What with acting, and supping, and an easy conscience, Mistress Oldfield gaily trod the primrose path of dalliance, and Cupid hovered near, albeit there was no law to chain him to the scene.  But one day he took to his wings and flew away, after witnessing the untimely death (November 1712) of Mr. Maynwaring.  The latter made his exit with the assistance of three physicians, and Nance was near to smooth the departure.[A] Then came the funeral, and after that Mrs. Mayn—­Mrs. Oldfield dried her lovely eyes (did she not have enough weeping to do when she played in tragedy?), and began once more to think upon the joys of existence.

[Footnote A:  He died at St. Albans, November 13, 1712, of a consumption, and was attended in his last illness by Doctors Garth, Radcliffe and Blackmore.  In his will he appointed Mrs. Oldfield, the celebrated actress, his executrix, with whom he had lived for several years, and by whom he had a son, named Arthur Maynwaring.  His estate was equally divided between this child, its mother and his sister.—­“Memoirs of the Celebrated Persons Comprising the Kit-Kat Club.”]

When General Churchill, a nephew of the great Duke of Marlborough, suggested to the disconsolate widow-by-brevet that she should share his home, the proposal was accepted, and the actress entered for a second time into a free-and-easy compact, and for a second time remained faithful thereto until her new admirer went the way of Mr. Maynwaring.  It was even rumoured—­scandalous gossip!—­that the two were married; and one day the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, asked the “incomparable sweet girl,” who was attending a royal levee, whether such were indeed the case.  “So it is said, may it please your Royal Highness,” diplomatically replied Nance, “but we have not owned it yet.”

To Churchill our unsteady heroine presented one son, and it was through the marriage of the latter that the swift-running blood of Oldfield now courses through the veins of the first Earl of Cadogan’s descendants.[A] This son and the one who bore the name of Maynwaring were the only two children credited, or discredited, to the actress, but there appears to have been a mysterious daughter, a Miss Dye Bertie, who became, as Mrs. Delany tells us, “the pink of fashion in the beau monde, and married a nobleman.”  It would not be wise, however, to peer too closely into the dim vista of the past.  The picture might prove unpleasant.

[Footnote A:  Her son, Colonel Churchill, once, unconsciously, saved Sir Robert Walpole from assassination, through the latter riding home from the House in the Colonel’s chariot instead of alone in his own.  Unstable Churchill married a natural daughter of Sir Robert, and their daughter Mary married, in 1777, Charles Sloane, first Earl of Cadogan....  When Churchill and his wife were travelling in France, a Frenchman, knowing he was connected with poets or players, asked him if he was Churchill the famous poet.  “I am not,” said Mrs. Oldfield’s son.  “Ma foi!” rejoined the polite Frenchman, “so much the worse for you.”—­DR. DORAN.]