The Project Gutenberg E-text of John Patrick Third Marquess of Bute, by Sir David Hunter Blair

Just twenty years have passed away since the death, at the age of little more than fifty, of the subject of this memoir—a period of time not indeed inconsiderable, yet not so long as to render unreasonable the hope that others besides the members of his family (who have long desired that there should be some printed record of his life), and the sadly diminished numbers of his intimate friends, may be interested in learning something of the personality and the career of a man who may justly be regarded as one of the not least remarkable, if one of the least known, figures of the closing years of the nineteenth century.

Disraeli, when he published fifty years ago his most popular romance, thought fit to place on the title-page a motto from old Terence: "Nosse omnia haec salus est adulescentulis."[1] Was he really of opinion—it is difficult to credit it—that the welfare of the youth of his generation depended on their familiarising themselves with the wholly imaginary life-story of "Lothair"? the romantic, sentimental, and somewhat invertebrate youth who owed such {viii} fame as he achieved to the fact that he was popularly supposed to be modelled on the young Lord Bute—though never, in truth, did any hero of fiction bear less resemblance to his fancied prototype.

The present biographer ventures to think that the motto of Lothair might with greater propriety figure on the title-page of this volume. For there is at least one feature in the life of John third Marquess of Bute which teaches a salutary lesson and points an undoubted moral to a pleasure-loving generation, such a lesson and moral as it would be vain to look for in the puppet of Disraeli's Oriental fancy. If there is any characteristic which stands out in that life more saliently than another, it is surely the strong and compelling sense of duty—a sense, it is to be noticed, acquired rather than congenital, for Bute was by nature and constitution, as an acute observer early remarked,[2] inclined to indolence—which runs all through it like a silver thread. Other traits, and marked ones, he no doubt possessed—among them a penetrating sense of religion, a curious tenderness of heart, a singular tenacity of purpose, and a deep veneration for all that is good and beautiful in the natural and supernatural world; but these were for the most part below the surface, though the pages of this record are not without evidence of them all. But in the whole external conduct of his life it may be said that the desire of doing his duty was paramount with him—his duty to God and to man; his duty, above all, to the innumerable human beings {ix} whose happiness and welfare his great position and manifold responsibilities rendered to some extent dependent on him; and, finally, his duty in such public offices as he was called on to fill, and from which his diffidence of character and aversion from anything like personal display would have naturally inclined him to shrink. If the writer has succeeded in presenting in these pages something of this aspect of the life and character of his departed friend with anything like the vividness with which, at the end of twenty years, they still remain impressed on his own memory, he will be well content.

"The true life of a man," wrote John Henry Newman nearly sixty years ago,[3] "is in his letters"; and no apology is needed for the inclusion in this volume of some, at least, of the large number of Lord Bute's letters which have been placed at the disposal of his biographer, and for the use of which he takes this opportunity of thanking the several owners. Bute possessed in a high degree the essential qualities of a good letter-writer—a remarkable command of language, the power of clear and forcible expression, and (not least) a salutary sense of humour; and his voluminous correspondence, especially in connection with his literary work, was always and thoroughly characteristic of himself.

The writer desires, in conclusion, to express his gratitude not only for the loan of Lord Bute's letters, but for the kind help he has received from many quarters in the elucidation (especially) of details regarding his childhood and youth. In this connection his thanks are particularly due to the late Earl of Galloway and his sisters for their interesting reminiscences of Bute's boyhood at Galloway House; and also to the family of the late Mr. Charles Scott Murray for some particulars of his life during the critical years of his early manhood.

[1] "It is for the profit of young men to have known all these things." Terence, Eunuchus, v. 4, 18.

[3] "It has ever been a hobby of mine, though perhaps it is a truism, not a hobby, that the true life of a man is in his letters.... Not only for the interest of a biography, but for the arriving at the insides of things, the publication of letters is the true method. Biographers varnish, they conjecture feelings, they assign motives, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods; but contemporary letters are facts." (Newman to his sister, Mrs. John Mozley, May 18, 1863.)

JOHN PATRICK

THIRD MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T.

(1847-1900)

CHAPTER I

EARLY LIFE

1847-1861

John Patrick, third Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, Mountjoy and Dumfries, holder of nine other titles in the peerages of Great Britain and of Scotland, and a baronet of Nova Scotia, was fifteenth in descent from Robert II., King of Scotland, who, towards the end of the fourteenth century, created his son John Stuart, or Steuart, hereditary sheriff of the newly-erected county of Bute, Arran and Cumbrae, making to him at the same time a grant of land in those islands. His lineal descendant, the sixth sheriff of Bute, who adhered faithfully to the monarchy in the Civil Wars, and suffered considerably in the royal cause, was created a baronet in 1627; and his grandson, a stalwart opponent of the union of Scotland with England, was raised to the peerage of Scotland as Earl of Bute, with several subsidiary titles, in 1702. Lord Bute's grandson, the third earl, was the well-known Tory minister and favourite of the young king, George III., and his mother—a faithful servant of his sovereign, a man of culture and refinement, admirable as husband, father, and friend, and withal, by the irony of fate, unquestionably the most unpopular prime minister {2} who ever held office in England. His heir and successor made a great match, marrying in 1766 the eldest daughter and co-heiress of the second and last Viscount Windsor; and thirty years later he was created Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, and Viscount Mount joy. Lord Mountstuart, his heir, who predeceased his father, married Penelope, only surviving child and heiress of the fifth Earl of Dumfries and Stair; and the former of those titles devolved on his son, together with valuable estates in Ayrshire. The second marquess, who succeeded to the family honours the year before Waterloo, when he was just of age (he had already travelled extensively, and had paid a visit to Napoleon at Elba), earned the reputation of being one of the most enlightened and public-spirited noblemen of his generation. During the thirty-four years that he owned and controlled the vast family estates in Wales and Scotland, he devoted his whole energies to their improvement, and to promoting the welfare of his tenantry and dependents. His practical interest in agriculture was evinced by the fact that the arable land on his Buteshire property was trebled during his tenure of it; and foreseeing with remarkable prescience the great future in store for the port and docks of Cardiff, he spared neither labour nor means in their development. He was Lord-Lieutenant both of Glamorgan and of Bute, and discharged with tact and success the office of Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland in 1842, on the eve of the ecclesiastical crisis which ended in the secession of more than 400 ministers of the Establishment. His political opinions were in the best sense liberal, and he was a consistent advocate of Catholic Emancipation, even when that {3} measure was opposed by the Duke of Wellington, whom he generally supported. A few hours before his death, which occurred at Cardiff Castle with startling suddenness in March, 1848, he had expressed the confident hope that his successor, if not he himself, would live to see Cardiff rival Liverpool as a great commercial seaport.

Lord Bute was twice married—first to Lady Maria North, of the Guilford family, by whom he had no issue; and secondly, three years before his death, to Lady Sophia Hastings, second daughter of the first Marquess of Hastings. By this lady, who survived him eleven years, he had one child, John Patrick, the subject of this memoir, who was born on September 12, 1847, at Mountstuart House, the older mansion of that name in the Isle of Bute, which was burnt down in 1877 and replaced by the great Gothic pile designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson. Old Mountstuart was an unpretending eighteenth-century house, built by James, second Earl of Bute (1690-1723), a few years before his early death. It was the favourite residence of his son the third earl, George III.'s prime minister, who is commemorated by an obelisk in the grounds not far from the house. The wings at the two extremities escaped the fire, and are incorporated in the modern mansion.

Here, then, on the fair green island which had been the home of his race for nearly five centuries, opened the life of this child of many hopes, who within a year was by a cruel stroke of fate to be deprived of the guardianship and guidance of his amiable and excellent father. The second marquess died, as has been said, deeply regretted, in the spring following the birth of his heir; and the manifold {4} honours and possessions of the family devolved upon a baby six months old. Up to his thirteenth year the fatherless boy was under the constant and unremitting care of a devoted mother, whose memory he cherished with veneration to the end of his life. Sophia Lady Bute was a woman of warm heart and deep personal piety, tinged, however, with an uncompromising Protestantism commoner in that day than in ours. One of her fondest hopes or dreams was the conversion to her own faith of the numerous Irish Catholics whom the development of the port of Cardiff, and the rapid growth of the mining industry, had attracted to South Wales; and the venerable Benedictine bishop who had at that time the spiritual charge of the district, and for whom Lord Bute had a sincere regard and respect, used to tell of the band of "colporteurs" (peripatetic purveyors of bibles and polemical tracts) whom the marchioness engaged to hawk their wares about the mining villages of Glamorgan.

Lord Bute's upbringing as a child was, by the force of circumstances, under entirely feminine influences and surroundings; and to this fact was probably to some extent due the strain of shyness and sensitive diffidence which were among his life-long characteristics. He seems to have been inclined sometimes to resent, even in his early boyhood, the strictness of the surveillance under which he lived. His mother once took him from Dumfries House to call at Blairquhan Castle, driving thither in a carriage and four, as her custom was. While the ladies were conversing in the drawing-room, a young married daughter of the house took the little boy out to see the gardens, ending with a call at the head gamekeeper's. A day or two afterwards {5} the châtelaine of Blairquhan received a letter from Lady Bute, expressing her dismay, indignation, and distress at learning that her precious boy had actually been taken to the kennels, and exposed to the risk of contact with half a dozen pointers and setters. When reminded many years later of this incident (which he had quite forgotten), Lord Bute said, in his quiet way: "Yes, I was kept wrapped in cotton wool in those days, and I did not always like it. The dogs would not have hurt me, and I am sure that I made friends with them."

Lady Bute died in 1859, leaving behind her, both in Scotland and in Wales, the memory of many deeds of kindness and benevolence. Her husband had made no provision whatever in his will for the guardianship of his only son, who had been constituted a ward in Chancery two months after his father's death, his mother being nominated by the Lord Chancellor his sole guardian. Lady Bute's will recommended the appointment as her son's guardian of Colonel (afterwards Major-General) Charles Stuart, Sir Francis Hastings Gilbert, and Lady Elizabeth Moore, who was distantly related to the Bute family through the Hastings', and had been one of Lady Bute's dearest friends. Sir Francis Gilbert being at this time absent from England in the consular service, the Court of Chancery appointed as guardians the two other persons named by Lady Bute.

It seems unnecessary to describe in detail the prolonged friction and regrettable litigation which were the result of this dual guardianship of the orphaned boy; yet they must be here referred to, for it is beyond question that they were not only detrimental to his happiness and welfare during his {6} early boyhood, but could not fail seriously to affect the development of his character in later years. The child was deeply attached to Lady Elizabeth Moore, who had assumed the entire charge of him after his mother's death; and his letters written at this period give evidence not only of this attachment, but of his very strong reluctance to leave her for the care of General Stuart, who insisted that it was time that a boy of nearly thirteen should be removed from the exclusively female custody in which he had been kept from babyhood. Lady Elizabeth, yielding partly to her own feelings, and partly to the earnest and repeated solicitations of her young ward, was ill-advised enough, instead of committing him as desired to the care of her co-guardian, to carry him off surreptitiously to Scotland, and to keep him concealed for some time in an obscure hotel in the suburbs of Edinburgh. Here is the boy's own account of the affair, written from this hotel to a relation in India[1] (he was between twelve and thirteen years of age):—

I prayed, I entreated, I agonised, I abused the general; I adjured her not to give me up to him. She was shaken but not convinced. So we went to Newcastle, to York, and to London, where I got a bad cold, my two teeth were pulled, etc., etc. We were delayed some time there, and meanwhile my prayers and adjurations were trebled: Lady E. was convinced, and promised not to let me go. She got one of the solicitors to the Bank of England in the City to write a letter to Genl. S. for her, as civil as possible, but declining to give me up; to which the general returned a furious answer, conveying his determination to appeal to the Vice-Chancellor about {7} the matter. After a month we became convinced that the Vice-Chancellor would decide against us; and on the night of April 16th Lady E. left the hotel secretly, and with her maid and me shot the moon to Edinburgh, where we arrived at 7 next morning.[2]

For a boy of twelve this is a sufficiently remarkable letter; but an even more precocious document is a draft letter dated a fortnight before the flight to Edinburgh, and composed entirely by young Bute, who recommended Lady Elizabeth to copy it and send it to her co-guardian as from herself!

You will, I am afraid, be much surprised upon the reception of this letter, but I trust that your love for Bute will make you accede to the request which I am about to make. B. has lately had much sorrow, and he has formed an attachment to me only to have it broken by separation, and in order to go among entire strangers to him—for in that light, I am sorry to say, I must regard you and Mrs. Stuart. With your consent, then, dear Genl. Stuart, I shall be happy to keep him with me until he is 14, when he will of course choose for himself. We could live with good Mr. Stacey very nicely at Dumfries House or Mountstuart, and I could occasionally bring him to England—or indeed you could come to see him at Mountstuart. I trust, dear Gen. Stuart, you will be the more inclined to accede to my request when I tell you that he has {8} expressed to me the greatest reluctance at parting from me and going to you—a repugnance which I can only regard as very natural, for I was much grieved to see that you did not follow my advice in walking with him and consulting him (and believe me without so doing you will never gain his affections), while I have always done so, as was his poor mother's invariable custom.[3]

It does not appear whether this letter, which is dated from 23 Dover Street, and is entirely in the boy's own handwriting, exactly as given above, was actually sent by Lady Elizabeth. In any case General Stuart was not the man to submit to the compulsory separation from his ward which resulted from what the House of Lords afterwards characterised as the "clandestine, furtive, and fraudulent action" of Lady Elizabeth Moore. He at once laid the case before the Court of Chancery, which directed that the boy was to be immediately handed over to his care, and sent without delay to an approved private school, and in due time to Eton or Harrow, and then to one of the English universities. Lady Elizabeth absolutely refused to comply with the order of the Court, and was consequently removed in July, 1860, from the office of guardian. Meanwhile the case was complicated by the intervention of the Scottish tutor-at-law, Colonel {9} James Crichton Stuart, who had been since the death of Lord Bute's father manager and administrator of the family estates in Scotland. Colonel Stuart obtained from the Scottish Courts an order that the boy should be sent to Loretto, a well-known school near Edinburgh, and that the Earl of Galloway should be the "custodier" of his person. The Court of Chancery promptly issued an injunction forbidding the tutor-at-law to interfere in any way with the boy's education, whereupon both Colonel Stuart and the English guardian appealed to the House of Lords. That tribunal gave its judgment on May 17, 1861, censuring the Court of Session for its delay in dealing with this important matter, confirming General Stuart as sole guardian, and sanctioning his scheme for the boy's education.

The House of Lords, in giving the decision which brought this long litigation to a close, had raised no objection to the continued residence of the young peer with the Earl of Galloway, an arrangement which had already been approved by the Court of Chancery. Bute had, in fact, at the time the judgment was pronounced, been living for some months with Lord and Lady Galloway at their beautiful place on the Wigtownshire coast; and this was certainly, as it turned out, the most favourable and beneficial solution of the difficult question of providing a suitable and congenial home for one who, whilst the possessor of three or four splendid seats in England and Scotland, had yet, by a pathetic anomaly, never known what home life was since his mother's death in 1859. At Galloway House he found himself for the first time the inmate of a large and cheerful family circle, including several young people of about his own age. "I {10} am comfortably established here," he wrote to Lady Elizabeth Moore soon after his arrival in December, 1860. "This house is like Dumfries House, but much prettier. I have a charming room, not at all lonely. Lord and Lady G. are so kind to me, and the little girls treat me like a brother." "They are all very very kind to me," he wrote a week or two later, adding in the same letter that he had on the previous day attended two services in Lord Galloway's private chapel. "It is very plain," was the comment of the thirteen-year-old critic; "but the chaplain's sermons were all about the saints and the Church. Do you know what he called the Communion? a 'commemorative sacrifice!' In a subsequent letter he says, "Mr. Wildman (the chaplain) says that Mary should be called the 'Holy Mother of God.'"

These new religious impressions, contrasting sharply as they must have done with the narrow Evangelical teaching of his early days, are of interest in connection with his first schoolmaster's report of him some six months later, which will be mentioned in its proper place. "He was very fond," writes one of his former playfellows at Galloway House in those far-off days, "of sketching with pen and pencil religious processions and ceremonies, and his thoughts seemed to be constantly turned on religion. He liked having religious discussions with our family chaplain, who was a clever and well-read man." "Our dear father and mother," writes another member of the same large family, "told us that we must be very kind to him, as he had lost both his parents and was almost alone in the world. I remember seeing him in the library on the night of his arrival—a tall, dark, good-looking boy, {11} looking so shy and lonely, but with very nice manners." "I recollect him," says the son of a neighbouring laird, who was about two years his senior, and was often at Galloway House, "rather a pathetic figure among the swarm of joyous young things there, distinct among them from never seeming joyous himself." This was doubtless the impression which his extreme diffidence generally made on strangers; and it is the pleasanter to read the further testimony of the playfellow already quoted: "His shyness soon wore off when he got away from the elders to play with us, and he entered with zest into all our amusements. He was intensely earnest about everything he took up, whether serious things or games. He was greatly attached to our brother Walter,[4] whose bright, cheery nature appealed to him. Walter was always full of fun and spirits and mischief; and Bute was delighted at this, and soon joined in it all. I remember our old housekeeper, after some great escapade, saying, "Yes, and the young marquis was as bad as any of you!" One of his hobbies was collecting from the seashore the skulls and skeletons of rabbits, birds, etc. I spent much time on the cliffs and rocks looking for these things, of which we collected boxes full. With his curious psychic turn of mind he liked to conduct some kind of ceremonies over these remains after dark, inviting us children to take part, sometimes dressed in white sheets. He loved legends of all kinds, and used often to tell them to us: I was very fond of hearing him, he told them so well. History, too, especially Scottish history, {12} he liked very much. He wrote a delightful little history of Scotland for my youngest brother,[5] of whom he was very fond—a tiny boy then. It was all written in capital letters, with delightful and clever pen-and-ink sketches, one on every page."

These recollections of happy home life in a Scottish country house, nearly sixty years ago, call up a pretty picture of the orphan boy, whose childhood had been so strangely lonely and isolated, contented and at home in this charming family circle. That he was truly so is further testified by letters that passed about this time between him and his tutor-at-law, Colonel Crichton Stuart. In reply to a letter from Colonel Stuart, expressing a desire to hear from Bute himself whether he was comfortably settled at Galloway House, the boy wrote: "In answer to your request, I write to confirm Mr. A.'s statement regarding my happiness here. Lord and Lady Galloway did indeed receive me as a child of their own, which I felt deeply."

That these words were a sincere expression of the young writer's sentiments there is no reason to doubt; but thoughtful and advanced as he was in some ways for his years, he was too young to realise then—-possibly he did later on, though he very seldom spoke of his boyhood's days—how much more he owed to the Galloway family than mere kindness. It seemed, indeed, a special providence which had brought the orphaned marquis at this critical moment under influence so salutary and so much needed as that of the admirable and excellent family which had welcomed him to their beautiful home as one of themselves. The numerous letters {13} written by Bute at this period, of which many have been preserved, are marked indeed by propriety of expression and a command of language remarkable in a boy of his age; but they also reveal very clearly a self-centred view of life even more extraordinary in so young a boy, and due, it cannot be doubted, to the singularity of his upbringing. Surrounded from babyhood by a circle of adoring females, in whose eyes the fatherless infant was the most precious and priceless thing on earth, he had grown up to boyhood penetrated, no doubt almost unconsciously, with an exaggerated and overweening sense of his own importance in the scale of creation, to which the wholesome influence of Galloway House provided the best possible corrective. Distinguished, high-principled, exemplary in every relation of life, Lord and Lady Galloway held up to their children, by precept and example, a constant ideal of duty, unselfishness and simplicity of life; and the young stranger within their gates was fortunate in being able to profit by that teaching. If his future life was to be marked by generous impulses and noble ambitions—if one of his most notable characteristics was to be a personal simplicity of taste and an utter antipathy to that ostentation which is not always dissociated from high rank and almost unbounded wealth—if he was to realise something of the supreme joy and satisfaction of working for others rather than for oneself; for all this he owed a debt of gratitude (can it be doubted?) to the kindly and gracious influences which were brought to bear on his sensitive nature during these years of his boyhood. He was received at Galloway House as a child of the family; and his companions spoke their minds to him with fraternal freedom. "You {14} will never find your level, Bute," the eldest son of the house (whom he greatly liked and respected) once said to him, "until you get to a public school." He did not resent the remark, for his good sense told him that it was true. Harrow was the public school of the Galloway family; but it was not so much for that reason that Harrow was chosen for him rather than Eton, as because his wise and kind guardians believed, rightly or wrongly, that a boy in his peculiar position would be less exposed to adulation and flattery at the more democratic school on the Hill than at its great rival on Thames-side.

Meanwhile a preparatory school had to be selected; and the choice fell on May Place, the well-known school conducted by Mr. Thomas Essex at Malvern Wells, where one of Lord Galloway's sons was just finishing his course. It was locally known as the "House of Lords" from its connection with the peerage; and the pupils included members of the ducal houses of Sutherland, Argyll, Manchester, and Leinster, as well as of many other well-known families. One who well remembers the first arrival at May Place of the young Scottish peer, then aged thirteen and a half, has described him as a slight tall lad, reserved and gentle in manner, and particularly courteous to every one. The shyness and also the reverence for sacred things which always distinguished him as a man were equally noticeable in him as a boy; and it is remembered that when he revisited the school three or four years later, during the Harrow holidays, and was asked where he would like to drive to, he chose to go and inspect an interesting old church in the neighbourhood. A school contemporary with whom he occasionally squabbled was William Sinclair, the future Archdeacon of London; and there was {15} once nearly a pitched battle between them, in consequence of some caricatures which Sinclair drew, purporting to represent Bute's near relatives, but for which he afterwards handsomely apologised.

Towards the end of Bute's first term at Malvern Wells, his master wrote to Lord Galloway the following account of his young pupil. The concluding sentence is of curious interest in view of what the future held in store. It seems to show that the reaction in his mind—a mind already thoughtful beyond his years—against the one-sided view of religion and religious history which had been impressed upon him from childhood had already begun.

Lord Bute is going on more comfortably than I could have expected. He is on excellent terms with his schoolfellows; and though he prefers "romps" to cricket or gymnastics, yet I am glad to see him making himself happy with the others. More manly tastes will, I think, come in time. His obedience and his desire to please are very pleasing; while his strong religious principles and gentlemanly tone are everything one could desire. His opinions on things in general are rather an inexplicable mixture. I was not surprised to find in him an admiration of the Covenanters and a hatred of Archbishop Sharpe; but I was certainly startled to discover, on the other hand, a liking for the Romish priesthood and ceremonial. I shall, of course, do my best to bring him to sounder views.

We have no evidence as to what methods were employed, or what arguments adduced, by the excellent preceptor in order to carry out the purpose {16} indicated in the concluding lines of his letter. Bute himself never referred to the matter afterwards, but the result was in all probability nugatory. It is not within the recollection of the present writer, who was an inmate of May Place a year or two later, that any serious effort was ever made there to impress religious truths on the minds of the pupils, or indeed to impart to them any definite religious teaching at all. The views and opinions of the young Scot, although only in his fourteenth year, were probably already a great deal more formed on these and kindred subjects than those of his worthy schoolmaster. In any case the time available for detaching his sympathies from the "Romish" priesthood and ritual was short. The boy had come to school very poorly equipped in the matter of general education, as the term was then understood. In the correspondence between his rival guardians, when he was just entering his 'teens, allusion is made to the boy's "precocious intellect," also to the fact that he knew little Latin, no Greek, and (what was considered worse) hardly any French. Mathematics he always cordially disliked; and it is on record that all the counting he did in those early years was invariably on his fingers. His natural intelligence, however, and his aptitude for study soon enabled him to make up for much that had been lost owing to the haphazard and interrupted education of his childhood; and it was not long before he was pronounced intellectually equal to the not very exacting standard of the entrance examination at Harrow. A final reminiscence of his connection with May Place may here be recorded. He revisited his old school not long after his momentous change of creed; and being left alone awhile in {17} the study took up a blank report that lay on the table, and filled it up as follows[6]:—

[1] Charles MacLean, to whom he referred more than thirty years later, in his Rectorial address at St. Andrews (p. 188).

[2] During Bute's travels with Lady Elizabeth Moore, in the course of her efforts to retain the custody of her little ward, his most trusted retainer was one Jack Wilson. The pertinacity with which the child was pursued, and the extent of Wilson's devotion, are attested by the known fact that on one occasion he knocked a writ-server down the stairs of a Rothesay hotel where Bute was staying with Lady Elizabeth. Wilson was accustomed always to sleep outside his young master's door. He rose later to be head-keeper at Mountstuart, and died there on May 23, 1912.

[3] It seems right to mention that Bute had another reason, apart from his attachment to Lady Elizabeth Moore, for his apparently unreasonable hostility to his other guardian. One of his strongest feelings at this time was his almost passionate devotion to the memory of his mother; and he never forgot what he called General Stuart's "gross disrespect" in not accompanying her remains from Edinburgh, where she died, to Bute, where she was buried. "He left her body," wrote Bute to an intimate friend from Christ Church, Oxford, "to be attended on that long and troublesome journey, in the depth of winter, only by women, servants, and myself, a child of twelve."

[4] Hon. Walter Stewart, afterwards colonel commanding 12th Lancers (died 1908). He was about eighteen months younger than Bute.

[6] This anecdote was communicated to a weekly journal (M.A.P.) soon after Lord Bute's death, by the son of the master of his old school.

CHAPTER II

HARROW AND CHRIST CHURCH

1862-1866

In September, 1861, Lord Bute completed his fourteenth year, attaining the age of "minority" (as it is called in Scots law), which put him in possession of certain important rights as regarded his property in the northern kingdom. The young peer had from his childhood, as is shown by his early correspondence with Lady Elizabeth Moore, been aware that he would be entitled at the age of fourteen to exercise certain powers of nomination in respect to the management of his Scottish estates. Most of the members of the Lords' tribunal which had adjudicated on his position in May, 1861, had evinced a curious ignorance of the nature, if not of the very existence, of these prospective rights, and even when informed of them had been inclined to question the expediency of their being acted upon. Bute himself, however, was not only perfectly aware of these rights, but resolved to exercise them; and we accordingly find him, a few weeks after his fourteenth birthday, writing as follows, from his private school, to his guardian, General Stuart:—

I wish the necessary steps to be taken in the Court of Session for the appointment of Curators {19} of my property in Scotland. The Curators whom I wish to appoint are Sir James Fergusson, Sir Hastings Gilbert, Lt.-Col. William Stuart, Mr. David Mure, Mr. Archibald Boyle, and yourself.

I wish the Solicitor-General of Scotland to be employed as my legal adviser in this buisness (sic).

Bute was now entitled to choose from the number of these curators any one to whose personal guardianship he was willing to be entrusted during the seven years of his minority. His choice fell on Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran, M.P. for Ayrshire, who had recently married the daughter of Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General of India; but he did not immediately take up his residence with Sir James, as it was thought best that he should continue, at any rate during the earlier part of his public school life, to spend his holidays at Galloway House, where he had become thoroughly at home. Lord Galloway's younger son Walter was destined for Harrow School; and thither Bute preceded him after spending two terms at May Place.

It was in the first term of 1862 that Bute entered the school at Harrow, then under the headmastership of Montagu Butler. His position was at first that of a "home boarder," and he was under the charge of one of the masters, Mr. John Smith, known to and beloved by several generations of Harrovians.

There was a rather well-known and self-important Mr. Winkley, quite a figure among Harrow tradesmen (writes a school contemporary of Bute's, son of a famous Harrow master, and himself afterwards {20} headmaster of Charterhouse), a mutton-chop-whiskered individual who collected rates, acted as estate agent, published (I think) the Bill Book, sold books to the School, &c. He occupied the house beyond Westcott's, on the same side of High Street, between Westcott's and the Park. There John Smith resided with the Marquess of Bute.

Mr. Smith, whose mother lived at Pinner, used to visit her there every Saturday, and to take over with him on these occasions one or two of his pupils, who enjoyed what was then a pretty rural walk of three miles, as well as the quaint racy talk of their master, and the excellent tea provided by his kind old mother.

I remember first meeting Bute on one of these little excursions. Mr. Smith had told me that the tall, shy, quiet boy (he was a year younger than me, but much bigger) had neither father, mother, brother nor sister, and was therefore much to be pitied. I wondered why he did not come more forward, and said so little either to Smith himself or to Mrs. Smith; for Smith was a man who had great capabilities for drawing people out, and was a general favourite with every one. The impression I had of Bute during all our time at Harrow was always the same—that of his very shy and quiet manner.

Undemonstrative as he was by nature, Bute never forgot those who had shown him any kindness, and he always preserved a grateful affection for John Smith, who accompanied him more than once during the summer holidays to Glentrool, Lord Galloway's lodge among the Wigtownshire hills, and enjoyed some capital fishing there. Bute wrote to him in {21} later years from time to time, and during the sadly clouded closing period of the old man's life, when he was an inmate of St. Luke's Hospital, he gave him much pleasure by sending him annually a palm branch which had been blessed in his private chapel. More than twenty years after Bute's Harrow days, he received this appreciative letter from his former master:

The real Palm Branch was most welcome, with its special blessing: it is behind me as I write, and many happy thoughts and messages does it bring. God bless you for your most kind thought. I intend to forward it in due time to Gerald Rendall (late head of Harrow, then Fellow of Trin. Coll., Cambridge, now Principal of University College, Liverpool), as my share in furnishing his new home: he was married this vacation. The students, male and female, will be glad to see what a real Palm Branch is like. Your gift of last year is now in the valued keeping of Mrs. Edward Bradby, whose husband was a master of Harrow in your day, and, after fifteen years of hard and successful work at Haileybury, has taken up his abode at St. Katherine's Dock House, Tower Hill, with wife and children, to live among the poor and brighten their dull existence with music and pictures and dancing; besides inviting them, in times of real necessity, to dine with himself and his wife, in batches of eight and ten.

I look forward to the Review[1] with great interest. {22} I show it to the Medical Gentlemen here, read what I can, and then forward it to my sister at Harrow for friends there.

I try to realise the old chapel on the beach, in which the branches were consecrated,[2] but fail utterly to do so. Whereabouts is it? I suppose you have a chapel in the house also, for invalids, &c., in bad weather.

God bless you all: Lady Bute and the children, especially the maiden who is working at Greek.[3]

From John Smith's quasi-parental care, Bute passed in due time into the house of Mr. Westcott (afterwards Bishop of Durham), who occupied "Moretons," on the top of West Hill (now in the possession of Mr. M. C. Kemp). The future bishop, with all his attainments, had not the reputation of a very successful teacher in class, nor of a good disciplinarian; but as a house-master he had many admirable qualities, and was greatly beloved by his pupils. For him also Bute preserved a warm and lifelong sentiment of regard and gratitude; and to him, as to John Smith, he was accustomed to send every Easter a blessed palm from his private chapel, which Dr. Westcott preserved carefully in his own chapel at Auckland Castle. "See that the Bishop of Durham gets his palm," were Lord Bute's whispered words as he was lying stricken by his last illness in the Holy Week of 1900. The tribute of affectionate {23} remembrance had been an annual one for more than thirty years.

Of all Bute's contemporaries at the great school, there were perhaps only two with whom he struck up a real and close friendship. One was Adam Hay Gordon of Avochie (a cadet of the Tweeddale family), who was with him afterwards at Christ Church, and was one of his few intimate associates there. The intimacy was not continued into later years, but the memory of it remained. "I heard with sorrow," Bute recorded in his diary on July 12, 1894, "of the death of one of my dearest friends, Addle Hay Gordon. Though at Harrow together, and very intimate at college, we had not met for many years. In my Oxford days I several times stayed in Edinburgh with him and his parents, in Rutland Square. We were as brothers."[4]

An even more intimate, and more lasting, friendship was that with George E. Sneyd, who was at Westcott's house with Bute, and who afterwards became his private secretary, married his cousin, Miss Elizabeth Stuart (granddaughter of Admiral Lord George Stuart) in 1880, and died in the same year as Adam Hay Gordon. "It is difficult to say," wrote Bute in January, 1894, "what this loss is to me. He had been an intimate friend ever since we were at Westcott's big house at Harrow—one of my few at all, the most intimate (unless Addle Hay Gordon) and the most trusted I ever had. He had a very important place in my will. For these two I had prayed by name regularly at every Mass I have heard for many, many years."

A school contemporary, who records Bute's close friendship with George Sneyd, mentions (as do others) his fancy for keeping Ligurian bees in his tiny study-bedroom. "My only recollection of his room at Harrow, where I once visited him," writes Sir Herbert Maxwell, "is of an arrangement whereby bees entered from without into a hive within the room, where their proceedings could be watched." A brother of Sir Redvers Buller, who boarded in the adjoining house, has recorded that "Bute's bees" were a perfect nuisance to him, as they had a way of flying in at his window instead of their own, and disturbing him at his studies or other employments.

"At Harrow," said one of Bute's obituary notices, "the young Scottish peer was as poetical as Byron." This rather absurd remark is perhaps to some extent justified by one episode in Bute's school career. "I have a general recollection of him," writes a correspondent already quoted, "as a very amiable, though reserved, boy, not given to games, who astonished us all by securing the English Prize Poem. He won this distinction (the assigned subject was 'Edward the Black Prince') in the summer of 1863, when only fifteen years of age." "His winning this prize in 1863, when quite young," writes the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in the same form as Bute at Harrow and knew him well, "was his most notable exploit. There is a special passage about ocean waves and their 'decuman,' which has often been quoted as a remarkable effort on the part of a young boy.[5] {25} He was very quiet and unassuming in all his ways."

A further honour gained by Bute in the same year (1863) was one of the headmaster's Fifth Form prizes for Latin Verse; but the text of this composition (it was a translation from English verse) has not been preserved. The fact of his winning these two important prizes is a sufficient proof that, if not "as poetical as Byron," he had a distinct feeling for poetry, and that generally his industry and ability had enabled him to make up much, if not all, of the leeway caused by the imperfect and desultory character of his early education. In other words he passed through his school course with credit and even distinction; and that he preserved a kindly memory of his Harrow days is sufficiently shown by the fact that he took the unusual step—unusual, that is, in the case of the head of a great Roman Catholic family—of sending all his three sons to be educated at the famous school on the Hill.

