The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly called Colonel Jack

Here indeed I lived perfectly incog. I made no particular acquaintance so as to be intimate, and yet I knew everybody, and everybody knew me. I discoursed in common, talked French with the Walloons, and English with the English; and lived retired and sober, and was well enough received by all sorts; but as I meddled with nobody's business, so nobody meddled with mine; I thought I lived pretty well.

But I was not fully satisfied. A settled family life was the thing I loved; had made two pushes at it, as you have heard, but with ill-success; yet the miscarriage of what was past did not discourage me at all, but I resolved to marry. I looked out for a woman as suitable as I could, but always found some thing or other to shock my fancy, except once a gentleman's daughter of good fashion; but I met with so many repulses of one kind or another that I was forced to give it over; and indeed, though I might be said to be a lover in this suit, and had managed myself so well with the young lady that I had no difficulty left but what would soon have been adjusted, yet her father was so difficult, made so many objections, was to-day not pleased one way, to-morrow another, that he would stand by nothing that he himself had proposed, nor could he be ever brought to be of the same mind two days together; so that we at last put an end to the pretensions, for she would not marry without her father's consent, and I would not steal her, and so that affair ended.

I cannot say but I was a little vexed at the dis appointment of this, so I left the city of Canterbury and went to London in the stage-coach. Here I had an odd scene presented as ever happened of its kind.

There was in the stage-coach a young woman and her maid. She was sitting in a very melancholy posture, for she was in the coach before me, and sighed most dreadfully all the way, and whenever her maid spoke to her she burst out into tears. I was not long in the coach with her but, seeing she made such a dismal figure, I offered to comfort her a little, and inquired into the occasion of her affliction. But she would not speak a word; but her maid, with a force of crying too, said her master was dead, at which word the lady burst out again into a passion of crying, and between mistress and maid this was all I could get for the morning part of that day. When we came to dine, I offered the lady, that seeing, I supposed, she would not dine with the company, if she would please to dine with me, I would dine in a separate room; for the rest of the company were foreigners. Her maid thanked me in her mistresses name, but her mistress could eat nothing, and desired to be private.

Here, however, I had some discourse with the maid, from whom I learned that the lady was wife to a captain of a ship, who was outward bound to somewhere in the Straits-I think it was to Zante and Venice; that, being gone no farther than the Downs, he was taken sick, and after about ten days' illness had died at Deal; that his wife, hearing of his sickness, had gone to Deal to see him, and had come but just time enough to see him die; had stayed there to bury him, and was now coming to London in a sad, disconsolate condition indeed.

I heartily pitied the young gentlewoman indeed, and said some things to her in the coach to let her know I did so, which she gave no answer to, but in civility now and then made a bow, but never gave me the least opportunity to see her face, or so much as to know whether she had a face or no, much less to guess what form of a face it was. It was winter time, and the coach put up at Rochester, not going through in a day, as was usual in summer; and a little before we came to Rochester I told the lady I understood she had ate nothing to-day, that such a course would but make her sick, and, doing her harm, could do her deceased husband no good; and therefore I entreated her that, as I was a stranger, and only offered a civility to her in order to abate her severely afflicting herself, she would yield so far to matters of ceremony as let us sup together as passengers; for, as to the strangers, they did not seem to understand the custom or to desire it.

She bowed, but gave no answer; only, after pressing her by arguments, which she could not deny was very civil and kind, she returned, she gave me thanks, but she could not eat. "Well, madam," said I, "do but sit down; though you think you cannot eat, perhaps you may eat a bit. Indeed you must eat, or you will destroy yourself at this rate of living, and upon the road too; in a word, you will be sick indeed." I argued with her. The maid put in, and said, "Do, madam; pray try to divert yourself a little." I pressed her again, and she bowed to me very respectfully, but still said, "No," and she could not eat. The maid continued to importune her, and said, "Dear madam, do. The gentleman is a civil gentleman; pray, madam, do;" and then, turning to me, said, "My mistress will, sir, I hope," and seemed pleased, and indeed was so.

