The Story of Nell Gwyn/Chapter 1
THE
STORY OF NELL GWYN.
CHAPTER I.
Introduction—Birth and birth-place—Horoscope of her nativity—Condition in life of her father—Her account of her early days—Becomes an orange-girl at the theatre—Effects of the Restoration—Revival of the stage—Two theatres allowed—Scenery and dresses—Principal actors and actresses—Duties and importance of the orange-girls.
Dr. Thomas Tenison, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, preached the funeral sermon of Nell Gwyn. What so good a man did not think an unfit subject for a sermon, will not be thought, I trust, an unfit subject for a book; for the life that was spent remissly may yet convey a moral, like that of Jane Shore, which the wise and virtuous Sir Thomas More has told so touchingly in his History of King Richard III.
The English people have always entertained a peculiar liking for Nell Gwyn. There is a sort of indulgence towards her not generally conceded to any other woman of her class. Thousands are attracted by her name, they know not why, and do not stay to inquire. It is the popular impression that, with all her failings, she had a generous as well as a tender heart; that when raised from poverty, she reserved her wealth for others rather than herself; and that the influence she possessed was often exercised for good objects, and never abused. Contrasted with others in a far superior rank in life, and tried by fewer temptations, there is much that marks and removes her from the common herd. The many have no sympathy, nor should they have any, for Barbara Palmer, Louise de Querouelle, or Erengard de Schulenberg; but for Nell Gwyn, "pretty witty Nell," there is a tolerant and kindly regard, which the following pages are designed to illustrate rather than extend.
The Coal Yard in Drury Lane, a low alley, the last on the east or city side of the lane, and still known by that name, was, it is said, the place of Nell Gwyn's birth. They show, however, in Pipe Lane, in the parish of St. John, in the city of Hereford, a small house of brick and timber, now little better than a hovel, in which, according to local tradition, she was born. That the Coal Yard was the place of her birth was stated in print as early as 1721; and this was copied by Oldys, a curious inquirer into literary and dramatic matters, in the account of her life which he wrote for Curll.[1] The Hereford story too is of some standing; but there is little else I am afraid to support it. The capital of the cider country, however, does not want even Nell Gwyn to add to its theatrical reputation; in the same cathedral city which claims to be the birth-place of the best known English actress, was born, seventy years later, David Garrick, the greatest and best known actor we have yet had.[2]
The horoscope of the nativity of Eleanor Gwyn, the work perhaps of Lilly, is still to be seen among Ashmole's papers in the Museum at Oxford. She was born, it states, on the 2nd of February, 1650. The horoscope, of which I have had a fac-simile made, shows what stars were supposed to be in the ascendant at the time; and such of my readers as do not disdain a study which
Of the early history of Nell, and of the rank in life of her parents, very little is known with certainty. Her father, it is said, was Captain Thomas Gwyn, of an ancient family in Wales.[3] The name certainly is of Welch extraction, and the descent may be admitted without adopting the captaincy; for by other hitherto received accounts her father was a fruiterer in Covent Garden. She speaks in her will of her "kinsman Cholmley," and the satires of the time have pilloried a cousin, raised by her influence to an ensigncy from the menial office of one of the black guard employed in carrying coals at Court. Her mother, who lived to see her daughter a favourite of the King, and the mother by him of at least two children, was accidentally drowned in a pond near the Neat Houses at Chelsea. Her Christian name was Eleanor, but her maiden name is unknown.
Whatever the station in life to which her pedigree might have entitled her, her bringing up, by her own account, was humble enough. "Mrs. Pierce tells me," says Pepys, "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 latter called the other my Lord Buckhurst's mistress. Nell answered her, 'I was but one man's mistress, though I was brought up in a brothel to fill strong water[4] to the gentlemen; and you are a mistress to three or four, though a Presbyter's praying daughter.'" This, for a girl of any virtue or beauty, was indeed a bad bringing-up.
The Coal Yard, infamous in later years as one of the residences of Jonathan Wild, was the next turning in the same street to the still more notorious and fashionably inhabited Lewknor Lane, where young creatures were inveigled to infamy, and sent dressed as orange-girls to sell fruit and attract attention in the adjoining theatres.
That this was Nelly's next calling we have the testimony of the Duchess of Portsmouth and the authority of a poem of the time, attributed to Lord Rochester:
But first the basket her fair arm did suit,
Laden with pippins and Hesperian fruit;
This first step raised, to the wondering pit she sold
The lovely fruit smiling with streaks of gold.