Bute's career at Harrow, like his private school course, was an unusually short one, extending over only three years. He left the school in the first term of 1865, presenting to the Vaughan Library at his departure a small collection of books, which it may be of some interest to enumerate. They were Pierotti's Jerusalem Explained, 2 vols. folio; {26} Digby's Broadstone of Honour, 3 vols.; Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, 3 vols.; Miss Proctor's Legends and Lyrics; Gil Blas, 2 vols. (illustrated); Don Quixote; Napier's Memoirs of Montrose, 3 vols.; and Memoirs of Dundee, 2 vols.

He further evinced his interest in his old school by presenting to it, five years after leaving, a portrait of John first Marquess of Bute (then Lord Mountstuart), wearing the dress of the school Archery Corps of that day (1759). This portrait (which is a copy of a well-known painting by Allan Ramsay) now hangs in the Vaughan Library.

It was characteristic of the young Harrovian that, his school-days over, he took the very first opportunity to turn his steps towards the East, in which from his earliest boyhood he had always been curiously interested. It was not the first occasion of his leaving England, for he had visited Brussels and other cities several times with his mother during his childhood, and used in later years to note in his diary the half-forgotten recollections of places which he had seen in those early and happy days. But his visit to Palestine in the spring of 1865—the first of many journeys to the Holy Land—was an entirely new experience; and to this youth of seventeen, thoughtful and religious-minded beyond his years, it was no mere pleasure trip, but a veritable pilgrimage. "I am sending you a copy," he wrote to a friend at Oxford in the autumn of this year, "of a document which I value more than anything I have ever received in my life: the certificate of my visit to the Holy Places of Jerusalem given to me by the Father Guardian of the Franciscan convent on Mount Sion. Here it is:

In Dei Nomine. Amen. Omnibus et singulis praesentes literas inspecturis, lecturis, vel legi audituris, fidem notumque facimus Nos Terrae Sanctæ Custos, devotum Peregrinum Illustrissimum Dominum Dominum Joannem, Marchionem de Bute in Scotia, Jerusalem feliciter pervenisse die 10 Mensis Maii anni 1865; inde subsequentibus diebus præcipua Sanctuaria in quibus Mundi Salvator dilectum populum Suum, immo et totius generis humani perditam congeriem ab inferi servitute misericorditer liberavit, utpote Calvarium ... SS. Sepulchrum ... ac tandem ea omnia sacra Palestinæ loca gressibus Domini ac Beatissimæ ejus Matris Mariæ consecrata, à Religiosis nostris et Peregrinis visitari solita, visitasse.

In quorum fidem has scripturas Officii Nostri sigillo munitas per Secretarium expediri mandavimus.

Datis apud S. Civitatem Jerusalem, ex venerabili Nostro Conventu SS. Salvatoris, die 29 Maii, 1865.

L.S. De mandato Reverendiss. in Christo Patris
F. REMIGIUS BUSELLI, S.T.L., secret.

"It touched and interested me extremely," Bute said many years later, "to find myself described in this document as 'devotus Peregrinus,' and this for more than one reason. The phrase, in the first place, seemed to link me, a mere schoolboy, with the myriads of devout and holy men, saints and warriors, who had made the pilgrimage before me. 'Illuc enim ascenderunt tribus, tribus Domini.' And then I remembered that I descended lineally through my mother's family, the Hastings', from a very famous pilgrim, the 'Pilgrim of Treves,' the Hebrew who went to Rome during the great Papal Schism, sat himself down on one of the Seven Hills, and dubbed himself Pope. When Martin V. (Colonna) was recognised as lawful Pope, {28} my ancestor returned to Rome and, I believe, reverted to the Judaism from which he had temporarily lapsed. But this celebrated journey earned him the title, par excellence, of the Pilgrim of Treves; and the name of Peregrine has been borne since, all through the centuries, by many of his descendants, of whom I am one." All this is so curiously characteristic of Lord Bute's half serious, half whimsical (and always original) manner of regarding out-of-the-way corners of history and genealogy, that it seems worth reproducing in this place.

Soon after his return from his Palestine journey, Bute was duly matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, and he went into residence in the October term. He was one of the last batch of peers who entered the university on the technical footing of "noblemen," with the privilege of wearing a distinctive dress, sitting at a special table in hall, and paying double for everything. Among his contemporaries at the House were the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Rosebery, the seventh Duke of Northumberland, and Lords Cawdor, Doune, and Willoughby de Broke. His cousin, the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings, who was five years his senior, had not long before gone down from the university, had been married for a year, and was at the height of the meteoric career which came to a premature and inglorious end just when Bute attained his majority. The latter had that strong sense of family attachment which is so marked a characteristic of Scotsmen; and noblesse oblige was a maxim which for him had a very real and serious meaning. It is certain that the contemplation of his cousin's wasted life not only distressed him deeply, but tended to confirm in him an almost exaggerated {29} antipathy to the extravagant craze for racing, gambling and betting, which was the form of "sport" most prevalent among the young men of family and fashion who were his contemporaries at Oxford. Bute's entire want of sympathy with such pursuits and such ideals thus inevitably cut him off from anything like intimate intercourse with the predominant members of the undergraduate society of his college. He would not be persuaded to frequent their clubs or share in their amusements, which to him would have been no amusements at all; although he was elected a member of "Loders," to which the noblemen and gentlemen-commoners of the House as a matter of course belonged. He was, however, induced, on the representations of one of his friends (probably Hay Gordon) to own and nominate a horse in the university steeplechases (or "grinds," as they were called). "Some one, I do not know who," writes one of his contemporaries, "had informed him that I was the proper person to ride his horse. When I interviewed him on the subject (which I did with some trepidation, as he was exceedingly shy and stiff with strangers), he evinced not the slightest interest either in his horse or the contest in which it was to take part. The animal came in only third, but Bute showed neither disappointment nor pleasure in anything it did or failed to do either on this or on subsequent occasions." Another anecdote in connection with this episode of "Bute's steeplechaser" is related by one of his fellow-undergraduates, who was charged, or had charged himself, with the duty of informing the owner of this unprofitable horse (for which, by the way, he had paid a good round sum) that it was among the "Also Rans" in the Christ Church {30} grinds. "Ah! indeed?" was his only comment; "but now I want to know," he continued eagerly, "if you can help me to solve a much more important question. What real claim had the [Greek: kremastoí kêpoi] (the hanging gardens) of Semiramis at Babylon, to be classified, as they were in ancient times, among the Seven Wonders of the World?"

Whilst on the subject of Bute's diversions at Christ Church (though steeplechasing, even vicariously, can hardly be said to have been one of them), reference may appropriately be made to a rather remarkable entertainment which he gave by way of repaying the hospitalities extended to him by his companions, including some of his former school-fellows at Harrow. It took the form of a fancy-dress ball, which came off in the fine suite of rooms which he occupied in the north-west corner of Tom Quad (since subdivided). Here is the invitation card, surmounted with the emblazoned arms of the House, which was sent out:

"La Morgue" was the room, adjacent to his own, which was, as a matter of fact, used as a mortuary when any death occurred within the college. The young host received his guests at the entrance to this apartment in the character of his Satanic Majesty, attired in a close-fitting garment of scarlet and black, with wings, horn, and tail; and most of the guests figured as dons, eminent churchmen, and other well-known personages in the university, the stately dean being, of course, represented, as well as {31} Mrs. Liddell, who afterwards expressed regret that she had not been present in person. A fracas in the refreshment room resulted in a jockey (the Hon. H. Needham) being arrested by a policeman, who conducted him to the police-office before the culprit discovered that the supposed constable was one of his fellow-revellers. The affair was altogether so successful that Bute designed to repeat it a year later; but the authorities of the House, who had given no permission for the original entertainment, peremptorily forbade its repetition.[6]

Bute had come into residence at Oxford a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday; and the above reminiscences show that with all his serious-mindedness he possessed, as indeed might have been expected, something also, at that period, of what Disraeli called "the irresponsible frivolity of immature manhood." His amiability of character and remarkable personal courtesy prevented him from being in any degree unpopular; but his intimate friends at Oxford were undoubtedly very few; and it is curious that the most intimate of them all was not an undergraduate, or an Oxford man at all, but a lady much his senior, Miss Felicia Skene, daughter of a well-known man of letters and friend of Walter Scott, long resident in Oxford. Miss Skene was herself a person of remarkable attainments and qualities, one of them being a rare gift of sympathy, which seems to have won the heart of the solitary young Scotsman from the first {32} day of their acquaintance. Bute corresponded with her constantly and regularly, not only during his undergraduate days, but for many years subsequently; and his letters show to how large a degree he gave her his confidence in matters of the most intimate interest to himself. One of the earliest of these is dated from Dumfries House, Ayrshire, in the Christmas vacation following his first term at Oxford.

A happy Xmas to you. Mine is comfortable, if not merry nor ideal. Let me say in black and white that I mean to pay for the meat and wine ordered by the doctor for the poor woman you mention.... Money I cannot send. I have little more than £100 to spend myself. My allowance is £2000, and I have overdrawn £1630, with a draft for £1000 coming due. I am trying to raise the wind here: it seems absurd that I should be "hard up," but it is a long story. I am only sorry that the offerings I should make at this time to the "Little Child of Bethlehem" are not procurable.

Bute had now finally left Galloway House, which had been his holiday residence during his Harrow days; and his home when not at Oxford was at Dumfries House, his Ayrshire seat, then in the occupation of Sir James and Lady Edith Fergusson. "I saw a good deal of him when he was living at Dumfries House under the tutelage of Sir James Fergusson," writes one who had known him from {33} childhood. "He used to come down to the smoking-room at night arrayed in a gorgeous garment of pale blue and gold: I think he said he had had it made on the pattern of a saintly bishop's vestment in a stained glass window of the Harrow Chapel. Sir James was anxious to make a sportsman of Bute, and bought a hunter or two for him. I remember his coming out one day with Lord Eglinton's hounds, but I never saw him take the field again." The tyro, as a matter of fact, got a toss in essaying to jump a hedge; and so mortified was he by this public discomfiture that he not only never again appeared in the hunting-field, but he never quite forgave Sir James for being the indirect cause of the misadventure.

Miss Skene not only acted to some extent as Bute's almoner during his Oxford days (it is fair to say that the "hard-up" condition alluded to in the above letter was due at least as much to his lavish almsgiving as to any personal extravagance), but was his adviser in regard to other matters. "Mrs. Leighton [wife of the Warden of All Souls] has invited me," runs one of his notes, "to come and meet a Scottish bishop (St. Andrews) at dinner, and asks me in the same letter to give 'out of my abundance' a cheque to enlarge the Penitentiary chapel. Now I dislike Scots Episcopalian bishops (not individually but officially), their genesis having been unblushingly Erastian, and their present status in Scotland being schismatic and dissenting; and my 'abundance' at present consists of a heavy overdraft at the bank. Read and forward the enclosed reply, unless you think the lady will take offence, which can hardly be."

He often copied for his friend extracts which {34} struck him from books he was reading. "I have transcribed for you," he wrote a few weeks after his nineteenth birthday, "the account of the death of Krishna from the Vishnu Purána. A hunter by accident shot him in the foot with an arrow. When he saw what he had done he prostrated himself and implored pardon. Krishna granted it and translated him at once to heaven. 'Then the illustrious Krishna, having united himself with his own pure, spiritual, inexhaustible, inconceivable, unborn, undecaying, imperishable and universal spirit, which is one with Vásundera, abandoned his mortal body and the condition of the threefold qualities.' To my mind this description of the great Saviour becoming one with universal spirit approaches the sublime."

At the end of his first summer term (June, 1866) Bute made his second tour in the East—a more extended one this time, visiting not only Constantinople and Palestine, but Kurdistan and Armenia. His tutor, the Rev. S. Williams, accompanied him, as well as one or two friends, including Harman Grisewood, one of his associates at the House, and one of the few with whom he maintained an intimacy after their Oxford days. A diary kept by Bute of the first portion of this tour has been preserved: it describes his doings with great minuteness, and is a remarkable record for a youth of eighteen to have written. In Paris nothing seems to have much interested him except the churches, and long antiquarian conversations with the Vicomte de Vogüé and others. "I again visited the Comte de V.,"[7] {35} runs one entry. "We got into the Cities of Bashan, and stayed there three or four hours." Many pages are devoted to a detailed description of Avignon, and later of St. John's Church at Malta, of Syracuse, Catania, and Messina. At Malta he visited the tomb of his grandfather (the first Marquess of Hastings, who died when governor of Malta in 1826), and "was much pleased with it." Describing the high mass in the Benedictine Church at Catania, he says, "At the end, during the Gospel of St. John, the organist (the organ is one of the finest in the world) played a military march so well that I, at least, could hardly be persuaded that the loud clear clash, the roll of the drums, the ring of the triangle, and the roar of the brass instruments were false. It seemed to me that this passage, which was admirably executed, harmonised wonderfully well with the awful words of the part of the Mass which it accompanied."

The young diarist's vivid descriptive powers are well shown in his narrative of the ascent of Etna, and the impression it made on him:

We dined [at Nicolosi] on omelet, bread, and figs, and the nastiest wine, and at about 7 p.m. started on mules. These beasts had saddles more uncomfortable than words can describe. Their pace was about 2-½ miles per hour, which it was too easy to reduce, but quite impossible to accelerate. Mine had for bridle a cord three feet long, tied to one of several large rings on one side of its head. The journey lasted till 1.30 a.m. or later.... About {36} 1 in the morning, Mr. W. and one guide having long dropped far behind, where their shrieks and yells (now growing hoarse from despair) could be faintly heard in the darkness far down the mountain, we emerged upon the summit between the peaks; and at the same time the full moon, silver, intense, rose from behind the lower summit, and shed a flood of light over the tremendous scene of desolation. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing visible but cinders and sky. At every step we sank eighteen inches into the black dust as we stumbled on in single file in perfect silence. A couple of miles ahead rose the great crater peak, with patches of snow at its foot and the eternal white cloud emanating and writhing from the summit. After an hour's rest at the Casa Inglese, a miserable hovel at the foot of the Cone, we started, wrapped in plaids, the cold being intense. Mr. W. had now rejoined us. The Cone is a hill about the size of Arthur's Seat, covered with rolling friable cinders, from which rise clouds of white sulphureous dust. The ascent took rather more than an hour. Mr. W. gave out half-way up, declaring he should faint. The pungent sulphur-smoke came sweeping down the hill-side, choking and blinding one. Eyes were smarting, lungs loaded, throat burnt, mouth dry and nostrils choked. On we struggled till the very ground gave forth curling clouds of smoke from every cranny. A few more steps and we were on the summit, at the very edge of the crater, which yawned into perdition within a few inches of one's foot. It is an immense glen, surrounded by a chain of heights, with tremendously precipitous sides, bright yellow in the depths, whence rises continually the cloud of smoke. The whole scene is exactly like Doré's illustrations of the Inferno.... The sun rose over Italy as we sat with our heads wrapped up and handkerchiefs in our mouths; but there was no view at all, the height is too stupendous. The {37} horror of the whole place cannot be depicted. We were delighted to get back to the Casa Inglese, where we remounted our mules and crept away.

From Sicily the travellers visited Smyrna and Chios on their way to Constantinople. Pages of the diary are taken up with descriptions of churches, and functions attended in them, and it is of interest to note that, profoundly interested as Bute was in the Greek churches and the Greek liturgy, his religious sympathies were entirely with the Latin communion. The "spiritual deadness," as he calls it, of the schismatic churches of the East, repelled and dismayed him. "It strikes me as essentially dreadful," he writes of a visit to the Church of the Transfiguration at Syra, "that the Photian Tabernacle everywhere enshrines a deserted Saviour. The daily sacrifice is not offered; the churches are closed and cold, save for a few hours on Sunday and festivals; visits to the B. Sacrament are unknown. Pictures are exposed to receive an exaggerated homage, unknown and undreamt of in the West. But it is absolutely true to say that the Perpetual Presence (to which no reverence at all is offered, by genuflection or otherwise) receives less respect than one ordinarily pays to any place of worship whatever, even a meeting-house or synagogue." Later, recording a visit to the Greek cathedral at Pera, he describes the service there as "the most disagreeable function I ever attended: the church crammed with people in a state of restlessness and irreverence characteristic of Photian schismatics; and the whole service as much spoiled as slurring, drawling, utter irreverence, bad music, and bad taste could spoil it. After breakfast I {38} attended the High Mass at the Church of the Franciscans—a different thing indeed from the Photian Cathedral; and I went back there in the afternoon for Vespers and Benediction."

It has been sometimes said that Bute, during the period immediately preceding his reception into the Catholic Church, was even more drawn towards the "Orthodox" form of belief than he was to the prevailing religion of Western Christendom. The above extracts show that the very reverse was the case. Genuine and earnest worship stirred and impressed him everywhere: thus he writes, after witnessing an elaborate ceremonial (including the dance of the dervishes) in a mosque at Constantinople: "I left the mosque very much wrought up and excited. There are those who are not impressed by this. There are those also who laugh at a service in a language they do not know: there are those who see nothing august or awful even in the Holy Mass." Slovenliness, irreverence, tepidity in religion were what pained and repelled him; and finding those characteristics everywhere in the liturgical services of those whom he called the Photians, he was so far from being attracted towards any idea of joining their communion, that he returned to England, and to Oxford, after this Eastern journey, with the whole bent of his religious aspirations set more and more in the direction of the Catholic and Roman Church. His conversion was, in fact, accomplished before the end of this year, although circumstances, as will be seen, compelled the postponement for a considerable time of the public and formal profession of his faith.

[1] The Scottish Review, which Lord Bute controlled at this time, and to which he contributed many articles.

[2] This was the chapel on the edge of the sea, among the Mountstuart woods, which had been built for the convenience of the people living and working near the house. Lord Bute used it as a domestic chapel until the new chapel at Mountstuart was opened. He was buried there in 1900.

[3] Lord Bute's only daughter, Lady Margaret Crichton-Stuart, then in her twelfth year, and under the tutelage of a Greek governess.

[4] Adam Hay Gordon married in 1873 the beautiful granddaughter of Sir Robert Dalrymple Horn Elphinstone, and died without issue, as above recorded, in July, 1894.

[5] "'Tis said that when upon a rocky shore     The salt sea billows break with muffled roar,
    And, launched in mad career, the thundering wave
    Leaps booming through the weedy ocean cave;
    Each tenth is grander than the nine before.
    And breaks with tenfold thunder on the shore.
    Alas! it is so on the sounding sea;
    But so, O England, it is not with thee!
    Thy decuman is broken on the shore:
    A peer to him shall lave thee never more!"

[6] The particulars of this whimsical incident in Bute's university career have been kindly furnished by Mr. Algernon Turnor, C.B., who was his contemporary at Christ Church. It was he who rode—though not to victory—the steeplechaser mentioned in the text. Mr. Turner married in 1880 Lady Henrietta Stewart, one of Bute's early playmates and companions at Galloway House.

[7] Eugene Vicomte de Vogüé, whom Bute wrongly styles "Comte" in his diary, was a few months his junior. One of the most brilliant and charming men of his generation, he was in turn soldier, diplomatist, politician, and littérateur. He became a member of the Academy in 1888 and died in 1910. He published books and articles on a great variety of subjects, all marked with the profoundly religious feeling which characterised him.

CHAPTER III

RELIGIOUS INQUIRIES—RECEPTION POSTPONED—COMING OF AGE

1867, 1868

A well-meaning person thought well to compile and publish, some years ago, a volume in which a few distinguished Roman Catholics, and a great number of mediocrities, were invited to describe the process and motives which led them "to abandon" (as some cynic once expressed it) "the errors of the Church of England for those of the Church of Rome." Lord Bute, who was among the many more or less eminent people who received and declined invitations to contribute to this symposium, was certainly the last man likely to consent to recount his own religious experiences for the benefit of a curious public. It is, therefore, all the more interesting that in a copy of the book above referred to, belonging to one of his most intimate friends,[1] was preserved a memorandum in Bute's writing, which throws an interesting light on some, at least, of the causes which were contributory to his own submission to the Roman Church.

I came to see very clearly indeed that the Reformation was in England and Scotland—I had not studied it elsewhere—the work neither of God nor of the people, its real authors being, in the former country, {40} a lustful and tyrannical King, and in the latter a pack of greedy, time-serving and unpatriotic nobles. (Almost the only real patriots in Scotland at that period were bishops like Elphinstone, Reid, and Dunbar.)

I also convinced myself (1) that while the disorders rampant in the Church during the sixteenth century clamoured loudly for reform, they in no way justified apostacy and schism; and (2) that were I personally to continue, under that or any other pretext, to remain outside the Catholic and Roman Church, I should be making myself an accomplice after the fact in a great national crime and the most indefensible act in history. And I refused to accept any such responsibility.

The late Jesuit historian, Father Joseph Stevenson, who spent a great number of years in laborious study (for his work in the Record Office) of the original documents and papers of the Reformation period, frankly avowed that it was what he learned in these researches, and no other considerations whatever, which convinced him—an elderly Anglican clergyman of the old school—that the Catholic Church was the Church of God, and the so-called Reformation the work of His enemies. It was one of his colleagues in the Society of Jesus[2] who quoted this to Lord Bute, and his emphatic comment was, "That is a point of view which I thoroughly appreciate." As to Bute himself, there were undoubtedly many sides of his character to which the appeal of the ancient Church would be strong and insistent. Her august and venerable ritual, the ordered splendour of her ceremonial, the deep significance of her liturgy and worship, {41} could not fail to attract one who had learned to see in them far more than the mere outward pomp and beauty which are but symbols of their inward meaning. The love and tenderness and compassion with which she is ever ready to minister to the least of her children would touch the heart of one who beneath a somewhat cold exterior had himself a very tender feeling for the stricken and the sorrowful. The marvellous roll of her saints, the story of their lives, the record of their miracles, would stir the imagination and kindle the enthusiasm of one who loved to remember, as we have seen, that the blood of pilgrims flowed in his veins, and found one of his greatest joys in visiting the shrines, following in the footsteps, venerating the remains, and verifying the acts of the saints of God in many lands, even in the remotest corners of Christendom. His mind and heart and soul found satisfaction in all these things; but most of all it was the historic sense which he possessed in so peculiar a degree, the craving for an exact and accurate presentment of the facts of history, which was one of his most marked characteristics—it was these which, during his many hours of painful and laborious searching into the records of the past, were the most direct and immediate factors in convincing his intellect, as his heart was already convinced, that the Catholic and Roman Church, and no other, was the Church founded by Christ on earth, and that to remain outside it was, for him, to incur the danger of spiritual shipwreck.

Dr. Liddon, who was at this time a Senior Student of Christ Church, and resident in the college (he became Ireland Professor of Exegesis four years later, and a Canon of St. Paul's in the same year), {42} was wont to say that Bute was far too busy, during his undergraduate career, in "reconsidering and reconstructing his religious position," to give more than a secondary place to his regular academic studies. His reading, which, undistracted by any of the ordinary dissipations of university life, he pursued with unflagging ardour, sitting at his books often far into the night, ranged over the whole field of comparative religion. Every form of ancient faith, Judaism, Buddhism, Islamism, the beliefs of old Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as the creeds and worship of Eastern and Western Christendom, were the subject of his studies and his thoughts; and the more he read and pondered, the more clear became his conviction that in the Roman Church alone could his mind, his heart, and his imagination find rest and satisfaction. No external influence of any kind helped to bring him to that conclusion. In the conduct of his studies and the arrangement of his reading he freely sought and obtained the advice and assistance of tutors and professors, both belonging to the House and outside it. But from no Roman Catholic source did he ask or receive counsel or direction at this time; and he once said that during the first year of his Oxford course he was not even aware of the existence of a Roman Catholic church in the university city. Two or three Catholic undergraduates were in residence at Christ Church in his time, but he was not intimate with any of them. He was fond of taking long walks, then, as always, almost the only form of bodily exercise he favoured, though he was a good swimmer and fencer; and it was in company with his most intimate friend, Adam Hay Gordon, that he once, after a visit to Wantage (the associations {43} of which with King Alfred greatly interested him), penetrated to the ancient Catholic chapel of East Hendred, not far distant. He was greatly moved at learning that this venerable sanctuary was one of the very few in England in which, it was said, the lamp before the tabernacle had never been extinguished, and Mass had been celebrated all through the darkest days of penal times; and he knelt so long in prayer before the altar that he had twice to be reminded by his companion of the long walk home they had in prospect. This pilgrimage—Bute always considered it as such, and spoke of it with emotion long years afterwards—took place in the autumn of 1866; and before he left Oxford for the Christmas vacation of that year he had made up his mind to seek admission without delay into the Catholic fold, and (as he hoped) to make his first communion as a Catholic before the Easter festival of the following year.

Absorbed in his studies, and cheered and encouraged by the dawn of religious certainty, and his growing confidence in the sureness of the ground on which his feet were placed, Bute had, it is probable, reckoned little, if at all, on the storm of opposition, protest, and resentment which was bound to break out the moment his proposed change of religion became known. Lady Edith Fergusson, his guardian's wife, for whom he had a sincere affection, first learned his intention from himself during his Christmas sojourn at Dumfries House. The news came as a great blow to Sir James, who, with all his good qualities, had no intellectual equipment adequate to meeting the reasoned arguments of his young ward; and he fled up to London to take counsel with Bute's English guardians. The tidings caused consternation in the {44} Lord Chancellor's Court, and (it was said) in a Court even more august; and the cry was for a scapegoat to bear the brunt of the general wrath. Who and where was the subtle Jesuit, the secret emissary of Rome, who had hatched the dark plot, had "got hold of" the guileless youth, and inveigled him away from the simple faith of his childhood? Public indignation was heightened rather than allayed by the impossibility of identifying this sinister conspirator. Non est inventus. He had, in fact, no more existence than Mrs. Harris. The circumstances of the case were patent and simple. A young man of strong religious instincts, good parts, and studious habits, had, after much reading, grave consideration (and, it might be added, earnest prayer, but that was outside the public ken), come to the conclusion that the religion of the greater part of Christendom was right and that of the British minority wrong. And what made matters worse was that he had in his constitution so large a share of native Scottish tenacity, that there seemed no possibility of inducing him to change his mind. The obvious, and only alternative, policy was delay. Get him to put off the evil day, and all might yet be well. The mot d'ordre was accordingly given; and a united crusade was entered on by kinsfolk and acquaintance, guardians, curators, and tutors-at-law, the Chancellor and his myrmidons, the family solicitors, and finally the dons and tutors at Oxford, to extract from the prospective convert, at whatever cost, a promise not to act on his convictions at least until after attaining his majority. After that—well, anything might happen; and if during the interval of nearly two years he were to take to drink or gambling, to waste his substance on riotous living (like his {45} unfortunate cousin), or generally to go to the devil—it would be of course very regrettable, but anyhow he would be rescued from Popery, and that was the only thing that really mattered.

In the midst of these alarums and excursions the young peer returned to Christ Church for the Lent term of 1867, and found himself the object of much more public attention and solicitude than he at all appreciated. "Life is odious here at present," he wrote to the always faithful friend of whose sympathy he was sure, "and I am having a worse time even than I had during all the rows about my guardianship. Luckily I am better able to bear it, and nothing will ever change my resolution."

Dr. Liddon concerned himself very actively with the project of getting Bute to agree to delay in carrying out his purpose; and with him was associated Dr. Mansel, at that time a Fellow of St. John's and Professor of Church History (he became Dean of St. Paul's in 1868). There were some advanced churchmen among the Senior Students[3] of that day, including the Rev. R. Benson, first superior of the Cowley brotherhood, and the Rev. T. Chamberlain of St. Thomas's, who claimed to be the first clergyman to have worn a chasuble in his parish church since the Reformation.[4] Such men as these would naturally {46} point out that Bute could get all that he wanted in their section of the Anglican Church; but by another of the Students, Mr. Septimus Andrews, who afterwards followed Bute into the Catholic Church and became an Oblate of St. Charles, he was encouraged to remain faithful to his convictions, in spite of the strong pressure brought to bear on him from all quarters. It was even said that Dr. Pusey (who seems to have taken no part in the agitation of the time) was to be asked to approach Dr. Newman in his retirement at Edgbaston, and beg him to use his influence to secure the delay which was all that was now hoped for. There is no evidence that this step was actually taken; but the success, such as it was, of these reiterated appeals for postponement of the final and definitive step is attested by the following deeply interesting letter, written by Bute to his friend at Oxford at the beginning of the Easter vacation of 1867.

On this day, which was to have seen my First Communion, I do not believe I should have the heart to write and tell you that it has all failed, if it were not for a sort of hard, cold, listless feeling of utter apathy to everything Divine which is new to me, but which has, as it were, petrified me since my fall.

The long and short is that the Protestants—i.e. the Lord Chancellor and his Court; my Guardians; my friends and relations; and Mansel, Liddon, and Co. have extorted from me a promise not to become a Catholic till I am of age. They are {47} jubilant with the jubilation of devils over a lost soul; but I am hopeless and weary to a degree.

There remains nothing to say now, except that I am utterly wrecked. I have not dared to pray since. I have heard Mass twice, but I looked on with an indifference greater than if I had been at a play. I feel no moral principle either. It is simply all up. Instead of feeling these holy days, the thought of the suffering of Christ simply haunts me like a nightmare. I try to drown it and drive it away.

There is no use in going on this way. It is a triumph for which Mansel, etc., are thanking God (!). I know what my own position is. It is hopeless, and graceless, and godless.

If the well-meaning divines and others who had wrung from Bute, under the severest moral pressure, the much-desired promise, had had an opportunity of perusing the above letter, the "jubilation" of which he speaks would surely have been considerably modified. It is a sad enough document to have been written by a youth in his twentieth year, to whom his opening manhood seemed to offer, from a worldly point of view, everything that was most brilliant and most desirable. The day on which it was dated, and the thought of all that day was to have been to him, and yet was not, naturally deepened the depression under which it was penned, and led him perhaps to exaggerate the condition of spiritual dereliction which he so pathetically described. But if his life was not in reality wrecked, if he had not in truth (and we know that he had not) lost all sense of moral principles, it is impossible to avoid the reflection that no thanks for this are due {48} to those who seem utterly to have misapprehended the strength and sincerity of his religious convictions, and the very grave responsibility they incurred (to say nothing of the risk to himself) in persuading him to stifle them, even for a time. It was their hope, doubtless, that the delay they had secured would ultimately lead to the abandonment of his purpose; but nothing is more certain that while resolved to abide faithfully by his promise, he was inflexibly determined to follow his conscience and carry out his declared intention at the very moment that he was free to do so. This resolution taken, his wonted tranquillity returned, and he went back to Christ Church for the summer term to resume undisturbed, and with a mind at rest, his quiet life of study and other congenial occupations. Reproduced here is a rough sketch from his pen, dated at this time (May 13, 1867), but not otherwise described. The drawing, which is not devoid of charm and power, depicts apparently the Communion of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland. On the same sheet is another sketch which seems to be a design for a stained glass window representing Scottish Saints.

A great part of the Long Vacation of 1867 was spent by Bute in a cruise to the north of Scotland and to Iceland, in the yacht Ladybird, which he had recently purchased. "On Sundays in my yacht," he writes to a friend from Edinburgh on July 13, 1867, "I am to conduct Presbyterian services. There is a book of prayers approved by the Church of Scotland for the purpose: instead of sermon, some immense bit of Scripture, e.g. the whole Epistle to the Romans." This letter, by the way, is dated "Feast of S. Anicete"—a rare instance of hagiographical inaccuracy on the writer's part. {49} July 13 is not the festival of St. Anicetus, P.M. (who is commemorated on April 17), but of an earlier Pope and Martyr, St. Anacletus.

Bute visited St. Andrews during this cruise—a fact to which he made interesting reference on a memorable occasion many years subsequently.[5] It {50} was, however, in quest of the relics of another ancient saint and martyr, dear for centuries to Scottish Christians under the title of St. Magnus of Orkney, that Bute spent much time in far northern waters during the summer of 1867. Magnus Earl of Orkney, if not a martyr in the technical sense any more than St. Oswald (called King and Martyr) and some others of the early English Saints, was yet a Christian hero who died a violent death at the hands of his enemies. It was in the little island of Egilshay that he was slain in A.D. 1116 by his treacherous cousin Haco; and there Bute landed from his yacht, kissing (as he records) the sacred ground as he touched the land, and recommending—he does not say with what result—his companion, Mr. George Petrie, F.S.A., to do the same. After visiting the ancient church, dedicated to the saint, though its round tower is probably far older than the time of St. Magnus, Bute spent a long time at Kirkwall in the study of its noble cathedral, where he obtained leave to take the reputed bones of the saint from their resting-place in the great pier on the north side of the choir. A minute inspection of these bones, conducted by himself, Mr. Petrie, two local doctors, and an apothecary, convinced him that the skull (an unusually large one, of a very degenerate type, with an old sword-cut in it over which there was a new growth of bone) was not in the least likely to be that of St. Magnus; and there were other remains in the cavity, clearly those of a different person. This conclusion was confirmed by subsequent investigations (nineteen {51} years later) which Bute made in Orkney, and to which reference is made on a later page.[6] These details are worth mention, as testifying to the scrupulous care with which he was always anxious to examine any supposed relic of antiquity (whether the remains of a saint or anything else) before giving credence to its authenticity.

To the memory, and for the personality, of St. Magnus himself, Bute always cherished a lively devotion and veneration,[7] which was shown not only in some of his later writings, but in a hymn of seven stanzas which he composed at this time in honour of the saint, and which was printed in the Orcadian over the signature "Oxonian." It is a free paraphrase of the Latin vesper hymn assigned to St. Magnus in the Aberdeen Breviary on his feast day (April 16), and has more merit than was claimed for it by its author, who described it in a letter to Mr. Petrie as "a very indifferent attempt." Another poetical composition of his dating from this period was a pretty set of verses entitled "Our Lady of the Snows," which was published anonymously this year in the Union Review (then edited by Dr. F. J. Lee) after being declined by the editor of the Month.[8] He wrote to Miss Skene from Thurso on July 16, 1867:

I am tickled pleasurably by the opinion of the editor of the Union about my little poem. Are we to conclude that the standard of the Month is the higher of the two, as it rejects what the Union admits, and even describes as "feeling and beautiful"? I confess that till now that had not been the result produced on my mind by a comparison of their respective "Poet's Corners."

