John Doran - Their Majesties' Servants. Annals of the English Stage (Volume 1 of 3)

Under the auspices of Charles Hart, Nelly made her first appearance at the (King's) theatre, in a serious part, Cydaria, in the "Indian Emperor." She was then not more than fifteen, though some say seventeen years of age. For tragedy she was unfitted: her stature was low, though her figure was graceful; and it was not till she assumed comic characters, stamped the smallest foot in England on the boards, and laughed with that peculiar laugh that, in the excess of it, her eyes almost disappeared, she fairly carried away the town, and enslaved the hearts of city and of court. She spoke prologues and epilogues with wonderful effect, danced to perfection, and in her peculiar but not extensive line was, perhaps, unequalled for the natural feeling which she put into the parts most suited to her. She was so fierce of repartee that no one ventured a second time to allude sneeringly to her antecedents. She was coarse, too, when the humour took her; could curse pretty strongly if the house was not full, and was given, in common with the other ladies of the company, to loll about and talk loudly in the public boxes, when she was not engaged on the stage. She left both stage and boxes for a time, in 1667, to keep mad house at Epsom with the clever Lord Buckhurst – a man who for one youthful vice exhibited a thousand manly virtues. The story, that Lord Buckhurst separated from Mistress Gwyn for a money consideration and a title, can be disproved by the testimony of a character which all Peru could not have influenced, and of chronology, which sets the story at nought.

They who would read Buckhurst's true character, will find it in the eloquent and graceful dedication which Prior made of his poems to Buckhurst's son, Lionel. Like the first Sackville, of the line of the Earls of Dorset, he was himself a poet; and, "To all you ladies now on land," although not quite the impromptu it is said to have been, is an evidence how gracefully he could strike the lyre on the eve of a great battle. In short, Buckhurst, who took Nelly from the stage, and who found Prior in a coffee-shop and added him to literature, was a "man," brave, truthful, gay, honest, and universally beloved. He was the people's favourite; and Pope assures us, when Buckhurst had become Earl of Dorset, that he was "the grace of courts, the muses' pride."

After a year's absence, 25 25 She was absent only about six weeks; Pepys chronicles her departure under July 13, 1667, and her return under August 22, 1667. Mistress Gwyn returned to the stage. In all nature, there was nothing better than she, in certain parts. Pepys never hoped to see anything like her in Florimel, with her changes of sex and costume. She was little, pretty, and witty; danced perfectly, and with such applause, that authors would fain have appropriated the approbation bestowed on her "jig," to the play in which it was introduced. A play, without Nell, was no play at all to Mr. Pepys. When, in 1667, she followed Buckhurst to Epsom, and flung up her parts and an honestly-earned salary for a poor £100 a-year, Pepys exclaims, "Poor girl! I pity her; but more the loss of her at the King's house." The Admiralty-clerk's admiration was confined to her merry characters; he speaks of her Emperor's Daughter, in the "Indian Emperor," as "a great and serious part, which she does most basely."

Her own party hailed her return; but she did not light upon a bed of roses. Lady Castlemaine was no longer her patroness – rather that and more of Nelly's old lover, Charles Hart, who flouted the ex-favourite of Buckhurst. That ex-favourite, however, bore with equal indifference the scorn of Charles Hart and the contempt of Charles Sackville; – she saw compensation for both, in the royal homage of Charles Stuart. Meanwhile, she continued to enchant the town in comedy, to "spoil" serious parts in Sir Robert Howard's mixed pieces, and yet to act with great success characters, in which natural emotion, bordering on insanity, was to be represented. Early in 1668, we find her among the loose companions of King Charles; "and I am sorry for it," says Pepys, "and can hope for no good to the state, from having a Prince so devoted to his pleasure." The writers for the stage were of a like opinion. Howard wrote his "Duke of Lerma," as a vehicle of reproof to the King, who sat, a careless auditor, less troubled than Pepys himself, who expected that the play would be interrupted by royal authority. The last of her original characters was that of Almahide, in Dryden's "Conquest of Granada," the prologue to which she spoke in a straw hat as broad as a cart wheel, and thereby almost killed the King with laughter. In this piece, her old lover, Hart, played Almanzor; and his position with respect to King Boabdelin (Kynaston) and Almahide (Nelly) corresponds with that in which he stood towards King Charles and the actress. The passages reminding the audience of this complex circumstance threw the house into "convulsions."

