Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/57

Rh the obscurity of her birth was a common topic of talk and banter among the less fortunate inhabitants of the lane she lived in. The scene so lightly sketched by Pepys might furnish no unfitting subject for the pencil of Leslie or Maclise—a subject indeed which would shine in their hands. That absence of all false pride, that innate love of unaffected nature, and that fondness for the simple sports of the people which the incident exhibits, are characteristics of Nelly from the first moment to the last—following her naturally, and sitting alike easily and gracefully upon her, whether at her humble lodgings in Drury Lane, at her handsome house in Pall Mall, or even under the gorgeous cornices of Whitehall.

But I have no intention of finding a model heroine in a coal-yard, or any wish either to palliate or condemn too severely the frailties of the woman whose story I have attempted to relate. It was therefore within a very few months of the May-day scene I have just described, that whispers asserted, and the news was soon published in every coffeehouse in London, how little Miss Davis of the Duke's House had become the mistress of the King, and Nell Gwyn at the other theatre the mistress of Lord Buckhurst. Whoever is at all conversant with the manners and customs of London life in