A Pair of Merrie Ladies: Katherine Sedley & Nell Gwyn

Readers of The Countess and the King have been intrigued by the relationship between Katherine Sedley and actress Nell Gwyn, and have asked for more information about their friendship. I'm happy to oblige!

At first glance, the two seem to have little in common. Nell Gwyn (1650-1687), left, was born into extreme poverty. Raised by her mother in a brothel, she was saved from that fate by her beauty, her charm, and, most of all, her gift for being able to entertain others with her singing, dancing, and witty, bawdy banter. She was also lucky. The return of Charles II to the English throne in 1660 marked the end of Puritan rule. One of the first acts by Charles was to reopen the playhouses, and better still, permit women on the stage for the first time. The rowdy Restoration playhouse was the perfect place for Nell’s saucy exuberance, and she rose quickly from being an orange seller in the pit to a leading lady in comic roles. She was a favorite of audiences, and in 1667, when she first would have met Katherine, she was a seventeen-year-old superstar that had already been noticed by the king himself.

Katherine Sedley (1657-1717), right, was the daughter of baronet, poet, politician, and libertine Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701.) Sir Charles was young, wealthy, and sufficiently connected at court that he regularly drank and played tennis with the king. But Sir Charles’s wife was mad, believing herself to be queen, and he soon sent her to live out her days in a foreign convent. This left Sir Charles as the only parent to their only child, and instead of having ten-year-old Katherine reared by relatives, he decided to include her in his life. This meant that Katherine stayed out late at playhouses and taverns, and that some of the town’s most disreputable, high-born gentlemen (known as the Merry Gang) became like indulgent uncles. In the company of her father’s friends, she learned to drink, swear, and gamble. Because she amused them, she was encouraged to speak freely, and outrageously. Whatever well-bred shyness she might have once possessed vanished, and unlike most young ladies her age, she came to enjoy being the center of attention for what she said.

She probably met Nell in a playhouse tiring room, for Sir Charles liked actresses, and kept at least one of Nell’s friends as a mistress. In turn Nell was mistress to one of Sir Charles’s closest friends, Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. Katherine certainly knew Nell by July of 1667, when Lord Buckhurst and Nell retreated to a house in Epsom for the summer. Sir Charles was a frequent visitor, and he often brought Katherine with him. Nell taught Katherine to dance the theatrical jigs that had made her famous, and amidst all the drunken partying and general excess that were the talk of Epsom –– another friend of Sir Charles, the infamous Earl of Rochester was a frequent guest as well –– it’s likely Katherine observed and learned a great deal more than just jigs. (I've included much of this summer at Epsom in my novel about Nell, The King's Favorite.)

Back in London, the baronet’s daughter and the actress continued to cross paths. Nell recognized a kindred spirit in the younger girl, and looked after her – if not exactly like a mother, then as an affectionate older sister. When Nell left Lord Buckhurst’s keeping for that of the king, becoming a royal mistress, Katherine took notice. Wives were banished to the country (or, like her mother, abroad), while mistresses stayed in town and had much more fun. Is it any wonder that when Sir Charles, belatedly worrying about his daughter’s future, began to speak of finding a husband for the teenaged Katherine, she wasn’t interested?

Instead Katherine became part of the royal court, first attending the palace with her father and later, as a maid of honor, in her own right. There she was again united with Nell. They must have been quite a pair to see: Katherine tall, dark, and angular, with snapping dark eyes that missed nothing, and tiny, doll-like Nell with her auburn curls. Together they must have struck fear in the hearts of all gentlemen who lacked the quickness to follow their wit, or worse, to deflect it. The two women were fast with jests, jibes, droll observations, and barbed insults, and because they were women, they often got away with saying things that might have landed a man in the Tower.  They also amused the King, and that, too, was a sure way to success at court. But women as clever as these two were a rarity, and being the only females connected to the Merry Band must have also strengthened their friendship.

Certainly Nell provided an example of the fun-loving royal mistress for Katherine, and neither one pretended to be better than they were. While Louise de Keroualle, another of Charles’s mistresses, clung to the French notion of a royal mistress as an honorable position of state, Nell and Katherine thought otherwise. When anti-Catholic sentiment makes a crowd stop Nell’s carriage, mistaking her for French Louise, Nell famously popped her head through the window and reassured the onlookers that they should be calm and let her pass, because she “was the Protestant whore.”