Nell was now an orange-girl, holding her basket of fruit covered with vine-leaves in the pit of the King's Theatre, and taking her stand with her fellow fruit-women in the front-row of the pit, with her back to the stage.[5] The cry of the fruit-women, which Shadwell has preserved, "Oranges! will you have any oranges?"[6] must have come clear and invitingly from the lips of Nell Gwyn.
She was ten years of age at the restoration of King Charles II., in 1660. She was old enough, therefore, to have noticed the extraordinary change which the return of royalty effected in the manners, customs, feelings, and even conversation of the bulk of the people. The strict observance of the Sabbath was no longer rigidly enforced. Sir Charles Sedley and the Duke of Buckingham rode in their coaches on a Sunday, and the barber and the shoe-black shaved beards and cleaned boots on the same day, without the overseers of the poor of the parish inflicting fines on them for such (as they were then thought) unseemly breaches of the Sabbath. Maypoles were once more erected on spots endeared by old associations, and the people again danced their old dances around them. The Cavalier restored the royal insignia on his fire-place to its old position; the King's Head, the Duke's Head, and the Crown were once more favourite signs by which taverns were distinguished; drinking of healths and deep potations, with all their Low-Country honours and observances, were again in vogue. Oughtred, the mathematician, died of joy, and Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, of laughter, at hearing of the enthusiasm of the English to "welcome home old Rowley."[7] The King's health—
Here's a health unto his Majesty, with a fa, la, la,[8]
was made a pretext for the worst excesses, and irreligion and indecency were thought to secure conversation against a suspicion of disloyalty and fanaticism. Even the common people took to gay-coloured dresses as before; and a freedom of spirits, rendered familiar by early recollection, and only half subdued by Presbyterian persecution, was confirmed by a licence of tongue which the young men about court had acquired while in exile with their sovereign.
Not the least striking effect of the restoration of the King was the revival of the English theatres. They had been closed and the players silenced for three-and-twenty years, and in that space a new generation had arisen, to whom the entertainments of the stage were known but by name. The theatres were now re-opened, and with every advantage which stage properties, new and improved scenery, and the costliest dresses, could lend to help them forward. But there were other advantages equally new, and of still greater importance, but for which the name of Eleanor Gwyn would in all likelihood never have reached us.
From the earliest epoch of the stage in England till the theatres were silenced at the outbreak of the Civil War, female characters had invariably been played by men, and during the same brilliant period of our dramatic history there is but one instance of a sovereign witnessing a performance at a public theatre. Henrietta Maria, though so great a favourer of theatrical exhibitions, was present once, and once only, at the theatre in the Blackfriars. The plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson,
Which so did take Eliza and our James,
were invariably seen by those sovereigns, as afterwards by Charles I., in the halls, banqueting houses, and cockpits attached to their palaces. With the Restoration came women on the stage, and the King and Queen, the Dukes of York and Buckingham, the chief courtiers, and the maids of honour, were among the constant frequenters of the public theatres.
Great interest was used at the Restoration for the erection of new theatres in London, but the King, acting it is thought on the advice of Clarendon, who wished to stem at all points the flood of idle gaiety and dissipation, would not allow of more than two—the King's Theatre, under the control of Thomas Killigrew, and the Duke's Theatre (so called in compliment to his brother, the Duke of York), under the direction of Sir William Davenant. Better men for the purpose could not have been chosen. Killigrew was one of the grooms of the bed-chamber to the King, a well-known wit at court and a dramatist himself; and Davenant, who filled the office of Poet Laureate in the household of the King, as he had done before to his father, King Charles I., had been a successful writer for the stage, while Ben Jonson and Massinger were still alive. The royal brothers patronised both houses with equal earnestness, and the patentees vied with each other in catering successfully for the public amusement.
The King's Theatre, or "The Theatre," as it was commonly called, stood in Drury Lane, on the site of the present building, and was the first theatre, as the present is the fourth, erected on the site. It was small, with few pretensions to architectural beauty, and was first opened on the 8th of April, 1663, when Nell was a girl of thirteen. The chief entrance was in Little Russell Street, not as now in Brydges Street. The stage was lighted with wax candles, on brass censers or cressets. The pit lay open to the weather for the sake of light, but was subsequently covered in with a glazed cupola, which however only imperfectly protected the audience, so that in stormy weather the house was thrown into disorder, and the people in the pit were fain to rise.
