Exit the Actress (58 page)

“Well, now that you are all here,” said the king, descending the steps and encircling me in his arms, “what do you think?”

“It is beautiful. Just beautiful,” I said, looking at the stylish contraption.

“Rose and I picked the emerald green seat coverings,” Peg said proudly. Rose came down the steps and hugged me as well.

“Your little feet will grace our ground no more,” trilled Buckhurst over-dramatically, his cheeks pinked with the cold.

“Try it out!” Teddy called, as the king helped me into the boxy interior. With that, Johnston and Cook took up the long handles and off we went, bouncing down the street. It took a few moments for them to match their strides and for me to regain my balance, but eventually I was able to turn to see the group of beloved faces waving good-bye. I blew them a theatrical kiss from the window and settled down to enjoy the bumpy ride.

“You truly like it, sweetheart?”

We were settled into our bed, under the quilted satin coverlets. At last, Charles is happy to sleep here, despite his concerns.

“I love it,” I said, dropping a kiss on his nose. “Nothing could make me happier.”

“Nothing?” he asked archly.

I shook my head firmly. “Nothing.”

“Not even this?” he asked softly, pulling out a light, wrapped box from beside the bed. “Open it.” He smiled and put the box into my hands.

I gently unbound the grosgrain ribbon and stripped away the thin tissue. Inside was a long, ruffled christening robe. The creamy satin ran through my fingers like water.

“It was used for my brother Henry and my sister.”

“Minette?”

He nodded. The favourites. I knew how much he still missed Henry. I fell into his arms. There was nothing to say.

I no longer walk anywhere. “It certainly makes me more conspicuous,” I confided to Teddy after the morning rehearsal for my farewell event. Today, I will rehearse the new monologue Dryden has written for me. I was hoping he would not have too many script changes.

“Nothing wrong with conspicuous,” Teddy said, smiling. I had caught him this morning in a pretty pink walking frock, alighting from Lady Jemimah’s open carriage.

“Ellen, would you look at this,” Dryden said, hurrying over to me, his hat plumes bobbing as he waved the newest playbill aloft.

By Order of His Majesty

M
RS
. N
ELLY
G
WYN’S
F
AREWELL
P
ERFORMANCE

“If you wanted inconspicuous, you have chosen the wrong profession, my lamb.” Teddy giggled.

“And the wrong lover,” Dryden added fondly.

Note
—Hart has unexpectedly left for Hill House. “I don’t think he could face saying good-bye,” Tom said wisely.

“You are sure you are up to this?” Charles asked for the millionth time.

I kissed him in response. “I love the stage, Charles. It makes me happy. Of course I am up to it.”

“But you feel well? The baby feels well?” Charles asked, rubbing my back; my back has been cramping lately.

“Your Majesty.” Tom bowed, flustered. “You’d best be in your box, sire, as we are about to begin.”

“I issued the patent on this theatre. You will begin when I choose,” the king said in an uncharacteristically imperious tone. Tom looked instantly shamefaced and dropped into a deep court bow and began to stutter.

I giggled at that. “He is jesting, Tom. Do stop scraping.”

The king pealed with laughter. Tom came up from his bow to see the king’s merry face. “I, uh, we can start whenever you wish…,” he said, looking from me to the king.

“I will get to my box now, Tom. We will start when
Ellen
is ready,” Charles said generously, hugging me close.

The king released me and went up to his seat, and Tom hurried off to talk to Mr. Booth, the stage manager and Keeper of the Prompt Book for the evening. He would record this, my last night on the stage. I could sense the house quieting around me. I put my hand on my belly and curved around my baby growing inside me. Closing my eyes, I felt the absolute precise calm born of being in the correct place at the correct time. Stepping forward, I gathered up my many Ellens, like a fisherman pulling in a net, and held them to me for this moment.

Take a breath. Count three. Curtain up.
Now.

Gwyn Family

In 1679 old Madam Gwyn drowned in a puddle near Chelsea. Charles Hart, Charles Buckhurst, George Buckingham, Johnny Rochester, and all the Merry Gang turned out for her funeral. After her husband’s death, Rose Gwyn lived on an allowance provided by King Charles II. She never bore children.

