Aphra Behn: A Secret Life

by Janet Todd

  Third, Oroonoko is defeated by the cruelty of his opponents and by his own naivety and dread; so too James II was inspired by fear, that the fate of Charles I would be visited on his son. Charles I had been killed and James II had killed his nephew Monmouth. There was no precedent for royal deposition or defeat without death. That a death of James would be caused by a daughter and son-in-law in a Lear-like tragedy made it the more dreadful. In Oroonoko Behn pandered to the King’s fears by presenting the ‘frightful spectacle of a mangled king’. How could she or James know that political violence was giving way to violent verbal politics? Few could have anticipated the mundane, sordid petering out of King James II and his reign.

  Like Oroonoko and James, Imoinda and Mary of Modena have curious parallels—indeed Imoinda is almost an anagram of Modena. Both women are romantically loving. As so often with feminine attributes and notions, Behn explains this in terms of culture, in this case, a foreign tradition in which the husband is a god. English husbands are no longer so regarded by fickle English wives, but King James is constantly termed a god in Behn’s poetry and the foreign Mary’s devotion to him was much noted. The veneration of their husbands, rare in Behn’s society and her fictional works, marked out both women as heroic and different. Bacon managed to kill his beloved by accident, while Oroonoko killed Imoinda intentionally. If James fell, no one knew what would happen to the much hated foreign Queen Mary, whose pregnancy, like Imoinda’s, was precipitating the tragedy. Many must have assumed she could not survive.

  On one level, Behn’s emotions were thoroughly engaged with Imoinda and Oroonoko, but she allowed some estranging details into the story. Like the Queen, Imoinda is an exotic beauty. Her tribal scars distinguish her even from Oroonoko, for, where he has only a few carvings, she is covered in birds and flowers. Unlike actual African tribal marks from the Gold Coast, Imoinda’s presumed home, hers are in the aesthetic forms appreciated by Europeans, so that she seems ‘jappaned’. It was some years since Behn had been in Surinam and her notion of slavery probably had more to do with the East where slaves, often Christians, could be regarded as treasured objects rather than workhorses.19 Yet the seemingly throwaway detail of the comprehensive patterning is so peculiar that some distancing of the character is inevitable. It is exaggerated by the news that, after her murder by Oroonoko, the decorated object is transformed into a corpse whose ‘Stink... almost struck them dead’. So too with the hybrid figure of Oroonoko, real and romantic, heir of the great classical slave Aesop, whom Behn has so recently been contemplating; he is made alien in his gruesome death. At one point he appeared to be heading towards the noble tragic fate of Charles I, but this progress is subverted when he is chopped to death, smoking a pipe while his ‘Members’, ear, nose and arms are hacked off and thrown on the fire. Only ‘at the cutting of this other Arm, his Head Sunk, and his Pipe drop’d.’ Oroonoko, who had recoiled from the self-mutilation of the strange Native Americans, is mutilated into strangeness himself

  Such repeated estrangement might have had a semi-political, semipersonal purpose. As the Baber poem suggested and her writing of The Widdow Ranter and Oroonoko confirmed, Behn held multiple views and, as she lauded the loyal, she also understood inevitable disloyalty. So, as narrator of the story, she often included herself in the ‘we’ of the whites and even shared their fear of Oroonoko’s possible cruelty when baited. Her absence at crucial moments was ascribed to her physical female weakness, but it might also signify a kind of reluctant disloyalty. In Surinam, Behn had inevitably been part of the often brutal and deceitful European society; so in London, whatever her emotional ties, she remained a member of the non-courtly, non-royal people who must go on living with their kind. As well as admonishing James and his Queen, then, the story may have worked as a covert investigation of her own position in relation to her hero and heroine. She was lamenting a misguided monarch while leaving herself some small room to redefine both him and herself, should events overtake her. Both in Oroonoko and in The Widdow Ranter genres wobble as romance collides with violent reality and heroics jostle farce.

