_HEATH STREET TO THE UPPER FLASK AND SPANIARDS._
Heath Street[116] is long and straggling, with nothing remarkable in it
but the florid-looking new fire-brigade office at its entrance on the
left, in a line with what is called the Mount,[117] one of the several
little hills on which Hampstead is built, and which has been cut through
to form the roadway and street beneath it. Some good private houses and
gardens crest the Mount, and some fine old elm-trees, for the growth
of which Hampstead has always been remarkable, remain on the same side
of the way. A little distance along Heath Street on the left is Grove
Passage, and nearly opposite a lane leading to the rather depressed
neighbourhood of New End, in which the workhouse is situated. Just beyond
Grove Passage lie Silver Street and Golden Square, with nothing in their
present appearance, except irony, to suggest the etymology of the names.
Further on to the right is Elm Row, leading past Christ Church to Cannon
Road and Squire’s Mount.
Continuing its uphill way a little farther, Heath Street terminates
upon the edge of the Heath. The high wall extending some distance along
the east side of the street incloses the garden and pleasure-grounds of
what was once the Upper Flask Tavern, but is now a private residence so
grave and respectable in appearance that no one would suspect the rather
rackety reputation of its youth. A line of fine old elm-trees with bulged
and warted trunks, interspersed with younger trees, stands in formal row
at the side of the house looking to the Heath.
In the first period of Hampstead’s popularity as a spa, the Upper Flask
was famous for its fine gardens—‘a sort of _petit_ Vauxhall’—on gala
nights, for the noble views from its upper windows, its good ales, fine
wines, and cosy suppers, a little less severely simple than Sir Roger
de Coverley’s. Especially was it famous as the summer meeting-place of
the celebrated Kit-Cat Club,[118] a fact eloquent as to the excellence
of its cellar and the skill of its _chef_. The club was first held at
the Trumpet, at the west side of Shire Lane, St. Clement Danes, and
subsequently at the Tavern in King Street, Westminster, near to which
lived Christopher Kat, cook and confectioner, who supplied the members
with pastry so excellent that, according to Bowyer, they complimented
him by giving his name to the club. A wit has preserved in one of the
many epigrams it gave rise to another origin for the name, and tells us
it arose from the liberal yet somewhat selfish chivalry of the members,
who, to add to the number of their toasts, were wont to include all the
beauties, and were not fastidious as to the matter of age:
‘Whence deathless Kit-Cat took its name
Few critics can unriddle;
Some say from pastrycook it came,
And some from Cat-and-Fiddle.
‘From no trim beau its name it boasts,
Gray statesman, or green wits,
But from its pell-mell pack of toasts,
Of old Cats and young Kits!’
We know that the club was Whig in politics, and had for its object ‘the
Protestant succession of the House of Hanover.’ It was also eminently
literary, counting amongst the thirty-nine noblemen and gentlemen of whom
it consisted some of the finest scholars, wits, and poets of the day, so
that from its commencement in 1700[119] (some writers say 1688) to its
close in 1720 it was a power politically and intellectually in the land.
Its secretary, Jacob Tonson—‘genial Jacob,’ Pope calls him[120]—one of a
family of remarkable printers and publishers, survived the dissolution
of the club sixteen years, dying March 24, 1736, at Ledbury in
Herefordshire. Kneller painted the portraits of the members, which at the
breaking up of the club were given to the secretary, who left them to his
great-nephew.
[Illustration: _Swift._]
In 1833 they were in the possession of William Baker, Esq., of
Crayfordbury.[121]
Amongst the company to the Upper Flask came Dr. Garth,[122] Addison,
Swift, Steele, Parnell, Sir Richard Blackmore, Sir Godfrey Kneller, Dr.
Arbuthnot, and others whose names are not connected with my subject.
But the friendship of the associates did not end with good-fellowship.
Few things redound more to the credit of this famous club than the
firmness of its members’ regard for one another, which often showed
itself very practically, as in Addison’s frequent assistance of Steele,
till wearied by his recklessness and folly, and in Swift’s help to him at
a critical moment, which we have already glanced at.
