day a Mrs. Jackson called on him, and spoke of the oppressive state of
the weather. 'Heat! it was dreadful,' said Sydney; 'I found I could do
nothing for it but take off my flesh and sit in my bones.' 'Take off
your flesh and sit in your bones! Oh, Mr. Smith! how could you do that?'
the lady cried. 'Come and see next time, ma'am--nothing more easy.' She
went away, however, convinced that such a proceeding was very
unorthodox. No wonder, with all his various acquirements, it should be
said of him that no 'dull dinners were ever remembered in his company.'
A happy old age concluded his life, at once brilliant and useful. To the
last he never considered his education as finished. His wit, a friend
said, 'was always fresh, always had the dew on it. He latterly got into
what Lord Jeffrey called the vicious habit of water drinking. Wine, he
said, destroyed his understanding. He even 'forgot the number of the
Muses, and thought it was thirty-nine, of course.' He agreed with Sir
James Mackintosh that he had found the world more good and more foolish
than he had thought when young. He took a cheerful view of all things;
he thanked God for small as well as great things, even for tea. 'I am
glad,' he used to say, 'I was not born before tea.' His domestic
affections were strong, and were heartily reciprocated.
General society he divided into classes: 'The noodles--very numerous and
well known. The affliction woman--a valuable member of society,
generally an ancient spinster in small circumstances, who packs up her
bag and sets off in cases of illness or death, "to comfort, flatter,
fetch, and carry." The up-takers--people who see, from their fingers'
ends and go through a room touching everything. The clearers--who begin
at a dish and go on tasting and eating till it is finished. The
sheep-walkers--who go on for ever on the beaten track. The
lemon-squeezers of society--who act on you as a wet blanket; see a cloud
in sunshine; the nails of the coffin in the ribbons of a bride;
extinguish all hope; people, whose very look sets your teeth on an edge.
The let-well-aloners, cousin-german to the noodles--yet a variety, and
who are afraid to act, and think it safer to stand still. Then the
washerwomen--very numerous! who always say, "Well, if ever I put on my
best bonnet, 'tis sure to rain," &c.
'Besides this there is a very large class of people always treading on
your gouty foot, or talking in your deaf ear, or asking you to give them
something with your lame hand,' &c.
During the autumn of the year 1844, Sydney Smith felt the death-stroke
approaching. 'I am so weak, both in body and mind,' he said, 'that I
believe if the knife were put into my hand, I should not have strength
enough to stick it into a Dissenter.' In October he became seriously
ill. 'Ah! Charles,' he said to General Fox (when he was being kept very
low), 'I wish they would allow me even the wing of a roasted butterfly,'
He dreaded sorrowful faces around him; but confided to his old servant,
Annie Kay--and to her alone--his sense of his danger.
Almost the last person Sydney Smith saw was his beloved brother Bobus,
who followed him to the grave a fortnight after he had been laid in the
tomb.
He lingered till the 22nd of February, 1845. His son closed his eyes.
His last act was, bestowing on a poverty-stricken clergyman a living.
He was buried at Kensal Green, where his eldest son, Douglas, had been
interred.
It has been justly and beautifully said of Sydney Smith, that
Christianity was not a dogma with him, but a practical and most
beneficent rule of life.
As a clergyman, he was liberal, practical, staunch; free from the
latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry of Laud. His
wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man; it had pungency without
venom; humour without indelicacy; and was copious without being
tiresome.
GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE.
A Dinner-giving lordly Poet.--A Misfortune for a Man of Society.--
Brandenburgh House.--'The Diversions of the Morning.'--Johnson's Opinion
of Foote--Churchill and 'The Rosciad.'--Personal Ridicule in its Proper
Light.--Wild Specimen of the Poet.--Walpole on Dodington's 'Diary.'--The
best Commentary on a Man's Life.--Leicester House.--Grace Boyle,--Elegant
Modes of passing Time.--A sad Day.--What does Dodington come here for?--
The Veteran Wit, Beau, and Politician.--'Defend us from our Executors
and Editors.'
It would have been well for Lord Melcombe's memory, Horace Walpole
remarks, 'if his fame had been suffered to rest on the tradition of his
wit, and the evidence of his poetry.' And in the present day, that
desirable result has come to pass. We remember Bubb Dodington chiefly as
the courtier whose person, houses, and furniture were replete with
costly ostentation, so as to provoke the satire of Foote, who brought
him on the stage under the name of Sir Thomas Lofty in 'The Patron,'
We recall him most as '_l'Amphytrion chez qui on dine_;' 'My Lord of
Melcombe,' as Mallet says--
'Whose soups and sauces duly season'd,
Whose wit well tim'd and sense well reason'd,
Give Burgundy a brighter stain,
And add new flavour to Champagne.'
Who now cares much for the court intrigues which severed Sir Robert
Walpole and Bubb Dodington? Who now reads without disgust the annals of
that famous quarrel between George II. and his son, during which each
party devoutly wished the other dead? Who minds whether the time-serving
Bubb Dodington went over to Lord Bute or not? Who cares whether his
hopes of political preferment were or were not gratified? Bubb Dodington
was, in fact, the dinner-giving lordly poet, to whom even the saintly
Young could write:--
'You give protection,--I a worthless strain.
Born in 1691, the accomplished courtier answered, till he had attained
the age of twenty-nine, to the not very euphonious name of Bubb. Then a
benevolent uncle with a large estate died, and left him, with his lands,
the more exalted surname of Dodington. He sprang, however, from an
obscure family, who had settled in Dorchester; but that disadvantage,
which, according to Lord Brougham's famous pamphlet, acts so fatally on
a young man's advancement in English public life, was obviated, as most
things are, by a great fortune.
Mr. Bubb had been educated at Oxford: at the age of twenty-four he was
elected M.P. for Winchelsea; he was soon afterwards named Envoy at the
Court of Spain, but returned home after his accession of wealth to
provincial honours, and became Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset. Nay, poets
began to worship him, and even pronounced him to be well born:--
'Descended from old British sires;
Great Dodington to kings allied;
My patron then, my laurels' pride.
It would be consolatory to find that it is only Welsted who thus
profaned the Muse by this abject flattery, were it not recorded that
Thomson dedicated to him his 'Summer.' The dedication was prompted by
Lord Binning; and 'Summer' was published in 1727 when Dodington was one
of the Lords of the Treasury, as well as Clerk of the Pells in Ireland,
It seemed, therefore, worth while for Thomson to pen such a passage as
this:--'Your example sir, has recommended poetry with the greatest grace
to the example of those who are engag'd in the most active scenes of
life; and this, though confessedly the least considerable of those
qualities that dignify your character, must be particularly pleasing to
_one_ whose only hope of being introduced to your regard is thro' the
recommendation of an art in which you are a master.' Warton adding this
tribute:--
'To praise a Dodington rash bard! forbear.
What can thy weak and ill-tun'd voice avail,
When on that theme both Young and Thomson fail?'
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.'