and that Nelly and Beck Marshall falling out the other day, the latter called the other my Lord Buckhurst's mistress. Nell answered her, 'I was but one man's mistress, though I was brought up in a brothel to fill strong water[1] to the gentlemen; and you are a mistress to three or four, though a Presbyter's praying daughter.'" This, for a girl of any virtue or beauty, was indeed a bad bringing-up.
The Coal Yard, infamous in later years as one of the residences of Jonathan Wild, was the next turning in the same street to the still more notorious and fashionably inhabited Lewknor Lane, where young creatures were inveigled to infamy, and sent dressed as orange-girls to sell fruit and attract attention in the adjoining theatres.
That this was Nelly's next calling we have the testimony of the Duchess of Portsmouth and the authority of a poem of the time, attributed to Lord Rochester:
But first the basket her fair arm did suit,
Laden with pippins and Hesperian fruit;
This first step raised, to the wondering pit she sold
The lovely fruit smiling with streaks of gold.
- ↑ Among Mr. Akerman's "Tradesmen's Tokens current in London, 1648 to 1672," is that of "a strong water man."