However, I went on to persuade her; and, taking no notice of what her maid said, that I was a civil gentleman, I told her, "I am a stranger to you, madam; but if I thought you were shy of me on any account, as to civility, I will send my supper up to you in your own chamber, and stay below myself." She bowed then to me twice, and looked up, which was the first time, and said she had no suspicion of that kind; that my offer was so civil that she was as much ashamed to refuse it as she should be ashamed to accept it, if she was where she was known; that she thought I was not quite a stranger to her, for she had seen me before; that she would accept my offer so far as to sit at table, because I desired it; but she could not promise me to eat, and that she hoped I would take the other as a constraint upon her, in return to so much kindness.

She startled me when she said she had seen me before; for I had not the least knowledge of her, nor did I remember so much as to have heard of her name; for I had asked her name of her maid; and indeed it made me almost repent my compliment, for it was many ways essential to me not to be known. However, I could not go back; and, besides, if I was known, it was essentially necessary to me to know who it was that knew me, and by what circumstances; so I went on with my compliment.

We came to the inn but just before it was dark. I offered to hand my widow out of the coach, and she could not decline it; but though her hoods were not then much over her face, yet, being dark, I could see little of her then. I waited on her then into the stairfoot, and led her up the inn-stairs to a dining-room which the master of the house offered to show us, as if for the whole company; but she declined going in there, and said she desired rather to go directly to her chamber, and turning to her maid, bade her speak to the innkeeper to show her to her lodging-room. So I waited on her to the door, and took my leave, telling her I would expect her at supper.

In order to treat her moderately well, and not extravagantly, for I had no thoughts of anything farther than civility, which was the effect of mere compassion for the unhappiness of the most truly disconsolate woman that I ever met with; I say, in order to treat her handsomely, but not extravagantly, I provided what the house afforded, which was a couple of partridges and a very good dish of stewed oysters. They brought us up afterwards a neat's tongue and a ham that was almost cut quite down, but we ate none of it; for the other was fully enough for us both, and the maid made her supper off the oysters we had left, which were enough.

I mention this because it should appear I did not treat her as a person I was making any court to, for I had nothing of that in my thoughts; but merely in pity to the poor woman, who I saw in a circumstance that was indeed very unhappy.

When I gave her maid notice that supper was ready, she fetched her mistress, coming in before her with a candle in her hand, and then it was that I saw her face, and being in her dishabille, she had no hood over her eyes or black upon her head, when I was truly surprised to see one of the most beautiful faces upon earth. I saluted her, and led her to the fireside, the table, though spread, being too far from the fire, the weather being cold.

She was now something sociable, though very grave, and sighed often on account of her circumstances. But she so handsomely governed her grief, yet so artfully made it mingle itself with all her discourse, that it added exceedingly to her behaviour, which was every way most exquisitely genteel. I had a great deal of discourse with her, and upon many subjects, and by degrees took her name, that is to say, from herself, as I had done before from her maid; also the place where she lived, viz., near Ratcliff, or rather Stepney, where I asked her leave to pay her a visit when she thought fit to admit company, which she seemed to intimate would not be a great while.

It is a subject too surfeiting to entertain people with the beauty of a person they will never see. Let it suffice to tell them she was the most beautiful creature of her sex that I ever saw before or since; and it cannot be wondered if I was charmed with her the very first moment I saw her face. Her behaviour was likewise a beauty in itself, and was so extraordinary that I cannot say I can describe it.

The next day she was much more free than she was the first night, and I had so much conversation as to enter into particulars of things on both sides; also she gave me leave to come and see her house, which, however, I did not do under a fortnight or thereabouts, because I did not know how far she would dispense with the ceremony which it was necessary to keep up at the beginning of the mourning.