  Behn concludes her story of Oroonoko by boasting of her verbal power. Partly this is to compensate for her inability to protect her hero and heroine in the tale and to provide some form of fame or immortality, now their unborn child is dead. For William Scot, whom she felt she had let down in Antwerp, she had had merely her letters to give in the end. For Dangerfield and Nevil Payne, she had simply tried to set the record straight. In short, for all of these men she had had only a pen with which to do them ‘Justice’. Behn, too, wanted ‘Justice’ for herself, and, in Oroonoko, she again expressed the desire for poetic fame inserted into the Cowley translation. She hoped that ‘the Reputation of my Pen is considerable enough to make [Oroonoko’s] Glorious Name to survive to all ages.’ If it did, hers would survive with it. After comparing painting and writing in her dedication to Lord Maitland, Behn exulted that ‘the Pictures of the Pen shall out-last those of the Pencil, and even Worlds themselves.’ The exaggeration revealed how far she had come since she had seen herself as the author of a middling sort of play.

  Lord Maitland was one of James’s Scots and, with him, Behn could continue to pay ‘the Obligations I have to some of the Great Men of your Nation’ and emphasise her new enthusiasm for Scotland which, despite the ‘Barrenness of [the] Soil’, produced so many admirable men. Although the nephew of the Protestant Duke of Lauderdale who had ruled Scotland autocratically in the 1670s and son-in-law of the virulently Protestant Earl of Argyll, recently executed as part of the wider Monmouth Rebellion, Maitland, like Dryden and Melfort, was a recent Catholic convert. So Behn could gain extra merit with the court through a dedication of Oroonoko to a Catholic. Maitland was therefore praised not only for his learning and loyalty—he is of course an aristocratic bulwark of monarchy—but also for his religion: ‘’tis only Men of so elevated Parts, and fine Knowledge; such noble Principles of Loyalty and Religion this Nation sighs for. Where is it amongst all our Nobility we shall find so great a Champion of the Catholick Church?’ Then, after publication of Oroonoko in June or July, that is, just after the controversial birth of the Prince of Wales and the warming-pan rumours, Behn or possibly Canning thought better of so public an endorsement of Catholic loyalty. The last sentence was excised from other copies of the work.

  In June 1688, the same month as the ‘Happy Birth’, Henry Sidney, younger cousin of Colepeper and uncle and close friend of Sunderland, obtained the signature of several nobleman on a letter in cipher which he sent to William of Orange. The letter invited William to invade his father-in-law’s kingdom. James continued writing his own letters to his nephew William in his usual simple and kindly way.

  By late September, even James, surrounded as he was by the rival sycophancies of the Earls of Sunderland and Melfort, felt things amiss and began to reel back his Catholic policies and appointments. Some Protestants were restored to office and the army; the hated Sunderland was dismissed. It was all too late. The situation had grown critical: London was in an uproar with rumours of Catholic atrocities and there were frequent mob attacks.

  On 5 November, William of Orange answered the nation’s call by landing in Torbay. He brought with him printing presses to print pamphlets which were distributed all over England through the penny post and through booksellers who were given them to sell for their own benefit.20 Burnet, who had come over with William, was much involved in the campaign and it was probably his influence that made the pamphlets insist on the fraudulent birth of the Prince of Wales.21 James’s propaganda machine was outclassed. Some rushed to defend the King, others like Behn’s young friend, George Granville, yearned to do so. Most stayed away.

  At this point James had one of the most unlucky and vicious nosebleeds in history. In fact, it was more of a haemorrhage, accompanied by insomnia, vertigo and headaches. The loss of blood led to hallucinations of his murdered father which eroded his courage, as did the defection of his former followers, including his da
ughter Princess Anne and many of the nobles Behn had praised in dedications and in her Coronation Ode. The court disintegrated around him. In early December the Queen and baby Prince left for France. James tried to follow, was caught, and then allowed to slip away. It was tragedy turned into farce. The Stuart monarchy which had been Behn’s political life was ended.

