The story of Nell Gwyn (20 page)

p. 12. Mrs. Knep . . . the mistress of Pepys.

Mrs. Knep can hardly be styled the diarist's " mistress," although she granted him a share of her favours. The details in the Z^w^j respecting this lively actress and "her brute of a husband," whom Pepys describes as a "horse jockey," are so amusing as to make it a matter for regret that no particulars of their subsequent history can be recovered. Mrs. Knipp or Knep probably made her debtit on the stage of the Theatre Royal as a member of Killigrew's company, as Epicene in Ben Jonson's Silent Woman, on June i, 1664. Pepys made her acquaintance at his friend Mrs. Pierce's on Dec. 6, 1665, and thought her "pretty enough, but the most excellent, mad-humoured thing, and sings the noblest tliat ever I heard in my life." Her husband he describes as "an ill, melancholy, jealous-looking fellow," suspected of ill-treating her. On Jan. 2, 1665-6 he records the " perfect

NOTES

pleasure" it gave him at Lord Brouncker's "to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of Barbary Allen." They soon became very intimate, corresponding with one another as " Dnpper Dicky" and "Barbary Allen."

Her last recorded appearance was as Mrs. Dorothy in D'Urfey's version of Fletcher's Trick for Trick in 1678. (See Dictionary of Natiotial Biography, s.v. Knipp.)

p. 13. Jos&ph Harris.

The researches of Mr. Lowe {Thomas Betterton, 1891, p. 72) have proved conclusively that the christian name of this well-known actor, who was Pepys's intimate friend, was Henry and not Joseph. Mr. Lowe supposes that Harris died or retired about 1682,

p. 13. EFzabeth Davenport.

There were two actresses named Davenport—the sisters Elizabeth and Frances—and both are indifferently styled "Mrs. Davenport" in the lists of dramatis persona:. It is, however, tolerably certain that Elizabeth was the Roxolana mentioned in Pepys's Diary and Hamilton's jMcmoirs of Count Grammont as the mistress of the Earl of Oxford ; her elder sister, Frances, being, according to Pepys (April 7, 1668), a "very bad actor."

p. 14. Jubilee Dicky.

The nickname bestowed on Henr}' Norris from his performance of that character in Farquhar's Constant Couple ; or, a Trip to the Jubilee.

p. 16. The ladies . . . wore . . . masks.

In Steele's Toxvn Talk, No, 5, dated Jan. 13, 1715-6, we are told that the wearing of masks, which had long become the distinguishing badge of couriesans, was prohibited in theatres.

NOTES p. 17. Pepys,-when challenged in the pit, (Ac.

Pepys relates his rencontye with the orange-wcnch under date May ii, 1668. A little previously we are told by him (March 26, 1668) that sixpence was the orthodox price of a "chaney" orange at the playhouse; half that sum being the cost elsewhere.

p. 20. A favourite passage,

Tlie words of a song ("Beauty retire ; thou doest my pitty move"), addressed by Solyman to Roxolana, and taken from the second part of the Siege of Rhodes^ by Sir William Davenant, Act IV. sc. ii.

p. 20. Joseph Harris of the Duke's.

As previously noted, the christian name of this celebrated actor was Henry (not Joseph).

p. 21. Nell was in her sixteenth . . . year.

As she was born in Feb. 1650-1, she had just entered her fifteenth year.

p. 22. Old Stephen Marshairs younger daughter.

It has been already pointed out that Steplien Marshall was not the father of the actresses Anne and Rebecca Marshall.

p. 22. The heiress of the very earl.

Lady Diana de Vere, eldest daughter and eventually sole heiress of Aubrey, twentieth and last Earl of Oxford of the name, was married, April 13, 1694, to NellGwyn's eldest son, Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans.

The well-known lines on the Duchess of St. Albans, by Lord Halifax, may here be cited :—

NOTES

"The line of Vere, so long renowned in arms, Concludes with lustre in St. Albans' charms ; Her conquering eyes have made their race complaat; They rose in valour, and in beauty set."

The verses were written in 1703 "for the toasting glasses of the Kit-Kat Club." The two last lines recall those of Waller (" On St. James's Park ")—

" Making the circle of their reign complete Those suns of empire, where they rise they set."

p. 23. The Dongan described by De Grammont.

The city merchant, who is said by Etherege in his The Lady of Pleasure to have been Nelly's first "protector " and introducer to the stage, is quite a different person from the Duncan of Madam Nelly's Complaint, by the same satirist.