Bute continued his yachting cruise from Orkney to Iceland, and spent there his twentieth birthday, viewing the volcano of Hecla in full eruption, as he had seen Etna a year previously. One of his birthday letters was from Lady Elizabeth Moore, with whom he had renewed a regular correspondence, and who was now happy in the belief that her former ward's secession from Protestantism was postponed sine die. Her letters are always characteristically kind and affectionate, if every phrase is not altogether judicious.

You are much in my thoughts this day.... My most affectionate good wishes on your entering your twenty-first year. May the Almighty bless and protect you. May you be preserved from evil doings and erroneous opinions, and prove a bright example of good to others in the elevated position of life in which God has placed you. Ten years ago I spent September 12 at St. Andrews with a little boy, the cherished object of his mother's deepest affection. We little thought how soon he would be deprived of that excellent parent, and how cruel would be the consequences that followed her sad loss. You have wonderfully escaped the dangers and survived the difficulties of your too eventful life in early youth. May the future be more calm, more happy! ... Your mother's bequest to me has {53} been a source of more anxiety than you can ever know. My consolation is that I firmly did my duty towards my cousin who trusted me, and towards her orphan child.

I was charmed to receive your letter of the 16th, with most interesting details. I pass it on to-day to Sir James Fergusson, who merits that attention. I am thankful you are safe out of cold, dreary, dangerous Iceland, though in after times it will be amusing to talk of your travels in such a curious unvisited country. You are a dear good Boy for writing so often, and I thank you very very much; only it vexed me to be forced to remain so long silent. On your birthday we drank your health "with a sentiment," and the servants had a bottle of wine for the festive occasion, and Mungo [Bute's dog] was decorated with a new ribbon.... Mr. Henry Stuart has been extremely civil in sending me boxes of game and fruit from Mountstuart. There were great doings on the 12th at Rothesay, from which I gather you are now considered Somebody, instead of being Nobody (which I always felt you were wrong in ever permitting). If Sir J. F. had been Guardian long ago, such a state of things would not have existed.

Bute was called away from Oxford, soon after his return for the October term, to attend the funeral at Cheltenham of his last surviving aunt, Lady Selina Henry. His mother had had three sisters, but he had never been intimate with any of them, although he appreciated their personal piety more, perhaps, than they did his. "When I return," he wrote from Cheltenham to his Oxford {54} friend, "I shall be able, perhaps, to add to your knowledge of the ultra-Protestant school, as I have already added to my own. It is wonderful how holy some people are in spite of everything." Bute always recalled with pleasure the extreme piety of some of his Protestant forbears, notably that of his great-great-grandmother, Selina ninth Countess of Huntingdon,[9] after whom Lady Selina Henry was named. He gave an old engraved portrait of this esteemed ancestress, who was as homely-looking as she was pious, to an intimate friend, with these words written under it by himself: "Fallax est gratia et vana pulchritudo: mulier timens Dominum ipsa laudabitur."[10]

Not only tolerant of, but conspicuously fair-minded towards, the religious views of others, Bute gave evidence of this, as well as of his deep interest in theological questions, in a letter written early in 1868 on the subject of the Filioque clause in the Creed, which divides East from West. Himself persuaded of the truth of the doctrine on this, as on all other points, held in the Latin Church, he could not pass unchallenged defective or disingenuous arguments even on the right side.

It is really breaking a fly on the wheel to attack the argument of the writer in the Rock.

What he says is this: If the Spirit proceeds from the Father only, and not from the Father and the Son, then the Father, by this attribute of emitting {55} the Spirit, which the Son has not, is of a nature so different from that of the Son that they cannot be of one substance.

This visibly ludicrous position can be shown to be an absurdity thus: The Son is by generation, the Spirit by procession, which is a much greater difference between them than there is between the Father and the Son by the Father's being Spirit-emitting and the Son not. Therefore, if this difference between the Father and the Son be sufficient to make them of different substances, how much more shall the Son and the Spirit be of different substances!

His characteristic reverence in approaching such subjects is shown in the postscript of this letter, dated from Christ Church, March 26, 1868:

I have a great shrinking from writing or speaking upon this awful matter. But as you wanted it, here it is.

In the Long Vacation of this year—his last as an Oxford undergraduate—Bute again spent some weeks in a yachting cruise, not this time in Eastern waters, but in the North Sea and the Baltic, his companion being Lord Rosebery, who was just his own age, and had matriculated at Christ Church in the same term as himself. At the end of August he returned home in view of his impending majority, which was celebrated in September all over his extensive estates with much rejoicing, the principal festivities being held at Cardiff. "It will be a great ordeal," he wrote a few days previously, "and one which I wish it were possible to avoid." It was in truth only the strong sense of duty by which he was {56} ever actuated that enabled him to overcome his natural repugnance to appearing as the principal figure in such demonstrations; but when the time came he enacted his part with dignity and success, and won golden opinions everywhere. His personal appearance, hitherto unknown to thousands of those who acclaimed him in the streets, prepossessed them in his favour. "His well-knit and stalwart form," writes one of those present, "and the combined expression of amiability and decision of character stamped upon his countenance, struck all present." And the same observer commends in the young peer's speeches on this occasion, the "simplicity of style, conciseness of expression and depth of sentiment which showed him to be a man of thought and reflection, and one thoroughly alive to the great responsibility entailed on him by the heritage of wealth." His principal speech was delivered at a great dinner given him by more than three thousand of the tradesmen and workers of Cardiff, and it very favourably impressed all who heard it. In reply to the toast of his health, he said:

I tell you that when I come into this great and growing town, and see the vast number of men who are nourished by its growing prosperity, and when I feel the ties of duty which bind me to them; when I consider the hopes which they fix on me and the affectionate and precious regard with which for my father's sake they look on me; when it comes home to me that I must perforce do great good or great evil to them; and when, on the other hand, my self-knowledge sets before me my own few years, my inexperience, my weakness, my many faults, my limited ability, my loneliness, the weight of responsibility which lies on me seems sometimes absolutely crushing. But it will not do to be {57} crushed by it, and I do not mean to be. I mean to try to do my best for this place to the end of my life, and to do this I would ask you to help me.

The rejoicings at Cardiff, which lasted a full week, included the public roasting of two oxen, one in the old river-bed, the other at the head of the west dock. The Corporation also entertained Bute to a banquet, of which the bill of fare is worth reproducing, as a specimen of the Gargantuan scale on which such things were done in mid-Victorian days:

Fish.—Turbot and lobster sauce, mullet à la cardinal, crimped cod and oyster sauce, filets de sole.

Removes.—Haunch venison, boiled leg of lamb, roast beef, green goose, rouleau of veal, ragout sausages, roast chicken, boiled turkey (Bechamel), braised rump beef, saddle mutton, turkey à la royale, forced calves' head, ducks, rouleau of venison, boiled chicken, tongues, hams.

Entrées.—Sweetbreads à la Princesse, lamb-cutlets au Jersey, compôt of pigeons, fillet of chicken à la royale, filet de boeuf, kidneys au champagne, pork cutlets and tomato sauce, vol-au-vent.

Sweets.—Ice pudding, Snowdon pudding, plum pie and cream, macaroni au gratin, Charlotte Russe, cabinet pudding, Italian cream, pastries (various), jellies (various).

The dinner, it was reported, "gave great satisfaction"; and it is only to be hoped that those of the guests who worked conscientiously through the menu did not live to repent it.

Bute spent the rest of the autumn, after coming of age, quietly at Cardiff, reading much, and preparing {58} himself for the important step—his reception into the Catholic Church—which he now felt himself free to take. He had already begun to obey the dietary rules prescribed to the faithful (he found them always extremely trying, though he observed them strictly all his life).

My chief news [he wrote on October 24, 1868] is that I have begun to keep the laws of the Church about fasting and abstinence, and had my first fish dinner yesterday. The series of messes, fish and eggs and puddings, nearly made me sick.

In the same letter he refers to a more important matter, the breaking off of his projected marriage. He had formed an attachment to the sixth of the seven beautiful daughters of a well-known peer; but the rumours of his conversion, which was now known to be certainly impending, had caused the lady's parents to withdraw their sanction to the proposed engagement.

To-day's post [he writes] brings me a long letter from the Duchess of ——. It is very disheartening. Unless the woman lies, she will do everything in her power to prevent the marriage. She is, I think, too upright a woman to deceive.

This autumn was overshadowed for Bute by an event which he felt much for several reasons, the death (on November 10), when only in his twenty-seventh year, of his cousin the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings, to whose unfortunate career reference has already been made. Bute had gone up to Scotland a few days previously, leaving at Cardiff Castle Mr. John Boyle (the brother of one of his former curators and a trustee of his father's {59} will), who on November 10 was expecting a friend to dinner. Seated in the library, he heard a carriage roll through the great courtyard and stop at the door. After an interval, thinking the bell must be broken, he came into the hall, but the butler, who was waiting there, assured him that no carriage had come. Next morning he received a telegram announcing that Lord Hastings had died suddenly the night before. He only heard later, for the first time, that the arrival of a spectral carriage was said always to foretell the death of some member of the Hastings family.[11]

[1] Hartwell Grissell, M.A., of Brasenose, and for many years attached to the Papal Court.

[2] The late Father James MacSweeney, Bute's principal collaborator in his opus magnum, the translation of the Roman Breviary.

[3] The Senior Students (now called "Students") of Christ Church correspond to the Fellows of other colleges.

[4] The writer was told by Mr. Chamberlain himself, in his old age, that he had first worn a red chasuble at St. Thomas's Church on Whit Sunday, 1854. Dr. Neale, however, had certainly worn the Eucharistic vestments before that in his chapel at East Grinstead; and they were introduced at Wilmscote (Warwickshire) as early as 1849.

[5] "I remember when I was at Oxford," he said in his Rectorial address at St. Andrews a quarter of a century later (post, p. 187), "and was going one Long Vacation to Iceland in company with an English friend (now the secretary of one of Her Majesty's ministers), I stopped the yacht here [at St. Andrews] in order to show him with pride the only place in Scotland, as far as I know, whose appearance can boast any kinship with that of Oxford."

[7] "Isn't it perfectly monstrous," Bute is recorded to have once asked a lady in a London drawing-room, à propos of nothing in particular, "that St. Magnus hasn't got an octave?" What the lady said or thought is not recorded, but Bute had the satisfaction of knowing, before his death, that Pope Leo XIII. had at least authorised the keeping of St. Magnus's festival throughout Scotland; The Scots Benedictine Abbey of Fort Augustus is probably the only place in Christendom where the feast-day of the holy Earl (April 16) is annually celebrated by a solemn high Mass.

[9] Patroness of George Whitefield (the inventor of Calvinistic Methodism), and founder of numerous chapels up and down England, which were under her absolute control. The adherents of this sect (known as the "Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion") for the most part joined the Congregationalist body later.

[10] "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised" (Prov. xxxi. 30).

[11] Mr. Boyle's grandson, who communicates this incident, adds: "My grandfather always told this story very solemnly, and with the fullest conviction of its truth, although he was not at all apt to believe in anything except the most positive and material facts."

Lady Margaret MacRae (Bute's only daughter) has assured the writer that on the eve of her father's death at Dumfries House (October 8, 1900), she was an ear-witness of a phenomenon precisely similar to that described in the text.

CHAPTER IV

DANESFIELD—RECEPTION INTO CATHOLIC CHURCH

1867-1869

The conversion of Bute to the Roman Church, as to which his mind was practically made up before the end of 1866, though the actual step was delayed until nearly two years later, was brought about, as we have seen, chiefly by his own reading and reflection, combined with the impression wrought on his mind by foreign travel—not, it is to be noted, mainly in Catholic countries, but in those Eastern lands where he had every opportunity of studying at first hand the various forms of worship and belief in which he was so deeply interested. None of his companions on these extended journeys were Roman Catholics, nor apparently in any degree sympathetic with the spirit in which the young Scottish pilgrim visited those historic spots. A casual note in one of his journals reveals the fact that he defrayed in most cases the entire expenses of his fellow-travellers on these trips; but though he thus secured companionship, there is no evidence that his varied journeyings were carried out in society particularly congenial to him. At Oxford, as has been already said, his only really intimate friends (in a host of acquaintances) were a lady already middle-aged, and two undergraduates, whose loyal affection for him certainly {61} did not include any intelligent sympathy with his religious aspirations. It was not until the Christmas vacation of 1866, when his conversion was to all intents and purposes an accomplished fact, that he became for the first time intimate with a Catholic family, and through them with one who was destined to be the actual instrument of his reception into the Latin Communion. Let us pause for a moment at the turning-point in his life which we have now reached, and look back some eighteen months to the beginning and the development of this new friendship.

Not far from the old town of Marlow, among chalky downs starred in early summer with masses of golden St. John's wort, stood in those days the pretty country seat of Danesfield, the home of Mr. Charles Scott Murray, a Catholic gentleman of Scottish descent and good estate. He had married a daughter of the twelfth Lord Lovat, and had a large family; and both his country home and his house in Cavendish Square were centres of much pleasant hospitality. Lord Bute stayed with him several times at Danesfield, and made there, early in 1867, the acquaintance of the Rev. T. W. (afterwards Monsignor) Capel, who acted as chaplain in the beautiful private chapel (one of Pugin's finest works) attached to the house. "Lord Bute was often at Danesfield in those days," writes a daughter of the house, "and I remember him sitting for hours talking to my mother—almost always on religious subjects—and watching her embroidering vestments for the chapel." With the chaplain also he held many conversations, and informed himself through him about many points in Catholic practice and observance. But he was already, as has been {62} seen, practically convinced of the truth of the Roman claims; and he subsequently took occasion more than once emphatically to deny that there was any truth whatever in the popular idea that he had been "converted" by Mgr. Capel. Writing to an intimate friend,[1] four or five years later, on the subject of a biography of that prelate which it was proposed to publish, he says:

If it does come out, the only thing I hope they won't put in is that he "converted" me, which would be, to put it plainly, a mere lie. Mgr. C. performed the ceremony of reception in December, 1868. I chose him for the purpose because, having several times met him at the Scott Murrays' the year before, I knew him fairly well, and was pleased with his clear and simple way of explaining certain things I wished to know. I received much spiritual help from him at a time when I was greatly in need of such help, and yet was unable, for certain reasons, to take the final step; and I was, and am, grateful to him for this and for much else. But that I was in any sense "converted" by him is simply untrue.[2]

Bute was greatly attracted by the kindness, good sense, and sterling Catholic piety of his host {63} at Danesfield, and had a sincere regard and affection for both him and his wife, and indeed for the whole family. "His initial shyness once overcome," one of them writes, "he became like one of ourselves. He shared all our home life, came to Mass and Benediction with us as a matter of course, and talked quite simply of how he longed to be a 'real' Catholic." Of his postponed reception he wrote to Mr. Scott Murray in much the same terms (though more briefly) as he had written to his friend at Oxford.

It is all over for the present. I have yielded to the pressure of the Court of Chancery, my guardians, and the Oxford people, and given them a promise not to be received until I am of age. I do assure you that the state of hopelessness in which I am is sad to a degree. When I see you next I can tell you, if you like, the details of a very wretched business.

I have a favour to ask, which is that you will get for me one of those crosses such as you have hanging on your beads. I hope you will not refuse me this kindness, although I remain external to the Faith.

Believe me always, with many thanks for all your kindness, most sincerely yours,

A letter to the same correspondent, towards the close of the year, mentions the names of some recent or prospective converts to the Roman Church, in whom Bute was naturally interested.

I was for two nights at Blenheim at the end of term; they were rather full of Lady Portarlington's[3] {64} conversion, and told me also that the young Norths had been received and their mother was about to be. We heard there also of the reception of Lord Granard and Lord Louth—an unusual event, I imagine, in Ireland.

I met at Blenheim an old Admiral, Sir Lucius Curtis[4] (at least eighty), who became a Catholic, he told me, soon after Newman, more than twenty years ago. Two men connected with Aberdeen, George Akers of Oriel[5] and William Humphrey,[6] the Bishop of Brechin's chaplain, are both going over, I hear, almost at once. Akers is, I believe, an able man; but a more distinguished convert is Clarke, fellow of St. John's[7] (and a famous rowing man). George Lane Fox and Hartwell Grissell are both certain, I believe. So you see Oxford is moving.

The friendship between Bute and Capel, begun at Danesfield, was strengthened during the summer term of 1868, the latter part of which Mr. Capel spent at Oxford, in residence at the Catholic presbytery. He arrived there a day or two after a sad fatality at Christ Church, the shock of which was deeply felt by all—even the most wild and thoughtless—of the members of the House. A letter from Bute thus describes it:

One of the most frightful accidents I have ever known took place here last night. A man called Marriott, whom I knew well, one of the sporting set (he rode my horse in a steeplechase only last term), fell out of the top windows of Peckwater, and died in about half an hour. You may conceive what a state Ch. Ch. is in.... Mr. Capel is coming next Wednesday, and I am sure his visit will do good. Indeed I think this opportunity an admirable one, when the sight of death has awakened many from the dream of sensuality in which they habitually lie asleep.

A letter to the same correspondent next day gives a curious picture of the state of feeling at the House:

Another fatal accident! What days we are living in. Yesterday afternoon some undergraduates were shooting crows with saloon pistols about Magdalen Walks, when one of them got shot through the stomach and died almost at once. He was an Exeter man.

We are all in black and white at the House, and very sad and depressed. Last night a number of us dined at the "Mitre," so as to keep away from the House. It was a strange meal—much noisy talk and a good deal drunk, but every now and then came long miserable pauses, and talk about Marriott in low, frightened tones. Afterwards they came down to my rooms for coffee, and as we sat here we could hear the passing bell tolling from St. Aldate's. Some, almost in desperation, rushed off to the billiard-room and played pool in a gloomy sort of way. It was anything to keep away out of the House. I assure you the gloom and misery of it all are excessive. I hear men saying that they simply dare not die.

I do feel that Mr. Capel will find men here not unprepared to listen to him. Left to themselves, they are evidently making desperate efforts to forget it all....

I had seen him lying in the ground-floor room where he died—totally unconscious, and breathing with great difficulty. The Senior Censor came in when I was there, and read over him the prayers for the dying. This was the very clergyman who told me a few months ago that he did not believe in prayer.... I went into the room again after the men had gone to the billiard-room. It was the room of a friend of his: the walls covered with pictures of horses and actresses, and whips and spurs and pipes. The body lay on a mattress on the floor, covered with a sheet. It was all dreadful, and I tried in vain in that room to say a De Profundis for him. As I went out I met men coming in carrying the coffin.

We all assembled in the cathedral, in mourning, at 2.30 p.m. The Dean read the funeral service, making repeated and most painful slips of the tongue. Then the choir sang a really lovely anthem, "In the sight of the unwise he seemed to die, but he is at peace." All were much moved; and the man next me was, I think, crying, as indeed I was myself. We walked in procession, two and two, to Peck., then formed a lane to Canterbury Gate, through which the hearse passed, his friends following it down to the station. All in profound silence, broken only by the tramp of feet and the tolling of the bell. Everything inky black, except as much of the Dean's surplice as a huge black scarf and stole let be seen. The coffin was all black, with no cross {67} or anything else to relieve it. I heard great disgust expressed at the godless gloom of it all.

I have mentioned Mr. Capel's visit to several; and they have all hailed it, I may say, with pleasure. What has happened here has made many think and say, "Now is the time to arise from sleep." Only they are so chained by the habits of their lives and by the fear of what the worldly consequences may be if they follow their consciences.

Mr. Capel, of whose visit to Oxford, and its possible results, his friend entertained such sanguine hopes, was at that time a man of very attractive personality, pleasing alike in appearance, manner, and address, and possessed of a singular gift of eloquence. Bute's hope, no doubt, was that his earnestness, sympathy, and tact might have a soothing effect on the nerves of his friends, still quivering from the shock of the recent catastrophe; and to some extent his anticipations were justified. Several of the undergraduates made Mr. Capel's acquaintance, and were pleased and touched by his unaffected kindness. One of them, he found, had been for some months resolved to make his submission to Rome; and by Mr. Capel's advice he asked for an interview with the Dean and frankly informed him of his intention, adding, apparently, that he thought it highly probable that his example would be followed by others. Capel wrote on May 31 to Mrs. Scott Murray:

The Dean of Christ Church is in a great state of mind, having just heard from B—— not only of his own decision, but of the likelihood of others taking a like step. Pusey, I hear, has written to the Dean to the effect that any secessions which might take place were to be attributed not to the {68} teaching of the High Church party, but to his (the Dean's) bad government of the college! Meanwhile Liddon has issued a peremptory mandate prohibiting the undergraduates of the House from making my acquaintance. As Bute puts it, this is a clear case of shutting the stable door after the horse had been stolen. All those who want to know me, I think, already do.

Dr. Liddon expressed a desire, a little later, to meet Mr. Capel, who thus describes the interview:

I saw Liddon for an hour and a half on Saturday. Our meeting was quite cordial: our conversation quite courteous, but quite unsatisfactory, for he kept shifting his ground, and slipped away like an eel from every point I raised. To me his mind seems as confused as Pusey's, which is saying much. Yet to a section of people here he is more than Pope, a little God, whose every word they accept as an oracle from heaven. Poor good people! It is hard to understand such idolatry: it is, I think, a peculiar product of Oxford, and of one school here.

Bute is in admirable dispositions, and during the month of May has been leading the life of a true Christian. The long delay has tried him much: yet his spiritual progress since last summer has been extraordinary. I am simply amazed at some of the things he has told me. May our dear Lord be eternally blessed for all He has done, and is doing, for this soul so dear to Him.

The long vacation of 1868 was, as has been seen, chiefly devoted to a yachting tour in the North Sea, and a visit to Russia, undertaken by Bute in the companionship of Lord Rosebery. The autumn months after the celebration of his majority were {69} spent quietly at Cardiff and in Scotland, as much time as he could spare being given to a course of reading recommended to him by Mr. Capel, partly by way of preparation for his reception into the Church of his choice. He refers to this in an interesting letter to his attached friend at Oxford, written soon after his coming of age.

You may imagine how busy I have been and am since my birthday. Still I find time every day for some serious reading, as to which I have had competent advice. I am going through some of the writings of S. Cyprian, S. Ambrose, and S. Gregory, and doing a little liturgical study. Then there are the 12th cent. lives of Ninian and Kentigern, and Adamnan's Columba, all of great interest to me; and I have sent for Boethius's lives of the Bishops of Aberdeen. Theiner's great work, not long ago published in Rome,[8] I find most valuable, and throwing a flood of light on the mediæval relations between Scotland and the Holy See.

For devotion I have St. Bernard (his Letters): a very simple prayer-book, such as children use; and the Latin Psalter. I wish you were able to use this;[9] there is a beauty and fulness of meaning in the Latin version which I think no modern language can give—except, you will say (and as to that you have a right to speak)[10] possibly Greek. I sometimes dream of trying my hand at a new English version of the Psalms; but that is part of {70} a larger scheme which it is perhaps presumptuous of me even to think of.[11]

It was natural that when the long-anticipated time at length came for actually taking the step prepared for with such anxious deliberation, Bute should turn to the only Catholic priest with whom he was in any degree intimate. More than thirty years later Monsignor Capel, who had then been for some time resident in California, wrote in a San Francisco newspaper a short account of Bute's conversion, the steps that led up to it, and his own part in receiving him into the Church.

A course of reading was suggested, I seeing him from time to time. Newman's pathetic hymn, "Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom," was often on his lips. In course of time he was fully convinced that the true Church is an organic body, a Divine institution, the source of all spiritual power and jurisdiction, and the channel of sacramental grace, under the Vicar of Christ, the Bishop of Rome.

Finally, after an hour of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the convent chapel at Harley House, London,[12] he determined to ask admission to the Church.

Bute's conditional baptism, profession of faith, and first Communion took place quite privately on December 8, 1868 (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), in the chapel of the Sisters of Notre {71} Dame, Southwark.[13] Mr. Capel officiated at all these acts, with the authorisation of the Bishop of Southwark (Dr. Grant), who himself assisted at them. The event was not generally known until the New Year, and it was generally believed, and has indeed often been stated since, that the reception took place on Christmas Eve. The young neophyte left England a few days after the event, and was well out of hearing by the time the excited comments of the public and the press on his action had begun to make themselves audible.

Circumstances have induced me to come to the resolution of making the pilgrimage to the Holy Land a third time. Lady Loudoun and myself are going together in my yacht, which is coming round, with her in it, to Nice in January.

I am going abroad on Monday next, and expect to arrive at Nice on Wednesday, this day week. I venture on your kindness to propose myself as your guest.

I will give no further information at present, but to say that thanks to the grace of God I am what I am. You are so kind, I believe you will be glad to see me.

Mr. Capel has been having most extraordinary success at Oxford. He leaves it to-day, as the colleges are going down, and will be at Nice some time soon. His health is giving way from the {72} perpetual physical and mental toil. He is not going to return till May, when he will recommence. For the present he has received some converts, is preparing some more, has awakened a great many, and, partially at least, sanctified the congregation, and reclaimed the wandering. The mission has received an infusion of life. On Saturday night he heard confessions till 11.30, and again in the morning. They had general Communion, and renewal of baptismal vows; at 10.30 High Mass and sermon. During the afternoon he operated privately on some rationalists: in the evening they had a very long sermon, and Benediction, with an immense congregation, among whom were a vast number of Protestants, several Dons, and the President of Trinity College!

Lord Bute was with us at Nice from December 24, 1868, until February 3, 1869. He was very shy, and refused all invitations to dances and picnics. At one afternoon dance at our house we all insisted he should appear; and then he made himself charming, but he fled as soon as he possibly could. He used to amuse us all at breakfast by reading out some of the wonderful begging-letters he received—from French girls asking him for a dot so as to enable them to marry, curés asking him to rebuild their churches, and many more wonderful requests. I think most of the English begging-letters were seen to in England, and only a few of them sent on. The numbers addressed to him every day, and by every post, were, I believe, quite incredible.

It was during this visit to Nice that he told my father that he intended leaving directions in his will {73} that his heart should be sent at his death to Jerusalem to be buried there.

He was very kind-hearted. When leaving Nice at the end of his visit, he had got into the carriage to drive with us to the yacht, when he remembered that he had not said good-bye to my sister's ugly governess. He insisted on jumping out of the carriage and rushing up to the schoolroom for this purpose.

He was a regular boy, and enjoyed games with us all: one, I remember, was pelting one another with oranges, the little hard ones which had fallen from the trees, he leading one side, and Basil (my schoolboy brother) the other. He was always ready to join in any fun, as long as he had not to meet strangers.

These details, which are wonderfully reminiscent of the childish days at Galloway House eight years before,[14] and show how like the young man of twenty-one was to the boy of thirteen, may be supplemented by an extract or two from the diary of another member of the same family:

Christmas Day, 1868.—We had midnight Mass at St. Philip's, the little church in our garden. Mgr. Capel said it, he, Lord Bute, and Basil having arrived from England the day before. We all went to Communion together (Lord Bute had been received into the Church a short time previously). Mgr. Capel said his two Christmas Masses, which we heard, early next morning; and then we went to the cathedral. In the afternoon we went to Notre Dame, where Mgr. Capel preached.

Tuesday, February 2.—After Mass Lord Bute took us all over his yacht, the Ladybird, which had arrived on Saturday. He gave us luncheon, and {74} we had to go a little before 2, as the Prince and Princess Charles of Prussia were going to see it. The cabins are most comfortable, and the saloon beautifully decorated with the arms of the ports she has put in at.

February 3.—-We drove with Lord Bute down to the port, and the Ladybird left at 4 o'clock, with Lord Bute, Lady Loudoun, Mgr. Capel, Miss Eden, and Dr. Bell safely on board.

From Nice Bute and his friends went straight to Rome—his first visit there—where he spent a week, including Ash Wednesday, on which day he received the blessed ashes from the hand of Pius IX. in the Sistine Chapel. Next morning he communicated at the private Mass of the Holy Father, who afterwards administered to him the sacrament of confirmation. Bute made a munificent offering of Peter's Pence to the Pope, who in turn presented him with a magnificent reliquary. On February 23 he wrote to Mrs. Scott Murray from Sicily:

We arrived here safely last night, and are to continue our voyage this afternoon. As we have spent so much time already we are not going to stop at Patmos on the way, but make straight for Jaffa, going north of Crete.

As Mr. Murray prophesied, I was very "agreeably disappointed" in Rome. I went to only a few of the most celebrated sanctuaries, but I liked them very much. The sight of the Holy Father had a very great effect on me, and it is impossible for me to speak too warmly of his kindness. Every one was most civil, which is a rarity for me to meet with. The Holy Father has given all the permissions which we wanted, and we have had Mass {75} three times on board, making up a very nice altar in Mr. Capel's cabin.

The odd thing is that we have not had a row yet, but are all quite on good terms, a state of things which I suppose one need not hope to continue.

Accept my best wishes and continued thanks for kindnesses received, and believe me,

The journey to Palestine ("the continuation of my pilgrimage of thanksgiving," as Bute called it in a subsequent letter) was safely accomplished, and Mgr. Capel wrote to Mrs. Scott Murray on Palm Sunday from Jerusalem:

Thank God, all is going well. We have had some physical discomforts, indisposition, etc., but our pilgrimage viewed spiritually is singularly blessed. I hope to lay in a store of grace for my future work. Certainly nothing could be more touching than our visits to the Holy Places. Bute gives great edification. He communicates very frequently, and is growing rapidly in Catholic devotion. Now that I live with him I see, of course, some weaknesses—among others a tendency to idleness; but he has much charm of character and personality. You will probably know through the papers that he has accepted the Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Our journey will be dreadfully prolonged. I am afraid we shall not reach England until June: our plans change at every moment. I send for you and Mr. Murray the enclosed pictures, which have touched the Holy Places. My affectionate regards to you all, including the officer.[15]

Another letter from Mgr. Capel to Danesfield is dated, "In the Ladybird, about the Mediterranean, May 14, 1869." It indicates that Bute had been, as usual, not particularly fortunate in securing congenial companionship for his journey.

When we are ever to reach home I cannot say. We have already been fourteen days at sea and have not yet reached our port. Sicily is in sight, and I trust we may very soon reach Messina. If not we shall be starved! The steward solemnly tells us we have bread for only three days longer, and that the stores are almost all consumed.

Of our party, I think I may say that Lady Loudoun, Miss Eden, and the doctor are the worse for their visit to Jerusalem. They had the misfortune to make acquaintance with people, calling themselves religious, whose delight seems to be to deny the authenticity of every single sacred site. The result has been, as might have been expected, a semi-disbelief in everything.

I think, on the other hand, the pilgrimage has been very advantageous to Bute. It has helped him to gather up his thoughts and prepare for action and the work of his life. He has kindly appointed me his chaplain. I am not to live at either of his houses, but to be ready when needed to go to him and to travel with him. I cannot but feel that this arrangement (which is entirely his own idea) will allow me to do much more good than if I were settled in any one spot. I hope it may turn to the advantage of my soul and to God's glory.

Bute left his yacht at Marseilles (his companions continuing the voyage to England by Gibraltar and the Bay of Biscay), and repaired to Paris, to complete his pilgrimage by a visit of devotion and {77} thanksgiving to the famous shrine of Our Lady of Victories. On returning home he went to Cardiff, and thence he wrote, later in the year, some account of himself and his doings in a long and interesting letter to his faithful friend at Oxford.

During the past year I have had several kind letters from you, which have gone unanswered. Before me lie the three first pages of a letter to you dated October 1, but never finished. I had at that time only just received your last, as I had been away from home for some months, and had skilfully concealed my addresses from every one, lest any letters (mine are almost invariably business or beggars) should follow and find me out.

The first thing you will want to know is how I am getting on in the Church. I don't remember whether I ever wrote to you from Nice or not; but that, if I had, could only have been so soon after my reception as to make it almost valueless. I have not been received a year, so I suppose what I say now is not worth very much. I am, thank God, very comfortable. I had, no doubt, a first flush of fervour and enthusiasm, but that soon passed away, and I became almost immediately quite a humdrum Catholic. The practices, as you know, were already familiar to me; and I knew also a great many, if not all, of the practical drawbacks, of which florid figured music and appropriated and paid-for sittings in church are (to me) the most distasteful. Florid forms of devotion and piety have never appealed to me any more than florid music; and in that respect I am (so I am told) considered like the slowest type of old English Catholicism. The old-fashioned "Garden of the Soul" is my book, except when visiting some very holy shrine, when I find {78} myself able to use occasionally the "Prayers of St. Gertrude," or at least some of them.

I am perfectly at peace in the Church, and have been. My taste for controversy has gone, and for theological inquiry also, to great extent. I think that when one has once entered the Church—well, one has jumped over the cliff and reached the bottom, safe and sound it is true, but in a condition that renders restlessness impossible and controversy absolutely superfluous.

I left Nice, as you are aware, at the beginning of February, went to Rome for a week, to be confirmed by the Holy Father, and then continued the pilgrimage of thanksgiving to Jerusalem. I performed the last ceremonies in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Victories in Paris about the beginning of June, and returned to England. I had kept as much as possible out of the way of letters and newspapers, but had inevitably heard much that was very disagreeable—all sorts of lying stories, for instance, deliberately and maliciously circulated about me—and I arrived here in a state of very uncomfortable anticipation. However, I found everything very much better than I anticipated. Every one seemed glad to see me, and I received much kindness from all the people about. Religious matters were easily arranged; and though large mobs of people assembled to see me go to Mass, they were disappointed, as I had got a little oratory ready in the house, which is served every day by the Fathers of Charity. And I have special permission from the Pope for myself, my "familiars" and guests to satisfy the obligation in it on every day in the year. We have here between 9,000 and 10,000 Catholics, who are of course delighted at what has happened.

I am going to Rome about the 23rd of this month, and shall, I think, certainly stay there till about Septuagesima; but if I am tempted I shall stop over Easter. When I return I shall go to {79} Bute. Bute will be much stiffer than this: they got pictures of me and made them into cockshys; and I have had at least one threatening letter from there. Besides that there are no Catholics that I know of,[16] and I cannot have a daily Mass.