For the sake of these celebrities the Upper Flask had been famous long
before Richardson made the persecuted Clarissa alight there from the
Hampstead coach. The mulberry-tree, now held together by iron bands,[123]
in what was once the garden of the tavern, may have shaded in those
far-off summers the brows of Isaac Bickerstaffe, Obadiah Greenhat,
and others of the witty confederates banded against the vices and
frivolities of the times. Their charming essays remain with us in the
too-little-looked-at pages of the _Spectator_, _Guardian_, and _Tatler_.
A few years later we should have found Colley Cibber, playwright and
actor, seated beneath it, discussing stage business with his theatrical
allies, Wilkes and Booth, over tankards of brown ale or a bowl of punch;
or it may be the great Dr. Johnson himself, in his ‘bushy, grayish wig,
brown clothes, black worsted stockings, and plain shirt’ (a solecism
in the days of lace ruffles and embroidery). Goldsmith, too, may have
sat there, having strolled through the pleasant fields from his cottage
lodging ‘near a place called Kilburn Priory,’ with the MS. of his
‘Animated Nature.’ And Richardson must have been familiar with the place
of his heroine’s attempted seclusion.
Samuel Stanton, vintner, was the proprietor of the Upper Flask, or Upper
Bowling-green House, as it was called in 1707. He left it to his nephew
and namesake, a man of considerable wealth and standing, it would appear,
whose sister was married to the Earl of Warwick, and who bequeathed
this house in 1750 to his niece, Lady Charlotte Rich, their daughter. In
all probability it continued to be let as an inn for a considerable time
after this date. A writer in the _Universal Museum_, 1764, says that,
going to Hampstead to observe an eclipse of the sun, he noticed near the
Upper Flask a stone fixed, stating that this spot was as high as the
cupola of St. Paul’s. The stone has long since disappeared, but this note
proves the existence of the tavern till within five years of the date
when it came to be the property of George Steevens, the indefatigable
annotator of Shakespeare, twenty of whose plays he published from the
original text, and with the aid of Johnson brought out a complete edition
of them in 1773. The fourth edition of his plays of Shakespeare, with
notes, was undertaken and finished wholly by himself in the short space
of eighteen months. To facilitate the printing of it, and prevent any
delay for want of copy, proofs, etc., he was in the habit of starting
with the patrol from Hampstead every morning between four and five
o’clock, without reference to season or weather, taking with him the copy
written overnight.[124]
‘Him still from Hampstead journeying with his book
Aurora oft for Cephalus mistook,
What time he brushed the dew with hasty pace,
To meet the printer’s dev’let face to face.’[125]
In his time the house was simply paled in, and had a fair lawn before it,
surrounded by picturesque trees and shrubs. A man of fine taste, but of
a violent and uncertain disposition, George Steevens lived in retirement
at Hampstead for nearly thirty years (twenty-one of them in this house),
‘excluding all local acquaintance.’ He is said to have expended £2,000 in
improving and beautifying the house and grounds. He died here in 1800,
aged sixty-two, and was buried in the chapel at Poplar, in which parish
he was born, being the son of a sea-captain in the service of the East
India Company, subsequently a director. A monument by Flaxman and an
epitaph by Hayley distinguish his tomb.[126]
In 1812, when John Carey published the fifth edition of his ‘New
Itinerary, or Book of the Roads,’ this house was in the possession
of Thomas Sheppard, Esq., M.P. for Frome,[127] who retained it till
1845, when it passed into other hands. At this present writing it is
the property of Mrs. Lister. Immediately opposite is the green mound
and ornamental shrubbery of the New Reservoir, and at the end of the
wall, continued from the house, and enclosing the once busy stable-yard
and offices of the Upper Flask, a path runs into the Holford Road, by
Heathfield House, and so to the East Heath.
