The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I | Page 3

Great
Poetess, O thy stupendous lays The world admires and the Muses
praise. The name was then Aphara. The Biog. Brit., whilst insisting on
Aphara as correct and citing the stone as evidence, none the less prints
Apharra. Her works usually have Mrs. A. Behn. One Quarto misprints
'Mrs. Anne Behn'. There are, of course, many variants of the name.
Afara, and Afra are common. Oldys in his MS. notes on Langbaine
writes Aphra or Aphora, whilst the Muses Mercury, September, 1707,
has a special note upon a poem by Mrs. Behn to say 'this Poetess' true
Name was Apharra.' Even Aphaw (Behen, in the 1682 warrant,) and
Fyhare (in a petition) occur.]
[Footnote 5: He died in 1642.]
[Footnote 6: The Vicar of Wye, the Rev. Edgar Lambert, in answer to
my inquiries courteously writes: 'In company with Mr. C. S. Orwin,
whose book, The History of Wye Church and College, has just been
published, I have closely examined the register and find no mention of
"Johnson", nor of the fact that Aphara Amis' father was a "barber".']
[Footnote 7: Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1660-1720),
sometime Maid of Honour to Queen Mary of Modena. She had true
lyric genius. For a generous appreciation see Gosse, Gossip in a
Library (1891).]
[Footnote 8: Then unprinted but now included in the very voluminous
edition of Lady Winchilsea's Poems, ed. M. Reynolds, Chicago, 1903.]
To these is appended this note: 'Mrs. Behn was Daughter to a Barber,
who liv'd formerly in Wye, a little Market Town (now much decay'd) in
Kent. Though the account of her life before her Works pretends
otherwise; some Persons now alive Do testify upon their Knowledge
that to be her Original.' It is a pity that whilst the one error concerning
Aphra's birthplace is thus remedied, the mistake as to the nature of her

father's calling should have been initiated.
Aphra Amis, then, was born early in July, 1640, at Wye, Kent. When
she was of a tender age the Amis family left England for Surinam; her
father, who seems to have been a relative of Francis, Lord Willoughby
of Parham, sometime administrator of several British colonies in the
West Indies, having been promised a post of some importance in these
dependencies. John Amis died on the voyage out, but his widow and
children necessarily continued their journey, and upon their arrival
were accommodated at St. John's Hill, one of the best houses in the
district. Her life and adventures in Surinam Aphra has herself
realistically told in that wonderfully vivid narrative, Oroonoko. [9] The
writer's bent had already shown itself. She kept a journal as many girls
will, she steeped herself in the interminable romances fashionable at
that time, in the voluminous Pharamond, Cléopatre, Cassandre,
Ibrahim, and, above all, Le Grand Cyrus, so loved and retailed to the
annoyance of her worthy husband by Mrs. Pepys; with a piece of which
Dorothy Osborne was 'hugely pleased'.
[Footnote 9: In 'Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko' Dr. Bernbaum elaborately
endeavours to show that this story is pure fiction. His arguments, in
many cases advanced with no little subtlety and precision, do not
appear (to me at least) to be convincing. We have much to weigh in the
contrary balance: Mrs. Behn's manifest first-hand knowledge of, and
extraordinary interest in, colonial life; her reiterated asseverations that
every experience detailed in this famous novel is substantially true; the
assent of all her contemporaries. It must further be remembered that
Aphra was writing in 1688, of a girlhood coloured by and seen through
the enchanted mists of a quarter of a century. That there are slight
discrepancies is patent; the exaggerations, however, are not merely
pardonable but perfectly natural. One of Dr. Bernbaum's most crushing
arguments, when sifted, seems to resolve itself into the fact that whilst
writing Oroonoko Mrs. Behn evidently had George Warren's little book,
An Impartial Description of Surinam (London, 1667), at hand. Could
anything be more reasonable than to suppose she would be intimately
acquainted with a volume descriptive of her girlhood's home? Again,
Dr. Bernbaum bases another line of argument on the assumption that

Mrs. Behn's father was a barber. Hence the appointment of such a man
to an official position in Surinam was impossible, and, 'if Mrs. Behn's
father was not sent to Surinam, the only reason she gives for being
there disappears'. We know from recent investigation that John Amis
did not follow a barber's trade, but was probably of good old stock.
Accordingly, the conclusions drawn by Dr. Bernbaum from this point
cannot now be for a moment maintained.]
It was perhaps from the reading of La Calprenède and Mlle de Scudéri
Aphra gained that intimate knowledge of French which served her well
and amply in after years during her literary life; at any rate she