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Mrs.—Behn's Biography A Fiction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The personal history of Mrs. Behn, commonly called the first Englishwoman to earn her livelihood by authorship, has long been regarded as unusually interesting. The daughter of a barber named John Johnson, she was baptized at Wye, Kent, 10 July, 1640. She was buried in London, 20 April, 1689. We find that her career, as generally related, falls into three principal episodes. (1) With a relative whom in Oroonoko she calls her father, and who was appointed lieutenant-governor of Surinam, she went to that colony, where she met the royal slave who is the hero of her story, and where she remained until about 1658. (2) She married a London merchant of Dutch extraction, named Behn, but was widowed by 1666. (3) In the latter part of 1666, while acting as a political agent at Antwerp, she gained, through a Dutch lover of hers named Vander Albert, early information of the famous raid by De Ruyter on the English ships in the Thames and Medway; but her timely warning was ridiculed by the British government officials, and she retired from the secret service to devote herself to literature. Momentary doubts whether these data are not in some particulars inaccurate have occasionally been expressed during the last sixty years; but the suspicions, never very strong, have always quickly died away. The story as outlined above has been substantially accepted and retold, not only by the compilers of popular works of reference, but by scholars like Walter Raleigh, Richard Garnett, W. H. Hudson, H. S. Canby, and Miss C. E. Morgan, as well as by those who have made a special study of Mrs. Behn,—namely Edmund Gosse, P. Siegel, and E. A. Baker.
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References
page 432 note 1 Note in the handwriting of Lady Winchelsea (which, as it alludes to the Life and Memoirs of Mrs. Behn, must have been made in or after 1696), and parish register of Wye,—both reported by Edmund Gosse in Athenœum, 6 September, 1884.
page 432 note 2 Westminster Abbey Registers (1876), p. 223, n. 2.
page 433 note 1 H. J. Rose, New General Biographical Dictionary, iv (1848), p. 10.—Notes and Queries, 3rd Ser., iii (1863), p. 368; 6th Ser., x (1884), p. 244; 8th Ser., I (1892), p. 145.—Mrs. M. A. E. Green, Preface to Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1666–1667, (1864), p. xxviii.—J. L. Chester, Westminster Abbey Registers (1876), p. 223, n. 2.—P. Siegel, in Anglia, xxv (1902), pp. 87 and 90.
page 433 note 2 Julia Kavanagh, English Women of Letters (1862), pp. 4-13.—Edmund Gosse, in Dictionary of National Biography, iv (1885), pp. 129-131; and in second edition, ii (1908), pp. 130 ff.—Walter Raleigh, The English Novel, 5th ed. (1906), pp. 107-109.—Richard Garnett, The Age of Dryden, (1895), pp. 146-147.—W. H. Hudson, Idle Hours in a Library (1897), pp. 155-157.—André Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme Utopique (1898), pp. 8-12.—P. Siegel, Aphra Behn's Gedichte und Prosawerke, Anglia, xxv (1902), pp. 86 ff. (praised by Miss Morgan (p. 75) for its “careful and adequate treatment”).—Chambers's Encyclopedia, ii (1902), p. 68.—E. A. Baker, Introduction to The Novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn (1905).—H. S. Canby, The Short Story in English (1909), pp. 163-167.—Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., iii (1910), p. 657.—Charlotte E. Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners (1911), pp. 75 ff.—The Cambridge History of English Literature, vii (1912), pp. 159-161.
page 433 note 3 Edward Arber, The Term Catalogues, ii (1905), pp. 230 and 578.—Cf. Dict. Nat. Biog., ii (1908), p. 131.
page 434 note 1 Ernest Bernbaum, Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko, in the George Lyman Kittredge Anniversary Papers (1913), pp. 419-433.
page 434 note 2 On the conventional character of authors' declarations of veracity, see A. J. Tieje, A Peculiar Phase of the Theory of Realism in Pre-Richardsonian Fiction, in Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. of Am., xxviii (1913), pp. 213 ff. Their presence is, however, no proof of fiction; for of course veracious historians may and do make similar declarations.