Katherine, too, believed in calling a spade a spade. It was James’s idea to make her a countess, not Katherine’s, and Katherine wickedly enjoyed reminding the reserved Mary of Orange (the Mary of William and Mary) that she had been Mary’s father’s whore. Shortly before Katherine’s death in 1717, she attended one of George I’s drawing rooms. Among those attending were two other former royal mistresses: Louise , and Elizabeth Villiers, mistress to William II. Cackling with delight, Katherine loudly announced their presence: “Who would have thought that we three old whores should meet here?”

Who, indeed?  By then the time of the Merry Gang were forever done, and no other English royal court would welcome two such outrageous ladies as Katherine and Nell. For better or worse, but certainly for quieter, the palace would never be the same.

Introducing Katherine Sedley, Heroine of "The Countess & the King"

At first glance, Katherine Sedley (1657-1717) doesn’t seem like heroine material. In most English history books, she’s not mentioned at all, and even in histories that concentrate on the Restoration (1660-1685), she’ll merit just a footnote if she’s lucky. She didn’t come from a stellar royal family, or one with notable talent or power. She wasn’t a great beauty, or a queen or princess who changed the course of history.

Yet still I made Katherine Sedley the heroine of my new historical novel, The Countess and the King, and in the perverse ways of writing, all those reasons why Katherine shouldn’t merit a book turned out to be exactly the same reasons why she made for such a wonderfully contradictory heroine.  Katherine was always unpredictable, and always determined to go her own way – not something most 17^th c. English ladies would dare to do.

 Katherine was born the only child of privelged teenaged parents who weren’t much more than children themselves. In another time period, their families would have likely exerted a steadying influence, and seen that the young family followed a responsible path through life. But Katherine was born just before the grim Puritan ways of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate were replaced by the much merrier ones of Charles II, restored at last to his throne. With the king’s return, wealthy young aristocrats like the Sedleys flocked to join the free-wheeling court.

Respectability was out of fashion; exuberant excess was the new style, and young Sir Charles became a well-known libertine, famous for drunken debauchery. His young wife, however, remained at home, sinking deep into madness. Against such a background, Katherine’s upbringing reads like something from a modern tabloid. Her father treated her more like an amusing pet than a daughter, taking her with him to playhouses and taverns and introducing her to his notorious friends.  She was both adored and spoiled, and learned how to drink, swear, and tell off-color jokes, and was equally comfortable with actresses like Nell Gwyn and with the king himself.  With such connections, and as the heiress to her father’s large fortune, Katherine should have been primed for a splendid dynastic marriage.

Except, however, for a few sizable stumbling-blocks. First, Katherine was considered shamefully plain. In a court that prized languid, voluptuous beauties, she was pale, thin, and angular, with heavy brows and a wide mouth.  She was also intelligent, her wit quick and sharp. (Her first portrait, above left, by Sir Peter Lely, shows how she didn’t fit the fashionable ideal, yet still captures the sense that she was a lot of fun.) Most of all, she had no wish to wed and give control of her life to a husband. From her own mother to the queen herself, the court was full of neglected, lonely wives, and Katherine was far too independent for that.  She had her own fortune, and was determined to choose her own loves.  The first two men she gave her heart to very nearly broke it, choosing prettier women to wed instead, and another who she rejected proved to be a fearsome enemy at court.

But finally Katherine found a man who appreciated her: James Stuart, Duke of York, and heir to the throne of England. Katherine didn’t care that James was married, or that he was much older, or that the rest of the court regarded him as a poor second in comparison to his brother the king. James found her witty and outrageously amusing and beautiful, and Katherine gleefully gave herself over to the role of a royal mistress. Her portrait, above right, by Godfrey Kneller from this time shows her unadorned elegance, her expression seemingly bemused by her good fortune.

Even as a prince’s mistress, Katherine couldn’t be conventional. She delighted in the scandal she caused, enjoying every moment of it. But the carefree days were short-lived. James had always been a polarizing figure at court, and before long his religious beliefs made him a politically dangerous one as well. Katherine was thrust into the intrigue, torn between her royal lover and England itself, and her cleverness was valuable not for amusement, but for survival. When Charles suddenly died and James became king, Katherine’s position at court grew all the more perilous. The last portrait, above left, by the studio of Godrey Kneller, shows her soon after James has been crowned, and after he has made her Countess of Dorchester. Formally posed on the edge of a gilded bed, lifting aside the bed curtain in a royal mistress’s welcome, her earlier merriment has vanished. Instead she appears reserved and self-contained, as if she already knows the difficult choice before her, a choice that will determine both her fate, and that of The Countess and the King. 

