The Scandal of the Century

Do we truly need another profile of Aphra Behn? Despite the relative scarcity of information about her life, three biographies have appeared since 1977, thanks to the collective efforts of Janet Todd, Maureen Duffy, and Angeline Goreau. Todd is especially skillful in balancing historical context with biographical conjecture, and while Lisa Hilton’s account does not always meet her high benchmark, it nonetheless reaffirms the necessity for new scholarship. The Scandal of the Century capitalizes on recent work on trans-Atlantic circulation in the seventeenth century to fill in hitherto unexplained gaps in Behn’s life. Stylistic excess and an overwrought narrative design, however, threaten to undermine Hilton’s more ingenious discoveries. Interwoven with Behn’s story is that of Lady Henrietta (“Harriet”) Berkeley, who absconded with her brother-in-law and inspired Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister. Aside from providing Behn with source material for her novella, the two women have little in common other than the “scandal” referenced in the book title—and even that thematic link is weak at best. That Hilton’s biography remains worthwhile despite these shortcomings testifies to the strength of her archival research and critical approach.As a crossover book, The Scandal of the Century targets both academic and nonspecialist readers, and that hybridity is a source of its strength and weakness. For Hilton’s publisher Penguin Random House, the appeal is evident. As Devoney Looser has demonstrated with Jane Austen, crossover books can expand readership, thereby easing the tight waistband of profit margins. The form can also have a salutary effect on writing; again, Looser’s eminently readable style is instructive. While Hilton pens a brisk, accessible prose, she sometimes overly reaches for a popular readership. Surmising about Berkeley’s motives for running off with her wastrel brother-in-law, Ford Grey, first Earl of Tankerville, Hilton wonders if she was “an abused child who comes to love her abuser . . . [w]as she excited by her power over Grey, did she relish being the object of his love as a rival to her older sister? Or was she a bored teenage girl desperate for romance, who believed that she and her brother-in-law were star-crossed, meant to be?” (259). These are passages perhaps better suited to a Jilly Cooper bonkbuster than a literary biography.There are other wobbles. Crossover books usually jettison notes for a stand-alone bibliography. While this practice produces a more inviting readerly format, it makes verification difficult. Hilton says that Charles II presented “a grand house” to Nell Gwyn, “which may still be seen today at 79 Pall Mall” (231). Well, not quite. The current dwelling was designed by David Brandon c. 1866 for the Eagle Insurance Company, but without notes, we have no way of knowing why Hilton thinks otherwise. Especially maddening are unsubstantiated claims of “evidence” for tantalizingly obscure facts, such as Behn’s putative early work as a copyist in a scriptorium (56). Others have surmised the same but at least provided documentation and had the good grace to use conditional language. Crossover books also envisage in earlier periods our own cultural preoccupations, thereby encouraging readers to “identify” with material that might seem arcane. Hilton gambles that scandal—always a lure—will not only suture the past to the present but also amalgamate what are effectively two separate biographies of Behn and Lady Henrietta Berkeley. The problem, however, is that no two women were more dissimilar nor their stories less alike in dignity, as revealed by strained topic sentences such as this: “Harriet was not the only one taking risks in the summer of 1682” (241). Behn was a bold trailblazer who bequeathed to posterity a body of brilliant work while Berkeley was an aristocratic twit who left a legacy of infamy and ruin. Notoriety does not make for equivalency.Despite these flaws, The Scandal of the Century remains worthwhile, especially for Behn aficionados. Drawing upon recent scholarship on trans-Atlantic circulation, Hilton speculates that Behn may have been born in Wye, Maryland—not Wye, Kent—and resulted from an illicit union between her English immigrant mother and the planter George Marten. Demographic data support this postulation. Barbados in the mid-century was a hotbed of displaced Stuart supporters—the population quadrupled between 1640 and 1670—and many women looking for a better life and enhanced marital prospects circulated between the American colonies and these island outposts. Marten apparently followed exilic patterns, going from the Wye plantation in Maryland to Barbados and then to Surinam. A hard-drinking spendthrift, he was also an inveterate womanizer. Hilton thinks that Behn’s mother most likely remained attached to his wandering household, which in turn would account for her daughter’s familiarity with these colonial outposts and her facility with Dutch and French. Hilton additionally surmises that Behn acquired her knowledge of nuns and Catholic practices from her childhood in Maryland, which established the first American convent in 1649.Because the historical record is so spotty, Hilton mines Behn’s work for evidence, such as the allusion in the dedication to Oroonoko to “my travels to the other world” (72). Equally intriguing is the statement in the dedication to The Young King (1679) that her muse is “an American” (59). Marten figures in Oroonoko, and he is the first character to enter onstage in her late play The Younger Brother (1696). Certainly, both fictional portraits accord with contemporary accounts. Complex kinship ties further strengthen Hilton’s alternative story of Behn’s origins and early life, and as Hilton points out, “the Martens, Welds, Killigrews, Berkeleys” were “all English gentry families with connections in the West Atlantic and the London theatre” (89). The colony of Virginia, the only crown property ruled directly from London, was governed by William Berkeley, who happened to be the first cousin of Thomas Killigrew. The latter, of course, would hire Behn to spy on William Scott and perhaps opened doors to London theatre, although intriguingly she never wrote plays for his company.Some readers might find Hilton’s antitheatricalism off-putting. Indeed, it seems strange that an author who faults late seventeenth-century drama for being “clunky,” “tiresome,” and “a snore” would undertake a biography of the first professional female playwright in Restoration England (181, 182). To be fair, Hilton does stress the inherent theatricality of Lady Harriet’s scandalous life, such as her decision to hide her brother-in-law in her closet for two days, surely an episode worthy of a comedy by Thomas Durfey or Behn herself (257–58). That said, Hilton does not have much affinity for a Restoration “mindset . . . [that] feels in many ways impossibly remote,” and consequently she is at her best when delving into colonial contexts or teasing out scandal in the lives and the novellas that she clearly prefers over the plays (3). Because The Scandal of the Century reads so quickly, even occasionally irritated readers (like me) can breeze through the annoying bits and focus on what Hilton does well.