However, I came as a man that had business with her, relating to the ship her husband was dead out of, and the first time I came was admitted; and, in short, the first time I came I made love to her. She received that proposal with disdain. I cannot indeed say she treated me with any disrespect, but she said she abhorred the offer, and would hear no more of it. How I came to make such a proposal to her I scarce knew then, though it was very much my intention from the first.

In the meantime I inquired into her circumstances and her character, and heard nothing but what was very agreeable of them both; and, above all, I found she had the report of the best-humoured lady and the best-bred of all that part of the town; and now I thought I had found what I had so often wished for to make me happy and had twice miscarried in, and resolved not to miss her, if it was possible to obtain her.

It came indeed a little into my thoughts that I was a married man, and had a second wife alive, who, though she was false to me and a whore, yet I was not legally divorced from her, and that she was my wife for all that. But I soon got over that part; for, first, as she was a whore, and the marquis had confessed it to me, I was divorced in law, and I had a power to put her away. But having had the misfortune of fighting a duel, and being obliged to quit the country, I could not claim the legal process which was my right, and therefore might conclude myself as much divorced as if it had been actually done, and so that scruple vanished.

I suffered now two months to run without pressing my widow any more, only I kept a strict watch to find if any one else pretended to her. At the end of two months I visited her again, when I found she received me with more freedom, and we had no more sighs and sobs about the last husband; and though she would not let me press my former proposal so far as I thought I might have done, yet I found I had leave to come again, and it was the article of decency which she stood upon as much as anything; that I was not disagreeable to her, and that my using her so handsomely upon the road had given me a great advantage in her favour.

I went on gradually with her, and gave her leave to stand off for two months more. But then I told her the matter of decency, which was but a ceremony, was not to stand in competition with the matter of affection; and, in short, I could not bear any longer delay, but that, if she thought fit, we might marry privately; and, to cut the story short, as I did my courtship, in about five months I got her in the mind, and we were privately married, and that with so very exact a concealment that her maid, that was so instrumental in it, yet had no knowledge of it for near a month more.

I was now, not only in my imagination, but in reality, the most happy creature in the world, as I was so infinitely satisfied with my wife, who was indeed the best-humoured woman in the world, a most accomplished, beautiful creature indeed, perfectly well-bred, and had not one ill quality about her; and this happiness continued without the least interruption for about six years.

But I, that was to be the most unhappy fellow alive in the article of matrimony, had at last a disappointment of the worst sort even here. I had three fine children by her, and in her time of lying-in with the last she got some cold, that she did not in a long time get off; and, in short, she grew very sickly. In being so continually ill and out of order, she very unhappily got a habit of drinking cordials and hot liquors. Drink, like the devil, when it gets hold of any one, though but a little, it goes on by little and little to their destruction. So in my wife, her stomach being weak and faint, she first took this cordial, then that, till, in short, she could not live without them, and from a drop to a sup, from a sup to a dram, from a dram to a glass, and so on to two, till at last she took, in short, to what we call drinking.

As I likened drink to the devil, in its gradual possession of the habits and person, so it is yet more like the devil in its encroachment on us, where it gets hold of our senses. In short, my beautiful, good-humoured, modest, well-bred wife grew a beast, a slave to strong liquor, and would be drunk at her own table-nay, in her own closet by herself, till, instead of a well-made, fine shape, she was as fat as a hostess; her fine face, bloated and blotched, had not so much as the ruins of the most beautiful person alive-nothing remained but a good eye; that indeed she held to the last. In short, she lost her beauty, her shape, her manners, and at last her virtue; and, giving herself up to drinking, killed herself in about a year and a half after she first began that cursed trade, in which time she twice was exposed in the most scandalous manner with a captain of a ship, who, like a villain, took the advantage of her being in drink and not knowing what she did. But it had this unhappy effect, that instead of her being ashamed and repenting of it when she came to herself, it hardened her in the crime, and she grew as void of modesty at last as of sobriety.

