at once, as I doubt not it would have done to any woman in the world. The horse guards, or what they call there the gens d'armes, had, upon some occasion, been either upon duty or been reviewed, or something (I did not understand that part) was the matter that occasioned their being there, I know not what; but, walking in the guard-chamber, and with his jack-boots on, and the whole habit of the troop, as it is worn when our horse guards are upon duty, as they call it, at St James's Park; I say, there, to my inexpressible confusion, I saw Mr—, my first husband, the brewer.
'I could not be deceived; I passed so near him that I almost brushed him with my clothes, and looked him full in the face, but having my fan before my face, so that he could not know me. However, I knew him perfectly well, and I heard him speak, which was a second way of knowing him.'
However certain we may feel as to the truth of any theory about Defoe's authorship of books like the Journal of a Cavalier and the Memoirs of Captain Carleton, or parts of books like that under discussion now, we are always met by these difficulties in proving them.
- 1906.
