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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 £140026 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.

      In the time of Nelly's most brilliant fortunes, the people who laughed at her wit and impudence publicly contemned her. In February 1680 she visited the Duke's Theatre, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, on which occasion a person in the pit called her loudly by a name which, to do her justice, she never repudiated. The affront, which she herself could laugh at, was taken up by William Herbert, brother of Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who had married the younger sister of another of the King's favourites, Henrietta de Querouaille. The audience took part, some with the assailant, others with the champion of Nelly. Many swords were drawn, the sorrows of the "Orphan" were suspended, there was a hubbub in the house, and more scratches given than blood spilt. That Nelly found a knight in Thomas Herbert only proves that a hot-headed young gentleman may become a very sage as years grow upon him. This Thomas, when Earl of Pembroke, was "first plenipotentiary" at the making of the treaty of Ryswick, and Chief Commissioner in establishing the Union of England and Scotland. His excellent taste and liberality laid the foundations of the collection of antiques which yet attracts visitors to Wilton. But love for leading play-house factions did not die out in his family. Four and forty years after he had drawn sword for the reputation of Nell Gwyn, his third Countess, Mary, sister of Viscount Howe, headed the Cuzzoni party at the Opera-house against the Faustina faction, led by the Countess of Burlington and Lady Delawar. Whenever Faustina opened her mouth to sing, Lady Pembroke and her friends hissed the singer heartily; and as soon as Cuzzoni made a similar attempt, Lady Burlington and her followers shrieked her into silence. Lord Pembroke sat by, thinking, perhaps, of the young days when he was the champion of Nell Gwyn, or of Margaret Symcott, if an old tradition be true that such was Nelly's real name.

      Of the ladies who played at the Duke's House, under Davenant, the principal were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Holden, Mrs. Jennings, Mrs. Long, and Mrs. Norris. Chief among these were Mistresses Davenport, Davies, Saunderson, and Long. Mrs. Davenport is remembered as the Roxalana of Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes," which she played so well that Pepys could not forget her in either of her successors, Mrs. Betterton or Mrs. Norton. She is still better remembered in connection with a story of which she is the heroine, although that character in it has been ascribed to others.

      Aubrey de Vere, the twentieth Earl of Oxford, was the last of his house who held that title, but the one who held it the longest, namely, seventy years, from 1632 to 1702. Aubrey de Vere despised the old maxim, "Noblesse oblige." He lived a roystering life, kept a roystering house, and was addicted to hard drinking, rough words, and unseemly brawling and sword-slashing in his cups. The young earl made love, after the fashion of the day and the man, to Mrs. Davenport, but he might as well have made love to Diana; and it was not till he proposed marriage that the actress condescended to listen to his suit. The lovers were privately married, and the lady was, in the words of old Downes, "erept the stage." The honeymoon, however, was speedily obscured; Lord Oxford grew indifferent and brutal. When the lady talked of her rights, he informed her that she was not Countess of Oxford at all. The apparent reverend gentleman who had performed the ceremony of marriage was a trumpeter, who served under this very noble Lord in the King's own regiment of cavalry. The forlorn fair one, after threatening suicide, sought out the King, fell at his feet, and demanded justice. The award was made in the shape of an annuity of £300 a year, with which "Lord Oxford's Miss," as Evelyn calls her, seems to have been satisfied and consoled; for Pepys, soon after, being at the play, "saw the old Roxalana in the chief box, in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and very handsome, at which I was glad."

      As for Miss Mary Davies, it is uncertain whether she was the daughter of a Wiltshire blacksmith, or the less legitimate offspring of Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Berkshire, or of the earl's son – not the poet, but the colonel. However this may be, Mary Davies was early on the stage, where she danced well, played moderately ill, announced the next afternoon's performance with grace, and won an infamous distinction at the King's hands, by her inimitable singing of the old song, "My lodging is on the cold СКАЧАТЬ