by Janet Todd
During the first part of the journey, Scot still appeared reticent and Behn had to use all her reputed charm, stopping short, she implied in her report to Halsall, of actual seduction. The charm offensive worked, and, from being shy, Scot became ‘so extreamly willing to under take the service that he saide more to conferme me then I could expect’. Indeed he grew positively expansive, ‘seemingly passionate in the busen’. Perhaps there were frequent stops at inns.
Despite his growing cooperativeness, however, Scot remained insistent that for further information she, not he, should put herself in jeopardy by coming to Holland. He returned to the point at intervals throughout the long day and night of talk. It was, he urged, easier for Behn to travel. Scot did not mention his terror of the angry Corney, for the situation of Corney was rather too close to Behn’s. Instead, he told her only of his anxiety about Colonel Bampfield, his ‘ally’ and commander, who, he claimed, was horribly possessive and watched his every move. Scot was greatly afraid of giving any cause for suspicion.
As it turned out, what he claimed was right: he should indeed have feared Bampfield. To Aphra Behn, however, it must have seemed that the Colonel was Scot’s obsession, an obsession to which he would return in every communication. Not only did Bampfield appal Scot with his baseness but he rebuked him with his social skills—Bampfield was so ingratiating he had even been entertained by the young Prince of Orange at his country house in Scheveningen. What also irked Scot was his inferior position in Bampfleld’s regiment. He disliked soldiering and intended to leave it soon after his return to Holland. Fearing the change would make him less useful, he added that he would settle in The Hague, offer his services directly to the Dutch, and relay information to the English. To justify his envious obsession with Bampfield, Scot implicated Behn: the Colonel knew of her coming and had received a description; indeed he, Scot, had had to deny it when Bampfield accosted him with the news.
The result of the night’s conference was that Behn agreed to move her party to The Hague. Despite her initial poor impression of him, she had been convinced that Scot was indeed a sincere man—although he had a discomfiting verbal habit of speaking of himself as ‘another person’—while, on his side, Scot declared himself willing to answer all the questions in her ‘Memorialls’. They parted amicably, Scot dashing off to Arnhem where he was to receive his Dutch pay. He expected to meet up with Behn again in Holland.
When he had gone Behn learnt in dismay that both Sir Antony and Lord Stafford had observed the meeting. She would not tell Scot, nor ask them to be discreet. She was supposed to be on a secret mission. In a slightly dissatisfied mood she sat down to write her first report. She had little time to complete it and was worried how to express herself. As all the spies knew, it was important to gain the attention and approval of the spy-masters in London and appropriate style was essential. She began by telling Halsall of her plan to go to Holland which she believed he ‘would have me to do’; so she would not be in Antwerp to await an answer. She tried to be complacent about her performance and her ability to manipulate Scot for their ends; yet she sensed that her information was more gossip and narrative interest than hard fact.10 Like Scot, she was eager to promise better in the future: ‘by the next post you may expect som thing of me & from us.’ The more detailed report, probably dispatched the next day, may have miscarried, since it is not in the records.
As Sir Antony had now confided in her that he served the King and was himself bound on business to enemy Holland, Behn felt justified in telling him more of her affairs. He had seen her with the jumpy Scot and she might just as well be ‘ffree’ with him, although, in telling Halsall this, she revealed some uneasiness. It was pleasant to have such a man to talk to. He quickly made himself invaluable by showing her a secret way to send and receive letters from Whitehall.
On his side, Sir Antony had by now formed his opinion. However compelling Scot might be in his demand that she come to The Hague, he advised Behn not to go. If she entered Holland at all, she should stay nearer the border. He suggested Dordrecht close to Rotterdam as a suitable place, less hostile to the English since it was at odds with the Dutch leader, De Witt. She agreed to follow this advice, especially since her conversations with Sir Antony had made her aware of receiving more protestations than intelligence from Scot, who had been concerned with his own skin rather than hers. She would, she told Halsall, change her plans again and go to Dordrecht in three days’ time. The advice was probably right, since the Dutch authorities were now vigilant. Lord Stafford tried to cross the border in early September and was questioned rigorously, suspected as an adroit operator. At the end of September he was still detained, humbly apologising for an out-of-date passport, reminding the Dutch of his past services and asking permission to travel through Holland for his health.
