Let us too for a little hour forget responsibility and fall in with the spirit of the times; while we tipple and toast, and vainly boast: “The King! Long live the King!”
Old Drury Lane was alive as the sun was setting, on the day of our visit to London Town, with loungers and loafers; busy-bodies and hawkers; traffickers of sweets and other petty wares; swaggering soldiers, roistering by, stopping forsooth to throw kisses to inviting eyes at the windows above.
As we turn into Little Russell Street from the Lane, passing many chairs richly made, awaiting their fair occupants, we come upon the main entrance to the King’s House. Not an imposing or spacious structure to be sure, it nevertheless was suited to the managerial purposes of the day, which were, as now, to spend as little and get as much as may be. The pit was barely protected from the weather by a glazed cupola; so that the audience could not always hear the sweetest song to a finish without a drenching, or dwell upon the shapeliness of the prettiest ankle, that revealed itself in the dance by means of candles set on cressets, which in those days sadly served the purposes of foot-lights.
It was Dryden’s night. His play was on–“The Conquest of Granada.” The best of London were there; for a first night then was as attractive as a first night now. In the balcony were draped boxes, in which lovely gowns were seen–lovely hair and lovely gems; but the fair faces were often masked.
The King sat listless in the royal box, watching the people and the play or passing pretty compliments with the fair favourites by his side, diverted, perchance, by the ill-begotten quarrel of some fellow with a saucy orange-wench over the cost of her golden wares. The true gallants preferred being robbed to haggling–for the shame of it.
A knowing one in the crowd was heard to say: “‘Tis Castlemaine to the King’s left.”
“No, ’tis Madame Carwell; curse her,” snarled a more vulgar companion.
“Madame Querouaille, knave, Duchess of Portsmouth,” irritably exclaimed a handsome gallant, himself stumbling somewhat over the French name, though making a bold play for it, as he passed toward his box, pushing the fellow aside. He added a moment later, but so that no one heard: “Portsmouth is far from here.”
It was the Duke of Buckingham–the great Duke of Buckingham, in the pit of the King’s House! Truly, we see strange things in these strange times! Indeed, William Penn himself did not hesitate to gossip with the orange-wenches, unless Pepys lied–and Pepys never lied.
“What said he?” asked a stander-by, a butcher, who, with apron on and sleeves to elbow, had hastily left his stall at one of the afternoon and still stood with mouth agape and fingers widespread waiting for the play. Before, however, his sooty companion could answer, they were jostled far apart.