anywhere, that I might be freed from the dreadful necessity of seeing them all perish and perishing with them myself. So I agreed to go away out of the house and leave the management of the whole matter to my maid Amy and to them; and accordingly I did so, and the same afternoon they carried them all away to one of their aunts.
Amy, a resolute girl, knocked at the door with the children all with her, and bade the eldest, as soon as the door was open, run in, and the rest after her. She set them all down at the door before she knocked, and when she knocked she stayed till a maidservant came to the door. "Sweetheart," said she, "pray go in and tell your mistress, here are her little cousins come to see her from ----," naming the town where we lived; at which the maid offered to go back. "Here, child," says Amy, "take one of them in your hand, and I'll bring the rest." So she gives her the least, and the wench goes in mighty innocently with the little one in her hand; upon which Amy turns