Volume I Part 1 (1/2)
The Works of Aphra Behn.
by Aphra Behn.
PREFACE.
It is perhaps not altogether easy to appreciate the multiplicity of difficulties with which the first editor of Mrs. Behn has to cope. Not only is her life strangely mysterious and obscure, but the rubbish of half-a-dozen romancing biographers must needs be cleared away before we can even begin to see daylight. Matter which had been for two centuries accepted on seemingly the soundest authority is proven false; her family name itself was, until my recent discovery, wrongly given; the very question of her portrait has its own vexed (and until now unrecognized) dilemmas. In fine there seems no point connected with our first professional auth.o.r.ess which did not call for the nicest investigation and the most incontrovertible proof before it could be accepted without suspicion or reserve. The various collections of her plays and novels which appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century give us nothing; nay, they rather c.u.mber our path with the trash of discredited _Memoirs_. Pearson's reprint (1871) is entirely valueless: there is no attempt, however meagre, at editing, no effort to elucidate a single allusion; moreover, several of the Novels-- and the Poems in their entirety-- are lacking. I am happy to give (Vol. V) one of the Novels, and that not the least important, _The History of the Nun_, for the first time in any collected edition. Poems, in addition to those which appeared in Mrs. Behn's lifetime, and were never reprinted after, have been gathered with great care from many sources (of which some were almost forgotten).
It is hoped that this new issue of Mrs. Behn may prove adequate. Any difficulties in the editing have been more than amply compensated for by the interest shown by many friends. Foremost, my best thanks are due to Mr. Bullen, whose life-long experience of the minutiae of editing our best dramatic literature, has been ungrudgingly at my service throughout, to the no small advantage of myself and my work. Mr. Edmund Gosse, C.B., has shown the liveliest interest in the book from its inception, and I owe him most grateful recognition for his kindly encouragement and aid. Nay, more, he did not spare to lend me treasured items from his library so rich in first, and boasting unique, editions of Mrs. Behn. Mr. G. Thorn Drury, K.C., never wearied of answering my enquiries, and in discussion solved many a knotty point. To him I am obliged for the transcript of Mrs. Behn's letter to Waller's daughter-in-law, and also the Satire on Dryden. He even gave of his valuable time to read through the Memoir and from the superabundance of his knowledge made suggestions of the first importance. The unsurpa.s.sed library of Mr. T. J. Wise, the well-known bibliographer, was freely at my disposal. In other cases where I have received any a.s.sistance in clearing a difficulty I have made my acknowledgement in the note itself.
MEMOIR OF MRS. BEHN.
The personal history of Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her livelihood by authors.h.i.+p, 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 s.e.x', 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 a.s.sociation 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, acc.u.mulated 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[1] 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 circ.u.mstances. 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.
[Footnote 1: _Kalendar of State Papers, Domestic_, 1666-7. --ed. Mrs.
M. A. E. Green (1864).]
[Footnote 2: This is inaccurate. Mrs. Behn's first play, _The Forc'd Marriage_, was produced in December, 1670.]
[Footnote 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[4] (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.[5] Up to this time Aphra's maiden name has been stated to be Johnson, and she is a.s.serted 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.[6] 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,[7] 'copied about 1695 under her eye and with innumerable notes and corrections in her autograph'. In a certain poem ent.i.tled _The Circuit of Apollo_[8] 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.
[Footnote 4: 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 pet.i.tion) occur.]
[Footnote 5: He died in 1642.]
[Footnote 6: The Vicar of Wye, the Rev. Edgar Lambert, in answer to my inquiries courteously writes: 'In company with Mr. C. S. Orwin, whose book, _The History of Wye Church and College_, has just been published, I have closely examined the register and find no mention of ”Johnson”, nor of the fact that Aphara Amis' father was a ”barber”.']
[Footnote 7: Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1660-1720), sometime Maid of Honour to Queen Mary of Modena. She had true lyric genius. For a generous appreciation see Gosse, _Gossip in a Library_ (1891).]
[Footnote 8: Then unprinted but now included in the very voluminous edition of Lady Winchilsea's _Poems_, ed. M. Reynolds, Chicago, 1903.]
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 Amis, then, was born early in July, 1640, at Wye, Kent. When she was of a tender age the Amis family left England for Surinam; her father, who seems to have been a relative of Francis, Lord Willoughby of Parham, sometime administrator of several British colonies in the West Indies, having been promised a post of some importance in these dependencies. John Amis died on the voyage out, but his widow and children necessarily continued their journey, and upon their arrival were accommodated at St. John's Hill, one of the best houses in the district. Her life and adventures in Surinam Aphra has herself realistically told in that wonderfully vivid narrative, _Oroonoko_. [9]
The writer's bent had already shown itself. She kept a journal as many girls will, she steeped herself in the interminable romances fas.h.i.+onable at that time, in the voluminous _Pharamond_, _Cleopatre_, _Ca.s.sandre_, _Ibrahim_, and, above all, _Le Grand Cyrus_, so loved and retailed to the annoyance of her worthy husband by Mrs. Pepys; with a piece of which Dorothy Osborne was 'hugely pleased'.
[Footnote 9: In 'Mrs. Behn's _Oroonoko_' Dr. Bernbaum elaborately endeavours to show that this story is pure fiction. His arguments, in many cases advanced with no little subtlety and precision, do not appear (to me at least) to be convincing. We have much to weigh in the contrary balance: Mrs. Behn's manifest first-hand knowledge of, and extraordinary interest in, colonial life; her reiterated a.s.severations that every experience detailed in this famous novel is substantially true; the a.s.sent of all her contemporaries. It must further be remembered that Aphra was writing in 1688, of a girlhood coloured by and seen through the enchanted mists of a quarter of a century. That there are slight discrepancies is patent; the exaggerations, however, are not merely pardonable but perfectly natural. One of Dr. Bernbaum's most crus.h.i.+ng arguments, when sifted, seems to resolve itself into the fact that whilst writing _Oroonoko_ Mrs. Behn evidently had George Warren's little book, _An Impartial Description of Surinam_ (London, 1667), at hand. Could anything be more reasonable than to suppose she would be intimately acquainted with a volume descriptive of her girlhood's home? Again, Dr.
Bernbaum bases another line of argument on the a.s.sumption that Mrs.
Behn's father was a barber. Hence the appointment of such a man to an official position in Surinam was impossible, and, 'if Mrs. Behn's father was not sent to Surinam, the only reason she gives for being there disappears'. We know from recent investigation that John Amis did not follow a barber's trade, but was probably of good old stock.