¹ The most notable passages are: Plays, Histories, and Novels (London, 1871), v, 75–82, 85–88, 146–171, 184–187, 198, 205, and 243.

² The History of the Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn. Written by one of the Fair Sex, included in Gildon's edition of Mrs. Behn's work, published in 1696. For a discussion of the author of this biography, see: Bernbaum, “Mrs. Behn's Biography a Fiction,” PMLA, xxiii (1913), 448–450; and V. Sackville-West, Aphra Behn (London, 1928), 50–54.

³ Bernbaum, “Mrs. Behn's ‘Oroonoko’,” Kittredge Anniversary Papers (Boston, 1913), pp. 419–434, and “Mrs. Behn's Biography a Fiction,” PMLA, xxiii (1913), 432–453.

⁴ The Works of Aphra Behn, 6 vols., edited by the Rev. Montague Summers, with a memoir of Mrs. Behn (London, 1915); and V. Sackville-West, Aphra Behn (London, 1928).—Professor Bernbaum's articles have been overlooked completely by several other writers, notably Prof. Myra Reynolds, The Learned Lady in England, 1650–1760 (New York, 1920), John Buchan, Hist. of Eng. Lit. (London, 1923); the author of the account of Mrs. Behn in the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; and Mrs. E. W. Blashfield, Portraits and Backgrounds (New York, 1917).

⁵ Sackville-West, pp. 20–21.—Italics mine.

⁶ It seems probable to me that Aphra's father was a barber. Of course, the anonymous biography says that she was “of good Family in the City of Canterbury in Kent; her Father's Name was Johnson. …” No record of her birth could be found at Canterbury. Edmund Gosse, however, came on a manuscript note of the Countess of Winchelsea's, saying that Mrs. Behn was born at Wye, daughter to a barber. Corroborated by an entry of baptism, the part of this note fixing Wye as Mrs. Behn's birthplace is universally accepted by Mrs. Behn's biographers and critics; but Father Summers and Miss Sackville-West indignantly reject “ the fable about the barber, for which Anne Countess of Winchelsea in that manuscript note was alone responsible.” Unless the reason lies concealed in the mysterious new evidence mentioned but not produced by Father Summers, I fail to see why the Countess of Winchelsea's statement of Aphra's father's trade should be less true than her identification of Aphra's birthplace.

⁷ Behn, Plays, Histories, and Novels (London, 1871), v, 152, 153.

⁸ See Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, lxxxix, 143–144, 184–188, 200 for several accounts of factional strife in Surinam.

⁹ Bernbaum, Kittredge Papers, p. 426.

¹⁰ PMLA, xxiii, 437. “Today we know that she never was in Surinam; but this does not alter the fact that a biographer who believed that she had been there, and who was not made suspicious by the remarkably improbable celerity of events which that would involve, had evidently no regard for chronology, and can hardly be considered a sufficiently careful historian.”

¹¹ The complication in connection with the composition of Oraonoko raised by Mrs. Behn's departure before the events she described took place will be discussed below, p. 558.

¹² Bembaum, Kittredge Papers, pp. 424–433.

¹³ Ibid., pp. 422–424.

¹⁴ Father Summers and Miss Sackville-West insist that the use of a book of reference is not proof of Mrs. Behn's unfamiliarity with Surinam.

¹⁵ Conventional inaccuracies in description of the tropics do not prove that their author was unfamiliar with Guiana. This proposition is amply demonstrated by materials in Professor Bernbaum's own article. After discussing Mrs. Behn's inaccurate treatment of the climate of Surinam, he concludes: “We are reminded thereby of ‘the sweet ayre’ praised by Raleigh and his immediate followers in those rose-colored passages describing their explorations upon the Orinoco, wherein they mingle enthusiasm and inaccuracy.” (Kittredge Papers, p. 424.) Again Mrs. Behn's conventional descriptions of Indians are, he says, “ the echoes of the hopeful words the brave Elizabethans sent home across the sea, when they were seeking El Dorado. …” (Kittredge Papers, p. 433.) After a long paragraph on her treatment of flowers, he says: “In this riot of color we see what has been called ‘the old tropical fallacy.‘… The early European travelers reported especially the striking, gorgeous plants; and … [wrongly] gave the impression that everywhere the flowers grew in solid banks of bright color.” (Kittredge Papers, p. 429.) It is not quite fair to insist that Mrs. Behn never went to Surinam, that she was unfamiliar with the tropics because she records the same impressions as do acknowledged explorers and travelers, although it is perhaps evidence that her descriptions display no high order of realism.

