by Janet Todd
By now Behn herself was a known poet, with her manuscripts circulating to friends, and she included four of her own works in Covent Garden Drolery. She did not, however, use the verses already published in her plays: again this suggests she may not have wanted to make publicly clear her involvement. One of the four included poems proved immensely versatile. A description of love-making in the pastoral world, it was used by Behn repeatedly, with variously sexed protagonists and different seductive inflections:
I led my Silvia to a Grove,
Where all the Boughs did shade us
The Sun it self, though it had strove
It could not have betray’d us.
The place secur’d from humane eyes
No other fear alows,
But when the Winds do gently rise;
And kiss the yeilding Boughs.
Down there we sate upon the Moss,
And did begin to play,
A thousand wanton tricks to pass,
The heat of all the day.
And many kisses I did give,
And she returned the same,
Which made her willing to receive;
That which I dare not name.
My greedy eyes no ayds requir’d,
To tell their amorous Tale,
On her that was already fir’d:
’Twas easie to prevail.
I did but kiss and claspe her round,
[Whilst] they my thoughts exprest,
And laid her gently on the ground:
Oh! who can guess the rest.19
After Aphra Behn’s death, the dubious Muses Mercury reprinted this poem, claiming it was from a manuscript. At the end the editor wrote: ‘As Amorous as these Verses may be thought, they have been reduc’d to bring them within the Rules of Decency, which all Writers ought to observe, so instead of a Diversion they will become a Nuisance.’ Since there is nothing indecent in the earlier versions, this seems journalistic puffing to make the verses appear more scandalous in a less frank age.
In fact ‘I led my Silvia to a Grove’, like Behn’s other slight songs, was conventional enough, the sort of mildly risqué pastoral ditty being written by a host of literate men and women. In his Essay on Poetry, the Earl of Mulgrave described the form as a song with ‘expression easy, and the fancy high’, formally perfect and informal in style. The danger was that it could become insipid. Parodically Etherege summed up much of the sentiment: ‘How charming Phyllis is! how fair! / Ah, that she were as willing...’.20
The Covent Garden Drolery came out in 1672 from James Magnes. It was a success and inspired a Bristol imitation, the editor of which advised his muse ‘Humbly to cast herself on Madam Bhend.’ In his play The Country Wife, Wycherley included it in the choice of reading-matter for his unsophisticated country heroine, Margery Pinchwife.
Behn and Dryden were of the new breed of men and women of letters. Before them authors had been aristocrats, actors or court officials, or they had had some other source of income or function. In this generation, however, a few began to make a living solely from writing. Such authors had to be flexible and write in whatever genre was required or fashionable. Most began in the theatre, the most lucrative place, and thus they gained a sense of audience at the outset. They also relied on patronage, but, so far, Behn had showed that this was not essential.
Later in the century, when Behn’s and Dryden’s careers had indelibly made their mark, a character in A Comparison between Two Stages grumbled:
I am an Enemy to those mercenary Scriblers who get their Bread by [writing]: I have always thought it a pity that the Muses shou’d be prostituted to every wretched Fellow, that because he lies in a Garret, fancies himself on the top of Parnassus; ’Twas never any where thus but in England. The Greek and Latin Poets were Men of Figure in their Country, of Wealth and Reputation; ours, for the most part, the Dregs of the People; some of ’em bred at School upon publick Charity; who proving Rebellious to their Parents and Masters, escape from their Discipline, and for a shift betake themselves to this Trade: No wonder Poetry lies under such a scandal, to such a degree, that it’s become proverbial to say—As poor as a Poet—when indeed some of ’em were Beggars before they began, and their cursed Poetry serves but to keep ’em poorer.
To which another replied, ‘the Trade of Play-writing is now (as we say) one of Jack’s last Shifts.’
