Chapter 23

Yet even when midway in his career, Dodington, in the famous political caricature called 'The Motion,' is depicted as 'the Spaniel,' sitting between the Duke of Argyle's legs, whilst his grace is driving a coach at full speed to the Treasury, with a sword instead of a whip in his hand, with Lord Chesterfield as postilion, and Lord Cobham as a footman, holding on by the straps: even then the servile though pompous character of this true man of the world was comprehended completely; and Bubb Dodington's characteristics never changed.

In his political life, Dodington was so selfish, obsequious, and versatile as to incur universal opprobrium; he had also another misfortune for a man of society,--he became fat and lethargic. 'My brother Ned' Horace Walpole remarks, 'says he is grown of less consequence, though more weight.' And on another occasion, speaking of a majority in the House of Lords, he adds, 'I do not count Dodington, who must now always be in the minority, for no majority will accept him.'

Whilst, however, during the factious reign of George II., the town was declared, even by Horace to be wondrous dull; operas unfrequented, plays not in fashion, and amours old as marriages. Bubb Dodington, with his wealth and profusion, contrived always to be in vogue as a host, while he was at a discount as a politician. Politics and literature are the highroads in England to that much-craved-for distinction, an admittance into the great world; and Dodington united these passports in his own person: he was a poetaster, and wrote political pamphlets. The latter were published and admired: the poems were referred to as 'very pretty love verses,' by Lord Lyttelton, and were never published--and never ought to have been published, it is stated.

His _bon mots_, his sallies, his fortunes and places, and continual dangling at court, procured Bubo, as Pope styled him, one pre-eminence. His dinners at Hammersmith were the most _recherchés_ in the metropolis. Every one remembers Brandenburgh House, when the hapless Caroline of Brunswick held her court there, and where her brave heart,--burdened probably with some sins, as well as with endless regrets,--broke at last. It had been the residence of the beautiful and famous Margravine of Anspach, whose loveliness in vain tempts us to believe her innocent, in despite of facts. Before those eras--the presence of the Margravine, whose infidelities were almost avowed, and the abiding of the queen, whose errors had, at all events, verged on the very confines of guilt--the house was owned by Dodington. There he gave dinners; there he gratified a passion for display, which was puerile; there he indulged in eccentricities which almost implied insanity; there he concocted his schemes for court advancement; and there, later in life, he contributed some of the treasures of his wit to dramatic literature. 'The Wishes,' a comedy, by Bentley, was supposed to owe much of its point to the brilliant wit of Dodington[14].

[14: See Walpole's 'Royal and Noble Authors']

At Brandenburgh House, a nobler presence than that of Dodington still haunted the groves and alleys, for Prince Rupert had once owned it. When Dodington bought it, he gave it--in jest, we must presume--the name of La Trappe; and it was not called Brandenburgh House until the fair and frail Margravine came to live there.

Its gardens were long famous; and in the time of Dodington were the scene of revel. Thomas Bentley, the son of Richard Bentley, the celebrated critic, had written a play called 'The Wishes;' and during the summer of 1761 it was acted at Drury Lane, and met with the especial approbation of George III., who sent the author, through Lord Bute, a present of two hundred guineas as a tribute to the good sentiments of the production.

This piece, which, in spite of its moral tendency, has died out, whilst plays of less virtuous character have lived, was rehearsed in the gardens of Brandenburgh House. Bubb Dodington associated much with those who give fame; but he courted amongst them also those who could revenge affronts by bitter ridicule. Among the actors and literati who were then sometimes at Brandenburg House were Foote and Churchill; capital boon companions, but, as it proved, dangerous foes.'

