The Adventures of Roderick Random

Of my Birth and Parentage

The narrator’s grandfather, a man of considerable fortune and legal reputation, presided over cases with particular severity toward beggars, for whom he harbored intense dislike. The narrator’s father, his youngest son, fell in love with and secretly married a poor relation who served as housekeeper in the grandfather’s household. This union produced the narrator as its first fruit.

Before the narrator’s birth, his mother experienced a disturbing dream foretold by a Highland seer’s favorable interpretation. The dream depicted the devil acting as midwife to deliver a tennis ball, which he struck violently away, only for it to return and embed itself in the earth as a flourishing tree covered with blossoms. The seer predicted the child would become a great traveler who would encounter numerous dangers but eventually return to flourish in his native land.

When the grandfather learned of the marriage, he angrily expelled his son and daughter-in-law, refusing any assistance based on a prior vow. They found refuge in a humble farmhouse. Near her delivery, the mother went in disguise to the grandfather’s house seeking compassion but was immediately dismissed. She went into labor that same day in a garret. Despite her vulnerable condition, she was expelled within three days and the servant who aided her was dismissed. The combination of cold, want, and grief caused her to sicken and die.

The father was devastated, losing his sanity for six weeks. The grandfather eventually relented enough to take in the infant, and when the father recovered, he fell into melancholy before mysteriously vanishing, prompting rumors of self-destruction.