What you don't say

Sometimes what you don't say is even more important than what you do say.

When I walked through St James's on Saturday, I came across this blue plaque. These signs commemorate famous people who've lived in a house or in a house on the very same site or an important historic events. I'd written a newsfeature about blue plaques for the course some weeks ago.

This plaque is suspicious as it doesn't say who Nell Gwynne was. Eleanor "Nell" Gwynne was in fact one of the earliest English actresses to receive prominent recognition, and a long-time mistress of King Charles II. According to Wikipedia she has come to be considered a folk heroine, with a story echoing the rags-to-royalty tale of Cinderella.

My guide book tells a nice story about her. The house she lived in (the one with the blue plaque; Pall Mall no. 79) had a garden which backed onto the grounds of St James's Palace so that she and Charles II could chat over the garden wall.

"It was from one of the windows overlooking the garden that Nell is alleged to have dangled her 6-year-old, threatening to drop him if Charles didn't acknowledge paternity and give the boy a title, at which Charles yelled out "Save the Earl of Burford!"; another, more tabloid-style version of the story alleges that Charles was persuaded only after overhearing Nell saying: "Come her, you little bastard", then excusing herself on the grounds that she had no other name by which to call him." (The Rough Guide to London, page 83)