Part 29

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.

On the 13th of April, 1751, the body of the prince was entombed in Henry VII.'s chapel. Except the lords appointed to hold the pall, and attend the chief mourner, when the attendants were called over in their ranks, there was not a single English lord, not one bishop, and only one Irish lord (Lord Limerick), and three sons of peers. Sir John Rushout and Dodington were the only privy counsellors who followed. It rained heavily, but no covering was provided for the procession. The service was performed without organ or anthem. 'Thus,' observes Bubb Dodington, 'ended this sad day.'

Although the prince left a brother and sisters, the Duke of Somerset acted as chief mourner. The king hailed the event of the prince's death as a relief, which was to render happy his remaining days; and Bubb Dodington hastened, in a few months, to offer to the Pelhams 'his friendship and attachment.' His attendance at court was resumed, although George II. could not endure him; and the old Walpolians, nick-named the Black-tan, were also averse to him.

Such were Bubb Dodington's actions. His expressions, on occasion of the prince's death, were in a very different tone.

'We have lost,' he wrote to Sir Horace Mann, 'the delight and ornament of the age he lived in,--the expectations of the public: in this light I have lost more than any subject in England; but this is light,--public advantages confined to myself do not, ought not, to weigh with me. But we have lost the refuge of private distress--the balm of the afflicted heart the shelter of the miserable against the fury of private adversity; the arts, the graces, the anguish, the misfortunes of society, have lost their patron and their remedy.

'I have lost my companion--my protector--the friend that loved me, that condescended to hear, to communicate, to share in all the pleasures and pains of the human heart: where the social affections and emotions of the mind only presided without regard to the infinite disproportion of my rank and condition. This is a wound that cannot, ought not to heal. If I pretended to fortitude here, I should be infamous--a monster of ingratitude--and unworthy of all consolation, if I was not inconsolable.'

'Thank you,' writes the shrewd Horace Walpole, addressing Sir Horace Mann, 'for the transcript from Bulb de Tristibus. I will keep your secret, though I am persuaded that a man who had composed such a funeral oration on his master had himself fully intended that its flowers should not bloom and wither in obscurity.'

Well might George II., seeing him go to court say: 'I see Dodington here sometimes, what does he come for?'

It was, however, clearly seen what he went for, when, in 1753, two years after the death of his 'benefactor,' Dodington humbly offered His Majesty his services in the house, and 'five members,' for the rest of his life, if His Majesty would give Mr. Pelham leave to employ him for His Majesty's service. Nevertheless he continued to advise with the Princess of Wales, and to drop into her house as if it had been a sister's house--sitting on a stool near the fireside, and listening to her accounts of her children.

In the midst of these intrigues for favour on the part of Dodington, Mr. Pelham died, and was succeeded by his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, the issue of whose administration is well known.

In 1760 death again befriended the now veteran wit, beau and politician. George II. died; and the intimacy which Dodington had always taken care to preserve between himself and the Princess of Wales, ended advantageously for him; and he instantly, in spite of all his former professions to Pelham, joined hand and heart with that minister, from whom he obtained a peerage. This, as we have seen, was not long enjoyed. Lord Melcombe, as this able, intriguing man was now styled, died on the 28th of July, 1762; and with him terminated the short-lived distinction for which he had sacrificed even a decent pretext of principle and consistency.

So general has been the contempt felt for his character, that it seems almost needless to assert that Bubb Dodington was eminently to be despised. Nothing much more severe can be said of him than the remarks of Horace Walpole--upon his 'Diary;' in which he observes that Dodington records little but what is to his own disgrace; as if he thought that the world would forgive his inconsistencies as readily as he forgave himself. 'Had he adopted,' Horace well observes, 'the French title "Confessions," it would have seemed to imply some kind of penitence.'