¹⁶ Colonising Expeditions to the West Indies and Guiana, 1623–1667, published by the Hakluyt Society, Second Series, lvi, 1924.

¹⁷ Kittredge Papers, pp. 422, 423.

¹⁸ Dr. H. D. Benjamins (“Nog Eens: Aphra Behn,” in De West-Indische Gids, 1920) anticipated me in identifying Treffry and Marten, although he gave less detailed information than mine. His study is mainly concerned with the alleged realism of Oroonoko.

¹⁹ Behn, Works (1871), v, 156.

²⁰ Ibid., 198, 200.

²¹ Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, 194, 195.

²² Ibid., 203, 204.

²³ H.M.C., 14th Report, App. 2, Portland MSS., iii, 310.

²⁴ D.N.B., arts. “Harry Marten” and “Sir Henry Marten.”

²⁵ Behn, Works, v, 178.

²⁶ H.M.C., 14th Report, App. 2, Portland MSS., iii, 309–310. Treffry's threat of seizing sugar about to be turned over to Sir Robert Harley's agent was part of Willoughby's policy, which aimed at preventing Harley from removing his colonial property after his disgrace. Thus Treffry's connection with Willoughby is shown.

²⁷ H.M.C., 10th Report, App. vi, 96.

²⁸ Kittredge Papers, p. 423.

²⁹ Behn, Works, v, 177. Professor Bernbaum quotes this passage.

³⁰ “An Exact Narrative of ye State of Guyana & of ye English Colony in Surynam in ye Beginning of ye Warre with ye Dutch,” West Indies and Guiana, Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, 199. In connection with the armament of the colony he is again less correct than Mrs. Behn. Speaking of the slave mutiny, he says: “Ignoring apparently the site of the fort, Mrs. Behn says that Oroonoko proposed to lead his fellow slaves towards the sea, a plan that seems hardly in accord with his oft-praised intelligence.” (Kittredge Papers, 425.) The site of the fort could not have been very terrifying at the time of the mutiny, the early spring of 1666, since it was not until May of that year that the Assembly ordered a fort to be constructed. Work was not really started, according to Byam's narrative, until the end of June. When the Dutch arrived in February 1667, Byam despaired of defending “our Fort, or rather half a Fort, … whereof only one Curtaine, one Bastion, & half another were Palizadoed & perfected.” (Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, 201–206.) The site of the fort was harmless when Oroonoko marched towards the sea.

³¹ Behn, Works, v, 177. Mrs. Behn remarks that the men who refused to aid Byam in recapturing the slaves were working against “almost the common Cause.”

³² Kittredge Papers, p. 423.

³³ Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, 199, 200, and Introduction, xc.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 200.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 213.

³⁶ Ibid., p. 214.

³⁷ For Mrs. Behn's alleged use of Warren, see Kittredge Papers, pp. 427–433. Warren gives one point in his description on the authority “of the Honourable William Byam, Lord General of Guiana and Governor of Surinam, who I am sure is too much of a Gentleman to be the Author of a Lye.” See George Warren, An Impartial Description of Surinam (London, 1667), p. 6.—Mrs. Behn does not follow her “source” at all, her first description of Byam being the following: “The Deputy-Governor … was the most fawning fairtongu'd Fellow in the World.” (Behn, Works, v, 177.)

³⁸ Henry Adys, A Letter Sent from Syrranam (London, 1664).

³⁹ H.M.C., 10th Report, App. vi, 96; Cal. of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1661–68 (London, 1880), 166, 167; Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, 213, 250.

