| LETTER THE FIRST |
| LETTER THE SECOND |
I sit down to give you an undeniable proof of my considering your desires asindispensable orders. Ungracious then as the task may be, I shall recall toview those scandalous stages of my life, out of which I emerged, at length, tothe enjoyment of every blessing in the power of love, health and fortune tobestow; whilst yet in the flower of youth, and not too late to employ theleisure afforded me by great ease and affluence, to cultivate an understanding,naturally not a despicable one, and which had, even amidst the whirl of loosepleasures I had been tossed in, exerted more observation on the characters andmanners of the world than what is common to those of my unhappy profession,who, looking on all though or reflection as their capital enemy, keep it at asgreat a distance as they can, or destroy it without mercy.
Hating, as I mortally do, all long unnecessary prefaces, I shall give you goodquarter in this, and use no farther apology, than to prepare you for seeing theloose part of my life, written with the same liberty that I led it.
Truth! stark, naked truth, is the word; and I will not so much as take thepains to bestow the strip of a gauze wrapper on it, but paint situations suchas they actually rose to me in nature, careless of violating those laws ofdecency that were never made for such unreserved intimacies as ours; and youhave too much sense, too much knowledge of the originals, to sniff prudishlyand out of character at the pictures of them. The greatest men, those of thefirst and most leading taste, will not scruple adorning their private closetswith nudities, though, in compliance with vulgar prejudices, they may not thinkthem decent decorations of the staircase, or salon.
This, and enough, premised, I go souse into my personal history. My maiden namewas Frances Hill. I was born at a small village near Liverpool, in Lancashire,of parents extremely poor, and, I piously believe, extremely honest.
My father, who had received a maim on his limbs, that disabled him fromfollowing the more laborious branches of country drudgery, got, by making nets,a scanty subsistence, which was not much enlarged by my mother’s keepinga little day-school for the girls in her neighborhood. They had had severalchildren; but none lived to any age except myself, who had received from naturea constitution perfectly healthy.
My education, till past fourteen, was no better than very vulgar: reading, orrather spelling, an illegible scrawl, and a little ordinary plain work,composed the whole system of it; and then all my foundation in virtue was noother than a total ignorance of vice, and the shy timidity general to our sex,in the tender age of life, when objects alarm or frighten more by their noveltythan anything else. But then, this is a fear too often cured at the expense ofinnocence, when Miss, by degrees, begins no longer to look on a man as acreature of prey that will eat her.
My poor mother had divided her time so entirely between her scholars and herlittle domestic cares, that she had spared very little to my instruction,having, from her own innocence from all ill, no hint or thought of guarding meagainst any....