CONTENTS
CHAPTER III.
PAGE
Epsom in the reign of Charles II. —England in 1667 —Nelly resumes her engagement at the King's Theatre—Inferior in Tragedy to Comedy—Plays Mirida in All Mistaken —Miss Davis of the Duke's Theatre—Her song, '' My lodging it is on the Cold Ground," parodied by Nell—Influence of the Duke of Buckingham in controlling the predilections of the King—Charles II. at the Duke's Theatre—Nelly has leading parts in three of Dryden's new Plays—Buck-hurst is made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, promised a peerage, and sent on a sleeveless errand into France—Nell becomes the Mistress of the King— Piays Almahide in The Conqicest of Granada — The King more than ever enamoured—Parallel case of Perdita Robinson and George IV. ... 40
CHAPTER IV. Personal Character of King Chsirles II. . , . 62
CHAPTER V. The Sayings of King Charles II 82
CHAPTER VI.
Birth of the Duke of St. Albans—Arrival of Mademoiselle de Qu^rouaille—Death of the Duchess of Orleans—Nelly's house in Pall Mall—Countess of
CONTENTS
PAGB
Castlemaine created Duchess of Cleveland—Sir John Birkenhead, Sir John Coventry, and the Actresses at the two Houses—Insolence of Dramatists and Actors —Evelyn overhears a conversation between Nelly and the King—The Protestant and Popish Mistresses—Story of the Service of Plate—Printed Dialogues illustrative of the rivalry of Nelly and the Duchess of Portsmouth—Madame de Sdvign^'s account of it—Story of the Smock—Nelly in mourning for the Cham of Tartary—Story of the two Fowls— Portsmouth's opinion of Nelly—Concert at Nell's house—^The Queen and La Belle Stewart at a Fair disguised as Country Girls—Births, Marriages, and Creations—Nelly's disappointment—Her witty remark to the King—Her son created Earl of Burford, and betrothed to the daughter and heiress of Vere, Earl of Oxford 99
CHAPTER Vn.
Houses in which Nelly is said to have lived—Burford House, Windsor, one of the few genuine—Her losses at basset—Court paid to Nelly by the Duke of Monmouth, Lord Cavendish, etc.—Death of her mother —Printed elegy on her death—Nelly's household expenses—Bills for her chair and bed—Death of Mrs. Roberts—Foundation of Chelsea Hospital— Nelly connected with its origin—Books dedicated to Nelly—Death of her second son—The Earl of Burford created Duke of St. Albans—Nelly's only letter —Ken and Nelly at Winchester—Nelly at Avington
CONTENTS
PAGE
—Death of the King—Was the King poisoned ?— Nelly to have been created Countess of Greenwich if the King had lived 121
CHAPTER VIII,
Nelly in real mourning, and outlawed for debt—Death of Otway, tutor to her son—James II. pays her debts—The King's kindness occasions a groundless rumour that she has gone to mass—Her intimacy with Dr. Tenison, tlien Vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, and Dr. Lower, the celebrated physician— She sends for Tenison in her last illness—Her death and contrite end—Her will and last request to her son—Her funeral—Tenison preaches her funeral sermon—False account of the sermon cried by hawkers in the streets—The sermon used as an argument against Tenison's promotion to the See of Lincoln—Queen Mary's defence of him and of Nelly —Her son tlie Duke of St. Albans—Eleanor Gwyn and Harriet Mellon—Various portraits of Nelly— Further Anecdotes—Conclusion .... 143
Notes 165
Index 223
xu
THE
STORY OF NELL GWYN
CHAPTER I.
Introduction— ISiith and Birthplace—Horoscope of her nativity—Condition in life of her fatlier—Her account of her early days—Becomes an orange-girl at the theatre—Effects of the Restoration—Revival of the stage—Two theatres allowed—Scenery and dresses-Principal actors and actresses—Duties and importance of the orange-girls.
Dr. Thomas Tenison, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, preached the funeral sermon of Nell Gwyn. What so good a man did not think an unfit subject for a sermon, will not be thought, I trust, an unfit subject for a book ; for the life that was spent remissly may yet convey a moral, like that of Jane Shore, which the wise and virtuous Sir Thomas More has told so touchingly in his History of King Richard III.
The English people have always entertained a peculiar liking for Nell Gwyn. There is a sort of indulgence towards her not generally conceded to any other woman of her class. Thousands are attracted by her name, they know not why, and do not stay to inquire. It is the popular impression that, with all her failings, she had a generous as
B
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well as a tender heart; that when raised from poverty, she reserved her wealth for others rather than herself; and that the influence she possessed was often exercised for good objects, and never abused. Contrasted with others in a far superior rank in life, and tried by fewer temptations, there is much that marks and removes her from the common herd. The many have no sympathy, nor should they have any, for Barbara Palmer, Louise de Querouaille, or Erengard de Schulenberg; but for Nell Gwyn, " pretty witty Nell," there is a tolerant and kindly regard, which the following pages are designed to illustrate rather than extend.
The Coal Yard in Drury Lane, a low alley, the last on the east or City side of the lane, and still known by that name, was, it is said, the place of Nell Gwyn's birth. They show, however, in Pipe Lane, in the parish of St. John, in the city of Hereford, a small house of brick and timber, now little better than an hovel, in which, according to local tradition, she was born. That the Coal Yard was the place of her birth was stated in print as early as 1721 ; and this was copied by Oldys, a curious inquirer into literary and dramatic matters, in the account of her life which he wrote for Curll.i The Hereford story, too, is of some standing; but there is little else, I am afraid, to support it. The capital of the cider country, however, does not want even Nell Gwyn to add to its theatrical reputation ; in the same cathedral city which claims to be the birthplace of the best-known English actress, was
1 Curll's History of the English Stage, 8vo, 1741, p. in.
THK STORY OF NELL GWYN
!*V ^. <n^ «^^ •
HOROSCOPE OF NELL GWYN.
From Asliiuolcaii MS.
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born, seventy years later, David Garrick, the greatest and best-known actor we have yet had. *
The horoscope of the nativity of Eleanor Gwyn, the work perhaps of Lilly, is still to be seen amongst Ashmole's papers in the museum at Oxford. She was born, it states, on the 2nd of February 1650. The horoscope, of which I have had a facsimile made, shows what stars were supposed to be in the ascendant at the time ; and such of my readers as do not disdain a study which engaged the attention and ruled not unfretjuently the actions of vigorous-minded men like Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury and the poet Dryden, may find more meaning in the state of the heavenly bodies at her birth than I have as yet succeeded in detecting.
Of the early history of Nell, and of the rank in life of her parents, very little is known with certainty. Her father, it is said, was Captain Thomas Gwyn, of an ancient family in Wales.- The name certainly is of Welsh extraction, and the descent may be admitted without adopting the captaincy ; for by other hitherto received accounts her father
^ "When I went first to Oxford, Dr. John Ireland, an antiquary, assured me that Nelly was born in Oxford. He named the parish, but I have forgot it. It is certain that two of her son's titles—Headington and Barford—were taken from Oxfordshire localities."—MS. note by the late Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, tlie antiquary and genealogist. Oddly enough, one of Nelly's grandsons died Bishop of Hereford, fjames Beauclerk, bishop from 1746 to 1787.]
2 MS. note by Van Bossen, made in 1688, and quoted at length in a subsequent page (chapter vii.). [Nelly had her coat of arms, and very imposing it is. (See Addit. MS., 26,683, f- SQ*^' in British Museum.)]
Reputed birthplace of Nell Gwyn at Hereford. From a photograph
taken in 1858.
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was a fruiterer in Covent Garden. She speaks in her will of her " kinsman Cholmley," and the satires of the time have pilloried a cousin, raised by her influence to an ensigncy from the menial office of one of the black guard employed in carrying coals at Court. Her mother, who lived to see her daughter a favourite of the King, and the mother by him of at least two children, was accidentally drowned in a pond near the Neat Houses at Chelsea. Her Christian name was Eleanor, but her maiden name is unknown.
Whatever the station in life to which her pedigree might have entitled her, her bringing up, by her own account, was humble enough. " Mrs. Pierce tells me," said Pepys, " that the two Marshalls at the King's House are Stephen Marshall's, the great Presbyterian's daughters; and that Nelly and Beck Marshall falling out the other day, the latter called the other my Lord Buckhurst's mistress. Nell answered her, ' I was but one man's mistress, though I was brought up in a brothel to fill strong water ^ to the gentlemen ; and you are a mistress to three or four, though a Presbyter's praying daughter.'" This, for a girl of any virtue or beauty, was indeed a bad bringing-up.
The Coal Yard, infamous in later years as one of the residences of Jonathan Wild, was the next turning in the same street to the still more notorious and fashionably inhabited Lewknor Lane, where young creatures were inveigled to
1 Among Mr. Akerman's Tradesmen's Tokens current in London, 164S to 1672, is that of " a strong wafer man."
THE STORY OF NELL GWYN
infamy, and sent dressed as orange-girls to sell fruit and attract attention in the adjoining theatres.
That this was Nelly's next calling we have the testimony of the Duchess of Portsmouth and the authority of a poem of the time, attributed to Lord Rochester :
But first the basket her fair arm did suit,
Laden with pippins and Hesperian fruit;
This first step raised, to the wondering pit she sold
The lovely fruit smiling with strealts of gold.
Nell was now an orange-girl, holding her basket of fruit covered with vine-leaves in the pit of the King's Theatre, and taking her stand with her fellow fruit-women in the front row of the pit, with her back to the stage.^ The cry of the fruit-women, which Shadwell has preserved, " Oranges ! will you have any oranges ?" ^ must have come clear and invitingly from the lips of Nell Gwyn.
She was ten years of age at the Restoration of King Charles IL, in 1660. She was old enough, therefore, to have noticed the extraordinary change which the return of royalty effected in the manners, customs, feelings, and even conversation of the bulk of the people. The strict observance of the Sabbath was no longer rigidly enforced. Sir Charles Sedley and the Duke of Buckingham rode in their coaches on a Sunday, and the barber and the shoeblack shaved beards and cleaned boots on the same day, without the overseers of the poor of the parish inflictmg fines on them for such
1 T. Shadwell's Works, iii. 173. " Davies's Dramatic Miscellanies, iii. 464. 6
Another view of the Hereford house.
\Tofacep. 6.
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(as they were then thought) unseemly breaches of the Sabbath. Maypoles were once more erected on spots endeared by old associations, and the people again danced their old dances around them. The Cavalier restored the royal insignia on his fireplace to its old position ; the King's Head, the Duke's Head, and the Crown were once more favourite signs by which taverns were distinguished ; drinking of healths and deep potations, with all their Low-Country honours and observances, were again in vogue. Oughtred, the mathematician, died of joy, and Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, of laughter, at hearing of the enthusiasm of the English to " welcome home old Rowley." ^ The King's health-Here's a health unto his Majesty, with a fa, la, la— was made a pretext for the worst excesses, and irreligion and indecency were thought to secure conversation against a suspicion of disloyalty and fanaticism. Even the common people took to gay-coloured dresses as before; and a freedom of spirits, rendered familiar by early recollection, and only half subdued by Presbyterian persecution, was confirmed by a licence of tongue which the young men about court had acquired while in exile with their sovereign.
Not the least striking effect of the Restoration of the King was the revival of the English theatres. They had been closed and the players silenced for
1 " Welcome home, old Rowley," is the name of the well-known Scottish tune called " Haud awa'frae me, Donald." See Johnson's Sco/s Musical Museum, iv. 318.
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three-and-twenty years, and in that space a new generation had'arisen, to whom the entertainments of the stage were known but by name. The theatres were now re-opened, and with every advantage which stage properties, new and improved scenery, and the costliest dresses could lend to help them forward. But there were other advantages equally new, and of still greater importance, but for which the name of Eleanor Gwyn would in all likelihood never have reached us.
From the earliest epoch of the stage in England till the theatres were silenced at the outbreak of the Civil War, female characters had invariably been played by men, and during the same brilliant period of our dramatic history there is but one instance of a sovereign witnessing a performance at a public theatre. Henrietta Maria, though so great a favourer of theatrical exhibitions, was present once, and once only, at the theatre in the Black-friars. The plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, Which so did take Eliza and our James,
were invariably seen by those sovereigns, as afterwards by Charles I., in the halls, banqueting-houses, and cockpits attached to their palaces. With the Restoration,
When Love was all an easy Monarch's care, Seldom at council, never in a war,
came women on the stage, and the King and Queen, the Dukes of York and Buckingham, the chief courtiers, and the maids-of-honour, were among the constant frequenters of the public theatres.
THE STORY OF NELL GWYN
Great interest was used at the Restoration for the erection of new theatres in London, but the King, acting it is thought on the advice of Clarendon, who wished to stem at all points the flood of idle gaiety and dissipation, would not allow of more than two—the King's Theatre, under the control of Thomas Killigrew, and the Duke's Theatre (so called in compliment to his brother, the Duke of York), under the direction of Sir WiUiam Davenant. Better men for the purpose could not have been chosen. Killigrew was one of the Grooms of the Bedchamber to the King, a well-known wit at court and a dramatist himself; and Davenant, who filled the office of Poet Laureate in the household of the King, as he had done before to his father, King Charles L, had been a successful writer for the stage, while Ben Jonson and Massinger were still alive. The royal brothers patronised both houses with equal earnestness, and the patentees vied with each other in catering successfully for the public amusement.
The King's Theatre, or " The Theatre," as it was commonly called, stood in Drury Lane, on the site of the present building, and was the first theatre, as the present is the fourth, erected on the site. It was small, with few pretensions to architectural beauty, and was first opened on the 8th of April 1663, when Nell was a girl of thirteen. The chief entrance was in Little Russell Street, not as now in Brydges Street. The stage was lighted with wax candles, on brass censers or cressets. The pit lay open to the weather for the sake of light,
THE STORY OF NELL GWYN
but was subsequently covered in with a glazed cupola, which, however, only imperfectly protected the audience, so that in stormy weather the house was thrown into disorder, and the people in the pit were fain to rise.
The Duke's Theatre, commonly called "The Opera," from the nature of its performances, stood at the back of what is now the Royal College of Surgeons, in Portugal Row, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was originally a tennis-court, and, like its rival, was run up hurriedly to meet the wants of the age. The interior arrangements and accommodation were much the same as at Killigrew's house.
The company at the King's Theatre included among the actors, at the first opening of the house, Theophilus Bird, Charles Hart, Michael Mohun, John Lacy, Nicholas Burt, William Cartwright, William Wintershall, Walter Clun, Robert Shat-terell, and Edward Kynaston ; and Mrs. Corey, Mrs. Ann Marshall, Mrs. Rebecca Marshall, Mrs. Eastland, Mrs. Weaver, Mrs. Uphill, Mrs. Knep, and Mrs. Hughes were among the female performers. Joe Haines, the low comedian, and Cardell Goodman, the lover of the Duchess of Cleveland, were subsequent accessions to the troop ; and so also were Mrs. Boutell and " Mrs. Ellen Gwyn."
