"The Darling Strumpet"

NELL GWYN: ROYAL MISTRESS (309 pp.) John H. Wilson--Pellegrini & Cudahy ($4).

One summer's morning in 1669, Queen Catherine of England popped so inconsiderately into the bedchamber of her spouse, Charles II, that there was scarcely time for Nell Gwyn to pop out of the merry monarch's bed and slip behind the arras. The moment the good queen spied Nell's dainty slipper on the floor, she tumbled to the situation, of course, and delicately repaired her breach of court etiquette with a hasty exit and a solicitous hope that the lady might not "take cold."

Nell did not mind the inconvenience. She was one of the best-natured girls who ever took a king's mind off his country. In fact, she was such a trouble-to-nobody sort that posterity--even the proper Victorians--has been as uncensorious as the queen; "sweet Nell of Old Drury" has almost been sentimentalized into a saint of strumpetry. It may come as something of a surprise to readers of Author John H. Wilson's brisk but scholarly biography that on contemporary testimony the true, unsanctified Nell was also "wanton, brazen, debauched and humorous ... a bold, merry slut," and all for all, "the wildest and indiscreetest creature that ever was in a court."

A Full Nether Lip. Nelly was born, said the journals of the age, in a Covent Garden bawdyhouse, of a father unknown and a mother notorious as "old Madam Gwyn," a brandy-soak "that in one day could twenty quarts consume, / And bravely vaunt she durst it twice presume." (One day she durst, and the next she was fished out of a Chelsea brook; Nelly, rich and famous by then, gave her one of the flashiest funerals of the Restoration.)

Nell grew up in her mother's establishment, sweeping the fireplaces and "serving strong waters to the guests." At 13, she improved her station to that of an "orange wench," selling fruit in the theater pit. At 14, the chronicler reports, she was "eased of her virginity," probably by a famous actor, Charles Hart, who cast her in a small part or two.

"Pretty, witty Nell" soon became a fine comedian, caused such an uproar with her sallies and such a sensation with her "neat silk leg and pair of holland thighs" that half of the Restoration bucks were bidding for her favors. Hart sold her to Lord Buckhurst, but Nelly didn't like him, and besides, a scepter was already tapping at her door. Poet John Dryden has described some of the charms that caught the royal eye: "Oval face, clear skin, hazel eyes, thick brown eyebrows ... a full nether lip ... the bottom of your cheeks a little blub, and two dimples when you smile." Add to that a firm, small, voluptuous figure. Charles II took her home with him.

Pride of Petticoat. Like all the King's women, Nell was paid out of the Secret Service funds. The payments grew as Nell grew on His Majesty, until she was established as mistress of -L-5,000 a year and a mansion in Pall Mall, and was second only to the Duchess of Portsmouth in the King's affections.

There were hard, practical reasons for Nelly's success as well as soft, womanly ones. Charles was always a bit weak in the exchequer--once during his reign the funds in the national treasury dwindled to one pound, two shillings and tenpence--and lowborn Nelly was cheaper to keep than dames of high degree. She was generally a sight less meddlesome. "All matters of state with her soul she does hate," the broadside ran, "and leaves to the politic bitches." And not least: "When he was dumpish, still would she be jocund / And chuck the royal chin of Charles the Second."

Nell brought to the feverish, pale-blooded court of Charles a throb of natural England. The tales of her fishwife eloquence in high places made her--in a phrase that was intended as an epithet but became an accolade--"the darling strumpet of the crowd." Once, for instance, she was so proud of her new petticoats that right in the presence of the French ambassador, she lifted them one by one. In line of duty, the Frenchman sat down and wrote a report to his foreign minister back home: "I never in all my life saw such thorough cleanliness, neatness and sumptuosity."

When the haughty Duchess of Cleveland, another of the King's mistresses, put on airs with her baseborn rival, Nell gave her a friendly whop on the shoulder, and remarked philosophically that "persons of one trade loved not one another." And one day, when popular hostility to Rome was at its height, Nelly's coach was mobbed by Whigs, who thought it carried the King's Catholic mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth. Never at a loss, Nell stuck her head out of the window and bellowed: "Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore."

On his deathbed, Charles besought his brother and heir, "Let not poor Nelly starve." James II kept faith, and Nelly died rich, of a stroke brought on by an occupational disease, at 37.

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