Salad Days of 1699 with John Evelyn

When we think of dining in late 17th c. England (if, admittedly, we think of it at all), it's the roaring display of roasted beef and venison and pheasant, turtle soup and eel pie. The England of Charles II seems such a time of wine, women, and song, that it's hard to imagine a menu that included...salad.

John Evelyn (1620-1706) was a serious, scholarly gentleman, a public servant, writer, philosopher, and horticulturalist whose agile mind wandered from the study of architecture to gardens, from paintings to the pollution of London. He was a founding member of the Royal Society, and also a friend of Charles II. In a court full of carnivores, Evelyn was a confirmed vegetarian, believing that the key to health was to be found in the garden, not on the hunt. The fact that Evelyn lived to be eighty-six, while the king died shy of his fifty-fifth birthday, might be considered proof enough.

Evelyn was so devoted to his beliefs that he wrote an entire book on the subject: Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets.  Published in 1699, the book  suggested what kinds of plants and herbs to include in a salad garden, their cultivation, and recipes. To Evelyn, raw salads were more fit for masculine tastes, while he recommended that vegetables be "Boil'd, Bak'd, Pickl'd, or otherwise disguis'd, variously accommodated by skillful Cooks, to render them grateful to the more feminine Palat."

On the whole, though, his advice seems remarkably contemporary. Here's how he prepared greens:

Preparatory to the Dressing therefore, let your Herby Ingredients be exquisitely cull'd, and cleans'd of all worm-eaten, slimy, cander'd, dry, spotted, or any way vitiated Leaves. And then that they be rather discretely sprinkl'd, than over-much sob'd with Spring-Water, especially Lettuce....After washing, let them remain a while in the Cullender, to drain the superfluous moisture; And lastly, swing them together gently in a clean course Napkin; and so they will be in perfect condition to receive the Intinctus following.

The "Intinctus" is a dressing of "the Yolks of fresh and new-laid Eggs, boil'd moderately hard, to be mingl'd and mash'd with the Mustard, Olive Oyl, and Vinegar; and cut into quarters, and eat with the Herbs."  Sounds mighty tasty!

Like to try this and other recipes from John Evelyn? Acetaria is available as a thoroughly modern free ebook download here.  With all of John Evelyn's interests, it's very easy to imagine him sitting beneath the trees in his garden with an iPad in hand....

Above: An 18th century kitchen garden in Colonial Williamsburg

Below: John Evelyn, by Sir Godrey Kneller, 1687

Growing Old Gracefully (and Powerfully)

Commenting on a recent blog over at The Two Nerdy History Girls, reader JennyGirl asked if the ladies on my most recent book covers were related. They're not, not even remotely. But for anyone glancing at a group of 17th c. ladies by Sir Peter Lely, (1618-1680) THE portraitist of his time, there is, ahem, a striking similarity.

Much of this is because the ladies wanted to be shown in the fashionable "look" of the time (think of the interchangeable blond starlets of today), and Sir Peter happily obliged. He wasn't wildly successful for nothing. But Sir Peter could certainly paint more than one kind of face, and his two portraits of Elizabeth Maitland, Duchess of Lauderdale (1626-1698) prove it.

In an era of indolent brunette beauties, Elizabeth was unique. She was well-educated, assertive, outspoken, and ambitious, and a countess in her own right. You didn't mess with Bess. During her long life, she studied philosophy, married twice and bore eleven children, served as a Royalist spy during the Civil War, acted as a fierce behind-the-scenes politician on behalf of her husbands, and conducted a love affair considered especially shocking because she was in her forties! Here's an overview of her story.

Elizabeth wasn't conventionally beautiful by the languid standards of the day. Her first portrait by Sir Peter, painted when she was about 22 in 1648 (above left), shows her famously auburn hair (faulted for being "deep coullerd") and sandy brows and lashes. Unconventional or not, she was widely regarded as a great beauty, and praised as well for her wit.

When Sir Peter painted her the last time (above right), between 1675-80, she was in her fifties – absolutely ancient in the 17th c. – yet still confident enough in her appearance not to have herself idealized, but painted as she was.

Some historians simply can't accept this, however, and interpret this portrait as a memento mori, one of those cheerless warnings of mortality and impending death. I don't agree. To me the duchess seems quite content in her own skin and that swath of scarlet silk. She's proud of whom she has become, not who she wishes she still were.

