The story of Nell Gwyn (19 page)

1 Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 457.

^ Gibber's Apology, ed. 1740, p. 450.

THE STORY OF NELL GWYN

shall think this woman (he is writing of Jane Shore) too slight a thing to be written of and set among the remembrances of great matters ; but meseem-eth," he adds, "the chance worthy to be remembered—for, where the King took displeasure she would mitigate and appease his mind ; where men were out of favour she would bring them in his grace ; for many that had highly offended she obtained pardon ; of great forfeitures she gat men remission ; and, finally, in many weighty suits she stood more in great stead."—Wise and virtuous Thomas More,—pious and manly Thomas Tenison, —pretty and witty—and surely with much that was good in her— Eleanor Gwyn.^

' I have great pleasure in extracting the following defence of Nelly from the preface to Douglas Jerrold's drama of Nell Gwynne, or The Prologue, a capitally-constructed piece, and one true throughout to its heroine and the manners of the age in which Nelly lived : " Whilst we may safely reject as unfounded gossip many of the stories associated with the name of Nell Gwynne, we cannot refuse belief to the various proofs of kind-heartedness, liberality, and— taking into consideration her subsequent power to do harm— absolute goodness of a woman mingling (if we may believe a passage in Pepys) from her earliest years in the most depraved scenes of a most dissolute age. The life of Nell Gwynne, from the time of her connection with Charles IL to that of her death, proved that error had been forced upon her by circumstances, rather than indulged from choice. It was under this impression that the present little comedy was undertaken : under this conviction an attempt has been made to show some glimpses of the ' silver lining' of a character, to whose influence over an unprincipled voluptuary we owe a national asylum for veteran soldiers, and whose brightness shines with the most amiable lustre in many actions of her life, and in the last disposal of her worldly effects."

THE STORY OF NELL GWYN

[Jerrold produced his play in 1833. He stated in the preface that he was induced to write it bv reading in Waldron's edition of Downes's lioscius Avglicanus (1789) an account of Nell Gwyn speaking the prologue to the first part of Dryden's Almaiizor attd Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada bv the Spaniards, in a broad-brimmed hat as big as a cart-wheel and a waist-belt. The story is as follows : '' At the Duke's theatre, Nokes appeared in a hat larger than Pistol's, which took the town wonderful, and supported a bad play by its fine effect. Dryden, piqued at this, caused a hat to be made the circumference of a timber coach wheel; and as Nelly was low of stature, and what the French call mignonne ox piquaiile, he made her speak under the umbrella of that hat, the brims thereof being spread out horizontally to their full extension. The whole theatre was in a convulsion of applause, nay, the very actors giggled, a circumstance none had observed before. Judge, therefore, what a condition the merriest Prince alive was in at such a conjuncture ! 'Twas beyond odso and ods fish, for he wanted little of being suffocated with laughter."

The year 1900 witnessed a decided Nell Gwyn boom in the dramatic world. Two plays, with Nelly for heroine, were produced within a few days of each other in the early autunm. On August 21 Miss Marie Tempest made a hit at the Prince of Wales's theatre, as the royal favourite in EiigUsh Nell, founded by Messrs. Anthony Hope and Edward Rose on the former's novel, Simon Dale. Nine days afterwards at the Haymarket Miss Julia Neilson won warm approval in the title-role of Paul Kester's Sweet Nell of Old Drury, as did Miss Ada Rehan when the play was performed in America.]

NOTES

p. I. The funeral sermon of Nell Gwyn.

Our author sought vainly for a copy of this doubtlessly edifying discourse through the medium of Notes and Queries (ist series, i, 28).

p. 2. The Coal Yard in Drury Lane, Now known as Goldsmith Street.

p. 2. In Pipe Lane . . . Hereford, . . a small house . . , in zmhich . . . she was horn.

More correctly Pipe Well Lane. The house itself was pulled down m 1859, but the Herefordians, in their anxiety to claim Nelly as their own, changed the name of the place from Pipe Well Lane to Gwyn Street. Moreover, in 1883, good Dr. Atlay, the then Bishop of Hereford, allowed a memorial tablet to Nelly to be fixed on the outer face of his garden wall, in order that no future uncertainty might exist as to the site of the house where (on the slenderest authoiity) Charles IL's mistress is supposed to have been born. We have not heard that the birthplace of Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, has been similarly distinguished. Surely her service to the country in relieving the illustrious Marlborough of pecuniary anxiety should not be overlooked.

p. 2. The place of Nell Gtuyn's birth.