Bird belonged to the former race of actors, and did not long survive the Restoration. Hart and Clun had been bred up as boys at the Blackfriars to act women's parts. Hart, who had served as a
THE STORY OF NELL GWYN
captain in the King's army, rose to the summit of his profession, but Clun was unfortunately killed while his reputation was still on the increase. Mohun had played at the Cockpit before the Civil Wars, and had served as a captain under the King, and afterwards in the same capacity in Flanders, where he received the pay of a major; he was famous in lago and Cassius. Lacy, a native of Yorkshire, was the Irish Johnstone and Tyrone Power of his time. Burt, who had been a boy first under Shank at the Blackfriars, and then under Beeston at the Cockpit, was famous before the Civil Wars for the part of Clariana in Shirley's play of Love's Crtielty^ and after the Restoration equally famous as Othello. Cartwright and Winter-shall had belonged to the private house in Salisbury Court. Cartwright won great renown in FalstafF, and as one of the two kings of Brentford in the farce of the Rehearsal. Wintershall played Master Slender, for which Dennis the critic commends him highly, and was celebrated for his Cokes in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. Shatterell had been quartermaster in Sir Robert Dallison's regiment of horse,—the same in which Hart had been a lieutenant and Burt a cornet. Kynaston acquired especial favour in female parts, for which, indeed, he continued celebrated long after the introduction of women on the stage. Such were the actors at the King's House when Nell Gwyn joined the company
Mrs. Corey (the name Miss had then an improper meaning, and the women though single were called
THE STORY OF NELL GWYN
Mistresses)' played Abigail, in the Scornful Lady of Beaumont and Fletcher ; Sempronia, in Jonson's Catiline; and was the original Widow Blackacre in Wycherley's Plain Dealerj —Pepys calls her Doll Common. The two Marshalls, Ann and Rebecca (to whom I have already had occasion to refer), were the younger daughters of the well-known Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian divine, who preached the sermon at the funeral of John Pym. Mrs. Uphill was first the mistress and then the wife of Sir Robert Howard, the poet. Mrs. Knep was the wife of a Smithfield horsedealer, and the mistress of Pepys. Mrs. Hughes, better known as Peg, was the mistress of Prince Rupert, by whom she had a daughter ; and Mrs. Boutell was famous for playing Statira to Mrs. Barry's Roxana, in Lee's impressive tragedy of Alexander the Great. Such were the actresses when Nell came among them.
Among the actors at the Duke's were Thomas Betterton, the rival of Burbage and Garrick in the
1 The first unmarried actress who had Miss before her name on a playbill was Miss Cross, the original Miss Hoyden in Vanbrugh's Relapse [which was given at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on Boxing-day 1697]. [In Epigrams of All Sorts made at Divers Times, by Richard Flecknoe, London, 1670, p. 43, is an epigram to Mrs. Davis (the famous " Moll ") on her excellent dancing, which begins :
" Dear Mis, delight of all the nobler sort. Pride of the stage, and darling of the Court,"
and " furnishes," says Mr. Joseph Knight, art. Davis or Davies (Mary) in Diet. Nat. Biog. , an exceptionally early instance of an unmarried woman being addressed, with no uncomplimentary intention, as Miss." Still, in this case, " Miss " may have come in (like Saint Peter) for the sake of the metre.]
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well-earned greatness of his reputation, and the last survivor of the old school of actors ; Joseph Harris, the friend of Pepys, originally a seal-cutter, and famous for acting Romeo, Wolsey, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek ; William Smith, a barrister of Gray's Inn, celebrated as Zanga in Lord Orrery's Mustapha; Samuel Sandford, called by King Charles II. the best representative of a villain in the world, and praised both by Langbaine and Steele for his excellence in his art ; James Nokes, originally a toyman in Cornhill, famous for playing Sir Nicholas Cully in Etherege's Love in a Tub, for his bawling fops,i and for his "good company"; Cave Underbill, clever as Cutter in Cowley's comedy, and as the grave-digger in Hamlet, called by Steele "honest Cave Underbill" ; and Matthew Medbourne, a useful actor in parts not requiring any great excellence. The women were, Elizabeth Davenport, the first Roxolana in the Siege of Rhodes, snatched from the stage to become the mistress of the twentieth and last Earl of Oxford of the noble family of Vere ; Mary Saunderson, famous as Queen Katherine and Juliet, afterwards the wife of the great Betterton ; Mary or Moll Davis, excellent in singing and dancing,—afterwards the mistress of Charles II. ; Mrs. Long, the mistress of the Duke of Richmond,^ celebrated for
1 In Tunbridi^e Wells a Satyr Rochester, after alluding to the Cully part, writes: "A Bawling Fop, a Natural Nokes." Works, ed. 1709, p. 58.—G. G.
2 MS. note by Isaac Reed, in his copy of Downes's Roscius Anglicanus.
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the elegance of her appearance in men's clothes ; Mrs. Norris, the mother of Jubilee Dicky; Mrs. Holden, daughter of a bookseller to whom Betterton had been bound apprentice ; and Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Johnson, both taken from the stage by gallants of the town,—the former but little known as an actress, the latter celebrated as a dancer and for her Carolina in Shadwell's comedy of Epsom Wells.
Such were the performers at the Duke's House. Anthony Leigh and Mrs. Barry, both brought out at the same theatre, were accessions after Davenant's death, and, as I see reason to believe, after Nell Gwyn had ceased to be connected with the stage.
The dresses at both houses were magnificent and costly, but little or no attention was paid to costume. The King, the Queen, the Duke, and several of the richer nobility, gave their coronation suits to the actors, and on extraordinary occasions a play was equipped at the expense of the King. Old court dresses were contributed by the gentry, and birthday suits continued to be presented as late as the reign of George II. The scenery at the Duke's House was superior to the King's, for Davenant, who introduced the opera among us, introduced us at the same time to local and expensive scenery. Battles were no longer represented
With four or five most vile and ragged foils,
or coronations by a crown taken from a deal table by a single attendant.
The old stock plays were divided by the two
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companies. Killigrew had Othello, Julius Ccrsar, Henry the Fourth, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer-Nighfs Dream; fourof Ben Jonson's plays— The Alchemist, The Fox; The Silent Woman, and Catiline J and the best of Beaumont and Fletcher's— A King and no King, The Humorous Lieutenant, Rule a Wife aiid have a Wife, The Maid's Tragedy, Rollo, The Elder BrotJier, Phil-aster, and The Scornful Lady; with Massinger's Virgin Martyr, and Shirley's Traitor. Davenant played Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Henry the Eighth, Twelfth Night, and The Tempestj Webster's Duchess of Malfi and Mad Lover; Middleton's Young Chafigelingj ^ Fletcher's Loya^ Subject diXi.^ Mad Lover; and yidiSsmgtr's Bondman. The new plays at the King's House were contributed by Sir Robert Howard, Sir Charles Sedley, Major Porter, Killigrew himself, Dryden, and Nat Lee; at the Duke's House by Davenant, Cowley, Etherege, Lord Orrery, and others. The new tragedies were principally in rhyme. At the first performance of a new comedy ladies seldom attended, or, if at all, in masks—such was the studied indecency of the art of that period.
The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame, Nor wished for Jonson's art or Shakespeare's flame ; Themselves they studied—as they felt they writ— Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit.
^ The Changeling, by Thomas Middleton and 'William Rowley, first played January 4, 1623, was printed in 1653 and reissued with the title given in the text in 1668. The play was revived with great success at the Restoration, when it was witnessed by Pepys (February 23, 1661).—G. G.
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The performances commenced at three.* It was usual, therefore, to dine beforehand, and when the play was over to adjourn to the Mulberry Garden, to Vauxhall, or some other place of public entertainment—
Thither run, Some to undo, and some to be undone.
The prices of admission were, boxes four shillings, pit two-and-sixpence, middle gallery eighteenpence, upper gallery one shilling. The ladies in the pit wore vizards or masks. The middle gallery was long the favourite resort of Mr. and Mrs. Pepys.
The upper gallery, as at present, was attended by the poorest and the noisiest. Servants in livery were admitted as soon as the fifth act commenced.
With the orange-girls (who stood, as we have seen, in the pit, with their back to the stage) the beaux about town were accustomed to break their jests ;^ and that the language employed was not of the most delicate description, we may gather from the dialogue of Dorimant, in Etherege's comedy of Sir Fopling Flutter.
^ Plays began at one in Shakespeare's time, at three in Dryden's, at four in Congreve's. In 1696 the hour was four. [Cunningham follows Malone {Shakespeare hy Bos7vell), hut the more recent researches of Payne Collier {Engl. Dramat. Poetry, ed. 1879, iii. 180) and Robert W. Lowe ( Thomas Betierton, p. 15) show that the time varied with the season of the year. Three o'clock was the hour according to His-triomastix (1610) and Thomas Cranley's Amanda (1635), and half-past three the time named in the prologue to Dryden's Wild Gallant, 1663.]
2 Prologue to Lord Rochester's Valentinian; T. Shad-well's Works, i. 199.
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The mistress or superior of the girls was familiarly known as Orange Moll, and filled the same sort of office in the theatre that the mother of the maids occupied at court among the maids-of-honour. Both Sir William Penn and Pepys would occasionally have " a great deal of discourse" with Orange Moll; and Mrs. Knep, the actress, when in want of Pepys, sent Moll to the Clerk of the Acts with the welcome message. To higgle about the price of the fruit was thought beneath the character of a gentleman. " The next step," says the Young Gallanfs Academy, •' is to give a turn to the China orange wench, and give her her own rate for her oranges (for 'tis below a gentleman to stand haggling like a citizen's wife), and then to present the fairest to the next vizard mask.''^ Pepys, when challenged in the pit for the price of twelve oranges which the orange-woman said he owed her, but which he says was wholly untrue, was not content with denying the debt, " but for quiet bought four shillings'-worth of oranges from her at sixpence a-piece."^ This was a high price, but the Clerk of
1 The Young Gallant's Academy, or Directions how he should behave himself in all places and company. By Sam. Overcome [or rather Vincent], 1674. [A republication of the Guls Hornebook of Thomas Dekker, 1609, with alterations adapted to the time.]
* " Half-crown my play, sixpence my orange cost."
Prologue to Mrs. Behn's Young King, 1698. " Nor furiously laid orange-wench a-board For asking what in fruit and love you'd scored. '
Butler, A Panegyric on Sir John Denham. " When trading grows scant, they join ail their forces
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the Acts was true to the direction in the Galla7it^s Acade?)!)'.
together, and make up one grand show and admit the cut-purse and ballad-singer to trade under them, as orange-women do at a playhouse."
Butler, Character of a Jitgkr.
" Mr. Vain. —I can't imagine how I first came to be of this humour, unless 'twere hearing the orange-wenches talk of ladies and their gallants. So I began to think I had no way of being in the fashion, but bragging of mistresses."
Hon. James Howard, The English Monsieur, p. 4, 4to, 1674.
" Mrs. Crafty. —This life of mine can last no longer than my beauty ; and though 'tis pleasant now, 1 want nothing whilst I am Mr. Welbred's mistress,—yet, if his mind should change, I might e'en sell oranges for my living, and he not buy one of me to relieve me."
Hon. James Howard, The English Monsieur, p. 10.
" She outdoes a playhouse orange-woman for the politick management of a bawdy intrigue."
Tunbridge Wells, a Comedy, 4to, 1678.
" In former times, a play of humour, or with a good plot, could certainly please ; but now a poet must find out a third way, and adapt his scenes and story to the genius of the critic, if he'd have it pass ; he'll have nothing to do with your dull Spanish plot, for whilst he's rallying with the orange-v;ench, the business of the act gets quite out of his head, and then 'tis ' Damme, what stuff's this? ' he sees neither head nor tail to't."
D'Urfey, Preface to The Banditti, 4to, 1686.
"The noble peer may to the play repair, Court the pert damsel with her China-ware— Nay, marry her—if he please—no one will care." D'Urfey, Prologue to ^ Foots Preferment, 4to, 1688.
"The orange-miss that here cajoles the Duke May sell her rotten ware without rebuke."
D'Urfey, Prologue to Don Quixote, Part I, 410, 1694. 18
CHAPTER II.
Pepys introduces us to Nelly— Character of Pepys—Nelly at the Duke's Theatre—Who was Duncan?—Nell's parts as Lady Wealthy, Enanthe, and Florimel—Charles Hart-Nell's lodgings in Drury Lane—Description of Drury Lane in the reign of Charles IL—The Maypole in the Strand—Nell and Lord Buckhurst—Position in society of Actors and Actresses—Character of Lord Buckhurst— Nelly at Epsom.
Our earliest introduction to Nell Gwyn we owe to Pepys. This precise and lively diarist (who makes us live in his own circle of amusements by the truth and quaintness of his descriptions) was a constant playgoer. To see and to be seen, when the work of his office was over, were the leading objects of his thoughts. Few novelties escaped him, for he never allowed his love of money to interfere with the gratification of his wishes. His situation, as Clerk of the Acts, in the Navy Office, while the Duke of York was Lord High Admiral, gave him a taste for the entertainments which his master enjoyed. He loved to be found wherever the King and his brother were. He was fond of music, could
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prick down a few notes for himself, and when his portrait was painted by Hales, was drawn holding in his hand the music which he had composed for a favourite passage in the Siege of Rhodes} He was known to many of the players, and often asked them to dinner,—now and then not much to the satisfaction, as he tells us, of his wife. Mrs. Knep, of the King's House, and Joseph Harris of the Duke's (to both of whom I have already introduced the reader) were two of his especial favourites. The gossip and scandal of the green-room of Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields were in this way known to him, and what he failed to obtain behind
1 This hitherto unengraved portrait was bought by me at the sale, in 1848, of the pictures, etc., of the family of Pepys Cockerell. It was called by the auctioneer "portrait of a Musician," but is unquestionably the picture referred to by Pepys in the following passages of his Diary :—
" 1666, March 17. With my wife out to Hales's, where I am still infinitely pleased with my wife's picture. I paid him ^14 for the picture, zxiA £x ^s. for the frame. . . . This day I began to sit, and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture. He promises it shall be as good as my wife's, and I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.
" March 30. To Hales's, and there sat till almost quite dark upon working my gowne, which I hired to be drawn in ; an Indian gowne.
" April II. To Hales's, where there was nothing found to be done more to my picture, but the musique, which now pleases me mightily, it being painted true."
See also The AthencBum for 1848. Lord Braybrooke (Pepys, iii. p. 178) doubts the likeness, but admits that the portrait answers the description. [Pepys further informs us (April 13) that the landscape was "put out." The portrait was bought for the National Portrait Gallery in February 1B66 ; a good reproduction of it is given in Mr. Wheatley's edition of Pepys's Diarv,\
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the scenes he would learn from the orange-women at both houses.