Above: Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart, by Sir Peter Lely, c. 1648, Victoria & Albert Museum (Ham House)

Below: Lady Elizabeth Maitland, Countess of Dysart, Duchess of Lauderdale, by Sir Peter Lely, c. 1680, Victoria & Albert Museum (Ham House)

King Charles II, the Duke of Richmond, & Frances Stewart

King Charles II (1630-1685), left, of England loved women, and women in turn loved him. From high-born peeresses to humble orange-girls, literally hundreds of women enjoyed the royal person during his lifetime. Only one lady of his court is known to have refused him: a beautiful nineteen-year-old Maid of Honor named Frances Stewart (1647-1702), lower right. Although Charles pursued her for months, Frances clearly had other interests. This is an excerpt from the Memoirs of Philibert, Comte de Gramont, one of the greatest gossips of the 17th century.

It was near midnight: the king met [Frances's] chambermaids [at her bedchamber door], who respectfully opposed his entrance, and, in a very low voice, whispered to His Majesty that Miss Stewart had been very ill; but that, having gone to bed, she was God be thanked, in a very fine sleep.

"That I must see," said the king, pushing her back...He found Miss Stewart in bed, indeed, but far from being asleep: the Duke of Richmond was seated at her pillow, and in all probability was less inclined to sleep than herself. The perplexity of the one party, and the rage of the other, were such as may easily be imagined upon such a surprise. The king, who, of all men was one of the most mild and gentle, testified his resentment to the Duke of Richmond in such terms as he had never before used. The duke was speechless, and almost petrified...Miss Stewart's window was very convenient for a sudden revenge, the Thames flowing close beneath it..and seeing the king more incensed...than he thought his nature capable of, [the duke] made a profound bow, and retired, without a single word to the vast torrent of threats and menaces that were poured upon him.

Miss Stewart, having a little recovered from her first surprise, instead of justifying herself...said everything that was most capable to inflame the king's...resentment; that, if she were not allowed to receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond's rank, who came with honourable intentions, she was a slave in a free country;...if this was not permitted her...she did not believe that there was any power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France, and throwing herself into a convent, to enjoy there that tranquillity which was denied her in this court. The king, sometimes furious with anger, sometimes relenting at her tears...nearly was induced to throw himself upon his knees, and entreat pardon for the injury he had done her...when instead she desired him to retire, and leave her in repose, at least for the remainder of that night....This impertinent request provoked and irritated the king to the highest degree: he went out abruptly, vowing never to see her more.

Ladies who refuse kings, let alone berate them in their bedchambers, seldom fare well in history. But Frances won. Soon after this night in 1667, she eloped with her duke, and the pair were married – much to the displeasure and disappointment of the King.

Above: Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, by James Michael Wright

Below: Frances Teresa Stewart, by Sir Peter Lely

Picturing Nell Gwyn

Once upon a time, before every last second of every other person’s life wasdocumented by way of a digital camera or cell-phone (at least every other person beneath a Certain Age), images were special. Before photography and daguerreotypes became widespread in the early 19th century, the overwhelming majority of people lived their entire lives without any sort of visual documentation. No photo-smiles, retouching, good sides or bad. One’s image was based entirely on the here and now, or memory.

Portraits belonged to the rich, the famous, and the infamous. Portraits were expensive, and the formal ones could take months, even years, to complete. Portraits celebrated beauty, rank, wealth, achievement, nobility, or notoriety, and did so for all posterity. Portraits could be viewed and venerated as stand-ins for the actual person, whether the king in a distant colonial outpost or a deceased dowager duchess respectfully added to the other ancestors in the family gallery.

Portraits also grace the covers of my historical novels. I’ve been phenomenally fortunate in my covers, which have each featured an actual portrait of my heroine. In the past, I’ve blogged about the portraits on the covers of Duchess and Royal Harlot, so it seems only fair that I write as well about the portrait of Nell Gwyn on the cover of my current novel, The King’s Favorite.

Those two earlier heroines –– Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland –– were both seventeenth century Ladies with a capital L, and as such they had their choice of the very best and most fashionable artists. They were painted grandly, lushly, extravagantly, with the trappings of their titles and wealth around them. (That's Sarah with her family to the right, and even the younger son is looking flawlessly aristocratic.)

Nell Gwyn was different. Nell was Common. True, she was a celebrity in an era that was just beginning to realize the concept, an immensely popular actress before she became a royal mistress. With her curly auburn hair, she wasn’t considered classically beautiful so much as charmingly pretty (what we’d now call “cute”), and her diminutive size (best modern guesses peg her at about 4’10”) made her an unlikely model for a goddess. She was gleefully unapologetic of her humble beginnings, and only affected grand airs to twit her betters.

