subject: What is a Dorset funeral [print this page] What is a Dorset funeral What is a Dorset funeral
Unlike many other slang terms that enter common use, the origins of the phrase "a Dorset funeral" can be identified with some certainty. According to Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable", it first appeared in a copy of the Georgian magazine, " The Spectator" in connection with the death of the larger-than-life figure of Baron George Bubb Doddington.
Born the son of a humble chemist, from Melcombe in Dorset, he adopted the name of Doddington after inheriting a large property from an uncle of that name. With his new found wealth, he went on to study at Oxford and after graduating was returned to Parliament as an MP for Winchelsea, later becoming an envoy to the Spanish court.
Mostly because of his own diaries, he is remembered as the archetypal Georgian gentleman,with a social life of gambling and drinking, balanced by important other affairs of state. On the other side of the coin, he proved to be a great wit, scholar and an excellent friend and dinner guest. Thomson dedicated his evocative poem "Summer" to him, Fielding addressed an Epistle to him and Edward Young, the author of satires, made him a London celebrity with his writing.
Frederick, the young Prince of Wales went on to become his close friend and moved into a London house bought by Doddington, after the prince's father, King George II, threw him out without giving him an allowance. Doddington then went on to use his own money to clear the young princes debts and support him until the government of the day, finally stepped in and sorted it out. It was Frederick's son, George lll that made Bubb-Doddington a Baron.
Bubb-Doddington went on to become a leading figure in St Francis Dashwood's infamous "Hellfire club",which counted among its members all the leading aristocrats and politicians of the day. The group held their revels and orgies in a ruined Cistercian Abbey by the Thames.
When he died in 1762, he was to have a simple but dignified Dorset funeral, that was attended by his London friend's. It was the reports of this funeral, especially in the well read "Spectator", that gave rise to the phrase. The fashion at the time was to have very elaborate funerals.
In the capital, it was not unusual to have groups of hired women, wailing as mourners. Soldiers from the local militia or yeomanry, to parade behind the coffin and floats decorated with living tableaus and flowers. So, the term " Dorset funeral" was originally used in a disparaging fashion.
Rumours and gossip abounded, hinting that George had actually died in debt and his relatives were unable to afford better. At the time,under the constant pressure of keeping up appearances and their position in "high society", many families would spend what was left of the deceased estates and even put them themselves in debt, to be seen to give a suitable sending off.
The finest example of those extravagant funerals was to culminate in the burial of Lord Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar in 1806. This colourful state funeral was to go on to last five days before Nelson's body was buried in the crypt of St Paul's.
It was only a generation later, with the age of austerity and primness that followed the death of Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert that the term " A Dorset funeral" was to take on another meaning. In the age of arts and crafts, which looked back with nostalgia to an earlier uncomplicated medieval age, a simple, dignified funeral became something to aspire to. Now, the phrase took on a new meaning and to arrange "a Dorset funeral" for your loved one was regarded as the height of of respectability. The irony of this would not have escaped that infamous Georgian rake.
