The story of Nell Gwyn (4 page)

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.