My old friends are all much the same, except Lady Elizabeth, who takes no more notice of me than if I were a dead dog. I have written her letter after letter, without even acknowledgment. The company of my dear friend, Sneyd, is a great pleasure to me. He is my secretary. He is, however, an awful liberal, and is even now reading Charles Kingsley's "Hypatia" with approval. I consider it one of the most impure as well as heretical books I ever saw. I have been reading lately, and with the greatest pleasure, Canon Jenkins's "Age of the Martyrs,"[17] which is really charming, and a worthy product of Oxford, where, however, I hear that the blighting disease of Liberalism has fairly set in. You have, I hear, Mgr. Capel with you, lecturing on something or other; but I know not what success or effect he has had. Ever most sincerely yours,

There were reasons why the feeling in the island of Bute about the young peer's change of religion was, as he expressed it, "much stiffer" than it was in Cardiff. The sentiments of resentful surprise which the Presbyterians felt at the lord of the island embracing a faith so alien from their own was fostered and aggravated by the disappointment with {80} which the local Liberals learned that he was politically quite out of sympathy with the Whig principles of his kinsman and former tutor-at-law, the Liberal M.P. for Cardiff and Lord-Lieutenant of Buteshire.[18] One Radical newspaper asserted that Lord Bute had purposely delayed the profession of his new faith until after the general election, so that his influence as a Tory might help the Conservative candidate for the county to win the seat! And the Liberal Buteman thought fit to devote a page, a month after Bute's reception into the Church, to reprinting a catena of the articles commenting on that event which had appeared in the principal newspapers of the country. The feeling with which, in an age more tolerant or more indifferent, one peruses these journalistic effusions, is one of wonder, first at their extraordinary impertinence, and secondly at the cool audacity with which they sit in judgment on the action of one of whose character, personality, and motives they one and all show themselves to be in a state of absolutely abysmal ignorance. The Times summed up a spiteful article by concluding that the "defection of an average curate would have said more for the Roman Catholic religion, and might be expected to lead to more lasting results"; the Daily News announced that the new convert "had taken up his honours, wealth, and influence, and laid them in the lap of the Church of Rome," adding that it was "of course a pity when a man believed too much in religion"; a West of Scotland journal was "sure that the acquisition would, except in a pecuniary way, be of little advantage to those who had wheedled him out {81} of his wits and into their snares"; a Glasgow evening paper denounced the "Jesuitism" with which "his perverted lordship" had denied the fact of his reception in 1867, and the "fatal facility" with which he had been received in 1868; and another Scottish journal, after waxing eloquent over the "lithe figure, agile step, and penetrating eye of the handsome young peer," lamented that "the poorest labourer on his vast domains had an immediate access to truth and duty, to conscience, and to God, which since last Christmas was denied to his unfortunate lord." The Glasgow Herald, after admitting that Lord Bute "was believed to be a studious, thoughtful youth, with high ideas of the responsibility of his position," dolefully goes on: "If, as is most likely, this perversion is the result of priestly influences acting upon a weak, ductile, and naturally superstitious mind, we may expect a continual eclipse of all intellectual vigour." One wonders if this sapient prophet ever had the grace to acknowledge the falsity of his forecast. The Scotsman was an honourable exception to the general tone of the contemporary press. It announced the event "not in the slightest degree in the spirit of taunt or reproach"; and the final sentence of a temperate article repudiated any desire "to reproach Lord Bute with a change of religious opinion, which even those who most deeply regret it must admit to be made at great sacrifices and under the influence only of conscience."

On this reasonable and even generous note the subject may well be left. A man of sensitive and impressionable nature, and one who was himself possessed by an almost passionate love of truth, could not be insensible to public attacks on his {82} candour and honesty, or to mendacious statements of alleged facts, such as he refers to in his letter cited above. But he bore them all in silence, with the quiet dignity characteristic of him, and trusting to time for the vindication of the rectitude of his motives and conduct. How amply this trust was justified was shown by the mutual respect, regard, and affection which daily grew and strengthened between him and his friends, neighbours, and dependents, not only in Bute, but on his extensive estates in other parts of the country, during the next thirty years.

[1] Hartwell Grissell. The letter was dated from Mountstuart, November 19, 1872.

[2] Mr. Buckle, in Vol. V. of his "Life of Disraeli," quotes Mr. Montague Corry as writing (September 22, 1868): "Fergusson says no ingenuity can counteract the influence which certain priests and prelates have over him, chief among them being Monsignor Capel. The speedy result is inevitable."

Sir James Fergusson, as Bute's guardian, probably felt it necessary to take this view in self-vindication. The fact, however, was, as is abundantly shown by the letter in the text, as well as by the authentic history of Bute's conversion as given in preceding pages, that the event was brought about by his own study, thought, and prayer, and was in no sense due to the influence of Capel, or of any other "priests or prelates."

[3] Alexandrina Lady Portarlington (a daughter of the third Marquess of Londonderry) was sister-in-law to the seventh Duke of Marlborough, Bute's host at Blenheim. Lord and Lady North, who were received into the Church about this time, were not very distant neighbours of Blenheim, living at Wroxton Abbey, near Banbury.

[4] Second baronet of Gatcombe, Hants. He died in 1869, in his eighty-third year.

[5] A former curate of Dr. F. G. Lee at Aberdeen. He became a canon of Westminster and president of St. Edmund's College, Ware.

[6] M.A. of Aberdeen University; afterwards the distinguished Jesuit writer and preacher.

[7] Became a Jesuit, rector of Wimbledon College, and later first Master of Campion Hall, Oxford.

[8] This was Aug. Theiner's "Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum atque Scotorum, historiam illustrantia, 1216-1547," published at Rome in 1864.

[9] More than a dozen years later Bute wrote to his friend regretting her ignorance of "the dead languages," and recommending her to begin the study of Hebrew!

[10] Miss Skene had lived with her father at Athens continuously from her eighteenth to her twenty-fourth year, and was well acquainted with the language and literature of modern Greece.

[11] The allusion, no doubt, is to his projected translation of the Roman Breviary, published eleven years later.

[12] The convent of Marie Réparatrice, founded at Harley House, Marylebone, in 1862. It was transferred in 1899 to Willesden, and a year later to its present site at Chiswick.

[13] The temporary chapel, now used as the Sisters' community-room. Bishop Grant was at this time acting as chaplain to the nuns, and saying Mass for them daily. Bute attended this Mass for a week previous to his reception, breakfasting afterwards with the bishop (who was giving him a course of instruction) in the convent parlour.

[15] Charles Scott Murray, who had just got his commission in the 1st Life Guards.

[16] The writer was misinformed as to this. There had been a Catholic chapel at Rothesay since 1839; and a larger church (St. Andrew's) had been opened two years before Bute's conversion. The number of Catholics at this time was probably between two and three hundred.

[17] See post, pp. 102, 103. This book had just been published at Oxford. Two volumes of selections from Canon Jenkins's MSS. writings were issued in 1879, after his death.

[18] Colonel James Frederick Crichton Stuart, Liberal for Cardiff from 1857 to 1880.

CHAPTER V

THE WESTERN MAIL—ROME AND THE COUNCIL—RETURN TO MOUNTSTUART

1869-1871

Although Bute's attraction towards a life of simplicity and retirement was, even in his early manhood, as it remained throughout his life, one of his most marked characteristics, he never allowed this to interfere with such public duties as he conceived to be rendered incumbent on him by the responsibilities of his position. His first public appearance in Cardiff, apart from the celebrations connected with his majority, seems to have been in his capacity as chairman of the local Benefit and Annuitants Society, when he acquitted himself to the general satisfaction. In 1869 he accepted the honorary colonelcy of the Glamorgan Artillery Volunteers. "It seemed to be expected of me," he wrote to a friend, "and though there was never a man of less military proclivities than myself, I regard the Volunteer movement as an excellent one, and desire to encourage it.[1] I look forward also, under proper guidance, to learning something about {84} guns, though I fear ours can hardly be said to be altogether up-to-date. But I hope to be instrumental in bringing about some improvement in that respect." On November 11, 1869, he appeared in uniform at the inspection of the regiment at the new drill-hall, which he had just erected at a cost of over £10,000.

A few months previous to the date just mentioned, Bute had, not without serious consideration, embarked on an enterprise which, while entailing heavy expenditure on himself, was to have a considerable and permanent effect on the industrial and political life not only of the rapidly-growing town of Cardiff, but of the whole of South Wales. This was the launch of the Western Mail newspaper, of which the first number was published in May, 1869. At this time the principal paper in the district was the Liberal (weekly) Cardiff Times, started in 1857, the year in which Colonel James Frederick Crichton Stuart was first elected M.P. for Cardiff. Bute was entirely out of sympathy with the political views of his kinsman, and had openly declared himself on coming of age an adherent of the Conservative party. He wrote to a friend at Oxford after the formation of Mr. Gladstone's first Ministry:

I suppose I may call myself—you would certainly call me—an old-fashioned Tory. The inclusion of Bright in the Cabinet shows that the new Government is Radical, naked and unashamed. And whatever else I am, anyhow I am not a Radical.

Deeply and intelligently interested as he was in the future development of Cardiff, which he was to do so much to promote, Bute's conviction was that a really healthy public opinion in the district {85} could not be created or maintained if only one school of politicians was to have the chance of making its voice heard. This was the main reason which determined him, with full foreknowledge of the heavy financial burden it would entail on him, of starting and supporting a Conservative daily paper in the heart of Liberal Wales. The local Liberals were, of course, disappointed and indignant; and the "Leap of the wolf into the fold," as they described the new journalistic venture, was very bitterly commented on both in the Cardiff Times and in its successor, the South Wales Daily News. The "underhand influence of the Castle," the "Castle propaganda," the "pouring out of gold from the Castle coffers," were the constant theme of discussion in the opposition press, whose acrimony was not diminished by the steadily growing power and influence of the Conservative organ. Yet although Bute was for some years the actual owner of the Western Mail, not the slightest trace of his personal influence is to be found in its columns during those early years, nor the least suggestion that he made use of the paper to serve any private ends of his own. "Not a single line that has ever appeared in the Western Mail has been written or inspired by the Marquis of Bute," wrote the Editor when his paper had reached a position of security and success; and the statement was literally and exactly true. The Western Mail won the confidence of the people by strongly upholding their rights at such times of crisis as the serious upheaval in the coal and iron industries in 1873; and one of its most appreciated tributes was that received from a leading Nonconformist minister: "Though you are Conservative in name you are Liberal in practice." After eight {86} years' connection with the paper Bute relinquished all financial interest in it in 1877. He considered himself that this journalistic enterprise had cost him from first to last not less than £50,000. "I have never grudged it," he once simply said when questioned on the subject.

With these new interests at home, Bute did not lose sight of his intention (expressed in a letter quoted in the last chapter) of spending the winter of 1869 and the succeeding spring in Rome, and he arrived there in the last days of November, taking up his residence at the Palazzo Savielli in the Piazza SS. Apostoli. He wrote shortly before Christmas:

It is of particular interest to me to find myself living within a stone's-throw of the building which sheltered for so many years my unfortunate kinsmen (if I may be allowed so to call them) the exiled Stuarts.[2] Their cenotaph by Canova in St. Peter's (paid for by their Hanoverian supplanter on the throne!) strikes me always as one of the most pathetic and beautiful monuments of modern Rome.

Bute was of course drawn to Rome, like so many others at this time, by the event on which the eyes of all Christendom were turned with curious if widely varying interest—namely, the opening of the Vatican Council by Pius IX. Bute was present at the solemn inauguration on December 8, when more than 700 mitred prelates walked in procession to St. Peter's, preceded by the splendid silver {87} processional cross, set with precious stones, which he had presented to the Pontiff a few days previously. A day or two after the imposing ceremony he records a curious little incident in a letter to a friend:

I heard that the titular Abbot of Westminster, the head of the Benedictine Order in England, called to report his arrival on some high dignitary, dressed not in his habit but in the get-up of an elderly English clergyman. He was told that if he wanted to process with the abbots he must attire himself accordingly, and was asked if he possessed the insignia of his office. "Certainly," he replied. "I have the ring of the Abbots of Westminster," pulling out of his waistcoat pocket the identical ring worn by Feckenham, the last abbot in the reign of Queen Mary! The lamentable sequel to the story is that as he was mounting the steps into St. Peter's on the opening day of the Council, the precious ring, which he had not taken the trouble to get fitted to his finger, fell off, rolled down the steps, and was never heard of again. If this is true it seems very deplorable.

During his sojourn in Rome Bute had opportunities, which he was not likely to neglect, of meeting many interesting people, and hearing much at first hand, and from both sides, of the weighty matters under discussion at the Council. The prelate of whom he saw most, and to whom he was very sincerely attached, was Mgr. Clifford, Bishop of Clifton, who with the Archbishops of Paris, Vienna, and St. Louis, and Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans, were prominent among the opponents of the definition of Papal Infallibility. With the leaders of the opposite party also he had from time to time considerable intercourse, and in a letter addressed to {88} him nearly thirty years later by the venerable Cardinal Gibbons, now (1920) the sole survivor of the Fathers of the Council, his Eminence reminded Bute of a long drive he had taken with himself and Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore, a very strong pro-definitionist, and of their interesting talk on that occasion about the great subject of the day. Bute's own habit of mind, and the influence exercised on his judgment by Bishop Clifford, undoubtedly predisposed him to sympathise with those opposed to the definition; and he shared the apprehensions of many of his friends among that party—apprehensions not justified in the event—that the step if carried through might result in a serious defection from the Church. A subsequent letter from him, however, will show what with instant and edifying submission of heart and mind he accepted the decree when once it had been promulgated by the supreme authority which he never for a moment questioned.

Bute was not so preoccupied with these grave matters but that he found time for a certain amount of social intercourse with the distinguished and cosmopolitan society gathered that winter in the Eternal City. He made friends with the Papal Zouaves, and often accepted the hospitality of the officers of that pleasant international corps, with one of whom, Captain the Hon. Walter Maxwell, he became very intimate. He liked to watch the Zouaves at rifle-practice in the Borghese Gardens, visited the officers on guard at the Colosseum and elsewhere, and entertained them once at a famous supper of which the recollection long survived in the corps. About Christmas time he was present at a great reception given at the Palazzo Bonimi by Mr. and Mrs. Delabarre Bodenham, and records a {89} "twenty minutes' conversation with Archbishop Manning, in a quite empty little room opening out of the reception hall." Soon after New Year he attended a dinner given in a café in the Corso by the British Committee of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, and made a speech reported by one of those present to be "the best speech of the evening and very well received." His name is also recorded as having been present at many notable religious functions—among others the imposing funeral service, in the church of the Holy Apostles, of the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, at which the Pope assisted and gave the final absolution. Bute saw much, during these weeks in Rome, of the savants and scholars—by no means all sympathisers with the Papal regime—then resident in the city, and his modesty of demeanour, earnestness, and intelligence made a very favourable impression on the varied society with which he was brought into contact. In those days he liked to be amused as well as interested; and there was plenty of amusement to be found at that time in the kaleidoscopic throngs of visitors which the unique and unrivalled charms of Rome attracted within her gates. One of his most agreeable acquaintances—quite outside ecclesiastical and antiquarian circles—was Olivia Lady Sebright, the clever and charming sister of an Irish peer who had been his contemporary at Oxford. Her lively persiflage was doubtless a pleasant and piquant contrast to the discourses of Bute's learned acquaintances; and it was often jestingly remarked in Anglo-Roman society that Lady Sebright seemed to do all the talking and Lord Bute all the listening. He alludes to her in one of his letters as "a very vivacious lady, who would {90} have her joke even in the Catacombs." Lady Sebright was included in the party which Bute invited to join him in the yachting cruise in the Mediterranean which he made after leaving Italy in the summer of 1870.

Bute did not remain in Rome for the final Congregation of the Council on July 18, 1870, when 533 bishops voted in favour of the schema "De Ecclesia," with the added clauses on Papal Infallibility. Two only voted "Non placet," the Bishops of Ajaccio and of Little Rock, U.S.A.[3] The decree was immediately confirmed by the Pope in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm; and on the same day Napoleon III. declared war against Prussia. In a letter to H. D. Grissell, dated five days before the occupation of Rome by the troops of Victor Emmanuel, Bute tells how he first heard of the momentous event:

How can I tell in what a state this may find you at Rome? the Pope perhaps gone to Malta, and the whole place in revolution, tempered only by the presence of Italian troops.

My first act on returning to England was to go to Clifton to see [Bishop] Clifford. He was away, but two of his chaplains received me and told me {91} of the definition, of which I have now received from you the awful description. My mind bowed itself at once before the definition, and I believed the doctrine ex animo. I have since found that many most pious Catholics, most heartily willing to believe anything on the Church's authority, do not see that that authority exists in this case. They argue in this way: I. It is admitted that an OEcumenical Council approved by the Pope can bind the soul. II. To be OEcumenical it is necessary for the Council to be closed, the decrees signed by a majority of the Fathers, then published and received in the whole world. III. This is not at present the case with the Vatican Council.[4]—Ergo.

Whether there is anything in all this I am not personally concerned to enquire. There seems to me no doubt that external disobedience and denial of the doctrine are, as things now are, sinful; though some may, and doubtless do, hold a hope that God will some day teach us by His Church that this definition of the Vatican Council is not, after all, part of the revealed truth. Such thoughts sometimes make me unhappy, and I endeavour (which is what our confessors advise) to drown them by practical Catholic work and such attempts at piety as I am capable of. I repeat—from the moment of the definition I had not one doubt of the truth of the doctrine in the bottom of my soul. The conviction that the doctrine is truly part of God's Eternal Truth—even though it may not yet be officially made known to us as part of that "faith" of which St. Paul speaks when he says, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord JESUS Christ"—still remains in me; and it seems to me that I could never cease to hold it until, or unless, the Church laid down the contrary. {92} Let us leave the matter here: I shall write no more of it.

Our voyage home was very happy and successful. We travelled across Corsica by carriage, after a week in a quiet Sardinian bay, in sight of Garibaldi's home at Caprera. We were nearly three weeks between Nice and Cannes, where Lady Sebright left us; then about a fortnight at the Balearic Isles—Palma is charming. We touched at some Spanish ports, passed ten days at Gibraltar, and ran up from Cadiz for a week at Seville; then eight days at Lisbon and Cintra. Never in England or out of it have I seen cathedrals worked so splendidly as the few Spanish I saw. I could not have conceived the grandeur of the fabric, establishment, and functions of Seville—infinitely better than St. Peter's. Not having witnessed any great solemnity, I fail to imagine what they must be like. Some of the Peninsular practices are very interesting, such as the use of the double ambon, and the Portuguese practice of administering a glass chalice with wine to communicants.[5]

George Lane Fox was married to Miss Slade by the Archbishop [Manning] on Saturday. I gave her for a marriage present that rosary of emeralds you used to admire so much; and she at once wrote to ask my consent to its being altered into a necklace! which I refused to give.

G—— (from Parker's) is down here working at my books; he wears a cassock, with red worsted slippers embroidered with coloured glass beads. H told me (1) that Llandaff Cathedral was only a whited sepulchre, and (2) that he doubted if Liddon {93} would ever succeed in introducing Christianity into St. Paul's Cathedral.[6]

Thank God, it is only within the Church (and that, one trusts and hopes, but for a season) that consciences have been disturbed by the troubles of the Definition. These have had no apparent effect on the accession of converts. Lord Robert Montagu has just been received, and I hear of others. I had lately a long discussion with a clever, well-read, and agreeable Protestant, and he told me it appeared to him quite immaterial, once granted the infallibility of the Church—the only real question—in what precise place or person it resided.

I have set up a great screen and rood in the Fathers of Charity's church here, and got it opened daily from 2 to 8 p.m., which enables me sometimes to pay a visit to the Santissimo. The change seems appreciated, and many persons come to pray. I hope Our Lord will sanctify them out of His holy Tabernacle.

I am about starting a convent of Sisters of the Good Shepherd about a mile from this town, in a beautiful spot. Their church will contain a tribune for the public, and they will sing High Mass, Vespers, and Benediction on Sundays and holidays of obligation. Burges is to do the chapel, wherein I propose to erect a large gothic baldequin. The building is now an old barn. The whole will, I think, though simple, be very nice, and a great consolation to me.

I expect to be here till the end of this month, and after that I have a few visits to pay; but I hope to be in Bute by November 1, and intend to stay there all the winter. The place is very charming, {94} and is my real home. I have not been there since I became Catholic, and the people are all, I fear, very strongly prejudiced; so I am afraid I shall have rather a rough time of it—at least at first. Will you not leave Rome and all its troubles, and pay a good long visit to Sneyd and me in a country where the Church is in a missionary character? If so, come and pass Christmas at least with me in Bute. We shall be delighted to see you, and you will be away from all sorts of disagreeable things, for a time at least.

Before leaving Cardiff for his home in Scotland, which he had not visited for two years, Bute attended the annual congress of the Iron and Steel Institute at Merthyr, was present at the banquet given to the congress by the South Wales ironmasters, and accompanied several of the excursions to the great works in the district in which he was interested. The letter which he wrote on the day of his arrival in Bute to his old friend at Oxford showed what his feeling was about the usurpation of the States of the Church by the Sardinian monarch.

I ought to have written to you long ago, and really do not know what to say—except "mea culpa." There will be much to tell you when we next meet.

I am quite firm, thank GOD, in the Church. I have outgrown any "convert enthusiasm" I may ever have possessed; but I have long ceased to think of anything else even as a possibility, or to {95} feel anything novel in Catholic practices. I am quite quiet, and I think, thank GOD, so far doing pretty well.

You ask me about Rome. As to politics, my feeling in favour of the Temporal Power is very strong. Of course it had its faults, the extreme leniency of the criminal tribunals being probably the worst; but, putting the question of right aside, a Christian could institute no comparison between the Italian and the Pontifical Governments. Religiously, Rome is neither so good nor so bad as the extreme people would make it out. It was very edifying, and there was a great deal of piety—more conspicuous, perhaps, among the foreigners than the Romans, but of course that was to be expected, as the former came on purpose. The sanctuaries of Rome are very precious, especially the Holy Reliques and the graves of the Martyrs, and I love them very much.

At the same time I think that this dreadful Revolution may be possibly a scourge in the hand of GOD to bring about His Will, though every Catholic must be appalled at the wickedness of the new Pontius Pilate and his accomplices. Perhaps the fiery trial may destroy some abuses, stop some things one does not like to see, and bring about others more profitable to Rome herself and to us.

As to the Greeks in America, it is impossible for me, I am sorry to say, to have anything to do with supplying them with my own or any other Liturgical books for use in their (as we believe) schismatic worship.

It is evident from one or two of his letters already quoted, that Bute, who was well aware of the strong feeling aroused among the people of his titular island by his conversion to the Roman Church, {96} had felt some natural apprehension as to their possible attitude towards him when he returned after a somewhat prolonged absence to live amongst them. "I have been getting along very comfortably here," he wrote soon after his arrival at Mountstuart, "but have so far no opportunity of knowing what the people think of me behind my back." A letter addressed a little later to the same correspondent in Oxford is interesting in this connection.

I am getting on very well here up to this, and doing my best to popularise myself by going about among the people. Yesterday, for example, I attended both a funeral and a marriage. I believe this was much appreciated, and at the marriage I was very warmly received, was begged to do them the honour of signing the "lines," etc., etc. The oddest part of the matter was that at the funeral the Rothesay tag-rag outside cheered me as I left the churchyard. I thought the prayers at both ceremonies (of course extemporary) were intended to do me a little good: there was nothing in them with which I could not heartily concur, but a good deal of stress was laid on the "One Oblation offered once for all"—"the full and free Redemption which is by faith in Christ's death," etc., which are, I find, commonly supposed to be ideas irreconcileable with the teaching of the Holy Roman Church—why, I can't conceive, unless it is for want of reading St. Alphonsus Liguori.

Here at Rothesay we have a chapel and schools, a superannuated bishop, Dr. Gray, and a young Scottish priest educated in France, Mr. George Smith, a man of piety and learning.[7] The whole {97} island contains about 500 Catholics, either Highlanders or Irish. I have had one of the rooms here made into a chapel, than which no meeting-house can be barer. Mass is said here on Sundays and holidays, preceded by a very simple English service. Last Sunday I was at Largs, on the mainland opposite, and heard an early Mass in a very poor cottage—said in the kitchen on a small chest of drawers. The house was crowded by the congregation, standing on the stairs, in the passages, and all the rooms. They are wonderfully devout. Out of the East I never saw such a sight.

Bute spent nearly the whole winter and spring of 1870-1871 at his beautiful Scottish home, to which he was deeply attached. As he came to know his neighbours better—and he took much pains to cultivate friendly relations with them all—the stiffness, which was, perhaps, as much the result of his own shyness and reserve as of their lack of sympathy with his religious opinions, to a great extent wore off, and his simplicity, courtesy, good sense, and kindness of heart won for him little by little the high place in their regard which he ever afterwards maintained. He was from the first on the friendliest terms with the Presbyterian clergy of the island as well as with his own pastor, and had also established very cordial relations with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Charles Dalrymple, then and for the following fifteen years member for the county, and resident in the island. This cordial acquaintanceship ripened, after the marriages of Bute and of Dalrymple, into a warm {98} friendship between the two families which terminated only with death.[8]

Liturgical matters engrossed at this time, as always, a good deal of Bute's attention, and are dealt with in many of his letters. Thus, in March, 1871, he writes very seriously about the "truly scandalous proceedings" at the London pro-cathedral, news of which had reached him in Scotland, and which the context shows to have consisted in the wearing of dalmatics instead of folded chasubles at some Lenten function in the church in question. As will be seen from a later letter, he arranged for the ceremonial of Holy Week and Easter to be carried out as far as possible in his tiny chapel at Mountstuart; and we find him giving minute instructions to his friend Grissell, who was to spend that season as his guest in Bute, as to bringing the requisites for the celebrations, including "18 yellow candles, rather slim and 18 inches long, a paschal candle 3 feet long and 1-½ inches thick, a book on ceremonies, five grains of incense, and a wooden clapper for Maundy Thursday." "We had the rites of the Holy Week," he wrote subsequently to Miss Skene, "performed in my little chapel, for the first time in Bute since the change of religion three centuries ago. They seldom, if ever, take place in Scotland, and our priest here had never (so he told me) officiated in his life before on Good Friday! You may be surprised to hear that, having no choir to execute the liturgical chant, we adopt as far as {99} we can the methodist style of singing emotional hymns during the services."

After Easter Bute stayed for a while in London, and then returned to Cardiff, where he remained in residence for the greater part of the year. He took regular lessons in Welsh at this time from one of the Cardiff clergy, and quickly mastered the language scientifically, though he never learned to speak it fluently.

The science of philology (the late Dean Howell wrote) seemed to cost Lord Bute no effort, for he was a born philologist, and appeared to penetrate and solve linguistic difficulties as it were by instinct. Another thing that used to astonish me was his familiarity with, and wide knowledge of, the Authorised Version of the Bible; for at that time (1871) he could not have been more than 23 or 24 years of age. His retentive memory (which I have never seen equalled) enabled him to quote exactly lengthy passages; and if I chanced to quote a Welsh word from Scripture for illustrative purposes, he would give the English rendering of the whole passage from memory with ease and perfect accuracy. His tastes and accomplishments were essentially mediæval; and history, art, and archæology had for him an inexhaustible charm.

Bute had a little before this shown his practical interest in art by not only presiding at a Fine Art Exhibition in the drill-hall which he had erected, but by exhibiting there valuable plate and pictures, including a painting executed by himself. A little later he was in the chair at the annual meeting held at Cardiff of the Palestine Exploration Fund, recounting in very interesting fashion his own travels in that country. And in July, 1871, he took an {100} active part in the congress of the British Archæological Institute held at the Town Hall, entertaining the members at a reception at the Castle and a banquet at Caerphilly. He also spoke at the congress, taking many of the distinguished visitors by surprise with the extent of his knowledge and information on the subjects special to the Institute.

Soon after the meeting of the Archæological Congress, Bute left England for Ober Ammergau to witness the Passion Play, which had been postponed for a year owing to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He then joined his yacht at St. Malo, and after a cruise off Devon, Cornwall, and the Channel Islands returned to Cardiff for the autumn. During this time he paid several visits to the Benedictine Priory at Belmont, near Hereford, where his liturgical tastes found satisfaction in the solemn rendering of the Divine service by the monastic community. One of the fathers then resident there[9] has some interesting recollections of these periodical visits:

Lord Bute came to Belmont three or four times, I think, in the year before his marriage. He left on us the impression of a modest, unassuming, and extremely intelligent young man with serious tastes, who seemed quite at home in the simple surroundings of a monastery. He frequented the Divine Office regularly, and followed all the Church functions with interest. He joined the Fathers at coffee after meals, and conversed very pleasantly, telling us sometimes of his Cardiff interests or of his early experiences and travels. He was a good deal with {101} Prior Vaughan,[10] of course; but as I was acting guestmaster and about his own age, I walked out with him several times, and we talked of many subjects, chiefly, perhaps, archæological or theological topics. I remember his telling me of a conversation with a Protestant clergyman who came to interview him, possibly with hope of influencing an unformed mind. Lord Bute proposed for discussion the precise theological value of the verse on the Precious Blood[11]—

and I gathered that they soon came to an end of the poor parson's divinity, and of his efforts to "snatch a brand from the burning."

The prior took Lord Bute to Llanthony, where they saw "Father Ignatius," who told them that he reserved the Holy Eucharist under three rites—Anglican, Greek, and Roman. He also said (which struck Lord Bute as very whimsical) that he insisted on his visitors keeping strict silence when walking over a field in which his cloisters were one day to be built.[12]

[1] As a little boy of twelve Bute had been enrolled as an honorary member of the 1st Bute Rifle Volunteers, and had occasionally appeared in the dark-grey uniform with blue facings. When the Cardiff Yeomanry went on service in the South African War, Bute showed his patriotism by subscribing £500 to the funds of the corps.

[2] The kinship was undoubted, if somewhat remote. Bute was fifteenth in direct male descent from King Robert II. of Scotland, the lineal ancestor of James VIII. (the "Chevalier de St. George"), to whom the Pope made over the Palazzo Santi Apostoli as a residence in 1720, the year of the birth of Prince Charles Edward.

[3] The caustic comment in Vatican circles was, of course, that it was a case of the "Little Rock" in conflict with the Rock of Peter; but it should be added that the two dissentient prelates, immediately after voting against the decree, left their places and prostrated themselves before the Papal Chair in token of their submission. Similarly every one of the eighty-eight bishops who had voted "Non placet" in the Congregation of July 13—not, of course, against the dogma, but against the opportuneness of its definition—accepted the decree without qualification as soon as it was officially promulgated.

[4] On October 20, 1870, a month after the forcible occupation of Rome by the Piedmontese troops, Pius IX. issued a brief proroguing the Council. It has never been either closed or reassembled.

[5] Fr. Herbert Thurston, S.J., in a learned article in The Month (October, 1911), has shown that the custom of offering a "purification" of unconsecrated wine and water to lay communicants, after their reception of the Host, was practically universal in England down to the period of the Reformation, and was continued until the reign of James II. The practice is still generally observed at Ordination Masses, and on one or two other rare and special occasions.

[6] The learned and eloquent Professor of Exegesis had been appointed a canon of St. Paul's by Mr. Gladstone in the spring of this year, and had preached his first sermon under the dome as canon-in-residence on September 11, four days before the above letter was written.

[7] Father George Smith, who had studied at St. Sulpice, and was an excellent scholar and theologian, became Bishop of Argyll and the Isles in 1893, occupying the see for a quarter of a century until his death in 1918.

[8] Long after the termination of his political connection with Bute, Sir Charles Dalrymple used to recall with pleasure the remark once made to him on Rothesay Pier by a Buteshire farmer of the old school: "Weel, sir, we've got three things to be thankful for in the Isle of Bute, and forbye they all begin with an M: we've a gude mairquis, and a gude member, and a gude meenister."

[9] Right Rev. J. I. Cummins, O.S.B., now (1920) titular Abbot of St. Mary's, York.

[10] This was Dom Roger Bede Vaughan, younger brother of Cardinal Herbert Vaughan of Westminster. He was cathedral prior of Belmont from 1862 to 1872, and in 1877 became Archbishop of Sydney, N.S.W. He died in 1883.

[11] From the Eucharistic hymn Adoro Te devoiè, written by St. Thomas of Aquin about A.D. 1260, and known as the "Rhythmus S. Thomæ Aquinatis." Sixteen English versions of it have been published at various times.

[12] The Rev. J. Leycester Lyne—commonly known as "Father Ignatius"—was at this time endeavouring, with no great success, to establish an Anglican Benedictine monastery among the Black Mountains of Wales. About a year previous to Bute's visit he had laid the

CHAPTER VI

MARRIAGE—HOME AND FAMILY LIFE—VISIT TO MAJORCA

1871-1874

Included in Bute's great inheritance were a considerable number of advowsons, carrying the right of presentation to livings in the Established Church. Nearly a dozen of these benefices were in Glamorgan, two (St. Mary's and Roath) being within the town of Cardiff. Bute was, of course, from the time of his conversion to the Roman Church, legally disabled from the exercise of his right of patronage in regard to these livings; but instead of allowing them to "lapse" (as the technical phrase is[1]) he from time to time made over the next presentations to two quasi-trustees, friends of his own, and members, of course, of the Church of England. One of these "trustees" was for a time Canon John David Jenkins, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, with whom Bute had become intimate during his university career. Dr. Jenkins became vicar of Aberdare, one of the Bute livings, in 1870, and we find Bute writing to an Oxford friend about a year later:

Canon Jenkins has just appointed the Revs. Puller[2] and Stuart to two out of the three parishes here; and Puller, at any rate, will be inducted in Ember week.

The practice adopted by Bute with regard to the livings in his gift—a practice probably unique among Roman Catholic patrons, and one which, in the case of a man less conscientious and honourable than himself, might have been open to obvious objections—was not continued by his successor after his death; nor, indeed, could it have been, after the assignment of next presentations ceased to be legally permissible. The ten family livings in the county of Glamorgan fell accordingly, as provided by the statute, to the gift of the University of Cambridge.[3] The advowsons of other livings, in Monmouthshire and Northumberland, were sold in Bute's lifetime or by his successor.

The friendship between Canon Jenkins and Bute was maintained until the death of the former in 1876[4]; and he was one among the little group of learned men—scholars, antiquarians, and ecclesiastics—much senior in age to the young Scottish peer, whom he gathered round him at this time, and often invited to share the solitude of his Welsh {104} castle or his island home in Scotland. That it was something of a solitude, and that he felt it to be so there are many indications in his letters at this period. His only intimate friend of his own age was his old schoolfellow George Sneyd, with whose views on many subjects, sincere as was his affection for him, he was (as has been seen) in some respects entirely out of sympathy. What he was longing for and looking forward to, as he found himself approaching his twenty-fourth birthday, was domestic happiness and the home life of which he had known so little since his early boyhood; and this, as was natural, he hoped to secure by an early and happy marriage.