page 434 note 3 The Fair Jilt, in Mrs. Behn's Plays, Histories, and Novels, ed. John Pearson (1871), v, pp. 205, 243, 263.
page 435 note 1 P. 243. She tells us that for six years after the last year of King Charles's banishment (1659-1660), Prince Tarquin travelled “up and down the world, and then arrived at Antwerp, about the time of my being sent there by King Charles.”
page 435 note 2 The Histories and Novels of Mrs. Behn … And Love Letters never before printed: together with the Life of Mrs. Behn, written by one of the Fair Sex (1696). Recorded in the Term Catalogues, ii, 578. This is apparently the first edition. A “fifth” is in the British Museum, and like the “eighth” (reprinted in 1871 by John Pearson, and referred to in this paper), it contains a dedication signed “Charles Gildon.”
page 436 note 1 “Aphara” seems to me the proper spelling. It appears thus in Mrs. Behn's letters in the State Papers, in her petitions to the king, and on her gravestone. The baptismal register has “Ayfara.” The title-pages of her works during her lifetime usually have “Mrs. A. Behn.”
page 437 note 1 Life and Memoirs, pp. 2-4.—Kittredge Anniversary Papers, p. 422.
page 437 note 2 The Fair Jilt, p. 243.—Life and Memoirs, p. 8.
page 438 note 1 The Fair Jilt, p. 38.
page 438 note 2 State Papers, 1667, p. 67.
page 438 note 3 State Papers, 1667, p. 108.—Gilby reports to Williamson the arrival of a letter from Amsterdam, dated May 10/20, stating that the treaty at Breda is beginning.
page 439 note 1 Life and Memoirs, pp. 39-40.
page 439 note 2 State Papers, 1667, pp. 76 and 72.
page 440 note 1 Life and Memoirs, pp. 8-10.
page 440 note 2 G. A. Lefèvre Pontalis, Jean de Witt, i (1884), p. 400.—P. J. Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, v (1902), p. 223.
page 440 note 3 J. E. Tanner, The Administration of the Navy from the Restoration to the Revolution, English Historical Review, xii (1897), p. 39.
page 440 note 4 Among the many orders issued is one for the protection of the ships in the Medway, 25 March. State Papers, 1666–1667, pp. 586 and xxxi.
page 441 note 1 Lefèvre Pontalis, De Witt, i, p. 400.—Blok, Nederlandsche Volk, v, p. 223.—As a possibility, an attack upon the Thames had long been in De Witt's mind; but the question here is when he definitely determined upon this particular expedition.
page 441 note 2 Lefèvre Pontalis, i, pp. 329-330.
page 441 note 3 Blok, v, p. 223.
page 441 note 4 Lefèvre Pontalis, i, p. 401.—Blok, v, p. 223.
page 441 note 5 State Papers, 1667, 29 May (O. S.), pp. 130-131.
page 441 note 6 State Papers, 1667, 19 May, 23 May; pp. 108 and 116.
page 442 note 1 Ibid., 29 May, pp. 130 and xii-xiii.
page 442 note 2 Ibid., p. xvi.
page 442 note 3 Ibid., 8 June (O. S.), p. 158.
page 443 note 1 State Papers, 1666–1667, pp. 44, 72, 82, 97, 118, 125, 135, 142, 145, 146, 156, 157, 236, 371.—Of these seventeen letters, eleven are written by Mrs. Behn, the others by her correspondent, William Scott.
page 443 note 2 In her first letter (16 August), she says she sailed with Sir Anthony Desmarces. He was at Margate 25 July and at Bruges 7 August. These dates are presumably O. S.—State Papers, 1665–1666, p. 576; Ibid., 1666–1667, pp. 17 and 44.
page 444 note 1 State Papers, 1665–1666, p. 318.—A curious list of duties to be performed by Dutch spies in England (Ibid., 1666–1667, p. 427) includes “to communicate with Scott's brother-in-law and correspondent.”
page 444 note 2 Ibid., 1666–1667, p. 82.
page 444 note 3 Ibid., p. 44.
page 444 note 4 Ibid., p. 82. It may be recalled that Mrs. Behn's The Rover is based on Killegrew's Thomaso the Wanderer.
page 445 note 1 Thus the exigencies of political service, and not literary affectation, gave rise to this well known name of Mrs. Behn.
page 445 note 2 State Papers, 1666–1667, p. 146. This was written in September, 1666.
page 445 note 3 Ibid., pp. 118, 125, 135, 156.
page 445 note 4 Ibid., pp. 82, 118, 135, 146.
page 445 note 5 Ibid., pp. 145 and 136. Cf. pp. xxvii-xxviii and 82.
page 446 note 1 Ibid., pp. 44, 72, 135.
page 446 note 2 State Papers, 1668–1669, p. 127.—Cf. Notes and Queries, 2nd Ser., viii (1859), pp. 265-266.
page 447 note 1 State Papers, 1666–1667, p. 236.—Had spying been the ground of his arrest, we should hardly learn that, as Mrs. Behn writes in December (p. 371), “he will have his liberty in a few days.”
page 447 note 2 Mrs. M. A. E. Green, in the preface to the State Papers, 1666–1667, p. xxviii, says Mrs. Behn returned in December; but her last letter is dated 26 December,—O. S.
page 447 note 3 We likewise ascertain that Mrs. Behn's only autobiographic assertion in The Fair Jilt,—that she was sent to Antwerp in 1665 or 1666,—is not a falsehood. But on the same grounds the story itself proves fictitious: for she. was there only five months, and the adventures of Tarquin, which she says occurred during her stay, can hardly have covered a period of less than one year, his imprisonment alone lasting over six months (p. 275). The length of her stay in Antwerp assumed in the Life and Memoirs is also impossibly long.
page 448 note 1 Cf. C. E. Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners (1911), pp. 76-77.
page 448 note 2 Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic Poets, … first begun by Mr. Langbain, improved … by a careful hand [Charles Gildon] (1698), p. 174.
page 449 note 1 Cf. C. N. Greenough, John Dunton's Letters from New England, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xiv (1912), pp. 213-257.
page 449 note 2 Cf. H. R. Steeves, The Athenian Virtuosi and the Athenian Society, Modern Language Review, vii (1912), pp. 358-371.
page 449 note 3 Term Catalogues, ii, p. 466.
page 449 note 4 Miscellaneous Letters and Essays … directed to John Dryden, Esq., … Mr. Dennis, Mr. Congreve, etc. (1694).
page 450 note 1 Miscellany Poems, p. 29.—Chorus Poetarum, p. 172.
page 450 note 2 Prefaces to Charles Blount's Oracles of Reason (1693) and Miscellaneous Works (1695).
page 450 note 3 Southerne's play is alluded to in Gildon's Account.—Was Gildon the unidentified “G. J., her friend” who in 1690 issued Mrs. Behn's The Widow Ranter and prefixed to it a prologue identical with Dryden's to Shadwell's A True Widow?
page 451 note 1 Gildon, Epistle Dedicatory to Mrs. Behn's Histories and Novels, Works (1871), v, p. xi. Cf. the last page of Gildon's Account.
page 451 note 2 Life and Memoirs, pp. 4-5. Is this a fanciful development of Southerne's statement (Epistle Dedicatory to Oroonoko, 1696): “I remember what I have heard from a friend of hers, that she always told his [Oroonoko's] story more feelingly than she writ it”?
page 451 note 3 Cf. P. Siegel, Anglia, xxv, p. 98.
page 452 note 1 Cf. the marriage registers published by the Harleian Society, and J. L. Chester's sceptical comment in Westminster Abbey Registers, p. 223, n.
page 452 note 2 The other paragraphs are almost wholly critical and bibliographic.
page 452 note 3 P. Siegel, Anglia, xxv, p. 93.—E. A. Baker, Introduction to The Novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn, p. xii.
page 453 note 1 Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxvi (1911), p. xxviii. The full results of the study there summarized I expect to publish shortly.