Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/133

Behn however (circ. 656), was in the kingdom of Strathclyde, at the spot on the sea-coast which, under the designation of St. Bees, still preserves the memory of her name. A priory was afterwards founded here by William de Meschines, lord of Copeland temp. Henry I. In her old age Begha resigned her abbacy in Oswald's Kingdom into the hands of St. Hilda, under whose rule she lived till her death, the year of which cannot be fixed, but her festival was kept on 31 Oct.

 BEHN, AFRA, APHRA, APHARA, or AYFARA (1640–1689), dramatist and novelist, was baptised at Wye on 10 July 1640. She was the daughter of John Johnson, a barber, and of Amy, his wife. A relative whom she called her father was nominated by Lord Willoughby to the post of lieutenant-general of Surinam, which was then an English possession. He went out to the West Indies with his whole family when Aphra was still a child. The father died on the outward voyage, but the family settled in the best house in the colony, a charming residence called St. John's Hill, of which the poetess has given a probably overcharged picture, painted from memory, in her novel of 'Oroonoko.' She became acquainted, as she grew up, with the romantic chieftain whose name has just been mentioned, and with Imoinda his wife. A great deal of nonsense was long afterwards talked in London about this friendship, in which the scandal-mongers would fain see a love-affair between Aphra and Oroonoko. The latter, to say the truth, is a slightly fabulous personage, although the poetess says that 'he was used to call me his "Great Mistress," and my wishes would go a great way with him.' England resigned Surinam to the Dutch, and Aphra returned to her native country about 1658. She presently married a city merchant named Behn, a gentleman of Dutch extraction. It appears that through her marriage she gained an entrance to the court, and that she amused Charles II with her sallies and her eloquent descriptions. Her married life, during which she seems to have been wealthy, was brief. Before 1666 she was a widow. When the Dutch war broke out, Charles II thought her a proper person to be entrusted with secret state business, and she was sent over to Antwerp by the government as a spy. During this stay in the Low Countries she was pestered with attentions from suitors, of whom she has left a very lively account. One of those, in a moment of indiscretion, gave her notice of Cornelius de Witt's intention to send a Dutch fleet up the Thames. Accordingly she communicated the news to london, but her intelligence was ridiculed. She was doomed to adventure in all that she undertook, for having promised to marry a Dutchman named Van der Aalbert, the two lovers separated to meet again in London. But Van der Aalbert was taken with a fever in Amsterdam and died, while Aphra Behn, having set sail from Dunkirk, was wrecked in sight of land, and narrowly escaped drowning. She returned to London, and, as her biographer puts it, she dedicated the remainder of her life to pleasure and poetry.

The fact is that Aphra Behn from this time forth became a professional writer, the first female writer who had lived by her pen in England, and that her assiduity surpassed that of any of the men, her contemporaries, except Dryden. Her works are extremely numerous. The truth seems to be that she had been left unprovided for at the death of her husband, and that the court basely failed to reward her for her services in Holland. She was driven to her pen, and she attempted to write in a style that should be mistaken for that of a man. Her earliest attempt was taken from a novel of La Calprenède, a tragedy of 'The Young King,' in verse. She did not find a manager or even a publisher who would take it, and she put it away. She gradually, however, made friends among the playwrights of the day, and particularly with Edward Ravenscroft, with whom there is reason to believe that her relations were very close. He wrote many of her early epilogues for her. In 1671 she produced at the Duke's Theatre the tragicomedy of the 'Forc'd Marriage,' in which Otway, a boy from college, unsuccessfully appeared on the stage for the first and only time in the part of the king. Still in 1671, she brought out and printed a coarse comedy, called 'The Amourous Prince.' It would appear that she had been for some time knocking in vain at the doors of the theatres; it does not seem to be known what induced the management of the Duke's to bring out two plays by a new writer within one year. In 1673 she published the 'Dutch Lover,' a comedy. Her tragedy of 'Abdelazar,' a rifacimento of Marlowe's 'Lust's Dominion,' was acted at the Duke's Theatre late in the year 1676, and published in 1677. This play contains the beautiful song, 'Love in fantastic triumph sat.' In 1677 she enjoyed a series of dramatic successes. She brought out the 'Rover,' an anonymous comedy. This play