She was content during her lying-in to abate a little, though it was but a very little indeed, of the great expense she had intended, and, with some difficulty and persuasion, was content with a suit of child-bed linen of £15 instead of one she had intended of threescore; and this she magnified as a particular testimony of her condescension and a yielding to my avaricious temper, as she called it. But after she was up again, it was the same thing, and she went on with her humour to that degree that in a little time she began to carry it on to other excesses, and to have a sort of fellows come to visit her, which I did not like, and once, in particular, stayed abroad all night. The next day, when she came home, she began to cry out first; told me where (as she said) she lay, and that the occasion was a christening, where the company had a feast and stayed too late; that, if I was dissatisfied, I might inform myself there of all the particulars, where she lay, and the like. I told her coldly, “Madam, you do well to suggest my being dissatisfied, for you may be sure I am, and you could expect no other; that as to going to your haunts to inform myself, that is not my business: it is your business to bring testimonies of your behaviour, and to prove where you lay, and in what company. It is enough to me that you lay out of your own house, without your husband’s knowledge or consent, and before you and I converse again I must have some satisfaction of the particulars.”
She answered, with all her heart; she was as in different as I; and since I took so ill her lying at a friend’s house on an extraordinary occasion, she gave me to understand that it was what she would have me expect, and what she would have the liberty to do when she thought fit.
“Well, madam,” said I, “if I must expect what I cannot allow, you must expect I shall shut my doors by day against those that keep out of them at night.”
She would try me, she said, very speedily; and if I shut the doors against her, she would find a way to make me open them.
“Well, madam,” says I, “you threaten me hard, but I would advise you to consider before you take such measures, for I shall be as good as my word.” However, it was not long that we could live together upon these terms; for I found very quickly what company she kept, and that she took a course which I ought not to bear. So I began the separation first, and refused her my bed. We had indeed refrained all converse as husband and wife for about two months before, for I told her very plainly I would father no brats that were not of my own getting; and matters coming thus gradually to an extremity, too great to continue as it was, she went off one afternoon, and left me a line in writing, signifying that affairs had come to such a pass between us that she did not think fit to give me the opportunity of shutting her out of doors, and that therefore she had retired herself to such a place, naming a relation of her own, as scandalous as herself; and that she hoped I would not give her the trouble to sue for her support in the ordinary course of law, but that, as her occasions required, she should draw bills upon me, which she expected I would not refuse.
I was extremely satisfied with this proceeding, and took care to let her hear of it, though I gave no answer at all to her letter; and as I had taken care before that whenever she played such a prank as this, she should not be able to carry much with her, so, after she was gone, I immediately broke up housekeeping, sold my furniture by public outcry, and in it everything in particular that was her own, and set a bill upon my door, giving her to understand by it that she had passed the Rubicon, that as she had taken such a step of her own accord, so there was no room left her ever to think of coming back again.
This was what any one may believe I should not have done if I had seen any room for a reformation; but she had given me such testimonies of a mind alienated from her husband, in particular espousing her own unsufferable levity, that there was indeed no possibility of our coming afterwards to any terms again.
However, I kept a couple of trusty agents so near her that I failed not to have a full account of her conduct, though I never let her know anything of me but that I was gone over to France. As to her bills which she said she would draw upon me, she was as good as her word in drawing one of £30, which I refused to accept, and never gave her leave to trouble me with another.
It is true, and I must acknowledge it, that all this was a very melancholy scene of life to me, and but that she took care by carrying herself to the last degree provoking, and continually to insult me, I could never have gone on to the parting with so much resolution; for I really loved her very sincerely, and could have been anything but a beggar and a cuckold with her, but those were intolerable to me, especially as they were put upon me with so much insult and rudeness.
But my wife carried it at last to a point that made all things light and easy to me, for after above a year’s separation, and keeping such company as she thought fit, she was pleased to be with child again, in which she had, however, so much honesty as not to pretend that she had had anything to do with me. What a wretched life she led after this, and how she brought herself to the utmost extremity of misery and distress, I may speak of hereafter.