The Duke's Theatre, commonly called "The Opera," from the nature of its performances, stood at the back of what is now the Royal College of Surgeons in Portugal Row, on the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was originally a tennis-court, and, like its rival, was run up hurriedly to meet the wants of the age. The interior arrangements and accommodation were much the same as at Killigrew's house.
The company at the King's Theatre included, among the actors, at the first opening of the house, Theophilus Bird, Charles Hart, Michael Mohun, John Lacy, Nicholas Burt, William Cartwright, William Wintershall, Walter Clun, Robert Shatterell, and Edward Kynaston; and Mrs. Corey, Mrs. Ann Marshall, Mrs. Rebecca Marshall, Mrs. Eastland, Mrs. Weaver, Mrs. Uphill, Mrs. Knep, and Mrs. Hughes, were among the female performers. Joe Haines, the low comedian, and Cardell Goodman, the lover of the Duchess of Cleveland, were subsequent accessions to the troop; and so also were Mrs. Boutell and "Mrs. Ellen Gwyn."
Bird belonged to the former race of actors, and did not long survive the Restoration. Hart and Clun had been bred up as boys at the Blackfriars to act women's parts. Hart, who had served as a captain in the King's army, rose to the summit of his profession, but Clun was unfortunately killed while his reputation was still on the increase. Mohun had played at the Cockpit before the Civil Wars, and had served as a captain under the King, and afterwards in the same capacity in Flanders, where he received the pay of a major; he was famous in Iago and Cassius. Lacy, a native of Yorkshire, was the Irish Johnstone and Tyrone Power of his time. Burt, who had been a boy first under Shank at the Blackfriars, and then under Beeston at the Cockpit, was famous before the Civil Wars for the part of Clariana in Shirley's play of Love's Cruelty, and after the Restoration equally famous as Othello. Cartwright and Wintershall had belonged to the private house in Salisbury Court. Cartwright won great renown in Falstaff, and as one of the two kings of Brentford in the farce of The Rehearsal. Wintershall played Master Slender, for which Dennis the critic commends him highly, and was celebrated for his Cokes in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair. Shatterell had been quarter-master in Sir Robert Dallison's regiment of horse,—the same in which Hart had been a lieutenant and Burt a cornet. Kynaston acquired especial favour in female parts, for which, indeed, he continued celebrated long after the introduction of women on the stage. Such were the actors at the King's House when Nell Gwyn joined the company.
Mrs. Corey (the name Miss had then an improper meaning, and the women though single were called Mistresses)[9] played Abigail, in the Scornful Lady of Beaumont and Fletcher; Sempronia, in Jonson's Catiline; and was the original Widow Blackacre in Wycherley's Plain Dealer;—Pepys calls her Doll Common. The two Marshalls, Ann and Rebecca (to whom I have already had occasion to refer), were the younger daughters of the well-known Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian divine, who preached the sermon at the funeral of John Pym. Mrs. Uphill was first the mistress and then the wife of Sir Robert Howard, the poet. Mrs. Knep was the wife of a Smithfield horsedealer, and the mistress of Pepys. Mrs. Hughes, better known as Peg, was the mistress of Prince Rupert, by whom she had a daughter; and Mrs. Boutell was famous for playing Statira to Mrs. Barry's Roxana, in Lee's impressive tragedy of Alexander the Great. Such were the actresses when Nell came among them.
Among the actors at the Duke's were Thomas Betterton, the rival of Burbage and Garrick in the well-earned greatness of his reputation, and the last survivor of the old school of actors; Joseph Harris, the friend of Pepys, originally a seal-cutter, and famous for acting Romeo, Wolsey, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek; William Smith, a barrister of Gray's Inn, celebrated as Zanga in Lord Orrery's Mustapha; Samuel Sandford, called by King Charles II. the best representative of a villain in the world, and praised both by Langbaine and Steele for his excellence in his art; James Nokes, originally a toyman in Cornhill, famous for playing Sir Nicholas Cully in Etherege's Love in a Tub, for his bawling fops, and for his "good company;" Cave Underhill, clever as Cutter in Cowley's comedy, and as the grave-digger in Hamlet, called by Steele "honest Cave Underhill;" and Matthew Medbourne, a useful actor in parts not requiring any great excellence. The women were, Elizabeth Davenport, the first Roxolana in the Siege of Rhodes, snatched from the stage to become the mistress of the twentieth and last Earl of Oxford of the noble family of Vere; Mary Saunderson, famous as Queen Katharine and Juliet, afterwards the wife of the great Betterton; Mary or Moll Davis, excellent in singing and dancing,—afterwards the mistress of Charles II.; Mrs. Long, the mistress of the Duke of Richmond,[10] celebrated for the elegance of her appearance in men's clothes; Mrs. Norris, the mother of Jubilee Dicky; Mrs. Holden, daughter of a bookseller to whom Betterton had been bound apprentice; and Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Johnson, both taken from the stage by gallants of the town,—the former but little known as an actress, the latter celebrated as a dancer and for her Carolina in Shadwell's comedy of Epsom Wells.
