Volume I Part 2 (2/2)
[Footnote 40: Astrea with her soft gay sighing Swains And rural virgins on the flowery Plains, The lavish Peer's profuseness may reprove Who gave her Guineas for the _Isle of Love_.
--_Contemporary Satire_,-- (Harleian MSS.)]
The following undated letter (preserved at Bayfordbury) addressed to Jacob Tonson, and first published in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, May, 1836, pleads hard for an extra payment of five pounds for her book. She writes:--
Deare Mr. Tonson
I am mightly obleg{d} to you for y{e} service you have don me to Mr.
Dryden; in whose esteeme I wou'd chuse to be rather then any bodys in the world; and I am sure I never, in thought, word, or deed merritted other from him, but if you had heard w{t} was told me, you wou'd have excus'd all I said on that account. Thank him most infinitly for y{e} hon. he offers, and I shall never think I can do any thing that can merritt so vast a glory; and I must owe it all to you if I have it. As for Mr. Creech, I would not have you afflict him w{th} a thing can not now be help'd, so never let him know my resentment. I am troubled for y{e} line that's left out of Dr.
Garth,[41] and wish yo{r} man wou'd write it in y{e} margent, at his leasure, to all you sell.
As for y{e} verses of mine, I shou'd really have thought 'em worth thirty pound; and I hope you will find it worth 25_l_; not that I shou'd dispute at any other time for 5 pound wher I am so obleeged; but you can not think w{t} a preety thing y{e} Island will be, and w{t} a deal of labor I shall have yet with it: and if that pleases, I will do the 2nd Voyage, w{ch} will compose a little book as big as a novel by it self. But pray speake to yor Bro{r} to advance the price to one 5lb more, 'twill at this time be more then given me, and I vow I wou'd not aske it if I did not really believe it worth more. Alas I wou'd not loose my time in such low gettings, but only since I am about it I am resolv'd to go throw w{th} it tho I shou'd give it. I pray go about it as soone as you please, for I shall finish as fast as you can go on. Methinks y{e} Voyage shou'd com last, as being y{e} largest volume. You know Mr. Couly's Dauid is last, because a large poem, and Mrs. Philips her Plays for y{e} same reason. I wish I had more time, I wou'd ad something to y{e} verses y{t} I have a mind too, but, good deare Mr. Tonson, let it be 5lb more, for I may safly swere I have lost y{e} getting of 50lb by it, tho that's nothing to you, or my satisfaction and humour: but I have been w{th}out getting so long y{t} I am just on y{e} poynt of breaking, espesiall since a body has no creditt at y{e} Playhouse for money as we usd to have, fifty or 60 deepe, or more; I want extreamly or I wo'd not urge this.
Yo{rs} A. B.
Pray send me y{e} loose papers to put to these I have, and let me know w{ch} you will go about first, y{e} songs and verses or that.
Send me an answer to-day.
[Footnote 41: This of course cannot be correct, but it is so transcribed. In the transcript of this letter made by Malone, and now in the possession of G. Thorn Drury, Esq., K.C., over the word 'Garth's' is written 'Q', and at the foot of the page a note by Mitford says: 'This name seems to have been doubtful in the MSS.'
I have thought it best not to attempt any emendation.]
It is probable that about this date, 1683-4, she penned her little novel _The Adventure of the Black Lady_, and also that excellent extravaganza _The King of Bantam_.[42] Both these and _The Unfortunate Happy Lady_ are written as if they had certainly been completed before the death of Charles II, in which case they must have lain by, MSS, in Mrs. Behn's desk.
[Footnote 42: Neither of these was printed until eight years after her death. They first appear, each with its separate t.i.tle page, 1697, bound up in the Third Edition, 'with Large Additions,' of _All the Histories and Novels, Written by the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn, Entire in One Volume_, 1698. After Nos. vii, viii, ix, _Memoirs of the Court of the King of _Bantam_, _The Nun; or, the Perjured Beauty_, _The Adventure of the Black Lady_ follows a note: 'These last three never before published.' Some superficial bibliographers (e.g. Miss Charlotte E. Morgan in her unreliable monograph, _The English Novel till 1749_) have postulated imaginary editions of 1683-4 for _The Little Black Lady_ and _The King of Bantam_. _The Nun; or, the Perjured Beauty_ is universally confounded with _The History of the Nun_ (_vide_ Vol. V, p. 259, Introduction to that novel) and dated 1689.
With reference to _The King of Bantam_ we have in the 1698 collected edition of the Novels the following '_Advertis.e.m.e.nt to the _Reader_._ The Stile of the Court of the King of _Bantam_, being so very different from Mrs. _Behn's_ usual way of Writing, it may perhaps call its being genuine in Question; to obviate which Objection, I must inform the Reader, that it was a Trial of Skill upon a Wager, to shew that she was able to write in the Style of the Celebrated _Scarron_, in Imitation of whom 'tis writ, tho' the Story be true. I need not say any thing of the other Two, they evidently confessing their admirable Author.']