On the opposite side of the road is the Whitestone Pond, and here the
visitor finds himself
‘High on bleak Hampstead’s swarthy moor,’
as Macaulay has it, a line all very well for poetical purposes, but by no
means characteristic of Hampstead Heath, with its pure, etherized air,
full of brightness on the least pretence of sunshine, and though bleak
enough at this eminence with the wind at N.N.E., even balmy then in some
one or other of its many walks and sheltered valleys. It is true that
Gilchrist in his ‘Life of Blake’ speaks of the depth and monotony of the
tints prevailing in the woods and fields about Hampstead. But Collins and
Constable, Linnell, Leslie, and Landseer, and a host of later artists,
have not found them so. To them the Heath, with its broken ground,
varied herbage, and picturesque trees or groups of them, its splendid
cloudscapes, its changeful lights and shadows, has proved an art school
full of infinite variety and inexhaustible beauty. Here Collins came
for his old trees, his undulating banks, ‘full of flowering grasses,
and dark dock leaves,’ and the light and shade and reflections that
delight us in his pictures. Here, too, he met his ‘Harvest Showers’ and
‘Blackberry-Gatherers,’ and just across the Heath, where we are going, is
the scene of his ‘Taking out a Thorn’ (this picture is in the possession
of Her Majesty). And Constable, he who never saw an ugly thing in his
life, ‘for light and shade and perspective will make it beautiful,’[128]
he, too, found by every hedge and in every lane treasures of form and
tint, which Nature scatters broadcast, and therefore, to use his own
words, ‘nobody thinks it worth while to pick them up’—we suppose because
the miracle is too common to be generally noticed. Here he also studied
the skies, and effects of light, shade and colour, the dews, the breeze,
the storm, and made many a pictorial transcript from the vantage-ground
of the Heath, now bright with sunshine, but more often under the aspect
of drifting showers, for he seems to have loved the rain-laden, cloudy
skies, and to have revelled in depicting them. Fuseli, when going to call
on the artist, would cry out, ‘Give me an umbrella; I am going to see
Constable’s pictures!’[129]
It was delightful to Constable, as it was to Collins, to point out the
beauty of the scene (than which there are few more lovely spots in
England), and to do, as it were, the honours of the Heath to friends
and visitors less intimate with it than himself—to surprise them with
new effects, and hear the praise of his ‘sweet Hampstead,’ repeated at
every fresh point of view. Such sympathetic appreciation doubled his own
pleasure in the prospects. We can imagine him and the brothers Chalon,
who in the delicious weather of the summer of 1834-35 spent six weeks
at Hampstead, standing here,[130] near the Flagstaff, from whence on a
clear day one may see the towers of Windsor, on the one hand, and across
the Thames to Shooter’s Hill and Hanging Woods on the other; while to the
south-west rises the spire-crowned hill of Harrow, with all the broad
lands lying between. Blake, too, though he could not relish the brisk air
of the Upper Heath, must in his visits to Linnell’s have met with visions
on its summit. It may have been here that he saw
‘The moon like a flower
In heaven’s high bower
With silent delight
Sit and smile on the night.’
Who knows? And Varley, with his portfolio of mingled horoscopes and
drawings, must have added many a rapid sketch to these latter from this
fair neighbourhood.[131]
[Illustration: _Jack Straw’s Castle._]
[Illustration: _Flagstaff._]
At this point the well-known tavern, Jack Straw’s Castle, claims the
distinction of occupying the highest of the London levels, standing, as I
have elsewhere said, 400 feet (local historians say 443 feet) above the
level of the Thames. The tavern, according to a fast-fading tradition,
has its name from a robber who assumed it, and who lived on this spot,
where, of course, he commanded a good look-out on all footpaths leading
to or crossing the Heath. A cave on the premises is said to have been
the depository of his spoils. In all probability it had been the site
of a rude fort or mound, thrown up as a defence either against or by
Jack Straw’s and Wat Tyler’s rebel army.[132] At present Jack Straw’s
Castle is best known as a pleasant resort of summer visitors to the
Heath, and of late years as the scene of the Christmas Court Leets, one
of the rare occasions when the red-crossed flag of St. George, the Lord
of the Manor’s flag, waves from the adjacent flagstaff. From this spot
two roads fork off, that to the left leading to North End, the other to
the Spaniards, an inn standing at the entrance of the Heath on the road
to Highgate, on the site of an ancient toll-gate which formerly divided
the Bishop of London’s park from Hampstead Heath. It was primitively
known as the Gate-house or Park Gate-house, and has its present name from
its first landlord, a Spaniard, who converted the lodge into a house of
entertainment. So the story runs, but how it grew to a plural is not
explained. It is quite outside the precincts of Hampstead, being really
in Finchley parish, but is too closely connected with the Heath to be
left out in a description of it.