Nell was in her sixteenth, and Mr. Pepys in his thirty-fourth year, when, on Monday the 3rd of April 1665, they would appear to have seen one another for the first time. They met at the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields during the performance of Mustapha^ a tragedy, by the Earl of Orrery, in which Betterton played the part of Solyman, Harris that of Mustapha, and Mrs. or Miss Davis that of the Queen of Hungaria. Great care had been taken to produce this now long-forgotten tragedy with the utmost magnificence. All the parts were newly clothed, and new scenes had been painted expressly for it. Yet we are told by Pepys that "all the pleasure of the play" was in the circumstance that the King and my Lady Castlemaine were there, and that he sat next to "pretty witty Nell at the King's House " and to the younger Marshall, another actress at the same theatre—a circumstance, he adds, with his usual quaint honesty of remark, " which pleased me mightily." Yet the play was a good one in Pepys's eyes. Nine months later he calls it "a most excellent play"; and when he saw it again, after an interval of more than two years, he describes it as one he liked better the more he saw it:—" a most admirable poem, and bravely acted." * His after entries, therefore, more than confirm the truth of his earlier impressions. The real pleasure of the
1 Pepys, Sept. 4, 1667.
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play, however, was that he sat by the side of " pretty witty Nell," whose foot has been described as the least of any woman's in England,^ and by Rebecca Marshall, whose handsome hand he has carefully noted in another entry in his Diary. The small feet peeping occasionally from beneath a petticoat, and the handsome hands raised now and then to check a vagrant curl, must have held the Clerk of the Acts in a continual state of torture.
There was a novelty that night which had doubtless drawn Nell and old Stephen Marshall's younger daughter to the pit of Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mrs. Betterton was playing Roxolana in place of the elder Davenport, and Moll Davis had begun to attract the notice of some of the courtiers, and, as it was whispered, of the King himself The old Roxolana had become the mistress of the twentieth and last earl of the great race of Vere ; and Nell, while she reflected on what she may have thought to have been the good fortune of her fellow-actress, might have had her envy appeased could she have foreseen that she should give birth to a son (the mother an orange-girl, the father the King of England) destined to obtain a dukedom in her own lifetime, and afterwards to marry the heiress of the very earl who had taken the old Roxolana from a rival stage—first to deceive and afterwards to desert her.
Nell was indebted, there is reason to beheve, for her introduction to the stage, or at least to another
^ Oldys, in CuiU's Hisioiy of the Siagc, p. in.
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condition in life, to a person whose name is variously written as Duncan and as Dungan. Oldys, who calls him Duncan, had heard that he was a merchant, and that he had taken a fancy to her from her smart wit, fine shape, and the smallness of her feet. The information of Oldys is confirmed by the satire of Etherege, who adds, much to the credit of Nelly, that she remembered in after years the friend of her youth, and that to her interest it was he owed his appointment in the Guards. To sift and exhibit the equal mixture of truth and error in these accounts would not repay the reader for the trouble I should occasion him. I have sifted them myself, and see reason to believe that Oldys was wrong in calling him a merchant; while I suspect that the Duncan commemorated by Etherege, in his satire upon Nelly, was the Dongan described by De Grammont as a gentleman of merit who succeeded Duras, afterwards Earl of Feversham, in the post of Lieutenant in the Duke's Life Guards. That there was a lieutenant of this name in the Duke's Life Guards I have ascertained from official documents. He was a cadet of the house of Limerick, and his Christian name was Robert. If there is truth in De Grammont's account, he died in or before 1669. A Colonel Dungan was Governor of New York in the reign of James II.*
1 Secret Service Expenses of Charles II. and James II., p. 195. There is in one of Etherege's MS. satires a very coarse allusion to Dungan and Nelly. [The lines occur in Etherege's satire called Madam Nelly s Complaint, printed in Miscellaneous Works written by George, late Duke oj Buckingham, edits. 1704 and 1715.]
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Such, then, is all that can be ascertained, after full inquiry, of this Duncan or Dungan, by whom Nelly is said to have been lifted from her very humble condition in life. Such, indeed, is the whole of the information I have been able to obtain about " pretty witty Nell" from her birth to the winter of 1666, when we again hear of her through the indefatigable Pepys. How her life was passed during the fearful Plague season of 1665, or where she was during the Great Fire of London in the following year, it is now useless to conjecture. The transition from the orange-girl to the actress may easily be imagined without the intervention of any Mr. Dungan. The pert vivacity and ready wit she exhibited in later life must have received early encouragement and cultivation from the warmth of language the men of sort and quality employed in speaking to all classes of females. This very readiness was her recommendation to Killigrew, to say nothing of her beauty or the merry laugh, which is said in after life to have pervaded her face till her eyes were almost invisible.*
As we owe our first introduction to Nelly to the Clerk of the Acts, so to him are we indebted for the earliest notice yet discovered of her appearance on the stage. Her part was that of the principal female character in a comedy ( The English Monsieur) by the Hon. James Howard, a son of the Earl of Berkshire, the brother-in-law of Dryden, and brother of Philip, an officer in the King's Guards, and of
1 The London Chronicle ior Aug. 15-18, 1778 ; Waldron's Downes, p. ig.
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Robert and Edward Howard, both also writers for the stage. But these, as we shall see hereafter, were not the only connections with the stage of the Berkshire Howards. There is not much story in the English Monsieur, much force of character, or any particular vivacity in the dialogue. It is, however, very easy to see that the situations must have told with the audience for whom they were intended, and that the part of Lady Wealthy was one particularly adapted to the genius of Nell Gwyn ; a part, in all probability, written expressly for her. Lady Wealthy is a rich widow, with perfect knowledge of the importance of wealth and beauty, a good heart, and a fine full vein of humour, a woman, in short, that teases, and at last reforms and marries, the lover she is true to. The humour of the following dialogue will allow the reader to imagine much of the by-play conducive to its success :—
Lady Wealthy. —When will I marry you ! When will I love ye, you should ask first.
Welbred. —Why ! don't ye?
Lady W. —Why, do I? Did you ever hear me say I did ?
Welbred. —I never heard you say you did not.
Lady W. —I'll say so now, then, if you long.
Welbred. —By no means. Say not a thing in haste you may repent at leisure.
Lady W. —Come, leave your fooling, or I'll swear it.
Welbred. —Don't, widow, for then you'll lie too.
Lady W. —Indeed it seems 'tis for my money you would have me.
Welbred. —For that, and something else you have.
Lady W. —Well, I'll lay a wager thou hast lost all thy money at play, for then you're always in a marrying humour. But, d'ye hear, gentleman, d'ye think to gain me with this careless way, or that I will marry one I don't think is in love with me?
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Welbred.—Why, I am.
Lady W. —Then you would not be so merry. People in love are sad, and many times weep.
Welbred. —That will never do for thee, widow.
Lady W. —And why?
Welbred. —'Twould argue me a child; and I am confident if thou didst not verily believe I were a man, I should ne'er be thy husband. . . . Weep for thee !—ha ! ha ! ha!—if e'er I do!
Lady W. —Go, hang yourself.
IVe/bred.—Thank you for your advice.
Lady W. —When, then, shall I see you again?
Welbred. —When I have a mind to it. Come, I'll lead you to your coach for once.
Lady W. —And I'll let you for once. \Exetmt.
Pepys, who saw it on the 8th Dec. 1666, commends it highly. " To the King's House, and there," his entry runs, " did see a good part of the English Monsieur, which is a mighty pretty play, very witty and pleasant. And the women do very well; but above all, little Nelly ; that I am mightily pleased with the play, and much with the house, the women doing better than I expected ; and very fair women." Nor was his admiration abated when he saw it many months afterwards, April 7, 1668, at the same house.
Nell's success on the stage was such that she was soon called to represent prominent parts in the stock plays of her company. What these parts were, is, I believe, with very few exceptions, altogether unknown. One part, however, has reached us—that of Enanthe, or Celia, in the Humorous Lieutenant of Beaumont and Fletcher, a play that was long a favourite with the public—continuing to be frequently acted, and always with applause,
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throughout the reign of Charles II. The wit and fine poetry of the part of Celia are known to the readers of our English drama, nor is it difficult to conceive how effectively language like the following must have come from the lips of Nell Gwyn. She is in poor attire amid a mob when she sees the King's son :—
Was it the prince they said ? How my heart trembles !
[Enter Demetrius with a javelin in his hand. 'Tis he indeed ! what a sweet noble fierceness Dwells in his eyes ! Young Meleager-like, When he returned from slaughter of the boar, Crown'd with the loves and honours of the people, With all the gallant youth of Greece, he looks now— Who could deny him love ?
On one occasion of its performance Pepys was present, and though he calls it a silly play, his reader smiles at his bad taste, while he is grateful for the information that when the play was over he had gone with his wife behind the scenes, through the introduction of Mrs. Knep, who " brought to us Nelly, a most pretty woman, who acted the great part of Celia to-day very fine, and did it pretty well. I kissed her, and so did my wife, and a mighty pretty soul she is." Nor was his chronicle of the day concluded without a fresh expression of pleasure at what he had seen, summing up all as he does with the satisfactory words, "specially kissing of Nell." ^ The remark of Walter Scott will occur to many, " It is just as well that Mrs. Pepys was present on this occasion."
^ Pepys, Jan. 23, 1666-7. ^^- Augustus Egg, A.R.A., has painted a clever picture from this passage.
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Her skill increasing with her years, other poets sought to obtain the recommendations of her wit and beauty to the success of their writings. I have said that Dryden was one of the principal supporters of the King's house, and ere long in one of his new plays a principal character was set apart for the popular comedian. The drama was a tragi-comedy called Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen, and an additional interest was attached to its production from the King having suggested the plot to its author, and calling it " his play." The dramatis personcB consist, curiously enough, of eight female and only three male parts. Good acting was not wanting to forward its success. Mohun, Hart, and Burt, three of the best performers then on the stage, filled the only male parts—while Mrs. Marshall, Mrs. Knep, "Mrs. Eleanor Gwyn,"^ and Mrs. Corey sustained the principal female characters. The tragic scenes have little to recommend them ; but the reputation of the piece was thought to have been redeemed by the excellence of the alloy of comedy, as Dryden calls it, in which it was generally agreed he was seldom happier. Even here, however, his dialogue wants that easy, brisk, pert character which Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar afterwards brought to such inimitable perfection, and of which Etherege alone affords a satisfactory example in the reign of Charles II.
^ In the list of " Persons" prefixed to the play (ed. 1668) she is called "Mrs. Ellen Guyn." The actress with whom she is so often confused, "Mrs. Quin,'' appeared as " Can-diope, Princess of the Blood."—G. G.
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The first afternoon of the new play was the 2nd of March 1666-7. The King and the Duke of York were both present:—so too were both Mr. and Mrs. Pepys, who had heard the play mightily commended for the regularity of its story, and what Mr. Pepys is pleased to call " the strain and wit." The chief parts (its author tells us) were performed to a height of great excellence, both serious and comic; and it was well received. The King objected, indeed, to the management of the last scene, where Celadon and Florimel (Hart and Nelly) are treating too lightly of their marriage in the presence of the Queen. But Pepys would not appear to have seen any defect of this description. " The truth is," he says, " there is a comical part done by Nell, which is Florimel, that I never can hope ever to see the like done again by man or woman. ... So great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before as Nell do this, both as a mad girl, then most and best of all when she comes in like a young gallant, and hath the motion and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, admire her." Nor did the worthy critic change his opinion. He calls it, after his second visit, an " excellent play, and so done by Nell her merry part as cannot be better done in nature." ^ While after his third visit he observes that it is impossible to have Florimel's part, which is the most comical that ever was made for woman, ever done better than it is by Nelly.^ 1 Pepys, March 25, 1667. * Ibid., May 24, 1667.
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The support of the performance rested, it must be owned, on Hart's character of Celadon, and on Nelly's part of Florimel. Nell indeed had to sustain the heavier burden of the piece. She is seldom off the stage —all the loose rattle of dialogue belongs to her, nay, more, she appears in the fifth act in male attire, dances a jig in the same act, often of itself sufficient to save a play, and ultimately speaks the epilogue in defence of the author:
I left my client yonder in a rant
Against the envious and the ignorant,
Who are, he says, his only enemies ;
But he contemns their malice, and defies
The sharpest of his censurei s to say
Where there is one gross fault in all his play,
The language is so fitted for each part,
The plot according to the rules of art;
And twenty other things he bid me tell you.
But I cry'd "E'en go do't yourself for Nelly ! "
There are incidents and allusions in the parts of Celadon and Florimel which must have carried a personal application to those who were, speaking technically, behind the scenes. Nelly, if not actually the mistress at this time of Charles Hart, was certainly looked upon by many as very little less. Their marriage in the play is more of a Fleet or May Fair mockery than a religious ceremony,— as if, to use Florimel's own language, they were married by the more agreeable names of mistress and gallant, rather than those dull old-fashioned ones of husband and wife.
Florimel, it appears to me, must have been Nelly's chef d'ceuvre in her art. I can hear her
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exclaiming, with a prophetic feeling of its truth, " I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five-and-twenty ;" while I can picture to myself, as my readers will easily do, Nelly in boy's clothes, dressed to the admiration of Etherege and Sedley, scanned from head to foot with much surprise by Mr. Pepys and Sir William Penn, viewed with other feelings by Lord Buckhurst on one side of the house, and by the King himself on the other, while to the admiration of the author, and of the whole audience, she exclaims, with wonderful by-play, "Yonder they are, and this way they must come. If clothes and a bonne mien will take 'm, I shall do't.—Save you, Monsieur Florimel! Faith, methinks you are a very janty fellow, poudre et ajuste as well as the best of 'em. I can manage the little comb—set my hat, shake my garniture, toss about my empty noddle, walk with a courant slur, and at every step peck down my head :—if I should be mistaken for some courtier, now, pray where's the difference?" This is what Beau Hewit or Beau Fielding were enacting every day in their lives, and Colley Gibber lived to be the last actor who either felt or could make others feel its truth and application.
Nelly was living at this time in the fashionable part of Drury Lane, the Strand or Covent Garden end, for Drury Lane in the days of Gharles IL was inhabited by a very different class of people from those who now occupy it—or, indeed, who have lived in it since the time Gay guarded us from
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" Drury's mazy courts and dark abodes "—since Pope described i*^ only too truly as peopled by drabs of the lowest character, and by authors " lulled by sof^ zephyrs " through the broken pane of a garret window. The upper end, towards St. Giles's Pound and Montague House, had its squalid quarters, like Lewknor's Lane and the Coal Yard, in which, as we have concluded, our Nelly was born ; but at the Strand end lived the Earl of Anglesey, long Lord Privy Seal, and the Earls of Clare and Craven, whose names are still perpetuated in Clare Market and Craven Yard. Drury Lane, when Nelly was living there, was a kind of Park Lane of the present day, made up of noblemen's mansions, small houses, inns, and stable-yards. Nor need the similitude be thus restricted ; for the Piazza of Covent Garden was then to Drury Lane what Grosvenor Square is at present to Park Lane. Squalid quarters, indeed, have always been near neighbours to lordly localities. When Nelly lodged in Drury Lane, Covent Garden had its Lewknor Lane, and Lincoln's Inn Fields their Whetstone Park. Belgravia has now its Tothill Street—Portman Square has its contaminating neighbourhood of Calmel Buildings— and one of the most infamous of alleys is within half a stone's throw of St. James's Palace.