Oh, the power of intemperance! and how it encroaches on the best dispositions in the world; how it comes upon us gradually and insensibly; and what dismal effects it works upon our morals, changing the most virtuous, regular, well-instructed, and well-inclined tempers into worse than brutal! That was a good story, whether real or invented, of the devil tempting a young man to murder his father. No, he said; that was unnatural. "Why, then," says the devil, "go and lie with your mother." "No," says he; "that is abominable." "Well, then," says the devil, "if you will do nothing else to oblige me, go and get drunk." "Ay, ay," says the fellow, "I will do that." So he went and made himself drunk as a swine, and when he was drunk, he murdered his father and lay with his mother.

Never was a woman more virtuous, modest, chaste, sober; she never so much as desired to drink any thing strong; it was with the greatest entreaty that I could prevail with her to drink a glass or two of wine, and rarely, if ever, above one or two at a time; even in company she had no inclination to it. Not an immodest word ever came out of her mouth, nor would she suffer it in any one else in her hearing without resentment and abhorrence. But upon that weakness and illness after her last lying-in, as above, the nurse pressed her, whenever she found herself faint and a sinking of her spirits, to take this cordial and that dram, to keep up her spirits, till it became necessary even to keep her alive, and gradually increased to a habit, so that it was no longer her physic but her food. Her appetite sunk and went quite away, and she ate little or nothing, but came at last to such a dreadful height that, as I have said, she would be drunk in her own dressing-room by eleven o'clock in the morning, and, in short, at last was never sober.

In this life of hellish excess, as I have said, she lost all that was before so valuable in her, and a villain, if it be proper to call a man who was really a gentleman by such a name, who was an intimate acquaintance, coming to pretend a visit to her, made her and her maid so drunk together that he lay with them both; with the mistress, the maid being in the room, and with the maid, the mistress being in the room; after which he, it seems, took the like liberty with them both as often as he thought fit, till the wench, being with child, discovered it for herself, and for her mistress too. Let any one judge what was my case now. I, that for six years thought myself the happiest man alive, was now the most miserable, distracted creature. As to my wife, I loved her so well, and was so sensible of the disaster of her drinking being the occasion of it all, that I could not resent it to such a degree as I had done in her predecessor; but I pitied her heartily. However, I put away all her servants, and almost locked her up; that is to say, I set new people over her, who would not suffer any one to come near her without my knowledge.

But what to do with the villain that had thus abused both her and me, that was the question that remained. To fight him upon equal terms, I thought, was a little hard; that after a man had treated me as he had done, he deserved no fair play for his life. So I resolved to wait for him in Stepney fields, and which way he often came home pretty late, and pistol him in the dark, and, if possible, to let him know what I killed him for before I did it. But when I came to consider of this, it shocked my temper too as well as principle, and I could not be a murderer, whatever else I could be, or whatever I was provoked to be.

However, I resolved, on the other hand, that I would severely correct him for what he had done, and it was not long before I had an opportunity; for, hearing one morning that he was walking across the fields from Stepney to Shadwell, which way I knew he often went, I waited for his coming home again, and fairly met him.

I had not many words with him, but told him I had long looked for him; that he knew the villainy he had been guilty of in my family, and he could not believe, since he knew also that I was fully informed of it, but that I must be a great coward, as well as a cuckold, or that I would resent it, and that it was now a very proper time to call him to an account for it; and therefore bade him, if he durst show his face to what he had done, and defend the name of a captain of a man-of-war, as they said he had been, to draw.

He seemed surprised at the thing, and began to parley, and would lessen the crime of it; but I told him it was not a time to talk that way, since he could not deny the fact; and to lessen the crime was to lay it the more upon the woman, who, I was sure, if he had not first debauched with wine, he could never have brought to the rest; and, seeing he refused to draw, I knocked him down with my cane at one blow, and I would not strike him again while he lay on the ground, but waited to see him recover a little; for I saw plainly he was not killed. In a few minutes he came to himself again, and then I took him fast by one wrist, and caned him as severely as I was able, and as long as I could hold it for want of breath, but forbore his head, because I was resolved he should feel it. In this condition at last he begged for mercy, but I was deaf to all pity a great while, till he roared out like a boy soundly whipped. Then I took his sword from him and broke it before his face, and left him on the ground, giving him two or three kicks on the backside, and bade him go and take the law of me if he thought fit.