[Illustration: _The Spaniards’ Garden._
(From a print by Chastelaine.)]
The Spaniards was, perhaps is still, famous for its curiously laid-out
garden, in which designs in coloured pebbles appear to have anticipated
floral tapestry beds; and also for the fine views from the mound in it,
from which the most salient objects in six counties could be seen. It
was to the Spaniards, if I remember aright, that Oliver Goldsmith was
wont to take his ‘Jolly Pigeon friends’ for what he called ‘a shoemaker’s
holiday’ on the Heath; and it was to the Spaniards Tea-gardens that
Mrs. Bardell and her friends betook themselves on that eventful summer
afternoon when Dodson and Fogg took the widow in execution ‘on cognovit
and costs.’[133] The memory of Charles Dickens, like that of the author
of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ is thus indelibly associated with the
Spaniards.[134]
A visit to this tavern was not always so unadventurous a proceeding as
at present, for a notice in the _Grub Street Journal_ of October, 1736,
informs us that on the previous Sunday evening, between seven and eight,
when Mr. Thomas Lane, a farrier of Hampstead, was coming home from the
Spaniards, upon the Heath, near the house called Mother Huffs[135] three
men in mean apparel jumped out of the bushes, and laying hold of him,
robbed him of forty-five shillings. They afterwards stripped him, tied
him neck and heels, and made him fast to a tree, in which condition he
lay more than an hour, till a woman coming by, he cried out, and she
released him. A warning to farriers and others to avoid tippling at the
Spaniards till eight o’clock on Sunday evenings.
It was to the astuteness of the landlord of the Spaniards that Lord
Mansfield owed the saving of his house at Caen Wood from the fury of
the mob in the Gordon Riots, who, after sacking and setting fire to the
Earl’s town-house in Bloomsbury Square, started for Caen Wood with the
intention of destroying that also. The course of the rioters lay through
Gray’s Inn Lane to Hampstead. The afternoon was exceedingly sultry, and
the men and boys composing the mob, heated and weary from their previous
exertions and the march out, rejoiced at the sight of the well-known inn,
and longed for its foaming tankards of ripe ale. The landlord, who knew
of their intentions, affected rabble sympathies, and encouraged them to
refresh themselves. While they did so, he secretly gave information to
Lord Mansfield’s steward, who supplied additional barrels of ale from
the Caen Wood cellars, and in the meantime sent off a messenger for the
military. They fortunately were already on their way out, and quickly
surrounded the house, made the ringleaders prisoners, and as many of
their wretched followers as they could well secure.
[Illustration: _Erskine House._]
It is said Lord Mansfield never forgot his indebtedness to his publican
neighbour. And now—for this talk of the inn has lured us straight
to it—we must turn back if we mean to keep within the precincts of
Hampstead. The house—the end one of three at the east corner of the
Heath as we enter it from the Spaniards—with a deep portico projecting
to the road, was once the residence of the famous Lord Erskine, ‘an
inconsiderable-looking home for the great Lord Chancellor, but in
which, with his domestic tastes and love of Nature, he probably spent
some of the happiest years of his life.’ Originally neither house nor
garden appears to have been of much importance, but both were capable of
improvement, and Lord Erskine delighted in improving them. The ground
comprised several acres lying in natural undulations, and lent itself to
ornamental planting; while the eye was not confined to the enclosure,
but ‘ranged over views diversified and beautiful.’ The garden in his
day, be it remembered, lay on the opposite side of the road, and was
connected with the house by a subway, but this has long since been taken
by Lord Mansfield. Erskine himself is said to have planted the famous
holly-hedge. Here, with his old gardener, his lordship worked by way of
refreshment after his professional toils, and at last the place became
noted for the number and beauty of the trees and shrubs about it, and
took the name of the Evergreens, or Evergreen Hill, which it retained
till his lordship’s death, since when it is properly distinguished as
Erskine House.