Nelly's lodgings were near the lodgings of Lacy the actor, at the top of Maypole Alley,
Where Drury Lane descends into the Strand,
and over against the Gate of Craven House. The
The Cock and Magpie, Nell Gwyn's lodgings in Drury Lane, From a ivato--colour drawing made in 1850 by J. Findlay.
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look-out afforded a peep into a part of Wych Street, and while standing at the doorway you could see the far-famed Maypole in the Strand, at the bottom of the alley to which it had lent its name.
This Maypole, long a conspicuous ornament to the west-end of London, rose to a great height above the surrounding houses, and was surmounted by a crown and vane, with the royal arms richly gilded. It had been set up again immediately after the Restoration. Great ceremonies attended its erection : twelve picked seamen superintending the tackle, and ancient people clapping their hands, and exclaiming, "Golden days begin to appear ! " Nelly must have remembered the erection of the Maypole at the bottom of the lane in which she was born ; but there is little save some gable-ends and old timber-fronts near her " lodgings door " to assist in carrying the mind back to the days of the Maypole and the merry monarch whose recall it was designed to commemorate.
Among the many little domestic incidents perpetuated by Pepys, there are few to which I would sooner have been a witness than the picture he has left us of Nelly standing at her door watching the milkmaids on May-day. The Clerk of the Acts on his way from Seething Lane in the City met, he tells us, "many milkmaids with garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddle before them," and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings door in Drury Lane in her smock sleeves and bodice looking upon one. " She seemed," he adds, " a mighty
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pretty creature.'' This was in 1667, while her recent triumphs on the stage were still fresh at Court, and the obscurity of her birth was a common topie of talk and banter among the less fortunate inhabitants of the lane she lived in. The scene so lightly sketched by Pepys might furnish no unfitting subject for the pencil of Leslie or Maclise—a subject, indeed, which would shine in their hands. That absence of all false pride, that innate love of unaffected nature, and that fondness for the simple sports of the people which the incident exhibits, are characteristics of Nelly from the first moment to the last—following her naturally, and sitting alike easily and gracefully upon her, whether at her humble lodgings in Drury Lane, at her handsome house in Pall Mall, or even under the gorgeous cornices of Whitehall.
But I have no intention of finding a model heroine in a coal-yard, or any wish either to palliate or condemn too severely the frailties of the woman whose story I have attempted to relate. It was, therefore, within a very few months of the May-day scene I have just described, that whispers asserted, and the news was soon published in every coffee-house in London, how little Miss Davis of the Duke's House had become the mistress of the King, and Nell Gwyn at the other theatre the mistress of Lord Buckhurst. Whoever is at all conversant with the manners and customs of London life in the reign of Charles II. will confirm me in the statement that two such announcements, even at the same time, would cause but
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little surprise, or indeed any other feeling than that of envy at their good luck. With the single exception of Mrs. Betterton, there was not, I believe, an actress at either theatre who had not been, or was not then the mistress of some person about the Court. Actors were looked upon as little better than shopmen or servants. When the Honourable Edward Howard was struck by Lacy of the King's House, a very general feeling prevailed that Howard should have run his sword thi-ough the menial body of the actor. Nor was this feeling altogether extinguished till the period of the Kembles. It was entirely owing to the exertions of the great Lord Mansfield, that Arthur Murphy, less than a century ago, was allowed to enter his name on the books of Lincohvs Inn. He had been previously refused by the Benchers of the Middle Temple, for no other reason than that he had been an actor.* Nay, George Selwyn, it is well known, excluded Richard Brinsley Sheridan from Brooks's on three occasions because his father had been upon the stage.
Nor did actresses fare better than actors. If anything, indeed, they were still worse treated. They were looked upon as women of the worst character, possessed of no inclination or inducement to virtue. Few, indeed, were found to share the sentiment expressed by one of Shad well's manliest characters, " 1 love the stage too well to keep
1 Dr. Johnson is thoii£;ht to have objected to Garrick becoming a member of " the Club " for a like reason. Bos-well's Johnson, ed. 1848, p. 164.—G. G.
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any of their women, to make 'em proud and insolent, and despise that calling to take up a worse." The frailty of " playhouse flesh and blood " ^ afforded a common topic for the poet in his prologue or his epilogue, and other writers than Lee might be found who complain of the practice of "keeping "as a grievance to the stage.^ Davenant, foreseeing their fate from an absence of any control, boarded his four principal actresses in his own house ; but, with one exception (that of Mrs. Betterton before referred to), the precaution was altogether without effect. The King, Prince Rupert, the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Oxford, Lord Buckhurst, Sir Charles Sedley, Sir Philip Howard, his brother. Sir Robert Howard, were all successful in the arts of seduction or inducement. So bad indeed was the moral discipline of the times, that even Mrs. Knep, loose as were her notions of virtue, could see the necessity of parting with a pretty servant-girl, as the tiring-room was no place for the preservation of her innocence.^ The virtuous life of Mrs. Bracegirdle, and her spirited rebuke to the Earl of Burlington, stand out in noble relief from the conduct of her fellow-actresses. The Earl had sent her a letter and a present of a handsome set of china. The charming actress retained the letter and informed the servant of the mistake. The letter, she said, was for her, but the china was for Lady Burlington. When the Earl returned home
* Dryden's Prologue to Marriage-d.-la-Mode.
^ Epilogue to 7he Rival Queens.
2 Pepys, April 7, i663.
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he found his Countess all happiness at the unexpected present from her husband.^
Times, however, changed after Nelly had gone, and the Stuarts had ceased to reign, for ennobled actresses are now common enough in the English peerage. Other changes too took place. Mrs. Barry walked home in her clogs, and Mrs. Brace-girdle in her pattens ; but Mrs. Oldfield went away in her chair,- and Lavinia Fenton (the original Polly Peachum) rolled westward in her coroneted carriage as Duchess of Bolton.^
It says little for the morality of London in the reign of Charles II., but something for the taste of the humble orange-girl, that the lover who had attracted her, and with whom she was now living in the lovely neighbourhood of Epsom, was long looked up to as the best bred man of his age:
None ever had so strange an art
His passion to convey Into a list'ning virgin's heart,
And steal her soul away.*
But Buckhurst had other qualities to recommend him than his youth (he was thirty at this time), his rank, his good heart, and his good breeding. He had already distinguished himself by his personal
1 Walpole to Mann {Mann Letters), iii. 254.
' Walpole, May 26, 1742.
3 Mr. Murray, of Albemarle Street, possesses Hogarth's interesting picture of the first representation of the Beggar's Opera, in its original frame. Here his Grace of Bolton is gazing upon Polly from one stage-box—while in the other, Bolingbroke is seated by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
* Song by Sir C. S. [Sir Carr Scrope or Sir Charles Sedley] in Etherege's hlaii 0/ Mode; or. Sir Fopling Flutter.
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intrepidity in the war against the Dutch ; had written the best song of its kind in the English language, and some of the severest and most refined satires we ix)ssess ; was the friend of all the poets of eminence in his time, as he was afterwards the most munificent patron of men of genius that this country has yet seen. The most eminent masters in their several lines asked and abided by his judgment, and afterwards dedicated their works to him in grateful acknowledgment of his taste and favours. Butler owed to him that the Court 'tasted" his Hudibms; Wycherley that the town "liked" his Plain Dealer; and the Duke of Buckingham deferred to publish his Rehearsal till he was sure, as he expressed it, that my Lord Buckhurst would not " reheai'se " upon him again. Nor was this all. His table was one of the last that gave us an example of the old housekeeping of an English nobleman. A freedom reigned about it which made every one of the guests think himself at home, and an abundance which showed that the master's hospitality extended to many more than those who had the honour to sit at table with himself.* Nor has he been less happy after death. Pope wrote his epitaph and Prior his panegyric— while Walpole and Macaulay (two men with so little apparently in common) have drawn his character with a warmth of approbation rather to have been expected from those who had shared his bounty or enjoyed his friendship, than from the
1 Prior's Dedication of his Poems to Lord Buckhurst's son, Lionel, first Duke of Dorset.
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colder judgments of historians looking back calmly upon personages who had long ceased to influence or affect society.
With such a man, and with Sedley's resistless wit to add fresh vigour to the conversation, it is easy to understand what Pepys had heard, that Lord Buckhurst and Nelly kept " merry house " at Epsom,—
All hearts fall a-le;)ping wherever she comes,
And beat day and night hke my Lord Craven's drums, i
What this Epsom life was like shall be the subject of another chapter.
1 Song by Lord Buckhurst [on "bonny black Bess," who, according to Horace Walpole, was Mrs. Barnes. See Mr. A. H. Bullen's Musa Prctei-va, p. 35].
Epsom in the reign of Charles II.—England in 1667—Nelly resumes her Ene^agement at the King's Theatre—Inferior in Tragedy to Comedy—Plays Mirida in All Mistaken — Miss l3avis of the Duke's Theatre—Her song, "My Lodging it is on the Cold Ground," parodied by Nell— Influence of the Duke of Buckingham in controlling the predilections of the King^Charles II. at the Duke's Theatre—Nelly has leading parts in three of Dryden's new Plays—Biickhurst is made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, promised a peerage, and sent on a sleeveless errand into France—Nell becomes the Mistress of the King—Plays Almaliide in The Conquest of Granada — The King more than ever enamoured—Parallel case of " Perdita" Robinson and George IV.
Nelly was now at Epsom, then and long after the fashionable resort of the richer citizens of London. " The foolish world is never to be mended," is the remark of "a gentleman of wit and sense" in Shadwell's comedy of The Virtuoso. " Your glass coach," he says, "will to Hyde Park for air; the suburb fools trudge to Lamb's Conduit or Tottenham ; your sprucer sort of citizens gallop to Epsom; your mechanic gross fellows, shewing much con-
40
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Gyle// .0/r/
//
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jugal affection, strut before their wives, each with a child in his arms, to Ishngton or Hogsden." The same agreeable writer, whose plays supply truer and happier illustrations of the manners and customs of the time than any other contemporary dramatist, has left us a comedy called Epso)n Wells^ in which, notwithstanding the sneer of Dryden about his "hungry Epsom-prose," he has contrived to interest us by peopling the place with the usual frequenters out of term-time ; men of wit and pleasure ; young ladies of wit, beauty, and fortune ; with a parson and a country justice ; with two cheating, sharking, cowardly bullies; with two rich citizens of London and their wives, one a comfit-maker, the other a haberdasher, and both cuckolds (" Epsom water-drinking " with other ladies of pleasure) ; with hectors from Covent Garden, a constable, a Dogberry-like watch, and two country fiddlers—in short, by picturing "the freedom of Epsom " as it existed in an age of easy virtue.
The Derby and the Oaks, the races which have rendered Epsom so famous, and our not less celebrated Tattenham Corner, were then unknown ; but the King's Head and the New Inn, Clay Hill and Mawse's Garden, were favourite names, full of attractions to London apprentices, sighing to see their indentures at an end, and Epsom no longer excluded from their places of resort. The waters were considered efficacious, and the citizens east of Temple Bar were supposed to receive as much benefit from their use, as the courtiers west of the
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Bar were presumed to receive from the waters of Tunbridge Wells. The alderman or his deputy, on their way to this somewhat inaccessible suburb of the reign of Charles II., were met at Tooting by lodging-house-keepers, tradesmen, and quack-doctors, with so many clamorous importunities for patronage, that the very expressive English word touting derives its origin from the village where this plying for trade was carried to so importune an extent.
There is now at Epsom, or was to be seen there till very lately, a small inn with the sign of the King's Head, lying somewhat out of the present town, on the way to the wells. It was at "the next house " to this inn, or to an inn with the same name, that Nelly and Lord Buckhurst put up, keeping " merry house," with Sedley to assist them in laughing at the " Bow-bell suckers" who resorted to the Epsom waters.^ Nelly would contribute her share to the merriment of the scene around them. The citizens of London were hated by the players. They had successfully opposed them in all their early attempts in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. to erect a theatre within the jurisdiction of the City ; and at no time had they ever encouraged the drama by their presence. The poets and actors lived by the King and Court, while they repaid their opponents and gratified the courtiers by holding up every citizen as a cuckold and a fool. So long was this feeling perpetuated on the stage (it still lives in
* Pepys, July 14, 1667. 42
THE STORY OF NELL GW'YxV
our literature), that Garrick, in his endeavour to supplant the usual performance of the London Cuckolds on the 9th of November (Lord Mayor's day), was reduced to play first to a noisy, and next to an empty house.
Whilst Buckhurst and Nelly kept "merry house' at Epsom in the months of July and August 1667) it w^as not altogether merry in England elsewhere. The Plague of 1665 had been followed by the Fire of 1666, and both Plague and Fire in 1667 by the national shame of a Dutch fleet insulting us in the Thames, burning some of our finest ships in the Medway at Chatham, and by the undeserved disgrace inflicted by the King and his imperious mistress, Castlemaine, on the great Lord Clarendon. Wise and good men, too, were departing from among us. Cowley finished the life of an elegant and amiable recluse at Chertsey in Surrey, and Jeremy Taylor that of a saint at Lisnegarry in Ireland. England, too, in the same year, had lost the loyal Marquess of Worcester and the virtuous Earl of Southampton, neither of whom could she well spare at such a period ; on the other hand, the country was receiving a noble addition to her literature by the publication of Paradise Lost; but this few at the time cared to read, as the work of ^''that Milton who wrote for the regicides,"*— '■'■that Paradise Lost of Milton's which some are pleased to call a poem," - or chose to understand,
' Evelyn's Diary, June 2, 1686.
=" Thomas Rymer's The Tragedies of the last age consider'd . . . Ina Letter to Fleetwood Shepheard [1678], p. 143.
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from the seriousness of the subject, or the grandeur of its treatment.
At the Court, where undisguised Hbertinism was still triumphant, the burning of the city began to be talked of as an old story, like that of the burning of Troy, and the disgrace at Chatham as something to be obliterated by the disgrace of the Lord Chancellor. Indeed, there was no feeling of fear, or any sentiment of deserved dishonour, maintained at Court. On the very day on which the Great Seal was taken from Clarendon, and his ruin effected, the Countess of Castlemaine, one of the leading instruments of his fall, was admiring the rope-dancing of Jacob Hall, and laughing at the drolls and odd animals exhibited to the citizens at Bartholomew Fair!
