by Janet Todd
By the end of the month, the innkeeper was threatening prison. Behn’s desperation demanded desperate measures and, having tried Halsall and Killigrew, she now addressed the powerful Lord Arlington directly.
She began more humbly than to either Killigrew or Halsall but, as she went on, she grew emboldened. Of necessity she had to recapitulate the whole sorry history of the last two months, pointing out how regularly she had written, ‘not missing a Post’. ‘[T]was all in Vaine,’ however; both she and Scot had been hobbled by Whitehall. Because of debts, Scot could not enter The Hague, nor pick up crucial documents; now he was imprisoned and could be of little use to them. So what had been gained by allowing him to go there? Meanwhile, what was she supposed to do? She had been forced to run up debts which she could not pay. When owing £120, she had been sent £50. Now she was suffering constant abuse from the people at the inn—‘I am in extreame want & nessesity,’ she wailed. If she were sent to prison, what would other potential agents think?
By the end of her letter Behn was almost weeping on to the paper, begging Arlington not to ‘let me be disgraced & ruend in a straing place where I have none to pity or help me’. Daringly she tried to shame him into action: she would rather starve than not keep her word to Scot, while Arlington was breaking his to her. She ended, ‘take som Pitty on a poore strainger.’ She then signed off as his ‘afflicted servant Astrea’.
The letter, with its pathetic appeal, must have had some effect, for Arlington replied and authorised money to be paid to her to settle the most urgent debts. He also told her what she must have guessed from the moment she heard of Scot’s imprisonment: that her mission was terminated. She should return to London.
Immediately Behn wrote to Scot in prison. She had now to tell him the worst: that nothing would come for him from Whitehall. Scot, who had long suspected as much, was now in desperate straits and he managed at once to get a message to her, for it was too dangerous to write. He begged her to have faith in him and not to go back until he was released and they could meet. Playing on her presumed affection, he assured her he would give ‘more sattisfaction then ever yet I gave you’. Behn might be pardoned for wondering why he had not provided this when at liberty.7 Having digested the appeal, she wrote to Halsall.8 By now she had greater confidence in Lord Arlington than in his underlings and she also wrote directly to him with Scot’s message, enclosed in a long letter. It was only nine days before Christmas and she was facing the festival in an alien country. Like Bampfield, Scot, and Corney, all lonely, desperate men abroad, she wrote too much for busy statesmen, but the letter movingly summarised her mission:
I have troubld every body so offten wth my complaints, & to so little purpose that weare I not confident of the Justness of my cause (which I can make as cleere as day.) I think I should be wild wth my hard treatment: Pardon me Sir that I aply myself to your Lordship: as the ffountaine from whence all the marcy I can expect (it seemes) must spring: it is to your Lordship as to my last hopes: which I adress myself: & how Justly god of heaven knows: since the delays which my little merritts have causd you to put on me have bin the only occation of above twice as much expence to you: as I might other wise have chargd you with: all which your Lordship may please to remember I offten said: & with all tould mr Hallsall; I knew that in the end this would be my reward: I can Justly say: that if I have not servd him as was expected: it was because I wanted what he promisd: but I have allready saide so much of that: tis true I am sent for home: but tis as true that they knew well I had not money enough to com withall: I could not Beg nor starve heare: & I was keepd so long without money that I was glad at any rate allmost to get Creditt: & what I had was spent before it came: but every on[e] complaines of such usage that are any ways imployd by them: Pardon me my Lord for I do not study comply[me]nts but with abundance of sincerity would speake my griefe & misfortune but since I dare not venture upon too long a relation of it to your Lordship: I only do most humbly Pitition: that your Lordship would be pleasd out of your goodness alone to let me com home with creditt & hansomness for magre [despite] all those excuses which others make for my stay (as if I had a mind to do so) I do protest to your Lordship: I desire nothing so much as to come hom & wheare as tis thought my little Services are at an end: I am of another opinion & am very confident that I shall in a very ffew weeks or days be able to do more then ever: for, had I had those supplys for him which weare from Post to Post Promisd your Lordship [had] had a better proofe of my will & his abillity: I do expect him to have liberty in a ffew days if he have it not by this time: & I heare trouble your Lordship with a little part of on[e] of his too long letters to me: however I do humbly beg to com home: & if your Lordship will be pleasd to lett me have a Bill upon mr shaw for on[e] 100 pound more, of which my friend shall have part: I will heare promise your Lordship: if when I com home I can not give you absolute sattisfection I will Justly returne it againe. which I hope I am able to do when at home & your Lordship shall be gratiously pleasd only to lend it me