arthing 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 L150 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 of letters has been since in relation to later times and
manners, as unhampered and free as her witty successor, Mrs. de la
Riviere Manley, who lived for so long as Alderm