It was not an uncommon view. Behn herself was caught in this rhetoric, which even Dryden could not escape. As a woman she was of course more vulnerable, for, as a typical disgruntled critic of A Comparison between Two Stages exclaimed, ‘What a Pox have Women to do with the Muses? I grant you the Poets call the Nine Muses by the names of Women, but why so? not because the Sex has anything to do with Poetry, but because in that Sex they’re much fitter for prostitutes.’21 But it was the vulgarity of writing itself that was most often attacked, and, if Dryden was not quite seen as prostituting himself like Behn, he was found pimping for his ‘Young, plump and Buxsome’ Muse, whom he made into a ‘Hackney-Whore’ for vile-Pence... Against the Laws of Art’.22
Whatever the scoffing elite might think, however, Aphra Behn knew her writing to have been quite popular and this was its most salient attribute. With two successful plays and an anthology under her belt, she could pride herself on having launched her career. The money she had earned, somewhat diminished by payment of debts, could procure her the kind of wardrobe that allowed her to mix with people of ‘Quality’ in the town and on the periphery of the court, and afford the chairs, hackney coaches and link boys needed to keep herself fine. Her society may have been a little louche like her poetry, but so was a large proportion of the court.
Chapter 13
The Dutch Lover and Theatrical Conflict
‘delicious whoring, drinking and fighting’
In the 1670s London was being rebuilt fast, although selfish competing interests prevented it from conforming to any one conception. Emphasising the need to rid the town of ‘horrid smoke’, Evelyn had imagined public buildings by the side of the river, while Christopher Wren visualised them fronting wide streets. The King ordered new houses to be of brick and stone, to have drainage pipes on the sides and to have flat facades. Some people complied, some did not. St James’s Park was transformed for public use, part of it being drained, and a pattern of ornamental water and avenues in the French manner imposed. On the new lake there was skating—or ‘sliding’. The Duke of York was especially adept. The Fire had emphasised the trend, also influenced by the court at Westminster, of fashion’s moving westward. In the narrow dirty streets of the walled City, coaches could not easily be manoeuvred, but, in the growing West End, fashionable equipages could be seen to advantage in the wider streets. Entrepreneurs made vast fortunes through land speculation in the new suburbs, while sellers prospered by following their customers. London Bridge and the New Exchange in the Strand, consisting of about a hundred small shops on ground and upper floors, were the main attractions for trade to remain east at all.
As long as Behn had money, her domestic needs could easily be met in or near the old City. She could get her maid to buy food from street markets or barrows and she herself could obtain what she needed on London Bridge or hunt and haggle for cloth and accessories in the New Exchange. She could browse in book shops on the lower floor or go to Paternoster Row, where publishers had re-established themselves after being horribly decimated by the Fire (they had sought to save their wares by depositing them in old St Paul’s, in the event the greatest bonfire of all). Unbound sheets were set out on tables and Behn could choose which she wanted to be bound or, more economically, read them in the shop to see if they were worth the considerable purchase price. As a good customer, she was probably able to borrow sheets and use shops rather like lending libraries.
If she could work partly by candlelight, Behn would have been free much of the day, breakfasting on cheese and toast, often softened in a mug of ale either in her lodgings or in a tavern. These taverns were usually conver
ted private houses and consisted of several small rooms where friends could assemble. They were open all day and a patron could expect food or drink at whatever time it was wished. For lunch she could have meat: pigeon, mutton steak, or Westphalian ham. A fancy meal could cost as much as two guineas, but, at a lesser inn or ‘ordinary’, she could get a reasonable dinner for 3d. Probably she attended the expensive eating establishment called Lockets only when treated.
In the capital, Behn’s social life flourished. Believing that politics and sex were not distinct, she caught her shifting, amorous society in a poem called ‘Our Cabal’ after the governing political group around Lord Arlington. In pastoral mode, always an easier literary realm for a woman to enter and describe than the coarse, violent, urban one of so much male verse, the poem described a sunny picnic to celebrate the newly restored May Day. Music played, bagpipes blew and the crowd talked and danced. As in her secret letters, Behn hid her friends, this time under pseudonyms. Some may be guessed, but not yet ‘Urania’ and ‘Alexis’. Urania was dressed in white, adorned with spring flowers, her black curling hair blowing seductively in the wind; her beau was diffident and foppish: ‘The price of Flocks h’has made a Prey / To th’Usual Vanity of this day.’ (Behn was not commonly worried about the economic costs of display; so the young man must have had more than usual on his back.) As hidden now are ‘Martillo’ and ‘Phyllis’, glossed by contemporaries as Edward Butler and Ms Masters. If this was the Mr Butler who had threatened Behn with prison, it suggests how necessary it was in the small society of London to control feeling and superficially observe good manners. Perhaps she would need his services again.
