Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded
‘Our prayers are at length heard, and we are overwhelmed with joy. O
what sufferings, what trials, hast thou gone through! Blessed be the
Divine goodness, which has enabled thee to withstand so many
temptations! We have not yet had leisure to read through your long
accounts of all your hardships. I say long, because I wonder how you
could find time and opportunity for them: but otherwise they are the
delight of our spare hours; and we shall read them over and over, as
long as we live, with thankfulness to God, who has given us so virtuous
and so discreet a daughter. How happy is our lot in the midst of our
poverty! O let none ever think children a burden to them; when the
poorest circumstances can produce so much riches in a Pamela! Persist,
my dear daughter, in the same excellent course; and we shall not envy
the highest estate, but defy them to produce such a daughter as ours.
‘I said, we had not read through all yours in course. We were too
impatient, and so turned to the end; where we find your virtue within
view of its reward, and your master’s heart turned to see the folly of
his ways, and the injury he had intended to our dear child: For, to be
sure, my dear, he would have ruined you, if he could. But seeing your
virtue, his heart is touched; and he has, no doubt, been awakened by
your good example.
‘We don’t see that you can do any way so well, as to come into the
present proposal, and make Mr. Williams, the worthy Mr. Williams! God
bless him!—happy. And though we are poor, and can add no merit, no
reputation, no fortune, to our dear child, but rather must be a
disgrace to her, as the world will think; yet I hope I do not sin in my
pride, to say, that there is no good man, of a common degree,
(especially as your late lady’s kindness gave you such good
opportunities, which you have had the grace to improve,) but may think
himself happy in you. But, as you say, you had rather not marry at
present, far be it from us to offer violence to your inclination! So
much prudence as you have shewn in all your conduct, would make it very
wrong in us to mistrust it in this, or to offer to direct you in your
choice. But, alas! my child, what can we do for you?—To partake our
hard lot, and involve yourself into as hard a life, would not help us,
but add to your afflictions. But it will be time enough to talk of
these things, when we have the pleasure you now put us in hope of, of
seeing you with us; which God grant. Amen, amen, say ‘Your most
indulgent parents. Amen!’
‘Our humblest service and thanks to the worthy Mr. Williams. Again we
say, God bless him for ever!
‘O what a deal we have to say to you! God give us a happy meeting! We
understand the ’squire is setting out for London. He is a fine
gentleman, and has wit at will. I wish he was as good. But I hope he
will now reform.’
O what inexpressible comfort, my dear father, has your letter given
me!—You ask, What can you do for me?—What is it you cannot do for your
child!—You can give her the advice she has so much wanted, and still
wants, and will always want: You can confirm her in the paths of
virtue, into which you first initiated her; and you can pray for her,
with hearts so sincere and pure, that are not to be met with in
palaces!—Oh! how I long to throw myself at your feet, and receive from
your own lips the blessings of such good parents! But, alas! how are my
prospects again overclouded, to what they were when I closed my last
parcel!—More trials, more dangers, I fear, must your poor Pamela be
engaged in: But through the Divine goodness, and your prayers, I hope,
at last, to get well out of all my difficulties; and the rather, as
they are not the effect of my own vanity or presumption!
But I will proceed with my hopeless story. I saw Mr. Williams was a
little nettled at my impatience; and so I wrote to assure him I would
be as easy as I could, and wholly directed by him; especially as my
father, whose respects I mentioned, had assured me my master was
setting out for London, which he must have somehow from his own family
or he would not have written me word of it.
Saturday, Sunday.
Mr. Williams has been here both these days, as usual; but is very
indifferently received still by Mrs. Jewkes; and, to avoid suspicion, I
left them together, and went up to my closet, most of the time he was
here. He and she, I found by her, had a quarrel: and she seems quite
out of humour with him: but I thought it best not to say any thing: and
he said, he would very little trouble the house till he had an answer
to his letter from Mr. B——. And she returned, The less, the better.
Poor man! he has got but little by his openness, making Mrs. Jewkes his
confidant, as she bragged, and would have had me to do likewise.
I am more and more satisfied there is mischief brewing; and shall begin
to hide my papers, and be circumspect. She seems mighty impatient for
an answer to her letter to my master.
Monday, Tuesday, the 25th and 26th days of my heavy restraint.
Still more and more strange things to write! A messenger is returned,
and now all is out! O wretched, wretched Pamela! What, at last, will
become of me!—Such strange turns and trials sure never poor creature,
of my years, experienced. He brought two letters, one to Mrs. Jewkes,
and one to me: but, as the greatest wits may be sometimes mistaken,
they being folded and sealed alike, that for me was directed to Mrs.
Jewkes; and that for her was directed to me. But both are stark naught,
abominably bad! She brought me up that directed for me, and said,
Here’s a letter for you: Long-looked-for is come at last. I will ask
the messenger a few questions, and then I will read mine. So she went
down, and I broke it open in my closet, and found it directed To MRS.