Nelly, after a month's absence, returned to London in August 1667, and resumed some of her old parts at the theatre in Drury Lane, playing Bellario in Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster; Panthea, in A King and No King of the same authors ; Cydaria, in The Indian Emperor of Dryden and his brother-in-law ; Samira, in Sir Robert Howard's Surprisalj Flora, in Florals Vagaries, a comedy attributed to Rhodes ; and M\r\6i3i,m All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple, of the Hon. James Howard. Of her performance in some of these parts Pepys again is our only informant. How graphic are his entries!—
"22 Aug. 1667.—After dinner with my lord Brounckerand his mistress to the King's playhouse, and there saw The Indian Emperor, where 1 find Nell come again, which I am
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glad of; but was most infinitely displeased with her being put to act the Emperor's daughter, which is a great and serious part, which she do most basely. The rest of the play, though pretty good, was not well acted by most of them, methought; so that I took no great content in it.
"26 Aug. 1667.—I wallted to the King's playhouse, there to meet Sir W. Pen, and saw The Surprisal, a very mean play I thought, or else it was because I was out of humour, and but very little company in the house. But there Sir W. Pen and I had a great deal of discourse with [Orange] Moll, who tells us that Nell is already left by my lord Buckhurst, and that he makes sport of her, and swears she hath had all she could get of him ; and Hart, her great admirer, now hates her ; and that she is very poor, and hath lost my Lady Castlemaine, who was her great friend also ; but she is come to the house, but is neglected by them all.
"5 Oct. 1667.—To the King's house, and there, going in, met with Knepp, and she took us up into the tireing rooms ; and to the women's shift, where Nell was dressing herself [as Flora], and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. And so walked all up and down the house above, and then below into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit; and here I read the questions to Knepp, while she answered me, through all her part of Floras Figarys, which was acted to-day. But, Lord ! to see how they were both painted would make a man mad, and did make me loath them ; and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk! and how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make on the stage by candle-hght, is very observable. But to see how Nell cursed, for having so few people in the pit, was pretty; the other house carrying away all the people at the new play, and is said now-a-days to have generally most company, as being better players.
"II Nov. 1667.—^To the King's playhouse, and there saw The Indian Emperor, a good play, but not so good as people cry it up, I think, though, above all things, Nell's ill-speaking of a great part made me mad.
"26 Dec. 1667.—With my wife to the King's playhouse, and there saw The Surprisal, which did not please me to-day, the actors not pleasing me, and especially Nell's acting of a serious part, which she spoils.
"28 Dec. 1667.—To the King's house, and there saw The Mad Couple, which is but an ordinary play; but only Nell's and Hart's mad parts are most excellently done, but
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especially hers, wliicli makes it a miracle to me to think how if. she do any serious part, as, the other day, just like a fool or changling; and in a mad part do beyond all imitation almost."
That Nell hated "serious parts," in which, as Pepys assures us, she was poor, we have her own testimony, in an epilogue which she spoke a few months later to the tragedy of the Duke of Lerma :
I know you in your hearts
Hate serious plays—as I hate serious parts.
And again in the epilogue to Tyrantiick Love:
Idle Out of my calling in a tragedy.
The truth is (as I see reason to believe), such parts were thrust upon her by Hart, her old admirer, who hated her for preferring Lord Buckhurst to himself. But this feeling was soon overcome, and Nell, as Mirida in the comedy of All Mistake)!, added to her well-earned reputation as an actress, obeying the advice of Mrs. Barry, " Make yourself mistress of your part, and leave the figure and action to nature." ^
All Mistaken, or the Mad Couple, a play commended by some, says Langbaine, " as an excellent comedy," has little merit of its own to recommend it to the reader. The whole success of the performance must have rested on Hart and Nelly. Philidor (Hart) is a mad, or, as we should now call him, a madcap, kinsman of an Italian duke, and Mirida (Nelly) is a madcap young lady of the same
1 Curll's Stage, p. 62. 46
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eccentric school. Philidor is troubled with clamorous importunities for marriage from six young ladies whom he has betrayed, and for money from those nurses by whom his children have been taken; and Mirida is persecuted with the importunate addresses, at the same time, of a very lean and of a very fat lover. Some of the pleasantries to which the madcap couple resort are of a coarse and practical character. Philidor tricks his be siegers, and Mirida replies to her importunate lovers that she will marry the lean one when he is fatter, and the fat one when he is leaner. The arts which the suitors have recourse to are somewhat tedious, and certainly not over decent. Yet it is easy to see that the play would tell with the audience to whom it was addressed, for many of the situations are humorous in the extreme. In one of the scenes Philidor and Mirida are bound back to back by the six ladies, Philidor losing his money and his hat, and Mirida consoling herself by the entry of a fiddler.
[Enter Fiddler.'] Mirida. —A fiddle, nay then I am made again ; I'd have a dance if I had nothing but my smock on. Fiddler, strike up and play my jig, call'd " I care not a pin for any man." i
1 Nell was famous for dancing jigs. The Duke of Buckingham, in his Epilogue to The Chances [an alteration from Beaumont and Fletcher, performed at the theatre in Dorset Garden in 1682], laughs at poets who mistook the praise given to Nelly's jig for the praise bestowed on their own performances :—
'' Besides the author dreads the strut and mien Of new prais'd poets, having often seen Some of his fellows, who have \Nrit before, 47
TPIE STORY OF NELL GWYN
Fiddler. —Indeed I can't stay. I am going to play to some gentlemen.
Mirida. —Nay, thou shalt stay but a little.
Fiddler. —Give me half-a-crown then.
Mirida. —I have no money about me ; but here, take my hankercher. [Dance and Exit.
In another part Mirida manages a sham funeral for Philidor, to which the six young ladies are invited to hear the will of the deceased.
Mirida. — Poor young man, he was killed yesterday by a duel.
" Item. I give to Mrs. Mary for a reason that she knows, 500/. Item. 500/. to Mrs. Margaret for a reason she knows. Item. 500/. to Mrs. Sarah lor a reason she knows. Item. 500/. to Mrs. Martha for a reason she knows. Item. 500/. to Mrs. Alice for a reason she knows. Item. 500/. to Mrs. Elinor for a reason she knows, and so to all the rest. Item. To my nurses I leave each of them 20/. a year apiece for their lives, besides their arrears due to them for nursing. These sums of money and legacies I leave to be raised and paid out of my manor of Constantinople, in which the Great Turk is now tenant for Hfe." [Laughs aside."] If they should hear how their legacies are to be paid, how they'd fall a-drumming on his coffin !
There is more of this ; but it is time to turn to that incident from which the play derived its popularity, its satire on a recent event at the Duke's Theatre.
The Rivals, a play altered by Davenant from The Two Noble A'/«j-;«if« of Beaumont and Fletcher, or rather of Fletcher alone, was brought upon the stage about 1664, but would not appear to have
When Nel has danc'd her Jig, steal to the door, Hear the pit clap, and with conceit of that. Swell, and believe themselves the Lord knows what." Works, ed. 1715, pt. ii. p. 150.
-?'^_i^^ Sa,u^,Ji4,.n.a>'
9'ySi.Mijr2j'
t¥i// < ^1.
lo-r/n
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met with any great success till 1667, when the part of Celania was represented by little Miss Davis, who danced a jig in the play and then sang a song in it, both of which found their way direct to the heart of the merry monarch. The jig was probably some fresh French importation, or nothing more than a rustic measure, with a few foreign innovations. The song has reached us, and has much ballad beauty to recommend it.
My lodging"it is en the cold ground,
And very hard is my fare, But that which troubles me most is
The unkindness of my dear. Yet still I cry, O turn, love,
And I prythee, love, turn to me. For thou art the man that I long for,
And alack what remedy !
I'll crown thee with a garland of straw, then,
And I'll marry thee with a rush ring, My frozen hopes shall thaw then,
And merrily we will sing. O turn to me, my dear love,
And prythee, love, turn to me. For thou art the man that alone canst
Procure my liberty.
But if thou wilt harden thy heart still.
And be deaf to my pitiful moan, Then I must endure the smart still,
And tumble in straw alone. Yet still I cry, O turn, love.
And I prythee, love, turn to ms, For thou art the man that alone art
The cause of my misery.i
1 The stage direction is—"That done she lies down and falls asleep." [The music of the ballad will be found in Hawkins's Hist, of Music, iv. 525.]
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The success of the song is related by the prompter at the theatre in his curious Uttle volume, called Roscius AngUcantis. " All the women's parts," says Downes, " were admirably acted, but what pleased most was the part of Celania, a shepherdess, mad for love, and her song of ' My lodging is on the cold ground,' which she performed," he adds, " so charmingly that not long after it raised her from her bed on the cold ground to a bed royal." ^
I might be excused for referring, at this period of Nelly's life, to the ribald personalities common to the stage in the reign of Charles II., but I am unwilling to stop the stream of my narrative by delaying to relate the personal reference made by NeU^ in the play of All Mistaken, to the song and the incident at the Duke's House, which raised little Miss Davis to a "bed royal." The scene in All Mistaken which doubtless gave the greatest delight to the audience at Drury Lane was that in the last act, where Pinguisier, the fat lover, sobs his complaints into the ear of the madcap Mirida.
Mirida.—'Dea.r love, come sit thee in my lap, and let me know if I can enclose thy world of fat and love within tbese arms. See, I cannot nigh compass my desires by a mile.
Pinguisier. —How is my fat a riv'al to my joys! sure I shall weep it all away. [Cries.
Mirida. —
Lie still, my babe, lie still and sleep, It grieves me sore to see thee weep.
1 Rosciif! Anglicanits, ed. 1708, p. 24. [Downes is wrong in .statin;^ that she enacted the part of a " shepherdess mad for love," as a comparison with the printed text of the play will prove.]
so
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Wert thou but leaner I were glad ; Thy fatness makes thy dear love sad.
What a lump of love I have in my arms !
My lodging is on the cold boards,
And wonderful hard is my fare, But that which troubles me most is
The fatness of my dear. Yet still I cry, Oh melt, love.
And I pry thee now melt apace, For thou art the man I should long for
If 'twere not for thy grease.
Pinguiiier. —
Then prythee don't harden thy heart still,
And be deaf to my pitiful moan, Since I do endure the smart still.
And for my fat do groan. Then prythee now turn, my dear love,
And I prythee now turn to nie, For, alas ! I am too fat still
To roll so far to thee.
The nearer the fat man rolls towards her, the further she rolls away from him, till she at length rises and laughs her hearty Mrs. Jordan-like mirth-provoking laugh, first at the man and then towards the audience, seizes a couple of swords from a cutler passing by, disarms her fat lover, and makes him the ridicule of the whole house. It is easy to see that this would not take now, even with another Nelly to represent it; but every age has its fashion and its humour, and that of Charles II. had fashions and humours of its own, quite as diverting as any of the representations and incidents which still prove attractive to a city or a west-end audience
"Little Miss Davis" danced and sang divinely, but was not particularly beautiful, though she had fine eyes and a neat figure, both of which are
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preserved in her portrait at Cashiobury, by Sir Peter Lely.' The popular belief still lingering among the cottages surrounding the old Jacobean mansion of the Howards at Charlton in Wiltshire, that she was the daughter of a blacksmith, and was at one time a milkmaid, can only in part be true. Pepys was informed by Mrs. Pierce, wife of James Pierce, surgeon to the Duke of York, and surgeon of the regiment commanded by the Duke, that she was an illegitimate child of Colonel Howard, son of the Earl of Berkshire, and brother of James Howard, author of the play in which, as we have seen, she was held up to ridicule through the inimitable acting of Nell Gwyn. The King's affection for her was shown in a marked and open manner. The ring of rushes referred to in the song was exchanged for a ring of the value of ^700, and her lodging about Ludgate or Lincoln's Inn (the usual resorts of the players at the Duke's Theatre) for a house in Suffolk Street, Haymarket, furnished by the King expressly for her use. The Queen, before she was worn into complete indifference by the uncontrolled vices of her husband, resented them at times with the spirit of a woman. When Miss Davis was dancing one of her favourite "jigs" in a play at Court, the Queen rose and " would not stay to see it." Nor was the imperious Countess of Castle-
1 This isahalf-Iength.seated,—the same portrait, I suspect, which Mrs. Beale saw in Bap. May's lodgings at Whitehall. The curious full-length portrait of her in after-life by Kneller, and now at Audley End, barely supplies a single feature that is attractive.
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maine less incensed than the Queen herself at the unwelcome intrusion of little Miss Davis within the innermost chambers and withdrawing-rooms of Whitehall. Her revenge, however, was peculiarly her own—she ran into open infidelities ; and, as the King had set her aside for an actress at his brother's house, so, to be " even " with him (the expression is in Pepys), she extended her favours to Charles Hart, the handsome and celebrated actor, at his own house.
The Duke of Buckingham (the wit, and the second and last Duke of the Villiers family) is thought to have been the principal agent at this time in directing and confirming the predilections of the King. The Duke and Lady Castlemaine had newly quarrelled, fiercely and almost openly, and both were devising means of revenge characteristic of their natures. By the influence of the Countess the Duke was removed from his seat at the Council, and the Duke in return " studied to take the King from her by new amours," and thinking, truly enough, that a "gaiety of humour" would take with his Majesty more than beauty without humour, he encouraged his passion for little Miss Davis by all the arts and insinuations he was master of. The King, too, was readier than usual to adopt any new excess of enjoyment which Buckingham could offer him. La Belle Stewart, the only woman for whom he would seem to have entertained any sincere affection, had left his Court in secret a few months before, and worse still, had given herself in marriage to the Duke of Richmond,
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without his approbation, and even without his knowledge. Castlemaine was now past her zenith, though she retained much beauty to the last, and found admirers in the great Duke of Marlborough, when young, and in Beau Fielding, long the handsomest man about town. Yet Charles was not really unkind to her at any time. The song which he caused Will Legge to sing to her—
Poor Alinda's growing old,— Those charms are now no more,—^
must have caused her some temporary uneasiness and a disdainful curl of her handsome and imperious lip ; but she knew her influence, and managed to retain it almost unimpaired to the very last, in spite of many excesses, which Buckingham seldom failed to discover and make known to the King.
Of the King, the Countess, and pretty Miss Davis, at this period, Pepys aftords us a sketch in little—but to the point:—
"21 Dec. 1668. To the Duko's playhouse, and saw Macbeth. The King and court there; and we sat just under them and mv Lady Castlemaine, and close to the woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip, that pretends to be like her, and is so, something. And my wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them ; I never thought so much before ; and so did Talbot and_W. Hewer, as they said, I heard, to one another. The King and Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me; but it vexed me to see Moll Davis, in the box over the King's and my Lady Castlemaine's head, look down upon the King, and he up to her; and so did my Lndy Castlemaine once, to see who it was ; but when she saw her', she loolced like fire, which troubled me."
1 I,ord Dartmouth's note in Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 458. Where are these verses to be found?
S4
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To complete the picture which Pepys has left us, we have only to turn to The True Widoiu of Shad-well, where, in the fourth act, the scene is laid in " the Playhouse," and stage directions of this character occur: "Enter women masked"; "Several young coxcombs fool with the orange-women " ; " He sits down and lolls in the orange-wench's lap" ; " Raps people on the backs and twirls their hats, and then looks demurely, as if he did not do it" ;—such were daily occurrences at both theatres in the reign of Charles II.
