The Loves of Charles II (111 page)

London was glad to see Nell back. She had changed in her two years’ absence. She was no longer a child. At seventeen she was a poised young woman; her charms had by no means diminished; she was as slender and as dainty as ever; her tongue was as quick; but all who saw her declared that her beauty was more striking than ever.

She scored an immediate success as Lady Wealthy in James Howard’s
The English Monsieur
, and later she played Celia in Fletcher’s
Humorous Lieutenant.

There was still great anxiety throughout the country; the plague and
the fire had crippled trade, and the Dutch were threatening. In her lodgings in Drury Lane which she had taken again Nell thought little of these things. She gave supper parties and entertained her friends with her singing and dancing. These friends talked of the scandals of the Court, of the theater, and the roles they had played; it never occurred to them to give a thought to state affairs or to imagine that such matters could concern them.

To these parties came men and women of the Court; even the great Duke of Buckingham came. He was something of a mimic, and he declared he wished to pit his skill against Mrs. Nelly’s. With him came Lady Castlemaine, who was graciously pleased to commend the little comedienne on her playing. She asked questions about Charles Hart, her great blue eyes rapaciously aglitter. Charles Hart was a very handsome man, and Nell had heard of the lady’s insatiable hunger for handsome men.

One of the lampoons which was being quoted throughout the city concerned the King’s chief mistress. It was:

“Full forty men a day provided for the whore
Yet like a bitch she wags her tail for more.”

This was said to have been composed by the Earl of Rochester—who was Lady Castlemaine’s own cousin and one of the wildest rakes at Court. He had recently been imprisoned for abducting an heiress; he was so daring that he cared not what he said even to the King; yet he remained in favor.

Henry Killigrew was there; he had been her friend since the days when she had begged him to help her obtain a pardon for Rose. Now she knew that he had been Lady Castlemaine’s lover as well as Rose’s and was the greatest liar in England. There was Sir George Etherege, lazy and good humored, known to them all as “Gentle George.” Another who came to her rooms was John Dryden, a fresh-complexioned little poet who had written several plays and promised to write another especially for Nell.

This he did and, very soon after her return to London, Nell was playing in
Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen
, and the part of Florimel, which had been specially written for her, was the greatest success of her career.

All the town was going to see Mrs. Nelly as Florimel, for in Florimel Dryden had created a madcap creature, witty, pretty, full of mischief, expert in mimicry; in other words Florimel was Nell, and Florimel enchanted all London.

She could now forget the terrible time of plague; she could forget poverty in Oxford, just as in the beginning she had forgotten the bawdy-house in Cole-yard and her life as orange-girl in the pit. Nell knew how to live gloriously in the joyous moment, and to remember from the past only that which made pleasant remembering.

She had lost Charles Hart. He had never forgiven her for choosing her family instead of him. Nell shrugged elegant shoulders. She had loved him when she had known little of love; her love had been trusting, experimental. She was grateful to Mr. Charles Hart, and she did not grudge him the pleasure he was said to be taking with my lady Castlemaine.

What she enjoyed now was swaggering across the stage, wearing an enormous periwig which made her seem smaller than ever—a grotesque yet enchanting figure, full of vitality, full of love of life, full of gamin charm which set the pit bouncing in its seats, and every little vizard mask trying to ape Nell Gwyn.

And at the end of the play she danced her jig.

“You must dance a jig,” Lacy had said. “Moll Davies is drawing them at the Duke’s with her dancing. By God, Nelly, she’s a pretty creature, Moll Davies; but you’re prettier.”

Nell turned away from his flattering glances; she did not want to seem ungrateful to one who had done so much for her, but she wanted no more lovers at this time.

She wanted no man unless she loved him, and there was so much else in life to love apart from men. She might have reminded him that Thomas Killigrew paid a woman twenty shillings a week to remain at the theater and keep his actors happy in their amorous moments. But being grateful to Lacy, she turned away as she had learned to turn away from so many who sought her.

And there were many seeking her. She was the most discussed actress of the day. There might have been better actresses on the stage but none was possessed of Nell’s charm; though some admitted that that mighty pretty creature, Moll Davies, at the Duke’s Theater, was the better dancer.

In the town they were quoting Flecknoe’s verses to a very pretty person:

The gallants quoted it to her; in the pit they chanted it. And they roared the last two lines:

And, although the times were bad and it was hard to fill a theater, those who could tear themselves from state matters came to see Nell Gwyn play Florimel and dance her jig.