The Duncan, who is supposed to have owed his appointment in the Guards to Nelly's fondness for him, was certainly not identical with the Dongan, or rather Dungan, mentioned in Hamilton's Memoirs of Count Grammont. It is true that his christian name was Robert, but he died in or about July 1662 {Administration Act Book, P. C. C, 1662, f. 61, now lost), when Nelly was a child of eleven. He did not succeed, but was succeeded by Louis de Duras, Marquis of Blanquefort, afterwards Earl of Feversham, in the lieutenancy of the Duke of York's troop of Guards. Another vacancy in the same troop occurred in June 1667, when de Duras was appointed captain and colonel, and Robert Werden, or Worden, lieutenant and major respectively (Ca/. State Papers, Dom. 1667, p. 245).

I-ieut. Robert Dongan came of a family conspicuous for thir attachment to the house of Stewart. He himself was imprisoned for being concerned in the plot to assassinate Cromwell in Nov. 1655, but by Feb. 1656 had escaped to Flanders {Cal. Clarendon State Papers, vol. iii.).

His elder brother, Sir William Dongan, born about

NOTES

1630, distinguished himself in the military service, and was created, Feb. 14, 1661-2, Viscount Dungan of Clane, CO. Kildare, being subsequently, Jan. 2, 1685-6, created Earl of Limerick. He was colonel of a regiment of Dragoons in the service of James II. in Ireland in 1688. After the defeat at the Boyne (July i, 1690), he retired to France and was attainded in 1691. His estates of nearly 30,000 acres were forfeited to William III ..who granted them to his Dutch favourite, the Earl of Athlone, in 1693. He died in France, Dec. 1698.

Another brother, Thomas Dongan, who is mentioned in the text, was born in 1634, and was for some time colonel of an Irish regiment in the service of Louis XIV. of France, but was subsequently (for Charles II. of England) lieutenant-governor of Tangier and governor of New York. He appears, notwithstanding tlie attainder of 1691, to have assumed in 1698 and been generally allowed the peerage. He died Dec. 14, 1715, aged eighty-one [Coviplele Peerage, ed. G. E. C[okayne], V. 81).

p. 24. The earliest notice . . , of her appearance on the stage.

Nell Gwyn's first recorded performance at the Theatre Royal took place in 1665 as Cydaria, Montezuma's daughter, in Dryden's Indian Emperor, a character which Pepys twice saw her in two years later (Aug. 22 and Nov. II, 1667), when he disapproved of her being given so serious a part.

p. 29. The 2nd of March, 1666-7. Not February as in original text.

p. 32. One of the most infamous of alleys.

The allusion is to Pall Mall Place, leading from King Street to Pall Mall; it is now highly respectable.

NOTES

p. 32. Nellyi's lodgings.

The old house in Drury Lane where Nell Gwyn is believed to have lodged had been known since the days of Henry VII. as the Cock and Pye tavern. It was pulled down in 1891, rebuilt, and has now (1903) disappeared under the Strand Improvement scheme of the London County Council. It was situated on the west side of the lane, nearly opposite Wych Street. An engraving of it was done by S. Rawle in 1807 for the European Alagazine (vol. lii.). There is also a water-colour of it by J. Findlay, dated 1850, in the Grace Collection, British Museum (portfolio xvii., Nos, 157, 158).

p. 43. Thievery expressive English word touting.

The derivation of the word "touting" here offered is presumably a jest.

p. 49. " Little Miss Davis.'^

She commenced to act in 1661 (not as Downes states in 1662). lier picture by Lely in the National Portrait Gallery makes her features singularly unattractive. In another Lely she is depicted as playing on a guitar. The portrait by Kneller, alluded to by Granger as formerly belonging to Baptist May, the keeper of the Privy Purse, represents her with a negro servant {Biog. Hist., ed. 1775, iv. 186).

p. 52. A house in Suffolk Street, Haymai-ket,

Here Moll Davis lived from 1667 to 1676 ; she then migrated to a house in the south-west corner of St. James's Square, and stayed there until 1687 (Dasent'sZfw^. of St. lames's Square, pp. 26, 184).

p. 52. When Miss Davis, etc.

Pepys (May 31, 1668) writes :—" At the play at Court the other night, Mrs. Davis was there ; and when she

Z76

NOTES

was to come to dance her jigg, the Queene would not stay to see it, wliich people do think it was out of displeasure at her being the King's whore, that she could not bear it."

p. 52. The imperious Countess of Castlemaine.

An anecdote of the silly vanity of this woman is told by Humphrey Prideaux in a letter to John Ellis, dated Sept. 17, 1674. She had come to Oxford to place her eldest son Charles Fitz-Roy—(a "very kockish idle boy " she called him, but he was in fact almost imbecile through her cruelty to him when a mere child)—at Christ Church, "The morneing before she went," writes Prideaux, " she sate at least an hour in her coach, that every body might se her" {Letters, Camd. Soc, p. 21). Prideaux's correspondent, " handsome Jack Ellis," at one time shared her expansive affections with a host of others, but having bragged of the intimacy, he was waylaid in the night by her satellites and reduced to the condition of Atys.

p. 56. Neliys part was Alizia.