  James’s escape was a relief to William, but a stunning humiliation for the King’s supporters. Behn’s feeling for James had been genuine and deep, if probably never unalloyed. His past encouragement of her plays had made a personal bond, while her public praises of him had helped rivet her to him. She understood expedience—she well knew of it in poets and in herself—but she must have felt deeply saddened and disappointed. The divinity of royalty she had so baroquely hymned never had much to do with the actual royal men and women, but she admired gracious public behaviour. This flight was not a gracious act.

  By fleeing like his father, rather than standing firm as he himself had done in 1685 in the face of Monmouth, James opened the way for usurpation. Had he remained in London, he would most likely have rallied support. More people than Aphra Behn still had memories of the Civil War and feared the anarchy that might follow any disturbance of the strict hereditary principle. The English were wary of foreigners and William was a Dutchman. James could have capitalised on the animosity this stern, astute and unprepossessing man quickly aroused. But the very traits Behn had so often lauded in the King kept him, like Oroonoko, rigid until he broke and, although courageous in past battles, he lost his nerve with his health and his confidence. He could not stay to compromise, for compromise was what a divine king should not do. It was a shock to discover that, despite his belief in sacred monarchy and its binding oaths, men found it easy to betray him. Behn’s analysis of heroic men, Oroonoko and Bacon, written before James’s flight, was proving fatally true—even down to the physical collapse.

  Sunderland, dressed as a woman, fled to Holland. He had of course kept options open and, like Philander of Love-Letters, could be counted on soon to return ‘in as much Splendour as ever’. It was no surprise to Behn to find that Lord Grey had not heeded a call to support the man who had so unexpectedly pardoned him. Later he was seen among the followers of William of Orange who, in time, gave him an earldom. Melfort and Maitland escaped to the Continent, but Jeffreys, fleeing disguised as a sailor, was assaulted by a mob and put in the Tower, where he died a few months later. The Duke of Norfolk, Behn’s Maecenas, prudently went abroad, then joined William once James left his kingdom; so he took part in yet another coronation and Behn lived to savour the irony of her earlier words: ‘so long as the Royal Cause has such Patrons as your Lordship, such vigorous and noble Supporters, his Majesty will be great, secure and quiet.’ Drumlangrig had anticipated him: he had become the first Scot to abandon the King and accept the new ruler.

  Further down the scale, men moved with the times. The Aesop illustrator, Francis Barlow, attuned as ever to the popular will, quickly produced a new pack of playing cards, detailing the ‘Crimes’ of James II and the arrival of William as saviour. Jacob Tonson, the publisher, made a hefty profit out of a reissue of Paradise Lost, which had been pretty coolly received in 1667. Nat Lee, the playwright, said to have been always a Whig at heart despite his frequent bouts of Toryism and the aid James II had given him in Bedlam, moved swiftly over to the new rulers. But not everyone could so easily turn: Roger L’Estrange was imprisoned and Henry Nevil Payne fled to Scotland. Loyal support for James, which Behn had so often lauded, became illegal Jacobitism.

  Chapter 30

  End of Stuart Dynasty and Death of Aphra Behn

  ‘I like the Excluded Prophet stand’

  William and his supporter Gilbert Burnet had expected an enthusiastic welcome from the English nobles, as well as from the common people who had supposedly suffered under Stuart rule. Neither group acted as it should. The people had been jubilant only as long as they were ignorant of the Dutch William, while the nobles hung back. Parliament too was recalcitrant.

