Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King [Paperback]

Charles Beauclerk (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2006

Written by a direct descendant of the union between Nell Gwyn and King Charles II, Nell Gwyn tells the story of one of England’s great folk heroines, a woman who rose from an impoverished, abusive childhood to become King Charles II’s most cherished mistress, and the star of one of the great love stories of royal history. Born during a tumultuous period in England’s past, Nell Gwyn caught the eye of King Charles II, the newly restored, pleasure-seeking “merry monarch” of a nation in full hedonistic reaction to Puritan rule. Their seventeen-year love affair played out against the backdrop of the Great Fire of London, the Great Plague, court scandals, and the constant threat of political revolution. Despite his other lovers’ Machiavellian efforts to win the king’s favor and humiliate Nell, the self-proclaimed “Protestant whore” earned the devotion of her king and the love of her nation, becoming England’s first “people’s princess.” Magnificently recreating the heady and licentious, yet politically charged atmosphere of Restoration England, Nell Gwyn tells the true-life Cinderella story of a common orange salesgirl who became mistress to a king.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British historian Beauclerk, a descendant of King Charles II and his longtime mistress Nell Gwyn (1650–1687), draws on earlier biographies, contemporary satires and plays, noted diarist Samuel Pepys and family archives to present a lively portrait of his famous forebears, along with an account of the theater of the time and the surprisingly parallel worlds of prostitutes and royal mistresses. Along the way, he renders an awfully generous reading of the royal cause and argues that Charles led the Restoration out of joie de vivre as much as for the sake of the monarchy. Beauclerk posits that the king's amorous adventures—particularly with women of lower classes—endeared him to his people after dismal years of Puritan restrictions. Nell's rise was meteoric: selling refreshments in London theaters, she honed a quick wit that led to an acting career and brought her to the attention of the king. Nell was never Charles's only mistress, but she was faithful to him and amused him by playing the fool. Beauclerk's historical insights have a personal flair that indicates his family's take on their ancestors. He ends with an odd history of his troubled family, suggesting its problematic twin inheritances from king and actress. 16 pages of color illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"'revealilng and entertaining' - Literary Review 'a rich and deep knowledge of the period conveyed in warm, unstuffy and amusing style' - Daily Mail" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (September 6, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802142745
• ISBN-13: 978-0802142740
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,358,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superbly Written and Insightful, October 28, 2005

By 

Chris (England) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King (Hardcover)

Far more than a mere recitation of dry facts, Charles Beauclerk's biography of the magical life of Nell Gwyn displays rare insight into the human condition, which insights one soon realizes are acutely applicable to the here-and-now of politics, art, and the mysterious attachments of the heart. To history, Nell Gwyn was (pg. 297) "...the stuff of legend, the girl from the slums who had won the heart of a king." In the author's hands, however, this story of love reciprocated (for such it was) is more than romance- it shines a spotlight on the theater of politics and power which was the 17th century and still is today, in which nothing is as it seems to be, and fame provides a most convincing disguise for the truth. Beauclerk's evident erudition is worn lightly, and in this biography the richly comedic serves to illustrate the philosophical. Beautifully written, the author's style is both polished and relaxed, not unlike the later diaries of James Lees-Milne, with a limpid clarity of prose interspersed with surprising imagery, like his description of the Protestant rabble-rouser Titus Oates, (p. 279) "His mouth, we are told, was in the centre of his face, and he was built like an orc, with short bandy legs and long lifeless arms." On nearly every page one finds apt insights as, for example (p. 293) referring to the death of Nell's mother, "...like many alcoholics, old Madam Gwyn probably found a way of abandoning decent surroundings for a life of misery somewhere." The world of Charles Stuart and Nell Gwyn was a theatre, both metaphorically and literally, and whether on stage or at court everyone acted a part. In his biography of Nell, the plays of Dryden, Marvell, and others are neatly dissected by Charles Beauclerk to reveal unexpected depths of meaning. Nell was above all a comedienne, a star in her own right whose alliance with the saturnine, tricksy Charles Stuart made them the most successful double act of the 17th century. And there is, of course, the well-known account of Nell, whose coach being attacked by a mob mistaking her for the King's French (and Roman Catholic) mistress Louise de Keroualle, ordered her driver to stop, and flinging open the window (p. 307) "...cried out good-humouredly, 'Pray, good people, be civil, I am the PROTESTANT whore!' Immediately, the curses turned to cheers, caps were tossed in the air, and a path cleared for her coach. Waving and smiling, she passed on." And so, waving and smiling, Nell's brightly shining spirit has been well and truly awakened in this present biography.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History Comes Alive, November 9, 2005

