Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/43

Rh lifetime, and afterwards to marry the heiress of the very earl who had taken the old Roxolana from a rival stage—first to deceive and afterwards to desert her.

Nell was indebted, there is reason to believe, for her introduction to the stage, or at least to another condition in life, to a person whose name is variously written as Duncan and as Dungan. Oldys, who calls him Duncan, had heard that he was a merchant, and that he had taken a fancy to her from her smart wit, fine shape, and the smallness of her feet. The information of Oldys is confirmed by the satire of Etherege, who adds, much to the credit of Nelly, that she remembered in after years the friend of her youth, and that to her interest it was he owed his appointment in the Guards. To sift and exhibit the equal mixture of truth and error in these accounts would not repay the reader for the trouble I should occasion him. I have sifted them myself, and see reason to believe that Oldys was wrong in calling him a merchant; while I suspect that the Duncan commemorated by Etherege, in his satire upon Nelly, was the Dongan described by De Grammont as a gentleman of merit who succeeded Duras, afterwards Earl of Feversham, in the post of Lieutenant in the Duke's Life Guards. That there was a