The Theatre

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, died at age thirty-three, debilitated by alcoholism and syphilis. He died after reconciling with King Charles II. Rochester remained a close friend of Nell’s to the end of his life. Aphra Behn became the first prominent female playwright on the English stage, dedicating her play
The Feign’d Courtesan
to her dear friend Ellen Guin. Virginia Woolf wrote in
A Room of One’s Own,
“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn … for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”

Edward Kynaston, whom Peyps called “the loveliest lady that I ever saw in my life,” retired from the stage in 1699 after a successful career playing both male and female roles. Thomas Killigrew retired from the stage in 1677, leaving his company to be mismanaged by his two sons, Henry and
Charles. Charles Hart left the stage in 1682 and died at his home in Middlesex less than a year later. Peg Hughes eventually married Prince Rupert and bore him a daughter, Ruperta. It was said that Prince Rupert hoped his daughter would marry Nell’s son, but Prince Rupert died before this came to pass. Dryden died in 1700 after writing some of the most famous poetry of his age and is buried next to Geoffrey Chaucer in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

The Court

James (Jemmy), Duke of Monmouth, declared himself the legitimate king after the death of his father and led an unsuccessful rebellion against his uncle King James II. His uncle ordered his execution in the summer of 1685. The unpopular King James II was deposed in 1688. Henriette-Anne (Minette), Duchesse d’Orléans, died suddenly at St. Cloud in 1670, two weeks after returning from England. It was rumored at the time that she had been poisoned by her husband. Minette’s Treaty of Dover was successful, and King Charles II fulfilled his promise to declare himself a Catholic, although he waited until his deathbed to do so. Although they remained childless, King Charles II refused to divorce Queen Catherine of Braganza and she returned to her native Portugal only after her husband’s death.

Nell and Charles

After giving birth to the king’s son Charles Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans, in May 1670 Nell returned to the stage to appear in Dryden’s
Conquest of Granada
before retiring from the theatre permanently. James, her second son, died in Paris at the age of eight. Nell’s love affair with Charles II thrived until his death in February 1685. Among his last recorded words was the entreaty to “let not poor Nelly starve.” On his deathbed he gave Nell’s son Charles the ring his father had given Bishop Juxon moments before his execution.

Nell remained faithful to Charles to the end of her life, reportedly
saying she would not “let a dog lie where the deer hath lain.” Nell survived Charles by only two years and died at age thirty-seven—it was said of a broken heart.

While I invented much of Nell’s daily life, the major events I describe are rooted in fact. All of the central characters and the majority of the peripheral characters really lived. The happenings in London, the court, the weather, the recipes, the remedies, the medical advancements, and the theatre are also historically based, as is much of the gossip (as much as gossip can be). A lunatic did predict the end of the world, a comet did appear just before the plague, and it did become customary at that time to bless someone who sneezes.

Some of the unlikelier elements are also true, such as Rochester’s destruction of the king’s sundial and Queen Catherine’s discovery of Nell’s slipper in her husband’s bedroom. Of all of her husband’s mistresses, Nell is the only one she befriended. It is interesting to note that Queen Catherine of Braganza is credited with introducing tea to England. Nell’s “three Charleses” are also accurate. She began her affair with Charles Hart (who was in his mid-thirties) at the age of fourteen and then abruptly took up with Charles Buckhurst and moved to Epsom before beginning her long affair with Charles II in approximately 1668. Charles II would have been thirty-eight at the time and Nell would have been eighteen. These age gaps would not have startled a seventeenth century observer; as these were considered reasonable liaisons in the seventeenth century, I chose not to evaluate them through my twenty-first-century lens. Nell was forthright about her personal history and did in fact refer to King Charles as her Charles III.

For anyone wishing to read further on the subject, I recommend Charles Beauclerk’s wonderful work
Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King,
a comprehensive biography of his endearingly illustrious ancestor. I also urge anyone interested in the period to read Antonia Fraser’s magnificent biography
King Charles II.

I should mention the several variations of Nell’s name I use throughout the story. Although history remembers her as Nell, in the few places she signed her name Nell often used the initials “E.G.” or “Ellen,” and Aphra Behn dedicated her play to “Ellen Guin.” One historical fact I chose to
dispute was Nell’s purported illiteracy. I find it difficult to believe that an actress who was required to learn up to three scripts in a week and was an intimate of both the king and the great writers of her age could have been unable to read.