The King, at the height of his power, after a short illness, died 6 February, 1685, an event that together with the accession of James naturally evoked a plethora of State Poems, to which flood Mrs. Behn contributed. Her Pindarics rank high amongst the semi-official, complimentary, threnodic or pastoral pseudo-Dithyrambs, of which the age was so bounteous; but it needed the supreme genius of a Dryden sustainedly to instil lyric fire and true poetry into these hybrid forms.[43] The nadir is sounded by the plumbeous productions of Shadwell, Nahum Tate, and 'Persons of Quality'. Aphra's _Pindarick on the Death of Charles II_ ran through two editions in 1685, and her _Poem to the Queen Dowager Catherine_ was published the same year. James II was crowned on St. George's Day, and she greeted her new monarch and old patron with a _Poem on the Happy Coronation of His Sacred Majesty_.
A little later she published a _Miscellany_ of poems by various hands: amongst whom were Etheredge, Edmund Arwaker, Henry Crisp, and Otway, including not a few from her own pen, 'Together with Reflections on Morality, or Seneca Unmasqued. Translated from the Maximes of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld', a number of clever apophthegms tersely turned.
[Footnote 43: Swift, although he amply fulfilled Dryden's famous prophecy, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a Pindaric poet', was doubtless thinking of these Pindarics when in _The Battle of the Books_ he wrote: 'Then _Pindar_ slew ----, and ----, and _Oldham_, and ----, and _Afra_ the _Amazon_ light of foot.']
The following note,[44] however, affords ample evidence that at this juncture, maugre her diligence and unremitting toils, she was far from being in easy circ.u.mstances:--
'Where as I am indebted to Mr. Bags the sum of six pownd for the payment of which Mr. Tonson has obleged him self. Now I do here by impowre Mr. Zachary Baggs, in case the said debt is not fully discharged before Michaelmas next, to stop what money he shall hereafter have in his hands of mine, upon the playing my first play till this aforesaid debt of six pownd be discharged. Witness my hand this 1st August, --85.
A. Behn.'
[Footnote 44: First published in _The Gentleman's Magazine_, May, 1836.]
Early in 1686 a frolicksome comedy of great merit, _The Lucky Chance_, was produced by her at the Theatre Royal, the home of the United Companies. A Whiggish clique, unable to harm her in any other way, banded together to d.a.m.n the play and so endeavoured to raise a pudic hubbub, that happily proved quite ineffective. _The Lucky Chance_, which contends with _The Rover (I)_, and _The Feign'd Courtezans_ for the honour of being Mrs. Behn's highest flight of comic genius, has scenes admittedly wantoning beyond the bounds of n.i.g.g.ard propriety, but all are alive with a careless wit and a brilliant humour that prove quite irresistible. Next appeared those graceful translations from de Bonnecorse's _La Montre ... seconde partie contenant La Boete et Le Miroir_, which she termed _The Lover's Watch_ and _The Lady's Looking-Gla.s.s_.
In 1687 the Duke of Albemarle's voyage to Jamaica[45] to take up the government in the West Indies gave occasion for a Pindaric, but we only have one dramatic piece from Mrs. Behn, _The Emperor of the Moon_, a capital three act farce, Italian in sentiment and origin. For some little time past her health had begun to trouble her.[46] Her three years of privation and cares had told upon her physically, and since then, 'forced to write for bread and not ashamed to own it,' she had spared neither mind nor bodily strength. Graver symptoms appeared, but yet she found time to translate from Fontenelle his version of Van Dale's _De Oraculis Ethnicorum_ as _The History of Oracles and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests_, a book of great interest. There was also published in 1687 an edition in stately folio of _aeesop's Fables with his Life in English, French and Latin_, 'ill.u.s.trated with One hundred and twelve Sculptures' and 'Thirty One New Figures representing his Life', by Francis Barlow, the celebrated draughtsman of birds and animals. Each plate to the Life has a quatrain appended, and each fable with its moral is versified beneath the accompanying picture. In his brief address to the Reader Barlow writes: 'The Ingenious Mrs. A. Behn has been so obliging as to perform the English Poetry, which in short comprehends the Sense of the Fable and Moral; Whereof to say much were needless, since it may sufficiently recommend it self to all Persons of Understanding.' To this year we further a.s.sign the composition of no fewer than four novels, _The Unfortunate Bride_, _The Dumb Virgin_, _The Wandering Beauty_, _The Unhappy Mistake_. She was working at high pressure, and 1688 still saw a tremendous literary output. Waller had died 21 October, 1687, at the great age of eighty-one, and her Elegiac Ode to his Memory begins:--
How to thy Sacred Memory, shall I bring (Worthy thy Fame) a grateful Offering?
I, who by Toils of Sickness, am become Almost as near as thou art to a Tomb?
While every soft and every tender strain Is ruffl'd, and ill-natur'd grown with Pain.
[Footnote 45: Christopher Monck, second Duke of Albermarle, was appointed Governor-General of Jamaica, 26 November, 1687. He died there early in the following autumn.]
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