In his fifty eighth year the honourable George Bubb Doddington purchased the Great House in the parish of Fulham in 1749 from Leonora Lannoy and embarked on aggrandising the house for such an august a personage as himself.
Born plain George Bubb, our hero was bright and sufficiently well connected to ensure a safe passage to Oxford University and from thence, in 1715, to the House of Commons.
He was an accomplished orator, a shrewd parliamentarian, a clever businessman and a wit. He was also rotund, fleshy, showy, venal and given to tergiversation – fickle, inconstant and prone to using subterfuge – an important requisite for an MP. His political philosophy was summarized in his own couplet -"Strive thy little bark to steer with the tide, but near the shore." He carried on a scandalous traffic in parliamentary votes and furnished ample food for the political satirists of the time – they were to name him ‘Silly-Bubb’. His considerable business and political acumen ensured a successful posting to Spain as an envoy extraordinary.
1720 proved the defining moment for Silly-Bubb. A childless maternal uncle died leaving his massive estate and equally huge fortune to our hero. Thereupon he took his uncle’s name, Doddington, and embarked on a life of self aggrandisement. He purchased a house in Pall Mall and commissioned Vanbrugh to re-build his house at Eastbury in Dorset to rival Blenheim Palace – which it did.
George Bubb Doddington was a snob, vain and a servile admirer. He was lampooned by Sir Horace Walpole and satirized by Pope:
"The honey dropping from Favonio’s tongue
The flowers of Bubo and the flow of Yonge."
Yet Walpole admitted that Doddington "was always searching for wit; and what was surprising, generally found it". Yes, Doddington was a wit and despite his profligacy in public life he was a kind friend, a generous, hospitable and good-humoured man. His political hatreds were shelved in private and his wit was fun and not venomous.
His impassioned, yet unsuccessful plea for the life of Admiral Byng was to make a lifelong friend out of Voltaire. He was also a friend of Edward Young and Fielding.
His purchase of the Great House in Fulham, which he named ‘La Trappe’ and was later to be known as Brandenburg House, gave him vent to his love of show. The marbled halls were unrivalled. One was "conducted through two rows of antique marble statues ranged in a gallery floored with the rarest marbles: his saloon was hung with the finest Gobelin tapestry and he slept in a bed canopied with peacock’s feathers".
One evening he fell asleep after a customarily heavy dinner with two guests, Sir Richard Temple, a cousin, and Lord Cobham. Lord Cobham was affronted but Doddington denied he had fallen asleep and repeated a story Lord Cobham had just told his fellow guest. "…And yet," he continued , " I fell asleep because , at about this time of day, I knew you would be telling that particular story."
La Trappe was named after a monastery in France and was occupied by four mismatched individuals; the subject of this story, Mr Wyndham, his cousin and eventual heir, Sir William Breton, the King’s Privy-purse and Mr Thomson, a non-practising physician. These guests formed his ‘Monks of the convent’ and their personalities were conveniently labelled as "a misanthrope, a courtier, and a quack".
As our Silly-Bubb Doddington aged, his corpulence, his vanity and his aspirations expanded. He held a succession of Government sinecures and was appointed Treasurer of the Navy. He was also a member of Sir Francis Dashwood’s Hell-Fire club, a founding member of White’s. Finally his greatest wish was granted in 1761. He was created Baron Melcombe of Melcombe Regis in Dorset! He was finally one of the few but only lived a year enjoying his title, dying in his Fulham ‘palace’ in 1762.
Nothing of the Lord Melcombe remains , except a few ruins in Dorset, a primary school called Melcombe on the borders of Hammersmith and Fulham and his diary - a rich source of how British politics actually worked for fifty years in the 18th Century!
Sources:
Hammersmith & Fulham Archives.