The story of Nell Gwyn (9 page)

^ Halifax's Character, p. 21. 2 Clarendon's Life, ed. 1826, iii. 61. ^ Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 288. * Pepys, Dec. 8, 1666.

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He had what Sheffield called the foible of his family, to be easily imposed upon ; for, as Clarendon truly remarks, it was the unhappy fate of the Stewart family to trust too much on all occasions to others.^ To such an extent did he carry unnecessary confidence, that he would sign papers without inquiring what they were about.^

He drew well himself,^ was fond of mathematics, fortification, and shipping ; knew the secrets of many empirical medicines, passed many hours in his laboratory, and in the very month in which he died was running a process for fixing mercury.* The Observatory at Greenwich and the Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital are enduring instances of his regard for science.

He had all the hereditary love of the Stewarts for poetry and poets, and in this respect was certainly different from George II., who considered a poet in the light of a mechanic.^ He carried Hudibras about in his pocket,^ protected its publication by his royal warrant, but allowed its author to starve. Nor was this from want of admiration, but from

* Clarendon's Life, ed. 1826, iii. 63. 2 Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 417.

' Walpole's Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, p. 427.

* Burnet, ed. 1823, ii. 254. Among the satires attributed to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is one on Charles II., called "The Cabin Boy." [On Jan. 15, 1668-9, Pepys chronicles a visit to the King's laboratory: "Then down with Lord Brouncker to Sir R. Murray into the king's little elaboratory under his closet, a pretty place, and there saw a great many chymical glasses and things, but understood none of them."]

" Lord Chesterfield's Works, ed. Lord Mahon, ii. 441.

* Dennis's Reflectioiis on Pope s Essay on Criticism, p. 23.

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indolence. Patronage had been a trouble to him. The noble song of Shirley—

The glories of our blood and state,

was often sung to him by old Bowman, and, while he enjoyed the poetry, he could have cared but little for the moral grandeur which pervades it. He suggested the Medal to Dryden as a subject for a poem while walking in the Mall. " If I was a poet,'' he said, "and I think I am poor enough to be one, I would write a poem on such a subject in the following manner."—Dryden took the hint, carried his poem to the King, and had a hundred broad pieces for it.^ A good new comedy, we are told by Dennis, took the next place in his list of likings immediately after his last new mistress. In points connected with the stage he was even more at home than in matters of poetry, insomuch that the particular differences, pretensions, or complaints of the actors were generally ended by the King's personal command or decision.^ This, however, he would at times carry to excess, and it has been even said that "he would hear anybody against anybody." One of his latest acts was to call the attention of the poet Crowne to the Spanish play, No puede ser; or, It cafinot be, and to command him to write a comedy on a somewhat similar foundation. To this suggestion it is that we owe the good old comedy of Sir Courtly Nice. ^

1 Spence's Anecdotes, p. 171.

* Gibber's Apology, ed. 1740, p, 75,

3 Crowne's Preface to Sir Courtly Nice, 410, 1685.

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He hated flattery,^ was perfectly accessible, would slop and talk with Hobbes, or walk through the Park with Evelyn, or any other favourite. Steele remembered to have seen him more than once leaning on D'Urfey's shoulder, and humming over a song with him.''' Hume blames him for not preserving Otway from his sad end ; but Otway died in the next reign, more from accident than neglect.

His passion for music (he preferred the violin to the viol) is not ill illustrated in the well-known jingle—

Four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row,

And there was tiddle-fiddle, and twice fiddle-fiddle, etc.,

written on his enlargement of his band of fiddlers to four-and-twenty,—his habit, while at his meals, of having, according to the French mode, twenty-four violins playing before him ;^ or by his letters written during his exile. " We pass our time as well as people can do," he observes, " that have no more money, for we dance and play as if we had taken the Plate fleet;" * " Pray get me pricked down," he adds in another, " as many new corrants and sarabands and other little dances as you can.

