Wastrel’s Reviews > The Secret Life of Aphra Behn > Status Update

Interestingly, though, this doesn't actually seem like a mission to send a novice on. True, all she has to do is talk to William Scott. But she's expected not only to persuade him to become a triple agent, but also to obtain from him extensive, detailed naval information and the Dutch invasion plans.

This seems both rather important stuff, and also rather detailed stuff to demand of a random woman. I have to think that either Behn was an experienced spy at this point, or else perhaps she was inexperienced, but particularly suited to this task.

What Todd points to in that direction (but oddly doesn't make more of) is that Scott had allegedly fallen in love in Surinam. The person who reported that had mockingly referred to him chasing after a "shepherdess", Astrea - which of course is the persona Behn herself later adopted. Perhaps it's believable, then, that the King, needing someone to talk to Scott, might have chosen to appeal to Scott's former girlfriend? She would have needed the money* and been eager of the connexions, and may perhaps have been connected to the royalist cause when younger (Todd's suggestion of a role as a courier seems plausible). This would support Todd's theory that she had been in Surinam, although perhaps undermine the idea that she was sent there as a spy.

However, Afara's reports don't seem to discuss the connexion between her and Scott (which they might have done if that was the whole reason she was sent). Todd says that Scott has to 'deny' to his suspicious roommate that an agent of her description has arrived - is he perhaps denying that the girl he'd talked about has arrived as a spy, or is he just denying knowing anything about any spy?

Frustratingly, Todd hates to cite where her claims come from, or quote her sources, so it's really hard for the reader to assess whether she's right or not!


*Todd claims she is 'impoverished', yet she apparently takes three servants with her on her mission. Even if the King is paying, that's quite an entourage for a penniless, jobless writer to have picked up...

Fun fact: during the plague, a rumour circulated that venereal diseases protected sufferers against the plague, so London pimps put out adverts specifically to recruit diseased and infected women as prostitutes.

Just read an article from 1913 that absolutely demolishes the fictional 'memoirs' of Behn, as well as her own autobiographical claims, mostly for good reason. Refreshing to see someone talk about Behn in a scientific manner, directly quoting and citing sources and providing context. Makes Todd's approach - sources are ultimately mostly cited overall, but individual claims are generally not cited, and there are few quotes (except to bully Aphara for her poor spelling) - instead, Todd combines quotes from different sources with her own imagination to describe what, in her imaginary story version, happened. In a way, I see why she does it - this is a long book and almost everything is hypothetical, so citing everything as though it were a journal article would be extremely laborious. It's legitimate that she says upfront that she's speculating, and gives us the sources she's basing it on so we can check ourselves, and then just goes ahead with her reconstruction. Legitimate... but very annoying, particularly once you realise how much she skews and distorts some of her sources.

In particular, while some details, particularly about the surounding world, are sourced in some detail, much of the narrative is taken either from pure imagination or from the fictional memoirs, and while that's OK (there's no non-fictional biography to tell of), it would really be great if she was more clear WHICH bits were fictional (or 'speculative'), and which were actually true.

Oh, and this paper also makes the argumant that Aphra's real name was Aphara. This is the name she uses in her letters to the government, and the name that was put on her gravestone. However, the paper claims that the name on the (assumed) baptismal record is 'Ayfara'. However, Todd believes she was originally 'Eaffrey'. However, the paper's Ayfara Johnson is evidently a different person from Todd's Eaffrey Johnson - Ayfara was the daughter of a Kentish barber named John Johnson, and was born in Wye in July 1640, whereas Eaffrey was the daughter of a Kentish barber named Bartholomew Johnson, and was born in Harbledown in December 1640. Ayfara fits with the description from Anne Finch, but Eaffrey with the description from Thomas Colepepper.

It's a good display of the frustrating precision and yet inaccuracy of historical work. We know the exact day on which these two women, Ayfara and Eaffrey, were born - six months and approximately 10 miles apart, both to local barbers named Mr Johnson. And yet we have no real way to know which of these women went on to be a playwright. In the same way, we don't know exactly when Aphara was in Antwerp, or exactly why - but we do know the name of the husband and wife who owned the inn where she stayed (Jacomyna and Joanna Huckx). We don't know whether Aphara's husband was fictional, or, if real, where he came from or what happened to him - but we know all sorts of details about the comings and going of several people of that name. We don't know if she spent time in Surinam, but we know which ship she must have travelled on if she did! This was a period in which record-keeping was simultaneously pedantically precise, when it existed, and yet utterly incomplete. It feels like a period in which a tiny part of a street is let up by bright, directed floodlights - anything that steps into the light can be seen in almost forensic detail, but the rest of the street is enveloped in pitch blackness...

[Todd seems right to pick Eaffrey: Colepepper would have to be lying if he was wrong, as he claims personal knowledge, whereas Finch could perhaps be mistaken. If she knew Aphara was originally the daughter of Johnson the barber in a small town near Canterbury, born in 1640, she might well have heard from her connexions in Kent about Ayfara and assumed that Ayfara was Aphara - indeed, if Ayfara left the area, the people living around Wye, hearing about Aphara, might legitimately have assumed that she was Ayfara, when in fact she was Eaffrey...]

