GILLIAN BAGWELL ON THE DARLING STRUMPET (Guest Blog with Giveaway)

The Darling Strumpet has had a very long and twisting path to publication. In fact, Nell Gwynn’s story didn’t start out as a novel. When I was an ambitious 23-year old actress, an actor friend got a lot of attention for a one-man show he was doing. I thought it was a great idea, and decided to write a show for myself to perform. I thought some historical character would be a good subject, and my father suggested Nell Gwynn. I began researching her, and the more I learned, the more I fell in love with her and her story.

She was born into poverty in London in 1650, and rose to great heights by using what she had: smarts, determination, charm, humor, and a very likeable sex appeal. At the age of 13 she began working as an orange seller at the brand-new Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. She got noticed, and soon became the lover and protégé of Charles Hart, the leading actor of the King’s Company.

Nell was one of the very first English actresses, and her gamine sex appeal and saucy personality made her an instant hit with London audiences. After the long closure of the theatres under Cromwell, a new generation of playwrights was at work, and Nell and Hart quickly became the William Powell and Myrna Loy of the 1660s, playing opposite each other as sparring and witty lovers in a series of star vehicles written just for them.

The newly-opened theatres were popular with the nobility – and the king - and Nell soon caught the eye of Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, later the Earl of Dorset, and became his mistress. It wasn’t long, however, before she rose even higher – to the bed of the king himself.

Charles II had many mistresses, but Nell was unique for several reasons. She wasn’t a noble lady, and she never put on airs or pretended to be other than she was, and this won her the love of the people.

Another reason Nell was better liked was that she was English, unlike another of Charles’s long-term mistresses, the baby-faced Louise de Keroualle, who promoted French interests, cost the royal purse quite a lot of money, and was spoiled and weepy into the bargain. Nell called her the Weeping Willow and Squintabella.

Nell didn’t care about politics. She cared about Charles for himself, and was faithful to him until his death, and that too set her apart from Charles’s other women, notably Barbara Palmer, later the Duchess of Cleveland, and Hortense Mancini, the Duchess of Mazarin.

So I set out to put Nell’s life on stage. I did write the script, but never completed it to my satisfaction. And no wonder – I found it was impossible to cover the richness of Nell’s story – which encompassed not only the dazzling worlds of the theatre and court, but also the devastating plague of 1665 that killed a third of the population of London, and the Great Fire of 1666 that destroyed most of the old City – in such a brief format.

So I put my script aside and embarked on an acting career that encompassed a lot of stage work and some film and TV. Eventually I began directing, and then founded The Pasadena Shakespeare Company, producing 37 shows over nine seasons. There was no time for writing during those years, but Nell stayed in my mind and heart and sometimes at the back of my mind I could hear her whispering “Someday….”

But in 2005 my mother, who was living alone in London, became terminally ill. I put my life on hold and went over to spend time with her and take care of her. It was an enormously difficult time in many ways, but there were also good things about it. I made some very good friends. I got a chance to really get to know London, which I had visited a few times, and had always been in love with from reading so many books and seeing so many movies set there! And for the first time in my adult life, I didn’t have a creative focus or a career taking up all my time. I decided that what Nell needed was a novel of her life, and the time had come to start it!

I read biographies of Nell that had been published since I had first learned about her, reread the famous diaries of Samuel Pepys, which not only gave a vivid picture of daily life in London in the 1660s, but also preserved for posterity Sam’s reviews of Nell performing some of her most famous roles as well as their occasional friendly encounters. I scouted out the sites of the old theatres where Nell had performed, and walked the streets that she had known.

London is an amazing place. In central London, the layout of the street is pretty much the same as it has been for centuries; even millennia. After the Great Fire in 1666, there were grand plans to create a street design that was more organized and formal, but it didn’t happen, because people couldn’t wait long enough for that to happen – they had to get on with their lives. So they built houses and shops and everything else in exactly the same places they had been, and there they stand now!

So in most of the areas that Nell knew well, where she lived and worked and performed, the footprint is basically unchanged from her time, though of course many of the buildings are gone. This is particularly true in the locations where many of the theatres were. Years ago I was walking near Lincoln’s Inn Fields and felt impelled to turn down a certain street, and felt somehow that the place was very significant. When I looked at my books, I discovered that I’d found my way to the place where the Vere Street Theatre had stood, the place where the King’s Company converted a tennis court into their first home when they began playing in 1660.

Very close to there, at the northeast corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, is Newman’s Row, where Nell’s first house was. Her own house, I mean, that Charles rented for her when she was going to have their first child. Newman’s Row is now little more than a passageway to High Holburn, but the layout of the streets is pretty much unchanged. I stood there and could feel very clearly how it must have been for her to look out over the square, where duels and executions occasionally happened, although it was a very posh area with many noble residents, and that Whetstone Park, a little street running along the top of the square, which was pretty unsavory, must have been noisy and squalid.

And of course the current Theatre Royal in Drury Lane is on the same spot as the original theatre, the one that Nell performed in. The original theatre was smaller, and burned down and was replaced, and the current building is the third on the site, I think. But standing there I can feel Nell with me.

About the Author

Gillian Bagwell is the author of The Darling Strumpet, a novel based on the life of Nell Gwynn, who rose from the streets to become one of London’s most beloved actresses and the life-long mistress of King Charles II, which was released on January 4, 2011.

For further information about Gillian’s books, other articles, and blogs of her research adventures, please visit her website, gillianbagwell.com.

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