The following is an account which I somewhere read of Nell Gwynn,
when a child:--“My first love, you must know, was a link-boy,”--“A
_what_?”--“’Tis true,” said she, “for all the frightfulness of your
_what_!--and a very good soul he was, too, poor Dick! and had the
heart of a gentleman; God knows what has become of him, but when I
last saw him he said he would humbly love me to his dying day. He used
to say that I must have been a lord’s daughter for my beauty, and
that I ought to ride in my coach; and he behaved to me as if I did.
He, poor boy, would light me and my mother home, when we had sold our
oranges, to our lodgings in Lewknor’s Lane, as if we had been ladies
of the land. He said he never felt easy for the evening ’till he had
asked me how I did, then he went gaily about his work; and if he saw
us housed at night, he slept like a prince. I shall never forget when
he came flushing and stammering, and drew out of his pocket a pair of
worsted stockings, which he brought for my naked feet. It was bitter
cold weather; and I had chilblains, which made me hobble about ’till I
cried,--and what does poor Richard do but work hard like a horse, and
buy me these worsted stockings? My mother bade him put them on; and so
he did, and his warm tears fell on my chilblains, and he said he should
be the happiest lad on earth if the stockings did me any good.”
When the Commissioners visited the Penitentiary at Lambeth, where the
prisoners are punished by solitary confinement, they found in one cell
a little girl, between eleven and twelve years of age. This child must
have spent many hours every day in the dark; was poorly clad, and
scantily fed, and her young limbs were deprived of all the joyous modes
of playful exercise, so necessary and so pleasant to that age: she
asked neither for food, nor clothes, nor light, nor liberty,--all she
wished for was “a little doll, that she might dress and nurse it.” Her
innocent and child-like request put an end to this cruel punishment for
children.
“I yesterday took my dear grand-daughter to see Westminster Abbey. She
is between seven and eight years of age, and is one of the sweetest
angels that ever existed on earth. It was a bitter cold morning: on
the tomb of Mrs. Warren, who was a mother to poor children, there is
a beautiful statue of a poor half-clothed Irish girl, with her little
naked baby in her arms;--my dear little child looked up at me, and,
through her tears, earnestly said, ‘How I _should_ like to nurse that
little baby!’”