In the summer of 1871 his name was connected by the rumour, or gossip, of the day with that of the charming ward of a well-known Catholic peeress, whose hospitality had often been extended to him on the occasions of his visits to London. Bute took the opportunity, when writing to an old friend on whose sympathy he could rely, to deny categorically the truth of the rumour in question, and at the same time to give expression with his usual frankness to the feelings of dissatisfaction and discontent with which he was entering on his twenty-fifth year.

As there is, I fear, little chance of my being in Oxford just now, I will not delay longer in replying to your kind letter.

I had not seen the reports to which you refer, although I knew that they had been circulated by the scandalmongers of the press. I may tell you at {105} once—I had meant to do so before—that there is no truth in them whatever. There is no engagement between Miss —— and myself, and nothing is less likely than that there ever should be. I will tell you all about it some day when I see you, or in a future letter: I cannot write more about it at present, except to say that here I am thrown out on the world again, feeling very lonely and desolate. My future, indeed, looks pretty blank just now, as you may imagine easily enough. There is nothing for it but to go on one's way, trying to do one's duty—and literature. I have also a considerable taste for art and archæology, and happily the means to indulge them. When I return from Ober Ammergau, whither I go next month, to see the Passion Play, I shall do a little yachting in home waters, and then return here for the autumn and winter. There is plenty to do here, of course; and building, archæology, and writing will perhaps help me to forget my troubles. After Christmas this place will be unbearable, and I think I shall go to Bute.

Whatever may have been the disappointment or mortification occasioned to Bute by the episode in his life referred to in the above letter, they were amply compensated for, and indeed wholly forgotten, in the happiness of the event which he was able to announce to his friends at the close of this year. This was his engagement to the Hon. Gwendoline FitzAlan Howard, eldest daughter of the first Lord Howard of Glossop by his first wife. The marriage took place at the Oratory Church on April 16, 1872, Archbishop Manning officiating, assisted by five Oratorian fathers. Bute's cousin, Lord Mauchline (afterwards Earl of Loudoun), {106} wearing Highland dress, was the best man, the principal bridesmaid being the Hon. Alice Howard of Glossop, who married Lord Loudoun in 1880. Mgr. Capel said the Nuptial Mass and preached the sermon; and the register was signed by the Duke of Cambridge, the Dukes of Northumberland and Argyll, and Mr. Disraeli. The wedding aroused an extraordinary amount of popular interest and even excitement; and the Spectator commented with satiric surprise on the fact that the London newspapers devoted entire pages to describing the ceremony, which actually occupied—but that perhaps was less astonishing—thirty columns of the Cardiff Western Mail. How distasteful this public excitement was to the chief actors in the ceremony may be gathered from a letter written by Bute to a friend in Rome a fortnight later:

The whole thing went off very well; the religious part of it, which most concerned us, was very well done, and, I hear, pleased and impressed the many Protestants who were present. I suppose you will have seen descriptions and pictures of it. You will understand that to the principals the whole thing—I mean the secular part of it—was absolutely detestable. As Lord Beauchamp says: "There is only one thing more disagreeable than being married in London, and that is being married in the country." Of course we have been extremely quiet ever since, and expect to be so. My Lady is the last person in the world to "rout one out" and want to make a flare-up and a splash.

The Pope sent presents to us both,[5] and I wrote to Mgr. Howard to express our gratitude, enclosing {107} a letter of thanks in very indifferent Latin, which I composed and we both signed; but it was not to be given if it was contrary to etiquette.

I find it the custom of Protestants, when they are married by an Archbishop, to present that dignitary with a pair of gloves—theirs being always white kid sewn with gold. I think I shall have a pair of cloth-of-gold chirothecæ made for Abp. Manning, and shall get Burges to design them. I know the Roman ones are often made of spun silk, but you can have them of other stuff, too, can you not?

A relique of St. Margaret of Scotland has been got for me, and I think of having a bust made for it, of silver-gilt; but I have not yet received it and don't know what it is like. I think also of sending to Chur (Choire) for a relique of St. Lucius of Glamorgan (Lleurwg Mawr).[6] A propos of Reliques, they have been making wonderful discoveries of the shrine of St. Alban in his abbey.[7]

Lord and Lady Bute had gone immediately after their marriage to Cardiff, where they received a very cordial welcome, the mayor reading an address to them at the Castle gates. "I assure you," said Bute in his brief reply, "that my wife comes here to-day with a sincere desire to do what is right, and to be of service not to me only, but to all by whom {108} she is surrounded, and among whom her life is to be henceforth spent." It is sufficient to say here that Bute's anticipations of the new happiness that this step would bring into his life were more than justified by the event. "I cannot but thank God, and congratulate myself, on this marriage," he wrote in May, 1872; "and I hope and believe that it will bring me many blessings." A little later he wrote to the same friend:

I have done two good things (besides some foolish ones) since my twenty-first birthday; the first on December 8, 1868, when I was reconciled to the Catholic Church; the second on April 16, 1872, when the same Church blessed my happy marriage. It is a satisfaction to feel that twice in one's life, at any rate, one has done what one is certain never to repent of nor to regret. Do you not agree with me?

Bute's marriage brought him into intimate relations, and indeed some degree of kinship, with some of the ancient Catholic families of England, of whom he had up to that time known very little. Profoundly interested as he always was in every phase of religious belief and practice, he welcomed the opportunity now afforded him of witnessing a traditionally religious life as unostentatious as it was obviously sincere, and contrasting alike with the austere Puritanism of his childish days and the fussy restlessness which was the chief characteristic of the earlier adherents of the advanced school of Anglicanism. Writing of some Catholics of the old school, to whose country home he and his wife had been paying a visit, he says:

They have edifying habits of piety, but of a very Low Church type—the school of "Hymns Antient {109} and Modern without the Appendix," red baize boxes in galleries, family prayers and daily Mass in the most unadorned of private chapels, and an absolute minimum of ritual. You will understand that the unassuming simplicity of it all appeals to a person like me—especially when I see the goodness that accompanies it. But some of our "advanced" Anglican friends would stare if they saw the good old-fashioned practices which prevail in old Catholic circles. I only wish they could.

A visit to Arundel Castle in the year following his marriage gave him evident pleasure; and a letter thence gives a pleasant glimpse of the home circle in that historic Catholic home:

The party here is an entirely family one;[8] and Whitsuntide and the Month of Mary [May] add by a shade to the amount of church-going, which is considerable here always: for, as you know, they are a very devout as well as a very merry and very nice family. I am rather looking forward to the procession of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunday week for Corpus Christi. The "Fête-Dieu" in the streets of an English country town will be rather an experience.

We have been down at the sea for the last month. We have no London address, neither of us caring for the place, where no one left me an house and where I have not the least intention of buying one.

Having at this time, as mentioned above, no London residence, Lord and Lady Bute spent their year chiefly between Cardiff and Mountstuart, with occasional visits to Dumfries House, for which Bute had always a particular affection. The stay at {110} Cardiff after their marriage was unexpectedly prolonged owing to Lady Bute being laid up there with scarlet fever, while he had the misfortune to break his arm. As soon as they could travel they went to Mountstuart for the autumn and winter, and Bute dictated thence the following letter, the last sentence of which illustrates the curious displeasure with which, notwithstanding his theoretical and archæological admiration of monastic institutions, he always received the news of any friends of his own entering a religious order:[9]

You will perceive by the handwriting that I am still incapable of using my right hand, which is, indeed, tied up with a piece of wood. I am glad to say that my Lady is now very nearly well; and I trust that her escape from the climate of Cardiff will soon complete her recovery.

The quiet routine of my life here is the same as formerly. My Lady plays the harmonium in our little chapel: we venture on nothing more than hymns, and get along pretty well.

The histories one hears from Rome seem all to be so "cooked" to suit the varying views of people who retail them, that one really feels quite uncertain as to how things are going on. I am told that there is an Italianising party among the Cardinals, from which much trouble may be expected in the event—may it be very far distant!—of the election of a successor to Pius IX.

I greatly regret to report that H—— G——[10] in a convent as a Redemptorist novice. I can only say that I most sincerely trust, as far as I lawfully may, that he may soon find that he has made a mistake.

The reference to the learned Jesuit Father MacSweeney in the following letter, written to his old Oxford friend in the spring of 1873, shows that Bute was now entering on what was to be the most considerable literary work of his life, namely, the translation into English of the entire Roman Breviary.

We are really coming south for a little, after a peaceful sojourn here of many months; and I hope for an opportunity of seeing you. I am not forgetful, and it will be a great pleasure. There is not much to bring me to Oxford now, as except yourself and very few others I have no friends there now, and I have not the footing I should have had if I had taken my degree. One day, however, I am to come, and my wife is to be "lionised" by old Mr. Parker, between whom and me archæology has formed ties. I have also business with the erudite Jesuit Fr. MacSweeney,[11] who has just been sent there. Most of my Oxford friends are married and changed and away—and I suppose I am very much changed myself. I fear I am not less indolent than I was, and my life is devoid of stirring incidents. My luxury is art, and perhaps the favourite pursuit Antiquarianism, as {112} History is the favourite reading. I study, too, a little science. I wish I were better as regards devotion—I want stirring up in that; but my associations of that kind are so much with the South, and so difficult to adapt (though I know I ought to try to adapt them) to the environment in which one has to live. We are both, however, looking forward to a Mediterranean trip next winter.

The projected visit to Oxford—Bute's first since his change of religion five years previously—duly came off, and he thus refers to it:

To "do" Oxford in a day is suggestive of the American tourists who "do" Rome in three; but my wife saw the most noteworthy things under the skilled guidance of old Parker, whom I fear we unduly fatigued. You may imagine the feelings and memories that came over me as I led my young wife through Christ Church. It is difficult to estimate exactly what I owe to Oxford, but the debt is a heavy one.... Materially the place seemed to me very little changed. The newest thing I noticed was St. Barnabas's, which impressed me. Only I wish they'd had the courage to Romanise it enough to put the Altar so—

Apropos of Americans "doing" Italy, Story told me that Gibson, the American sculptor, once met and talked with a countryman of his, who was "doing" Italy in some incredibly short space of time. "Yes, I guess I have been nearly everywhere," he said (the conversation took place in a North Italian {113} railway-carriage), "and one place that struck me very much was—I can't remember the name, but it begins with R." Gibson suggested Ravenna, Reggio, Recanati, and other names. "No, no, it was a shorter name than any of those: there was a big church with a dome, and a colonnade and fountains in front." "Good heavens! you surely don't mean Rome?" said Gibson, aghast. "Yes, that was it—Rome. I knew it was a short name, but I couldn't recall it for the moment." This is a fact, as newspapers sometimes say after telling a more than usually unbelievable story.

The second winter after his marriage Bute had the pleasure of spending in the south which he loved so well, and in more congenial and sympathetic company than he had always secured for his bachelor journeyings, even those which in some degree partook of the nature of a pilgrimage. "Our plan," he wrote on November 6, 1873, "is to dawdle through France and winter by the Mediterranean—we have been thinking of the Island of Majorca." The project was successfully carried out, and we see, from a letter written early in the following spring to the same friend, how much quiet enjoyment he was deriving from the rest and sunshine which he found in the Balearic Isles. The latter part of the letter refers to the recent death of his first cousin Edith Countess of Loudoun, who, it will be remembered, had been one of the party that accompanied him to the Holy Land a few weeks after his reception into the Roman Church.

This is a very fair place indeed, the best of it being the climate. I'm nearly always happy when {114} I'm abroad, particularly in the Mediterranean. I suppose there's something in fogs and perpetual rain and cold and darkness which is especially uncongenial to me. Also there are no business and bothers here to speak of, which is certainly a great change from home. We have the quiet and peace which we both enjoy and value, and I am glad to say that I have been getting on very well with the Breviary; for whereas I had hoped before returning to have reached Ascension Day, I now venture to think of the third Sunday after Pentecost.

A drawback (my Lady reminds me) to our residence here is its distance from any church, our only accessible service being one Low Mass each Sunday. There's an impressive, and very Spanish, Cathedral at Palma, with functions well and carefully done; but it is remote from us here.

The death of Edith[12] was a great shock to me, as well as a source of sincere sorrow. Requiescat in pace. We shall all go the same way in the long run, 100 years {115} hence it'll be all the same; but it does seem rather hard that the axe should fall on the neck of all of us (however much it may grieve or inconvenience the survivors), and cut us off from the only world we have any experience of. Not, for the matter of that, that it's much worth stopping in—still, it's all we've got. However, crying over this spilt milk—and I confess to having shed some tears since I heard the news—will never put it back into the pitcher, so perhaps there is not much use in crying. But I am sincerely grateful for your kind sympathy.

Later in the same year, after his return to England, Bute took occasion, in a letter to his ever-faithful friend at Oxford, to repel with indignation some malevolent rumours which had reached him to the effect that he had not found in his home life the happiness which he had anticipated.

Not one jot of truth is there, or has there ever been, in these iniquitous calumnies. Our happiness indeed is complete, and the terms on which we live completely affectionate and intimate. I find myself more attached to G. the longer I have the privilege and honour of living with her, and of seeing, as St. Augustine says of St. Monica, "her walk with God, how godly and holy it is, and to us-ward so sweet and gentle."

This letter was written from Heath House, Weybridge—"a little house," writes Bute, "which we have hired for a month or two. I go hence to London nearly every day to read Hebrew with a Rabbi [this was in view of the new version of the Psalms for his projected translation of the Breviary], and all sorts of things with a Jesuit. Besides the sacred language 'in which the Eternal spoke,' and certain branches {116} of Liturgiology, I continue, as formerly, to read history and science—very humbly.

"We go to Scotland this month, but perhaps shall be at Cardiff for Christmastide, though Mountstuart, as you know, is the home of our predilection."

Before Christmas of this year, which Bute spent not at Cardiff but at Mountstuart, he published (anonymously) a little book containing a translation of the Christmas Offices from the Roman Breviary. "I hope and believe," he wrote, "that it may be of some service to those (there must be many) who desire to follow with intelligence the Liturgy of that holy season, but are prevented from doing so by their partial or total ignorance of the language of the Church. For this reason I should wish the booklet made known through the ordinary channels—a matter in which I confess to thinking our Catholic publishers very much less enterprising and business-like than those who cater for devout Anglicans. But for this state of things, I fear, non c'è remedio."

In Bute's own chapel he was accustomed to have the church offices (with the exception, of course, of the Mass) recited in the vernacular. "Christmas went well here," he wrote to a friend in January, 1875. "We had the Monsignor [Capel] down. Mattins and Lauds were said in English, the altar being incensed at the Benedictus; and Mgr. C. treated us to a short and rather eloquent fervorino after the gospel at Mass. By the way, the progress of my Breviary is most discouragingly slow: eppur si muove."

[1] "Lapsed" livings are those in the gift of Catholics, who are legally incapable of presenting to them. By statutes passed in 1603 and 1715, the patronage of such livings is vested, according to their situation, in the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. All such benefices in Glamorgan were assigned to Cambridge.

[2] The Rev. F. W. Puller, the well-known Anglican divine and controversialist, resigned the vicarage of Roath in 1880 to join the Society of St. John the Evangelist at Cowley.

[3] The Welsh Disestablishment Act of 1920 has, of course, abolished private patronage in Wales.

[4] Canon Jenkins had held one of the "missionary fellowships" founded at Jesus by his namesake Sir Leoline Jenkins in the seventeenth century, and had accordingly gone out to Natal in 1853, and become a canon of Maritzburg. He had returned to Oxford when Bute came into residence at Christ Church, and was successively dean and bursar of Jesus between 1864 and 1870. A fine portrait of him by Holman Hunt hangs in the common-room of his college.

[6] The (probably mythical) "king of Britain" whom Bede reports to have written to Pope Eleutherius asking for instruction in Christianity. Lucius is supposed to have left Britain, preached among the Rhætian Alps, and died at Chur or Coire, where he is still venerated as a saint. The Welsh legend makes him founder of the churches of Llandaff, Roath, etc. Lleurwg or Lleurfer (Light-bearer) is the Welsh rendering of Lucius.

[7] More than 2000 fragments of the fourteenth-century base of St. Alban's shrine were discovered in 1872, built into the walls, and were pieced together again with extraordinary patience and skill, and re-erected on the original site.

[8] The Duke of Norfolk and his four unmarried sisters were at this time living at Arundel with their widowed mother.

[9] One recalls in this connection the cases of two of the most devout and accomplished Catholic writers of the nineteenth century, the Count de Montalembert and Kenelm Digby. Both expended the utmost enthusiasm and eloquence in their description of the religious life of the Middle Ages; and both resisted to the utmost, and not without bitterness, the entry into religion of members of their own immediate family circles.

[10] A contemporary of Bute's at Harrow and Christ Church. He had become a Catholic in 1871.

[11] In the preface to his translation of the Breviary, published six years later, Bute pays a handsome tribute to the "long pains and unwearied patience and kindness" which the learned Jesuit had expended in assisting him in the work. Father MacSweeney read the whole of it in proof, and contributed much valuable criticism, especially in connection with the translation of the Psalter.

[11] One of the testamentary dispositions of Edith Lady Loudoun, who had succeeded to the Scottish earldom in 1868 on the premature death of her brother, fourth and last Marquis of Hastings, curiously recalls a provision afterwards made by Bute in his own will. Lady Loudoun directed that her right hand should be severed after death, and buried apart from her body (which was interred in the family vault in Scotland) in the park at her husband's seat at Donington, her home before she inherited her brother's title. Curiously enough, a similar provision had been made by her grandfather (and Bute's), the first Marquis of Hastings, the distinguished Governor-General of India, who died in Malta in 1826, his wife and children being at the time in Scotland. He was buried at Malta, but his right hand was by his wish carried to Loudoun, and placed in the grave destined for his wife. When the latter was dying fourteen years later, her daughter Sophia, afterwards Marchioness of Bute, wrote a note to the parish minister, asking him to bring her a small iron box which he would find in the family vault. "There must be no delay," the missive ended. The young minister did Lady Sophia's bidding: the box was taken to her mother's deathbed, and two days later was enclosed in her coffin according to her husband's desire. This minister was the Rev. Norman Macleod, afterwards the chaplain and intimate friend of Queen Victoria.

CHAPTER VII

WINE-GROWING—LITERARY WORK—THE SCOTTISH REVIEW

1875-1886

Bute's domestic happiness was crowned, at the close of the year 1875, by the birth of his eldest (and for some years his only) child, the event taking place at Mountstuart on December 24, 1875. "At twenty minutes to five a.m. on Christmas Eve," he wrote to a friend, "the first cries of my daughter were heard, and the little thing is and has been in excellent health and strength. I cannot believe there is ever much likeness in babies to one parent or the other; but what she has absolutely, such as the colour of the eyes, formation of the ears, etc., is after me, and not after her mother ... She was baptised that evening at six, I asking the farmers round about. Mgr. Capel made a kind of little sermon for the occasion, very well done."

The autumn of the following year was marked by a Royal visit to the Isle of Bute—a rare event in those parts, and one which for that reason aroused all the greater interest and appreciation. H.R.H. Prince Leopold was the guest of Lord and Lady Bute for four days at Mountstuart, arriving in the evening in Lord Glasgow's yacht Valetta at the picturesque harbour of Rothesay, which was illuminated for the occasion. The Prince next day paid a kind of official visit to the {118} Aquarium (the chief public attraction of Rothesay), and had a most enthusiastic reception. On Sunday he attended service in the parish church, accompanied by the Protestant members of the house-party; and in the evening he was present at the Catholic service of vespers in Lord Bute's private chapel. A ball was given at Mountstuart during his visit; and he much enjoyed a cruise in the yacht round the islands, as well as a visit to the interesting colony of beavers which Bute had established some little time before on a spot adapted for their damming and tree-cutting operations.

From his boyhood Bute had been a lover of animals, though, unlike the young hero of "The Mill on the Floss" (who "was very fond of animals—that is, of throwing stones at them"), he took no interest whatever in their destruction. Besides the beavers, to whose constitutions the dampness of the Bute climate ultimately proved fatal, he introduced a number of kangaroos (or rather wallabies) into the sheltered woods round Mountstuart; and his visitors used to view with surprise these agile little marsupials leaping about among the bushes, as much at home as, and indeed much less shy than, the familiar hare or rabbit of our English coverts. The acclimatisation of exotic shrubs in the grounds of his island home (where the prevailing mildness of temperature encouraged such experiments) was always a source of interest to him; whilst at Cardiff he derived particular pleasure from the success of his efforts to grow grapes there for wine-producing purposes. Vines were selected from the colder districts of France, and were planted in 1875 on the slopes of Castell Coch, near Cardiff, in light fibrous loam soil. One particular vine, the Gamay Noir (a favourite in the Paris {119} district), so flourished that a second and larger vineyard was propagated from it. Forty gallons of wine were made in the second year after planting, and after two or three bad seasons so good a vintage was secured in 1881 that the wine, pronounced by connoisseurs to resemble good still champagne, was all sold at excellent prices. The record year, however, was 1893, when the entire crop of forty hogsheads, or over a thousand dozen, of the wine realised a price which recouped all the expenses incurred during the previous eighteen years. Dr. Lawson Tait, as famous for his taste in wine as for his surgical skill, bought some of it; and when sold with the rest of his cellar after his death it fetched 115s. a dozen.[1] The success of Bute's viticultural experiments aroused very general interest in England; and it is perhaps worth while putting on record, as a good specimen of the now discredited art of the punster, a notice of the new industry which appeared, now nearly half a century ago, in the principal comic paper of the day:

The Marquis of Bute has, it appears, a Bute-iful vineyard at Castle Coch, near Cardiff, where it is to be hoped such wine will be produced that in future Hock will be superseded by Coch, and the unpronounceable vintages of the Rhine will yield to the unpronounceable vintages of the Taff. Cochheimer is as yet a wine in potentia, but the vines are planted, and the gardener, Mr. Pettigrew, anticipates no petty growth.

No distinctive name was, as a matter of fact, ever given to the wine made from the Castle Coch grapes; {120} and Bute on more than one occasion asked good Welsh scholars (including some of the Cardiff clergy) to dinner, in order to consult with them as to this point. The site of one of the vineyards was a place called Swanbridge (Pont-yr-alarch), and it was suggested that "Sparkling Pont-yr-alarch"[2] would look well in a wine merchant's list. "True," was Bute's comment, made in the serious vein in which he loved to treat such subjects: "yet I fear that such a name would militate against the casual demand for my wine in hotels or restaurants. One can hardly imagine the ordinary diner calling for a bottle of Pont-yr-alarch at the beginning of his meal, still less asking for a second bottle at a more advanced stage of the repast. All orders for this particular vintage would have, in practice, to be given in writing." The wine continued to be anonymous; and Bute, who frequently had it served at his own table, used to puzzle his guests by asking their candid opinion of it. "Well, now, Lord Bute," said a distinguished connoisseur once, after tasting the 1893 vintage and rolling it over his palate secundum artem, "this is what I should call an interesting wine." "I wonder what Sir H—— M—— exactly meant by that," Bute would sometimes say afterwards, recalling the incident.

The year 1875 was marked for Bute by an incident which gratified him not a little, namely, the {121} bestowal on him by Queen Victoria of the Knighthood of the Thistle. It was characteristic of him that he did not accept this honour, as some noblemen of high rank and large possessions might easily have done, as a mere matter of course. He regarded it, on the contrary, as a recognition of the services he had endeavoured to render to education, learning, and the civic life; and he valued and appreciated it accordingly. Apart from any question of personal merit, he was gratified, as a patriotic Scot, by his admission into the most exclusive order of chivalry in the kingdom, and one which had been conferred for generations on the most eminent of his countrymen. He had held for some years the Grand Cross of two distinguished Papal Orders—those of St. Gregory and of the Holy Sepulchre; but on the occasion of his next ceremonial visit to Rome and to the Pope, it was remarked at the Vatican (where such details never pass unnoticed) that he was not wearing the Pontifical decorations, but only the insignia of the Scottish Order.[3]

The loyal affection cherished by Bute for his few near relatives has already been mentioned; and it may therefore be easily imagined with what sympathetic interest he learned in the summer of 1875 that his cousin Lady Flora Hastings, elder sister of Lord Loudoun, had been received into the Catholic Church, and was in consequence being subjected to a species of domestic persecution which seems strange in these more tolerant days, but was {122} by no means uncommon fifty years ago. Bute wrote as to this to an intimate friend:

The treatment to which she has been submitted at home has naturally been extremely trying and painful to her;[4] but she has endured it with admirable patience, being reinforced and supported by the remarkable kindness of her brother. Loudoun's behaviour has indeed been considerate to a degree that can hardly be imagined, and far more so than could have been at all expected. You will understand, without my saying more, what we all feel about this. Norfolk has been kindness itself to her, and so, too, have others.

An interesting sequel to the reference in the last sentence was the happy engagement concluded in 1877 between the Duke of Norfolk and Lady Flora. As first cousins respectively to the bride and bridegroom, Lord and Lady Bute were of course very specially interested in this marriage, which took place at the Oratory on November 21, 1877. "We are all occupied all day here," Bute wrote from a London hotel on November 16, "talking about the wedding next week, and some of us with other things besides talk, for there is much business to be done and settled."

Neither on this nor on any other occasion did Lord and Lady Bute care to remain away from their own home longer than was absolutely necessary. Bute wrote a few days afterwards from Lord Glasgow's seat in Fife, where they were paying a short visit:

We quitted London—as usual, with much satisfaction—the very day after the ceremony, which was decorously done, and the mob of sightseers was, I am inclined to think, better behaved (anyhow inside the church) than at our marriage five years ago. Lord Beaconsfield, who was in the front row next to Princess Louise, sat throughout the function wrapped in his long drab overcoat, and gazing at the altar with Sphinx-like immobility. He told me at the reception afterwards that he had thought the music (which at Norfolk's express wish was plain-chant throughout) "strangely impressive."

The bridegroom, by the way, forgot to order a carriage to take them away after the ceremony, but finding his father-in-law's carriage at the church door, handed in the bride with great presence of mind. They were just driving off when Mr. Hastings came out fuming, and insisted on a seat in his own carriage. So they all drove away together, quite in violation, I imagine, of the established etiquette on such occasions.

Bute's hopes of spending the winter of 1877-1878 quietly at his old home near Rothesay were rudely frustrated by the catastrophe of December 3, 1877, when Mountstuart House was practically burnt to the ground, only the two wings (one of them containing the little private chapel) escaping the flames. He wrote early in December, in reply to a letter of condolence:

Many thanks for the kind expressions in your letter. It has all been, of course, very distressing. Nearly all moveables (including books and pictures) were most fortunately saved,[5] but the confusion is {124} and has been so great that I am practically bookless for a while, and feel like a snail that has lost its shell. But the Breviary is slowly proceeding.

The destruction of his birthplace was, of course, far from leaving Bute in any sense homeless; for Cardiff Castle as well as Dumfries House, the fine old seat of the Crichtons, were still at his disposition, and to these he added in course of time two other country-places in Scotland, besides leasing for a term of years first the Duke of Devonshire's cedar-shaded villa at Chiswick, and later the beautiful domain of St. John's Lodge, in Regent's Park, which was almost as much a rus in urbe as Holland House itself. Superficially, and in one respect, he may thus be said to have resembled the anonymous duke in Disraeli's most popular novel, who was the owner of so many magnificent seats that he could never feel (it was his one grievance) that he possessed a home. But Bute, who considered it a matter of duty and conscience to spend a certain time at all his places in turn, contrived to find in each of them the Lar domestico (as the Portuguese call it) which makes a house a veritable home. Happy in the society of his wife and growing family (three sons were born to him between 1880 and 1887) and surrounded by the books which he loved, he was well contented to live remote from cities, although quite devoid of any instincts whatever for the sports which alone make country life tolerable to so many Englishmen. A good swimmer and fencer (as we have seen) in his early manhood, he indulged in middle life in no other bodily exercise than that of country walks; and even in these, given a congenial companion, what is called the "object of the walk" was often forgotten in the interest of some conversation on {125} topics strangely remote from the picturesque surroundings of a Scottish country house. One who was often his associate in such rambles, perhaps on the high moorlands above Mountstuart, recalls how they would pause at some notable point of view, and how his companion, gazing with unseeing eye (though in reality far from insensible to the beauties of nature) at the matchless panorama of woods and mountains, sea, and sky spread out before them, would dismiss the prospect, as it were, with a wave of the hand, and continue his discourse on the claim of some mediæval anti-pope to the recognition of Christendom, or the precise relation between the liturgical language employed by the Coptic Church and the tongue of ancient Egypt as spoken by the Pharaohs.

Bute was scrupulous and exact in the performance of his duties as a landowner; he kept himself informed of all the details connected with the management of his extensive estates, and never grudged the demands on his time and patience made by the lawyers, agents, and others for business interviews extending over many hours and sometimes even days. That he found these prolonged transactions irksome and fatiguing enough is clear from some expressions in his correspondence; and it was always a pleasure and relief to him to get back to his books and literary work, which were, perhaps, on the whole the chief interest of his life. Although he expended annually a considerable sum on the equipment of his libraries, Bute was no bibliophile in the sense in which that word is now often used. Tall-paper copies, first editions, volumes unique for their rarity, and publications de luxe had no interest for him at all. What he aimed at was to surround himself with a first-rate working library, furnished especially with those {126} works of reference—sources, as the French term is—most likely to be of service to him in the historical and liturgical researches with which he was chiefly occupied. His librarian had standing orders, in the case of new books of interest and utility, to purchase three copies, so that wherever he chanced to be resident he found the tools of his craft ready to his hand.[6] A letter written in the autumn of 1877 shows that the work at that time occupying most of his attention was his translation of the Roman Breviary, which after several years of assiduous (though not, of course, continuous) labour was now nearing its completion.

At last I am relieved from a more than usually tedious spell of business with lawyers and factors, and am able to fulfil my promise to tell you of my liturgical opus magnum (I call it so, though my office has been but the humble one of the translator). For the present, keep the matter to yourself.

I have been engaged since the winter of 1870 in translating the whole of the Roman Breviary into English; and the MS. is nearly finished, and the printing now going on. I expect it will be published next year. I have learnt Hebrew (more or less) for the purpose, and done an amount of reading which it quite frightens me to think of. This translation is my beloved child. I send you a volume of proof, and will give you a copy of the two volumes when they come out. Please keep it quiet: I don't want to be badgered about it, as I should be if people knew that I was doing it.

I am executing a paraphrase in English prose, with a critical commentary, introduction, notes, analysis, and all the rest of it, of the Scots metrical romance upon the Life of William Wallace, written by "Blind Harry" in the XVth century.

From my Scotch historical reading, I am gradually compiling a skeleton chronology of the History of Scotland, with references to every fact: it is intended to stretch from the fall of Macbeth to that of Mary—i.e. the national, Catholic, and feudal period.

And—pleasure after business—I have in hand a translation of the Targum (Paraphrastic Commentary by the Jewish Fathers) upon the Song of Solomon, from the Latin version published at Antwerp in 1570. This has just been rejected by the Jesuits for one of their publications as "dull." As I did not compose it, I feel free to differ from their verdict. I think now of offering it to Good Words. It is mystic (not fleshly) and very wild, picturesque, and diffuse—indeed, in my opinion, touching not infrequently on the sublime.

Bute took an infinity of pains over his English Breviary, polishing and repolishing his version of the mediæval Latin text over and over again, and correcting and revising the proofs with such meticulous care as greatly to add to the expense of the production (which was defrayed by himself, not by the publishers) and also to the delay in bringing out the work. Probably few books of the size and character of these two portly volumes were ever printed with a smaller proportion of typographical errors; but Bute professed himself far from satisfied with the work on its appearance. Sending a copy to a friend, he wrote:

There are a good many things in it—blunders and {128} oversights (mostly mine, not the printers', who have done their work extraordinarily well)—which make me anything but contented with it. I am on the whole, seeing the book in print, least dissatisfied with the rendering of the prayers, in which I venture to think I have not quite failed to reproduce to some extent the measured and sonorous dignity of the original Latin.

Reviewers, as a rule, received the Breviary with respectful admiration, their tributes being, however, paid in many cases less to the work itself than to the astonishing industry of the translator. Bute himself was disappointed at the slowness of the sale. "I hope," he wrote to a friend at Oxford, "you will speak of it if occasion offers, as the circulation is not large." And some months later he wrote again, "I am very glad that you find the Breviary of use, and that there are others who do the same. It is not, however, a feeling as yet very widely disseminated among the public, seeing that I am still £300 out of pocket by having published it."

There was, in truth, no very considerable body of educated English-speaking readers to whom these two ponderous and necessarily expensive tomes were likely to appeal. The Catholic clergy had no money to spare for literary luxuries, and felt no special need of an English version of their familiar office-book: the Catholic laity, devoid for the most part of all liturgical taste, and nurtured on modern methods and manuals of devotion, knew and cared little about the ancient and official prayer of the Church, either in Latin or in English; and thus those chiefly interested in this really monumental work, to which the translator had devoted such prolonged and unwearied labour, proved to be, not (pathetically enough) his own co-religionists, but a small group of scholars and devotees mostly {129} belonging to one section of the Church of England, and including liturgiologists of acknowledged eminence. In some religious houses, however, both of men and women, the Breviary was introduced, and greatly valued, as a means of instructing novices and others in the Divine Office; and in a certain number of Anglican communities, especially in the United States, it was brought into use as the regular office-book. Bute always heard with sincere gratification of any instances of this which were brought to his knowledge.[7]

Next to the Breviary, the "beloved child" of his brain, which was published in the autumn of 1879, Bute's chief literary labours may be said to have been in connection with the quarterly Scottish Review, to which he first became a contributor in 1882, and of which he afterwards assumed the control, purchasing the periodical outright in 1886. A series of his letters dealing with the Review, all eminently characteristic of the writer, have been preserved, mostly addressed to the editor, the Rev. W. Metcalfe, an Established Church minister of Paisley, who was afterwards closely associated with him during his Rectorship of St. Andrews University, and was during a long series of years one of his most intimate friends and most regular correspondents. One of his first letters, in reply to one suggesting certain subjects for possible articles from his pen, shows the complete frankness with which, when necessary, he acknowledged his own ignorance.

