Our book today is not exactly the Final Word: it’s The Story of Nell Gwyn (and the Sayings of Charles the Second), as “related and collected” by the now-forgotten Victorian editor and biographer Peter Cunningham in 1883. It’s a slightly oversized gold-gilded production of recounted Restoration trifles, just the kind of things for which Cunningham was, as London editors knew, an extremely reliable source. He was a rummager of archives and a knocker-together of friendly books of extracts, the kind of historian other historians tend to disdain – and who passes on that disdain in liberal helpings whenever possible. In the second paragraph of The Story of Nell Gwyn, for instance, he manages the smooth knight-fork of condescending not only to his subject but to his readers and his entire country of birth:

The English people have always entertained a peculiar liking for Nell Gwyn. There is a sort of indulgence towards her not generally conceded to any other woman of her class. Thousands are attracted by her name, they know not why, and do not stay to inquire. It is the popular impression that, with all her failings, she had a generous as well as a tender heart; that when raised from poverty, she reserved her wealth for others rather than herself; and that the influence she possessed was often exercised for good objects, and never abused.

There isn’t much accuracy in that parting string of accolades, but you don’t have to read much of The Story of Nell Gwyn to realize that accuracy isn’t high on Cunningham’s list of priorities. This is primarily a moralizing tract, and since our author is aware that his “Nelly” has lost none of her power to charm for being several centuries dead, he takes pains to remind us of his pious assumptions from time to time. “I have no intention,” he writes, “of finding a model heroine in a coal-yard, or any wish either to palliate or condemn too severely the frailties of the woman whose story I have attempted to relate.” Charming.

Predictably, the latter section of his book, the pages related to King Charles II and his witticisms and his Court of prissified sycophants, is rolled out with more gusto and less arm’s-length disdain. Here Cunningham is ready with every favorable anecdote about the “Merry Monarch,” eager to repeat the praise of every hanger-on as Gospel truth:

That he understood foreign affairs better than all his councils and counsellors put together was the repeated remark of the Lord Keeper Guildford. In his exile he had acquired either a personal acquaintance with most of the eminent statesmen of Europe, or else from such as could instruct him he had received their characters: – and this knowledge, the Lord Keeper would continue, he perpetually improved by conversing with men of quality and ambassadors, whom he would sift, and by what he obtained from them (“possibly drunk as well as sober”), would serve himself one way or other. “When they sought,” his lordship added, “to sift him – who, to give him his due, was but too open – he failed not to make his best of them.”

Although not even the late-Victorian pining for a male monarch can completely suppress the moral scold – historical condescension is a tough habit to break. “His love of wine was the common failing of his age,” we’re rather delicately told of Charles. Charming.