Just read an article from 1913 that absolutely demolishes the fictional 'memoirs' of Behn, as well as her own autobiographical claims, mostly for good reason. Refreshing to see someone talk about Behn in a scientific manner, directly quoting and citing sources and providing context. Makes Todd's approach - sources are ultimately mostly cited overall, but individual claims are generally not cited, and there are few quotes (except to bully Aphara for her poor spelling) - instead, Todd combines quotes from different sources with her own imagination to describe what, in her imaginary story version, happened. In a way, I see why she does it - this is a long book and almost everything is hypothetical, so citing everything as though it were a journal article would be extremely laborious. It's legitimate that she says upfront that she's speculating, and gives us the sources she's basing it on so we can check ourselves, and then just goes ahead with her reconstruction. Legitimate... but very annoying, particularly once you realise how much she skews and distorts some of her sources.

In particular, while some details, particularly about the surounding world, are sourced in some detail, much of the narrative is taken either from pure imagination or from the fictional memoirs, and while that's OK (there's no non-fictional biography to tell of), it would really be great if she was more clear WHICH bits were fictional (or 'speculative'), and which were actually true.

Oh, and this paper also makes the argumant that Aphra's real name was Aphara. This is the name she uses in her letters to the government, and the name that was put on her gravestone. However, the paper claims that the name on the (assumed) baptismal record is 'Ayfara'. However, Todd believes she was originally 'Eaffrey'. However, the paper's Ayfara Johnson is evidently a different person from Todd's Eaffrey Johnson - Ayfara was the daughter of a Kentish barber named John Johnson, and was born in Wye in July 1640, whereas Eaffrey was the daughter of a Kentish barber named Bartholomew Johnson, and was born in Harbledown in December 1640. Ayfara fits with the description from Anne Finch, but Eaffrey with the description from Thomas Colepepper.

It's a good display of the frustrating precision and yet inaccuracy of historical work. We know the exact day on which these two women, Ayfara and Eaffrey, were born - six months and approximately 10 miles apart, both to local barbers named Mr Johnson. And yet we have no real way to know which of these women went on to be a playwright. In the same way, we don't know exactly when Aphara was in Antwerp, or exactly why - but we do know the name of the husband and wife who owned the inn where she stayed (Jacomyna and Joanna Huckx). We don't know whether Aphara's husband was fictional, or, if real, where he came from or what happened to him - but we know all sorts of details about the comings and going of several people of that name. We don't know if she spent time in Surinam, but we know which ship she must have travelled on if she did! This was a period in which record-keeping was simultaneously pedantically precise, when it existed, and yet utterly incomplete. It feels like a period in which a tiny part of a street is let up by bright, directed floodlights - anything that steps into the light can be seen in almost forensic detail, but the rest of the street is enveloped in pitch blackness...

[Todd seems right to pick Eaffrey: Colepepper would have to be lying if he was wrong, as he claims personal knowledge, whereas Finch could perhaps be mistaken. If she knew Aphara was originally the daughter of Johnson the barber in a small town near Canterbury, born in 1640, she might well have heard from her connexions in Kent about Ayfara and assumed that Ayfara was Aphara - indeed, if Ayfara left the area, the people living around Wye, hearing about Aphara, might legitimately have assumed that she was Ayfara, when in fact she was Eaffrey... it's frustrating, though, that Todd, though she mentions Finch's account, doesn't mention the existence of Ayfara at all...]

[Oh, I see, it gets more complicated! It turns out Ayfara was actually Ayfara Amis (father's occupation unknown). However, others claimed that Aphara was the adopted daughter of the designated lieutenant-governor of Surinam... whose name was Johnson. She could thus be born the daughter of a barber, but be adopted by the politician who then died. However, Todd can't find evidence of this Johnson existing, so no reason to think that Ayfara Amis was ever a Johnson (or a Behn).]


Meanwhile, Todd has Aphara, back in Antwerp, "ingenuous" and "gullible" in the extreme. This is because she claims that Scott, her target, is credible - Todd assumes she must have swooned with feminine susceptibility on meeting the man, and led astray into intimacy by her (Aphara's) personal inability to imagine a man and a woman relating without sexuality. Personally, I would have assumed it's because she needed to be paid, and the only way to get either money or reputation as a spy was to persuade her masters that the person she was being paid to handle was worth the money. What was she going to say - "this guy's worthless so there's no reason to employ me to talk to him!". Of course her reports become more sceptical of him (calling him a 'rogue') when he's not cooperating (when she thinks the mission might fail and she doesn't want to be blamed for misjudging him), but more positive again when he starts talking to her more (when she thinks the mission might work out and wants to be paid).

Todd always assumes she's naive and childish/feminine, but her actions also make sense if you assume she's actually intelligent and knows what she's doing.

Ugh. Todd repeats on every page how 'gullible' and 'naive' and 'desparate' Aphra is, how uncertain of what she's meant to be doing, how easily fooled, how dependent on others.

But when we see her actual words, Aphora seems calm and professional, sharp, and even a little sarcastic with her boss [at least until things in Antwerp have gone completely off a cliff and she's worried the King is abandoning her].

Oddly, she doesn't mention at all that Aphora's information, far from being utterly useless as Todd suggests, lead to the arrest of at least one active foreign agent in London. She also passes over rather vaguely the fact that a rival English agent in Flanders actively outed Aphora to the Dutch.

Fun fact: in the 1660s, sea travel was so dangerous that merchant ships had to join together in convoys just to cross the English Channel. I assumed this would be the case in the Atlantic, but it's a surprise to hear it about the Channel (which is 20 miles at its narrowest).

And we're not talking 'couple of ships' convoys, either. The ship Aphara used to cross to the Continent was in a convoy of over ninety merchant ships, with half a dozen frigates for protection!

Glad to see you read this now and then, with amusing commentaries. Couldn't help noticing the start date... 2015!

Yeah, I tried reading it back then, got a fair way in and got distracted. Eventually gave up and started from the beginning again.