I am sensible of the kindness of your offer, but I know my own limitations. About prehistoric antiquities I can write nothing, for I know nothing; and of the Scots Men-at-Arms I know if possible even less. For the latter subject I could no doubt "mug up," as Arthur Pendennis did for his articles in the Pall Mall Gazette; but cui bono? As for early Scottish Christianity, the subject is too vast: you might almost as well ask me for an article on the history of the human race. It must be done in fragments. I think I might try my hand on some scrap, say the ancient Celtic Hymns, in Latin; and I am now taking steps to ascertain if there are known to be any more of such compositions than I already possess—also to get a legible transcript of one of mine, a (to me) illegible lithographic facsimile of an ancient Codex.... As to the Men-at-Arms, I am of opinion that Mrs. Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford would do this well. She is somewhat of an invalid, and spends much time in study, in which she has the advantage both of great natural ability and of her illustrious great-grandfather's admirable library. She is (unreasonably) diffident; but were the article once written, I feel sure you would not find yourself in search of any excuse not to print it.

Bute's own paper on "Ancient Celtic Latin Hymns" appeared in February, 1883, and was the first of over twenty articles contributed by him to the Scottish Review.[8] Other articles followed, dealing respectively with St. Patrick, the Scottish Peerage, and the Bayreuth Festival, which he attended for the first time in 1886, the same year in which he acquired {131} control of the Review. The last-named article has a particular interest of its own, as having been written by a man quite devoid (as he himself frankly acknowledged)[9] of any æsthetic appreciation of music, but who was yet moved and impressed to an extraordinary degree by the Wagnerian cycle as presented at Bayreuth. "Had you not better," he writes to the editor in sending the Bayreuth article, "submit my Festival to some expert musician of Wagnerian mind, that he may add a few technicalities at appropriate places? (I have indicated in pencil where I think this may fitly be done.)"

The article on St. Patrick aroused some interest, especially in the perennial question of the Saint's birthplace—a subject to which Bute makes whimsical reference in a letter relating to hoped-for contributions from the Rev. Colin Grant,[10] the learned priest of Eskadale.

He (G.) is at all sorts of things at this moment, including a memoir of Simon Lord Lovat, also a {132} formal attack on a priest (one M——) who writes an article every six months, making St. Patrick be born in a new place every time, as readily as if he were a kind of early Celtic Homer or Gladstone. Grant swears by Dumbarton; but whenever he crushes M—— in one place it is only to find him giving birth to the Saint again in a new one.

A note to the editor of the Review on the proper designation of a Greek named Bikelas, who had contributed an article, shows the extreme attention paid by Bute to such comparatively subsidiary points. The note was addressed from Dresden, which Lord and Lady Bute were visiting after their pilgrimage to Bayreuth, and where they prolonged their stay for several days (in spite of their usual eagerness to get home), in order to witness there another performance of the Nibelungen Tetralogy which they had seen at Bayreuth a few days previously.

Bikelas kicks against being called "the K. Bikelas": he wants the title "Mr." I tell him that we usually give foreigners the title they use themselves—not "Mr." Thus we say "M." not "Mr." Grévy—"Signor" not "Mr." Depretis—Herr not "Mr." von Hartmann—"Señor" not "Mr." Canovas." Greeks are vulgarly designated "M.," which must be wrong, as, whatever they are, they are not Frenchmen, nor are we. It is a mere blunder founded on ignorance. They themselves always use the style [Greek: ho kúrios]—e.g. [Greek: ho K. peparrêgopoulos]. Consequently I maintain that they should be called in English "the K." So-and-so.[11]

Under Bute's regime the columns of the Scottish Review were open to capable writers professing any religion or none; but he seems to have found the latitudinarian views of "[Greek: ho K. Bikelas]" as troublesome as his title.

B. is very tiresome indeed. The fact is, the man has lived more at Paris than has been good for him, and looks on anybody taking any interest in religion as a folly to be apologised for. This is a state of mind which will appear as strange and shocking in this country as it would in his own. I told him therefore that I thought I must "cook" his most free-thinking paragraphs, and he assented. Now he insists on having it all scepticised. I suppose that I must do as he wishes, and leave him—and ourselves—to the fate that may befall us. I fear, however, he won't be redeemed even by being sandwiched in between the Unknowable in front and the miracles of St. Magnus behind. There is, however, just the hope that the country ministers who do the notices won't see what he's driving at.

Bute's view about the application of the term "British" to his countrymen is expressed in a note referring to an article written for the number of January, 1887, by Amin Nassif, a Syrian protégé of his, translated from the Arabic by Professor Robertson, and prefaced by a rather mysterious foreword, apparently from Bute's pen.

I would not call Nassif's article "Egypt under the British," but "Egypt under the English invasion."[12] I dislike the word "British," which really only means Cymro-Celtic. It has a tendency to confound us with {134} the English, and to obscure to the popular mind the extent to which our forefathers in 1706 tried to make us a mere English province.[13] To every one their due: to the Westminster Parliament that of the bombardment of Alexandria and the rest of it.

The appearance of the first number of the Review published subsequent to Bute assuming control of the periodical is referred to with some complacency, in a letter written from Mountstuart on April 16, 1887:

It seems to me the best number of the S.R. that I have ever seen. But as I have had more to do with it than with any other, I probably see it with prejudiced eyes. The first newspaper notice or two will display it in its true light, in the same way that the impressions of Molière's housekeeper on his literary efforts were a precursor of those of his public audiences.

The "first newspaper notice" which came to hand, that in the Ayr Observer, evoked a comment which seemed to show that Bute was not then so hardened as he afterwards became to the depreciatory remarks of "irresponsible reviewers."

The Ayr Observer man had clearly not even glanced at any of the articles except the first and one other (to which he was attracted by my name as of local interest). He seems to believe the word "Byzantine," now seen by him for the first time, to be a synonym for "German" or "Russian." As none of the sentences parse, I conceive that the notice was {135} written in the small hours (from a dogged determination not to go to bed without getting it done), after separating from some scene freely enlivened by alcoholic stimulants.

A long letter to the editor written on June 18, 1887, contains, inter alia, lamentations on the writer's "hard fate" at having to return to London in mid-summer, and attend, incidentally, a crowded garden party there.

Fancy leaving this place [Mountstuart] at its very best, in order to be jammed in a stuffy back garden in London, in a hollow surrounded by houses, for hours on a midsummer's afternoon.

I see astrologically that Mars has a good deal to say with regard to the *******;[14] it may possibly mean sunstroke or apoplexy as well as dynamite. Really one would think they ought to provide not only an ambulance tent and nurses, but also a dead-house and a competent staff of undertakers.[15]

William Skene, the eminent Celtic scholar and historiographer-royal for Scotland, had proposed writing an article for the Review on the question of reunion between the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Churches; and this gave Bute an opportunity of ventilating his deep-seated animosity against what he considered the hopelessly Erastian element inherent {136} in, and (as he believed) essential to, Anglicanism. He wrote from Raby Castle on October 11, 1887:

If Dr. Skene advocates Bishop Wordsworth's views, he is likely to find himself strongly controverted in the next number. What the Bishop means by reunion is the unconditional surrender of the Scottish nation to a foreign body, whose marriages form 2 per cent. of those celebrated in Scotland. This seems to me simply insane impertinence. A reunion between Presbyterians and Catholics looks to me far less unlikely; for the very essence of the Presbyterian position—that the sacramental character of Order belongs only to the presbyterate, the episcopate being merely its full exercise—is at least a discutable[16] question with us, and we are already agreed on Christ's Divine Headship "on earth as it is in heaven": whereas the Anglicans have nailed their colours to the mast on the first point, and have abandoned every shred of Catholic principle on the second. Their doing this last is indeed the sole reason why they exist at all, either in England or in Scotland.

The withers of the historiographer-royal were probably quite unwrung by this rather polemical outburst, the fact being that Dr. Skene had (as he himself mildly explained) no sympathy at all with Bishop Wordsworth's views on reunion, which his article was designed not to support but to confute.[17]

[1] The vintage of 1885 was also a very good one. "The Mayor of Cardiff," Bute noted in his diary in July, 1892, "has bought three dozen of my 1885 wine—like, but in his opinion better (and I really think it is) than, my Falernian here."

[2] It may be worth while to point out that the suggested Welsh name for the wine is based on a mistaken etymology. The word "Swanbridge" has nothing to do with swans, but is from the Norse or Danish proper name Sweyn (Swegen, Swain or Svend). The narrow neck of land connecting the place, at low tide, with the island of Sully is the "bridge" or "brigg" forming the second half of the word. Norse names are common all along the south coast of Glamorgan.

[3] It is to be observed, in reference to this, that the occasion referred to was that of an exclusively Scottish deputation to Pope Pius IX.—an occasion on which Bute doubtless thought it congruous and becoming to appear wearing only the decoration of the highest Order of Scottish chivalry.

[4] By a singular sequence of events, the persecuting parent (who was afterwards created Lord Donington) followed his daughter's example a few years later, and died a devout member of the Catholic Church in 1895.

[5] Much of the credit of this was due to the sailors from the Clyde guardship, who arrived on the scene in time to render invaluable service in the work of salvage.

[6] The writer has been reminded, since the above sentence was penned, that another standing order to the librarian was to purchase annually one or two works of fiction among those most in demand during the current year.

[7] A tale (possibly ben trovato) in this connection was told of a certain nun, a blonde of very homely appearance, whose intonation in choir of the antiphon, "I am black but comely," provoked such unseemly giggles in the community, that the Superior promptly ordered the English Breviary to be discarded, and the Latin one adopted in its place.

[8] Afterwards reprinted in book form (post, p. 143, note). A complete bibliography of Bute's published writings is given in Appendix VI.

[9] "Since I have been here," he wrote in January, 1887, from Oban, where he had built a church and established a choir of men and boys for the daily celebration of the Liturgy, "I have been attending choir myself very regularly. I have no natural musical gifts at all, as you (being musical yourself) are well aware; but I think it better to put on a surplice when here, as it shows fellow-feeling." The Emperor Charlemagne, we are told, presided regularly over the choir in his private chapel; but beyond the fact that he coughed or sneezed (sternutabat) when he wished the lessons to stop, we do not hear of his taking any audible part in the service. Probably both he and Lord Bute, having instituted a choir to do the singing, thought it best themselves to follow the injunction which is, or was, posted up in the ante-chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, bidding visitors "join in the service silently."

[10] One of the most deeply learned men of his time in Scotland, especially on the lore and history of the early Celtic Church. He was appointed to the See of Aberdeen in 1889, but—to the great loss of Scottish learning—died only six weeks after his episcopal consecration. See post, p. 147.

[11] The articles contributed by this writer were, as a matter of fact, signed [Greek: Demétrios Bikelas, and appear in the index under the name of D. Bikelas. In some reviews of his writings he is, however, styled "the K." His "Seven Essays on Christian Greece," translated by Bute, appeared in book form in 1890.

[12] The title of the article as published was "Egypt on the Eve of the English Invasion." It was anonymous.

[13] One cannot but recall, in this connection, Mr. Putney Giles's words to Lothair in regard to the preparations for the celebration of his majority. "Great disappointment would prevail among your Lordship's friends in Scotland, if that country on this occasion were placed on the same level as a mere English county. It must be regarded as a Kingdom."—"Lothair," Chap. XXVII.

[14] The asterisked word is, of course, "Jubilee." Some time before this Bute had written: "I am dabbling, among other things, in astrology, and find it a curious and in some ways fascinating study." See post, p. 176.

[15] A curious parallel to this curious passage occurs in a letter written by Disraeli to Lady Chesterfield on July 14, 1887 ("Life," vol. vi. p. 169). "Garden parties in London are wells, full of dank air. Sir William Gull told me that if the great garden parties in future are held at Buckingham Palace and Marlboro' House instead of Chiswick and so on, his practice will be doubled."

[16] This odd synonym for "discussible" seems almost an [Greek: hápax legómenon]. The Oxford Dictionary gives but one example of its use, from an article in the Saturday Review of 1893.

CHAPTER VIII

LITERARY WORK (CONTINUED)

1886, 1887

"They will say that we are dull, of course," Bute wrote to his editor in 1887, discussing the contents of a forthcoming number of the Scottish Review. "But they say that anyhow, without reading us, whatever we put in or leave out." Bute did not always feel sure that his own contributions, written as they were with an immensity of care and painstaking, were not open to this charge. "I feel rather low about the 'Coronations,'"[1] he wrote a few weeks later. "It seems to me dull, very long, and intensely technical.... It is true that the Lord Lyon has returned my proof with a note calling the article 'most valuable,' and saying he could scarcely suggest any improvement. So far so good; but then he is a professional State Master of Ceremonies."

At other times Bute appeared rather to resent the charge of "heaviness" not infrequently applied to his Review. "They call us ponderous—it is their favourite adjective," he wrote in this mood a little later. "It is easy to bandy epithets, but I should say that we are positively light in comparison with {138} some other quarterlies I could name. I was drowsing for two hours last night over one of them, which I can designate by no other word than stodgy." Nevertheless it must be frankly admitted that Bute did not possess the power of treating with any kind of light touch (or perhaps of inspiring others to do the same) the various interesting and important subjects which were the staple of the Review. The gift of humour he certainly possessed, and in a high degree: he could see as well as any man the incongruous and ridiculous side of the most serious subject: he liked a good story, and could tell one himself, with a sort of solemn jocosity which, combined with his singular felicity in the choice of language, added vastly to the effect of the anecdote. Moreover, he could write as well as talk wittily, as is evident from the caustic and sometimes mordant humour which characterises many of his letters. But this feature is almost or wholly absent from his published writings; and in these he seems to have adopted the principle which Dr. Johnson certainly practised as well as preached: "The dignity of literature is little enhanced by what passes for humour and wit; and the true man of letters will do well to reserve his jests for the ears of his private friends, and to treat serious subjects, on the printed page, in a serious manner."

Bute hardly seemed to realise that the following of the sage counsel just quoted could be any bar to the popularity of the Review with the general reader; and he was at times almost querulous with what he called the "unaccountable apathy" of the Scottish public in particular. "I think," he wrote to a literary friend, "you ought to pitch strongly into the Scottish people for their distaste for anything like serious reading. I am told that of the books borrowed from {139} the Edinburgh Public Library for home perusal, more than 75 per cent. are works of fiction. One thing which I have particularly noticed about them is crass ignorance of their own history, to a point which is really quite astonishing."

In order to increase the circulation of the Review, and make it if possible self-supporting ("a state of things which, for the sake of the principle involved," wrote Bute, "I am extremely desirous to bring about,") the desperate expedient was proposed of transferring the Review to London, following the precedents of the Edinburgh and the North British. But this was too much for Bute's amor patriæ. He wrote to the Oxford friend from whom the suggestion had emanated:

One might, of course, do better business by dropping it as a Scottish review, and starting another English magazine in London under the same name, and with a continuity of numeration. This, however, would be to destroy in its very essence the attempt to keep going a Scottish quarterly in Scotland. It must be owned that the apathy of the Scottish public is quite enough to drive any one to such a course, and it would be entirely their own fault if it were taken.

A typical example of Bute's method of treating subjects drawn from the byways of history may be seen in his studies on the trial and execution of Giordano Bruno,[2] whose memory a noisy party in Italy was at that time (1888) endeavouring to exalt as that of an innocent victim and martyr. The opinion of educated Catholics might have been thought pretty well made up as to the justice of the {140} sentence on the notorious Neapolitan philosopher and ex-Dominican, of whom not a Roman Inquisitor, but a Protestant divine, had said that he was "a man of great capacity, with infinite knowledge, but not a particle of religion." Bute, however, approached the subject in his usual attitude of complete intellectual detachment, with no trace of parti pris. "There is much obscurity about the whole matter," he wrote from Sorrento on March 21, 1888, "but I flatter myself that my paper will at least be a triumph of impartiality, of absolutely colourless neutrality." It is sufficient to record here that his conclusion, after many months of patient sifting of evidence, much of it drawn from contemporary sources hitherto unexplored, was much the same as that of Bruno's accusers and judges in Venice and in Rome. He wrote as follows to Dr. Metcalfe, before his articles appeared in print:

What I fail to understand is why they executed him at all. If the Church Courts had kept him to themselves and imprisoned him for life, he could not have done any one any harm, and might with advancing age have repudiated and repented some of his blasphemous utterances (one being that Christ was not God, but only a magician of extraordinary cunning).[3] In the case of this obscure and repulsive vagabond, whose chief literary work could not be printed to-day without the author being prosecuted for obscenity, there was surely no need of a terrible public example, such as might have been (and was) urged in the case of the burning of Servetus.

Equally characteristic of his zeal for what he calls "colourless neutrality" in the presentment of historic facts are his observations on a proposed article for the Review on the autobiography of Garibaldi, then recently published. As to this he writes (February, 1888):

Perhaps the Contessa M—— C—— could do it; and if the book is on the Index (which is not unlikely),[4] she could easily get a dispensation by stating her object in wishing to read it. I suppose she is not a Garibaldian, by the way? that would never do. She should express as little opinion of any sort as possible—I don't mean, of course, that she should abstain from stating known facts—and should leave the man to speak for himself by an analysis and a string of quotations, which must be given from the Italian text, and severely literal.

The above example—many others could of course be cited—are sufficient to indicate the spirit of rigid impartiality in which Bute treated, and desired that others should treat, historical questions of every kind, and his almost passionate endeavours to follow in all such researches the old maxim, Audi alteram partem. It must be confessed, however—indeed he himself practically owned—that were his historiographical principles universally adopted, English literature, if not the cause of historic truth, would be the poorer. "Most history," he said in one of his addresses to a body of university students, "is not history at all, but romance, sometimes fascinating but seldom trustworthy, coloured, as it often is deeply, with the prejudices and prepossessions of its {142} writers. Names—facts—dates—there is true history; but when a man gets beyond that, when he begins to dissect characters, to attribute motives, to analyse principles of action, then in nine cases out of ten he ceases to be a historian and becomes a romancer. Gibbon, with his enormous erudition, could have presented to us all the details of Rome's decline as they really were—-he has given us instead a travesty of them distorted by his own devilish hatred of Christianity. Macaulay, whose whiggery may have been all very well on the hustings, disgusts us by intruding it into every page of his so-called "History of England." Froude vaunts that his history of the English Reformation is entirely based on original documents; by which he really means that he has used all those which have helped him in his self-imposed task of whitewashing Henry VIII., and has suppressed all the rest.[5] I need not give other instances."

Bute might have pointed to his own laborious work on Scottish Chronology in illustration of his theory of how history should be written—the immense folio volumes, specially constructed for the purpose, in which day by day and year by year he inserted dates, with the barest and briefest statement of facts bearing on the history of Scotland and her early kings, as he encountered them in the course of his omnivorous reading. He could hardly have seriously maintained the paradox that history in this skeleton {143} form was the only true history worthy of the name. But no historic student (and he disclaimed for himself any higher title) ever aimed more anxiously than he did, in every line that he wrote, to set forth the plain facts of history absolutely uncoloured by any views or prepossessions of his own. It was this marked characteristic, coupled (it is not necessary to say contrasted) with his complete and unquestioning loyalty to the teachings of his Church, which, especially to those who knew him, gave a unique interest to everything that came from his pen. Genuine erudition—a virile independence of thought and judgment—an engaging personal diffidence and a complete absence of anything like obtrusion of the writer's own opinions, combined with a gift of expression and a command of language which often soars to real, if sober, eloquence—these qualities may all be found in the essays which he wrote during the years which were the most intellectually productive of his life; and it is well that they have been rescued from the pozzo profondo of the pages of a provincial periodical of limited circulation, and are accessible, in two handsome volumes,[6] to all who care to read them.

It may be well at this point, and in this connection, to cite an interesting tribute to Bute's literary abilities paid by one who had been among the earliest friends of his dawning manhood, and whose own distinction in the world of letters gives a particular value to his judgment. Lord Rosebery said of him as follows:—[7]

The late Lord Bute was a remarkable character to the world at large, whether they knew him well or did not. To some it may often have seemed that he was out of place in the nineteenth century. His mind, his thoughts, his studies were so entirely thrown back into a past more or less remote; and I think, had he had more incentive to make known the objects and subjects of his researches, he would have left no mean name in the republic of letters. And even as it is he has left behind him a rectorial address to the University of St. Andrews, which contains, I think, one of the strangest, most pathetic, most striking passages of eloquence with which I am acquainted in any modern deliverance.

This is high praise; but to those who are familiar with the passages to which Lord Rosebery refers, it will not seem exaggerated or misplaced. They form the peroration to Bute's inaugural address delivered at St. Andrews on the occasion of his election to the lord-rectorship of that University; and they run as follows:—

On the 5th of March, in this year, I took a walk with Professor Knight to Drumcarrow. It was a fine, sunny day. We stood among the remains of the prehistoric fort, and looked over the bright view, the glorious landscape enriched by so many memories, the city of St. Andrews enthroned upon her sea-girt promontory, the German Ocean stretching to the horizon, from where it chafes upon the cliffs which support her walls. And we remarked how God and man, how nature and history, had alike marked this place as an ideal home of learning and culture. And then the view and the name of the Apostle together carried my thoughts away to another land and a narrower and land-locked sea. I do not mean that where Patrai, the scene of Andrew's death, looks from the shores of Achaia towards the home of {145} Ulysses over waters rendered for ever glorious by the victory of Lepanto. I do not mean the City of Constantine, where the first Christian Emperor enshrined his body, and where the union of ineffably debased luxury and ineffably debased misery, which drains into the Sea of Marmora, excites a disgust which almost chokes grief and humiliation. Neither do I mean those sun-baked precipices which, by the shores of the Gulf of Salerno, beetle over the grave where lies the body that was conformed in death to the likeness of the death of the Lord. I mean the land of Andrew's birth—the hot, brown hills, which, far below the general sea-level of the world, gird in the Lake of Gennesareth—that strange landscape which also is not unknown to me, the environing circle of arid steeps, at whose feet, nevertheless, the occasional brakes of oleander raise above the line of the waters their masses of pink blossom, and whence the eye can see the snows of Hermon glistering against the sky far away;—and I pray that some words which he heard uttered upon one of those hills may be realised here—that the physical situation of this place may be but a parable of its moral position—and that it may yet be said of the House of the Apostle that "the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock."[8]

In 1888 Mr. Gardner of Paisley, publisher of the Review, was honoured with the appointment of publisher to the Queen. Bute, who was interested in every detail concerning the periodical, wrote to the editor with one of his quaint comments:

I think it would be just as well that Gardner should put his Royal title at the foot of the title-page, as in his other publications, and just in the same way. {146} I suppose H.M. will not consider that she is thus made responsible for all the opinions to be found within. If she does, it will be time for her to say so when it strikes her.

I have just attacked a great frequenter and pillar of the Athenæum Club for not having us taken in there; and I hope he will succeed in wiping this reproach from the institution.

Bute's control of the Scottish Review was maintained until the end of his life. The seventy-second and final number appeared in October, 1900, the month in which he died. Occasional entries in his diaries show that he had incurred very heavy expenses in connection with the Review—perhaps, from first to last, almost as heavy as those entailed on him by the establishment and support, twenty years before, of a Conservative daily newspaper in the heart of Liberal Wales. As he had not grudged that outlay in what he believed to be a good cause, so he did not consider the money expended on this literary enterprise to have been expended in vain. If the Scottish Review under his control had not proved precisely a commercial success—and perhaps he had never really expected that it would—its conduct and management had at least provided him with congenial work and occupation during a period extending over several years. It afforded him a convenient vehicle for the publication of his curious researches into some of the obscurer corners of ecclesiastical and general history: it brought him into contact, either personally or by correspondence, with many distinguished scholars and men of letters whom he might otherwise have had no opportunity of knowing: it led indirectly to the forming of at least one intimate friendship which was the source of pleasure and interest to him until the {147} end of his life; and it brought him opportunities which he valued of playing the part of an unostentatious Mæcenas—in other words, of giving practical encouragement to literary beginners in whom he discerned actual ability or promise for the future, enabling them to make their first public appearance in a periodical of repute, and thus assisting them to mount at least the first slopes of the Parnassus to which they aspired.

Reserved, undemonstrative, and cold as Bute was often deemed, there is abundant evidence that his colleagues and collaborators on the Scottish Review appreciated highly the uniform courtesy, consideration, and kindness which they received at his hands. His real warmth of heart and loyal affection to his friends are well shown in the touching letter which he wrote on hearing of the death of his old and dear friend Bishop Colin Grant, who had not only contributed to the Review, but had given him, for many years past, constant and very highly valued assistance in his researches into the early history of Scotland.

My own feelings are divided between grief for the loss of my old and esteemed personal friend, and a sense of desolation, almost amounting to despair, at the loss which Scottish historical science has sustained. There must be among his papers masses of notes which ought not to be lost to the world. I have written to his nephew to implore him not to let a single scrap of paper be destroyed. As for himself, if we can only put aside our grief at the loss to ourselves, and at the apparent loss to the Church upon earth, we can only feel a curious joy as we picture his admission, far beyond the sphere where time works, into the blessed company of the just made perfect (especially those of our own land, on whose {148} earthly lives he loved so much to dwell[9]) and above all, into the very presence of their Divine Head, the great Shepherd of the sheep, Whom to please he so humbly and cheerfully devoted a lifetime in striving to serve His flock.

A short time before writing this tribute to his old friend and fellow-worker, Bute had attended a meeting held at Dundee to advocate the claims of Scotland to Home Rule—a claim which he regarded with a great deal of interest and not a little sympathy, as is evident from the article he wrote for the Scottish Review (October, 1889) on "Parliament in Scotland." He thus gives his impressions of the meeting:

The Home Rule meeting in Dundee seemed to me to be really a sort of battle between Dr. Clark and the Edinburgh Executive on the one hand, who gave me the impression of being well-informed, able, and educated people, either Tories or very moderate Liberals, with whom I get on perfectly; and on the other hand the great body of delegates, who seemed to me to be extreme Radicals unconscious of their own ignorance. Mrs. Maxwell Scott has read the proof of my forthcoming article, and is exceedingly pleased with it. The Home Rule people all wanted to know whether the Scottish Review could not be turned into their monthly organ! but I replied that such a change would be equivalent to annihilation of what the S.R. was designed to be, has always been, and is.

Bute had already accepted an engagement to preside this year (1889) at the St. Andrew's Day dinner of the Scottish Corporation in London, but {149} was extremely dubious as to what kind of reception he would have from a company of whom many were doubtless quite out of sympathy with the views on Scottish Home Rule set forth in this article. His letter on this subject, expressing his obvious relief at the manner in which things had turned out, makes amusing reading:

The St. Andrew's Day dinner came off last night. I had been extremely nervous about it, so that I could really take up nothing else until it was over. This was folly, and really almost sinful folly, because the desire to be liked is only vanity at bottom, and vanity is a bastard cousin to pride. But I knew also (and there I was on fair enough ground) that, although politics were not to be mentioned, the thing was in fact to be a political demonstration, and that it was not yours truly, John M. of B., who was to be placed in the chair, but the author of "Parliament in Scotland"; and the question was, how the Scottish commercial colony in London would receive him. It had even been publicly suggested in print that the charity should be boycotted because I had been asked to take the chair, "although, no doubt," (the writer charitably added,) "that must have been done before the article appeared." Well, the festival duly came off, and I think I was never more cheered in my life. They cheered for quite long periods every time I had to come forward, from the time I entered the drawing-room before the dinner. And I will not quote the language which was used to me about the speech which I made.

The interest which Bute had always felt in St. Magnus of Orkney since his visit, or pilgrimage, to the scene of the saint's martyrdom in his under-graduate days,[10] was evinced by the new and careful {150} investigations which he undertook in 1886, in view of an article on the subject in his Review. His cautious, yet reverent, attitude towards the supernatural is well shown in a passage of a letter to his publisher, relating to the local tradition about a perennially green spot of ground said to mark the site of Magnus's death in the isle of Egilsay:

I own that, with such information as I have ever had, together with my own recollections of the place, I am inclined to think that the phenomenon is, if not strictly miraculous, in the strongest sense of the word, a special intervention of Divine Providence, which may be called a preternatural testimony of God's favour towards His martyred servant.

Bute later entered into negotiations for the purchase of the site above referred to, with a view to its preservation; but this was not carried out. He also wrote at considerable length to his correspondents in Orkney, throwing great doubts (as he had done nineteen years previously) on the supposed bones (or "reliques," as he calls them) of St. Magnus preserved at Kirkwall—chiefly on account of the degenerate type of the skull. "It may be," he characteristically says, "that this only indicates a triumph of grace over nature. But it seems to me to be incompatible, I will not say with holiness, but with the intellectual, high-minded, and beautiful character and tastes of the Martyr." On these and other grounds he urges that the local photographer of the skull must be strictly enjoined not to circulate the photograph under false pretences.

A letter which Bute addressed (in Latin) to the Cardinal Archbishop of Prague as to reputed "reliques" of St. Magnus preserved in the cathedral there elicited no response. "The reliques of St. Magnus themselves," Bute wrote in some displeasure, "could not be more voiceless than the Cardinal of Prague in regard to my (I hope) courteously-worded request." Through Cardinal Manning, however, information finally reached him that the relics at Prague (venerated there for several centuries) included a shoulder-blade. This was missing from the bones in Kirkwall Cathedral—so far satisfactory; but they also included a shin-bone (crus), whereas the shin-bones (crura) at Kirkwall were complete and intact.[11] Bute's final conclusion (and the incident is recorded as showing the curious interest with which he pursued such minute investigations) was that the bones at Kirkwall were not St. Magnus's at all, but probably those of Earl St. Rognwald, nephew to St. Magnus, another Norse saint and hero venerated in the same locality. He thought it worth while to insert in the Review a letter from Orkney informing him that there was a tradition in Egilsay that one would always find an open flower on the site of the martyrdom, and that the writer had found there on December 10, after heavy snow and gales, several daisies in full bloom.[12]

The first two years of Bute's connection with the Scottish Review were perhaps among the busiest of his life, not only because of the assiduous care which, as we have seen, he devoted to the conduct and control of that journal, but also by reason of the increasing duties which devolved on him in connection with his extensive estates. To the latter he made very considerable additions at this period, increasing his Buteshire property in 1886 by the acquisition of the island of Cumbrae from the trustees of the sixth Earl of Glasgow, and also purchasing in the following year the important estate of Falkland in Fife, to which was annexed an office of the greatest interest to him, the hereditary keepership of the ancient palace of Falkland. In Cardiff, also, there was a great increase of business connected with the reorganisation of the vast docks. The new Roath Dock was opened in 1887 by his six-year-old heir, Lord Dumfries (his first appearance in public), and on the same day his youthful daughter cut the first sod of Roath Park, for which he had made a free gift of land valued at £50,000. His generosity was further shown after the disastrous failure of the Cardiff Savings Bank, when it was sought to make him liable as honorary president of the institution. As soon as it was judicially decided that there was no claim whatever against him, he voluntarily contributed £3,000 towards making up the deficiency. In the previous year he had manifested his liberality towards his Scottish tenants by obtaining (in view {153} of the prevalent agricultural depression) an independent valuation of his farms in Bute, and reducing the rents by a third. It was not without reason that the local Liberal newspaper, in many respects even vehemently hostile to him, described him as "a just and generous landowner"; whilst in Cardiff this handsome tribute was paid to him by one extremely well qualified to pronounce an opinion: "As regarded his estates, he was, of course, a most excellent and liberal landlord, as all who had the privilege of being his tenants would certainly admit."

Much of Bute's correspondence at this period is taken up with a scheme which he had greatly at heart, namely, the establishment of the full liturgical service of the Church at Oban, where his diocesan (the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles) had his see, and where he himself had built a handsome church. He was concerned that the canonical office of the Roman Breviary, for which he had so high a veneration, should not be recited daily in a single cathedral church throughout Britain;[13] and he incurred a great deal of trouble and expense in his efforts that this reproach should be wiped out at least in one church in Scotland. He defrayed the whole cost of organ and organist, choirmen and chorister-boys, instituted and supported a convent-school for the education of the last-named, and paid a chaplain for the exclusive work of presiding in choir and singing the daily Mass. The question of providing a chaplain {154} exercised him much, and he wrote to a friend in Italy on this point:

I imagined that, the duties being light and the remuneration (I venture to think) adequate, a chaplain could easily be found; but the difficulties seem endless. Whether the cause be chronic ill-health, constitutional indolence, or an entire want of interest in the Liturgy, I know not; but so far no priest has been found in England or Scotland able or willing to celebrate the daily sung Mass. Kindly set on foot inquiries among the unattached clergy of Rome, popularly known as preti di piazza—many of them, I believe, estimable priests, unoccupied through no fault of their own—and see if one can be found to supply our needs. Unexceptionable references would be, of course, required.

This and other difficulties were in time overcome, and the daily choral office was duly carried out for a period extending over several years, and was much appreciated by the numerous Catholic visitors who frequented Oban during the summer and autumn. Unfortunately it was not found possible to continue the daily services for any long time after the death of the founder.

Bute expressed, with his usual frankness, his sentiments on the subject of the rather nondescript festivals commonly known as "church openings":

I am suffering much at present from the persistent wish of my Lord of Argyll to have what he calls an "opening" of the tin temple[14] in August—i.e. {155} during the tourist and shooting season. This anomalous celebration is not designed in honour of the inauguration for public worship, which was last Sunday; nor its ecclesiastical blessing, which is arranged for an earlier date, nor the inception of the Divine office—but something in the nature of the "opening" of the Westminster Aquarium, a new Dissenting Chapel, municipal washhouses, or a fancy fair, with (I presume) tickets, placards, and posters, and probably excursion-trains. The bishop seems moved by a conviction that the local Protestants are anticipating a junketing of this kind with even more eagerness than the Catholics. But he is a gentleman; and I am sure when he knows how I hate the whole thing he will give it up.

Besides the pro-cathedral at Oban, Bute was interesting himself this year (1886) in building a church at a mining town in Ayrshire, near Loudoun Castle, the ancestral home of his mother's family. Discarding, as usual, conventional ideas, he chose for his model the great church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, of which the church at Galston was a carefully-executed miniature copy. One of the first solemn services held in it was a Requiem Mass celebrated for Lord Loudoun's sister, Flora Duchess of Norfolk, who died on April 11, 1887. Lord and Lady Bute attended her funeral at Arundel, and also that of Clara Lady Howard of Glossop, Lady Bute's sister-in-law, whose death occurred a few days later.