For the story of Lord Erskine’s life—a grand one, though with the last
pages of it a little blurred—I must refer my readers to Campbell’s
‘Lives of the Lord Chancellors.’ It is not often that the army proves
the vestibule to the Bar, but the training was of use there, and we read
that the effect of his eloquence was not a little heightened by the
dignity of his fine person and stately bearing. Crabb Robinson tells us
he could never forget the figure and voice of Erskine. There was a charm
in his voice, he says, ‘a fascination in his eye.’ His eloquence was at
once powerful and persuasive. We only remember it was used on the side
of truth and right. He was best known in connection with Hampstead as a
humane and amiable man, with a great love of gardening and flowers.
Apropos of this, there is a story told of an anxious client calling on
him in Serjeants’ Inn, and finding the table of his consulting-room
occupied by thirty or forty small vials, in each of which was a slip of
geranium, and when the great man came in, instead of talking of the case,
he began to tell him of the many kinds of geraniums there were.[136] He
made no secret that he attached little or no importance to consultations,
but chose rather to rely upon himself.
There is an anecdote told of him which, though it appeared in all
the magazines of the period subsequent to his death, and is repeated
in Howitt’s ‘Northern Heights,’ as it relates to the Heath, may very
well appear here. That good angel to animal existence, the Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, had not yet appeared, nor was there a Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, though to Lord Erskine belongs the
honour of having first proposed the measure in Parliament which Martin
of Galway succeeded in carrying,[137] and which resulted in the founding
of the society. Crossing the Heath, he saw one of the donkey-drivers
beating a poor brute with more than ordinary cruelty, and hurried up to
expostulate with the man, who rudely answered him ‘that he had a right to
do what he liked with his own.’ ‘Very well,’ said Erskine, ‘so have I.
This stick is my own;’ and he lost no time in practically illustrating
the force of the unfortunate argument by giving the fellow a sound
thrashing.
When Hardy, Horne Tooke, and others, were, through his manly pleading,
acquitted of high treason, his name became a household word in England.
Tokens, two of which are before me, were struck commemorative of the
event, with the portraits and names of the accused gentlemen on the
obverse, and the words ‘Tried for high treason, 1794’; and on the
reverse, ‘Acquitted by his jury and counsels, Hon. Thos. Erskine and W.
Gibbs, Esq.’
The words ‘Trial by Jury’ were painted by way of motto on one of the
windows of Erskine House.
It is well known that differences in their political feelings and
opinions had alienated him from Burke, whom he much admired; but it is
pleasant to learn that before the death of the latter their differences
were adjusted, and Burke visited him at Hampstead. ‘He came to see me,’
says Lord Erskine, ‘before he died. I then lived at Hampstead Hill.
“Come, Erskine,” said he, holding out his hand, “let us forget all. I
shall soon quit this stage, and wish to die in peace with everybody,
especially you.” I reciprocated the sentiment, and we took a turn round
the grounds. Suddenly he stopped; an extensive prospect broke upon
him.... He stood wrapped in thought, gazing on the sky as the sun was
setting. “Ah, Erskine,” he said, pointing towards it, “you cannot spoil
_that_, because you cannot reach it. It would otherwise go. Yes; the
firmament itself you and your reformers would tear down.”’
[Illustration: _Lord Erskine._]
This is Mr. Rush’s account, but the Right Hon. T. Erskine says: ‘Mr. Rush
has quite spoiled Mr. Burke’s sarcasm upon being conducted by my father
to his garden through a tunnel under the road that divided the house
from the shrubbery. All the beauty of Ken Wood, Lord Mansfield’s, and
the distant prospect burst upon him. “Oh,” said Burke, “this is just the
place for a reformer. All the beauties are beyond your reach; you cannot
destroy them.”’
