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makes mine water at it; the bottom of your cheeks a little blub, and two dimples when you smile. For your stature, 'tis well, and for your wit, 'twas given you by one that knew it had been thrown away upon an ill face. Come, you are handsome, there's no denying it." To trick Celadon and his mistresses Olinda and Sabina, Florimel presently assumes male dress, and mocks the airs and graces of the gallants of the time. "If clothes and a bonne mine will take 'em, I shall do't," she soliloquizes. "Save you, Monsieur Florimel! Faith, methinks you are a very jaunty fellow, poudré et ajusté as well as the best of them. 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?" The comedy is remarkable for containing but three male characters to eight female.

Pepys witnesses again and again the representation of "Secret Love," and never fails to register anew his delight at Nelly's efforts as Florimel, although upon one occasion he considers that Nelly's dancing has been excelled by the jig accomplished by Moll Davis in boy's clothes at the Duke's Theatre. On Mayday morning, 1667, he is gratified by observing the actress "in her smock sleeves and bodice," standing at the door of her lodgings in Drury Lane-a street of some consideration and fashion in those times; she is looking on while the milkmaids dance, according to custom, with garlands upon their pails, to the music of a fiddle. Two months later, and he is troubled to learn that my Lord Buckhurst "hath got Nell away from the King's house, and gives her £100 a year"; she has sent her parts to the house, and has resolved to act no more. She has left London, it seems, for Epsom, and is lodged there next door to the King's Head, keeping "merry house " there with his lordship and Sir Charles Sedley. "Poor girl, I pity her," writes Mr. Pepys; "but more the loss of her at the King's house." She was an actress, and what could be expected of an actress? In little more than a month, however, Nelly has returned to her theatrical duties, and resumed her original character of Cydaria in "The Indian Emperor." It is told of her that she is now very poor and neglected; that Lord Buckhurst has scornfully abandoned her, and that she has lost the favour of my Lady Castlemaine, who had been formerly a great friend to her. In October she was playing the heroine of "Flora's Vagaries," and appearing as Alizia in Lord Orrery's tragedy of "The Black Prince." Mr. Pepys was again taken behind the scenes by his friend Mrs. Knip, and even admitted to the women's tiring room, where he found Nelly all unready, dressing herself, and pronounced

her very pretty, prettier even than he had thought. He sits in the scene room, is regaled with fruit, and gives Knip her cues and hears her recite her part in "Flora's Vagaries." "But Lord," he writes, "to see how they were painted would make a man mad, and did make me loathe them!" He was shocked too at the licence of speech prevailing behind the curtain, at the base company of men, and how poor their clothes really were, and yet what a show they made on the stage by candlelight! "To see how Nelly cursed for having so few people in the pit was pretty," he observes. There was but a thin house: a new play at the Duke's Theatre had drawn away the audience of the King's. In December her "mad part" in James Howard's comedy, "The Mad Couple," was thought by Mr. Pepys to be "excellently done"; and he notes it as a miracle to him "to think how ill she do any serious part, as in the other day, just like a fool or a changeling, and in a mad part do beyond imitation almost." She had been attempting a serious character in the revived play of "The Surprisal," by Sir Robert Howard, "which she spoils," as it seemed to Pepys.

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Of Nell Gwynn's acting Pepys makes no further mention; although he observes upon her unseemly conduct as one of the audience in January 1669: "My wife and I to the King's playhouse, and there saw the Island Princess'-the first time I ever saw it, and it is a pretty good play, many good things being in it, and a good scene of a town on fire. We sat in an upper box, and the jade Nell came and sat in the next box-a bold merry slut, who lay laughing there upon people, and with a comrade of the Duke's house that came in to see the play." It is certain, however, that in 1668 she undertook the pathetic part of Bellaris in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Philaster," and represented Jacintha in Dryden's "Evening's Love, or the Mock Astrologer," an adaptation from the French. In 1669 she was the Valeria of Dryden's "Tyrannic Love," she was the Almahide of his "Conquest of Granada " in 1670. It was in January 1668 that Pepys learnt for the first time that the King had sent for Nell Gwynn-for Charles the Second sent for mistresses as other monarchs send for ministers. Mr. Pepys expresses his regret upon the occasion, and "can hope for no good to the State from having a prince so devoted to his pleasure." In the previous October Pepys had been told of the falling out of Nelly with her sister-actresses the Marshalls. It seems that Beck Marshall had taunted Nelly with being the mistress of my Lord Buckhurst. Nelly had retorted that, although she had served at Madame Ross's, she was "but one man's mistress," which was more

