These were the last, last words the doctor spoke
(And, believe me, sirs, the sentence was no joke),
"The world I leave, but can't the world forgive,
For by my patients I could never live."
In this rejoin'd a friend, "You'd but your due;
Your patients, doctor, ne'er could live by you."—E.
[10] It is said to have been designed for the once celebrated Betty Careless, and the remark is supposed to be countenanced by the initials E. C. on her bosom. This woman, by a transmigration as natural as is that of the chrysalis, from being one of the most fashionable of the Cyprian corps, became keeper of a brothel; and after repeated arrests and many imprisonments, was buried from the poorhouse of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, April 22, 1752. In many of the elegant Latin odes of Loveling her name is immortalized; and of her person and appearance Fielding thus speaks in his Amelia:—
"I happened in my youth to sit behind two ladies in a side-box at a play, where, in a balcony on the opposite side, was placed the inimitable Betsy Careless, in company with a young fellow of no very formal or indeed sober appearance. One of the ladies, I remember, said to the other, 'Did you ever see anything look so modest and so innocent as that girl over the way? What pity it is such a creature should be in the way of ruin, as I am afraid she is by being alone with that young fellow.'
"Now this lady was no bad physiognomist: for it was impossible to conceive a greater appearance of modesty, innocence, and simplicity than what nature had displayed in the countenance of that girl, and yet, all appearances notwithstanding, I myself (remember, critic, it was in my youth) had, a few mornings before, seen that very identical picture of those engaging qualities in bed with a rake at a bagnio, smoking tobacco, drinking punch, talking obscenity, and swearing and cursing with all the impudence and impiety of the lowest and most abandoned trull of a soldier."
Hogarth noticed this woman in a former print: one of the madmen in the last plate of "The Rake's Progress" has written "Charming Betsy Careless" on the rail of the stairs, and wears her portrait suspended to a riband tied round his neck. Mrs. Heywood's Betsy Thoughtless was in MS. entitled Betsy Careless; but, from the infamy at that time annexed to the name, had a new baptism. There are those who say that the letters upon this woman's bosom are not E. C. but F. C., and intended to designate Fanny Cock, daughter of Mr. Cock the auctioneer, with whom the artist had a casual disagreement. After all these conjectures, I think it is probable that these gunpowder initials are merely the marks of a woman of the lowest rank and most infamous description.