Miss Seward was much struck with Erskine’s fine face and elegant figure,
his bonhomie and exuberant fun; but his egotism was wearisome, and,
unfortunately, it grew upon him with years. Fanny Burney’s account of him
runs pretty much on the same lines, but he was not, when she met him, so
brilliant in conversation as he had been.
In 1805 he had lost his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, and who
had literally shared with him the ‘burden and heat of the day,’ as true
and loving in comparative poverty as in affluence. She died in London,
but is buried in Hampstead Church, where a fine monument by the younger
Bacon, of which Park gives an engraving, perpetuates her memory as the
‘most faithful and affectionate of women.’
About 1821-23 Lord Erskine removed from his house at Hampstead, where he
had resided from 1788, and on doing so transferred the copyhold to Lord
Mansfield.
He subsequently resided in Arabella Row, Pimlico, and tarnished, it is
said, the lustre of his declining years by a second marriage. ‘When,
how, or with whom,’ Lord Campbell had not heard upon authority. It is
also said that his bright spirits deserted him, and that, like S. T.
Coleridge, he had recourse to opium. Sheridan charitably suggested
‘When men like Erskine go astray,
Their stars are more in fault than they.’
The house next the Evergreens, Heath End House, was in 1811 in the
possession of Edward Coxe, Esq., the author of various poems, many of
them referring to the Heath;[138] and the large square one opposite
the beautiful grove of pine-trees (which Constable painted, and which
were raised from seeds of the stone-pine brought from Ravenna,[139] and
planted by that ancient Sylvanus of the Heath, Mr. Turner, a retired
tobacconist of Thames Street) originally belonged to him, but at the date
above mentioned was the residence of Charles Bosanquet, Esq. It stands
on an eminence, and is said to command beautiful and extensive views.
These houses have had various tenants since then, but not one who has
conferred such lasting benefits on the Heath as Mr. Turner, who appears
to have devoted his retired leisure to beautifying it. The groups of ash
and elm and horse-chestnut trees, now railed in (thanks to the Board of
Works) for their better preservation, are of his planting. He also made
the road, the Sandy Road, as it is called, from this point to North End.
Hereabouts is the scene of that charming bit of nature, to which we have
already referred, ‘Taking out a Thorn,’ which had for its point of view,
the late Mr. Charles Collins tells us, the clump of fir-trees near the
Spaniards, looking towards North End. ‘There, upon the bank, sits the old
furze-cutter, extracting a thorn from the finger of a chubby urchin,
who rubs his eye dolefully during the operation with the corner of his
pin-before.’
[Illustration: _North Heath._]
If, following the tree-shaded winding way, we make a little détour to the
right, we shall see, lying in the bottom, half in shade, by reason of
new sheds and a great square, vane-crested barn (the natural outcome of
thrifty labour, and better times for farmers than of late), the little
Morland-like farmhouse to which they belong. When the trees about it
are in leaf, its high-pitched, red-tiled roof, white weather-boarded
front, and small windows, set in a garden in which rue and southernwood
still flourish, the whole inclosed with palings and defended by a gate
on the latch, makes a pretty picture. A few ash-trees, the remains of a
grove of them, fringe the path to it past the new barn, and the view in
front is closed by a little gravelly hill, on the summit of which seats
are placed, and charming views are to be had for the climbing. This is
Collins’ Farm, now called Tooly’s Farm, a dwelling that, for all its
seeming humility, has been the temporary abode of many men of genius.[140]
This was for successive summers the ‘_sunshine holiday_’ home of the
elder Linnell and his family, who perhaps never worked harder himself
than when here, and who, being here, drew around him a little company
of his brother artists and men of letters—amongst them Blake, Varley,
Flaxman, and Morland.