1 Temple's Works, ed. 1770, ii. 409.

» The Guardian. [No. 67; dated May 28, 1713. The paper was written by Addison in the character of one of D'Urfey's old friends. It is unlikely that either Addison or Steele could have personally witnessed tlie occurrence.]

2 Anthony a Wood's Li/e, ed. Bliss, 8vo p, 70, * Mis. AiiHca, p. 117.

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and bring- them with you, for 1 have got a small fiddler that does not play ill." ^

Like others of his race, like James L and James V. of Scotland, like his father and his grandfather, he was occasionally a poet. A song of his composition is certainly characteristic of his way of life :—

I pass all my hours in a shady old grove, But I live not the day when I see not my love; I survey every walk now my Phillis is gone, And sigh when I think we were there all alone ;

O then, 'tis O then, that 1 think there's no hell

Like loving, like loving too well.

But each shade and each conscious bow'r when I find. Where I once have been happy, and she has been kind ; When I see the print left of her shape on the green, And imagine the pleasure may yet come again ;

O then 'tis I think that no joys are above

The pleasures of love.

While alone to myself I repeat all her charms, She I love may be lock'd in another man's arms, She may laugh at my cares, and so false she may be. To say all the kind things she before said to me :

O then, 'tis O then, that I think there's no hell

Like loving too well.

But when I consider the truth of her heart. Such an innocent passion, so kind without art; I fear I have wronged her, and hope she may be So full of true love to be jealous to me :

And then 'tis I think that no joys are above

The pleasures of love. '•^

1 Ellis's Letters (2nd series), iii. p. 376, and Mis. Aid.,

P- 155-

2 From Choice Ayres, Songs, etc., 1676, folio. See also

Roger North's Meinoirs of Mustek, 410, :846, p. 104; Hawkins's History of Music, v. 447 ; and Park's ed. of Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, i. 154.

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That he understood foreign afifairs better than all his councils and counsellors put together was the repeated remark of the Lord Keeper Guilford. In his exile he had acquired either a personal acquaintance with most of the eminent statesmen in Europe, or else from such as could instruct him he had received their characters :—and this knowledge, the Lord Keeper would continue, he perpetually improved by conversing with men of quality and ambassadors, whom he would sift, and by what he obtained from them ("possibly drunk as well as sober"), would serve himself one way or other. " When they sought," his lordship added, " to sift him—who, to give him his due, was but too open— he failed not to make his best of them." ^

His love of wine was the common failing of his age. The couplet which I shall have occasion hereafter to include among his happy replies :

Good store of good claret supplies everything, And the man that is drunk is as great as a king,

affords no ill notion of the feeling current at Whitehall. When the Duke of York, after dinner, asked Henry Saville if he intended to invite the King to the business of the day, Saville wondered what he meant, and incurred the displeasure of the Duke by continuing the King in the belief that hard drinking was the business before them.*^

His great anxiety was the care of his health thinking it, perhaps, more reconcilable with his

1 North, ed. 1826, ii. 102.

» Lady R. Russell's Letters, ed. Miss Berry, p. 177.

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pleasures than he really found it. He rose early, walked generally three or four hours a day by his watch, and when he pulled it out, skilful men, it is said, would make haste with what they had to say to him. He walked so rapidly with what Teonge calls " his wonted large pace," ^ that it was a trouble, as Burnet observes, for others to keep up with him. This rapid walk gives a sting to the saying of Shaftesbury, that "he would leisurely walk his Majesty out of his dominions," ^ while it explains his advice to his nephew. Prince George of Denmark, when he complained to Charles of growing fat since his marriage, " Walk with me, hunt with my brother, and do justice on my niece, and you will not be fat." ^

His ordinary conversation—and much of his time was passed in "discoursing,"*—hovered too frequently between profanity and indecency, and in its familiarity was better adapted to his condition before he was restored than afterwards. Yet it had withal many fascinations of which the best talker might be proud—possessing a certain softness of manner that placed his hearers at ease, and sent them away enamoured with what he said.^ When he thought fit to unbend entirely, he exhibited great quickness of conception, much pleasantness of wit, with great variety of knowledge, more observation and truer judgment of men than one would have

1 Teonge's Diary, p. 232.

* Sprat's Account of the Rye-House Plot.

