The next day the prince invited all the rank, beauty, and fashion of the
coalition party to a fete on his lawn. It wad a bright day that 18th of
May; and under the delicious shade of the trees the young and gay
forgot, perhaps, in the enchantments of the scene, politics and
elections. Lord North, dressed in blue and buff,--his new
livery,--strutted about amid those who only fifteen months before had
execrated and denounced him, until, by the coalition with Fox, he had
made himself their idol. Every one, on this occasion, crowded around the
minister, whose wit was as inexhaustible as his _sang-froid_, and whose
conversation in its playfulness resembled that of our great premier of
1859. Blue and buff pervaded the garden. Colonel North (afterward Lord
Guildford) and George Byng, hitherto bitter enemies, were seen, dressed
alike, walking together familiarly. The prince was irresistibly
fascinating, and nothing could be more splendid than the fete given by
royalty overwhelmed by debt.
As the party were thus enjoying themselves, by a strange coincidence,
the famous cream-coloured horses of George III. were beheld proceeding
in solemn state down St. James's Park. His Majesty was going to
Westminster to open Parliament. Nothing but a low wall separated Canton
Gardens from the park, so that the king could not forbear seeing his
former minister, his son, and the successful candidate disporting
themselves in all the elation of success.
In the evening Lower Grosvenor Street was blocked up with carriages, out
of which gentlemen and ladies, all in blue and buff, descended to visit
the famous Mrs. Crewe, whose husband, then member for Chester, was
created, in 1806, Lord Crewe. This lady was as remarkable for her
accomplishments and her worth as for her beauty; nevertheless, she
permitted the admiration of Fox, who was in the rank of her admirers.
The lines he wrote on her were not exaggerated. They began thus:
"Where the loveliest expression to features is joined,
By Nature's most delicate pencil design'd;
Where blushes unbidden, and smiles without art,
Speak the softness and feeling that dwell in the heart;
Where in manners enchanting, no blemish we trace,
But the soul keeps the promise we had from the face;
Sure philosophy, reason, and coldness must prove
Defences unequal to shield us from love."
Nearly eight years after the famous election at Westminster, Mrs. Crewe
was still in perfection, with a son of one and twenty, who looked like
her brother. The form of her face was exquisitely lovely, her complexion
radiant. "I know not," Miss Burney writes, "any female in her first
youth who could bear the comparison. She uglifies every one near her."
This charming partisan of Fox had been active in his cause; and her
originality of character, her good humour, her recklessness of
consequences, made her a capital canvasser.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Mrs. Mary Robinson, Written by Herself,: With the lives of the Duchesses of Gordon and Devonshire — John Shaqi
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