end of
the Strand, however, was Drury Lane, then the haunt of criminals and
every kind of wretch, while nearer still was the notorious Coal Yard,
where no citizen dared go unarmed.

Within this dreadful place children were kidnapped and trained to
various forms of vice. It was a school for murderers and robbers and
prostitutes; and every night when the torches flared it vomited forth
its deadly spawn. Here was the earliest home of Eleanor Gwyn, and out of
this den of iniquity she came at night to sell oranges at the entrance
to the theaters. She was stage-struck, and endeavored to get even a
minor part in a play; but Betterton, the famous actor, thrust her aside
when she ventured to apply to him.

It must be said that in everything that was external, except her beauty,
she fell short of a fastidious taste. She was intensely ignorant even
for that time. She spoke in a broad Cockney dialect. She had lived the
life of the Coal Yard, and, like Zola's Nana, she could never remember
the time when she had known the meaning of chastity.

Nell Gwyn was, in fact, a product of the vilest slums of London; and
precisely because she was this we must set her down as intrinsically a
good woman--one of the truest, frankest, and most right-minded of
whom the history of such women has anything to tell. All that external
circumstances could do to push her down into the mire was done; yet she
was not pushed down, but emerged as one of those rare souls who have in
their natures an uncontaminated spring of goodness and honesty. Unlike
Barbara Villiers or Lucy Walters or Louise de Keroualle, she was neither
a harpy nor a foe to England.

Charles is said first to have met her when he, incognito, with another
friend, was making the rounds of the theaters at night. The king spied
her glowing, nut-brown face in one of the boxes, and, forgetting his
incognito, went up and joined her. She was with her protector of the
time, Lord Buckhurst, who, of course, recognized his majesty.

Presently the whole party went out to a neighboring coffee-house, where
they drank and ate together. When it came time to pay the reckoning the
king found that he had no money, nor had his friend. Lord Buckhurst,
therefore, paid the bill, while Mistress Nell jeered at the other two,
saying that this was the most poverty-stricken party that she had ever
met.

Charles did not lose sight of her. Her frankness and honest manner
pleased him. There came a time when she wa