for that time: without which I vow to god I can not com home: & the longer I stay the worse it will be: for god sake my Lord consider me a poore strainger & farr from ffriends: & do not denye what my life depends on: & your Lordship shall see how I will indeavor to merrit it: & what a Just & good accoumpt I shall give of what I am now so Ill thought on ffor: I neither petitiond ffor nor desird the place I now have nor voyage I have taken: nor have I in the least bin prodigall more than what your delays have occationd: & I am all most killd with the griefe I have to be so Ill though[t] on; & if I com not now by this convoy I must stay this too months or more: for god of heavens sake Sir take Pity on me; let me be usd like a Christian & on[e] who would venture her life to gaine your ffavorable opinion & to be permitted amongst the number of my Lord your Lordships most ffaithfull & humble servant: A. Behne.9
She signed herself Behn: the spy Astrea was for the moment forgotten. Perhaps she felt the letter not desperate enough and a postscript was added: ‘for god sake Sir: do not ffor gett me: & I am sure your Lordship will not repent your goodness & I humbly beg your Lordship to be speedy least I eate out my head.’10
She did not make the convoy, but neither did she ‘eate out’ her head.
There were quite a few actions Behn probably took. Over the months she may have tried to salvage something from her dead husband’s shipping interests, with the help of Piers. She probably had another try now. Also, in moments of utter desperation, she might have yearned for the Abbess Mary Knatchbull and a quiet convent life. In Antwerp, she had visited the great seven-naved cathedral with its lacy stonework and its tinselled Catholicism. She was temperamentally drawn to it as a sort of religious version of aristocratic excess and the doctrines which so disturbed her compatriots hardly troubled her. She loved the sensuous drench of this alien faith, its heady amalgamation of candles, flowers and incense and, when she came to use the setting of Antwerp in her fiction, the location seemed to trigger memory of religious spectacle. Conceivably she might become a nun; she had been made much of in the convent if her History of the Nun may be credited as experience, and it was a common retreat for worried widows. She could have contacted the Ghent Abbess or the convent relatives of her travelling companion, Lord Stafford, in Louvain and Antwerp. But, if she thought of the notion, she soon dismissed it. If she could not pay the innkeeper, she could not muster a dowry for a convent. Besides, she had few religious feelings.
She may have entertained another idea more seriously. In her long novel, Love-Letters, the maid of the heroine Silvia, in similarly desperate straits in the Low Countries, tells her mistress not to despair while she has youth and beauty. Aphra Behn was still young and enjoyed amorous as well as political intrigue. Money had to come from somewhere. Her old companion, who had not been paid for many months, might, in the closeness of a night when they shared a bed, have suggested discreetly that, for a woman, there was an easier way of making a living than espionage, where the financial rewards could be achieved before the services had been rend
ered. Like Silvia, Behn never regarded herself as a whore, but she did see old rich men as fair financial game for attractive younger women and she did not condemn such women for giving sex for money in or out of marriage.
Scot’s last letter to Behn from prison suggested that there was something beyond spying between the pair and the letters within the ‘Memoirs’ strengthen the suggestion that Behn might have been fooled by Scot’s role of loving swain. These letters are fictionalised but, despite an anachronistic reference to the dismemberment of the Dutch leader, De Witt, well after Behn’s stay in Antwerp, they may be by Behn and enclose some genuine happenings.11 So, given her penchant for rearranging life and amalgamating real-life people into fiction, she might in part have used Scot for her ‘character’ of the suitor, Vander Albert, a man who had been in love with her ‘before the War, in her Husband’s time’. Curiously, though, Albert is said to have supported Astrea in Antwerp, a neat reversal of the real case, but a more usual one when sex rather than information is the commodity. After much merriment and swapping of bodies in bed, Astrea agrees to marry Albert, on whose love ‘she grounded the Success of her Negotiations’. Then Albert ‘dy’d’, as Scot may have done.12
If authentic, the comic letters suggest how much Behn had changed since Surinam. Perhaps her marriage had been the catalyst. She no longer fantasised heroines from La Calprenède, chaste princesses awaiting their prince. She had too much humour for romance and may have begun to fear her own love life would be in comic mode. Her other possible encounter in Antwerp bears this out. The Dutch and Flemings were famous for being drunk rather than amorous, and for aiming at a quick fix more than erotic foreplay. Albert’s fat friend, the old merchant Van Bruin, was in the mode; his letters might have drawn on the Amsterdam merchant Behn came to know, perhaps on the persistent Thomas Corney, perhaps on someone who had offered love but advanced no money, or perhaps, since he was a nautical man, on the dead and seemingly unlamented Mr Behn.13 In the letters he is an ‘old piece of worm-eaten Touchwood’.
