Nell Gwynne's On Land and At Sea

In the year 1848 there was, in the vicinity of Whitehall, an exclusive dining establishment catering to many of those distinguished gentlemen who might be observed going in and out of the Houses of Parliament. Its customers were by no means limited to statesmen and peers, however; Royal Society members, journalists, and other prominent and powerful personages dined there as well.

Several floors beneath the restaurant, communicating with it by means of a cleverly-concealed ascending room, was an even more exclusive establishment with a somewhat more limited clientele. Its membership was by invitation only, and invitations were generally extended only to persons likely to be privy to official secrets. The place was called Nell Gwynne’s, and was, to be perfectly plain, a brothel.

However…

Do not imagine, Reader, that Nell Gwynne’s was in any way a conventional house of ill repute. Its staff were, one and all, gentlewomen of some education who possessed certain talents (beyond those skills with which a reasonably experienced whore might be supposed to be familiar) that might have astonished their regular clientele, had they ever had occasion to learn of them. The artful extraction and retail of official secrets was foremost, but now and then the judicious use of firearms, code decryption or explosives might be required.

On the thirtieth of June a rare mood prevailed in the elegantly-appointed chambers far below King Street. There was a wistfulness amongst the gentlemen customers being entertained, and a certain blitheness amongst the ladies doing the entertaining, and for the same reason: Nell Gwynne’s was about to undergo its annual closure for its summer holidays. For the space of an entire month, Nell Gwynne’s regular customers would be obliged to seek their fornication elsewhere, as its staff would spend four weeks at the seaside.

The business of a brothel is at bottom a banal one. The solaces of the flesh are the common privilege of every man, upstairs or down, and so the habitués of Nell Gwynne’s paid more for characterization, theatrical detail and a certain specificity of satiation than for the simple act of sexual congress. They also expected a higher level of attention from their demi-mondaines, and thus the more sensitive patrons were aware that underlying the ladies’ enthusiasm (which could not honestly be denied) was their happy anticipation of well-earned holidays.

Mrs. Otley, who wore a jockey’s silks and employed, amongst other things, a bit and bridle, plied her riding crop today with a shade more cheery liberality than was her custom on the buttocks of Sir Arthur H., who whinnied appreciatively as he bore her around the room. Across the hall Miss Rendlesham, who presided over a chamber got up as a schoolroom, was belaboring likewise the buttocks of Lord Q., bent over a form and roaring as he promised to be a good boy henceforth. Privately, however, he felt that she wielded her birch rod with something less than her customary sternness.

In the next room over, Herbertina Lovelace, who affected midshipman’s garb and wore her hair cropped, counterfeited tearful protests as she dropped her trousers for Sir Dennis F. Sir Dennis was gaudily dressed in a naval costume to which he was not, in fact, entitled, never having got any nearer to armed service than strolling near the Horse Guards’ parade ground. It was just as well Herbertina presented her back to Sir Dennis, for otherwise he might have detected a certain insincere sparkle in her eyes as she begged the great fierce admiral not to shockingly abuse a poor young man so.

Major-General Francis P., on the other hand, while more than entitled to his uniform and a chestful of medals beside, had elected to wear a golden wig and schoolgirl’s frock today as he simulated sapphic delights with the three Devere sisters, Jane, Dora and Maude. If their squeals of merriment were a bit more gleeful than was customary, the Major-General didn’t mind;
he
liked jolliness in his little friends.

Even Lady Beatrice (a pseudonym, employed out of respect for her late father’s name), who was customarily of a work-womanlike disposition, might have been seen to exhibit a certain absent-mindedness in her attention to her duties. However, as she was presently clad solely in a layer of pale powder and a black velvet collar, and was, besides, impersonating a recently deceased person at the request of the Honorable Edwin J., she was not taxed in her contemplation of a month’s sunny leisure while that gentleman wept over her corpse and frenziedly abused himself. And, fortunately, the Honorable Edwin J. was not an exceptionally observant youth.

One by one, as their lusts were seen to, the respective gentlemen were dressed and ushered on their way to the ascending room, whence they departed after a final cigar or glass of brandy (or, for the Honorable Edwin J., lemon squash) in the reception parlor.

“Hurrah!” cried Herbertina, shrugging out of her brass-buttoned jacket. “Here’s to blessed chastity!”

“Here’s to the whole month of July!” Jane danced a few steps of a Highland Fling.

“Here’s to the balmy breezes of Torbay!” Dora pretended to snap castanets with her fingers. Lady Beatrice emerged from her changing room at this point, still powdered a ghostly white, and sprinted ahead of the others.

“First to the baths!” she called gaily, and the others raced after her, shedding garments as they went.

At the other end of the corridor, a somewhat less convivial scene was taking place. Mrs. Corvey, the proprietress of Nell Gwynne’s, sat in her office regarding Mrs. Merridge, the establishment’s cook. Mrs. Merridge avoided Mrs. Corvey’s eyes, not out of any particular sense of guilt but because Mrs. Corvey had none.

Which is to say, Mrs. Corvey did not possess human eyes. Having lost her sight as a consequence of working in a pin factory by limited light for most of her childhood, she had readily agreed when the artificers of the Gentleman’s Speculative Society (which discreet organization underwrote Nell Gwynne’s) invited her to undergo an experimental process intended to restore vision. Her black goggles concealed a pair of optical implants which, although providing her with superior sight by day, by night and by infrared as well as having a telescopic function, did not in any manner resemble
eyes
.

“This is rather short notice, Mrs. Merridge,” said Mrs. Corvey.

