The story of Nell Gwyn (10 page)

THE STORY OF NELL GWYN

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