The Fixer
The Political Journal of George Bubb Doding- ton. Edited by John Carswell and L. A. Dralle. (O.U.P., 70s.) SHORT, very short; fat, very fat; jowls, a tip- tilted nose; eyes bulbous; belly protuberant; shoulders wide, arse massive; clothes, ornate, silvered, gilded, studiously old-fashioned; a huge bag-wig; rich, greedy, gout-ridden; self-important, tetchy, servile, treacherous, Bubb Dodington (so perfectly named) is the archetype of a common variety of politician. As a young man, before life and his physique had corrupted him, he had possessed considerable ability. He first showed his quality in 1716 by his negotiations in Madrid which secured a workable commercial treaty with Spain: backed by the wealth derived from his father, Jeremiah Bubb, and rendered more plausible as a gentleman by the adoption of his mother's name of Dodington, he began to flourish in politics in the 1720s under the benign eye of Sir Robert Walpole. Dodington, it seemed, was born for eighteenth-century politics. His wealth was rooted in both land and com- merce; he could influence almost to nomination four seats at Weymouth and Melcombe, the twin Dorset boroughs. And he loved business, arrang- ing, managing, arguing. The smell of power intoxicated him. He was loyal to Walpole for years and yet Walpole, sensing a fundamental want of judgment or perhaps realising that Dodington possessed too hungry an ambition, kept him as a mere commissioner of the Treasury, a minor.. post firmly under Walpole's own control.
Sensing the drift of the future, in 1739 Dodington broke with Walpole and joined the Prince of Wales's bandwagon in the hope of obtaining great office when Walpole fell. He did not get it, for although Sir Robert fell, his party remained and the Pelhams did not like turnabouts any more than Sir Robert. Doding- ton secured a junior post-the Treasurership of the Navy, which, had he received it twenty years earlier, would have distinguished him. As it was, it underlined his failure. Yet he lingered in it. He quitted only in 1749. By then the King was ageing and the Prince of Wales flourishing. Dodington busied himself drawing up cabinet lists ready for the King's death, but it was the Prince who died. Later he backed Fox against Newcastle and was wrong again. Not until 1760 did his ship come home: by then he was sodden with food, and riddled with disease, but, like the true politician he was, his hopes soared. His letters rattle with self-importance. He got his barony; he slipped, at last, into the cabinet; then death seized him by the throat.
What Dodington lacked, of course, was stamina either in principles or loyalty, without which success in politics is almost impossible. His greed for power was too immediate: his temperament too shifty for the heights. Yet his willingness to work day and night, his addiction to the game of politics, combined with the power which he could manipulate, kept him in the game for nearly fifty years. Dodingtons still abound, so knowledge about him is valuable. He left behind his political testament, a journal, like himself, a thing of fits and starts: fascinat- ing for those to whom the politics of power is the wine of life, tedious beyond belief for those to whom it is not. It is essential, however, for historians of eighteenth-century England, and this admirably edited volume, which contains the full journal, is very welcome. It is superbly and most intelligently indexed and annotated and contains as well a neat, perceptive and elegant introduction.
J. II PLUMB
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