The gossips of the time have left us a picture of the man. Fat, ostentatious, extravagant, with the love of glitter and colour of a barbarian, he was yet a wit of repute, and had undoubtedly some learning. He possessed, besides, a considerable share of shrewdness. If he lent £5000 to Frederick, Prince of Wales, and never got it back, we are not to suppose that he ever expected to be repaid. That was, no doubt, regarded as practically an entrance-fee to the exalted companionship of a prince of whom it was written, when he came to an untimely end:—
But since it’s Fred who is dead, there’s no more to be said.
A WHIMSICAL FIGURE
That same Fred thought himself the clever man when he remarked ‘Dodington is reckoned clever, but I have borrowed £5000 of him which he will never see again’; but Dodington doubtless imagined the sum to have been well laid out; which, indeed, would have been the case had not the prince died early. Mæcenas was, in fact, working for a title, and this was then regarded as the ready way to such a goal. They say the same idea prevails in our own happy times; but that £5000 would not go far towards the realisation of the object. But, be that as it may, Dodington did not win to the Peerage as Lord Melcombe until 1761, and as he died in the succeeding year, his enjoyment of the ermine was short. As, however, the working towards an object and its anticipation are always more enjoyable than the attainment of the end, he is perhaps not to be regarded with pity, or thought a failure.
One who partook of his hospitality at Eastbury, and did not think the kindness experienced there a sufficient reason for silence as to his host’s eccentricities and failings, has given us some entertaining stories. The State bed of the gross but witty Dodington at Eastbury was covered with gold and silver embroidery; a gorgeous sight, but closer inspection revealed the fact that this splendour had been contrived at the expense of his old coats and breeches, whose finery had been so clumsily converted that the remains of the pocket-holes were clearly visible. ‘His vast figure,’ continues this reminiscencing friend, ‘was always arrayed in gorgeous brocades, and when he paid his court at St. James’s, he approached to kiss the Queen’s hand, decked in an embroidered suit of silk, with lilac waistcoat and breeches; the latter in the act of kneeling down, forgot their duty and broke loose from their moorings in a very indecorous and uncourtly manner.’ That must have been a sore blow to the dignity of one who possessed, as we are told, ‘the courtly and profound devotion of a Spaniard towards women, with the ease and gaiety of a Frenchman to men.’
Rolling down the Exeter Road, from his London mansion, or from his suburban retreat of ‘La Trappe,’ at Hammersmith, in his gilded, old-fashioned chariot, he gathered a variety of literary men at what Young calls ‘Pierian Eastbury.’ Johnson, sick of the Chesterfields and the whole gang of literary patrons, scornfully refused Dodington’s proffered friendship; but Fielding, Thomson, Bentley, Cumberland, Young, Voltaire, and others were not slow to revel in these more or less Arcadian delights. Christopher Pitt wrote to Young, congratulating him on his stay here:—
Where with your Dodington retired you sit,
Charmed with his flowing Burgundy and wit;
Where a new Eden in the wild is found,
And all the seasons in a spot of ground.
While Thomson, moved to it by the Burgundy or the more potent punch, has celebrated palace and park in his Autumn.
RUINED EASTBURY
Dodington had either no stomach for fighting, or else was a good fellow beyond the common run, as the following affair proves. Eastbury marches with Cranborne Chase, and one day the Ranger found one of Dodington’s keepers with his dogs in a part of the Chase called Burseystool Walk. The keeper was warned that if he was found there again, his dogs would be shot and himself prosecuted; but despite this warning he was found near the same spot a few days later, when the Ranger, having a gun in his hand, put his threat into execution and shot the three dogs as they were drinking in a pool, with their heads close together, in one of the Ridings. Dodington, in a first outburst of fury, sent a challenge to the Ranger over this affair, and the Ranger bought a sword and sent a friend to call on the challenger to fix time and place for the encounter; but by that time Dodington had thought better of it, and instead of making arrangements to shed the enemy’s gore, invited both him and his friend to dinner. They met and had a jovial time together, and the sword remained unspotted.