The story of Nell Gwyn (12 page)

1 See Bossuet's account of her death in Gentleman s Magazine for August 1851. [Littrd seemed to have established that she died a natural death—probably from acute peritonitis, brought on by over-fatigue and by a chill caught from bathing in the river in her already weakened condition. He drew this conclusion from the medical report on her postmortem examination. M. Lair has, however, taken up the old theory, that her death was caused by poison, and certainly Saint-Simon's account of her alleged poisoning in his Mhnoires is circumstantial enough. The matter is fully discussed in Madame (1894), a fascinating volume by Julia Cartwright (Mrs. Henry Ady).]

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removed from Lincoln's Inn Fields to a house on the east end of the north side of Pall Mall, from whence in the following year she removed to a house on the south side with a garden towards St. James's Park. Her neighbour on one side was Edward Griffin, Esq., Treasurer of the Chamber, and ancestor of the present Lord Braybrooke ; and, on the other, the widow of Charles Weston, third Earl of Portland.^ Nelly at first had only a lease of the house, which, as soon as she discovered, she returned the conveyance to the King, with a remark characteristic of her wit and of the monarch to whom it was addressed. The King enjoyed the joke, and perhaps admitted its truth, so the house in Pall Mall was conveyed free to Nell and her representatives for ever. The truth of the story is confirmed by the fact that the house which occupies the site of the one in which Nelly lived, now No. 79, and tenanted by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, is the only freehold on the south or Park side of Pall Mall.'-^

For many months preceding the retirement of Nelly from the stage, the palace of Whitehall had

^ Cunningham's Handbook for Loudon, article " Pall Mall" [Nelly's first house in Pali Mall was pulled down in 1848 to make way for the Army and Navy Club. In the visitors' dining-room of the club there is shown a looking-glass wliich is said to have belonged to her.]

■^ It is right to add, as Mr. Fearnside has kindly informed me, that no entry of the grant is to be found in the Land Revenue Record Office. fPlie house has been twice rebuilt since Nell Gwyn lived in it, and is now occupied by the Eagle Insurance Office.]

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hardly been a place for either the wife or the mistress—the Queen or the Countess of Castle-maine. The King, in November 1669, when his intimacy with "Madam Gwin," as she was now called, had begun to be talked about, had settled Somerset House, in the Strand, on his Queen for her life ; and in August 1670, when his liking for Nelly was still on the increase, and his growing partiality for Louise de Querouaille the theme of common conversation, the imperious Countess of Castlemaine was appeased, for a time at least, by the Heralds' College title of Duchess of Cleveland.

There were people, however, and those too not of the sourer kind, who were far from being pleased with the present state of the morality at Court, and the nature and number of the King's amours. The theatres had become, it was said, nests of prostitution. In Parliament it was urged by the opponents of the Court that a tax should be levied on the playhouses. This was of course opposed ; and by one speaker on that side the bold argument was advanced, that " the players were the King's servants, and a part of his pleasure." The speaker was Sir John Birkenhead, a man of wit, though not over lucky on this occasion. He was followed by Sir John Coventry, who asked, with much gravity, " whether did the King's pleasure lie among the men that acted, or the women ?" The saying was conveyed to the King, and Sir John Coventry was waylaid on his road to his house in Suffolk Street, on a dark night in December, and his nose cut to

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the bone that he might remember the offence he had given to his sovereign. The allusion chiefly applied to Moll Davis and Nell Gwyn, and was made in the very year in which the latter gave birth to the Duke of St. Albans ; while the punishment was inflicted in the very street in which Moll Davis lived.^