Then there were the unattached young men, John Cooper, yearning to be a writer, whom Behn flattered by addressing as ‘My dear Brother’. Later he became a translator and may have helped her with Latin. He was so young he still declared he despised sex, but his frank demeanour and lack of concern to impress, his vivacity and verve in throwing himself into any pastime of dancing, singing or playing, made him attractive. He already had many conquests. As had ‘Ed. Bed.’, possibly Edward Bedingfeild, a fellow Gray’s Inn lawyer to whom Hoyle left £50 in his will.1 His conquests tended to be men. Erotic feeling between men had always been a part of the pastoral world and, as her plays showed, Behn had little problem with it. She always found androgynous people especially seductive: ‘A softer Youth was never seen, / His Beauty Maid; but Man, his Mein.’ Ed. Bed. was dressed fashionably but less foppishly than Alexis’.
Among the young women was ‘Amoret’, sighing for N.V. Amoret may be the teenaged Elizabeth Barry who would become the most celebrated actress of her age. Already Behn had come to admire her forceful character, although Barry still had the acting craft to learn. She had a background almost as obscure as Behn’s and the same habits of secrecy. The famously unreliable Edmund Curll later did for her what the memoirist did for Behn: gave her respectable antecedents, declaring her father a Cavalier barrister and colonel who ruined himself in the royal cause. Others, however, claimed that she had been a servant in Norfolk. Whatever her provenance, Barry was a quick and clever girl; she had come into the care of Lady Davenant, who had educated her and introduced her to society. Davenant himself was said to have tried and failed to train her for the stage. If so, and if her birth date is correct at 1658, then she would have been branded a failure before the age of ten (Davenant died in 1668). The date may be wrong however: by the time Barry was famous enough for anyone to care about it, she had reason to falsify it, like Behn with hers.2
On this particular May Day, Elizabeth Barry (if it were she) was apparently unhappy because she loved someone whose ‘Amorous Heat was laid’ and she was feeling both lovelorn and angry. Her young man might have been the pale Nick Vernatty, an acquaintance of Jeffrey Boys, something of a Don Juan figure despite his shyness. He had the unnerving habit of sympathising with those he harmed, declaring he had not expected them to love him. He must have had an uncomfortable time with the glowering Amoret.
The most interesting couple of the group should have been Behn herself and Jeffrey Boys, ‘Amyntas’, seductive in body and mind, ‘Author of my Sighs and Flame’, to whom Behn revealed her love with every glance. Although Amyntas had ‘Majesty above his years’ and the androgynous qualities of sweetness, wit and vigour, combined with a ‘lovely Shape’, he did not dominate the poem. This was left to Lycidas or Lysidas, the learned and tough lawyer John Hoyle, to whom Jeffrey Boys may have introduced Behn, since both were at Gray’s Inn.3
Hoyle was the son of a Parliamentarian alderman from Yorkshire who had been so distressed by Charles I’s execution that he hanged himself on the first anniversary of the event.4 The son had become the sort of ex-Puritan that, in Burnet’s words, had embraced the Restoration ‘by going into the stream, and laughing at all religion’. In politics, however, he was reputed still to be a republican. In ‘Our Cabal’, Hoyle was an arrogant dark man with fierce black eyes, who trifled with women. Unlike the other men in the group, he was silent, and his taciturnity was curiously alluring. Not boasting of his amorous success, he indicated it with his self-confidence and contempt. He enjoyed power over others and himself, feeling it weakness to show response to or interest in anyone else’s feelings. That Hoyle’s disdain for women was connected with his homosexual desires was made clear in the poem, for it was on Hoyle that the young ‘Ed. Bed.’ bestowed his love; Hoyle ‘pays his Tenderness again, / Too Amorous for a Swain to a Swain’. The amorous looks between the two men made a circle of desire which attracted voyeurs.5