To Van Bruin’s nautical missive offering love, Astrea makes a spirited reply, describing to the old man the cost of keeping:
have you set before the Eyes of your Understanding, the charge of fitting out such a Vessel (as you have made me) for the Indies of Love.... There are Ribbonds and Hoods for my Pennons; Diamond Rings, Lockets, and Pearl-Necklaces for my Guns of Offence and Defence; Silks, Holland, Lawn, Cambrick, &c. for Rigging; Gold and Silver Laces, Imbroideries and Fringes fore and aft for my Stern and for my Prow; rich Perfumes, Paint and Powder, for my Ammunition; Treats, rich Wines, expensive Collations, Gaming Money, Pin-Money, with a long Et cetera for my Cargo; and Balls, Masks Plays, Walks. Airing in the Country, and a Coach and Six for my fair Wind.14
Whether written by Behn or not, the list gives a vivid sense not only of what a man set on keeping a mistress would have to expend, but also what an independent woman needed if she wished to make a show in the world.
It is entirely fitting that the one piece of prose definitely written by Aphra Behn and set in Antwerp should concern a woman’s obsession with money. After relating the comic incidents of the suitors, the letters in the ‘Memoirs’ mention a tale Behn is supposedly not yet ready to write. Two decades later this became The Fair Jilt, concerning a Prince Tarquin and the fair, rich and treacherous beguine, Miranda. The pair had featured in a curious item Behn had noticed in the London Gazette for 28–31 May 1666, not long before she left London:
The Prince Tarquino being condemned at Antwerp to be beheaded, for endeavouring the death of his sister-in-law: being on the scaffold, the executioner tied a handkerchief about his head and by great accident his blow lighted upon the knot, giving him only a slight wound. Upon which, the people being in a tumult, he was carried back to the Town-house, and is in hopes both of his pardon and his recovery.
A subsequent issue of the Gazette noted his pardon by the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo, the Governor. It was the kind of heroic and grotesque story that Behn would store in her mind.
In the dedication to The Fair Jilt, Behn claimed she had actually spoken to Tarquin and been ‘an Eye-Witness’ of some of the events she related. This is unlikely given her probable presence in Surinam at the time of the earlier events and the later dates of her sojourn in Antwerp. She may, however, have had many details second-hand from eyewitnesses and she could have been made aware of the contents of Dutch yearbooks and newspapers as well as the pamphlet written or most likely commissioned by Maria Theresia (Miranda) in self-justification. Detail of the main sensational events which she later related were probably among the ‘Journal Observations’ in which, according to The Fair Jilt, she wrote of things ‘curious to retain’. Also, in this city of baroque Catholicism, Behn might have seen indelible sights which could easily be assimilated into her tale, such as the rich show of a supposed penitent:
[Miranda] was dress’d in a black Velvet Gown, with a rich Row of Diamonds at the Peak behind; and a petty-coat of flower’d Gold, very rich, and lac’d; with all things else suitable: A Gentleman carry’d her great Velvet Cushion before her, on which her Prayer-Book, embroider’d, was laid; her Train was born up by a Page....15
The historical events behind The Fair Jilt concerned two sisters, Maria Theresia (Miranda in Behn’s story) and Anna Louisa (Alcidiana) van Mechelen, of an ancient and well-respected Antwerp family.16 They were the nieces of a rich man, Caspar Oosterlincx, with a house in the Reyndersstraat in Antwerp. On 10 November 1656 in the magnificent cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary—where Behn was probably accosted by Corney—Maria Theresia married Francisco de Tarquini, with her uncle Caspar as witness. Anna Louisa settled down to keep house for her uncle.
