The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I | Page 6

some ��150 which enabled her to settle her affairs and start for home in January, 1667.
[Footnote 12: There do not appear to be any grounds for the oft-repeated assertions that Mrs. Behn communicated the intelligence when the Dutch were planning an attack (afterwards carried out) on the Thames and Medway squadrons, and that her warning was scoffed at.]
[Footnote 13: Had he been imprisoned for political reasons it is impossible that there should have been so speedy a prospect of release.]
But the chapter of her troubles was by no means ended. Debt weighed like a millstone round her neck. As the weary months went by and Aphra was begging in vain for her salary, long overdue, to be paid, Butler, a harsh, dour man with heart of stone, became impatient and resorted to drastic measures, eventually flinging her into a debtor's prison. There are extant three petitions, undated indeed, but which must be referred to the early autumn of 1668, from Mrs. Behn to Charles II. Sadly complaining of two years' bitter sufferings, she prays for an order to Mr. May[14] or Mr. Chiffinch[15] to satisfy Butler, who declares he will stop at nothing if he is not paid within a week. In a second document she sets out the reasons for her urgent claim of ��150. Both Mr. Halsall and Mr. Killigrew know how justly it is her due, and she is hourly threatened with an execution. To this is annexed a letter from the poor distracted woman to Killigrew, which runs as follows:--
Sr.
if you could guess at the affliction of my soule you would I am sure Pity me 'tis to morrow that I must submitt my self to a Prison the time being expird & though I indeauerd all day yesterday to get a ffew days more I can not because they say they see I am dallied w{th} all & so they say I shall be for euer: so I can not reuoke my doome I haue cryd myself dead & could find in my hart to break through all & get to y{e} king & neuer rise till he weare pleasd to pay this; but I am sick & weake & vnfitt for yt; or a Prison; I shall go to morrow: But I will send my mother to y{e} king w{th} a Pitition for I see euery body are words: & I will not perish in a Prison from whence he swears I shall not stirr till y{e} uttmost farthing be payd: & oh god, who considers my misery & charge too, this is my reward for all my great promises, & my indeauers. Sr if I have not the money to night you must send me som thing to keepe me in Prison for I will not starue.
A. Behn.
Endorsed:
For Mr. Killigrew this.
[Footnote 14: Baptist May, Esq. (1629-98), Keeper of the Privy Purse.]
[Footnote 15: William Chiffinch, confidential attendant and pimp to Charles II.]
[Illustration: (Letter transcribed in body text)]
There was no immediate response however, even to this pathetic and heart-broken appeal, and in yet a third petition she pleads that she may not be left to suffer, but that the ��150 be sent forthwith to Edward Butler, who on Lord Arlington's declaring that neither order nor money had been transmitted, threw her straightway into gaol.
It does not seem, however, that her imprisonment was long. Whether Killigrew, of whom later she spoke in warm and admiring terms, touched at last, bestirred himself on her behalf and rescued her from want and woe, whether Mrs. Amy Amis won a way to the King, whether help came by some other path, is all uncertain. In any case the debt was duly paid, and Aphra Behn not improbably received in addition some compensation for the hardships she had undergone.
'The rest of her Life was entirely dedicated to Pleasure and Poetry; the Success in which gain'd her the Acquaintance and Friendship of the most Sensible Men of the Age, and the Love of not a few of different Characters; for tho' a Sot have no Portion of Wit of his own, he yet, like old Age, covets what he cannot enjoy.'
More than dubious and idly romancing as the early Memoirs are, nevertheless this one sentence seems to sum up the situation thenceforth pretty aptly, if in altogether too general terms. Once extricated from these main difficulties Mrs. Behn no doubt took steps to insure that she should not, if it lay in her power, be so situated again. I would suggest, indeed, that about this period, 1669, she accepted the protection of some admirer. Who he may have been at first, how many more there were than one, how long the various amours endured, it is idle to speculate. She was for her period as thoroughly unconventional as many another woman