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.”




“My lodging is on cold boards,


And wonderful hard is my fare.


But that which troubles me most


Is the impertinence of my host …”

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.

The King was furious with his players. It was unlike the King to lose his temper; he was, it was said by many, the sweetest tempered man at Court. But there was a great deal to make him melancholy at this time.

A terrible disaster had overtaken the country. The Dutch fleet had sailed up the Medway as far as Chatham. They had taken temporary possession of Sheerness; they had burned the Great James, the Royal Oak, and the Loyal London (that ship which London had so recently had built to ennoble the Navy). They had sent up in smoke a magazine of stores worth £40,000 and, afraid lest they should reach London Bridge and inflict further damage, the English had sunk four ships at Blackwall and thirteen at Woolwich.

The sight of the triumphant and arrogant Dutchmen sailing up the Medway, towing the Royal Charles, was, many sober Englishmen declared, the greatest humiliation the English had ever suffered.

So the King, who loved his ships and had done more than any to promote the power of his Navy, was melancholy indeed; this melancholy was aggravated by those who went about the country declaring that this was God’s vengeance on England because of the vices of the Court. There came to him news that a Quaker, naked except for a loincloth, had run through Westminster Hall carrying burning coals in a dish on his head and calling on the people of the Court to repent of their lascivious ways which had clearly found disfavor in the eyes of the Lord.

Charles, the cynic and astute statesman, said to those about him that the disfavor of the Lord might have been averted by cash to repair his ships and make them ready to face the Dutchmen. But he was grieved. He could not see that the fire and the plague which had preceded it—and which in the crippling effects they had had on the country’s trade were the reasons for this humiliating defeat—had any connection with the merry lives he and his followers led. In his opinion God would not wish to deny a gentleman his pleasure.

The plague came on average twice a year to London, and had done so for many years; he knew this was due to the crowded hovels and the filthy conditions of the streets, rather than to his licentiousness; the fire had been so disastrous because those same houses were built of wood and huddled so close together that there was no means—except by making gaps in the buildings—of stopping the fire once it had started on such a gusty night.

But he knew it was useless to tell a superstitious people these things, for they counted it Divine vengeance when aught went wrong and Divine approval when things went right.

But even a man of the sweetest nature could feel exasperated at times and, when he heard that in the Change of Crowns which was being done at his own playhouse John Lacy was pouring further ridicule on the Court, Charles was really angry. At any other time he would have laughed and shrugged his shoulders; he had never been a man to turn from the truth; but now, with London prostrate from the effects of plague and fire, with the Dutch inflicting the most humiliating defeat in the country’s history and rebelion hanging in the air as patently as that miasma of haze and stench which came from the breweries, soap-boilers and tanneries ranged about the city, this ridicule of Lacy’s was more than indiscreet; it was criminal.

The King decided that Lacy should suffer a stern reprimand and the playhouse be closed down for a while. It was incongruous, to say the least, that the mummers should be acting at such a time; and the very existence of the playhouse gave those who were condemning the idle life of the Court more sticks with which to beat it.

So, during those hot months, Lacy went to prison and the King’s Theater was closed.

Once more Nell was an actress without a theater to act in.

Afterwards she wondered how she could have behaved as she did.

Was it the desperation which was in the London air at that time? Was it the long faces of all she met which made her turn to the merry rake who was importuning her?

She who loved to laugh felt in those weeks of inactivity that she must escape from a London grown so gloomy that she was reminded of the weeks of plague, when she had lived that wretched life in a deserted city.

Charles Sackville was at her elbow. “Come, Nelly. Come and make merry,” he said. “I have a pleasant house in Epsom Spa. Come with me and enjoy life. What can you do here? Cry ‘Fresh herrings, ten a groat’? Come with me and I’ll give you not only a handsome lover but a hundred pounds a year.”

In her mood of recklessness, Nell threw aside her principles. “I will come,” she said.

So they made merry, she and Charles Sackville, in the house at Epsom.

There they were in pleasant country, but not too quiet and not so far from London that their friends could not visit them.

Charles Sedley joined them. He was witty and amusing, this Little Sid; and highly amused to see that Nell had succumbed at last. He insisted on staying with them at Epsom. He hoped, he said, to have a share in pretty, witty Nell. He would disclaim at length on the greater virtues of Little Sid as compared with those of Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, and he was so amusing that neither Nell nor Buckhurst wished him to go.

They were wildly merry; and all the good people at Epsom talked of these newcomers in their midst. Little groups hung about outside the house hoping to catch a glimpse of the Court wits and the famous actress; and it seemed that a spirit of devilment came to all three of them, so that they acted with more wildness than came naturally even to them; and the people of Epsom were enchanted and shocked by turns.

Other members of the Court came down to see Lord Buckhurst and his newest mistress. Buckhurst was proud of his triumph. So many had laid siege to Nell without success. There was Sir Carr Scrope, squint-eyed and conceited, who made them all laugh by assuring Nell that he was irresistible to all women and, if she wished to be considered a woman of taste, she must immediately desert Buckhurst for him.

Rochester came; he read his latest satires. He told Nell that he set his footmen to wait each night at the doors of those whom he suspected of conducting intrigues, that he might be the first to compile a poem on their activities and circulate it throughout the taverns and coffeehouses. She believed him; there was no exploit which would be too fantastic for my lord Rochester.

Buckingham came; he was at this time full of plans. He swore that ere long they would see Clarendon out of office. He was working with all his mind and heart and he could tell them that his cousin, Barbara Castlemaine, was with him in this. Clarendon must go.

And so passed the weeks at Epsom—six of them—mad, feckless weeks, which Nell was often to remember with shame.

It was Sir George Etherege—Gentle George—who came riding to Epsom with news from London.

Lacy was released; the King had pardoned him; he could not remain long in anger against his players; moreover he knew the hardship this brought to those who worked in his theater. The ban was lifted. The King’s Servants were playing once more.

Nell looked at her player’s livery then—a cloak of bastard scarlet cloth with a black velvet collar. In the magnificence of the apartment which Buckhurst had given her, she put it on; and she felt that the girl she had now become was unworthy to wear that cloak.

She had done that which she had told herself she would never do. She had loved Charles Hart in her way, and if her feeling for him had not proved a lasting affection, at least she had thought it was at the time.

She accepted the morals of the age; but she had determined that her relationship with men must be based on love.

And then, because of a mood of recklessness, because she had been weak and careless and afraid of poverty, she had become involved in a sordid relationship with a man whom she did not love.

Buckhurst came to her and saw her in the cloak.

“God’s Body!” he cried. “What have we here?”

“My player’s livery,” she said.

He laughed at it and, taking it from her, threw it about his own shoulders. He began to mince about the apartment, waiting for her applause and laughter.

“You find me a bore?” he asked petulantly.

“Yes, Charles,” she said.

“Then the devil take you!”

“He did that when I came to you.”

“What means this?” he cried indignantly. “Are you not satisfied with what I give you?”

“I am not satisfied with what there is between us.”