Players and authors required looking after. Shadwell brought Sir Robert Howard on the stage in the character of Sir Positive Atall, and in so marked a manner that the caricature was at once apparent. Mrs. Corey (of whom I have already given some account) imitated the oddities of Lady Harvey,^ and was imprisoned for her skill and impertinence. Lacy, while playing the Country Gentleman in one of Ned Howard's unprinted plays, abused the Court with so much wit and insolence for selling places, and doing everything for money, that it was found proper to silence the play, and commit Lacy to the Porter's Lodge.^ Kynaston mimicked Sir Charles Sedley, and was severely thrashed by Sedley for his pains.* The Duke of Buckingham, while busy with The Rehearsal, threatened to bring Sir William Coventry (uncle of Sir John) into a play at the King's House, but Coventry's courage averted the attempt.^ He challenged the Duke for the in-

^ Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 468. He was taken out of his coach (Reresby, ed. 1735, p. 18). The well-known Coventry Act against cutting and maiming had its origin in this incident.

^ Pepys, Jan. 15, 1668-9. ^ Ibid., April 15, 20, 1667.

4 Ibid., Feb. i, 1668-9. ^ Ibid., March 4, 1688-9.

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tended insult, and was committed to the Tower by the King for sending a challenge to a person of the Duke's distinction.

Charles's conduct was in no way changed by the personality of the abuse employed against him in the House of Commons. He still visited

His Clevelands, his Nells, and his Carwells.

Evelyn records a walk made on March 2, 1671, in which he attended him through St. James's Park, where he both saw and heard "a familiar discourse between the King and Mrs. Nelly, as they called an impudent comedian, she looking out of her garden on a terrace at the top of the wall, and the King standing on the green walk under it." The garden was attached to her house in Pall Mall, and the ground on which Nelly stood was a mount, or raised terrace, of which a portion may still be seen under the park wall of Marlborough House. Of this scene, at which Evelyn tells us he was " heartily sorry," my friend Mr. Ward has painted a picture of surprising truthfulness and beauty.^

When this interview occurred the King was taking his usual quick exercise in the Park, on his way to the Duchess of Cleveland, at Berkshire House —subsequently, and till within these few years, called Cleveland House —a detached mansion built by the Berkshire branch of the Howard

1 In Ravenscroft's Loudon Cuckolds (410, 1683) is the following stage direction—" Dashwell and Jane upon a mount, looking over a wall that parts the two gardens," p. 73. Among Mr. Robert Cole's Nell Gwyn Papers (bills sent to Nelly for payment) tJiere is a charge for this very Mount.

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family, on the site of the present Bridgewater House. Charles at this time divided his attentions between Nelly and the Duchess. Moll Davis had fallen out of favour, though not forsaken or un-pensioned :—while many open and almost avowed infidelities on the part of the Duchess of Cleveland had lessened the kindly feelings of the King towards her, though he continued to supply ample means for the maintenance of the rank to which his partiality had raised her.^ Poor Alinda, however, was no longer young, and the memory of old attractions could make but little way with Charles against the wit and beauty of Nell Gwyn, and the engaging youth and political influences of the new maid-of-honour, Louise de Querouaille, or Mrs. Carwell, as she was called by the common people, to whom the name offered many difficulties for its proper pronunciation.

There is no reason to suspect that either Nelly or Louise was ever unfaithful to the light-hearted King, or that Charles did not appreciate the fidelity of his mistresses. The people (it was an age of confirmed immorality) rather rejoiced than otherwise at their sovereign's loose and disorderly life. Nelly became the idol of " the town," and was known far and near as the Protestant Mistress ;

1 She bad ^6000 a year out of the Excise, and ^^3000 a year from the same quarter for each of her sons. {Harl. MS. 6013, temp. Charles IL) Her pension from the Post Office of ^4700 a year was stopped for a time in William H I. 's reign ; but the amount then withheld was paid in George L's reign to her son, the Duke of Grafton, sole e.xecutor and residuary legatee. (Audit Office Enrolments.)