This statement may be doubted, Downes in his Roscius Anglicanus says that "Mrs. Gwin " acted the heroine, Alizia, and by "Mrs. Gwin" he always designates an actress at the Theatre Royal named Anne Quin, Quyn, or Gwyn, who, needless to say, is constantly confounded with Neli Gwyn.

p. 57. Other rumours relating to Lord Buckhurst.

The charge so frequently made against Lord Buckhurst of handing over Nell Gwyn to the King in return for certain considerations, rests apparently on no better evidence than a statement said to have been made by Dryden to the inaccurate Boyer. Pepys's chronology of the episode is as usual clear and precise. On July 13, 1667, he writes:—"My Lord Buckhurst hath got Nell away from the King's house and gives her ;if 100 a year, so as

NOTES

she hath sent her parts to the house and will act no more." Lord and actress went to keep merry house together at Epsom, but soon parted, seemingly on no good terms, for in August Nell was back at the King's house acting Cydaria in Dryden's Indian Emperor again, and then Orange Moll told Pepys (Aug. 29) "that Nell is already left by my Lord Buckhurst, and that he makes sport of her, and swears that she hath had all she could get of him." The same accurate diarist even chronicles the commencement of Charles's connection with the sprightly actress, for on Jan. 11, 1667-8, he writes:— "The King did send several times for Nelly, and she was with him."

In describing the sojourn of the Court at Tunbridge Wells in the summer of 166S, Hamilton says:—"The queen had sent for the players, either that there might be no intermission in the diversions of the place, or, perhaps, to retort upon Miss Stewart by the presence of Nell Gwyn, part of the uneasiness she felt from hers " {^Memoirs of Cotint Grammont). Upon this episode in the actress's life Edward Jerningham founded a silly comedy in three acts, entitled The Peckham Frolic, or Nell Gwyn (published anonymously in 1799). The scene is laid in Peckham, near Tunbridge Wells, where some of the Court party resided.

p. 59. Nelly . . . *^ in a broad-brimmed hat."

Nell's cartwheel hat, although at first intended as a caricature of the French fashions brought over by the Duchess of Orleans and her suite, seems to have " caught on," and (in a modified form) to have become the mode among the bolder beauties of that day. The Countess of Kildare is wearing one in her portrait by Wissing, so finely mezzotinted by R. Williams.

p. 61. The part of Abiiahide was her last perform' ance on the stage.

Nell Gwyn is known to have appeared as Panthea in the revival of Beaumont and Fletcher's A King and No

NOTES

King, in 1670, but in the following year she seems to have definitely quitted the stage. Genest, however, in his Some Account of the English Stage, supposes that she returned to the boards in 1677, in which year he credits her with acting at Dorset Garden Ant^elica Bianca in Mrs. Behn's Rover, Astrea in the Constant Nytnph (an anonymous pastoral), and Thalestris in the Siege of Babylon of Samuel Pordage.

In 1678 he assigns to her the characters of Lady Squeamish in Otway's Friendship in Fashion, and Lady Knowell in Mrs. Behn's Sir Patient Fancy ; and in 1682 he makes her return to the Theatre Royal to play Sunamire in the Loyal Brother of Southerne, and Queen Elizabeth in Banks's Unhappy Favourite, or the Earl o Essex. Probably these parts were created by Mrs. Anne Gwin, the actress so constantly confounded with Nell Gwyn. Besides, Nelly's position as a lady of the Privy Chamber to Charles IL's luckless consort (to which she was appointed in 1675) would be incompatible with further stage performances.

p. 63. His personal appearance was remarkable.

When, after the battle of Worcester, a reward of ;^iooo was offered for the capture of Charles Stewart, he was described as "a tall man, above two yards high, his hair a deep brown nenr to black " ^Calendar of State Papers, Dom. 1651, p. 47).

p. 63. Riley must have doJic hint an injustice.

Ryley's portrait (as engraved by Trouvain) is not especially ugly when compared with those by Kneller and Caspars which are absolutely forbidding.

p. 66. He 7vas seen in St. _fames's Park.

A contemporary pencil drawing by Wittock from a picture by T. Van Wyck at Devonshire House gives a

NOTES

view in St. James's Park, showing Spring Gardens and Charles and his Court walking (Crace Collection, Brit. Mus., portfolio xii., no, 28). In the same portfolio (nos. 33 and 34) is an engraving by S. Mazell of the Old Horse Guards, etc., with Charles II. and his Court going towards the Decoy.