Nearer to our own times Dickens had lodgings here, and wrote, it is said,
several chapters of ‘Bleak House’ in this retirement. Lover is also said
to have made it his summer quarters on one occasion. Other artists than
the elder Linnell have found its simple comfort and quiet, in addition to
its close proximity to the lovely Heath and its surroundings, excellent
reasons for preferring Collins’ Farm to more pretentious lodgings in the
neighbourhood. It is easy to return from this point to the broad holly
hedge opposite Lord Erskine’s house. At the end of it is the site (until
quite recently) of the most interesting relic that Hampstead retained
of what may be called its classic days—the Nine Elms, whose boughs had
shaded the favourite resting-place of Pope and Murray (the after owner of
Ken Wood, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield). Poetically they were dedicated
to the Muses,
‘Who chose them for their favourite shrine:
The trees were elms, their number nine.’
So sang Edward Coxe, the poet of the Heath, and friend and neighbour of
Erskine, who, because they impeded his view, had had a mind to have them
cut down, but spared them for the sake of their associations. ‘So late
as the spring of 1872 these trees were standing. In April or May of that
year the writer of a letter to the Board of Works, which appeared in the
_Hampstead Express_, called their attention to a bit of unappropriated
land near the Nine Elms on the Spaniards Road, and suggested that, as
the Board had got possession of Judges’ Walk, the Wildwood Avenue, the
triangular piece of ground at the end of Holford Road, and the piece of
ground where the band used to play, the Vestry should endeavour to get
hold of this also.’ But soon after it was stated that the ground had been
granted to Lord Mansfield, and the first thing that had been done was to
cut down these trees, with which the name of his famous kinsman had been
so charmingly connected.
In my time the elms guarded the old seat, scarred with forgotten names
and the initials of the unknown, around which they stood, ‘green
sentinels,’ whispering in every breeze to those who knew the story
of their youth gentle reminiscences of the men for whose sake the
inhabitants of Hampstead and the conservators of the Heath would have
given, we believe, ten times their value as timber to have had them
retained.[141]
The small bit of land on which they grew having been granted to Lord
Mansfield, it is natural to suppose that, for the sake of their
associations, he would have spared the trees had he known how sacred they
were in the literary annals of Hampstead.
[Illustration: _Fanny Burney._]
Whereabouts, I wonder, was that villa situated on Hampstead Hill (Lord
Erskine used to speak of his home as being on Hampstead Hill) where in
June, 1792, Fanny Burney and her father paid a three days’ visit to the
beautiful Mrs. Crewe?—a villa, ‘small, but commodious,’ with a garden,
and so near the Heath that the company strolled out upon it for a walk
after dinner? No one can answer our question, and Miss Burney has left us
no clue. Mrs. Crewe, to whose name the word ‘beautiful’ appears to have
been an ordinary prefix, was one of the great leaders of society in the
latter part of the eighteenth century. She was the daughter of Mr. Fulke
Greville, Ambassador from the Court of Britain to that of Bavaria. She
married in 1774-75[142] John Crewe, Esq., of Crewe Hall, Leicestershire,
and accepted her husband’s politics, those of the Whigs. As clever as
she was lovely, her salons were sought by men of all parties, and she
numbered Burke and Fox among her stanchest friends. Especially was she
the idol of her husband’s club, Brooks’s,[143] whose favourite toast was
‘Buff and Blue, and Mrs. Crewe!’ The colours alluded to were those of the
club, whose uniform, audaciously borrowed from that worn by the American
rebels who fought in Washington’s army, consisted of a blue coat and
buff waistcoat. The personal feeling which permeated politics in those
days appears to have been felt as passionately by the women as the men,
and ladies, Whig and Tory, not only wore their patches on opposite sides
of their faces, but adopted the colours of their party in their dress.
I have before me an odd volume of the _Lady’s Magazine_, where, under
the head of ‘Fashion,’ I find it stated that ‘Ladies attached to Mr.
Fox’s party are distinguished by a uniform of blue and straw colour: the
gown blue, the petticoat straw colour; the hats blue, lined with straw
colour, and trimmed with a fox’s brush, feathers, or wreaths of laurel,
having the leaves inscribed in gold letters, “Fox, Liberty, Freedom and
Constitution!” with coloured silk shoes to match the dress, with white
heels.’ Imagine driving down the Regent Street of to-day in a hat thus
decorated!