Such were our pleasures in tlie days of yoje, Wlien amorous Charles Britannia's sceptre bore ; The mighty scene of joy the Park was made, And Love in couples peopled every shade. But since at Court the moral taste is lost, What mighty sums have velvet couches cost! ^
We are now less barefaced in our immoralities, but are we really better? Was Whitehall ia the reign of Charles 11, worse than St. James's Palace in the reign of George II., or Carlton House in the regency of George IV.? Were Mrs. Robinson, Mary Anne Clarke, or Dora Jordan better women then Eleanor Gwyn or Mary Davis ? Will future historians prefer the old Duke of Queensberry and the late .Alarquis of Hertford to the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Rochester?
A new play of this period, in which Nelly performed the heroine, is the Black Prince^ written by the Earl of Orrery, and acted for the first time at the King's House, on the 19th of October 1667.
1 Gay to Pulteney. 53
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Nelly's part was Alizia or Alice Piers, the mistress of Edward III. ; and the following lines must have often in after-life occurred to recollection, not from their poetry, which is little enough, but from their particular applicability to her own story :
You know, dear friend, when to this court I came, My eyes did all our bravest youths inflame; And in that happy state I lived awhile, When Fortune did betray me with a smile ; Or rather Love against my peace did fight; And to revenge his power, which I did slight, Made Edward our victorious monarch be One of those many who did sigh for me. All other flame but his I did deride ; They rather made my trouble than my pride: But this, when told me, made me quickly know. Love is a god to which all hearts must bow.
The King was present at the first performance, when his own heart was acknowledging and his own eyes betraying the sense he entertained of the beauty and wit of the charming actress who played Alizia on the stage, and who was hereafter to move in the same sphere in which the original had moved —with greater honesty and much more affection.
While little Miss Davis was living in handsome lodgings in Suffolk Street, and baring her hand in public in the face of the Countess of Castlemaine, to show the 700/. ring which the King had given her, a report arose that "the King had sent for Nelly." 1 Nor was it long before this gossip of the town was followed by other rumours about her, not likely, it was thought, to be true, from her constant appearance on the stage, speaking prologues in
1 Pepys, January ii, 1667-8. S6
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fantastic hats and Amazonian habits,' playing as she did, too, at this time, Valeria in Dryden's last new tragedy of Tyrannick Love, or the Royal Martyr, and Donna Jacintha in Dryden's latest comedy, called An Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer. Other rumours, relating to Lord Buck-hurst, and since found to be true, were current at the same time,—that he had been made a groom of the King's bed-chamber, with a pension of a thousand pounds a year, commencing from Michaelmas, 1668; that he had received the promise of a peerage at his grandfather's death; and that he had been sent by the King on a complimentary visit to a foreign power, or, as Dryden is said to have called it, on a " sleeveless errand "- into France. In the meantime gossips in both the theatres were utterly at a loss to reconcile the stories repeated by the orange-women that Nelly was often at Whitehall with her constant attention to her theatrical engagements, and the increasing skill she exhibited in the acquirements of her art. Nor was it till the winter of 1669, or rather the spring of 1670, that the fact of the postponement of a new tragedy by
1 Before the 1669 edition Catiline is a prologue "to be merrily spoke by Mrs. Nell in an Amazonian habit." Pepys and Evelyn both saw Ca////>;« acted on the 19th of Dec. 1668. [Nell Gvvyn acted Jacintha in 1668, and Valeria in the wmter of 1668-9. The epilogue to Tyrannick Love, "spoken by Mrs. Ellen when she was to be carried off dead by the bearers," was apparently written for the express purpose of displaying the actress's comic powers after she had performed but indifferently in a part unsuitable to her.]
^ Note by Boyer in his translation of De Grammont, Svo, 1714, p. 343.
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Dryden, on account of Nelly's being away, confirmed some of the previous rumours ; and it was known even east of Temple Bar, and among- the Puritans in the Blackfriars, that Nelly had become the mistress of the King.
When this important change in her condition took place—a change that removed her from many temptations, and led to the exhibition of traits of character and good feeling which more than account for the fascination connected with her name—she was studying the part of Almahide in Dryden'snew tragedy, The Conquest of Granada. Before, however, the play could be produced, Nelly was near giving birth to the future Duke of St. Albans, and therefore unable to appear, so that Dryden was obliged to postpone the production of his piece till another season. The poet alludes to this postponement in his epilogue :
Think him not duller for the year's delay ;
He was prepared, the women were away ;
And men without their parts can hardly play.
If they through sickness seldom did appear,
Pity the virgins of each theatre ;
For at both houses 'twas a sickly year!
And pity us, your servants, to whose cost
In one such sickness nine whole months were lost.
The allusion is to Miss Davis at the Duke's, and to Nelly at the King's ; but the poet's meaning has escaped his editors.
The Conquest of Granada was first performed in the autumn of 1670,—Hart playing Almanzor to Nelly's Almahide. With what manliness and grace
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of elocution must Hart have delivered the well-known lines,—
I am as free as Nature first made mnn, Ere the base law of servitude began, Wlien wild in woods the noble savage ran.
The attraction, however, of the play rested mainly upon Nelly, who spoke the prologue "in a broad-brimmed hat and waist-belt," and apologised in the following manner for her appearance, to the renewed delight of the whole audience :
This jest was first of th' other House's makinsf, And, five times tried, has never failed of taking ; For 'twere a shame a poet should be kill'd Under the shelter of so broad a shield. This is that hat whose very sight did win ye To laugh and clap as though the devil were in ye. As then for Nokes, so now I hope you'll be So dull to laugh once more for love of me.
The jest "of the other house's making" is said to have occurred in May 1670, while the Court was at Dover to receive the King's sister, the beautiful Duchess of Orleans. The reception of her royal highness was attended with much pomp and gaiety—the Duke's company of actors playing Shadwell's SuUe?t Lovers, and Caryl's Sh- Solotnon, or the Cajitiotis Coxcomb, before the Duchess and her suite. One of the characters in Caryl's comedy is that of Sir Arthur Addle, a bawling fop, played by Nokes with a reality of action and manner then unsurpassed upon the stage. The dress of the French attending the Duchess, and present at the performance of the plays, included an excessively short laced scarlet or blue coat, with a broad waist-
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belt, which Nokes took care to laugh at, by wearing a still shorter coat of the same character, to which the Duke of Monmouth added a sword and belt from his own side, so that he looked, as old Downes the prompter assures us, more like a dressed-up ape, or a quiz on the French, than Sir Arthur Addle. The jest took at once, King Charles and his whole Court falling into an excess of laughter as soon as he appeared upon the stage, and the French showing their chagrin at the personality and folly of the imitation. The sword, which the Duke had buckled on the actor with his own hands, was kept by Nokes to his dying day.
It was in the character of Almahide in The Conquest of Granada^ and while wearing her broad-brimmed hat and waist-belt in the prologue to the same play, that Charles became more than ever enamoured of Nelly. A satirist of the time has expressed the result of the performance in a couplet not wholly destitute of force :
There Hart's and Rowley's souls she did ensnare, And made a King a rival to a player ;—
while Granville, who enjoyed the friendship of Waller, and lived to be the patron of Pope, has told the result in his poem called The Progress of Beauty :
Granada lost, behold her pomps restor'd, And Almahide again by Kings adored.
An eflfect from a stage performance which some
still live to remember, when it found a parallel in
the passion which George IV., when Prince of
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Wales, evinced for Mrs. Robinson, while playing the part of Perdita in A IVtnfer's Tale. What a true name is Perdita indeed for such a fate, and what a lesson may a young actress learn from the story of poor Mrs. Robinson, when told, as I have heard it told, by her grave in Old Windsor churchyard ! Nor is Nelly's story without its moral—and now that we have got her from the purlieus of Drury Lane, and the contaminations of the greenroom,—for the part of Almahide was her last performance on the stage,—we shall find her true to the King, and evincing in her own way more good than we should have expected to have found from so bad a bringing up.
CHAPTER IV. TERSONAL CHARACTER OF KING CHARLES II.
The character of King Charles II. has been drawn with care and skill by several writers of distinguished reputation to whom he was known : by the great Lord Clarendon ; by the Marquess of Halifax ; by the Duke of Buckingham ; by Evelyn and Sir William Temple ; by Burnet, Dryden, and Roger North. Lord Clarendon had been acquainted with him from his boyhood, and had been his principal adviser for many years ; Halifax had been his minister ; Buckingham had received distinguished marks of favour at his hands ; Evelyn not only frequented his Court, but had often conversed with him on matters of moment, and was intimate with many who knew him well ; Temple had been his ambassador ; Burnet had spoken to him with a freedom which nothing but his pastoral character would have sanctioned ; Dryden was his Poet Laureate; and North added
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to his own his brother the Lord Keeper's experience of the King's character. From such writers as these, and with the aid of such incidental illustrations as a lengthened interest in the subject will supply, I propose to draw the portraiture of the King, using, where such fidelity is requisite, the very words of the authorities I employ.
His personal appearance was remarkable. He was five feet ten inches in height, and well made, with an expression of countenance somewhat fierce, and a great voice.^ He was, says Saville, an illustrious exception to all the common rules of physiognomy ; for, with a most saturnine, harsh countenance, he was both of a merry and merciful disposition. His eyes were large and fine ; and his face so swarthy, that Monck, before the Restoration, used to toast him as "the black boy."" " Is this like me?" he said to Riley, who had just completed his portrait; " then, odds fish, I am an ugly fellow." Riley, however, must have done him an injustice ; certainly, at all events, he is not an ugly fellow on the canvas of Lely, in the miniatures of Cooper, the sculpture of Gibbons, or the coins of Simon.
He lived a Deist, but did not care to think on the subject of religion, though he died professedly a Roman Catholic. His father had been severe with him, and once, while at sermon at St. Mary's in Oxford, had struck him on the head with his staff for laughing at some of the ladies sitting
1 Evelyn, ed. 1850, ii. 207. * Hinton's Memoirs, p. 29.
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opposite to him.' Later in life the ill-bred familiarity of the Scottish divines had given him a distaste for Presbyterian discipline, while the heats and animosities between the members of the Established Church and the Nonconformists with which his reign commenced made him think indifferently of both. His religion was that of a young prince in his warm blood, whose inquiries were applied more to discover arguments against belief than in its favour. The wits about his Court, who found employment in laughing at Scripture—
All by the King's example liv'd and lov'd—
delighted in turning to ridicule what the preachers said in their sermons before him, and in this way induced him to look upon the clergy as a body of men who had compounded a religion for their own advantage.^ So strongly did this feeling take root in him, that he at length resigned himself to sleep at sermon-time—not even South or Barrow having the art to keep him awake. In one of these half-hours of sleep when in chapel, he is known to have missed, doubtless with regret, the gentle reproof of South to Lauderdale during a general somnolency :—" My lord, my lord, you snore so loud you will wake the King."
He loved ease and quiet; and it was said, not untruly, that there was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours he passed among his
1 Dr. Lake's Diary, p. 26. "^ Clarendon's Life, ed. 1826, iii. 3. 64
Q.A/3Jy Swynn^.
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mistresses. Few things, remarked Burnet,* ever went near his heart. It was a trouble to him to think. Ujithinkingiicss^ indeed, was said by Hahfax to be one of his characteristics 2—and
Unthinking Charles, ruled by unthinking thee,
is a line in Lord Rochester. Sauntering is an epithet applied to him by Sheffield, Saville, and Wilmot. He chose rather to be eclipsed than to be troubled, to receive a pension from France rather than ask his Parliament for subsidies.
His affection for his children was worthy of a better man. He loved the Duke of Monmouth with the fondness of a partial parent, and forgave him more than once for injuries, almost amounting to crimes of magnitude, personal and political. 'The Duke of Grafton, one of his sons by the Duchess of Cleveland, he loved " on the score of the sea,"^ and for the frankness of his nature. His queen's manners and society he never could have liked, though his letter to Lord Clarendon, written from Portsmouth, upon her first arrival, is ardent in passion, and might have been held to promise the most constant affection for her person.* He grew at last to believe that she never could
^ Burnet, ed. 1823, ii. 469,
' Hahfax, p. 4.
' Pcpys's Tani^icr Diary, ii. 36.
* See it among the Latisdovine MSS. {1236, f. 124) in the British Museum. It is not fit to print. [The one sentence in the letter which might possibly shock our wonderful twentieth-century purists is that referring to the Queen's feverish condition ; it is couched in orthodo.\ medical language.]
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bring him an heir,i an opinion in which he was confirmed by the people about him ; but, anxious as he certainly was for another wife, he rejected with scorn a proposition that was made to him to send her away in disguise to a distant region. His steadiness to his brother, though it may, and indeed must, in a great measure be accounted for on selfish principles, had at least, as Fox remarks, a strong resemblance to virtue.^ Prince Rupert he looked upon, not unjustly, as a madman.^ If he was slow to reward and willing to forgive, he was not prone to forget. His secret service expenses record many payments, and at all periods, to the several branches of the Penderells, to whom he was indebted for his preservation after the battle of Worcester.*
He lived beloved, and died lamented, by a very large portion of his people. What helped to endear him has been happily expressed by Waller:
the first English bom
That has the crown of these three kingdoms worn.
Then, the way in which he was seen in St. James's Park feeding his ducks; '• or in the Mall playing a manly game with great skill; ^ or at
1 Clarendon's Life, ed. 1826, iii. 60.
2 Fox's James II., p. 70.
3 Pepys's Tangier Diary, ii. 36.
■* Printed for the Camden Society. Mr. Macaulay says, harshly enough—" Never was there a mind on which both services and injuries left such faint and transitory impressions."
Cibber's Apology, 8vo, 1740, p. 26. * Waller's poem " On St. James's Park."
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the two theatres encouraging English authors, and commending English actors and actresses, added to his popularity. He really mixed with his subjects ; and though a standing army was first established in his reign, it was needed more for his throne than for his person.
He did not study or care for the state which most of his predecessors before him had assumed, and was fond of dropping the formality of a sovereign for the easy character of a companion. He had lived, when in exile, upon a footing of equality with his banished nobles, and had partaken freely and promiscuously in the pleasures and frolics by which they had endeavoured to sweeten adversity. He was led in this way to let distinction and ceremony fall to the ground, as useless and foppish, and could not even on premeditation, it is said, act for a moment the part of a king either at parliament or council, either in words or gesture. When he attended the House of Lords, he would descend from the throne and stand by the fire, drawing a crowd about him that broke up all the regularity and order of the place. In a very little time he would have gone round the House, and have spoken to every man that he thought worth speaking to.^ He carried his dogs to the council table—
1 Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 472-3. In his speech in the House of Commons, March i, 1661, he says : " In a word, I know most of your faces and names, and can never hope to find better men in your places."