Worried about the welfare of Anna Louisa, Caspar Oosterlincx made a will in which he left his substantial goods of gold, silver and diamonds, as well as his property, to the two nieces, provided that they inhabited the house in the Reyndersstraat. It was a disastrous arrangement and, when he died, it was not long before the two sisters were at each other’s throats, Maria Theresia spurred on by her husband.17 In Behn’s story, The Fair Jilt, Tarquin is an infatuated malleable man, while Miranda is a ruthless dominant woman. In history, Tarquini seems to have been the harshest and most violent of the trio.18
Tension was high and, after much quarrelling, Anna Louisa left the house and sued Tarquini and her sister for her inheritance. A long legal wrangle followed, in which her witnesses described a frightful regime of cruelty. The young girl had been constantly mocked, called fool, whore, and pig by her savage brother-in-law, who also battered her and pinched her. She was not allowed to eat with the couple: sometimes she was given sticks to chew, sometimes food without implements, and sometimes she was starved. One of Tarquini’s servants testified to the many death threats she endured and to an incident when, after a dispute between the two sisters, Tarquini had tried to run Anna Louisa through with his sword; failing that, he had thrown things after her as she fled.
Tarquini and Maria Theresia denied the charges, claiming the headstrong young woman had left the house capriciously. To prove her extravagance, they produced an account of her expenditure. On clothes and shoes alone she had used 467 gilders (a good craftsman would earn one gilder a day and a high official one thousand a year, so it was a substantial sum). One witness testified that, when Anna Louisa had left the house, the couple tried to make peace and went to a lawyer to that end, but that Anna Louisa refused ever to live under their roof again. Showing a flash of that character Behn would so flamboyantly give to Miranda, Maria Theresia declared it was never too late to improve matters, but by then Anna Louisa wanted only justice.19
The Tarquinis’ murderous designs on Anna Louisa did not abate. Two shooting attempts were made on her life. In the first in 1662, Maria Theresia’s coachman shot at her sister as she left the Carmelite church (close to Behn’s future lodgings in the Rosa Noble). Bullets missed her body but pierced her clothes. As instigator of the crime, Maria Theresia was arrested. Under tortu
re she refused to confess and, instead of being executed, she was publicly humiliated, then banished. The second attempt in early 1666 was by Tarquini himself, again by the Carmelite convent and again bullets tore only Anna Louisa’s clothes. Caught with the pistol about him and known to feel murderous towards the victim, Tarquini was sentenced to death in May, with a sword rather than an axe, a privilege of nobility. The sentence was to be carried out the next day. The execution was bungled so badly that the authorities halted proceedings. Tarquini was then reprieved by the new Spanish governor, Castel Rodrigo, as Behn would have read in the Gazette.20
For a fiction she needed only a prelude, and the spacious and ancient beguinage on the outskirts of Antwerp, coupled with the great new Jesuit church near her lodgings, would provide it. Her heroine Miranda, based on Maria Theresia, would be a beguine and her amorous career would start with the attempted seduction of a friar as she knelt at the sort of sensuously decorated confessional Behn herself had seen in the Jesuit church. There the priest was divided from the penitent by carved angel’s wings.
That the story of The Fair Jilt disturbed Behn was apparent from the joltingly strange morality she gave it when she came to write it up twenty years later. There the abused and mutilated Alcidiana, whose money Miranda squanders, is made to ask forgiveness of her manipulating and vicious sister, and the deceived and condemned servant (based on Maria Theresia’s coachman) to beg pardon of the mistress who is causing his death. The glamorised Tarquin is largely forgiven by public opinion, which stands in for the morality of the tale, all because he behaves well on the scaffold and has sumptuous accessories. Perhaps in the clever, ambitious, and literate Miranda who never quite gets her comeuppance, Behn may have indulged in a little fantasy of how a woman might do what she pleased if she could only handle men and write engagingly—Miranda tries to seduce through letters.21