  By January 1689 there was acrimonious debating over what to do with the throne. Some thought it should be left to James, but with administration vested in the Prince of Orange as regent; some believed it should be declared vacant through James’s flight. In which case, it should go to his daughter and Protestant heir, Mary, with her powerful husband as prince consort. Two other monarchical options were mooted: that the hereditary principle should be waived and the Prince of Orange become king or that William and Mary, both with a Stuart parent, should rule jointly.1 William declared roundly that he would not hold ‘anything by apron strings’ and refused to ‘have any share in the government unless it was put in his person, and that for the term of life’.2

  In poor health and always irritated by political wrangling, of which he had experienced a good deal in the United Provinces, William was intensely irritated by the public discussion. He was well aware that the country was at his disposal and that he could declare himself king without much opposition or help from anyone. He found it demeaning that the realm he had just liberated or conquered should be considering in so public a manner what to do with him. Never affable at the best of times, he let his temper sour and, at the end of January, Evelyn noted that he ‘shew’d little countenance to the noblemen and others, whoe expected a more gracious and chereful reception when they made their court’.3

  During these difficult weeks of negotiations, Burnet, who had worked so tirelessly for the Orange cause, worried at the resentment William was inspiring, even in those who had been foremost in inviting him. He needed some quick propaganda besides his own to focus opinion on the benefits the new ruler was conveying on the English. In this spirit he probably approached Aphra Behn. He did not care for her morals, but he had preached morality to Charles II and had no fear of taint. As for her political opinions, although Burnet knew she had been a skilled apologist of the old regime, he had some reason to hope they might be changed, or, more accurately, they might be bought. He heard she was ill and would therefore be in need of support and money.4 He may also have believed her the author of the vicious satire on Dryden’s conversion, as well as knowing of some activities that later ages did not.

  Burnet might have been encouraged by Behn’s most recent publication, a light story of amorous intrigue set in France called The Lucky Mistake, dedicated, after James’s flight, to her young poetic friend, George Granville.5 When he read this dedication, he would perceive no hint of Jacobitism, despite the fact that Behn, a supporter of James, was writing to another supporter at what she called ‘this Critical Juncture’. Indeed, her reference to the nation’s need to have its ‘Laws and Liberties’ defended was, in the present context, at least ambiguous.

  During the crisis, Granville had retired in disgust to his mother’s house in Yorkshire, from where he expressed his poetic contempt for the world and its degeneracy. Fittingly, then, Behn praised him for his pastoral passivity. This quality had first been celebrated in her character, Celadon, before he bestirred himself to go to Ireland on political business, but it had been denigrated in the poem to Christopher, Duke of Albemarle, written in more fraught times. The renewed celebration of non-involvement which this praise implied appeared to include herself. Both she and Granville would rather not be drudging ‘Slaves of State’, it seems.

  And yet Burnet must have known that, whatever the wealthy Granville might do, Behn would be freed from politics only by death. If not turning Jacobite, she could only follow the advice in the manuscript satire on Dryden: ‘when the act is done and finish’t cleane / what shold the poet doe but shift the scene.’ Burnet, who had famously converted the libertine Earl of Rochester to Anglicanism, could surely make of this needy woman a Williamite.

  Behn was no doubt amused at the approach. She knew what Burnet had thought of her—indeed he thought most witty women lewd—but she must also have seen that he admired her poetic skill.6 The request indicated it. She would refuse of course, for it was only months sin
ce she had mocked the ‘Belgick lion’, but she would do so publicly and in code. If she could not give Burnet the clarity he requested, she would give the equivocation she imagined he half expected. A man such as Burnet could read into, as well as read.

  On its surface the work she wrote, A Pindaric Poem to the Reverend Doctor Burnet, was heroic, suitable for an old supporter of James II, for whom she was overtly risking her professional future. In it she denied the use of her pen to the man who was de facto ruler of the country, the Prince of Orange and Nassau. Yet, both in literary and in state politics, the denial was equivocal, suitable for an author who would need to go on writing whoever ruled in England.

  The Pindaric Poem to Burnet painted an affecting portrait of Behn as isolated poet, a portrait which the Pindaric form and Burnet’s invitation allowed her to make:

  The Brieze that wafts the Crowding Nations o’re

  Leaves me unpity’d far behind

  On the Forsaken Barren Shore,

  To Sigh with Echo, and the Murmuring Wind...