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.'
But vain-glory engrossed him: 'He was determined to raise an altar to
himself, and for want of burnt offerings, lighted the pyre, like a great
author (Rousseau), with his own character.'
It was said by the same acute observer, both of Lord Hervey and of Bubb
Dodington, that they were the only two persons he ever knew that were
always aiming at wit and never finding it.' And here, it seems, most
that can be testified in praise of a heartless, clever man, must be
summed up.
Lord Melcombe's property, with the exception of a few legacies, devolved
upon his cousin Thomas Wyndham, of Hammersmith, by whom his Lordship's
papers, letters, and poems, were bequeathed to Henry Penruddocke
Wyndham, with an injunction, that only such as 'might do honour to his
memory should be made public.'
After this, in addition to the true saying, defend us from our friends
one may exclaim, 'defend us from our executors and editors.'