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Very little is known about Nell Gwyn though her popularity is hardly rivalled by that of any other heroine of English history.

A few facts, a collection of anecdotes, mostly dubious, several portraits, many of which are also dubious, some doubtful personal relics—and that is all we really have of Nell Gwyn.

The whole information we possess about her would go into a few pages and these would seem of trivial import beneath any serious chronicle of the times or manners; indeed, an attempt to write weightily of indiscreet, charming Nelly must result in a prodigious amount of padding before the dignity of a volume is achieved, and then the spirit of the delicious actress is likely to be overlaid by the doings of her contemporaries.

In the following pages, what history and tradition tell us of Nell Gwyn has been told as a decorative romance, where no liberty has been taken with what we know or believe to be the truth. Fancy has been allowed to enlarge upon it, and, though the narrative must be taken as fiction, it contains no fictitious characters, nor do those which appear there, say or do anything that does not tally with what they are known to have said or to have done.

As the romance concerns only Eleanor Gwyn who never meddled with great affairs, these are left out of this picture of the reign of Charles II, which is only sought to provide a background for the figure of the heroine.

None of the details, however, outrage history or defy probability.

Marjorie Bowen.

Lancaster Gate, London. December, 1925.