Endowed with imagination; with a mind enriched by classical and historical studies; possessed of a brilliant wit, Bubb Dodington was, nevertheless, in the sight of some men, ridiculous. Whilst the rehearsals of 'The Wishes' went on, Foote was noting down all the peculiarities of the Lord of Brandenburgh House, with a view to bring them to account in his play of 'The Patron.' Lord Melcombe was an aristocratic Dombey: stultified by his own self-complacency, he dared to exhibit his peculiarities before the English Aristophanes. It was an act of imprudence, for Foote had long before (in 1747) opened the little theatre of the Haymarket with a sort of monologue play, 'The Diversions of the Morning,' in which he convulsed his audience with the perfection of a mimicry never beheld before, and so wonderful, that even the persons of his models seemed to stand before the amazed spectators.

These entertainments, in which the contriver was at once the author and performer, have been admirably revived by Mathews and others; and in another line, by the lamented Albert Smith. The Westminster justices, furious and alarmed, opposed the daring performance, on which Foote changed the name of his piece, and called it 'Mr. Foote giving Tea to his Friends,' himself still the sole actor, and changing with Proteus-like celerity from one to the other. Then came his 'Auction of Pictures,' and Sir Thomas de Veil, one of his enemies, the justices, was introduced. Orator Henley and Cock the auctioneer figured also; and year after year the town was enchanted by that which is most gratifying to a polite audience, the finished exhibition of faults and follies. One stern voice was raised in reprobation, that of Samuel Johnson: he, at all events, had a due horror of buffoons; but even he owned himself vanquished.

'The first time I was in Foote's company was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased: and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him; but the dog was so very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back in my chair, and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was irresistible.' Consoled by Foote's misfortunes and ultimate complicated misery for his lessened importance, Bubb Dodington still reigned, however, in the hearts of some learned votaries. Richard Bentley, the critic, compared him to Lord Halifax--

'That Halifax, my Lord, as you do yet, Stood forth the friend of poetry and wit, Sought silent merit in the secret cell, And Heav'n, nay even man, repaid him well.

A more remorseless foe, however, than Foote appeared in the person of Charles Churchill, the wild and unclerical son of a poor curate of Westminster. Foote laughed Bubb Dodington down, but Churchill perpetuated the satire; for Churchill was wholly unscrupulous, and his faults had been reckless and desperate. Wholly unfit for a clergyman, he had taken orders, obtained a curacy in Wales at £30 a year--not being able to subsist, took to keeping a cider-cellar, became a sort of bankrupt, and quitting Wales, succeeded to the curacy of his father, who had just died. Still famine haunted his home; Churchill took, therefore, to teaching young ladies to read and write, and conducted himself in the boarding-school where his duties lay, with wonderful propriety. He had married at seventeen; but even that step had not protected his morals: he fell into abject poverty. Lloyd, father of his friend Robert Lloyd, then second master of Westminster, made an arrangement with his creditors. Young Lloyd had published a poem called 'The Actor;' Churchill, in imitation, now produced 'The Rosciad,' and Bubb Dodington was one whose ridiculous points were salient in those days of personality. 'The Rosciad' had a signal success, which completed the ruin of its author: he became a man of the town, forsook the wife of his youth, and abandoned the clerical character. There are few sights more contemptible than that of a clergyman who has cast off his profession, or whose profession has cast him off. But Churchill's talents for a time kept him from utter destitution. Bubb Doddington may have been consoled by finding that he shared the fate of Dr. Johnson, who had spoken slightingly of Churchill's works, and who shone forth, therefore, in 'The Ghost,' a later poem, as Dr. Pomposo.

Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, drew a portrait of Lord Melcombe, which is said to have been taken from the life; but perhaps the most faithful delineation of Bubb Dodington's character was furnished by himself in his 'Diary;' in which, as it has been well observed, he 'unveiled the nakedness of his mind, and displayed himself as a courtly compound of mean compliance and political prostitution.' It may, in passing, be remarked, that few men figure well in an autobiography; and that Cumberland himself, proclaimed by Dr. Johnson to be a 'learned, ingenious, accomplished gentleman,' adding, 'the want of company is an inconvenience, but Mr. Cumberland is a million:' in spite of this eulogium, Cumberland has betrayed in his own autobiography unbounded vanity, worldliness, and an undue estimation of his own perishable fame. After all, amusing as personalities must always be, neither the humours of Foote, the vigorous satire of Churchill, nor the careful limning of Cumberland, whilst they cannot be ranked among talents of the highest order, imply a sort of social treachery. The delicious little colloquy between Boswell and Johnson places low personal ridicule in its proper light.