3 Anthony k Wood's Life, ed. Bliss, p. 260.

* North's Lives, ed. 1826, ii. * Burnet, ed. 1823, ii. 467.

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inia

" If writers be just to the memory of King Charles IL," says Dryden, addressing Lord Halifax, "they cannot deny him to have been an exact knower of mankind, and a perfect distinguisher of their talents." "It is true," he continues, "his necessities often forced him to vary his counsellors and counsels, and sometimes to employ such persons in the management of his affairs who were rather fit for his present purpose than satisfactory to his judgment ; but where it was choice in him, not compulsion, he was master of too much good sense to delight in heavy conversation ; and, whatever his favourites of state might be, yet those of his affection were men of wit."^

1 Temple, ed. 1770, ii. 408.

^ Lord Dartmouth's note in Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 436. 3 Dalrymple's Memoirs, ed. 1773, Appendix, p. 21. * Pepys.

« Clarendon's Z^/d", ed. 1826, i. 358. 6 Dryden—Dedication of King Arthur, 410, 1691. 76

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He was an admirable teller of a story, and loved to talk over the incidents of his life to every new face that came about him. His stay in Scotland, his escape from Worcester, and the share he had in the war of Paris, in carrying messages from the one side to the other, were his common topics. He went over these in a very graceful manner, but so often and so copiously, says Burnet, that all those who had been long accustomed to them were soon weary, and usually withdrew, so that he often began them in a full audience, and before he had done there were not above four or five left about him. But this general unwillingness to listen is contradicted by Sheffield, who observes that many of his ministers, not out of flattery, but for the pleasure of hearing it, affected an ignorance of what they had heard him relate ten times before, treating a story of his telling as a good comedy that bears being seen often, if well acted. This love of talking made him, it is said, fond of strangers, who hearkened to his stories and went away as in a rapture at such uncommon condescension in a king ; while the sameness in telling caused Lord Rochester to observe, that " he wondered to see a man have so good a memory as to repeat the same story without losing the least circumstance, and yet not remember that he had told it to the same persons the very day before."'

He was undisturbed by libels ; enjoying the severities of Wilmot, enduring and not resenting

1 Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 458. 77

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Ihe bitter personalities of Sheffield.' To have been angry about such matters had been a trouble ; he therefore let them alone, banishing Wilmot only for a time for a libel which he had given him on himself, and rewarding Sheffield for a satire unsurpassed for boldness in an age of lampoons. He was compared to Nero, who sung while Rome was burning, and pardoned the malice of the wit in the satire of the comparison. He loved a laugh at Court as much as Nokes or Tony Leigh did upon the stage.

Yet he would laugh at his best friends, and be Just as good company as Nokes or Leigh.^

Few indeed escaped his wit, and rather than not laugh he would turn the laugh upon himself.

Words or promises went very easily from him,^ and his memory was only good in such matters as affection or caprice might chance to determine. Had he been less " unthinking," we should have ;iad an epic from the muse of Dryden, " but being encouraged only with fair words from King Charles IL," writes the great poet, "my little salary ill paid, and no prospect of a future subsistence, I was thus discouraged in the beginning of my attempt." If we lost King Arthur, we gained Absalom and

1 Lord Rochester to Saville, relative to Mulgrave's Essay on Satire. (Malone's Life of Dryden, p. 134.) See also Burnet, ed. 1823, i. 433.

•^ lA\\\gxzy€% Essay on Satire. Mr. Bolton Corney, in vol. iii. p. 162 of Notes and Queries [ist series], has in a most unanswerable manner vindicated Mulgrave's claim to the authorship of this satire.

' Burnet, ii. 466.