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.
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: