1914

MEMOIR OF MRS. BEHN

by Montague Summers

MEMOIR OF MRS. BEHN -

THE personal history of Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her livelihood by authorship, is unusually interesting but very difficult to unravel and relate. In dealing with her biography writers at different periods have rushed headlong to extremes, and we now find that the pendulum has swung to its fullest stretch. On the one hand, we have prefixed to a collection of the Histories and Novels, published in 1696, 'The Life of Mrs. Behn written by one of the Fair Sex', a frequently reprinted (and even expanded) compilation crowded with romantic incidents that savour all too strongly of the Italian novella, with sentimental epistolography and details which can but be accepted cautiously and in part. On the other there have recently appeared two revolutionary essays by Dr. Ernest Bernbaum of Harvard, 'Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko', first printed in Kittredge Anniversary Papers, 1913; and- what is even more particularly pertinent- 'Mrs. Behn's Biography a Fiction,' Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxviii, 3: both afterwards issued as separate pamphlets, 1913. In these, the keen critical sense of the writer has apparently been so jarred by the patent incongruities, the baseless fiction, nay, the very fantasies (such as the fairy pavilion seen floating upon the Channel), which, imaginative and invented flotsam that they are, accumulated and were heaped about the memory of Aphra Behn, that he is apt to regard almost every record outside those of her residence at Antwerp* with a suspicion which is in many cases surely unwarranted and undue. Having energetically cleared away the more peccant rubbish, Dr. Bernbaum became, it appears to us, a little too drastic, and had he then discriminated rather than swept clean, we were better able wholly to follow the conclusions at which he arrives. He even says that after '1671'*(2) when 'she began to write for the stage... such meagre contemporary notices as we find of her are critical rather than biographical'. This is a very partial truth; from extant letters,*(3) to which Dr. Bernbaum does not refer, we can gather much of Mrs. Behn's literary life and circumstances. She was a figure of some note, and even if we had no other evidence it seems impossible that her contemporaries should have glibly accepted the fiction of a voyage to Surinam and a Dutch husband named Behn who had never existed. -

* Kalendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1666-7.- ed. Mrs. M. A. E. Green (1864).

*(2) This is inaccurate. Mrs. Behn's first play, The Forc'd Marriage, was produced in December, 1670.

*(3) e.g. to Waller's daughter-in-law; to Tonson. cf. also the Warrant of 12 August, 1682; the Pindaric to Burnet, &c. -

Ayfara, or Aphara* (Aphra), Amis or Amies, the daughter of John and Amy Amis or Amies, was baptized together with her brother Peter in the Parish Church of SS. Gregory and Martin, Wye, 10 July, 1640 presumably by Ambrose Richmore, curate of Wye at that date.*(2) Up to this time Aphra's maiden name has been stated to be Johnson, and she is asserted to have been the daughter of a barber, John Johnson. That the name was not Johnson (an ancient error) is certain from the baptismal register, wherein, moreover, the 'Quality, Trade, or Profession' is left blank; that her father was a barber rests upon no other foundation than a MS. note of Lady Winchilsea.*(3) Mr. Gosse, in a most valuable article (Athenaeum, 6 September, 1884), was the first to correct the statement repeatedly made that Mrs. Behn came from 'the City of Canterbury in Kent'. He tells how he acquired a folio volume containing the MS. poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea,*(4) 'copied about 1695 under her eye and with innumerable notes and corrections in her autograph'. In a certain poem entitled The Circuit of Apollo*(5) the following lines occur:- -

And standing where sadly he now might descry

From the banks of the Stowre the desolate Wye,

He lamented for Behn, o'er that place of her birth,

And said amongst Women there was not on the earth,

Her superior in fancy, in language, or witt,

Yet own'd that a little too loosely she writt. - To these is appended this note: 'Mrs. Behn was Daughter to a Barber, who liv'd formerly in Wye, a little Market Town (now much decay'd) in Kent. Though the account of her life before her Works pretends otherwise; some Persons now alive Do testify upon their Knowledge that to be her Original.' It is a pity that whilst the one error concerning Aphra's birthplace is thus remedied, the mistake as to the nature of her father's calling should have been initiated. -

* Aphra now appears on Mrs. Behn's gravestone, and is the accepted form. This is, however, in all probability the third inscription. The Antiquities of Westminster (1711), quoting the inscription, gives Aphara. Sometime in the eighteenth century a certain Thomas Waine restored the inscription and added to the two lines two more:- -

Great Poetess, O thy stupendous lays

The world admires and the Muses praise. - The name was then Aphara. The Biog. Brit., whilst insisting on Aphara as correct and citing the stone as evidence, none the less prints Apharra. Her works usually have Mrs. A. Behn. One Quarto misprints 'Mrs. Anne Behn'. There are, of course, many variants of the name. Afara, and Afra are common. Oldys in his MS. notes on Langbaine writes Aphra or Aphora, whilst the Muses Mercury, September, 1707, has a special note upon a poem by Mrs. Behn to say 'this Poetess' true Name was Apharra.' Even Aphaw (Behen, in the 1682 warrant,) and Fyhare (in a petition) occur.

*(2) He died in 1642.