Such were the performers at the Duke's house. Anthony Leigh and Mrs. Barry, both brought out at the same theatre, were accessions after Davenant's death, and, as I see reason to believe, after Nell Gwyn had ceased to be connected with the stage.
The dresses at both houses were magnificent and costly, but little or no attention was paid to costume. The King, the Queen, the Duke, and several of the richer nobility, gave their coronation suits to the actors, and on extraordinary occasions a play was equipped at the expense of the King. Old court dresses were contributed by the gentry, and birthday suits continued to be presented as late as the reign of George II. The scenery at the Duke's House was superior to the King's, for Davenant, who introduced the opera among us, introduced us at the same time to local and expensive scenery. Battles were no longer represented
With four or five most vile and ragged foils,
or coronations by a crown taken from a deal table by a single attendant.
The old stock plays were divided by the two companies. Killigrew had Othello, Julius Cæsar, Henry the Fourth, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night's Dream; four of Ben Jonson's plays—The Alchemist, The Fox, The Silent Woman, and Catiline; and the best of Beaumont and Fletcher's—A King and No King, The Humorous Lieutenant, Rule a Wife and have a Wife, The Maid's Tragedy, Rollo, The Elder Brother, Philaster, and The Scornful Lady; with Massinger's Virgin Martyr and Shirley's Traitor. Davenant played Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Henry the Eighth, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest; Webster's Duchess of Malfi and Mad Lover; Middleton's Young Changeling; Fletcher's Loyal Subject and Mad Lover; and Massinger's Bondman.
The new plays at the King's House were contributed by Sir Robert Howard, Sir Charles Sedley, Major Porter, Killigrew himself, Dryden, and Nat Lee: at the Duke's House by Davenant, Cowley, Etherege, Lord Orrery, and others. The new tragedies were principally in rhyme. At the first performance of a new comedy ladies seldom attended, or, if at all, in masks—such was the studied indecency of the art of that period.
The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame,
Nor wished for Jonson's art or Shakspeare's flame;
Themselves they studied—as they felt they writ—
Intrigue was plot, obscenity was wit.
The performances commenced at three.[11] It was usual, therefore, to dine beforehand, and when the play was over to adjourn to the Mulberry Garden, to Vauxhall, or some other place of public entertainment—
Thither run,
Some to undo, and some to be undone.
The prices of admission were, boxes four shillings, pit two-and-sixpence, middle gallery eighteen-pence, upper gallery one shilling. The ladies in the pit wore vizards or masks. The middle gallery was long the favourite resort of Mr. and Mrs Pepys.
The upper gallery, as at present, was attended by the poorest and the noisiest. Servants in livery were admitted as soon as the fifth act commenced.
With the orange-girls (who stood as we have seen in the pit, with their back to the stage) the beaux about town were accustomed to break their jests;[12] and that the language employed was not of the most delicate description, we may gather from the dialogue of Dorimant, in Etherege's comedy of Sir Fopling Flutter.
The mistress or superior of the girls was familiarly known as Orange Moll, and filled the same sort of office in the theatre that the mother of the maids occupied at court among the maids of honour. Both Sir William Penn and Pepys would occasionally have "a great deal of discourse" with Orange Moll; and Mrs. Knep, the actress, when in want of Pepys, sent Moll to the Clerk of the Acts with the welcome message. To higgle about the price of the fruit was thought beneath the character of a gentleman. "The next step," says the Young Gallant's Academy, "is to give a turn to the China orange wench, and give her her own rate for her oranges, (for 'tis below a gentleman to stand haggling like a citizen's wife,) and then to present the fairest to the next vizard mask."[13] Pepys, when challenged in the pit for the price of twelve oranges which the orange-woman said he owed her, but which he says was wholly untrue, was not content with denying the debt, "but for quiet bought four shillings' worth of oranges from her at sixpence a-piece."[14] This was a high price, but the Clerk of the Acts was true to the direction in the Gallant's Academy.