than Beck Marshall could say; for, "though a Presbyter's praying daughter," her character for morality and continence was reproachable enough. The Marshalls were understood to be the daughters of Stephen Marshall, the Presbyterian minister, of whom an account is furnished in Neal's "History of the Puritans." If Nelly spoke truth, her reputation may perhaps be spared any scandal as to her relations with her fellow-players Hart and Lacy. Upon the stage Hart was so often required to figure as her lover that a belief may have prevailed-not unusual in such circumstances-to the effect that he maintained the character both within and without the theatre. It is also difficult to credit the popular story that Mrs. Knight, celebrated as a singer and a favourite of the King's, had been sent by Charles with overtures to Nell Gwynn, but that Lord Buckhurst had refused to resign his mistress unless the large sums he had lavished upon her were repaid, and until he received the royal promise that the earldom of Middlesex should be conferred upon him. Apparently the actress had been abandoned by Lord Buckhurst some months before she obtained the favour of the King. His lordship was direct heir to the earldom of Dorset, and was not created Baron Cranfield and Earl of Middlesex until 1675, after the death in the previous year of his maternal uncle Lionel, the last of the Cranfields, Earls of Middlesex. Lord Buckhurst had inherited his uncle's estates, and the King might reasonably confer upon him his uncle's titles without any bargaining and sale of Nell Gwynn disgracing the transaction. The nobleman's youth had been profligate enough, yet, as Macaulay writes, "in the midst of follies and vices, his courageous spirit, his fine understanding, and his natural goodness of heart had been conspicuous." He is one of the "Noble Authors" of Horace Walpole, who says of him that "he was the finest gentleman of the voluptuous court of Charles the Second and in the gloomy one of King William. He had as much wit as his first master, or his contemporaries Buckingham and Rochester, without the royal want of feeling, the Duke's want of principles, or the Earl's want of thought. . . . He was not free from the failings of humanity, but he had the tenderness of it too, which made everybody excuse whom everybody loved." Burnet, in his "History of his Own Times," while applauding the generous and bountiful nature of Buckhurst, lays stress upon his indolence and phlegm: "He was so lazy that, though the King seemed to court him to be a favourite, he would not give himself the trouble that belonged to that post. He hated the court and despised the King when he saw he was neither generous nor tender-hearted." This was

hardly the man to sell his mistress, or to exact terms for his surrender of her-even to a king.

In the Memoirs of the Count de Grammont a description occurs of the visit of Queen Catherine to Tunbridge Wells-" the place of all Europe the most rural and simple, and yet at the same time the most entertaining and agreeable." The Queen, "confining in the bottom of her heart that grief and uneasiness she could not overcome," had perceived that Miss Frances Theresa Stewart, the grand-daughter of the first Lord Blantyre, "triumphantly possessed the affections of the King." Either that there might be no intermission in the diversions of the place, or "to retort upon Miss Stewart by the presence of Nell Gwynn part of the uneasiness she felt from hers," the Queen had sent for the players from London to perform at Tunbridge. It was said, indeed, that Miss Stewart would have been queen of England "had the King been as free to give his hand as he was to surrender his heart." To conciliate her, or to try whether jealousy was not the real occasion of her coyness, he even attempted certain reforms: "the Nell Gwynns, the Miss Davises, and the joyous train of singers and dancers in his Majesty's theatre were all dismissed." These sacrifices availed not, however : "for it was at this time that the Duke of Richmond took it into his head either to marry her or die in the attempt." The marriage was solemnised in March 1667. The King was deeply incensed; he consoled himself apparently by recalling his actresses and the joyous train of singers and dancers. De Grammont gives few dates; but Pepys notes, on July 22, 1666, "the Queen and maids of honour are at Tunbridge." On the 31st he records, "the Court empty, the King being gone to Tunbridge and the Duke of York a-hunting."

In his "History of the Stage," Curll says that Nell Gwynn first captivated the king by her manner of delivering the epilogue to Dryden's "Tyrannic Love, or the Royal Martyr ;" which was not produced, however, until the spring of 1668. The tragedy was founded upon the story of the martyrdom of St. Catherine, a saint much in vogue just then, by way of compliment to Catherine of Braganza. Even Mrs. Pepys had been portrayed by Mr. Hailes in the character of the saint, with the historic wheel upon which she suffered exhibited in the background. Nell Gwynn personated Valeria, the daughter of Maximin, tyrant of Rome. In the last act, before her dagger can be wrested from her, Valeria twice stabs herself. She has been compelled to give her hand to Placidius, but she loves Porphyrius, Dying, she appeals to him :

:

Have I not yet deserved thee, now I die?
Is Berenice still more fair than I?
Porphyrius, do not swim before my sight;
Stand still, and let me, let me aim aright.
Stand still but while thy poor Valeria dies,
And sighs her soul into her lover's eyes.

Before the curtain falls, however, the epilogue is

directed to be "spoken by Mrs. Ellen, when she was to be carried off dead by the She rudely bids them hold while she addresses the

bearers." audience :--

I come, kind gentlemen, strange news to tell ye :
I am the ghost of poor departed Nelly.
Sweet ladies, be not frightened.

I'll be civil;
I'm what I was, a little harmless devil. ..
To tell you true, I walk because I die
Out of my calling in a tragedy.

O Poet, damned dull poet, who could prove

So senseless! to make Nelly die for love;
Nay, what's yet worse, to kill me in the prime
Of Easter Term, in tart and cheese-cake time. .
As for my epitaph, when I am gone

I'll trust no poet, but will write my own.

"Here Nelly lies, who, though she lived a slattern,
Yet died a princess, acting in St. Cath'rin !"

A dramatist can seldom have taken more pains to ridicule the catastrophe of his own tragedy. Upon a previous occasion, in the epilogue to Sir Robert Howard's "Great Favourite, or the Duke of Lerma," the actress had informed the audience of her dislike of tragic characters :

I know you in your hearts

Hate serious plays, as I do serious parts.

That she "lived a slattern," as Dryden's epilogue states, seems to be generally admitted. Even after she had quitted the stage "she continued to hang on her clothes with her usual negligence," writes one of her biographers, while he adds, "but whatever she did became her."

It has been said of Dryden that he "highly favoured" Nell Gwynn; that he gave her "showy and fantastic parts" in his comedies, and "played her at the King" with a view, presumably, to his own advancement at court. But the success of the actress in his "Florimel" may reasonably have induced the poet to secure her services for other of his numerous productions; and, after all, she seems to have appeared in four only of his plays, two of them being tragedies, and her efforts in serious parts were, probably, no

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