|
|
 |
| |
| Temptress who found her prince
charming |
The life of Nell Gwyn, the feisty mistress
of Charles II, speaks across the centuries to Gerald Isaaman
Nell Gwyn: A Biography by Charles Beauclerk
Macmillan, £20
|
Nell Gwyn
Charles II
Charles Beauclerk
|
It’s a vibrant legend told with relish in local history
tomes and guide books. Indeed, you will see people enjoying the
gardens at Lauderdale House, Highgate, pointing up at one of the
top floor windows and declaring: “That’s where is must
have happened.”
Yes, may be that’s where the King’s mistress Nell
Gwyn held out her baby son in her arms and threatened to hurl him
to ground unless his father, Charles II, walking in the delightful
gardens below, properly recognised his bastard.
“Save the Earl of Burford!” cried the King. And all was
happily resolved, the family line continuing with the Dukes of St
Albans until this very day.
Yet, fact or fable, the story is virtually dismissed in this new
bright and entertaining biography of “pretty Nelly”, as
Pepys described the adorable royal concubine, its author giving
it but a couple of lines.
And he suggests that, if the drama did happen, then it was at the
mansion in Pall Mall where Nell lived under the King’s patronage,
moreover pointing out that the Earl of Burford was probably aged
six at the time, and quite a handful.
History is being re-written all the time these days, so it is sad
to see a local saga being obliterated, the more so because Charles
Beauclerk’s promises so much, as he is a direct descendent
of the very dangling child.
He is the son of the present Duke of St Albans, who has provided
him with access to unresearched family papers, and it was Beauclerk’s
former wife, Louise Burford, who gave him the idea for the book
and helped with the initial research.
What exactly is new is not dramatically clear, possibly because
Nell Gwyn (1650-87), has over the centuries become one of Britain’s
dashing folk heroines, almost a pantomime figure who grew up in
a brothel and jumped from selling oysters and oranges in Covent
Garden into the royal bed chamber of the “merry monarch”.
So all the characters from those past times of high political drama
and intrigue, plagues and indulgences and almost total sexual depravity
seem to be totally over the top.
Yet such licentiousness remains the basis of our parallel life today,
in which celebrity and scandal are synonymous, measured always against
the mythical moral values of the Victorian age, during which hypocrisy
devoured everything.
Nell Gwyn was the Marilyn Monroe of her age with more than a touch
of Germaine Greer thrown in; a woman who knew precisely how to use
her fairy prince’s good looks, her innate acting powers, love
of pranks, kindness and her true wit to devastating effect. Men
lusted after her.
And the enthralling parts of this biography are not so much about
her cavortings and influence on the King and his court but in the
fascinating detail of a life spent gorging on food and allowing
fondles and fun time to overwhelm them.
Beauclerk paints as good a picture as you will get of a period when
Nell Gwyn held remarkable sway and she undoubtedly deserves her
niche in history, perhaps more so than other royal mistresses, Camilla
included. But he does allow the infectious Nell to infect him.
As he concludes: “Having used the Woolsack in the House of
Lords as an impromptu soapbox to defend the golden principle of
sovereignty, I too set aside my courtesy title. And as the Beauclerk
family begins a new cycle, it seems that the genius of Nell Gwyn
is strongly reasserting itself.
“The ultimate torch-bearer, and a sure pledge of better times,
is my nine-year-old son, James, in whom the mischievous spirit of
his ancestress lives on!” |
|
|