[1] "The Earliest Scottish Coronations": "The Coronation of Charles I. at Holyrood"; "The Coronation of Charles II. at Scone." These appeared in the Review, 1887-1888, and were reprinted, with an additional article and an Appendix, in 1902, after Bute's death.

[2] "Giordano Bruno before the Venetian Inquisition" (July, 1888): "The Ultimate Fate of Giordano Bruno" (October, 1888).

[3] In his first trial (at Venice) Bruno tried to defend himself on the principle of "two-fold truth," maintaining that he had held and taught the errors imputed to him "as a philosopher, and not as an honest Christian."

[4] It does not appear on the official Index Librorum Prohibitorum published at the Vatican Press.

[5] This may seem a severe judgment; but some contemporary French critics of Mr. Froude had much harder things to say about his literary honesty. "L'historien d' Henry VIII. et d'Élizabeth," wrote M. de Wyzewa, "était victime de ce q'un critique a appelé 'la folie d'inexactitude.' Il ne pouvait pas copier un document sans y introduire des variantes qui souvent en altéraient le sens."—"Rév. des Deux Mondes," tom. xv. (1903), p. 937.

[7] The occasion of this striking utterance was an annual meeting of the Scottish History Society, held subsequent to Bute's death.

[9] Bishop Grant was, among other things, a noted hagiographer, having made profound studies of the lives and acts of the early Celtic saints of Scotland.

[10] See ante, p. 50. The writing of the article on St. Magnus was entrusted to Mrs. Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford, but illness prevented her from completing it, and Bute himself, as he says, "saw it through." It was published in January, 1887.

[11] Although the high authority of the Bollandists (Acta Sanctorum, April, tom. II. p. 435) is on the side of the relics at Prague being actually those of St. Magnus of Orkney, King and Martyr, it is impossible not to remember that there was another St. Magnus (popularly known as St. Mang), monk of St. Gall and Apostle of the Algau, who was greatly venerated in Germany, and whose cultus would seem more antecedently probable at Prague than that of the holy Norse Earl.

[12] In March, 1919, thirty-three years after Bute's second investigation of the supposed relics of St. Magnus, a discovery was made fully justifying his grave doubts as to the identity of the bones interred in the north pillar of the choir of Kirkwall Cathedral. A casket was found in one of the southern pillars of the choir, containing remains (including a skull with a clean cut in the parietal bone and a sword-cut through the jaw,) which there seems reason to believe may be the actual relics of St. Magnus.

[13] At Belmont Abbey, until recently cathedral of the diocese of Newport (in which Cardiff lay), the daily Divine office has been chanted by monks without intermission for more than sixty years; but their office is of course the Benedictine, not the Roman. The latter has been recited daily, and continuously, in Westminster Cathedral since its opening in 1902.

[14] The Oban pro-cathedral was a provisional structure of iron, but its interior was handsomely and even richly fitted up at Bute's expense. He usually gave the name of "tin temples" to the iron chapels which he set up in various parts of the country.

CHAPTER IX

FOREIGN TRAVEL—ST. JOHN'S LODGE—MAYOR OF CARDIFF

1888-1891

Notwithstanding the increasing and incessant claims on his time and attention of literature, business, and family duties, there were few, if any, years in which Bute was not able to secure an interval of what to him was real enjoyment, in foreign travel. Even from such journeys—and they were not infrequent—as were undertaken purely for reasons of health, he seldom failed to derive both pleasure and profit. "I am ordered abroad at once," he wrote on one occasion, "to drink the waters of Chales, in Savoy. They are, I believe, exceptionally nasty, but you know how I like being abroad, and I am quite in spirits at the prospect of the trip." He never travelled very far afield, his most distant journeyings having been, perhaps, to Petersburg (in Lord Rosebery's company) and to Teneriffe in 1891. The countries bordering on the Mediterranean, France and Italy, Spain and Portugal, Palestine, Egypt and Greece, were the scenes of most of his foreign sojournings; and in them all he found sources of continual and inexhaustible interest. He had travelled a good deal abroad with his mother in his childhood, and often recalls in his diary these early visits:

July 30, 1886. The very same rooms at the Belle Vue, Brussels, as we had when I came here in childhood.... The house is full of Americans, as like one another (to English eyes) as Chinese or negroes. It is impossible to tell them apart.[1]

At Dresden also, a few months later, he records his vivid recollections of an early visit to that capital. This was the year of his first pilgrimage to the shrine of Wagner at Bayreuth (he attended the festival there also in 1888 and 1891). Many of his letters to the editor of the Scottish Review are dated from foreign addresses; and interspersed in these with business and literary details are numerous picturesque notes on the customs and doings of the people among whom he was living. The descriptions of the religious observances of the inhabitants of Sorrento have a certain piquancy, when one remembers that they were addressed to a minister of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Bute wrote on such matters currente calamo, and took for granted—no doubt with reason—that his friend would be as much interested in such matters as he was himself.

We had a magnificent voyage, which made me feel immediately in a most robust and lively condition. I find, however, that a calm in the Bay of Biscay, such as we had, is considered ill-omened by the sailors; and one of the passengers committed {158} suicide on the night before we left Gibraltar. Curiously enough, the same thing happened in the same circumstances on another occasion which I remember of a calm in the same spot. We landed at Naples last Saturday. The lewdness, cruelty, etc., of the Neapolitans seems as bad as usual; but some non-Neapolitan clergy have lately been introduced, who say Mass very reverently, and preach and pray in the vernacular. I hear they are beginning to do much good. We arrived here yesterday, and are fasting to-day (Ash Wednesday) in great discomfort. Rome is crowded. The Scotch deputation (about 140 persons) is to be received by the Pope to-morrow at 10.30 a.m.

Bute read the address to Pope Leo XIII. on behalf of the Scottish pilgrimage, which had come to Rome to join with the rest of Christendom in congratulating the venerable Pontiff on the celebration of his sacerdotal jubilee. From Sorrento, where he afterwards spent several weeks, he wrote to Dr. Metcalfe on Holy Saturday:

The people had their fill (I should hope) of services, and especially of preaching, yesterday (Good Friday). They began with a procession round the town at 4 a.m., which I did not join, commemorative of the procession to Calvary. The Liturgy began in the cathedral at 8, and ended at 11. At 1 a man began preaching in the cathedral and went on till 4.15—I wonder he could do it. The church was full, and all, even small boys and girls, very attentive. He preached nine sermons, or rather one enormous sermon in nine points, with short and very sweet Italian anthems sung between each. Many of the congregation were affected to tears. The service of Tenebræ began at 5 and lasted an hour and a half; then they began another procession through the streets, this time in commemoration of Christ being {159} borne to the grave. A spectator said to me quite cheerily that this procession was going the round of seven churches; and that there would be a sermon in each. At 9.30 p.m. I heard from our garden the town band (which accompanied the procession) still playing in the distance sacred music and funeral marches. The people are now buying at the confectioners' small lambs made of the least indigestible sugar procurable, so that they may "eat the lamb this night" without violating the Lenten law of abstinence from flesh meat.

A long letter addressed to the same correspondent on Easter Monday seems worth reproducing almost in its entirety. It affords testimony, more convincing than any words of a biographer could be, of Bute's extraordinary interest in the religious services of his Church, and of the vivid and even moving eloquence which inspired his pen when describing the worship and the devotion of the simple Campanian folk among whom he was temporarily sojourning:

The people go on hearing sermons. There were at least two delivered in the Cathedral on Sunday, at 7 and 10 a.m. These preachments have their peculiar features, besides their length. They seem very often to conclude with an extempore prayer. I call it extempore, although it is of course prepared beforehand, and, in the works at any rate of St. Alfonso Liguori, these prayers are printed along with the sermons to which they belong; but no MS. is used. When the prayer begins the people generally kneel down, and sometimes the preacher asks them to join with him, in which case he prays very slowly, and they repeat after him. One day I went into the large Church of the Saviour at Meta. There was barely standing-room. A man was preaching against {160} blasphemous swearing. After a time he dictated to the congregation a sort of pledge never to commit this sin again, and many of them repeated it after him. He then, after the manner of old precentors I have heard of in the Highlands, when the people could not read, sang an hymn line by line, the people singing every line after him. After this he knelt down in the pulpit and offered a long and vehement extempore prayer; and when this was over he rose and began on the same subject again. I then left.

On the Feast of St. Benedict there were special services in the Benedictine convent church here. Before Benediction, the Archbishop officiating, the whole congregation sang the Te Deum together by heart, in Latin. Then the Archbishop began to preach, from the altar—a series of puns on the name of Benedict (Benedetto, "Blessed"), very well done. He spoke of the blessedness of the servants of God, here and hereafter, and in reference, no doubt, to the nuns behind their grating as well as to the women in the church, made allusion to the special blessedness of the women who serve God. This was followed by a long extempore prayer, the people (who had stood while he preached) sinking on their knees. He besought a blessing on himself and his flock, naming the different classes of his people in turn with great simplicity and fervour. The final supplication that all—not one being missing from the flock—might at last be brought together in the glory of heaven, was very moving. Then he gave the Sacramental benediction.

The use of the vernacular seems to be very considerable. At the parochial Mass on Sundays, besides the sermon, and Italian prayers before Mass begins, at certain moments the whole congregation repeat Italian prayers together. The similarity of their language to Latin robs the latter of much of its terror. Many of the commoner Latin hymns, etc., they seem all to know by heart quite familiarly. {161} I have spoken of the Te Deum. On Saturday they all sang the Litany, repeating every clause after the precentors. On Thursday, while the Sacrament for next day's Communion was being carried to the Chapel of Repose, the whole congregation sang on their knees the hymn of Thomas Aquinas upon the Last Supper; and the sublimity of the words, the spectacle of the kneeling multitude, and the solemnity of the procession moving through the church, made a very impressive whole. The clergy here are all extremely clean and respectable-looking, and very decorous and reverential, both out of church and in. And this remark applies also to the whole of the Divinity students, and the whole choir and staff of the Cathedral. The music—even when poor—is very grave and solemn; the services are conducted (and evidently prepared) with the utmost care, and a certain effect of subdued splendour is produced—with the air of being produced incidentally and unintentionally—by the real costliness and richness, combined with scrupulous cleanliness and neatness, of every object and garment employed, in their several degrees.

The admirably conducted services in the Cathedral have had a damaging effect on the Anglican chapel, some of the congregation of which have been assiduously attending them, to the not unnatural annoyance of the clergyman in charge, whose own domestic circle is not unaffected by the contagion. The erratic sheep, when summoned to private interviews of remonstrance, meet their pastor with questions as to what possible grounds Bishop Sandford of Gibraltar can have for pretending to possess and exercise Episcopal authority in the diocese of Sorrento.

It may be said that practically every one of Bute's journeyings to foreign lands either partook {162} more or less of the nature of a pilgrimage, or else was made in search of health. Pre-eminent among the first class were his frequent visits to the Holy Land, of which some account has already been given. Except for occasional references in his letters, we have little about these from his own pen. "My latest pilgrimage to the Holy Places," he writes on one occasion, "has been extraordinarily blessed to me." It is of interest in this connection to cite some passages inserted in the fly-leaf of a copy of Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," presented by Bute to a friend. They are not in his own handwriting—except the Latin quotation (from St. Luke xii. 34) at the end—nor is there any evidence as to their authorship; but their sentiment is undoubtedly one which would strongly appeal to him:

The attractions of Rome and Jerusalem are not comparable, and should not be compared. The interest of Rome is of course by far the more varied. Not all who journey thither go to venerate the Tombs of the Apostles. There are those to whom the Palace of the Cæsars appeals more than do basilicas built by Popes, who regard the Colosseum rather as the monument of emperors than as the palæstra of martyrs, to whom the Mamertine prison speaks of Catiline rather than of St. Peter.[2] People throng {163} to Rome not only to pray, but to study art, antiquities, and music, to enjoy the most cosmopolitan society in Europe, sometimes to hunt foxes on the Campagna. Jerusalem, on the other hand, is a city of faith, and (roughly speaking) all who visit it do so as pilgrims. Illuc enim ascenderunt tribus, tribus Domini. Rome has a thousand charms—Jerusalem one, but that one transcendent. Its sacred soil has been trodden by the feet of God made man, and it is the Holy City as no other city can ever be. Ubi enim thesaurus vesler est, ibi cor vestrum erit.[3]

The last words, written by Bute himself at the foot of the manuscript just quoted, are of particular interest, referring, as they doubtless do, to his long-cherished resolve that his heart, after his death, should mingle with the sacred dust of the Mount of Olives.

The visits to the Ober-Ammergau Passion-play, which Bute made in 1871, in company with Bishop Clifford and two Oxford friends, again in 1880 with his wife, and also in 1890, were undertaken, too, in the pilgrim spirit. "We start for Ober-Ammergau on Monday," he wrote on September 11, 1880, "and are both hoping to reap spiritual good from our stay there." A letter to his old friend at Oxford on his return home gives some interesting impressions:

The new theatre looks like a railway station, and the stage arrangements are considerably more elaborate than they were nine years ago. The crowd, too, was infinitely greater, but its behaviour was on the whole decent, except for some attempts to applaud (emanating, I fear, from our countrymen), {164} which were extremely distressing. The play itself was not less impressive than I remember it; and I was pleased with the simplicity and piety of the people, who seem unspoilt by the leap within recent years of their retired village into fame. I ventured to express, through a German-speaking friend, my satisfaction on this point to one of the most respected inhabitants of the place (one of the principal actors); and his reply (of which my friend gave me a translation) pleased me very much. "God be thanked," he said, "that is true; but it would not be so if we accepted the many offers made to us to give representations of the Passion-play in various cities of Europe. Also it is well for our people that the play is given but once in ten years; for in the intervals we lead our accustomed quiet life in this valley, and a new generation of children has time to grow up in the old traditions of the place."[4]

Bute refers later, in letters written from Bayreuth, to what he calls the "outrage" of applause from the audience during the performance of Parsifal, in terms which indicates how strongly he felt the religious appeal of the Wagnerian drama:

On Sunday the illiterate part of the audience insisted on applauding Acts II. and III. of Parsifal, in spite of all the protests of the cultured hearers; and the effect was most distressing and shocking. The {165} allusions to the Eucharist are of such a nature that it was almost as unseemly as it would be to clap a church choir during the Communion Service; and putting aside the gross irreverence and unseemliness of such conduct, it is an outrage and fraud on the public, who are at these moments wrapped in religious thought, and whom it is brutal and shameful to disturb by a revolting noise.

In his diary for 1891, Bute notes that he had written a letter to Frau Wagner, begging her to take steps to prevent any applause during the representation of Parsifal; but it is not recorded if this appeal had the desired effect.

The travels on the Continent were carried out without any sort of ostentation; and Bute found it even expedient occasionally to preserve his incognito when abroad. Thus he wrote on one occasion to one of his oldest friends:

The outside of your letter gave me, I confess, less pleasure than any I have ever had from you. You know the state of Sicily, and the way brigands have with people whom they believe to have money. Consequently, when ordered here by the doctors I was urged both in Naples and Messina to drop my title absolutely; and I am known here only as "B. Crichton Stuart." You may thus imagine the discontent with which I saw "The Marquess of Bute" staring me in the face out of the letter-rack in the hall.

Pray be most careful both to address me only as B.C.S., and also to keep your knowledge of my whereabouts most strictly to yourself. I need not point out the great annoyance and possible danger to which you might otherwise expose me.

I have been very ailing for more than a year. {166} Sometimes I feel as though the horizon of life were closing in, and wish I could recall the rest of the verse beginning:

But the warmth and sunshine here are helping me. I propose, when my "cure" is over (for good or evil), to go to Greece, and look for quarters in Athens where I may spend the winter with my wife and child.

I prefer this place to Italy, at least to Naples, whose people on the whole impress me as the off-scourings of humanity. The great difference between Sicily and Italy strikes me very much: it is, perhaps, due to the fact that Sicily belongs (I believe), both geographically and geologically, to Africa.

From Egypt, where he spent one spring, being ordered a spell of dry desert air by the doctors, he wrote characteristically to a friend (a Benedictine monk), then resident in a remote corner of Brazil:

I deserve your reproaches for not writing before. But really one has a feeling (I know I have) that writing to a distant address is, literally and physically, an heavier undertaking than writing to a near one. Query: If some philosophers are right in thinking that space, as well as time, is purely subjective, may not this have something to do with it?

"March 7. Amin Nassif brought a "professed {167} sorcerer to see me" (a later note adds, "I believe him to be a pure impostor").

"March 15. Tried the ascent of the great Pyramid, but collapsed from giddiness half-way. Margaret [his daughter, then aged sixteen] had no difficulty."[6]

"April 6. Monophysite Copts do not now reserve the B. Sacrament (although they formerly did so), because the species was once eaten by a snake, which was then eaten by a priest, who died in consequence!"

"April 24 (Alexandria). At the Greek Catholic church the new French Consul was received with extraordinary honour by three priests, vested respectively in red, white, and blue! There was no sermon, but a speech in which the benefits conferred by France on Syria and Egypt were highly praised."

Another journey which may be mentioned here was his trip to Teneriffe in the spring of 1891. His health at this time was far from robust, and was indeed causing some anxiety to his friends; but he was determined as usual to gain from his visit intellectual profit as well as (if possible) some benefit to his health. He wrote to H. D. Grissell on March 16, 1891:

I date to you from this eccentric place, whither I have come to try and patch myself together by a stay of a few weeks. Of course these islands are utterly unknown to me, and the vegetation in particular is at first sight quite startlingly novel. The air is delicious, but I feel the want of sun, and there is much cold wind. As Piazzi Smyth speaks much of the clouds here, I suspect that this stupendous {168} mountain (of which we rarely see the top, and only in early morning or late evening) has much to do with it.

The outcome of Bute's sojourn in the Canary Islands was a remarkable paper, "On the Ancient Language of the Inhabitants of Teneriffe," which he read at the meeting that summer of the British Association at Cardiff, and afterwards published in the Scottish Review. Like most of his writings on such recondite subjects, it was more or less "caviare to the general"; but it aroused considerable attention among philologists, who recognised it as a genuine and valuable contribution to linguistic science. Professor Sayce wrote to him from Queen's College, Oxford:

Many thanks for your kindness in sending me your monograph on the extinct language of Teneriffe. I wish that all linguistic investigations had been conducted with similar care and caution; we should have had fewer difficulties to contend with in the study of linguistic science. You have shown us exactly what are the materials on which we can base our opinion on the ancient language of Teneriffe, and how far those materials can be trusted. For this reason your paper seems to me to be of very real value.

It seems right to refer in this place to another and later tribute paid by another and equally distinguished man of science, who in his estimate of Bute's remarkable attainments makes special allusion to the article we are now considering. Sir William Huggins, who was very intimate with him in the later years of his life, wrote as follows:

The Marquess of Bute was one of those, the deeper side of whose mind and character could be duly {169} appreciated only by those who had the privilege of his friendship. A man of great natural gifts, he was highly cultured on many sides; and the extent and the variety of his information on a vast variety of subjects was really remarkable. No scientist[7] could discuss a scientific matter with him without being struck by the clear-sighted way in which he saw into the heart of the matter, and the fairness and patience with which he would weigh and consider it from various points of view. These qualities were well shown in the very interesting and valuable paper on "The Ancient Language of the Natives of Teneriffe" contributed by him to the British Association when it met at Cardiff.... Lord Bute's sensitive nature revolted from the killing of any living thing. But he was keenly interested in natural history, and had a knowledge of many creatures and of their habits as intimate and searching as that of the most scientific sportsman.

The reference in the last paragraph recalls the fact that when (in 1888) Lord Bute first acquired a London domicile, purchasing the twenty-seven years' lease of St. John's Lodge, in Regent's Park, he was particularly interested in finding himself in close proximity to both the Zoological and the Botanic Gardens. A priest who was often his guest there used to say that he could walk on the terrace, with its matchless view of garden and park and forest trees, and recite his Office in perfect quietness, with the tumult of London reduced to a distant hum, and the silence only occasionally broken by the roar of wild beasts in the "Zoo" not far away. Bute was {170} a fellow of both societies, and often strolled in one or other of the gardens with his guests or members of his family of a Sunday afternoon, talking freely with the custodians of animals and plants, and not infrequently astonishing them with the variety of his knowledge. One of his guests was looking, in the Botanic Gardens, at a remarkable and recently-acquired collection of dwarf Japanese trees, and observed that Lord Bute would be interested in seeing them. "Yes," was the reply, "his lordship knows a lot about plants. But then, he knows a lot about most things, don't he, sir?"[8]

That Bute did know "a lot about most things" was undoubtedly true; and what used often to strike those who were intimate with him was the singular orderliness of his knowledge. "His memory was prodigious," writes one who often consulted him on points of history, "and he seemed to me to keep everything which he had ever learned or read stored away, so to speak, in watertight compartments of his brain, ready for instant use when called for." But he never paraded his knowledge of history or anything else, and one of his most engaging characteristics was the extreme respect and, indeed, deference which he paid to acknowledged masters of any branch of learning or science. He welcomed the opportunity which his occasional periods of residence in London afforded him of offering hospitality to such. "My experience of men of intellectual eminence," he once said, "has been that they are not only interesting, {171} but as a rule extremely agreeable." Among those who from time to time were his guests at St. John's Lodge were men of such varied distinction as Lord Halsbury, Lord Rosebery, Mr. W. H. Mallock, Sir Ernest A. W. Budge, F.S.A., Cardinal Vaughan, Sir William Huggins, Mr. Walter Birch, Mr. Westlake, Sir William Crookes, Mr. F. W. H. Myers, etc. Later on, after the presentation of his only daughter, his charming house in Regent's Park (which, as well as its spacious gardens, he did much to improve and adorn) became the centre of much agreeable hospitality of a more general kind. Bute himself was pleased to think that the entertainments given there in the beautiful ball-room—lit from garlands of Venetian glass, and opening on to the illuminated grounds—were popular and appreciated by society. "I really think," he wrote, "that people enjoy making up parties to come to us on these occasions. Regent's Park is a terra incognita to a great many Londoners; and there is perhaps a certain piquancy about a place which almost simulates to be a country house and is yet only a shilling cab-fare from Piccadilly Circus."

In 1888, the same year in which he acquired his London residence, Bute paid his first visit to Falkland, his new possession in Fife—his first, that is, as owner of the estate and keeper of the ancient palace; for (as he notes in his diary) he had visited it as a boy of thirteen, nearly thirty years previously, in the company of Lady Elizabeth Moore, and had been there before more than once with his mother. The firstfruits of his new connection with the place was a carefully-written paper on "David Duke of Rothesay," the hapless heir of Robert III., said to have been starved to death in Falkland Palace in March, {172} 1402.[9] Of this article the friendly critic already quoted[10] appreciatively writes:

Lord Bute's qualities as a historian appear conspicuously in the lecture on David Duke of Rothesay, where the scanty material available about this unfortunate prince is treated in a truly scientific spirit. The zeal for truth shown in it is only equalled by his noble desire, even at the eleventh hour, to do justice to the poor lad so cruelly murdered by his contemporaries and misrepresented by posterity.

A rumour had been widely current, in the year of Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, that Bute was to be created "Jubilee" Duke of Glamorgan. It is permissible to question whether his patriotism would have allowed him to consent to the merging of his historic Scottish title in a brand-new one derived from a Welsh county; but his only written reference to the matter appears in a letter to a friend who had sent him a newspaper-cutting on the subject:

I cannot believe that there is anything in the report to which you have called my attention. Were it so, I imagine that I should have heard of it before now through some other channel than the Society columns of a halfpenny newspaper.

In the spring of 1890 the office of Lord-Lieutenant of Glamorganshire, then vacant, was offered to him {173} by the Prime Minister (Lord Salisbury), but he did not see his way to accept it. A single line in his diary records the fact; but there is a brief further mention of it in a letter written at the time:

I have little or no acquaintance with the county, or with "them that dwell therein" beyond the limits of Cardiff and of my own property. For this and other more personal reasons, I have—in, I hope, a not unbecoming letter—begged leave to decline the honour.

With another offer made to him a little later in the same year Bute found himself able to comply, much to the satisfaction of all concerned. This was a requisition that he should allow himself to be nominated as Mayor of Cardiff for 1890-91. It is a point of considerable interest, and one certainly illustrative of the strong sense of duty which always animated him, that the first peer to hold the highest municipal office in any English or Welsh borough for several generations—certainly since the Reform Bill—should have been one whom his natural love of retirement, and aversion from public display, might have prompted to refuse any office of the kind. Once elected, he attended with sedulous care to such duties as devolved on him in virtue of his office; and early in 1891 he wrote to his old friend Miss Skene, giving a cheerful account of his stewardship. The last part of this letter, in which some of his deeper feelings are touchingly disclosed, would have appealed with very special force to his correspondent, one of the chief works of whose life at Oxford was the rescue of girls and women; and for that reason a portion of her reply is appended:

This gorgeous paper[11] is that which the town of Cardiff supplies for the use of its mayors. As I have had nothing to do personally with originating it, I may freely say that I think it very pretty. And the arms of the town are certainly interesting historically, as a memorial of the De Clares, Lords of Glamorgan, of whom the last male representative fell at Bannockburn in 1314.

I get on pretty well with my civic government here. My official confidants are nearly all Radical Dissenters, but we manage in quite a friendly way. They only elected me as a kind of figure-head; and although they are good enough to be glad whenever I take part in details, I am willing to leave these in the hands of people with more experience than myself, as far as I properly and conscientiously can do so.

I have, however, felt it to be my duty (owing to some terrible facts) to insist upon the enforcement of the laws for the protection of little girls; and here I find unanimous and hearty support from quite a majority of the officials, who differ from one another as widely as possible upon every religious, political, and social question. I learned yesterday of a certain lot of children whom I have been honoured to be the instrument of getting out of a bad house of the worst kind. This will cheer me on my death-bed—or beyond, for I shall have forgotten, but Another will not.

I cannot tell you what immense pleasure it gave me to receive your kind letter, and I think you were indeed most good, in the midst of all your work, to write to me yourself.... I am most deeply interested in what you have been able to do for the rescue of the poor little victims of evil-doers. I wish with all my heart that the mayors of other towns would take the same view of their duty in these matters; but alas! this is not always the case.... I am sure it will always be a happiness to yourself to feel that you have saved the poor children of whom you speak. These things are not forgotten in heaven.

Bute gave his mayoral banquet in the Drill Hall at Cardiff on February 4, 1891, wearing the beautiful chain which he had had specially designed and made for the chief magistrate of the borough. Some alarm was caused, in the middle of the dinner, by the sudden breaking out of fire in the decorations of the roof; but no one was injured, and (largely owing to Bute's own coolness) there was no panic of any kind. In one of his letters he makes this curious comment on the mishap:

I should have been prepared for the misadventure, for I was suffering at the time under an evil direction of ☿, who was just then in ♂ with ♅, so that I was almost bound to anticipate some untoward happening.[12]

On his return from Teneriffe, Bute spent several months at Cardiff, where, as already mentioned, he entertained the Royal Association at their meeting there, and read his paper on the ancient language of the islanders. He attended the corporation-meetings regularly between April and November, and was able to note in his diary in the latter month that his year of municipal office had been a success. He was particularly gratified by a letter from the Duke of Norfolk, himself the mayor-elect for Sheffield, asking his advice on various points connected with the office—"advice," added the Duke, "which your most successful tenure of the mayoralty of Cardiff renders you so admirably qualified to give." Bute showed this letter to a friend, remarking in his quiet way: "The local press has spoken very kindly of my conduct as mayor, but I value this letter more than any number of newspaper articles."

Bute went up from Cardiff in May to attend the Royal Academy dinner, as he did on several subsequent occasions. It was of a later one of these entertainments that he noted: "The Academy was bad, and the dinner the dullest I have been at, only redeemed by Rosebery's very witty speech, which was, however, obviously the result of long toil. The Lord Chancellor's [Halsbury] seemed much more spontaneous." Bute does not seem to have spoken at any of these functions, as he did occasionally at the dinners of the Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.

Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff records in his diary the impression made on Sir Alexander Grant, at one of these dinners, by Bute's oration.

I met Sir A. Grant, who was full of the speech which Lord Bute delivered the other night at the Scottish Academy dinner, in which he said that "Athens and Assisi had spoilt him for everything else."[13]

[1] Froude makes the same remark ("Oceana," Chap. XIV.) about the Chinamen on board the steamer by which he travelled from Australia to New Zealand. "I suppose," he adds, "that to Chinamen the separate personalities are as easily recognised as ours. To me they seemed only what Schopenhauer says that all individual existences are—'accidental illustrations of a single idea under the conditions of space and time.'"

[2] A friend of J. H. Newman, referring to some papers contributed by him, under the title of "Home Thoughts Abroad," to the British Magazine, after his memorable tour in Italy and Sicily in 1833, says: "These papers were the first to turn people's thoughts from the classical antiquities and fine arts of Rome to its Christian associations. It was a new idea to me when I read the papers, and, I really think, to everybody else. Now (1885) any one would say it never was otherwise; the fact was, however, that no one then thought of Rome in connection with St. Peter and Paul, much less St. Leo and St. Gregory, or of sumptuous worship as anything but a kind of theatrical sight." This paper was reprinted in 1872, in the volume called "Discussions and Arguments," under the new title of "How to Accomplish it."

[4] The original German text (of which Bute's letter contained a copy) ran as follows: "Got sei Dank, das ist wahr; aber es wäre nicht so, wenn wir die vielen Anerbieten, das Passionspiel in verschiedenen Stadten Europas aufzuführen, annehmen würden. Es ist auch gut für unsere Bevölkerung, dass das Spiel nur alle zehn Jahre gegeben wird, denn in der Zwischenzeit führen wir unser gewohntes und ruhiges Leben in diesen Tale, und ein neues Geschlecht von Kindern hat Zeit heranzuwachsen in den alten Ueberlieferungen unseres Ortes."

[6] He had made the ascent of the Pyramids before—in 1865, when in his eighteenth year, and again in 1879.

[7] The eminent astronomer was, of course, himself a man of science rather than a man of letters, and as such must be pardoned the use of the uncouth word "scientist," which disfigures his otherwise eloquent tribute to his friend.

[8] Bute was interested in the longevity of parrots, and had many talks on the subject with the intelligent parrot-keeper at the Zoological Gardens. "The parrot they had longest," he notes, "lived with them fifty-four years; but they do not know how old it was when they got it."

[9] This article, published in the Scottish Review in April, 1892, was in substance a reproduction of a lecture given by Bute in January, 1872, to the Associated Societies of Edinburgh University, of which he was honorary president.

[11] Emblazoned with the scarlet and gold arms of Cardiff—or three chevronels gules. Since 1906 this charming and historic coat-armorial has unfortunately given place to one described by a respected citizen of Cardiff as "an abomination"—a shield bespattered with red dragons and leeks, and other Welsh emblems, and surmounted by three ostrich feathers. The last-named assumption is particularly indefensible, the ostrich plume being, of course, the badge of the King's son and heir, and not of the Prince of Wales as such.

[12] Bute's interest in astrology has been already noted (ante, p. 135), and is also referred to in Mr. Myers' obituary notice (post, Appendix V.). He was not, of course, unaware that the practice of astrology had been forbidden to the Christians of the early Church, and condemned by a sixteenth-century Pope. But he also had the authority of St. Thomas for believing, if he desired to do so, that the heavenly bodies do influence the bodies of men, and so indirectly their passions and their conduct. This is a matter of science, not of theology, which forbids, not the study of the science, but the belief, once so widely current, that the astrologer can predict with certainty the course of events and man's future actions.

CHAPTER X

FREEDOM OF GLASGOW—BENEFACTIONS TO WALES—
LORD RECTOR OF ST. ANDREWS

1891-1894

An incident which gave Bute sincere pleasure, during the year of his mayoralty of Cardiff, was the presentation to him of the freedom of the city of Glasgow, which took place on October 7, 1891. The honour was conferred on him, according to the burgess-ticket which he received, "in recognition of the distinguished services he has rendered to Scotland, by erecting and gifting[1] to Glasgow the Bute Hall, by his personal contributions to literature, and by the warm sympathy he has ever shown in whatever is fitted to promote the interests of art and science."

Bute replied to the presentation in a speech which he himself described in anticipation as "maddeningly dull," but which was nevertheless very well received; and on the same day he performed the opening ceremony of the new Mitchell Library, delivering an address which he thought, in contrast with the other, appeared "almost lively, with a tendency even to flippancy." It was not his first public appearance in Glasgow; for some time before this he had made an oration at the opening {180} of the new Jesuit College of St. Aloysius, and had warmly congratulated Scottish Catholics on taking another step in the resumption of a tradition which identified higher culture with the Catholic Church.[2]

Cherishing as he did, to the end of his life, feelings of grateful affection towards all those who had shown him kindness during his somewhat solitary childhood, Bute was sincerely grieved to hear, in the autumn of 1892, of the death of Lady Elizabeth Moore, one of his earliest and most devoted friends. The temporary estrangement between them caused by his change of religion had long passed away; and only nine days before her death, on the occasion of her eighty-eighth birthday, his daughter had written to her a letter of good wishes which Lord and Lady Bute and all their children signed. He wrote thus feelingly of this loss:

Of her affection for me, and mine for her, I cannot speak too strongly. It is an event which finally cuts me off (till my own death) from the generation to which my mother belonged, and in which I was born.... A great friend of my mother's, and a second mother to me; and I am ever grateful to her for her defence of me against General Stuart and others in 1860.

By a strange coincidence, General Stuart himself died two days later. The death of Colonel J. B. Crichton Stuart, Bute's former tutor-at-law, had occurred in the previous year; and the Lord-Lieutenancy of Buteshire, which he had held since 1859, {181} was in due course offered to Bute and accepted by him. He performed all the duties pertaining to the office with the scrupulous conscientiousness which characterised him; and he told a friend, some time afterwards, that he had been particularly gratified by the Lord Chancellor expressing his approbation of the care which he (Bute) had exercised in the recommendation of persons for the commission of peace in his titular county.

