The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campell . Defoe Daniel
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The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campell A Gentlen, who, tho' Deaf and Dumb, Writes down any Stranger's name at first Sight; with their future Contingencies of Fortune
I am not unacquainted, that, ever since this book was first promised by way of advertisement to the world, it was greedily coveted by a great many persons of airy tempers, for the same reason that it has been condemned by those of a more formal class, who thought it was calculated partly to introduce a great many new and diverting curiosities in the way of superstition, and partly to divulge the secret intrigues and amours of one part of the sex, to give the other part room to make favourite scandal the subject of their discourse; and so to make one half of the fair species very merry, over the blushes and the mortifications of the other half. But when they come to read the following sheets, they will find their expectations disappointed, but I hope I may say too, very agreeably disappointed. They will find a much more elegant entertainment than they expected. Instead of making them a bill of fare out of patchwork romances of polluting scandal, the good old gentleman who wrote the Adventures of my Life, has made it his business to treat them with a great variety of entertaining passages, which always terminate in morals that tend to the edification of all readers, of whatsoever sex, age, or profession. Instead of seducing young, innocent, unwary minds into the vicious delight which is too often taken in reading the gay and bewitching chimeras of the cabalists, and in perusing the enticing fables of new-invented tricks of superstition, my ancient friend, the writer, strikes at the very root of these superstitions, and shows them how they may be satisfied in their several curiosities, by having recourse to me, who by the talent of the second-sight, which he so beautifully represents, how nature is so kind frequently to implant in the minds of men born in the same climate with myself, can tell you those things naturally, which when you try to learn yourselves, you either run the hazard of being imposed upon in your pockets by cheats, gipsies, and common fortune-tellers, or else of being imposed upon in a still worse way, in your most lasting welfare, by having recourse to conjurors or enchanters that deal in black arts, and involve all their consulters in one general partnership of their execrable guilt; or, lastly, of imposing worst of all upon your own selves, by getting into an itch of practising and trying the little tricks of female superstition, which are often more officiously handed down by the tradition of credulous nurses and old women, from one generation to another, than the first principles of Christian doctrine, which it is their duty to instil early into little children. But I hope when this book comes to be pretty generally read among you ladies, as by your generous and numerous subscriptions I have good reason to expect, that it will afford a perfect remedy and a thorough cure to that distemper, which first took its rise from too great a growth of curiosity, and too large a stock of credulity nursed prejudicially up with you in your more tender and infant years.
Whatever young maid hereafter has an innocent but longing desire to know who shall be her husband, and what time she shall be married, will, I hope, when she has read the following sheets of a man that can set her right in the knowledge of those points, purely by possessing the gift of the second sight, sooner have recourse innocently to such a man than use unlawful means to acquire it, such as running to conjurors to have his figure shown in their enchanted glasses, or using any of those traditional superstitions, by which they may dream of their husbands, or cause visionary shapes of them to appear on such and such festival nights of the year; all which practices are not ordinarily wicked and impious, but downright diabolical. I hope that the next 29th of June, which is St. John Baptist's day, I shall not see the several pasture fields adjacent to this metropolis, especially that behind Montague House, thronged, as they were the last year, with well dressed young ladies crawling busily up and down upon their knees, as if they were a parcel of weeders, when all the business is to hunt superstitiously after a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their heads that night, that they may dream who should be their husbands. In order to shame them out of this silly but guilty practice, I do intend to have some spies out on that day, that shall discover who they are, and what they have been about; and I here give notice to the public, that this ill-acted comedy, if it be acted at all this year, must begin according to the rule of their superstition, on that day precisely at the hour of twelve. And so much for the pretty weeders. But as you, ladies, have had several magical traditions delivered to you, which, if you put in exercise and practice, will be greatly prejudicial to your honour and your virtue, let me interpose my counsels, which will conduct you innocuously to the same end, which some ladies have laboured to arrive at by these impieties. Give me leave first to tell you, that though what you aim at may be arrived to by these means, yet these means make that a miserable fortune which would have been a good one; because, in order to know human things beforehand, you use preternatural mediums, which destroy the goodness of the courses, which nature herself was taking for you, and annexes to them diabolical influences, which commonly carry along with them fatalities in this world as well as the next. You will, therefore, give me your pardon likewise, ladies, if I relate some other of these practices, which bare relation of itself, after what I have said before, seems to me sufficient to explode them.
Another of the nurse's prescriptions is this: upon a St. Agnes's night, the 21st day of January, take a row of pins and pull out every one, one after another, saying a Pater Noster, or Our Father, sticking a pin in your sleeve, and you will dream of her you shall marry. Ben Johnson, in one of his masks, makes some mention of this:
And on Sweet Agnes' night
Please you with the promis'd sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers,
Which an empty dream discovers.
Now what can be more infinitely profane than to use the prayer our Lord instituted in such a way?
There is another prescription, which is as follows: You must lie in another county, and knit the left garter about the right-legged stocking, let the other garter and stocking alone, and as you rehearse these following verses, at every comma, knit a knot: —
This knot I knit,
To know the thing I know not yet,
That I may see
The man that shall my husband be;
How he goes, and what he wears,
And what he does all days and years.
Accordingly in your dream you will see him: if a musician, with a lute or other instrument; if a scholar, with a book, &c. Now I appeal to you, ladies, what a ridiculous prescription is this? But yet as slight a thing as it is, it may be of great importance if it be brought about, because then it must be construed to be done by preternatural means, and then those words are nothing less than an application to the devil.
Mr. Aubrey, of the Royal Society, says, a gentlewoman, that he knew, confessed in his hearing that she used this method, and dreamt of her husband whom she had never seen. About two or three years after, as she was one Sunday at church, up pops a young Oxonian in the pulpit; she cries out presently to her sister, this is the very face of the man I saw in my dream. Sir William Somes's lady did the like.
Another way is to charm the moon thus, as the old nurses give out, at the first appearance of the moon, after New-year's-day, some say any other new moon is as good, go out in the evening, and stand over the spars of a gate or stile, looking on the moon (here remark that in Yorkshire they kneel on a ground-fast stone) and say,
All hail to the moon, all hail to thee,
I prithee, good moon, reveal to me
This night who my husband shall be.
You must presently after go to bed. The aforesaid Mr. Aubrey knew two gentlewomen that did thus when they were young maids, and they had dreams of those that married them.
But a great many of the wittiest part of your sex laugh at these common superstitions; but then they are apt to run into worse: they give themselves up to the reading of the cabalistical systems of sylphs, and gnomes, and mandrakes, which are very wicked and delusive imaginations.
I would not have you imagine, ladies, that I impute these things as infirmities and frailties peculiar to your sex. No; men, and great men too, and scholars, and even statesmen, and princes themselves, have been tainted with superstitions, and where they infect the minds of such great personages,