References
[edit]- ↑ Curll's History of the English Stage, 8vo. 1741, p. 111.
- ↑ "When I went first to Oxford, Dr. John Ireland, an antiquary, assured me that Nelly was born in Oxford. He named the parish, but I have forgot it. It is certain that two of her son's titles—Headington and Burford—were taken from Oxfordshire localities."—MS. note by the late Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, the antiquary and genealogist. Oddly enough, one of Nelly's grandsons died Bishop of Hereford.
- ↑ MS. note by Van Bossen, made in 1688, and quoted at length in a subsequent page.
- ↑ Among Mr. Akerman's "Tradesmen's Tokens current in London, 1648 to 1672," is that of "a strong water man."
- ↑ T. Shadwell's Works, iii. 173.
- ↑ Davies's Dramatic Miscellanies, iii. 464.
- ↑ "Welcome home, old Rowley," is the name of the well-known Scottish tune called "Had away frae me, Donald." See Johnson's Scott's Musical Museum, iv. 318.
- ↑ One of the seven "Choice New English Ayres" in Songs and Fancies in three, four, five parts, both apt for the Voices and Viols, with a brief Introduction to Musick, as taught in the Musick-School of Aberdeen, third Edition, enlarged, Aberdeen by Jo. Forbes, 1682, is—
"Here's a health unto his Majesty, with a fa, la, la.
Conversion 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," &c.The music appears to have been the composition of "Mr. John Savile." Shadwell refers to the song, Works, ii.268; iii. 52.
- ↑ The first unmamed actress who had Miss before her name on a playbill was Miss Cross, the original Miss Hoyden in Vanbrugh's Relapse.
- ↑ MS. note by Isaac Reed, in his copy of Downes's Roscius Anglicanus.
- ↑ Plays began at one in Shakspeare's time, at three in Dryden's, at four in Congreve's. In 1696 the hour was four.
- ↑ Prologue to Lord Rochester's Valentinian. T. Shadwell's Works, i. 199.
- ↑ The Young Gallant's Academy, or Directions how he should behave in all places and company. By Sam. Overcome, 1674.
- ↑ Half-Crown my Play, Sixpence my Orange cost.
Prologue to Mrs. Behn's Young King, 1698.
When trading grows scant, they join all their forces together, and make up one grand show, and admit the cut-purse and ballad-singer to trade under them, as orange-women do at a Playhouse.Nor furiously laid Orange-Wench a-board
For asking what in fruit and love you'd scor'd.
Butler, a Panegyric on Sir John Denham.Mr. Vain.—I can't imagine how I first came to be of this humour, unless 'twere hearing the orange-wenches talk of ladies and their gallants. So I began to think I had no way of being in the fashion, but bragging of mistresses.Butler, Character of a Jugler.
Mrs. Crafty.—This life of mine can last no longer than my beauty, and though 'tis pleasant now, I want nothing whilst I am Mr. Welbred's mistress,—yet, if his mind should change, I might e'en sell oranges for my living, and he not buy one of me to relieve me. Ibid. p. 10.Hon. James Howard, the English Monsieur, p. 4, 4to, 1674.
She outdoes a playhouse orange-woman for the politick management of a bawdy intrigue.In former times, a play of humour, or with a good plot, could certainly please; but now a poet must find out a third way, and adapt his scenes and story to the genius of the critic, if he'd have it pass; he'll have nothing to do with your dull Spanish plot, for whilst he's rallying with the orange-wench, the business of the act gets quite out of his head, and then 'tis "Damme, what stuff's this?" he sees neither head nor tail to't.Tunbridge Wells, a Comedy, 4to, 1678.
D'Urfey, Preface to the Banditti, 4to, 1686
The noble peer may to the play repair,
Court the pert damsel with her China-ware—
Nay marry her—if he please—no one will care.
D'Urfey, Prologue to a Fool's Preferment, 4to, 1688.The orange-miss that here cajoles the Duke
May sell her rotten ware without rebuke.
D'Urfey, Prologue to Don Quixote, Part I., 4to, 1694.