Wood, in noticing the death of old Mrs. Gwyn, expressly states that she " lived sometimes in Oxford "

NOTES

{Life and Times, Oxf. Hist. Soc, ii. 457). Elsewhere \ibid., ii. 565) he gives a pedigree of the family, as follows:—

Dr. [Edward] Gwynl of Ch. Ch.

. . . Gwyn w. . . . Smith (of St. Henry Gv/yn wi. Susan I Thomas' parish.) |

Eleanor Math[ew] Henry

borne at Reuley.

Nothing probably can be gleaned from the registers of St. Thomas's parish, as they do not begin until 1655.

Among the many " traditions " connected with Nell Gwyn is one to the effect that her real name was Margaret Symcott ; it is mentioned in Doran's Their Majesties' Servants, ed. Lowe, i. 91 (cf. also Manning and Bray's History of Surrey, iii. App. xvi, xxii, xxxi).

p. 5. The satires of the time have pilloried a cousin. Thus Rochester in A Panegyrick on Nelly: —

" Nor must her cousin be forgot; preferred From many years' command in the black guard

To be an ensign

Whose tattered colours well do represent His first estate i' th' ragged regiment."

p. 5. Her mother.

Wood, under date July 20, 1679, writes:—"Elen Gwynn, commonly called old Madam Gwynne, being drunk with brandy, fell in a ditch neare the Neathouses, London, and was stifled. Mother to Nell Quin. Lived sometimes in Oxford," {Life and Times, Oxf. Hist. Soc, ii. 457.)

Lord Rochester, in his amusing lampoon, entitled A Panegyrick on Nelly, wrote :—

1 Edward Gwin, M.A., installed canon of the fourth stall in Ch. Ch., May 11, 1615 ; died Aug. 24, 1624.

NOTES

"Nor was the mother's funeral less her care, No cost, no velvet, did the daughter sp£.re : Fine gilded 'Scutcheons did the Herse inrich, To celebrate this Martyr of the Ditch ; Burnt brandy did in flaming Brimmers flow, Drank at her funeral, while her well-pleas'd shade Rejoyc'd, even in the sober Fields below, At all the drunkenness her Death had made."

Sir George Etherege, in his The Lady of Pleaszire, a Satyr, which has for its argument

" The life of Nelly truly shown From Cole-yard and Celler, to the Throne, Till into the Grave she tumbled down,"

and begins,

" I sing the story of a scoundrel Lass,

Rais'd from a dung-hill to a King's embrace,"

refers to

" The Pious Mother of this flaming Whore,

Maid, Punk, and Bawd, full Sixty years and more, Dy'd drunk with Brandy in a Common-shore."

In some anonymous couplets called Satyr Unmuzzled, Nelly and her mother are severely handled (see Rox-burghe Ballads, ed. J. W. Ebsworth, pt. xiii. p. 33).

p. 5. Tke two Marshalls.

This story is "mighty pretty " as it stands (even in the Braybrookian version of Pepys), but later research has robbed it of much of its point. The sisters Anne (Nan) and Rebecca (Beck) Marshall were certainly not the daughters of the Presbyterian minister referred to, as Colonel Chester has conclusively shown in West-minster Abbey Registers, 1876, p. 149. Stephen Marshall, the eminent preacher, died Nov. 19, 1655, and at the date of his will his wife was dead, and five of his

NOTES

daughters were already married—three of them at least to clergymen—and had several children ; his remaining daughter, who proved the will, was unmarried, but she bore the name of Susan, and as her father's executor must have been of full age.

Sir Peter Leycester, who married a daughter of Gilbert, Lord Gerard, of Gerards Bromley, Staffordsliire, observes inhis Historical Antiquities concerning Cheshire, that "the two famous women-actors in London " were daughters

of Marshall, chaplain to Lord Gerard, by Elizabeth,

bastard daughter of John Dutton of Dutton. Sir Peter, being connected by marriage with the Buttons, ought to have known the fact, but Dr. George W. Marshall (Rouge Croix), who has done so much to illustrate the history of the Marshall families, notably in his privately printed Miscellanea Marescelliana, has not succeeded in verifying Sir Peter's statement.