I had now as much satisfaction as indeed could be taken of a coward, and had no more to say to him; but as I knew it would make a great noise about the town, I immediately removed my family, and, that I might be perfectly concealed, went into the north of England, and lived in a little town called – , not far from Lancaster, where I lived retired, and was no more heard of for about two years. My wife, though more confined than she used to be, and so kept up from the lewd part which, I believe, in the intervals of her intemperance, she was truly ashamed of and abhorred, yet retained the drinking part, which becoming, as I have said, necessary for her subsistence, she soon ruined her health, and in about a year and a half after my removal into the north she died.

Thus I was once more a free man, and, as one would think, should by this time have been fully satisfied that matrimony was not appointed to be a state of felicity to me.

I should have mentioned that the villain of a captain who I had drubbed, as above, pretended to make a great stir about my assaulting him on the highway, and that I had fallen upon him with three ruffians, with an intent to murder him; and this began to obtain belief among the people in the neighbourhood. I sent him word of so much of it as I had heard, and told him I hoped it did not come from his own mouth; but if it did, I expected he would publicly disown it, he himself declaring he knew it to be false, or else I should be forced to act the same thing over again, till I had disciplined him into better manners; and that he might be assured that if he continued to pretend that I had anybody with me when I caned him, I would publish the whole story in print, and, besides that, would cane him again wherever I met him, and as often as I met him, till he thought fit to defend himself with his sword like a gentleman.

He gave me no answer to this letter; and the satisfaction I had for that was, that I gave twenty or thirty copies of it about among the neighbours, which made it as public as if I had printed it (that is, as to his acquaintance and mine), and made him so hissed at and hated that he was obliged to remove into some other part of the town-whither I did not inquire.

My wife being now dead, I knew not what course to take in the world, and I grew so disconsolate and discouraged that I was next door to being distempered, and sometimes, indeed, I thought myself a little touched in my head. But it proved nothing but vapours and the vexation of this affair, and in about a year's time, or thereabouts, it wore off again.

I had rambled up and down in a most discontented, unsettled posture after this, I say, about a year, and then I considered I had three innocent children, and I could take no care of them, and that I must either go away and leave them to the wide world or settle here and get somebody to look after them, and that better a mother-in-law than no mother; for to live such a wandering life it would not do; so I resolved I would marry as anything offered, though it was mean, and the meaner the better. I concluded my next wife should be only taken as an upper servant; that is to say, a nurse to my children and housekeeper to myself; "and let her be whore or honest woman," said I, "as she likes best; I am resolved I will not much concern myself about that;" for I was now one desperate, that valued not how things went.

In this careless, and indeed rash, foolish humour, I talked to myself thus: "If I marry an honest woman, my children will be taken care of; if she be a slut and abuses me, as I see everybody does, I will kidnap her and send her to Virginia, to my plantations there, and there she shall work hard enough and fare hard enough to keep her chaste, I'll warrant her."

I knew well enough at first that these were mad, hare-brained notions, and I thought no more of being serious in them than I thought of being a man in the moon; but I know not how it happened to me, I reasoned and talked to myself in this wild manner so long that I brought myself to be seriously desperate; that is, to resolve upon another marriage, with all the suppositions of unhappiness that could be imagined to fall out.

And yet even this rash resolution of my senses did not come presently to action; for I was half a year after this before I fixed upon anything. At last, as he that seeks mischief shall certainly find it, so it was with me. There happened to be a young, or rather a middle-aged, woman in the next town, which was but a half-mile off, who usually was at my house and among my children every day when the weather was tolerable; and though she came but merely as a neighbour, and to see us, yet she was always helpful in directing and ordering things for them, and mighty handy about them, as well before my wife died as after.