The Loves of Charles II (107 page)

“God’s Body! I swear I’ve seen the child somewhere ere this?”

“You keep strange company, Henry.”

“I’m Nell,” cried Nell. “Mrs. Rose’s sister.”

“Why, now I know. And how fares Mrs. Rose?”

“Badly!” cried Nell in sudden rage. “And that seems small concern of yours.”

“And should it concern me?” he asked flippantly.

His companion was smiling cynically.

“If you are not knave it should,” retorted Nell.

Henry Killigrew turned to his companion. “This is the child who serves strong waters at Mother Gwyn’s bawdy-house.”

“And strong words with it, I’ll warrant,” said the other.

“A sharp-tongued vixen,” said Henry.

Nell cried suddenly: “My sister is in prison. They will hang her.”

“What?” said Henry’s companion languidly. “Do they then hang whores? It will not do.”

“Indeed it will not do,” cried Henry. “Shall they hang all the women of London and leave us desolate?”

“God preserve the whores of London!” cried the other.

“They will hang her for what she has not done,” said Nell. “You must save her. You must take her out of prison. It is on your account that she is there.”

“On my account?”

“Indeed yes, sir. She was hoping you would come; you did not, but another did. She refused him and so he accused her of this crime. He was a flesh-merchant of East Cheap. Rose could not endure him … after your lordship.”

“The vixen sets a drop of honey in the vinegar, Henry,” murmured his friend, flicking at the lace of his sleeve.

“Do not mock,” said Henry, serious suddenly. “Poor Rose! So this flesh-merchant had her sent to prison, eh …?” He turned to his friend. “Why, Browne, we’ll not endure this. Rose is a lovely girl. I meant to call on her this very night.”

“Then call on her in jail, sir,” begged Nell. “Call on her—and you, being such a noble gentleman, can of a certainty procure her release.”

“The little vixen bath a good opinion of you,” said Browne.

“And it shall not be misplaced.”

“Where go you, Henry?”

“I’m going to see Mrs. Rose. I’m fond of Rose. I anticipate many happy hours with her.”

“God will reward you, sir,” said Nell.

“And Rose also, I pray,” murmured Browne.

They walked away from Lady Bennet’s while Nell ran beside them.

Life was truly wonderful.

There was no longer need to hide her prettiness. Now she washed and combed her hair; it hung down her back in a cloud of ringlets. There was no longer need to squint and frown; she could laugh as often as she liked—an occupation which suited her mood more readily than any other.

On the day she walked into the King’s Theater, she was the proudest girl in London. Lady Castlemaine, for all that she was the King’s pampered mistress, could not have been happier than little Nell Gwyn in her smock, stays, and petticoat, her coarse gown and her kerchief about her neck; and she was actually wearing shoes on her feet. The chestnut curls hung over her bare shoulders; she looked her age now. She was thirteen, and even if it was a very small thirteen it was a very dainty one.

The men could look as much as they liked now, for, as Nell would be the first to admit, looks were free and any man who was prepared to pay his sixpence for one of her oranges could take his fill of looking.

If any tried to take liberties they would meet a torrent of abuse which seemed startling coming from one so small and so enchanting to the eye. It was said in the pit and the middle and upper galleries that the prettiest of all Moll Meggs’ orange-girls was little Nelly Gwyn.

Nell was filled with happiness, for Rose was home now. She had been saved by the two gallants whom Nell had called in to help her. What a wonderful thing it was to have friends at Court!

A word from Henry Killigrew, Groom of the Bedchamber, to the Duke, a word from Mr. Browne who, it appeared, was Cup-bearer to the same Duke, and Rose was granted a pardon, and had merely walked out of her jail.

Moreover Mr. Browne and Henry Killigrew had been somewhat impressed by the wit and resource of Rose’s young sister whom they addressed with mock ceremony as Mrs. Nelly; and Henry had been only too ready to
see that Mrs. Nelly became one of Orange Moll’s girls, for, as he said, it was such girls as Mrs. Nelly for whom Orange Moll was looking—and not only Orange Moll. He intimated that when he strolled into His Majesty’s Theater he also would not be averse to taking a glance at Mrs. Nelly.

Nell shook her curls. She felt that she would know how to deal with Henry Killigrew, should the need arise.

In the meantime her dearest wish had been granted. Six days of the week she was in the theater—the King’s Theater—and it seemed to her that, in that wooden building, the pageant of life at its most exciting passed before her eyes. She did not know which delighted her more, the play or the audience.

It was true that the King’s Theater was a drafty place; its glazed cupola let in a certain amount of daylight, which in bad weather could make it somewhat uncomfortable for the occupants of the pit; sometimes it was cold, for there was no artificial heating; sometimes it was stiflingly hot from the press of bodies, and this heat was augmented by the candles on the walls and over the stage.

These were trifling matters. Gazing at the stage it was possible to forget that her home was still the bawdy-house in Cole-yard; here she could live in a different world by aping the actors and actresses; she could see the nobility, for often the King himself came to the playhouse. Was he not its chief patron, and did not all the actors and actresses of the King’s house call themselves His Majesty’s Servants? So, it was natural that he should often be there, sometimes with the Queen, sometimes with the notorious Lady Castlemaine, sometimes with others. She would see the Court wits—my lord Buckingham, my lord Rochester, Sir Charles Sedley, Lord Buckhurst. They all came to the play, and with them came the ladies who interested them at the time.

She had heard wild stories concerning them all, and to these she listened with relish. She had seen the Queen sail up London river with the King after his marriage; she had been with the crowd which had witnessed their arrival at Whitehall Bridge, while the Queen Mother, who was on a visit to her son, waited to receive the royal pair on the pier which had been erected for the occasion; and all were so gorgeously clad that the spectators had gaped with wonder.