“I can’t help that, Ma’am,” Mrs. Merridge replied. “It come on me sudden. My brother gave me this tract what opened my eyes to sinfulness. I asked myself, what would Jesus say if I was to meet Him right now? And I can’t think He’d approve of the way I earn my wages, you know.”

“But you aren’t a whore, Mrs. Merridge,” said Mrs. Corvey. “You simply cook for them. It says in the Bible our Lord dined with sinners and publicans, don’t it? Now, who do you suppose done the cooking for them? Somebody had to.”

“Yes. Well. Be that as it may,” said Mrs. Merridge. “What do you expect our Lord would have to say to
you,
eh?”

“To
me
? ‘Sorry about the eyes, dear, just do the best you can’?” Mrs. Corvey guessed acidly. “Right, then, Mrs. Merridge, if you must go, you must. The Gentlemen will have something to say about it, however.”

Mrs. Merridge went a little pale. “I’m not telling none of your secrets! I signed that paper, didn’t I?”

The Gentlemen in question were those of the Speculative Society, of course. Operating out of a subterranean lair under Craig’s Court connected to Nell Gwynne’s by hidden tunnels, they were the recipients of all intelligence gathered therein, and had provided Mrs. Corvey not only with her new eyes but a number of other useful devices. Unfortunately, dependable servants were not among these devices, and Mrs. Corvey had to deal with the age-old vagaries of cooks as personally as any other London lady.

“To be sure, you did, Mrs. Merridge,” said Mrs. Corvey, with a sniff. “They’ll want to debrief you, all the same.”

Wondering uneasily what
debrief
might mean, Mrs. Merridge said, “I’m sure I’ve always been a woman of my word!”

“No doubt. It’s out of my hands now, I fear,” said Mrs. Corvey, drawing a blank form from a drawer in her desk. Dipping a pen in her inkwell, she wrote briefly on the form and sealed it with a gummed label. She wrote an address on the back and pushed it across the blotter to Mrs. Merridge. “Just you take that round to that address. The Gentlemen will see to your last month’s wages. I’m not saying anything about a reference, mind you.”

Mrs. Merridge stared at the form a long moment before picking it up and departing without a word. Mrs. Corvey exhaled forcefully.

“Bugger,” she said. Mrs. Merridge had excelled at making water ices, of which Mrs. Corvey was particularly fond. “Well, can’t be helped, I suppose.”

Cheered somewhat by the prospect of a month’s holiday, Mrs. Corvey rose and locked up her office.

At the appointed hour next day, the respectable blind widow who lived with her large and remarkably female household at a respectable address sallied forth, family in tow. From the arm of her young son Herbert (in reality Herbertina, in customary male attire) she directed the loading of trunks into a hired carriage, and squeezed in amongst her purported daughters. Herbert hopped up beside the driver, lit up a cigar, and they were off for the railway station!

It was rumored among the Gentlemen (and hence among the Ladies of Nell Gwynne’s) that the Society had subterranean tunnels communicating the length and breadth of England; indeed, of Europe itself. However, these were for official business only, if indeed they existed, and the holiday party was obliged to rely upon the technological marvels of the current age.

They thus endured an interesting journey, featuring three separate mechanical breakdowns, on Mr. Isembard Kingdom Brunel’s Atmospheric Railway. When they arrived in sunny Torquay, Mrs. Corvey was heard to mutter that being shot from tubes like bleeding champagne corks would never catch on.

A very brief interval afterward, suitably freshened and changed, Mrs. Corvey was seated comfortably on a carriage-rug on the red sands below Beacon Hill, shading herself with a parasol. Jane, Dora and Maude, in identical bathing costumes of blue serge, squealed and splashed happily around the rear steps of a bathing machine. Mrs. Otley wandered the sunny strand, looking for seashells to add to her collection. To one side of Mrs. Corvey, Herbertina sprawled lazily, hat drawn over her eyes. Beyond Herbertina, Miss Rendlesham relaxed with the first volume of
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

At Mrs. Corvey’s right hand Lady Beatrice opened her workbag and got out her knitting. It was her custom to make infant garments and present them to charities for poor families. It rather nonplussed the directors of charities that she worked exclusively in scarlet wool, but the infants were not heard to complain.

Midway through a shell-stitch jumper, Lady Beatrice remarked: “I trust I won’t offend, Mrs. Corvey, if I ask whether something troubles you?”

Mrs. Corvey, who had been sitting rather stiffly, shrugged. “It’s only Mrs. Merridge giving notice as she did. What cooks have against other working women, I’m sure I can’t imagine! And it’s always so tedious finding a new cook when they’ve got to get security clearance through the Gentlemen first, and now I shall have to think about that waiting for me at the end of the month.”

“Never mind it,” said Herbertina, somewhat muffled by her hat. “I’m sure there’s enough of us can cook a dish or two ourselves, until we find someone new. Aren’t there, girls?”

“I’m certain there are,” agreed Lady Beatrice. “I, for example, make a quite passable curried mutton.”

“Where’d you learn to make that?” Herbertina tilted her hat back to peer at Lady Beatrice.

“Jellalabad.”

“Oh,” said Herbertina, and asked nothing further, knowing as she did that Lady Beatrice had survived the Siege of Jellalabad only after surviving the Retreat from Kabul, in which her father’s regiment had died to the last man. “Well, I can toast muffins over a fire. You can put quite a lot of things on toasted muffins and make a decent meal. Pilchards. Anchovy relish. You know. I learned that at Eton.”

“What were you doing at Eton?” Miss Rendlesham looked up from her novel.

“It’s a long story.”