By 

Stephanie Hughes (Nyack, New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King (Hardcover)

The Restoration period in England is especially dear to historians--it provides so many interesting anecdotes and biographies, among them that of the King himself, Charles II. The sufferings of his youth, when he was hunted like a dog by his father's enemies, would seem more the stuff of fiction than fact if we didn't know it to be true. But Charles is probably better known for the many mistresses he acquired later, once his country returned him to the throne. Of these, the most interesting and famous is surely the actress turned Royal Mistress, Nell Gwynn.

Although the reign of Charles II is famous for its bawdy wit and licentious behavior, for the most part, it simply saw a return to the kind of healthy fun the English people had been denied during twenty years of repressive Puritan rule. Bawdy wit and licentious behavior was really only true of a handful of rakish pranksters whose antics have come down in history because they were well-reported. Typical of this group was Charles's friend, the poet John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, whose father had been given the earldom for military service to the Crown during the King's years in exile. Although Rochester's reputation as a genuine poet has suffered from his bad behavior, the 19th-century critic William Hazlitt stated that although Rochester's "contempt for everything that others respect almost amounts to sublimity . . . his verses cut and sparkle like diamonds." Of Charles, Rochester once teased: "He never said a foolish thing, nor ever did a wise one," to which Charles replied: "That is true, for my words are my own, but my actions are those of my ministers."

Among this group of wild and unruly poets and playwrights, beautiful Nell Gwynn held her own as a commedienne and entertainment star, qualities she took with her to Court when she rose to the status of Royal Mistress. Nell was the only one of Charles II's many mistresses who was genuinely popular with the English public. It is thought she persuaded the King to do the things he did to help the people, among them build the Royal Hospital in London for ex-servicemen.

Nell had two sons by the King, Charles and James Beauclerk. There are two versions of how Charles acquired the Earldom of Burford (both unverifiable). The first has it that one day, upon the arrival of the King, Nell, surrounded by a circle of friends, called out to her six-year-old, "Come here you little bastard and say hello to your father." When the King protested her language, she replied: "Your Majesty has given me no other name by which to call him." So Charles made him the Earl of Burford. The other version claims that out of frustration after months of unfulfilled promises, one day Nell grabbed her son and hung him out of a window, threatening to drop him unless the boy was granted a peerage, whereupon the frightened but quick-witted King cried out, "God save the Earl of Burford!"

These and many more such anecdotes are related here by the boy's descendant, another Charles Beauclerk, whose telling of his family history suggests that, along with their names and their stories, he's inherited a good share of his ancestors' wit and originality.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Life and a Vivid Age Come to Life, September 30, 2005

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Sally E. Mosher (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nell Gwyn: Mistress to a King (Hardcover)

Nell Gwyn is by way of being an English folk heroine. Only with the 1660 "Restoration" of the British monarchy were women allowed on the stage. Indeed, all Shakespeare's heroines had been played by men. Emerging from a background of poverty and obscurity, the teenage Nell rose to stardom as the best comic actress of the London Restoration stage in the 1660's. Beautiful, witty, unabashedly outspoken, Nell caught the eye and heart of the restored Stuart King, Charles II. In a time when class conscious snobbery extended even to the King's mistress, commoners were not welcome, and Nell's pointed humor and uninhibited ways stood in sharp contrast to the mannered, calculating world of the court. Then as now, people enjoyed gossip about notable figures, so Londoners came to feel strong affection for this untrammeled sprite. Beauclerk's brilliant depiction of the worlds of stage and politics, coupled with his penetrating analysis of character, bring Nell, Charles II, and their turbulent world to life. This is a touching love story, for Nell was the King's dear friend as well as his totally loyal lover throughout their seventeen years together, which ended only with his death in 1685. Beauclerk is a direct descendant of Nell and Charles's son, so a last chapter telling how the family has fared from then to the present adds and interesting coda to this lively tale.