Nell Gwyn

PRETTY WITTY NELL--Clifford Bax--Morrow ($3).

Nell Gwyn's 37 years were not all beer & skittles, but Biographer Bax is of the cheerful opinion that her short life was mostly merry. In a musical-comedy age she played one of the star parts, and the applause has not yet died away. Born in the slums of London, her father dead and her mother already a drunkard, Nell served drinks in a bawdy-house when she was still a moppet. She was only 10 when the Restoration brought her future lover, Charles II, back to England. Puritanism no longer darkened the doors of theatres, and as a great innovation women were allowed to play female parts. From selling oranges in the pit Nell graduated to the stage, at 15 played lead in her first appearance, quickly became the star comedienne of her day.

Poet Laureate John Dryden wrote pat parts for her saucy tongue; she even essayed tragic roles, much to the disgust of Gossip Samuel Pepys. Pepys was mighty proud of going behind the scenes once and meeting Actress Nell. Said he: "I kissed her, and so did my wife: and a mighty pretty soul she is." When she was 17 Lord Buckhurst gave her her first vacation from the stage; soon after, the Merry Monarch himself looked her way. Nell's cockney wit was never abashed by grand company. She made her royal lover laugh by saying that "he might be Charles the Second to the rest of his subjects, but that to her he was Charles the Third." (She had had two Charleses before him.)

Nell never retired formally from the stage, but after Charles took up with her she acted less & less. Though the King always had more than one mistress at a time Nell was apparently not jealous. She made the most of the princely presents he gave her: a house in Pall Mall, a generous allowance, two sons. The King found her good company and never stayed away for long. Her two principal rivals were Italian Hortense Mancini, French Louise de Querouailles. With Louise, an aristocrat who constantly tried to come the great lady over her, Nell never hit it off very well: when it came to backchat Louise was no match for her. Once Nell's coach was held up in Oxford by a threatening mob who thought Louise was inside. Nell put her curly head out the window, cried: "Be civil, good people, be civil! I am not she. I am the Protestant whore." The mob cheered, let her depart in peace.

When Charles II died suddenly in 1685, Nell Gwyn's world collapsed. She survived Charles only by two years. Though her death has usually been attributed simply to "apoplexy," Biographer Bax cites a modern medical opinion that the real cause of her death was syphilis, hints that this too was a gift from her lavish royal lover. Bax calls Nell "sweet, merry, winsome. . . . We cannot say, though, that she was one of the world's most beautiful women." But he thinks "she would have enchanted any cocktail party or diplomatic reception of our time."

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