Apart from espionage advice, Sir Antony provided a useful ear for Behn’s money worries. She had set off from England with a bill for £50, given to her by Halsall. When this was changed into Flemish money, it yielded only £40 for, England being at war, the rate of exchange was not in its favour. With this deflated sum, she had to keep herself, her brother and the rest of her party.
Beyond the sum from Halsall, Behn had no private resources, except for a few personal jewels; if the elusive Mr Behn had left her anything, it was certainly not cash. She could not borrow money from Sir Antony, but he comforted her when she asked in despair what more she could do. He assured her that she was indeed being as ‘ffrugal’ as possible. This may have been the case, although frugality and thrift were never virtues Behn much praised; £40 was not a great deal for several people in an expensive city, but it was a considerable sum to have spent in a few days. Whether extravagantly or thriftily, the money had gone and Behn desperately needed more. Yet she was uneasily aware, when she asked for it, that she had sent nothing of value back to Whitehall. Still, funds were a necessity if they wanted her to go to Dordrecht.
After concluding her letter to Halsall, Behn sat down again to write to Scot to change the place of assignation. She sensed that she had been a little gullible. She now wanted ‘better sattisffection’, more in deeds than words.
Having dispatched this note, she relaxed. There was company enough; she had met a merchant whose wife was in Amsterdam and with whom she had struck up a friendship—perhaps an old associate of her husband’s, perhaps a contact through Scot. She continued also to discuss matters with Sir Antony, soon to leave Antwerp. Happily she had found a successor as confidant in Hieronymous or Jerome Nipho, who lived in Flanders but had often visited England and had, indeed, just returned from there. Although Behn seems unaware of it, Nipho was in fact one of the three main agents of the English government in Flanders, the principal one in Antwerp, retained at a fee of £100 a year to spy on the navy. He was a fund of ideas on secret strategies and he suggested that she receive letters from Halsall through him, since he would be far less suspect than she—this was indeed one of his functions for all the agents. Nipho was also useful to moan to, since he had much experience in trying to prise money out of Whitehall. With such men Behn set up a sort of court, in which they became her advisers, enjoying her conversation and perhaps keeping an eye on her. Rather ingenuously, when she next wrote to Halsall she mentioned these gentlemen as assisting her with council in her discouragement.
By now, events themselves were unhelpful. In early August, under Albemarle’s and Prince Rupert’s orders, an English fleet commanded by Sir Robert Holmes had sailed into the sheltered Vlie Channel off the island of Schelling, where about 150 Dutch merchant ships were lying at anchor, with only two men-of-war as guard. With the help of fire ships, the English managed to destroy and burn a large number, gleefully referring to the event as ‘Holmes’s Bonfire’. They then went ashore on the island of Schelling and burnt Brandaris, a town of about a thousand houses which contained stores for the East Indies fleet. Estimates of the number of Dutch vessels sunk varied, but all reports to England agreed it was a spectacular and treacherou
s exploit. Pamphlets were celebratory, and poets sprang into action: Joyfull News for England, or, a Congratulatory Verse upon our late happy Success in Firing 150 Dutch Ships in their own Harbours told the Dutch to ‘Draw up your Sluces, ye may quench a flame / But never hope to wash away the Shame.’11
Despite the English claim that the inhabitants of Brandaris had escaped except for the old who ‘were used with all gentleness and humanity’, the whole Dutch nation regarded the sacking as wanton cruelty, quite beyond the proper prosecution of war. Anti-English feeling grew intense. Troops were recalled from Germany to help prosecute the war with England and an admiral and some statesmen were dismissed as scapegoats.12 The merchant whom Behn had come to know was summoned by his worried wife back to a volatile Amsterdam, where there was much disordered anger against the English.
In such a climate, the rendezvous planned between Behn and Scot in Dordrecht became perilous, and her advisers were adamant that she should now not go to Holland at all. So she sent again to Scot cancelling the meeting and making another in a house two miles outside Antwerp on a Saturday in nine days’ time. ‘I daere as well be hanged as go,’ she said of Holland. It was a prudent decision, but not very daring espionage. Possibly Behn could not have left even if she wished. By now her money had quite disappeared and she could not settle the bills at the inn and other eating-places, which amounted to over £35. She and her party together were costing some £10 a week, with another £2 or £3 going on expenses necessary for her mission. She had pawned a ring at one of the many pawnshops of Antwerp, but it had not yielded much. She had also tried to slow the growth of her enormous debt by skimping on her own food—indeed hardly any of the money had been spent on herself—but she could not skimp for others. Her friends were sympathetic and reassuring, but they offered no loans.
