BUBB DODINGTON

'DUL

ULCE et decorum est pro patria mori,' says
He might have added, with equal

the poet. truth, that to live for the fatherland is neither sweet nor comely. They who live for the fatherland are. wont also to live on the fatherland. 'Service is obligation, and obligation implies return,' says Bubb Dodington, summing up in these few candid words the purpose which has inspired politicians ever since popular government was invented. Dodington, indeed, faithfully respected the ancient tradition of his craft; his example has been piously followed by those who came after him; and if we would understand the strange processes by which the destinies of our country are controlled, we cannot do better than study the industrious, fruitless career of him who followed the trade of statesmanship for nearly half a century without losing sight of quarter-day, and who finally adopted for his own Rabelais' motto: Et tout pour la trippe.

George Bubb1 was born in 1691, with five boroughs 1 When Browning wrote a 'parleying' with him, Bubb Dodington was fading into forgetfulness. The 'parleying,' partially intelligible, ends on a couplet, which all can understand'folks see but one

Fool more, as well as knave, in Dodington.'

In Patriot and Place-Hunter, Mr. Lloyd Sanders gathered together all that ever need be known about this master of intrigue.

in his mouth. His father, Jeremiah, said to have been a Weymouth apothecary, was lucky enough to marry Mary, the only sister of George Dodington, a Dorsetshire squire. The good fortune of the father descended tenfold to the son. He was brought up as became his uncle's heir, from Winchester went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he won an easy reputation as a poet, was returned to Parliament by George Dodington's own borough of Winchelsea when he was no more than twenty-three, and a year later set out for Spain as Envoy Extraordinary, that he might see the world and thus prepare for the 'statesmanship' which was to be his trade. Nor was his time wasted. If he learned nothing else at Madrid, he learned, in conflict with Alberoni, the ease and value of political corruption, which solved differences of opinion far more speedily than argument ever could have done.

For George Bubb service abroad was but an interlude. After two years' sojourn at Madrid he resumed the duties of member for Winchelsea, and warmly espoused the cause of Walpole. In 1720 the death of his uncle made him the master of a large fortune and of the five boroughs, which conferred upon him, during a long life, place and influence and power. And the death of his uncle brought him something more than a ready-made position in politics: it ensured him a change of name. Henceforth he was to be known as Dodington, and the memory of Jeremiah, his offending father, would as far as possible

be wiped out. Alas! the Bubb that was in him died hard. The satirists among his enemies-and his enemies were not few-did their best to perpetuate it, and as Bubb, Bubo, or even Bubington, was he known until the end.

When he emerged from the chrysalis of Bubb into the butterfly (or moth) that was Dodington, he was assuredly possessed of many advantages. Wealth was his in abundance, and the estate of Eastbury, where he spent £140,000 in finishing his uncle's house, gave him a dignity and importance which were felt far beyond the boundaries of his own county. However ill-chosen his friends may have been, he had a true gift of hospitality. He delighted to fill Eastbury, and afterwards La Trappe, his famous villa at Hammersmith, with guests and sycophants, and no slur was ever cast upon the quality of his Burgundy. His taste in decoration was opulent rather than refined. He had a natural love of marble pillars and columns of lapis-lazuli, of costly furniture and Greek statues. And yet even in his splendour a kind of tawdriness was always intervening, as though Bubb was still looking over the shoulder of Dodington. His own state-bed,

for instance, a glory of Eastbury, was surrounded by a carpet embroidered in gold and silver, which betrayed its origin from old coats, waistcoats, and breeches, by the impregnable testimony of pockets, button-holes, and loops. The breeches, turned to the purpose of ornament, were typical of his character. 'See! sportive Fate,' writes Pope :

'to punish awkward pride

Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide:
A standing sermon, at each year's expense,
That never coxcomb reached magnificence.'

His reputation

His wit was better than his taste. for this, the rarest of all gifts, which envious time does not preserve, is well founded upon the evidence of his foes. Horace Walpole, who had no reason to love him, admits that Lord Hervey and Dodington 'were the only two he ever knew who were always aiming at wit, and generally found it,' and surely the specimen, which he quotes—a translation of the motto on the caps of the soldiers of the Hanoverians, vestigia nulla retrorsum, 'they never mean to go back '—is vastly to his credit. Unfortunately for his memory, his diary is utterly devoid of the one quality in which he excelled. He displays in it no glimmer of his wit, and being a politician he had no hint of humour. It is true that Pope dismisses him as a half-wit.' 'I wonder not,' he writes to Swift,' that Bubb paid you no sort of civility while he was in Ireland. He is too much of a half-wit to love a true-wit, and too much half-honest to esteem any entire merit.' So sincere was Pope in his hatred of Dodington, that he shrank from his friendly approach. I hope, and I think, he hates me too,' said he, and I will do my best to make him. He is so insupportably insolent in his civility to me when he meets me at one third place, that I must affront him to be rid of it.' However, in Pope's despite, Dodington still stands among

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the wits, and ambitious as he was to write verses himself, he took a simple delight in the society of poets. He was constantly on the look-out for talent, and it was part of his coxcomb's magnificence to play the patron's part. There was nothing he loved so much as a dedication, and all were welcome at Eastbury who would sing its owner's praise. Sometimes his importunity met with rebuff, and one failure at least was fortunate for him. He solicited in vain the friendship of Samuel Johnson, and thus escaped an encounter which would not have flattered him. Had the two met in Boswell's presence, we should be the richer for half-a-dozen pages. But Dodington could never have cajoled the Philosopher with the skill of John Wilkes, and Johnson would have tolerated his coxcombry as little as he would have borne with his inveterate Whiggishness.

If he missed Johnson, he attached to himself, even in undying print, two such great men as Henry Fielding and James Thomson. Truly Fielding was not on oath when he wrote his poem, 'Of True Greatness,' and yet it cannot have been a happy memory to him. With a lavish hand he covered with flattery the trafficker in boroughs. Let us hope that the genius of satire came to his aid when he penned these lines:

'Some greatness in myself perhaps I view;
Not that I write, but that I write to you.'

This is bad enough, and the eulogy becomes grosser