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!
CHAPTER VIII.
HOLLY-BUSH AND WINDMILL HILLS.
Leaving Heath Street upon the right (at the end of High Street), and Mount Vernon on the left, the ascent of Holly-bush Hill, in the years I am writing of, led through into an open space with a bit of the waste running in upon it, with three tree-sheltered and old-fashioned red-brick houses on the very brow of Windmill Hill. One of these, the centre one of the three—Bolton House—was for many years the home of Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes, where Lady Davy often visited them to the very last.
Windmill Hill and Holly-bush Hill are in such close proximity that the names become almost convertible, and were not unfrequently used one for the other. Thus, the author of the ‘Northern Heights of London’ placed the home of Romney the painter on Windmill Hill, and suggested that it was the house standing in a garden at the back of Bolton House. But Park, who was resident at Hampstead, and published the first edition of his history in 1813, only eleven years after the death of Romney, distinctly states that ‘the present very elegant Assembly Room’ at the Holly-bush Tavern, with card and supper rooms adjoining, are ‘partly formed out of the house built by Romney the painter.’