While Behn was awaiting Scot’s inevitably disgruntled answer to the change of plan, she sat down again to write to Whitehall. She began apologetically, with a sinking feeling about her mission. She had nothing from Scot to send and was worried that she would be regarded as negligent. As she went on with her letter, the sense of inadequacy increased, until by the end she admitted herself ‘really sick till I give you som good accompt’. Her decision not to pursue Scot to Holland was correct and Antwerp was, she assured Halsall, ‘the nerest part of Flanders to him’. Yet it made her dissatisfied with herself and she expressed this by distancing herself from Scot, calling him a ‘Rogue’ and declaring that she would be warier of him in future. Her main burden was, however, money. She was in the costly town for London’s benefit, not her own, ‘it being no delight at all for me...but much the contrary’. Possibly she could have found cheaper lodging, but there was little suitable around and it would now be difficult to extricate herself from the Rosa Noble where she owed so large a sum. Since she had to stay in Antwerp or nearby, she could not ‘flit’, as so many of the Cavaliers had done; if she tried to do so, she would probably end in debtors’ prison.
To improve her situation, Behn hit on the plan of sending Piers to London to fetch funds. This had the advantage of giving her one less mouth to feed and ensuring safe delivery of the money she trusted would be forthcoming. She could have sent her brother, but was keeping him to carry Scot’s pardon when it was agreed.
The day after Behn dispatched her letter had been appointed for the meeting with Scot. Despite misgivings, he was at the designated place outside Antwerp, eager to show good faith by answering the questions in the ‘Memorialls’. He and Behn discussed each point; then Scot wrote his answers in his own hand—she thought this might impress Whitehall since it necessarily placed him in some danger. As for himself, he claimed he was awaiting only the royal pardon before openly espousing the English cause; he reverenced Charles II as ‘his Lawfull Soveraigne’ and would do all to serve him within his ‘slender capacity, & possibly mean opportunities’.
Scot estimated that probably five men-of-war had been destroyed in the encounter on the Vlie, though some claimed only two or three. The whole Dutch fleet was now mutinous and in disarray, as was the army, several companies of which had been reorganised to prevent plotting. The towns were in a similar state: law and order had broken down and people were openly murdering each other on the streets. So much for Holland. When he turned to the dissidents, Scot was more detailed and less apocalyptic. He was aware of the English obsession about a land invasion, but downplayed it, rightly believing that there was no such design. Although there was not much actual plotting, however, there was much incipient treachery, most laid at the door of Scot’s grand obsession, Colonel Bampfield, ‘the most dexterous & perniciously malicious enemy’ and ‘the most desperate and inveterate villain of all’.
Bampfield was, declared the incensed Scot, a spider in the web of intrigue emanating from Holland. Among his agents was Sands Temple, a lieutenant in the English navy prepared to bring over to the Dutch any ship he might command—in her next letter to Halsall, Behn relayed Scot’s warning not to let Temple, then in prison in England, know that he had been discovered; otherwise when he came out he would suspect Scot and herself and deliver both to the Dutch.13 Scot also mentioned Joseph Hill, an agent of Bampfield’s and probably of the Dutch, on whom he later blamed his necessary treachery to Corney. (Hill, he claimed, had been about to betray him, Corney and Oudart when he, Scot, had minimised the damage by betraying Corney and Oudart, thus saving his useful self.) Joseph Hill had agreed to go over to England for Bampfield, to help the dissidents, but Bampfield was being very close with Scot, who thus did not know whether or not Hill had left. Finally, Scot named Colepeper’s cousin, Algernon Sidney. Whitehall had some interest in him since he was known to be writing a ‘Treatise in defence of a Republique, & ag...st Monarchy’.14 There was no mention of Stafford.
When Scot had finished, Behn noticed that he had tried to write his report in formal third-person style but failed. It was all due to ‘want of time’, she explained. Again Behn had been won over. In Scot’s absence, she doubted, but when she met him she was converted: ‘I beleeve him in all things,’ she wrote of the man she had recently called ‘Rogue’. No doubt their joint experience of debt pulled them together, but at times her gullibility seems extreme: for instance, she believed Scot would leave his military post solely to become a royal agent. So won over was she that again she promised to come to The Hague and even judged Scot delicate on the subject of money. She, however, had no such delicacy, and she reminded her employers once more of their responsibilities. Money was needed for herself and for Scot, now doubly disadvantaged since the Dutch had not paid him either. News was mainly available in Amsterdam, but Scot had debts there and must pay them if he wanted to visit. He also needed money for information: ‘pray Sir think with all speede of thes things,’ she begged Halsall.
By now, the intimacy of Surinam was re-established. Aphra Behn hardly imagined relationships between men and women that were not charged with sexuality. So Scot and she, both excited by secrecy, might well have come together for more than business, although she never wrote of Scot as inspiring love. She believed that he was bargaining for his life or at least for life in England, but she may also have thought herself chosen for the mission at his request: he was acting for her, out of a passion kindled in Surinam.
The tie grew emotional: together Scot and Behn formed an island of loyalty in a sea of corruption. Scot had said he would trust none but her and, warmed by his flattery, Behn was convinced of his truth. Indeed she was now feeling uneasy that he had had to give so much with no other surety than her word—an anxiety she would convey in Oroonoko, when the narrator worries over her unfulfillable commitments to the slave-prince. In the muddled politics of Surinam, the narrator made inappropriate political promises and played an intimate role that was half sincere and half calculating. As the narrator to Oroonoko, so she to Scot was promising liberty or pardon in the name of a foreign power which in the end she knew she could not control. And, like in Oroonoko, she herself might always be betrayed by that po
wer or by the man she was dealing with but never quite knew or trusted.
Behn’s intimacy with William Scot was doomed not to develop and this was probably the last meeting the pair would have. Although Scot stayed for three days in Antwerp, Behn had now learnt of Corney’s murderous designs and was afraid to endanger Scot by visiting him. As for Scot, he did not care to wait any longer—it was pleasant to eat at someone else’s expense, but he was heartily glad to leave Flanders.
By this stage Behn too was finding Corney troublesome. Though accustomed to using churches for assignations, she was surprised to be insistently accosted there in mid-August by a man who turned out to be Thomas Corney. He knew, he said, that she had had dealings with Scot and wished to warn her that Scot was a rogue, traitor, and drunk. He had learnt of part of Behn’s purposes through informers, but he did not know of her directly from Whitehall and could thus hardly credit that she had come purposely to deal with Scot. He thought he would be harming both by telling the authorities of their intimacy, sure it would lead to Behn’s being ‘clapt up’ when she returned to London. Perhaps, like Byam, he was also irked by a relationship in which he did not share.
From then on Corney trailed Aphra Behn. In the last original play staged in her lifetime, The Luckey Chance, she remembered Antwerp as she invented an intercepted letter from the Low Countries, and a man’s plan to be another’s ‘evil Genius’: he would ‘haunt him at Bed and Board, he shall not sleep nor eat—disturb him at his Prayers, in his Embraces; and teaz him into Madness’.15 She probably had Corney in mind.
Corney did not justify his attendance with any entertaining talk; he had little of the wit Behn sought in men, being merely garrulous and inquisitive. She was bored by his constant maligning of the lowly ‘Trooper’ Scot who, he claimed, was scorned by Dutch and English alike. Yet she could not herself keep silent and she matched Corney’s boastfulness with her own. Soon she was displaying her papers as proof of her position. What he learnt shocked Corney profoundly, for she had indeed been sent to treat with Scot and offer a pardon to an habitual traitor, son of a regicide. It was all Halsall’s doing, he surmised: he had never liked the man. On top of this, Corney regarded himself as a professional agent and in Behn he saw a rank amateur. He enjoyed namedropping and was irritated to hear her prating of Lord Arlington. It was all a ‘Cheat’ and he would alert Arlington of the fact that she had even managed to settle in an inn swarming with Dutch spies; they knew her business quite as well as she did.