Word: nell
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...Nell grew up in her mother's establishment, sweeping the fireplaces and "serving strong waters to the guests." At 13, she improved her station to that of an "orange wench," selling fruit in the theater pit. At 14, the chronicler reports, she was "eased of her virginity," probably by a famous actor, Charles Hart, who cast her in a small part...
...Pretty, witty Nell" soon became a fine comedian, caused such an uproar with her sallies and such a sensation with her "neat silk leg and pair of holland thighs" that half of the Restoration bucks were bidding for her favors. Hart sold her to Lord Buckhurst, but Nelly didn't like him, and besides, a scepter was already tapping at her door. Poet John Dryden has described some of the charms that caught the royal eye: "Oval face, clear skin, hazel eyes, thick brown eyebrows ... a full nether lip ... the bottom of your cheeks a little blub...
Pride of Petticoat. Like all the King's women, Nell was paid out of the Secret Service funds. The payments grew as Nell grew on His Majesty, until she was established as mistress of ?5,000 a year and a mansion in Pall Mall, and was second only to the Duchess of Portsmouth in the King's affections...
...Nell brought to the feverish, pale-blooded court of Charles a throb of natural England. The tales of her fishwife eloquence in high places made her-in a phrase that was intended as an epithet but became an accolade-"the darling strumpet of the crowd." Once, for instance, she was so proud of her new petticoats that right in the presence of the French ambassador, she lifted them one by one. In line of duty, the Frenchman sat down and wrote a report to his foreign minister back home: "I never in all my life saw such thorough cleanliness, neatness...
When the haughty Duchess of Cleveland, another of the King's mistresses, put on airs with her baseborn rival, Nell gave her a friendly whop on the shoulder, and remarked philosophically that "persons of one trade loved not one another." And one day, when popular hostility to Rome was at its height, Nelly's coach was mobbed by Whigs, who thought it carried the King's Catholic mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth. Never at a loss, Nell stuck her head out of the window and bellowed: "Pray, good people, be civil. I am the Protestant whore...