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while Mrs. Carwell, or the Duchess of Portsmouth, as she had now become, was hated by the people, and was known, wherever Nelly was known, as the Popish Mistress. It is this contrast of position which has given to Nell Gwyn much of the odd and particular favour connected with her name. Nelly was an English girl—of humble origin—a favourite actress—a beauty, and a wit. The Duchess was a foreigner—of noble origin—with beauty certainly, but without English wit ; and, worse still, sufficiently suspected to be little better than a pensioner from France, sent to enslave the English King and the English nation. To such a height did this feeling run that Misson was assured hawkers had been heard to cry a printed sheet, advising the King to part with the Duchess of Portsmouth, or to expect most dreadful consequences ; * while a still stronger illustration of what the people thought of the Duchess is contained in the reply of her brother-in-law, the Earl of Pembroke, of whom the Duchess had threatened to complain to the King. The Earl told her that if she did he would set her upon her head at Charing Cross, and show the nation its grievance.-

A feeling of antipathy between Protestants and Roman Catholics was at this time exciting the people to many ridiculous pageants and expressions of ill-will to those about the Court suspected of anti-Protestant principles. A True Blue Protestant poet was a name of honour, and a Protestant sock

1 Misson's Memoirs, 8vo, 1719, p. 204. * Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum, p. 464.

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a favourite article of apparel.' When Nelly was insulted in her coach at Oxford by the mob, who mistook her for the Duchess of Portsmouth, she looked out of the window and said, with her usual good-humour, " Pray, good people, be civil ; I am the Protestant whore." This laconic speech drew upon her the favour of the populace, and Nell was suffered to proceed without further molestation.^

An eminent goldsmith of the early part of the last century was often heard to relate a striking instance which he himself remembered of Nelly's popularity. His master, when he was an apprentice, had made a most expensive service of plate as a present from the King to the Duchess of Portsmouth : great numbers of people crowded the shop to see what the plate was like ; some indulged in curses against the Duchess, while all were unanimous in wishing the present had been for the use of Mrs. Gwyn.^ With the London apprentices, long an influential body east and west of Temple Bar, Nell was always a favourite.

She and the Duchess frequently met at Whitehall, often in good-humour, but oftener not in the

1 Shadwell was called the True Blue Protestant poet ; for the Protestant sock, see Scott's Diyden.

" [Both Nell Gwyn and the Duchess of Portsmouth were at Oxford during the parliament of 1681 (Luttrell's Brief Historical Relation, i. 71).] The great Lord Peterborough, when mistaken for the Duke of Marlborough, made a similar escape : " Gentlemen, I can convince you by two reasons that I am not the Duke. In the first place, I have only five guineas in my pocket; and in the second, they are heartily at your service."

3 The London Chronicle, Aug. 15, 18, 1778.

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best temper one with the other, for Nelly was a wit, and loved to laugh at her Grace. The nature of these bickerings between them has been well but coarsely described in a single half-sheet of contemporary verses printed in 1682—"A Dialogue between the Dutchess of Portsmouth and Madam Gwin at parting." The Duchess was on her way to France, I believe, for the first time since she landed at Dover, and the language employed by the rival ladies is at least characteristic. Nelly vindicates her fidelity:

Let Fame, that never yet spoke well of woman, Give out I was a strolling whore and common ;' Yet have I been to him, since the first hour, As constant as the needle to the flower.

The Duchess threatens her with the people's " curse and hate," to which Nell replies :

The people's hate, much less their curse, I fear. I do them justice with less sums a year. I neither run in court nor city's score, I pay my debts, distribute to the poor.

Another single sheet in folio, dated a year earlier, records " A pleasant Battle between Tutty and Snapshort, the two Lap-Dogs of the Utopian Court." Tutty belonged to Nell Gwyn, and Snap-short to the Duchess, and the dialogue is supposed to allude to some real fray between the rival ladies. Tutty describes the mistress of Snapshort as one of Pharaoh's lean kine, and with a countenance so sharp as if she would devour him as she had devoured the nation, while Snapshort observes ot