The excerpt from Pepys may as well be given in the honest diarist's own words :—

"Oct. 26, 1667. Mrs. Pierce tells me 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 latler called the other my Lord Buckhurst's whore. Nell answered then, ' I was but one man's whore, though I was brought up in a bawdy-house to fill strong waters to the guests ; and you are a whore to three or four, though a Presbyter's praying daughter !' which was very pretty."

p. 5. Lemknor Lane. Lewknor's Lane, on the east side of Druiy Lane, opposite Short's Gardens, was so called after Sir Lewis Lewknor, master of the ceremonies during the reign of James I., who lived in Drury Lane. It was once the residence of Jonathan Wild, and was the scene of Jack Sheppard's capture after his second escape from Newgate in 1724. It is now known as Charles Street.

p. 6. She was ten years of age . . . in 1660. Or rather nine years, as she was born on Feb. 2, 1650-1.

NOTES

p. 7. Here's a health tmto his Majesty.

This one-time favourite toast is referred to by Shadwell ( Works, ii. 268 ; iii. 52). The words as given in Catch that catch can ; or. The Musical Companion, containing Catches and Rounds for three and fojir voices, 4to, 1667, are as follows :—

" Here's a health unto his Majesty, with a fa, la, la, Conversion [? Confusion] to his enemies, with a fa, la, la. And he that will not pledge his health, I wish him neither wit nor wealth, Nor yet a rope to hang himself.

'•With a fa, la, la la, With a fa, la," etc.

Jeremy Savile seems to have composed the music.

p. 9. New theatres in London.

For fuller details of the theatres of this period Mr. R. W. Lowe's monograph on Thomas Bettcrton (1891), especially the chapter on "A Restoration Theatre," may be consulted with advantage. There are contemporary views of both the exterior and sta^e of the Dorset Garden theatre published with Settle's Empress of Morocco (ed.

1673)

p. 9. The King's Theatre,

Thomas Killigrew started business with his company at a house in Bear Yard, Vere Street, Clare Market, previously Gibbons's Tennis Court, Nov. 8, 1660; it is now (1903) cleared away for the construction of the new thoroughfare from Holborn to the Strand ; an engraving of the ruins, as they appeared after a fire in 1809, is in Wilkinson's Londma Illustrata. He opened Drury Lane Theatre on May 7, 1663 (not on April 8 as Cunningham, misled by Dcnvnes, has stated). The theatre was destroyed by fire in 1672, but was soon rebuilt, and reopened on March 26, 1674.

NOTES

A ballad "on the burning of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Jan. 25, 1671-2," has this couplet:—

" He cryes just judgment and wished when poor Bell Rung out his last, 't had been the stage's kNell."

A contemporary manuscript note on a copy of the ballad in the British Museum informs us that this was construed into a reflection upon Nell Gwyn, and the printer was threatened with prosecution by Sir Roger L'Estrange for making a capital N, although the verses were licensed {Noles and Queries, 2nd ser., ix. 121).

p. 10. The Duke's Theatre.

Sir William Davenant chose Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, for the first appearance of his company (Nov. 15, 1660), whence, in June 1661, he migrated to Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields. A note on " Sir William Davenant and the Revival of the Drama during the Protectorate " from the pen of Dr. C. H. Firth, appeared in the English Historical Review for April 1903.

p. 12. Mrs. Hughes.

In Mr. R. W. Lowe's Thomas Betterton, 1891, p. 81, Margaret Hughes is shown to have been the Desdemona "regarding whom Jordan's prologue was written, and, therefore, the first woman who acted on the English stage after the Restoration." The story of her conquest of Prince Rupert, and the amusement of the Court thereat, is thus told in Hamilton's Memoirs of Count Grammont: —

" Prince Rupert found charms in the person of another player, called Hughes, who brought down and greatly subdued his natural fierceness. From this time, adieu alembics, crucibles, furnaces, and all the black furniture of the forges: a complete farewell to all mathematical instruments and chemical speculations: sweet powder and essences were now the only ingredients that occupied any share of his attention. The impertinent gipsy chose to be attacked in form ; and proudly refusing money,

NOTES

that, in the end, she might sell her favours at a dearer rate, she caused the poor prince to act a part so unnatural, that he no longer appeared like the same person. The King was greatly pleased with this event, for which great rejoicings were made at Tunbridge ; but nobody was bold enough to make it the subject of satire, though the same constraint was not observed with other ridiculous personages."

p. II. Shank,

The list of actors printed in the first folio of Shakespeare (1623) contains the name of John Shanke. He died in Jan. 1635-6. The Restoration Shank or Shancke is probably identical with " one Shanks, a player," who acted no very glorious part in the Civil War (see Collier's Hist. Engl. Dravi. Poetry, ed. 1879, iii. 485).

p. 12. The two Marshalls.

Our author's mistake respecting the parentage of the two Marshalls has already been noticed.