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Hi-s very dog al council board Sits grave and wise as any lord.i
and allowed them to lie in his bedchamber, where he would often suffer them to pup and give suck, much to the disgust of Evelyn, and of many who resided at Court.''' His very speeches to his parliament contain traits of his personal character. "The mention of my wife's arrival," he says, "puts me in mind to desire you to put that compliment upon her, that her entrance into the town may be with more decency than the ways will now suffer it to be, and for that purpose I pray you would quickly pass such laws as are before you, in order to the amending those ways, and that she may not find Whitehall surrounded by water." ^ Nothing but his character, as Sir Robert Walpole observed of Sir William Yonge, could keep down his parts, and nothing but his parts support his character.
His mistresses were as different in their humours as in their looks. He did not care to choose for himself, so that, as Halifax observes, it was re-
' Lord Rochester's Poems, 1697, p. 150. [Cf. also Pepys's Diary (Sept. 4, 1667). Like his father, Charles IL was fond of dogs, and the " King Charles's spaniel" became quite a fashionable breed. In Notes and Queries (jth ser., vii. 26) are three quaint advertisements for dogs stolen from him, reprinted from the Merctirius Publicus and the hitel-lige liter.']
~ Evelyn, vol. ii. p. 207, ed. 1850. Charles was fond of animals and natural history. In the Works Accounts at Whitehall for 1667-8, I observe a payment for "the posts whereon the king's bees stand."
' Speech, March i, 1661-2. See the allusion explained in my Handbook for London, art. "Whitehall."
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solved generally by others whom he should have in his arms as well as whom he should have in his councils. Latterly he lived under the traditional influence of his old engagements ; and though he had skill enough to suspect, he had wit enough not to care.^ His passion for Miss Stewart, as I have already said, was a stronger feeling of attachment than he is thought to have entertained for anybody else.^
His understanding was quick and lively ; but he had little reading, and that tending to his pleasures more than to instruction. He had read men rather than books. The Duke of Buckingham happily characterised the two brothers in a conversation with Burnet. "The King," he said, "could see things if he would, and the Duke would see things if he could." ^ Nor was the observation of Tom Killi-grew, made to the King himself in Cowley's hearing, without its point. This privileged wit, after telling the King the ill state of his affairs, was pleased to suggest a way to help all. " There is," says he, "a good honest able man that I could name, whom if your majesty would employ, and command to see things well executed, all things would soon be mended, and this is one Charles Stewart, who now spends his time in employing his lips about the Court, and hath no other employment; but if you would give him this employment, he were the fittest man in the world to perform it." *
^ Halifax's Character, p. 21. 2 Clarendon's Life, ed. 1826, iii. 61. ^ Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 288. * Pepys, Dec. 8, 1666.
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He had what Sheffield called the foible of his family, to be easily imposed upon ; for, as Clarendon truly remarks, it was the unhappy fate of the Stewart family to trust too much on all occasions to others.^ To such an extent did he carry unnecessary confidence, that he would sign papers without inquiring what they were about.^
He drew well himself,^ was fond of mathematics, fortification, and shipping ; knew the secrets of many empirical medicines, passed many hours in his laboratory, and in the very month in which he died was running a process for fixing mercury.* The Observatory at Greenwich and the Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital are enduring instances of his regard for science.
He had all the hereditary love of the Stewarts for poetry and poets, and in this respect was certainly different from George II., who considered a poet in the light of a mechanic.^ He carried Hudibras about in his pocket,^ protected its publication by his royal warrant, but allowed its author to starve. Nor was this from want of admiration, but from
* Clarendon's Life, ed. 1826, iii. 63. 2 Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 417.
' Walpole's Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, p. 427.
* Burnet, ed. 1823, ii. 254. Among the satires attributed to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is one on Charles II., called "The Cabin Boy." [On Jan. 15, 1668-9, Pepys chronicles a visit to the King's laboratory: "Then down with Lord Brouncker to Sir R. Murray into the king's little elaboratory under his closet, a pretty place, and there saw a great many chymical glasses and things, but understood none of them."]
" Lord Chesterfield's Works, ed. Lord Mahon, ii. 441.
* Dennis's Reflectioiis on Pope s Essay on Criticism, p. 23.
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indolence. Patronage had been a trouble to him. The noble song of Shirley—
The glories of our blood and state,
was often sung to him by old Bowman, and, while he enjoyed the poetry, he could have cared but little for the moral grandeur which pervades it. He suggested the Medal to Dryden as a subject for a poem while walking in the Mall. " If I was a poet,'' he said, "and I think I am poor enough to be one, I would write a poem on such a subject in the following manner."—Dryden took the hint, carried his poem to the King, and had a hundred broad pieces for it.^ A good new comedy, we are told by Dennis, took the next place in his list of likings immediately after his last new mistress. In points connected with the stage he was even more at home than in matters of poetry, insomuch that the particular differences, pretensions, or complaints of the actors were generally ended by the King's personal command or decision.^ This, however, he would at times carry to excess, and it has been even said that "he would hear anybody against anybody." One of his latest acts was to call the attention of the poet Crowne to the Spanish play, No puede ser; or, It cafinot be, and to command him to write a comedy on a somewhat similar foundation. To this suggestion it is that we owe the good old comedy of Sir Courtly Nice. ^
1 Spence's Anecdotes, p. 171.
* Gibber's Apology, ed. 1740, p, 75,
3 Crowne's Preface to Sir Courtly Nice, 410, 1685.
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He hated flattery,^ was perfectly accessible, would slop and talk with Hobbes, or walk through the Park with Evelyn, or any other favourite. Steele remembered to have seen him more than once leaning on D'Urfey's shoulder, and humming over a song with him.''' Hume blames him for not preserving Otway from his sad end ; but Otway died in the next reign, more from accident than neglect.
His passion for music (he preferred the violin to the viol) is not ill illustrated in the well-known jingle—
Four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row,
And there was tiddle-fiddle, and twice fiddle-fiddle, etc.,
written on his enlargement of his band of fiddlers to four-and-twenty,—his habit, while at his meals, of having, according to the French mode, twenty-four violins playing before him ;^ or by his letters written during his exile. " We pass our time as well as people can do," he observes, " that have no more money, for we dance and play as if we had taken the Plate fleet;" * " Pray get me pricked down," he adds in another, " as many new corrants and sarabands and other little dances as you can.
1 Temple's Works, ed. 1770, ii. 409.
» The Guardian. [No. 67; dated May 28, 1713. The paper was written by Addison in the character of one of D'Urfey's old friends. It is unlikely that either Addison or Steele could have personally witnessed tlie occurrence.]
2 Anthony a Wood's Li/e, ed. Bliss, 8vo p, 70, * Mis. AiiHca, p. 117.
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and bring- them with you, for 1 have got a small fiddler that does not play ill." ^
Like others of his race, like James L and James V. of Scotland, like his father and his grandfather, he was occasionally a poet. A song of his composition is certainly characteristic of his way of life :—
I pass all my hours in a shady old grove, But I live not the day when I see not my love; I survey every walk now my Phillis is gone, And sigh when I think we were there all alone ;
O then, 'tis O then, that 1 think there's no hell
Like loving, like loving too well.
But each shade and each conscious bow'r when I find. Where I once have been happy, and she has been kind ; When I see the print left of her shape on the green, And imagine the pleasure may yet come again ;
O then 'tis I think that no joys are above
The pleasures of love.
While alone to myself I repeat all her charms, She I love may be lock'd in another man's arms, She may laugh at my cares, and so false she may be. To say all the kind things she before said to me :
O then, 'tis O then, that I think there's no hell
Like loving too well.
But when I consider the truth of her heart. Such an innocent passion, so kind without art; I fear I have wronged her, and hope she may be So full of true love to be jealous to me :
And then 'tis I think that no joys are above
The pleasures of love. '•^
1 Ellis's Letters (2nd series), iii. p. 376, and Mis. Aid.,
P- 155-
2 From Choice Ayres, Songs, etc., 1676, folio. See also
Roger North's Meinoirs of Mustek, 410, :846, p. 104; Hawkins's History of Music, v. 447 ; and Park's ed. of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, i. 154.
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That he understood foreign afifairs better than all his councils and counsellors put together was the repeated remark of the Lord Keeper Guilford. In his exile he had acquired either a personal acquaintance with most of the eminent statesmen in Europe, or else from such as could instruct him he had received their characters :—and this knowledge, the Lord Keeper would continue, he perpetually improved by conversing with men of quality and ambassadors, whom he would sift, and by what he obtained from them ("possibly drunk as well as sober"), would serve himself one way or other. " When they sought," his lordship added, " to sift him—who, to give him his due, was but too open— he failed not to make his best of them." ^
His love of wine was the common failing of his age. The couplet which I shall have occasion hereafter to include among his happy replies :
Good store of good claret supplies everything, And the man that is drunk is as great as a king,
affords no ill notion of the feeling current at Whitehall. When the Duke of York, after dinner, asked Henry Saville if he intended to invite the King to the business of the day, Saville wondered what he meant, and incurred the displeasure of the Duke by continuing the King in the belief that hard drinking was the business before them.*^
His great anxiety was the care of his health thinking it, perhaps, more reconcilable with his
1 North, ed. 1826, ii. 102.
» Lady R. Russell's Letters, ed. Miss Berry, p. 177.
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pleasures than he really found it. He rose early, walked generally three or four hours a day by his watch, and when he pulled it out, skilful men, it is said, would make haste with what they had to say to him. He walked so rapidly with what Teonge calls " his wonted large pace," ^ that it was a trouble, as Burnet observes, for others to keep up with him. This rapid walk gives a sting to the saying of Shaftesbury, that "he would leisurely walk his Majesty out of his dominions," ^ while it explains his advice to his nephew. Prince George of Denmark, when he complained to Charles of growing fat since his marriage, " Walk with me, hunt with my brother, and do justice on my niece, and you will not be fat." ^
His ordinary conversation—and much of his time was passed in "discoursing,"*—hovered too frequently between profanity and indecency, and in its familiarity was better adapted to his condition before he was restored than afterwards. Yet it had withal many fascinations of which the best talker might be proud—possessing a certain softness of manner that placed his hearers at ease, and sent them away enamoured with what he said.^ When he thought fit to unbend entirely, he exhibited great quickness of conception, much pleasantness of wit, with great variety of knowledge, more observation and truer judgment of men than one would have
1 Teonge's Diary, p. 232.
* Sprat's Account of the Rye-House Plot.
3 Anthony k Wood's Life, ed. Bliss, p. 260.
* North's Lives, ed. 1826, ii. * Burnet, ed. 1823, ii. 467.
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inia<Tined by so careless and easy a manner as was natural to him in all he said or did.* Such at least is the written opinion of Sir William Temple. His speech to La Belle Stewart, who resisted all his importunities,—that he hoped he should live to see her "ugly and willing";^—his letter to his sister on hearing of her pregnancy,^ and his speech to his wife, " You lie : confess and be hanged," * must be looked upon in connection with the outspoken language of his age—an age in which young women, even of the higher classes, conversed without circumspection and modesty, and frequently met at taverns and common eating-houses.*
" If writers be just to the memory of King Charles IL," says Dryden, addressing Lord Halifax, "they cannot deny him to have been an exact knower of mankind, and a perfect distinguisher of their talents." "It is true," he continues, "his necessities often forced him to vary his counsellors and counsels, and sometimes to employ such persons in the management of his affairs who were rather fit for his present purpose than satisfactory to his judgment ; but where it was choice in him, not compulsion, he was master of too much good sense to delight in heavy conversation ; and, whatever his favourites of state might be, yet those of his affection were men of wit."^
1 Temple, ed. 1770, ii. 408.
^ Lord Dartmouth's note in Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 436. 3 Dalrymple's Memoirs, ed. 1773, Appendix, p. 21. * Pepys.
« Clarendon's Z^/d", ed. 1826, i. 358. 6 Dryden—Dedication of King Arthur, 410, 1691. 76
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He was an admirable teller of a story, and loved to talk over the incidents of his life to every new face that came about him. His stay in Scotland, his escape from Worcester, and the share he had in the war of Paris, in carrying messages from the one side to the other, were his common topics. He went over these in a very graceful manner, but so often and so copiously, says Burnet, that all those who had been long accustomed to them were soon weary, and usually withdrew, so that he often began them in a full audience, and before he had done there were not above four or five left about him. But this general unwillingness to listen is contradicted by Sheffield, who observes that many of his ministers, not out of flattery, but for the pleasure of hearing it, affected an ignorance of what they had heard him relate ten times before, treating a story of his telling as a good comedy that bears being seen often, if well acted. This love of talking made him, it is said, fond of strangers, who hearkened to his stories and went away as in a rapture at such uncommon condescension in a king ; while the sameness in telling caused Lord Rochester to observe, that " he wondered to see a man have so good a memory as to repeat the same story without losing the least circumstance, and yet not remember that he had told it to the same persons the very day before."'
He was undisturbed by libels ; enjoying the severities of Wilmot, enduring and not resenting
1 Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 458. 77
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Ihe bitter personalities of Sheffield.' To have been angry about such matters had been a trouble ; he therefore let them alone, banishing Wilmot only for a time for a libel which he had given him on himself, and rewarding Sheffield for a satire unsurpassed for boldness in an age of lampoons. He was compared to Nero, who sung while Rome was burning, and pardoned the malice of the wit in the satire of the comparison. He loved a laugh at Court as much as Nokes or Tony Leigh did upon the stage.
Yet he would laugh at his best friends, and be Just as good company as Nokes or Leigh.^
Few indeed escaped his wit, and rather than not laugh he would turn the laugh upon himself.
Words or promises went very easily from him,^ and his memory was only good in such matters as affection or caprice might chance to determine. Had he been less " unthinking," we should have ;iad an epic from the muse of Dryden, " but being encouraged only with fair words from King Charles IL," writes the great poet, "my little salary ill paid, and no prospect of a future subsistence, I was thus discouraged in the beginning of my attempt." If we lost King Arthur, we gained Absalom and
1 Lord Rochester to Saville, relative to Mulgrave's Essay on Satire. (Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 134.) See also Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 433.
•^ lA\\\gxzy€% Essay on Satire. Mr. Bolton Corney, in vol. iii. p. 162 of Notes and Queries [ist series], has in a most unanswerable manner vindicated Mulgrave's claim to the authorship of this satire.
' Burnet, ii. 466.
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AcJtitophel. Thus discouraged, Drj'den took to temporary subjects, nor let us regret the chance that drove him from his heroic poem.