She knew, too, that the King had forced the Queen to accept Lady Castlemaine as one of the women of her bedchamber. All London talked of it—the resentment of the Queen, the flaming arrogance of Lady Castlemaine, and the stubbornness of the King. She was sorry for the dark-eyed Queen, who looked a little sad at times and seemed to be trying so hard to understand what the play was about, laughing a little too late at the jokes, at
which, poor lady, she might have blushed instead of laughed had she understood them.

Then there was the arrogant Lady Castlemaine, sitting with the King or in the next box and speaking to him in her loud imperious voice so that the audience in the pit craned their heads upwards to see and hear what she was at, and the galleries looked down for the same reason; for when Lady Castlemaine was in the playhouse few paid attention to the players.

There was often to be seen in their boxes those two rakes, Lord Buckhurst and Sir Charles Sedley. Lord Buckhurst was a good-natured man, a poet and a lover of wit, whose high spirits very often drew him into prominence. Sir Charles Sedley was a poet and a playwright as well. He was so slight in stature that he was nicknamed Little Sid. These two were watched with alert interest by the house. With Sir Thomas Ogle they had recently behaved with reckless devilry at the Cock Tavern, where, having eaten well and drunk still better, they had gone to the balcony of the tavern, taken off all their clothes, and lectured the passersby in an obscene and offensive manner. There had been a riot and as a result Little Sid was taken to court, heavily fined, and bound over to keep the peace for a year. So the audience watched and waited, no doubt hoping that these three rakes would repeat here in the theater the performance they had given at the Cock Tavern.

Here was Nell’s first glimpse at the high life of the Court. And, in addition to watching at close quarters the highest in the land, she could practice her repartee on the gay young men in the pit. All those with a strain of puritanism, left over from the fifties, stayed away from the theater which, they declared, was nothing more than a meeting place for courtesans and those who sought them; and indeed the noblemen in the pit and the boxes, and women from the Court together with the prostitutes, made up the greater part of the audience. The women wore vizard masks (which were supposed to hide their blushes when the dialogue on the stage was too outspoken) and the lowest aped the highest; they chatted with each other, noisily sucked China oranges, threw the peel at each other and the players, showered abuse on the actors and actresses if they did not like the way the play was going, fought one another, and added to the general clamor. Courtiers, and apprentices aping courtiers, made assignations with the vizard masks. The side boxes, which cost four shillings, were filled with ladies and gentlemen of the Court and were only slightly raised above the pit, where the price of a seat was two shillings and sixpence. In the middle gallery where a seat cost a modest eighteen pence sat the quieter folk who wished to hear the play; and in the shilling gallery were the poorest section of the audience, and here coachmen and footmen, whose masters and mistresses
were in the theater, were allowed to enter without charge towards the end of the play.

Each day Nell found full of incident. Never could one guess what would happen next at the playhouse, what great scandal would be talked of, or what great personage would quarrel with another during the course of the performance.

She could listen to the loud and often lewd conversation between courtiers in their boxes and vizard masks in the pit, conversation in which the rest of the audience would often join as they combed their hair or drank noisily from the bottles they brought in with them; some stood on the benches and jeered at the players, quarreled with the sentiments of the play, or even climbed onto the stage and attempted to fight an actor for his dastardly conduct in the play or mayhap on account of some real grievance.

It was all clamor, and color, and Nell loved it. Nor was this the sum of her excitement; for her, by no means least of the theater’s attractions was the play itself.

And when the handsomest actor of them all, who was considered by many to be the company’s leading man, played his parts he could often quiet the noisiest of the audience. He would strut the stage, not as himself, handsome Charles Hart, but as the character he played; and if that character were a king it would seem that Charles Hart was as much a king as that other Charles who sat in his box, alert and appreciative of one who aped his royalty with such success.

Nell thought Charles Hart godlike as he came from the back stage and stepped onto the apron stage, and by his magnetic presence demanded attention. She would stand very still watching him, forgetting her load of oranges, not caring if Orange Moll should see her staring at the stage instead of doing all in her power to persuade someone in the audience to buy a fine China orange. Nell had spoken to the great man once or twice. He had bought an orange from her. He had noted her dainty looks with appreciation, for Charles Hart was appreciative of beauty. He had never yet been made aware of the agility of Nell’s tongue, for she had been reduced to unaccustomed silence in the presence of the great man. Yet he must have known that she had a ready gift of repartee since no orange-girl could have survived long without it.

This day he was playing the part of Michael Perez in
Rule a Wife and Have a Wife
, and many from the Court had come to see him. Nell was in a daze of admiration as she went into the tiring room to see if she could sell an orange or two to the actresses.

Several gallants were already there, for they were admitted to the tiring
room on payment of an extra half-crown, and there it was possible for them to have intimate conversation with the actresses, perhaps make love to them there or make assignations for such lovemaking in more private places.

Nell was greatly attracted by the tiring room; she had heard that actresses were paid as much as twenty to fifty shillings a week—a fabulous sum to a poor orange-girl; they looked quite splendid off the stage as well as on it, for they had beautiful clothes which were given by courtiers—and even the King himself—for use in their plays. The gentlemen fawned on them, pressed gifts on them, implored them to accept their invitations; and the actresses gave answers as pert as any they used to their stage lovers.

“A China orange, Mrs. Corey?” cooed Nell. “So soothing, so cooling to the throat.”

“Not for me, wench. Go along to Mrs. Marshall. Mayhap she’ll get one of her gentlemen friends to buy her a China orange.”

“I doubt she’ll get much more from him!” cried Mary Knepp.

And Mrs. Uphill and Mrs. Hughes went into peals of laughter at Mrs. Marshall’s expense.