Then one day Nell cried: “We can no longer stay here. If we do we shall die of melancholy if not of the plague.”

“Let us to Oxford,” said her mother. “Your father has relations there. Mayhap they would take us in till this scourge be gone.”

And so they made their way out of the stricken city. That night they slept in the shelter of a hedge; and Nell felt her spirits lifted in the sweet country air.

TWO

It was nearly two years later when Nell came back to London. Life was not easy in Oxford. She had gone back to selling fruit and fish when she could lay her hands on it. Rose worked with her, and the two girls from London, so sprightly and so pretty, were able to keep themselves and their mother alive during those two years.

News came from London—terrible news which set them all wondering whether they would ever return there. Travellers brought it to Oxford during the month of September, a year after Nell and her family had arrived there. Nell, eager for news of what was happening in Drury Lane and whether the players were back, heard instead of the disastrous fire which had broken out at a baker’s shop in Pudding Lane and quickly spread until half the city was ablaze. The wild rumors reaching Oxford were numerous. Many declared that this was the end of London, and that not a house was left standing; that the King and all his Court had been burned to death.

Nell for once was speechless. She stood still, thinking of Drury Lane and that squalid alley where she had spent most of her life, the old Cole-yard; she thought of Covent Garden, the Hop Garden and St. Martin’s Lane. She thought of the playhouse—that which she thought of as her own—and that rival house, both furiously burning.

“’Tis the judgment of God on a wicked city,” some people declared.

Rose cast down her eyes, but Nell was shrilly indignant. London had not been wicked, she cried; it was merry and full of pleasure, and she for one refused to believe that it was a sin to laugh and enjoy life.

But she was too wretched to retort with her wonted spirit.

Each day there came fresh rumors. They heard that the people had thrown the furniture from their houses and packed it into barges; that the flames had spanned the river; how the wooden houses on London Bridge had blazed; how the King and his brother the Duke had worked together to prevent the fire from spreading; that it had been necessary to use gunpowder and blow gaps in the rows of highly inflammable wooden houses.

And at length came good news.

It came from a gentleman riding through Oxford from London, a prelate who mourned the restoration of the King and looked yearningly back at the puritanism of the Protectorate.

Riding to Banbury, he stopped at Oxford and, seeing that he was a traveller who had doubtless come from London, Nell approached him, not to ask him to buy her herrings, but for news.

He looked at her with disapproval. No woman of virtue, he was sure, could look like this one. That luxuriant hair allowed to flow in riotous disorder, those hazel eyes adorned with the darkest of lashes and brows—such a contrast to the reddish tints in her hair—those plump cheeks and pretty teeth, those dimples and, above all, that pert nose, could not belong to a virtuous woman.

Nell dipped in a charming curtsy which would have become a lady of high rank and which Charles Hart had taught her.

“I see, fair sir, that you hie from London,” she addressed him. “I would fain have news of that town.”

“Ask me not for news of Babylon!” cried the good man.

“Nay, sir, I will not,” answered Nell. “’Tis of London I ask.”

“They are one and the same.”

Nell dropped her eyes demurely. “I hie from London, fair sir. Is it in your opinion a fit place for a poor woman to go home to?”

“I tell ye, ’tis Babylon itself. ’Tis full of whores and cutthroats.”

“More so than Oxford, sir … or Banbury?”

He looked at her suspiciously. “You mock me, woman,” he said. “You should go to London. Clearly ’tis where you belong. In that cesspool everywhere one looks one sees rubble in the streets—the evidence of God’s vengeance … and these people of London, what do they do? They make merry with their taverns and their playhouses….”

“You said playhouses!” cried Nell.

“God forgive them, I did.”

“And may He preserve you, sir, for such good news.”

A few days later she, with Rose and her mother, caught the stage wagon and, after a slow and tedious journey travelling two miles to the hour and sitting uncomfortably on the floor of the wagon as the wagoner led the horses over the rough roads, they were jolted to London.

Nell could scarcely help weeping when she saw the old city again. She had heard that old St. Paul’s, the Guildhall, and the Exchange, among many other well-known landmarks, had gone; she had heard that more than thirteen thousand dwelling houses and four hundred streets had been destroyed, and that two-thirds of the city lay in ruins—from the Tower, all along the river to the Temple Church, and from the northeast gate along the city wall to Holborn Bridge. Nevertheless she was not prepared for the sight which met her eyes.

But she was by nature an optimist and when she remembered her last sight of the city, with the grass growing between the cobbles, with its red crosses on the doors and its pest-carts in the streets, she cried: “Well, ’tis a better sight than we left.”

Moreover the King’s Servants were back at the playhouse.

Nell lost no time in presenting herself at the playhouse, miraculously preserved; and indeed Thomas Killigrew had, during the time it had not been used, enlarged his stage.

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:




“She is pretty and she knows it;


She is witty and she shows it;


And besides that she’s so witty,


And so little and so pretty,


Sh’ has a hundred other parts


For to take and conquer hearts …”

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




“But for that, suffice to tell ye,


’Tis the little pretty Nelly.”

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.