The King was melancholy. Frances Stuart, whom he had been pursuing for so long, had run away with the Duke of Richmond; and matters of greater moment gave him cause for anxiety. His kingdom, well-nigh ruined by the disastrous events of the last two years, was facing a serious threat from the Dutch. He had no money to refit his ships, so he negotiated for a secret peace; the French were joining the Dutch against him; but the Dutch, who had suffered no such hardships, had no wish for peace.

The King rarely came to the play; he did not even come for John Howard’s new piece
All Mistaken or The Mad Couple
, in which Nelly had a comic part.

As Mirida she had two suitors—one fat, one thin—and she promised to marry the one if he could grow fatter, the other if he could lose his bulk. This gave her many opportunities for the sort of buffoonery in which she reveled. Lacy, stuffed with cushions, was the fat lover, and Nell and he had the audience hysterical with laughter. An additional attraction was Nell’s parody of Moll Davies in her role in
The Rivals
at The Duke’s; and with her fat lover she rolled about on the stage, displaying so much of her person that the gentlemen in the pit stood on their seats to see the better, so displeasing those behind them that this gave rise to much dissension.

There was one in his box who watched the scene with an avid interest. This was Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, a wit and poet, and he was filled with a great desire to make Nell his mistress.

Consequently after the play the first person to reach the tiring room to beg Mrs. Nelly to dine with him was Charles Sackville.

They dined at the Rose Tavern in Russell Street, and the innkeeper, recognizing his patrons, was filled with the desire to please them.

Nell had refused to ask the gentleman to her lodgings, as she had refused to go to his. She knew him for a rake and, although he was an extremely handsome one as well as a wit, she had no intention of giving way to his desires. Some of these Court gentlemen stopped at little. My lord Rochester and some of his boon companions, it was said, were beginning to consider seduction tame and were developing a taste for rape. She was not going to make matters easy for this noble lord.

He leaned his elbows on the table and bade her drink more wine.

“There’s not an actress in the town to touch you, Nelly,” he said.

“Nor shall any touch me—actress or noble lord—unless I wish it.”

“You are prickly, Nell! Wherefore?”

“I’m like a hedgehog, my lord. I know when to be on my guard.”

“Let us not talk of guards.”

“Then what should we talk of, the Dutch war?”

“I can think of happier subjects.”

“Such as what, my lord?”

“You … myself … alone somewhere together.”

“Would that be so happy? You would be demanding, I should be refusing. If you need my refusal to make you happier, sir, you can have it here and now.”

“Nelly, you’re a mad thing, but a little beauty like you should have better lodgings than those in Old Drury!”

“Is it a gentleman’s custom to sneer at the lodgings of his friends?”

“If he is prepared to provide a better.”

sang Nell, parodying the song in
The Rivals.

“I pray thee, Nell, be serious. I offer you a beautiful apartment, a hundred pounds a year … all the jewels and good company you could wish for.”

“I do not wish for jewels,” she said, “and I doubt you could provide me with better company than that which I now enjoy.”

“An actress’s life! How long does that go on?”

“A little longer than that of a kept woman of a noble lord, I imagine.”

“I would love you forever.”

“Forever, forsooth! For ever is until you decide to pay court to Moll Davies or Beck Marshall.”

“Do you imagine that I shall lightly abandon this….”

“Nay, I do not. It is after seduction that such as you, my lord, concern themselves with the abandonment of a poor female.”

“Nell, your tongue’s too sharp for such a little person.”

“My lord, we all have our weapons. Some have jewels and a hundred a year with which to tempt the needy; others have a love of straight speaking with which to parry such thrusts.”

“One of these days,” said Charles Sackville, “you will come to me, Nell.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows, my lord? Who knows? Now,
if you would prove to me that you are a good host, let me enjoy my food, I beg of you. And let me hear a piece of that wit for which I hear you are famous. For the man from whom I would accept jewels and an apartment and a hundred a year must needs be a witty man, a man who knows how to play the perfect host, and that—so my brief spell in high society tells me—is to talk, not of the host’s own inclinations, but of those of his guest.”

“I am reproved,” said Sackville.

He was exasperated, as he and his friends always were by the refusal of those they wished to fall immediate victims to their desires, but after that meal he was even more determined to make Nell his mistress.