In the March of 1775 Mrs. Crewe gave an elegant masquerade, remarkable
for the first appearance of plumes in the hair and head-dresses of
the ladies, a French fashion newly come up, and which, judging from
the number of quizzical verses it gave rise to in the pages of the
_Universal_ and other magazines of the day, was not at first more popular
with the gentlemen than with the mob.[144] One writer suggested that the
ladies had made a party to rob the museum,
‘And to feather their nests well, and make their heads clever,
Had crossed Leicester Square, and plundered poor Lever.’[145]
Upon the same page is a song called ‘The Feathers,’ also referring to
Mrs. Crewe’s masquerade, while a third writer sings:
‘Here beauty displays her high plumes to our view,
Here all her bright feathers are shown;
Though none of them wave on the tresses of _Crewe_,
She yet to each heart gives the _ton_.’
The personal beauty, wit and cleverness of this accomplished woman
appear to have distinguished her to the end. Sixteen years had passed
between this event and Miss Burney’s visit to her at Hampstead, and
this is how the author of ‘Evelina’ describes her: ‘We were received by
Mrs. Crewe with much kindness. The room was rather dark, and she had
a veil to her bonnet half down, and with this aid she looked still in
a full blaze of beauty. She is certainly in my eye the most complete
beauty of any woman I ever saw.’ Later on she had better opportunities
of noticing her fair hostess, and her verdict is still, ‘I know not even
now any female’ (horrid word!) ‘in her first youth who could bear the
comparison. Her bloom perfectly natural, and the form of her face so
exquisitely perfect’ that the eyes of the observant Fanny never met it
without fresh admiration. ‘She is certainly in my eyes,’ she repeats,
‘the most perfect beauty of a woman I ever saw: she _uglifies_ everything
near her.’ No wonder we find the gallants of the day, amongst others Fox,
writing adulatory verses to her. This unity of opinion as to the many
graces of this lovely woman suggests a character as perfect as her face,
and we do not wonder that men of such a diversity of personal qualities
and political opinions should be attracted by her as Burke and his
brother, who were dining with her on the occasion referred to, and Lords
Loughborough and Erskine, who joined them in their walk afterwards. Fox’s
poem is too long to quote, but the first verse will show the spirit of it:
‘Where the loveliest expression to features is joined,
By Nature’s most delicate pencil designed;
Where blushes unbidden, and smiles without art,
Speak the softness and feeling that dwell in the heart;
Where in manner enchanting no blemish we trace,
But the soul keeps the promise we had from the face!’[146]
And this reminds me of the complex character of the soft-hearted but
rugged-looking writer of them, the great Whig Minister, whom the
Opposition party represented as a desperate and dangerous demagogue,
and compared to another Cromwell. Yet Burke, his great opponent and
adversary, spoke of him as ‘a man made to be loved,’ the ‘most brilliant
and accomplished of debaters the world ever saw.’ And Gibbon declared
that no human being was more free from any taint of malignity, vanity,
or falsehood. It is no wonder that women were enthusiastic in their
admiration of him, and though one clever Frenchwoman designated him a
‘fagot des épines,’ Madame Récamier, paraphrasing Shakespeare, wrote of
him that he had ‘a tear for pity, and a hand open as day for melting
charity.’ ‘What a man is Fox!’ exclaimed Horace Walpole. ‘After his
exhausting speech on Hastings’ trial, he was seen handing ladies into
their coaches with all the gaiety and prattle of an idle gallant.’
He felt strongly on the subject of the slave trade, and opposed it,[147]
as well as the war with America. His good nature and affability made him
very popular. I should not wonder, if gout permitted it, to learn that
he made one of the visitors to Hampstead during Mrs. Crewe’s residence
there. What a charming figure, by the way, must this lady have made in
the walks, where we should have met the Hon. Miss Murrays (when not in
attendance on their venerable uncle, Lord Mansfield) and Mrs. Montague,
the recognised leader of literary society, and clever little Fanny Burney
herself!