PAMELA ANDREWS. But when I opened it, it began, Mrs. Jewkes. I was
quite confounded; but, thought I, this may be a lucky mistake; I may
discover something: And so I read on these horrid contents:
‘MRS. JEWKES,
‘What you write me, has given me no small disturbance. This wretched
fool’s play-thing, no doubt, is ready to leap at any thing that offers,
rather than express the least sense of gratitude for all the benefits
she has received from my family, and which I was determined more and
more to heap upon her. I reserve her for my future resentment; and I
charge you double your diligence in watching her, to prevent her
escape. I send this by an honest Swiss, who attended me in my travels;
a man I can trust; and so let him be your assistant: for the artful
creature is enough to corrupt a nation by her seeming innocence and
simplicity; and she may have got a party, perhaps, among my servants
with you, as she has here. Even John Arnold, whom I confided in, and
favoured more than any, has proved an execrable villain; and shall meet
his reward for it.
‘As to that college novice, Williams, I need not bid you take care he
sees not this painted bauble: for I have ordered Mr. Shorter, my
attorney, to throw him instantly into gaol, on an action of debt, for
money he has had of me, which I had intended never to carry to account
against him; for I know all his rascally practices, besides what you
write me of his perfidious intrigue with that girl, and his
acknowledged contrivances for her escape; when he knew not, for
certain, that I designed her any mischief; and when, if he had been
guided by a sense of piety, or compassion for injured innocence, as he
pretends, he would have expostulated with me, as his function, and my
friendship for him, might have allowed him. But to enter into a vile
intrigue with the amiable gewgaw, to favour her escape in so base a
manner, (to say nothing of his disgraceful practices against me, in Sir
Simon Darnford’s family, of which Sir Simon himself has informed me),
is a conduct that, instead of preferring the ungrateful wretch, as I
had intended, shall pull down upon him utter ruin.
‘Monsieur Colbrand, my trusty Swiss, will obey you without reserve, if
my other servants refuse.
‘As for her denying that she encouraged his declaration, I believe it
not. It is certain the speaking picture, with all that pretended
innocence and bashfulness, would have run away with him. Yes, she would
run away with a fellow that she had been acquainted with (and that not
intimately, if you were as careful as you ought to be) but a few days;
at a time when she had the strongest assurances of my honour to her.
‘Well, I think, I now hate her perfectly: and though I will do nothing
to her myself, yet I can bear, for the sake of my revenge, and my
injured honour and slighted love, to see any thing, even what she most
fears, be done to her; and then she may be turned loose to her evil
destiny, and echo to the woods and groves her piteous lamentations for
the loss of her fantastical innocence, which the romantic ideot makes
such a work about. I shall go to London, with my sister Davers; and the
moment I can disengage myself, which, perhaps, may be in three weeks
from this time, I will be with you, and decide her fate, and put an end
to your trouble. Mean time be doubly careful; for this innocent, as I
have warned you, is full of contrivances. I am ‘Your friend.’
I had but just read this dreadful letter through, when Mrs. Jewkes came
up in a great fright, guessing at the mistake, and that I had her
letter, and she found me with it open in my hand, just sinking away.
What business, said she, had you to read my letter? and snatched it
from me. You see, said she, looking upon it, it says Mrs. Jewkes, at
top: You ought, in manners, to have read no further. O add not, said I,
to my afflictions! I shall be soon out of all your ways! This is too
much! too much! I never can support this—and threw myself upon the
couch, in my closet, and wept most bitterly. She read it in the next
room, and came in again afterwards. Why, this, said she, is a sad
letter indeed: I am sorry for it: But I feared you would carry your
niceties too far!—Leave me, leave me, Mrs. Jewkes, said I, for a while:
I cannot speak nor talk.—Poor heart! said she; Well, I’ll come up again
presently, and hope to find you better. But here, take your own letter;
I wish you well; but this is a sad mistake! And so she put down by me
that which was intended for me: But I have no spirit to read it at
present. O man! man! hard-hearted, cruel man! what mischiefs art thou
not capable of, unrelenting persecutor as thou art!
I sat ruminating, when I had a little come to myself, upon the terms of
this wicked letter; and had no inclination to look into my own. The bad
names, fool’s play-thing, artful creature, painted bauble, gewgaw,
speaking picture, are hard words for your poor Pamela! and I began to
think whether I was not indeed a very naughty body, and had not done
vile things: But when I thought of his having discovered poor John, and
of Sir Simon’s base officiousness, in telling him of Mr. Williams, with
what he had resolved against him in revenge for his goodness to me, I
was quite dispirited; and yet still more about that fearful Colbrand,
and what he could see done to me: for then I was ready to gasp for
breath, and my heart quite failed me. Then how dreadful are the words,
that he will decide my fate in three weeks! Gracious Heaven, said I,
strike me dead, before that time, with a thunderbolt, or provide some
way for my escaping these threatened mischiefs! God forgive me, if I
sinned!
At last, I took up the letter directed for Mrs. Jewkes, but designed
for me; and I find that little better than the other. These are the
hard terms it contains:
‘Well have you done, perverse, forward, artful, yet foolish Pamela, to
convince me, before it was too late, how ill I had done to place my
affections on so unworthy an object: I had vowed honour and love to