But like many people who rise from poverty, Nell was acutely aware of the symbols of success. Although she could scarcely write her name, she made sure that all the silverware (and even many of the window panes) in her townhouse carried her monogram. Nell understood the importance of portraits. She wanted her beauty and success to be honored and preserved for future generations, but more importantly she wanted the notoriously unfaithful Charles to remember her now.

Nell sat for her portrait numerous times during her short life. She didn’t always have the most skilled painters (see the awkward effort to the right by Simon Verelst), and because of her background, she was often shown with one or both breasts bared. Her tiny stature makes her near-nude pose as Venus for Sir Peter Lely seem a little odd to modern eyes (and that's not to mention that weird vertical-futon-thingee she's lounging against), but Charles loved the picture so well that Nell had a copy of it painted for him to hang in his private quarters in the palace. The artists loved painting her as well; because of her great popularity, they could count on selling prints engraved after the original portrait.

The portrait of Nell by Sir Peter Lely on the cover of The King’s Favorite was painted and copied several times, too, and it’s unlikely that this version was the original. My cover is even further removed. For design purposes, my publisher asked for permission from the owners to reverse the painting, and to change the color of the gown from yellow to a more eye-catching red.

There’s another reason for the color change, too, the kind of weird coincidence that delights art historians. If you look back at the cover of Royal Harlot, you’ll see that Barbara is wearing the same yellow gown/blue cloak combination. And I mean the SAME gown and cloak. Because 17th century artists kept “costumes” (long swaths of rich fabric that could be pinned and clasped into a variety of vaguely classical styles) for posing in their studios, it’s very likely that both women are wearing the exact same length of yellow cloth pulled from Sir Peter’s wardrobe –– and I also imagine that Nell might have done so intentionally to irritate Barbara.

But in this painting meant as a gift for Charles, only Nell would have chosen to be painted in such a rural setting. She was Charles’s country mistress, his favorite companion on escapes from the London Court to Windsor Castle. She taught him to fish, and he tried to teach her to ride, and together they swam in the river and strolled through the fields and forests, and it’s likely she wished to remind the king of these balmy, happy days in her company. Her throat and ears bare of jewels and her hair carelessly tousled, she drapes a wreath of wildflowers around the neck of an adoring lamb who may (or may not) represent a besotted, tamed Charles himself.

What did Charles think? Ahh, for that you’ll just have to read The King’s Favorite, and find out for yourself.

Beauty & the Barbara

Since I’ve begun writing historical fiction, I’ve crossed over into a writing-world where nearly ALL the characters are based on real people. I won’t go into every one of the challenges of that kind of research in this blog; I’ll save that for another day. But to my surprise, one of the unexpected ones was having the appearances –– the “beauty”, as it were –– of those characters already determined for you by their portraits. And that beauty doesn’t always agree with contemporary conventions.

Just as most modern-day professional beauties –– fashion models and Hollywood actresses –– would have found little favor in a past that favored the more lushly appointed, it can be hard to look at three-hundred-year-old portraits with modern eyes and see the same thing. My next book, ROYAL HARLOT, is a fictionalized biography of Barbara Villiers Palmer, Countess of Castlemaine and Duchess of Cleveland. She was the most prominent mistress of King Charles II, and one of the baddest bad-girls in English history, which makes for a most entertaining heroine, if not perhaps the best girlfriend you’d call in a pinch. Barbara was universally regarded by her contemporaries as the most beautiful woman in 17th century England. Crowds would gather wherever she went, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Every head would turn when she entered her box at the theatre, and even happily-wed diarist Samuel Pepys made a point of walking by her house on laundry-day, just so he could see her lace-trimmed smocks hung out to dry and fantasize like mad.

Like most famous beauties of the past, Barbara was painted repeatedly, and her portraits by Sir Peter Lily are among the most enduring “images” of the Restoration. But her beauty hasn’t traveled well through the centuries. Sure, Alexander Pope wrote “Lely on animated Canvas stole/the sleepy Eye that spoke the melting soul”, but today those bedroom-eyes look, well, kind of burned-out and druggy, and the double-chins that were so celebrated among Restoration beauties seem matronly –– especially considering that most of these paintings were done before Barbara’s thirtieth birthday.

As a history-nerd, this didn’t bother me. I am up to the challenge. But the marketing folks at my publisher were scared to death, and as a result you won’t find Barbara’s face on the cover when the book hits stores on July 3. Instead we’ll be counting on readers to supply their own mental image of what the most beautiful woman in England looked like –– even if it’s not close to the 17th century truth.