Boswell.--'Foote has a great deal of humour.' Johnson.--'Yes, sir.' Boswell.--'He has a singular talent of exhibiting characters.' Johnson--'Sir. it is not a talent--it is a vice; it is what others abstain from. It is not comedy, which exhibits the character of a species--as that of a miser gathered from many misers--it is farce, which exhibits individuals.' Boswell.--'Did not he think of exhibiting you, sir?' Johnson.--'Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have broken his bones. I would have saved him the trouble of cutting off a leg; I would not have left him a leg to cut off.'

Few annals exist of the private life of Bubb Dodington, but those few are discreditable.

Like most men of his time, and like many men of all times, Dodington was entangled by an unhappy and perplexing intrigue.

There was a certain 'black woman,' as Horace Walpole calls a Mrs. Strawbridge, whom Bubb Dodington admired. This handsome brunette lived in a corner house of Saville Row, in Piccadilly, where Dodington visited her. The result of their intimacy was his giving this lady a bond of ten thousand pounds to be paid if he married any one else. The real object of his affections was a Mrs. Behan, with whom he lived seventeen years, and whom, on the death of Mrs. Strawbridge, he eventually married.

Among Bubb Dodington's admirers and disciples was Paul Whitehead, a wild specimen of the poet, rake, satirist, dramatist, all in one; and what was quite in character, a Templar to boot. Paul--so named from being born on that Saint's day--wrote one or two pieces which brought him an ephemeral fame, such as the 'State Dunces,' and the 'Epistle to Dr. Thompson,' 'Manners,' a satire, and the 'Gymnasiad,' a mock heroic poem, intended to ridicule the passion for boxing, then prevalent. Paul Whitehead, who died in 1774, was an infamous, but not, in the opinion of Walpole, a despicable poet, yet Churchill has consigned him to everlasting infamy as a reprobate, in these lines:--

'May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?) Be born a Whitebread, and baptised a Paul.'

Paul was not, however, worse than his satirist Churchill; and both of these wretched men were members of a society long the theme of horror and disgust, even after its existence had ceased to be remembered, except by a few old people. This was the 'Hell-fire Club,' held in appropriate orgies at Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire. The profligate Sir Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, and Churchill, were amongst its most prominent members.

With such associates, and living in a court where nothing but the basest passions reigned and the lowest arts prevailed, we are inclined to accord with the descendant of Bubb Dodington, the editor of his 'Diary,' Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, who declares that all Lord Melcombe's political conduct was 'wholly directed by the base motives of vanity, selfishness, and avarice.' Lord Melcombe seems to have been a man of the world of the very worst _calibre_; sensual, servile, and treacherous; ready, during the lifetime of his patron, Frederick, Prince of Wales, to go any lengths against the adverse party of the Pelhams, that Prince's political foes--eager, after the death of Frederick, to court those powerful men with fawning servility.

The famous 'Diary' of Bubb Dodington supplies the information from which these conclusions have been drawn. Horace Walpole, who knew Dodington well, describes how he read with avidity the 'Diary,' which was published in 1784.

'A nephew of Lord Melcombe's heirs has published that Lord's "Diary." Indeed it commences in 1749, and I grieve it was not dated twenty years later. However, it deals in topics that are twenty times more familiar and fresh to my memory than any passage that has happened within these six months I wish I could convey it to you. Though drawn by his own hand, and certainly meant to flatter himself, it is a truer portrait than any of his hirelings would have given. Never was such a composition of vanity, versatility, and servility. In short, there is but one feature wanting in it, his wit, of which in the whole book there are not three sallies.'