From this time, Ellen Gwyn disappears from the stage. A similar surname appears in the play-bills from 1670 to 1682; but there is no ground for believing that the "Madam Gwyn" of the later period was the Mrs. Ellen of the earlier, poorer, and merrier times. Nelly's first son, Charles Beauclerc, was born in her house, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, in May 1670; her second, in the following year, at her house in Pall Mall, the garden terrace of which overlooked the then green walk in the park, from which Evelyn saw, with shame, the King talking with the impudent "comedian." This younger son, James, died at Paris, 1680. The elder had Otway for a tutor. In his sixth year he was created Earl of Burford, and in his fourteenth was created a duke. His mother had addressed him, in the King's hearing, by an epithet referring to his illegitimacy, on the plea that she did not know by what title to call him. Charles made him an earl. Accident of death raised him to a dukedom. Harry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, of whom report made the second husband of Henrietta Maria, had just died. Blind as he had been, he had played cards to the last – some one sitting near him to tell him the points. At an age approaching to ninety years, he had passed away. Charles gave the name of St. Albans, with the title of duke, to Nell Gwyn's eldest son, adding thereto the registrarship of the High Court of Chancery, and the office (rendered hereditary) of Master Falconer of England. The present and tenth Duke of St. Albans is the lineal descendant of Charles Stuart and Ellen Gwyn.

The King had demurred to a request to settle £500 a year on this lady, and yet within four years she is known to have exacted from him above £60,000. Subsequently, £6000, annually, were tossed to her from the Excise, – that hardest taxation of the poor, – and £3000 more were added for the expenses of each son. She blazed publicly at Whitehall, with diamonds out-flashing those usually worn, as Evelyn has it, "by the like cattle." At Burford House, Windsor, her gorgeous country residence, she could gaily lose £1400 26 26 Peter Cunningham says, "1400 guineas, or £5000 at least of our present money." in one night at basset, and purchase diamond necklaces the next day, at fabulous prices. Negligent dresser as she was, she always looked fascinating; and fascinating as she was, she had a ready fierceness and a bitter sarcasm at hand, when other royal favourites, or sons of favourites, assailed or sneered at her. With the King and his brother she bandied jokes as freely as De Pompadour or Du Barry with Louis XV. By impulse, she could be charitable; but by neglecting the claims of her own creditors she could be cruel. Charles alluded to her extravagance when, on his deathbed, he recommended those shameless women, Cleveland and Portsmouth, to his brother's kindness, and hoped he would "not let Nelly starve." An apocryphal story attributes the founding of Chelsea Hospital to Nelly's tenderness for a poor old wounded soldier who had been cheated of his pay. The dedications to her of books by such people as Aphra Behn and Duffet are blasphemous in their expressions, making of her, as they do, a sort of divine essence, and becoming satirical by their exaggerated and disgusting eulogy. For such a person, the pure and pious Bishop Ken was once called upon to yield up an apartment in which he lodged, and the peerage had a narrow escape of having her foisted upon it as Countess of Greenwich. This clever actress died in November 1687 of a fit of apoplexy, by which she had been stricken in the previous March. She was then in her thirty-eighth year. She had been endowed like a princess, but she left debts, and died just in time to allow James to discharge them out of the public purse. Finally, she was carried to old St. Martin's-in-the-Fields to be buried, and Tennison preached her funeral sermon. When this was subsequently made the ground of exposing him to the reproof of Queen Mary, she remarked, that the good doctor, no doubt, had said nothing but what the facts authorised.