Among the most reprehensible of the minor frailties of his life, for which he must be considered personally responsible, was his squandering on his mistresses the ^70,000 voted by the House for a monument to his father, and his thrusting the Countess of Castlemaine into the place of a Lady of the Bedchamber to his newly-married wife. The excuse for the former fault, that his father's grave was unknown, was silly in the extreme, and has since been proved to be without foundation ; while his letter in reply to the remonstrance of Lord Clarendon, not to appoint his mistress to a place of honour in the household of his wife, assigns no reason for such a step, while it holds out a threat of everlasting enmity should Clarendon continue to oppose his will.^
One of his favourite amusements was fishing, and the Thames at Datchet one of his places of resort. Lord Rochester alludes to his passion for the sport in one of his minor poems," and among his household expenses is an allowance to his
^ See it in Lister's Life of Clarendoti, iii. 202. [The original is in the British Museum, Lansdowne MS., 1236, f. 121; of. Siowe MS. 154, f. i6. Charles's ferocity in this matter has been justly likened to that of a wild boar showing his tusks : see the admirable article on the Duchess of Cleveland (s. V. Villiers) in Diet. Nat. Biog.^
^ State Poems, 8vo, 1697, p. 43 ; Reresby's Memoirs, 8vo, *73S- P- 100. Lord Rochester's poem, in a MS. of the time, is headed " Flatfoot, the Gudgeon Taker." (MS. in posses-
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cormorant keeper for his repairing yearly into the north parts of Enjj;land "to take haggard cormorants for the King's disport in fishing." ^ His fancy for his ducks was long perpetuated in the public accounts, as Berenger observed, when a century after he was making his inquiries at the Mews for his flistory of Horsemanship. Struck by the constant introduction of a charge for hempseed, he was led at last to inquire for what purpose the seed was wanted. That none was used was at once admitted, but the charge had been regularly made since the reign of Charles II., and that seemed sufficient reason for its continuance in the Mews accounts.' Many an abuse has been perpetuated on no belter grounds.
Such was Charles II.:
Great Pan who wont to chase the fair And loved the spreading oak ;3
and such are the materials from which David Hume and Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Fox and Mr. Macaulay, have drawn in part their characters of
sion of R. M. Milnes, Esq., M.P. afterwards Lord Houghton, ii. 240.) [" The Royal Angler" is the title of one of Rochester's satires ( Works, ed. 1709, p. 149) ; it refers to Charles gndgeon-tishing at Datchet, and is presumably identical with the poem in Lord Houghton's MS.] [At Windsor,] i July 1679.—" Little was done all day but going a fishing. At night the Duchess of Portsmouth came. Tn the morning I was with the King at Mrs. Nell's."—Henry Sidney, Lord Romney's Diary, i. 20.
I Audit Office Enrolmenis (MSS.), vi. 326.
^ Nichols's Tatler, 8vo, 1786, iii. 36T.
* Addison, "To Sir Godfrej' Knellei."
^
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the King. But there are other materials for a true understanding of the man :
A merry monarch, scandalous and poor,
and these are his sayings, which Walpole loved to repeat, and of which I have made a collection in the following chapter.
CHAPTER V.
THE SAYINGS OF KING CHARLES II.
" I HAVE made a collection," said Walpole, " of the witty sayings of Charles II., and a collection of bon-mois by people who only said one witty thing in the whole course of their lives." ^ Both these collections are, it is believed, unfortunately lost. The former deficiency I have, however, attempted to supply (I fear imperfectly) in the following chapter ; regarding remarkable sayings as among the very best illustrations of individual character and manners.
The satirical epitaph written upon King Charles II. at his own request,^ by his witty favourite the Earl of Rochester, is said to be not more severe than it is just :
Here lies our sovereign lord the King, Whose word no man relies on ;
1 Walpoliana, i. 58.
^ So Sir Walter Scott in Misc. Prose Works, xxiv. 171— but upon what authority ?
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Who never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.
How witty was the reply ! " The matter," he observed, "was easily accounted for—his discourse was his own, his actions were his ministry's."'
A good story of the King and the Lord Mayor of London at a Guildhall dinner has been preserved to us in The Spectator. The King's easy manner, and Sir Robert Viner's due sense of City hospitality, carried the dignitary of Guildhall into certain familiarities not altogether graceful at any time, and quite out of character at a public table. The King, who understood very well how to extricate himself from difficulties of this description, gave a hint to the company to avoid ceremony, and stole off to his coach, which stood ready for him in Guildhall Yard. But the Mayor liked his Majesty's company too well, and was grown so intimate that he pursued the merry sovereign, and, catching him fast by the hand, cried out with a vehement oath and accent, " Sir, you shall stay and take t'other bottle." " The airy monarch," continues the narrator of the anecdote, " looked kindly at him over his shoulder, and with a smile and graceful air (for I saw him at the time and do now), repeated this line of the old song :
He that's drunk is as great as a king,*
^ Hume's History of England, viii. 212. 3 In Tate's CuckolcTs Haven, 410, 1685, is the following couplet:
" Good store of good claret supplies everything. And the man thati s drunk is as great as a king."
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and immediately turned back and complied with his landlord." ^ This famous anecdote is importantly illustrated by a letter from the Countess-Dowager of Sunderland to her brother, Henry Sidney, written five years after the mayoralty of Sir Robert Viner.^ The King had supped with the Lord Mayor ; and the Aldermen on the occasion drank the King's health over and over upon their knees, wishing every one hanged and damned that would not serve him with their lives and fortunes. But this was not all. As his guards were drunk, or said to be so, they would not trust his Majesty with so insecure an escort, but attended him themselves to Whitehall, and, as the lady-writer observes, "all went merry out of the King's cellar." So much was this accessibility of manner in the King acceptable to his people, that the Mayor and his brethren waited next day at Whitehall to return thanks to the King and Duke for the honour they had done them, and the Mayor, confirmed by this reception, was changed from an ill to a well affected subject.
It was an age of nicknames—the King himself was known as " Old Rowley," in allusion to an ill-favoured but famous horse in the Royal Mews. Nor was the cognomen at all disagreeable to him. Mrs. Holford, a young lady much admired by the King, was in her apartments singing a satirical ballad upon Old Rorvley the King^ when he knocked
1 Spectator, No. 462.
- Letter of March 12, 1679-80, in Henry Sidney's ZJ/arK, etc., i. 300.
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at her door. Upon her asking who was there, the King, with his usual good humour, rephed, " Old Rowley himself, madam." ^ Hobbes he called "the Bear." " Here comes the Bear to be baited," was his remark, as soon as he saw the great philosopher surrounded by the wits who rejoiced in his conversa-tion.2 A favourite yacht received from him the name of Fubbs —in honour of the Duchess of Portsmouth, who was become notably plump in her person.3 The Queen he called " a bat," in allusion to her short, broad figure, her swarthy complexion, and the projection of her upper lip from a protuberant foretooth.*
His politeness was remarkable, and he could convey a rebuke in the style of a wit and a gentleman. When Penn stood before him with his hat on—the King put off his. " Friend Charles," said Penn, "why dost thou not keep on thy hat?" "'Tis the custom of this place," replied the monarch, " that only one person should be covered at a time." * The well-known English schoolmaster. Busby, excused himself to the King for wearing his hat in his Majesty's presence in his own school at Westminster : " If I were seen without my hat,
^ Granger's 5z(7o". Hist., ed. 1775, iv. 50.
* Aahrey's Life of Hobbes. See also Tom Drozun, i. 174, " Kinsj Charles IL compared old Hobbes to a bear."
^ Hawkins's History of Music, iv. 359, n.
" The lean provokes me with her naughty rubs, But if she's plump, 'tis then my pretty Fubbs."
Poems collected by N. Tate, 1685, p. 35.
*■ Lord Dartmouth in Burnet, cd. 1823, i. 299.
* Butler's Hudibras, ed. Grey, i. 376.
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even in the presence of your Majesty, the boys' respect for me would certainly be lessened." The excuse, such is the tradition at Westminster, was at once admitted, and Busby wore his hat before the King as he still is seen to wear it in his portrait in the Bodleian.
When reprimanded by one of his courtiers for leading or interlarding his discourse with unnecessary oaths, he defended himself by saying, " Your Martyr swore twice more than ever I did." * And, in allusion again to his father's character, he observed to Lord Keeper Guilford, who was musing somewhat pensively on the woolsack, " My Lord, be of good comfort, I will not forsake my friends as my father did." ^ To Reresby he remarked, " Do not trouble yourself; I will stick by you and my old friends, for if I do not I shall have nobody stick to me ;" and on another occasion he said to the same memorialist, " Let them do what they will, I will never part with any officer at the request of either House ; my father lost his head by such compliance, but as for me, I intend to die another way."^
While Prince, seeing a soldier of the Parliament —one of Cromwell's officers, and one active against the King—led through the streets of Oxford as a prisoner, he asked what they designed to do with him. They said they were carrying him to the
^ The Apology of the Reverend Jolm Watson for his conduct, yearly, on the -yith of January, 8vo, [1755,] p. 34. and Malone's Shakespeare, by Boswell, iii. 235.
2 North, i. 387.
* Reresby'5 Memoirs, ed. 1735, pp. 103, 105.
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King, his father; " Carry him rather to the gallows and hang him up," was the reply ; " for if you carry him to my father he'll surely pardon him.''^ This was assuredly not cruelty in Charles—but merely an odd specimen of his ever-playful temperament.
He was altogether in favour of extempore preaching, and was unwilling to listen to the delivery of a written sermon. Patrick excused himself from a chaplaincy, " finding it very difficult to get a sermon without book."' ^ On one occasion the King asked the famous Stillingfleet, "how it was that he always reads his sermons before him, when he was informed that he always preached without book elsewhere ?" Stillingfleet answered something about the awe of so noble a congregation, the presence of so great and wise a prince, with which the King himself was very well contented. "But pray,'' continued Stillingfleet, "will your Majesty give me leave to ask you a question ? Why do you read your speeches when you can have none of the same reasons?" "Why truly, doctor," replied the King, " your question is a very pertinent one, and so will be my answer. I have asked the two Houses so often and for so much money, that I am ashamed to look them in the face." ^ This " slothful way of preaching," for so the King called it, had arisen during the civil wars ; and Monmouth; when Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, in compliance with the order of the
1 Dr. Lake's Diary in Camden Miscellany, vol. L ^ Patrick's Autobiography, p. 66, ' Richardsoniana^ p. 89. 87
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King, directed a letter to the University that the practice of reading sermons should be wholly laid aside.*
When Cosin, Bishop of Durham, reminded the King that he had presumed to recommend Bancroft and Sudbury as chaplains to his Majesty, the King replied, " My Lord, recommend two more such to me, and I will return you any four I have for them." ■''
One of his replies to Sir Christopher Wren is characteristic both of the monarch and his architect. The King was inspecting the new apartments which Wren had built for him in his hunting-palace at Newmarket, and observed that " he thought the rooms too low." Sir Christopher, who was small in height, walked round them, and looking up and about him, said, " I think, and it please your Majesty, they are high enough." Charles, squatting down to his architect's height, and creeping about in this whimsical posture, cried, ''Ay, Sir Christopher, I think they are high enough." ^
The elder Richardson was fond of telling a characteristic story of the King and kingly honour. A cutpurse, or pickpocket, with as much effrontery of face as dexterity of finger, had got into the Drawing-room on the King's birthday, dressed like a gentleman, and was detected by the King himself taking a gold snuff-box out of a certain Earl's
' Wilkins's Concilia, iv. 594. ' Dr. Lake's Diary in Camden Miscellany, vol. i. ' Richardsoniana, p. 187. 88
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THE STORY OF NELL GWYN
pocket. The rogue, who saw his sovereign's eye upon him, put his finger to his nose, and made a sign to the King with a wink to say nothing. Charles took the hint, and, watching the Earl, enjoyed his feeling first in one pocket and then in another for his missing box. The King now called the nobleman to him. "You need not give yourself," he said, "any more trouble about it, my Lord, your box is gone ; I am myself an accomplice :—I could not help it, I was made a confidant." ^
Of his graver and deeper remarks Dryden has preserved a specimen. " I remember a saying," writes the poet, " of King Charles II. on Sir Matthew Hale (who was, doubtless, an uncorrupted and upright man), that his servants were sure to be cast on any trial which was heard before him ; not that he thought the Judge was possibly to be bribed, but that his integrity might be too scrupulous ; and that the causes of the Crown were always suspicious when the privileges of subjects were concerned."^ The wisdom of the remark as respects Sir Matthew Hale is confirmed by Roger North. "If one party was a courtier,'' says North, " and well dressed, and the other a sort of puritan, with a black cap and plain clothes, Hale insensibly thought the justice of the cause with the latter." ^ Nor has it passed without the censure of Johnson. " A judge," said the great doctor, " may be partial
' Kichardsoniana, p. 103.
2 Dryden's Prose Works, ed. Malone, iv. 156.
* North, i. 119.
89
I
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Otherwise than to the Crown ; we have seen judges partial to the Populace." ^
His easy, gentlemanlike way of expressing disapprobation is exemplified in a saying to which I have already had occasion to refer. " Is that like me?'' he asked Riley the painter, to whom he had sat for his portrait; " then, odds fish ! I am an ugly fellow." 2
When told that the Emperor of Morocco had made him a present of two lions and thirty ostriches, he laughed, and said he "knew nothing more proper to send by way of return than a flock of geese." ^
Of Harrow Church, standing on a hill and visible for many miles round, he is said to have remarked that "it was the only visible church he knew";* and when taken to see a fellow climb up the outside of a church to its very pinnacle and there stand on his head, he offered him, on coming down, a patent to prevent any one doing it but himself.®
"Pray," he said at the theatre, while observing the grim looks of the murderers in Macbeth, "pray what is the reason that we never see a rogue in a play, but, odds fish ! they always clap him on a black periwig, when it is well known one of the
1 Boswell, ed. Croker, ed. 1848, p. 448.
2 Walpole's Anecdotes.
3 Reresby's Mei)ioirs, ed. 1735, p. 132.
* Remarks on Squire [William] Ayre's . . . Life . , . of Mr. Pope, 1745, lamo, p. 12 [it is signed J. H., and attributed to Sir John Hill].
* Horace Walpole, in Gentleman's Magazine for January 1848.
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greatest rogues in England always wears a fair one?" The allusion was, it is asserted, to Gates, but, as I rather suspect, to Shaftesbury. The saying, however, was told by Betterton to Gibber.^
He was troubled with intercessions for people who were obnoxious to him ; and once, when Lord Keeper Guilford was soliciting his favour on behalf of one he did not like, he observed facetiously, " It is very strange that every one of my friends should keep a tame knave.""
One day while the King was being shaved, his impudent barber observed to him that "he thought none of his Majesty's officers had a greater trust than he." " Oy," said the King, " how so, friend ?" " Why," said the barber, " I could cut your Majesty's throat when I would." The King started up and said, " Odds fish! that very thought is treason ; thou shalt shave me no more." ^ The barber of Dionysius, who had made the same remark, was crucified for his garrulity : but honest Rowley was not cruel. His loquacious barber was only dismissed. " Falsehood and cruelty," he said to Burnet, " he looked on as the greatest crimes in the sight of God." *
Of Woolley, afterwards Bishop of Clonfert, he observed wittily, and with great knowledge of character, that he " was a very honest man, but a very great blockhead—that he had given him a