The editor of this 'Diary' remarks, 'that he will no doubt be considered a very extraordinary editor; the practice of whom has generally been to prefer flattery to truth, and partiality to justice.' To understand, not the flattery which his contemporaries heaped upon Bubb Dodington, but the opprobrium with which they loaded his memory--to comprehend not his merits but his demerits--it is necessary to take a brief survey of his political life from the commencement. He began life, as we have seen, as a servile adherent of Sir Robert Walpole. A political epistle to the Minister was the prelude to a temporary alliance only, for in 1737, Bubb went over to the adverse party of Leicester House, and espoused the cause of Frederick, Prince of Wales, against his royal father He was therefore dismissed from the Treasury. When Sir Robert fell, Bubb expected to rise, but his expectations of preferment were not realized. He attacked the new Administration forthwith, and succeeded so far in becoming important that he was made Treasurer of the Navy; a post which he resigned in 1749, and which he held again in 1755, but which he lost the next year. On the accession of George III., he was not ashamed to appear altogether in a new character, as the friend of Lord Bute; he was, therefore, advanced to the peerage by the title of Baron of Melcombe Regis, in 1761. The honour was enjoyed for one short year only; and on the 28th of July, 1762, Bubb Dodington expired. Horace Walpole, in his 'Royal and Noble Authors,' complains that 'Dodington's "Diary" was mangled, in compliment, before it was imparted to the public.' We cannot therefore judge of what the 'Diary' was before, as the editor avows that every anecdote was cut out, and all the little gossip so illustrative of character and manners which would have brightened its dull pages, fell beneath the power of a merciless pair of scissors. Mr. Penruddocke Wyndham conceives, however, that he was only doing justice to society in these suppressions. 'It would,' he says, 'be _no_ entertainment to the reader to be informed who daily dined with his lordship, or whom he daily met at the table of other people.'

Posterity thinks differently: a knowledge of a man's associates forms the best commentary on his life; and there is much reason to rejoice that all biographers are not like Mr. Penruddocke Wyndham. Bubb Dodington, more especially, was a man of society: inferior as a literary man, contemptible as a politician, it was only at the head of his table that he was agreeable and brilliant. He was, in fact, a man who had no domestic life; a courtier, like Lord Hervey, but without Lord Hervey's consistency. He was, in truth, a type of that era in England: vulgar in aims; dissolute in conduct; ostentatious, vain-glorious--of a low, ephemeral ambition; but at the same time talented, acute, and lavish to the lettered. The public is now the patron of the gifted. What writer cares for individual opinion, except as it tends to sweep up the gross amount of public blame or censure? What publisher will consent to undertake a work because some lord or lady recommended it to his notice? The reviewer is greater in the commonwealth of letters than the man of rank.

But in these days it was otherwise; and they who, in the necessities of the times, did what they could to advance the interest of the _belles lettres_, deserve not to be forgotten.

It is with a feeling of sickness that we open the pages of this great Wit's 'Diary,' and attempt to peruse the sentences in which the most grasping selfishness is displayed. We follow him to Leicester House, that ancient tenement--(wherefore pulled down, except to erect on its former site the narrowest of streets, does not appear): that former home of the Sydneys had not always been polluted by the dissolute, heartless _clique_ who composed the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Its chambers had once been traversed by Henry Sydney, by Algernon, his brother. It was their _home_--their father, Robert Sydney, Earl of Leicester, having lived there. The lovely Dorothy Sydney, Waller's Saccharissa, once, in all purity and grace, had danced in that gallery where the vulgar, brazen Lady Middlesex, and her compliant lord, afterwards flattered the weakest of princes, Frederick. In old times Leicester House had stood on Lammas land--land in the spirit of the old charities, open to the poor after Lammas-tide; and even 'the Right Hon. the Earl of Leicester'--as an old document hath it--was obliged, if _he_ chose to turn out his cows or horses on that appropriated land, to pay a rent for it to the overseers of St. Martin's parish, then really 'in the fields.' And here this nobleman not only dwelt in all state himself, but let, or lent his house to persons whose memory seems to hallow even Leicester Fields. Elizabeth of Bohemia, after what was to her indeed 'life's fitful fever,' died at Leicester House. It became then, temporarily, the abode of ambassadors. Colbert, in the time of Charles II., occupied the place; Prince Eugène, in 1712, held his residence here; and the rough soldier, famous for all absence of tact--brave, loyal-hearted, and coarse--lingered at Leicester House in hopes of obstructing the peace between England and France.