Periods of carefree enjoyment of urban living must have been short for Behn. Her writing breathes of pleasure and anxiety, each with its distinct time, for she considered that it was Puritans or Dissenters who poisoned their days with agonising over the past and future. Being highly gregarious and garrulous, Behn threw herself into the delights of the present as if there were no tomorrow. When tomorrow came, she stirred herself and wrote furiously, so that she could procure another short period of ease. It was a see-sawing sort of existence that seems to have suited her temperament, if not perhaps her health. A perennial anxiety was money, for Behn was never financially secure, her expenditure frequently outstripping her earnings. On one occasion Jeffrey Boys declared that he gave ‘astrea 5s for a Guiny if she live half a year’. Perhaps she was ill and he thought she might not last six months. Perhaps, since the words come from his account book, he records a bit of exorbitant usury, whereby, for the loan of an immediate five shillings, Behn was to return over four times the amount in six months’ time. It was presumably some while ago since she had needed ‘keeping’ by any man. The transaction might have been a step in a process of disengagement. Jeffrey Boys sinks out of Behn’s amorous life.6
He was not replaced at once, although she may have suffered pretenders, each perhaps a little worried about addressing an emancipated theatrical woman who seemed to want the freedoms of a man within the sexual game, while needing the homage due to the feminine woman. Probably she refused to understand that few men could accept such a being. One uneasy man, whom she herself admired for a time, was hidden as Lysander in ‘To Lysander, on some Verses he writ, and asking more for his Heart than ’twas worth’. He was apparently a married man since his other lady is Behn’s ‘happy licenc’d Thief’ and he had offered intimacy far too cautiously:
Take back that Heart, you with such Caution give,
Take the fond valu’d Trifle back;
I hate Love-Merchants that a Trade wou’d drive;
And meanly cunning Bargains make.7
Like other men later, he was critical of Behn for assuming a masculine demeanour and freedom, but she protested: ‘Be just, my lovely Swain, and do not take / Freedoms you’ll not to me allow.’ If they tried a relationship, they should do so ‘upon the honest Square’. Probably Lysander failed the challenge.
Out of necessity, Behn began another play, this time for the grand, new, purpose-built theatre at Dorset Garden, into which Betterton and
Harris had, after much preparation, just moved the Duke’s Company.8 How should she write for this exciting location? While she had been composing heroic tragicomedies in the late 1660s, Etherege and Dryden had been putting on frolicking plays which included libertines and sceptical witty couples. Indeed she had used their epilogues and prologues in her Covent Garden Drolery. With their libertine views, the plays were thoroughly of the town and in the tone of court culture, presenting rakish men both exploitative of and attractive to women, men so witty that by the end of the play the audience is satisfied to see them catch the rich virginal prize. The tendency to infidelity for which the ‘amorous prince’ had been so severely reprimanded was not punished and the rake’s final marriage was not prefaced by repentance. Should Behn move in this direction?
Another new mode was influenced by the French dramatist, Molière, himself influenced by Italian commedia dell’arte, with its stock characters, stylised acting, improvisation, and transformation. Behn’s friend Ravenscroft had adopted the mode, and his Citizen Turn’d Gentleman was an enormous success, pleasing both King and court. His Careless Lovers became an equal hit and much impressed Aphra Behn with its picture of the brisk young girl engaging the rake. In Ravenscroft’s play, the former announces that women are no longer ‘poor sneaking sheepish Creatures’ for, ‘in this Age, we know our own strength, and have wit enough to make use of our Talents’. If chaste, the heroine is ‘a little waggish’ in thoughts and, should a husband not suit, she resolves to ‘swear my self a Virgin, and consequently, Sue a Divorce against him for Impotency’. The proviso scene, in which a couple bargain over behaviour rather than the conventional money and property, includes a demand for complete sexual liberty after marriage for both partners.9