⁴⁰ Cal. of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1661–68, 351, 363. The first petition is printed complete in Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, 184–188.

⁴¹ See North, Lives of the Regicides, “Thomas Scot” and Thurloe Papers, v, 711.

⁴² Warrant for Scot's arrest was issued on March 5, 1659/60 Cal. of State Papers, Dom. Series, 1660–1661, 571; warrant for payment of £1000 was issued on March 9 (Ibid., 594). The second warrant mentions Scot and another as former managers of the Post.

⁴³ There were two other William Scots at the time of the Restoration. One was a clergyman in a rural parish in England. The other was a merchant at Rouen. A royalist, he was at Rouen throughout the Interregnum and even lent money to Charles II. He should not be confused with Aphra Behn's William Scot. An undated entry calendared in 1663 in the Cal. of State Papers speaks of an unspecified Scot in Holland. This item probably refers to William Scot's brother Thomas, active in the Dutch service before William was and attainted of treason by Act of Parliament in 1665.

⁴⁴ The quantity of references to Scot before 1660 and after 1665 make the gap all the more noticeable. From August, 1665, to the end of the Dutch War in 1667 there are more than twenty references to Scot in the Cal. of State Papers alone.

⁴⁵ H.M.C., 14th Report, App., 2, 308.

⁴⁶ Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, 191.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 190.

⁴⁸ H.M.C., 14th Report, App. 2, 287. Gwilt's letter is confirmed by one from Byam to Harley on August 15, 1664 (Hakluyt Society Publications, Second Series, lvi, 193, 194).

⁴⁹ There is no record of Mr. Behn extant. Bernbaum (PMLA, xxiii, 452) is very doubtful of Mr. Behn's existence.

⁵⁰ Cal. of State Papers, 1664–1665, 500.

⁵¹ Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, 1485–1714 (Oxford, 1910), i, 417.

⁵² See Cal. of State Papers, Dom. Series, 1666–1667, 44, 72, 82, 82–83, 97.

⁵³ Kittredge Papers, p. 422.

⁵⁴ The fact that Mrs. Behn was not in Surinam at the time the events chronicled in Oroonoko were alleged to have taken place supports Professor Bernbaum's contention that Mrs. Behn was not candid when she said she was describing what she had actually seen. On the other hand, it does not prove that a number of the realistic touches in the novel are not reasonably accurate.

⁵⁵ See above, p. 554–5.

⁵⁶ In the anonymous biography Vander Albert is described as about thirty-two, “and tho' infinitely fond of his Interest, and an irreconcilable Enemy to Monarchy, has by the Force of Love been obliged to let me into some Secrets that might have done our King no small Service.” (Behn, Works, v, 19, 20.) Astrea, says the anonymous biography, chose Antwerp as her base because she could “meet with Vander Albert; who, before the War, in her Husband's Time had been in love with her in England, and on which she grounded the Success of her Negotiation. Albert, as soon as he knew of her arrival at Antwerp …, made a short Voyage to meet her.” Soon he gave her important information. (Behn, Works v, 7–9.) Scot may easily be understood instead of Vander Albert in the anonymous biography. Van Bruin, a man of sixty-five and quite ridiculous, another but less considerable of lover of Astrea's, may easily be a rival English agent at Antwerp, Thomas Corney. Van Bruin's metaphorical letters may be a caricature of Corney's “rhodomontades.” (Cal. of State Papers; 1666–67, 82, 83.) Corney called daily and interfered with her relations with Scot. (Cal. of State Papers; 1666–67, p., 145.) Van Bruin attempted to supplant Vander Albert in the latter's absence. Thus the anonymous biography displays again a distorted semi-truth characteristic of it.

⁵⁷ Mrs. Behn's autobiographical method is directly opposite to that of her novels. In her autobiographical passages she blended imaginative elements with the true story so as to secure a romantic effect; in the novels she studded essentially romantic stories with some details taken from life and with protestations of veracity so as to secure a realistic effect.