All that was good and great fled for ever from Leicester House at the instant that George II., when Prince of Wales, was driven by his royal father from St. James's, and took up his abode in it until the death of George I. The once honoured home of the Sydneys henceforth becomes loathsome in a moral sense. Here William, Duke of Cumberland--the hero, as court flatterers called him--the butcher, as the poor Jacobite designated him--of Culloden, first saw the light. Peace and respectability then dignified the old house for ever. Prince Frederick was its next inmate: here the Princess of Wales, the mother of George III., had her lying-in, and her royal husband held his public tables; and at these and in every assembly, as well as in private, one figure is conspicuous.

Grace Boyle--for she unworthily bore that great name--was the daughter and heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. She married Lord Middlesex, bringing him a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. Short, plain, 'very yellow,' as her contemporaries affirm, with a head full of Greek and Latin, and devoted to music and painting; it seems strange that Frederick should have been attracted to one far inferior to his own princess both in mind and person. But so it was, for in those days every man liked his neighbour's wife better than his own. Imitating the forbearance of her royal mother-in-law, the princess tolerated such of her husband's mistresses as did not interfere in politics: Lady Middlesex was the 'my good Mrs. Howard,' of Leicester House. She was made Mistress of the Robes: her favour soon 'grew,' as the shrewd Horace remarks, 'to be rather more than Platonic.' She lived with the royal pair constantly, and sat up till five o'clock in the morning at their suppers; and Lord Middlesex saw and submitted to all that was going on with the loyalty and patience of a _Georgian_ courtier. Lady Middlesex was a docile politician, and on that account, retained her position probably long after she had lost her influence.

Her name appears constantly in the 'Diary,' out of which everything amusing has been carefully expunged.

'Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I, waited on their Royal Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufacture of silk.' In the afternoon off went the same party to Norwood Forest, in private coaches, to see a 'settlement of gypsies.' Then returning, went to find out Bettesworth, the conjuror; but not discovering him, went in search of the little Dutchman. Were disappointed in that; but 'concluded,' relates Bubb Dodington, 'the peculiarities of this day by supping with Mrs. Cannon, the princess's _midwife_.'

All these elegant modes of passing the time were not only for the sake of Lady Middlesex, but, it was said, of her friend, Mrs. Granville, one of the Maids of Honour, daughter of the first Lord Lansdown, the poet. This young lady, Eliza Granville, was scarcely pretty: a far, red-haired girl.

All this thoughtless, if not culpable, gallantry was abruptly checked by the rude hand of death. During the month of March, Frederick was attacked with illness, having caught cold. Very little apprehension was expressed at first, but, about eleven days after his first attack, he expired. Half an hour before his death, he had asked to see some friends, and had called for coffee and bread and butter: a fit of coughing came on, and he died instantly from suffocation. An abscess, which had been forming in his side, had burst; nevertheless, his two physicians, Wilmot and Lee, 'knew nothing of his distemper.' According to Lord Melcombe, who thus refers to their blunders, 'They declared, half an hour before his death, that his pulse was like a man's in perfect health. They either would not see or did not know the consequences of the black thrush, which appeared in his mouth, and quite down in his throat. Their ignorance, or their knowledge of his disorder, renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assistance.'

The consternation in the prince's household was great, not for his life, but for the confusion into which politics were thrown by his death. After his relapse, and until just before his death, the princess never suffered any English, man or woman, above the degree of valet-de-chambre to see him; nor did she herself see any one of her household until absolutely necessary. After the death of his eldest born, George II. vented his diabolical jealousy upon the cold remains of one thus cut off in the prime of life. The funeral was ordered to be on the model of that of Charles II., but private counter-orders were issued to reduce the ceremonial to the smallest degree of respect that could be paid.