In September, 1892, Bute attended the meeting of the National Eisteddfod, and delivered an address with which he was himself extremely dissatisfied, though it is only fair to say that on such occasions he was the severest critic of his own orations, with which his audiences appeared well content. He had always been warmly interested in the Eisteddfodan, had subscribed liberally to their funds, and had presided and given an address at a previous meeting held at Cardiff in 1882. He also gave generous assistance to the Cymrodorion Society for its publication of Welsh Records, and enabled the Cardiff Library, by his subscription of £1000, to acquire the valuable MSS. which had belonged to Sir Thomas Phillips. Nor was it only the cause of learning which he assisted by his judicious benefactions. Every scheme set on foot for the benefit of the districts with which he was connected found in him a generous supporter. To King Edward VII.'s Hospital (then the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire Infirmary) he gave a site for the new building worth some £5000, having before this paid off the debt on the institution. For many years he maintained entirely a cottage hospital at Aberdare; he gave a large donation to the building fund of the Merthyr Hospital, and a still larger one to the Seamen's {182} Hospital at Cardiff, and contributed liberally both to the "Rest" at Porthcawl, and to the Miners' Relief Fund for Monmouthshire and South Wales.

Unostentatious as were his innumerable charities, it is right that these things (which include his benefactions in South Wales alone) should be recorded. Bute's name was known in his lifetime, and has been handed down to posterity, as that of a munificent patron of scholarship and learning, of science and architecture and art. He richly deserves this tribute; but it is not to be forgotten that he was also a wise, discriminating,[3] and most generous benefactor of a score of institutions designed only for the relief of the distressed, the needy, and the suffering. Every one knew him to be a scholar, and a friend and patron of scholars, but it was only his innermost circle of friends, and the countless beneficiaries of his far-reaching generosity, who knew how truly, how continually, his heart was open to the calls of mercy and of charity.

Bute never hesitated about expressing his opinion of men whom the world called famous, but whose claim to any such distinction he failed to recognise. Writing of Lord Randolph Churchill, whom he had met at luncheon in September, 1892, he says:

He seemed to me ill-informed, ill-mannered, and stupid. I used to know him slightly at Oxford, and thought little of him there. I wonder whether his wife writes his speeches.

{183} His notes on Royalties are, on occasion, quite as frank as on any one else. After attending the Lord Mayor's dinner in October, 1892, he wrote:

The Maharajah of Baroda (it is a mere ignorant vulgarism to call him "the Gaikwar") spoke, I found, much better English than the Duke of ——. The latter went off home from the Lady Mayoress's boudoir, whither we men were taken to smoke, without returning to the drawing-room to wish her good-night.

The closing weeks of 1892 were marked by an event which brought Bute into intimate connection with the oldest of the four Scottish Universities, namely, his unanimous election as Lord Rector of St. Andrews. The honour was one which he very greatly appreciated, and the duties of the office would have been not only extremely interesting, but altogether congenial to him, had he not been involved by the peculiar circumstances of the time in a series of highly contentious questions, which, in his somewhat enfeebled state of health, caused him for a period of time extending over several years considerable trouble and anxiety.

Bute's keen and practical interest in educational matters, and especially in the promotion of higher studies throughout the country, had naturally brought him into relation, at different times of his life, with several of the national universities. With Oxford, since his student days there at the most memorable crisis in his life, he had little subsequent connection. He refers occasionally in his letters to the disadvantage which he had suffered from having been prevented by circumstances from taking his degree; and Oxford never saw fit to honour him, {184} or herself, by conferring on him an honorary degree in recognition of his services to learning and scholarship. He never, however, lost his interest in his original Alma Mater; and nothing gave him greater pleasure, during the closing years of his life, than the news of the removal of the restrictions which had hitherto prevented Roman Catholic students from frequenting the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A friend, head of one of the Oxford Halls, was visiting him in London some time subsequently, and informed him that there were already, in consequence of this change of policy, more than seventy Catholic undergraduates in residence at that university. Bute, who was at that time quite an invalid, raised himself on his couch, and said with the quiet emphasis with which he always spoke when strongly moved: "I wish there were seven hundred." He only visited Oxford once or twice after his marriage, but his continued affection for it was evinced in many ways; and the Catholic church and mission there, as in so many places, benefited by his munificence.[4]

The establishment of a University College at Cardiff was to Bute naturally a matter of great interest, of which he gave many practical proofs. He accepted the presidency of the institution in 1890, when he contributed generously to the foundation of a chair of engineering; and six years later he gave a special donation of £10,000 to the funds. Besides his inaugural address, he gave another, in 1891, to the pupils of the science and art schools. His many gifts to the college included a complete {185} set of the valuable Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists; and he was particularly gratified by the very appreciative acknowledgment of this present which he received from the librarian. Bute proposed Mr. Gladstone as the first Chancellor of the University of Wales. Although profoundly opposed to some of the political views of that statesman, he had an admiration for his character and attainments; and he looked on it as a special honour, some years later, to receive the Honorary Doctorate of St. Andrews on the same occasion as the veteran Liberal leader.

The first of the Scottish universities with which Bute found himself practically connected was that of Glasgow, to which he presented in 1877 the noble hall, for graduation and other ceremonies, since known as the Bute Hall. Two years later, in recognition of this splendid gift, which is said to have cost him nearly £50,000, the Honorary Doctorate of Laws was bestowed on him by the university. He received the same honour from Edinburgh in 1882, and from St. Andrews in 1893, the first year of his rectorship. In 1883 he was invited to stand for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University, being nominated in the Conservative interest against Mr. Fawcett as the Liberal candidate. John Ruskin was also nominated. A regrettable element of religious animus was introduced into the contest, but the leading Glasgow journal warmly supported Bute. Mr. Fawcett was elected, the figures being—Fawcett 796, Bute 690, Ruskin 329.

By his appointment in 1889 as a member of the Scottish Universities Commission, Bute came, of course, into intimate relation with the affairs of all the four universities. He was an active member of the Commission, attending its meetings regularly, {186} and giving much time and attention to the important questions which came up for discussion and solution. But as a member of a mixed body of this kind, of which some—and these not the least distinguished—were sure to hold, and to express, views sharply conflicting with his own, Bute was not, it must be frankly said, at his best or happiest. The candid biographer must admit that, with all his admirable qualities, he was not of a temperament that could easily or patiently brook opposition to his matured views. The absolute impartiality and freedom from prejudice with which, as we have seen, he approached the consideration of any subject, literary or other, on which he had to form an opinion, made him, perhaps not unnaturally, all the more tenacious of that opinion when once formed. "I know no one," remarked one of his friends and admirers, "to whom the description of Horace, Justum et tenacem propositi virum, could be applied with greater truth"; and the tribute was a deserved one. But he did not always find it easy to realise that the views of those opposed to him might be as considered and as conscientious as his own; and he was, perhaps, too apt to regard their opposition in the light of personal hostility to himself. "It might, I think, have been observed," he wisely says in one of his university addresses, with reference to Peter de Luna's disputed claim to the Papacy, "that where so many learned and able persons were divided in opinion, a difference of judgment from one side or the other did not necessarily imply moral obliquity." It is not suggested that Bute imputed "moral obliquity" to those who differed from him either on the Universities Commission, or afterwards in the vexed questions which he had to encounter at St. Andrews. But {187} that he resented their action, and in some cases even with a certain bitterness, is clear from many passages of his correspondence; and this feeling was in one instance sufficiently acute to interrupt and suspend a friendship which had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, though it is pleasant to add that the breach was entirely healed, and cordial relations resumed, long before his death.

Bute's election to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews took place on November 24, 1892. "I had great difficulty in accepting," he wrote to his friend Dr. Metcalfe, "because I had already declined Glasgow[5] on the grounds of want of unanimity and probable inability to fulfil the duties, and only accepted St. Andrews on an assurance of unanimity, and that the duties are almost nominal." The latter hope was disproved by the event; but whether light or heavy, Bute entered on the duties of his office with his usual conscientious resolve to fulfil them all to the utmost of his ability,[6] and for the benefit of the ancient seat of Scottish learning which he had loved and venerated from his earliest years. He alluded in his inaugural address, with charming simplicity, to these childish memories, "associated with that of the only parent whom I ever knew, and with those of friends of hers, nearly all of whom are now passed away":

I dimly recall the old garden of St. Leonard's and a variety of mechanical toys working by wind and water, with which Sir Hugh Playfair had adorned it. I remember gazing from St. Andrews at the {188} great comet which there was about the time of the Indian Mutiny; and when we were living in the Principal of St. Mary's House, my kinsman, Charles MacLean,[7] came home wounded from India and stayed with us, and with his maimed hand gave me some elementary lessons in fortification, with wet sand in a box. I find in my diary, under date of July 20, 1889: "To St. Andrews ... saw the last of the old garden of St. Mary's College, where I used to play (and eat unripe pears) as a child: they are going to build the library extension over it." Well, I can only hope that the fruits of the tree of knowledge, to the cultivation of which that spot is now dedicated, may prove less crude and more wholesome than the grosser dainties, to the attractions of which I there formerly yielded.

It was an undoubted satisfaction to the new Lord Rector to be able to nominate, as he did in the month following his own election, to the office of his assessor his old friend and fellow-worker on the Scottish Review. He gives his reasons, with his usual clearness, in a letter addressed to Dr. Metcalfe himself:

I have come to the conclusion to nominate you, because you are a man of public position versed in these matters—you are (if you will allow me to say so) on most friendly and even intimate terms with me for years past—we are, I believe, after many conversations with you, quite at one upon University questions—and you are almost bound to be persona grata, having quite recently received the Honorary Doctorate of the University. Besides which, I think that an outside expert is better adapted to see questions fairly than somebody who is necessarily inside some local groove.

Dr. Metcalfe was duly appointed to the assessorship; and with one at his side in whose sound judgment as well as his personal attachment to himself he had the fullest confidence, Bute was greatly encouraged in the assumption of his important duties with regard to the university, in which he had already shown his practical interest by giving it, at a time of some financial distress, very timely and welcome help. This help had been all the more welcome in view of the unsympathetic attitude of successive Governments towards St. Andrews. Mr. Arthur Balfour had indeed during his Rectorship (1886-1889) persuaded the administration of which he was a member to build the addition to the library to which Bute refers in the extract from his diary quoted above. But, generally speaking, Tories and Liberals alike had shown towards the premier university of Scotland the minimum of interest and generosity. This was the more remarkable, inasmuch as the patronage of the principalships of the United College as well as of St. Mary's, and also of the chairs of Church History, Biblical Criticism, and Hebrew and Oriental Languages, was vested in the Crown. In 1889 Parliament had actually entrusted to the newly appointed Universities Commission powers to abolish St. Andrews University altogether—a proposal which found a certain measure of support in Dundee, where University College had been founded in the same year. The relations of this new college to the ancient university were still indeterminate when Bute took office in 1892; but its medical possibilities, situated as it was in the heart of a populous and growing city, had of course become quickly apparent to its managers.

It must be borne in mind that medical degrees had all along been granted by St. Andrews itself after due {190} examination by the professors of the university, who were assisted by external examiners of high distinction. The number of such degrees, originally unlimited, had been afterwards reduced to ten. At the time of Bute's coming into office there were two main contentions as to medical teaching at St. Andrews. The first was that provision should be made for one annus medicus only, so that practically the whole weight of medical teaching should be thrown on Dundee. The second was that there should be two complete anni medici in St. Andrews; but this was at the time impracticable, owing to the insufficiency of adequate medical teaching. Bute saw clearly that if, as was his great desire, the science of medicine should be worthily represented in the university, proper provision for the teaching of that science must be made in St. Andrews itself, and students of medicine must be encouraged to come to St. Andrews for the completion of their medical course. At no stage of the long controversy between St. Andrews and Dundee did he ever seek or propose to establish a complete medical school at St. Andrews; and he would have been the first, with his robust common sense, to see the absurdity of such a proposal as regarded the university city, where there was not even a hospital, and therefore no opportunity for the necessary clinical instruction. Unguarded language on this subject may have been employed by some of his supporters, but never by himself. He aimed only at what was practicable and desirable, and this he made it possible to attain by instituting a lectureship (now the Bute professorial chair) of Anatomy, by promoting the refoundation of the Chair of Physiology,[8] and by {191} building at his own cost the new medical school, the completion of which, though he did not live to see it, was a source of satisfaction to him only a few weeks before his death. It would have been not less gratifying to him to foresee, had that been possible, the natural result and development of his enlightened munificence, as shown in the following figures. The number of students of anatomy in the Bute Medical School was, in 1914, eighteen; in 1915-16 thirty; in 1916-17 thirty-seven; in 1917-18 fifty-four; and in 1919-20 ninety.

It would be doing Bute a great injustice to suppose that in his attitude towards Dundee he was actuated by any feeling of hostility towards the newly-founded college. The very contrary was indeed the case. Keenly interested as he was in the higher education of the people, especially in large centres of population, he was naturally as favourably disposed towards University College, Dundee, as he had shown himself to be towards University College, Cardiff. But he could not view with equanimity the prospect which was, as he well knew, hopefully contemplated by some of the supporters of the new college, namely, that of its ultimately not only absorbing the ancient university to which it had been united within the last three years, but even possibly of crushing it out of existence altogether. Of this prospect he wrote on March 12, 1893:

The object of the Dundee people is evidently to obtain entire command of the university, which they {192} will employ by secularising St. Mary's and translating all the Science subjects to Dundee, as well as starting, I take it, a complete Arts curriculum there, possibly allowing the United College to exist as a kind of outhouse.

"It has been said, and said publicly, by one of that party," he wrote on another occasion, "'Give us two years more of the union, and we will drag St. Andrews at our chariot wheels.'" To Bute, with his almost passionate veneration for the ancient university, which for centuries had been the chief home of religion and learning in Scotland, it was intolerable to think of St. Andrews being deposed from its pride of place and sinking into a decaying village, a mere resort of sea-bathers and golfers. From this fate he was resolute, if possible, to save the "House of the Apostle" (as he loved to call it), at whatever cost to himself. "For months past," he wrote a little later, "I have been slaving for St. Andrews. The people—or some of them—may not be worth saving, but the place surely is. My vital force is, it is plain to myself, much diminished by all this anxiety and strain; but I shall work on as long as I have strength to do so."

In the long and elaborate memorandum which he drew up in the second year of his Rectorship, on the four possible relations in which the University of St. Andrews and the college at Dundee might conceivably stand to one another, Bute gives clear evidence of his genuine desire that the cause of education and learning should flourish equally in both institutions. But both he and those who thought and acted with him were perfectly convinced that this would never be so long as Dundee continued its intrigues to become the predominant partner in {193} what he calls the "ill-assorted union" between them; and he was equally convinced that an absolutely essential preliminary step in this direction was the dissolution of the Order of the University Commission of March 21, 1890 (dies nefastus, as Bute calls it in one of his notes), by which the existing union between St. Andrews and Dundee had been brought about. It was with this object that an action was brought in the Court of Session in July, 1894, for the "reduction" of the union in question, and also that a bill was introduced into the House of Lords by the Chancellor of the university, the Duke of Argyll, whose sympathies were entirely with Bute in the question at issue.[9]

"I have sometimes dreamt," wrote Bute in one of the most picturesque passages of his Rectorial Address, "of the primeval headland, still lifting skyward its crown of ancient towers, but with that crown encircled by an aureola of affiliated colleges—a commonwealth of seats of learning, an Oxford of the North." It may have been with some such vision as this before him that Bute had suggested to his assessor, some time before drawing up the memorandum above referred to, another solution of the difficulty:

Why should it not be suggested to Dundee, that instead of a division of forces, difference of place, etc., etc., they should build a college for themselves at St. Andrews, just as we hope Blairs will do, confined to Dundee people? I think that would meet the foundress's intention, and it might be called Dundee College. This would be transferring her benefaction to St. Andrews, instead of St. Andrews being bled into such veins as Dundee possesses.

I do not see why St. Andrews, holding a unique position, geographically and otherwise, should not also hold a unique position in being constituted, as Oxford and Cambridge are, of a congeries of free and affiliated colleges.

The above mention of "Blairs" has reference to another scheme which Bute hoped might, if carried out, fulfil the two-fold object of strengthening the position of St. Andrews, and of raising the educational standard—an object he had much at heart—of his co-religionists in Scotland. With this view he had proposed the transference to St. Andrews, and the affiliation to the university, of the College of Blairs, near Aberdeen, the training-school of the Scots Catholic clergy; and had promised substantial help both towards the acquirement of a site, and in the endowment of the new seminary. The success of such a scheme obviously depended to great extent, if not entirely, on the concurrence of the ecclesiastical authorities. They were divided on the matter, among those opposed to the plan being the then Metropolitan of Scotland, as well as the rector of the college; and finally the Holy See, much to Bute's disappointment, decided against the project. An alternative scheme, providing for the establishment in {195} the university city of a house of studies in connection with the abbey of Fort Augustus, also proved impracticable. The Benedictines were only invited to make the foundation on the understanding that, and as long as, Bute's offer was not taken advantage of by the secular clergy, and they did not see their way to accept it under those conditions.

Simultaneously with the plan just referred to, Bute likewise cherished the hope of attracting to the university members of the Jewish body, in which he had always been warmly interested. He wrote as to this on June 8, 1894:

Mr. Mocatta has given me a tract, and talked to me at length of the religious desolation of the young Jews who are sent to Christian schools and colleges without any provision for their own religious instruction and practices. I am trying to persuade him and others that all they seek to gain would be gained, and all they deplore avoided, by starting a Jewish college at St. Andrews. I think the idea is dawning on them.

Three months later he wrote to the Chief Rabbi that he was much gratified at the prospect of young Hebrews matriculating at St. Andrews. "I do not pretend," he added, "to have any other motive in the matter than zeal for the good of the university; but I sincerely think that the benefits would be reciprocal."[10] Bute was not a little incensed at this time by what he called a "most unseemly" letter written to the newspapers by one of the professors, who said that he would much prefer that a group of Jewish students should have "a comfortable {196} berth in Abraham's bosom" than that they should come to St. Andrews. A question subsequently arose as to the unsuitability of a certain Saturday—which was not only, of course, the Hebrew Sabbath, but chanced to be also their solemn Day of Atonement—for the entrance examination of Jewish candidates. The Principal suggested, as an alternative, holding an examination on the following Sunday—a proposal that drew from Bute a characteristic protest, in which he gives interesting proof of his sympathy with Hebrew religious ideals:

The Day of Atonement is, as the Chief Rabbi feelingly wrote me, the most solemn day in all their year.... Anything more defiantly contemptuous of their race and religion than the original selection of that particular day for the examination can hardly be conceived, nor any device better calculated to raise contempt for St. Andrews in the whole Jewish world. I fear it can hardly have been inadvertent.... The amended proposal, of holding the examination on the Sunday, seems to me hardly less objectionable. I had suggested Thursday, in order that the young men's minds might be as free as possible on their solemnity. On the Principal's plan, they would have to reach St. Andrews—a place utterly strange to them—on Friday evening and there pass the Day of Atonement alone, presumably in an inn. When night set in on Saturday, they would have been 26 hours without so much as a crumb or a drop of water—unwashed, barefooted, and probably dressed in grave-clothes—their minds having been fixed as far as possible on Sin, Death, and Eternity—and worn out by hours of recitation of Hebrew prayers. Would they be likely in this state to do themselves justice in an examination held a few hours later?

It seems unnecessary, after a lapse of a quarter of a century, to enter into further details of the regrettable controversy between St. Andrews and Dundee, which persisted throughout Bute's term of office in the university, but of which all, or nearly all, the protagonists have now passed over

There is no doubt but that the part taken by Bute in the affair was much misinterpreted in many quarters; and he in turn may have to some extent misunderstood, and unconsciously misjudged, the actions and motives of his opponents. Enough, however, has perhaps been said to show, what no impartial person can question, that he was throughout animated by a single-hearted desire to act for the best, and to promote by every means in his power the highest interest of the university which he loved so well. That this was the view of those whose suffrages had placed him in office, and with whom he had never ceased to maintain the most cordial relations, namely, the students of the university, was shown by the substantial majority by which, as will be seen, they voted for his re-election to the Rectorship.

[1] It is to be feared, from their use of this particularly objectionable word, that the then Glasgow Corporation did not combine a literary sense with their other (doubtless) admirable qualities.

[2] Bute's speech on this occasion, delivered in reply to two addresses presented to him, was in Latin. Some of those present were rather disconcerted by this classical outburst, for which they were not in the least prepared.

[3] Bute's far-reaching charities were regulated, like everything else in his busy life, by strictly business-like methods. Every appeal for help which reached him was carefully sifted and inquired into through the almoner to whom, from the time of his coming of age, he entrusted the investigation of all such cases before dealing with them himself.

[4] The marble altar in the church was given by him. An inscription on it, inconspicuous yet visible to every priest who celebrates there, asks for prayers for Bute himself and for his wife.

[5] This was on a subsequent occasion to the election of 1883, referred to on a previous page.

[6] "I pray God bless my Rectorship of St. Andrews," he wrote in his diary on the last day of this year.

[7] It was to this same kinsman that Bute, then in his thirteenth year, had addressed the remarkable letter quoted on p. 6.

[8] A condition attached by Bute to his foundation of the Chair of Anatomy was that a new Chair of Physiology should be constituted from the former Chair of Medicine, which a majority of the University Commissioners had wished to transfer to History.

[9] The Court of Session refused to grant the "reduction" of the union; and the House of Lords, after some further litigation, finally decided, on July 27, 1896, that Dundee College was not merely affiliated to, but actually incorporated in, the University of St. Andrews, and that the union between them was valid, permanent, and irreversible. In November, 1900, a month after Bute's death, the same tribunal dismissed an action raised by certain members of St. Andrews University, craving the reduction of all the documents constituting the Union. Since the last-named date the union has remained as constituted in 1890, except that University College, Dundee, is no longer represented by two members in the University Court.

[10] In the same letter Bute expresses his willingness to give a site for the new synagogue to be erected at Cardiff. He did, as a matter of fact, a little later grant a ninety-nine years' lease, on very favourable terms, of an excellent site for the Jewish place of worship.

CHAPTER XI

NOTES AND ANECDOTES—SECOND RECTORSHIP OF ST. ANDREWS—
PROVOST OF ROTHESAY

1894-1897

Although Bute (who was not given to exaggeration) found occasion to write at the end of 1894, in his usual brief summary of the events of the past twelve-month, "The whole year has been spent in the struggle for the University of St. Andrews," he nevertheless found time, with the ordered industry which was one of his marked characteristics, not only for the numerous other duties incumbent on him, but also for the social amenities which the début of his only daughter had brought into his retired life. His note on the Caledonian ball in London, which he attended this year, is amusing, if not altogether appreciative:

The ball was doubtless a great success as regarded the charity which benefited by it; but it was mismanaged, crowded, and hot beyond expression, and the dancing was a mere rough-and-tumble (as seems to be the way now), with neither science, grace, nor even an elementary idea of time. The poetry of motion seems to be asleep.

A dinner given to Lord Rosebery[1] by his old {199} contemporaries at Christ Church, which Bute attended, must have evoked curious memories of long-past days.

R's cynical witticisms (when the doors were shut) on the state of politics were quite startling: we were all his political opponents except one. The well-remembered names and changed faces were rather pathetic.

Bute has a note on the famous Ardlamont murder trial, which was arousing general interest in the early days of 1894:

Lord Kingsburgh said that ten of the jury were determined to hang Monson, and he was determined they should not, as he did not consider the evidence legally conclusive. Nobody doubts M.'s guilt morally.[2]

On June 4 Bute made his maiden speech in Parliament (it was his last as well as his first,) in reference to certain petitions he had occasion to present on the affairs of St. Andrews University. He wrote of this to Dr. Metcalfe:

I had a conversation with Lord Salisbury on Saturday, and consequently made my maiden speech in the House of Lords to-day. There were only two {200} or three Peers present, but I was so nervous that I don't know what I said. However, Lord Windsor told me that I had been perfectly smooth and lucid, so I suppose I repeated mechanically the few sentences I had prepared.

A sequel, and to himself a very interesting one, to Bute's new and intimate connection with St. Andrews was his acquisition of the site of the ancient priory of canons-regular adjoining the ruined cathedral. Part of this was occupied by a modern villa, around and under which Bute carried out a series of exploratory excavations which must have been somewhat disconcerting to the occupants of the house. The discoveries consequent on these digging operations (Scoticè "howkings"), including that of a hitherto unknown vaulted chamber beneath the old refectory, were a very welcome diversion from the harassing duties of the Lord Rectorship. Bute always undertook and pursued such researches with the acutest zest and interest. "I think," a friend wrote of him with kindly humour, "some of the happiest hours of his life were spent standing by, wrapped in his long cloak and smoking innumerable cigarettes, while a band of workmen, directed by one of his many architects, dug out the foundations of a mediæval lady-chapel, or broke through a nineteenth-century wall in search of a thirteenth-century doorway."

How seriously Bute took his unremitting efforts "to save St. Andrews," as his own expression was, is shown in a characteristic passage of one of his letters describing a recent discovery among the priory remains:

A head of Christ in stone, seemingly life-size, has just been found under the earth at the Priory. {201} I would I could take this as an intimation of His favour towards the [Greek: témenos] of His [Greek: prôtóklêtos].[3] I have written for much prayer at the grave of the Apostle, primarily thanksgiving for the graces bestowed upon him in time and eternity.

Bute had of course visited more than once the tomb of St. Andrew at Amain, of which he speaks in the striking peroration, already quoted, of his Rectorial address. At his request the Archbishop of Amalfi sent him a large number of photographs, including some of the tomb, and one, specially taken, of the skull of the Apostle, which Bute, who attached much importance to craniological evidence, greatly valued.

The winter of 1894-1895 was an unusually severe one, even in the mild and sheltered Isle of Bute; and Bute, always complacent towards the frolics of the younger generation, speaks of curling, sleighing, and tobogganing as the order of the day, and of the "extraordinary descent of a snow-covered slope by Mr. S—— (a distinguished architect at that time a guest at Dumfries House) upon, or rather with, a tea-tray." He writes further, in this connection, of his schoolboy sons:

J—— and N—— seem both devoted to curling; and this fact, and the way in which it associates them with the people, delights me.[4]

The latter reference is interesting, and even pathetic, recalling as it does the pleasure Bute himself had always taken from his boyhood, notwithstanding his natural shyness, in associating on kindly terms, whether at weddings or less formal social gatherings, whenever opportunity offered, with his humbler neighbours in Buteshire and elsewhere. It was this characteristic, combined with his singular courtesy and unpretentiousness of manner, which won the affection as well as the respect of the reserved and undemonstrative people among whom, for the most part, his life was spent.[5]

A letter written in March, 1895, just after the death of Professor Blackie, gives a thumbnail sketch of that eccentric scholar, who was as unconventional in dress as in everything else:

The last time I met him (by invitation) he was dressed in a long velvet gown bound with a bright cherry-coloured sash, and a big sombrero hat. There was a middle-aged lady present, to whom he introduced me, and whom he insisted on my kissing. I think we kissed to please him. His accent (pronunciation) was so vile in Greek, and I believe in Gaelic, as almost to argue a physical defect of ear.

In this same spring Bute visited Sanquhar, where {203} he had lately bought back the ancient Crichton Peel tower, which the first Earl of Dumfries had sold to the Buccleuch family in 1639. "The Duke," he notes, "had allowed the tower to fall almost completely down. I bought some mugs here—'Presents from Sanquhar'—for the children, and found on investigation that they were made in Germany!"

I found the children of Falkland rolling Easter eggs downhill, calling the day "Pace (Pasch) Saturday." It was a week too soon, according to the Kalendar; but one little girl said that Pace Saturday was always the first Saturday in April.

Bute received this summer a letter, which pleased him much, from the eminent historian Lord Acton, a recently "capped" doctor of St. Andrews University, to whom Bute had presented a hood made in the mediæval fashion.[6]

I have just received the historic and venerable hood you are so very kind as to bestow on me. It has a very real value to me as coming from you, personally as well as from your sovereign position in the university to which I am proud to belong; and I beg to thank you for it as heartily and sincerely as it is possible to acknowledge an act of friendship.

If I was not one of your own recommendation,[7] {204} I shall deem henceforward that you have adopted me, just as if you had named me for the distinguished honour I have received.

Towards the close of his three years' Rectorship, Bute showed his interest in the city, as well as the university, of St. Andrews, by presenting to it a handsome chain of office for the use of the provosts. A member of the council, who had himself passed the civic chair, wrote thus to him in reference to this gift:

I need not say what our appreciation is of your most handsome act. In an informal conversation held yesterday by the Provost, Dr. Anderson and myself, it was agreed that while it was in the power of any wealthy man to perform the mere act, yet there was only one nobleman in the three kingdoms who could perform it in the delicate and gracious way in which it will now come before the Town Council.

In the early autumn of 1895 Bute was able, in the course of a cruise in his yacht Christine, to revisit the Orkneys, and to set foot again in Kirkwall, Egilsay, and other spots sacred in his eyes to the memory of St. Magnus, as he had done when a youth of twenty, nearly thirty years previously. "These islands," he notes, "are far more picturesque than I remember them before, and I am much struck by the number, industry, and wealth of their inhabitants."

A cause of special satisfaction to Bute, and that for more than one reason, was his re-election, at the end {205} of November, 1895, to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews University. Viscount Peel had been nominated for the office by the party opposed to Bute's policy, and the Master of Balliol had sent to the students a printed testimonial to Lord Peel's qualifications, and an urgent appeal to them to support his candidature. "This," wrote a member of the professorial staff to Bute, "is quite a new departure in Rectorial elections, and its legality is, I should say, as questionable as its taste." He adds in the same letter:

We had a very large and influential meeting [in London] last evening of the St. Andrews Graduates' Association. The President, Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, made a very strong speech in your favour. It was followed by what was virtually an ovation, so enthusiastic was the whole assemblage.

A letter to the press, shortly before the election, stated that the writer could not understand how any man of honour and intelligence, knowing all the facts, could possibly stand in opposition to Bute. His comment on this letter was as follows:

I cannot for a single moment believe that Lord Peel knows the facts, or that he in the least realises the fearfully burdensome nature of the duties. His only alternative, if elected, would be either to take that yoke upon him, or to neglect the duty of doing so. The writers of some things that have appeared in the papers seem to be under the impression that the Lord Rector's sole duty is to deliver a literary address!

I enclose a letter received a few months ago: you may show it to any one you please. It may be good for some people at this juncture to know what the great Presbyterian Duke thinks.

The last sentence, of course, refers to the Duke of Argyll, Chancellor of St. Andrews University since 1851, whose eminent abilities and distinguished personal character placed him at that time in the very forefront of the Scottish nobility. The Duke had written:

I wish I could accept your invitation, but in my present state of health, barely recovered from a sharp attack of this insidious epidemic, it is impossible. You have always made Falkland very pleasant to me, and I enjoy seeing the great public spirit with which you discharge all your duties. I hope I need not assure you of the indignation with which I have seen the attempt to arouse a sectarian spirit against you,[8] whose whole course of conduct has been so signally liberal, in the best sense of that much-abused word.

On learning the result of the election, in which Bute defeated his opponent by a majority of forty votes, the Duke at once wrote:

The telegram this afternoon was very acceptable. I am glad that the University has not disgraced itself by electing any one else than you at this juncture. As to Lord Peel himself, I suspect that he now feels very much relieved.

No one of the many congratulatory letters received by Bute on his re-election gave him more {207} sincere pleasure than the following, written by a member of the students' committee:

The 120 who won the election were the resident students of the university—those who, without distinction of sect or political partisanship, were most touched with the spirit and traditions of the place. We feel sure that you look on this circumstance as having a value far above the mere figures of the majority.

It was during his second term of office that Bute conceived the project—which would probably have occurred to no one but himself—of restoring the vast ruined Cathedral of St. Andrews, or a portion of it, for the purposes of a university church. The plan might, he thought, be realised if every member of the Scottish peerage could be induced to subscribe a thousand pounds towards it. But there were at least three reasons which militated against the success of the proposal. In the first place, the pedigrees of the peers of Scotland were in most cases a great deal longer than their purses; in the second, few of them were probably much interested in university education in general, or in St. Andrews in particular; in the third, the majority of them were members of the Episcopalian body, not of the Established Church, to which the university church would as a matter of course be aggregated. It is curious that the only promise of substantial support received by the Catholic Rector towards a scheme which must, it is to be feared, be pronounced fantastic, came from a wealthy nobleman who was not a member of either the Episcopalian or the Established Church, but a devoted and almost fanatical Free Churchman.

Bute's academic labours and anxieties were diversified at this time by the preparation of a book in which he took great interest, on the subject of the "Arms of the Royal and Parliamentary Burghs of Scotland." The study of heraldry had always had an attraction for him, although he was perhaps, in practice, sometimes more inclined to follow his own fancy than the rigid rules of that most exact of sciences. "I call Bute a sentimental rather than a scientific herald," a friend much interested in the subject once said of him; and perhaps the criticism was a just one. In any case, his curious and out-of-the-way erudition found its scope in the production of this volume, which he published in collaboration with Mr. S. R. N. Macphail and Mr. H. W. Lonsdale in 1897. A copy with plates specially coloured under Bute's supervision, and handsomely bound, was presented by the Town Council of Rothesay to Queen Victoria, who accepted it very graciously.[9]

An acquisition which Bute was able to make at the beginning of 1896, and which gave him great satisfaction, appealing as it did to his intense veneration for the religious monuments of the past, was that of the ancient friary and chapel of the Greyfriars in Elgin. He restored the chapel in its original Franciscan simplicity, and made it over for the use of the Sisters of Mercy, already established in Elgin. The ancient stone tabernacle or sacrament-house, detached from the altar, was still preserved in the chapel; and a long letter from the Bishop of Aberdeen (then in Rome), among Bute's papers, shows that the {209} latter was engaged in the difficult task of trying to induce the Sacred Congregation of Rites to derogate from modern rules and practice, and to allow this interesting relic of the past to be again used for the purpose for which it had been originally intended.[10] Writing to the Provost of Elgin, in acknowledgment of a presentation made to him by the contractors and clerk of works employed at Greyfriars, Bute said with his usual felicity of expression:

My purchase was one on which I must congratulate myself, not only because in interest it has exceeded my expectation, but because it has enabled me to be of some service to Elgin by preserving an historical monument of considerable value to the town and district.

Bute had several years before this been solicited to allow himself to be nominated to the provostship of the Royal Burgh of Rothesay. He had not seen his way at that time to accept the offer, but when it was renewed in the autumn of 1896, he signified his willingness to undertake the office, and he was unanimously elected on November 6, 1896. It was a source of legitimate pride to him to be called to the chief magistracy of the ancient burgh with which his family had been associated for five hundred years, and in which five of his lineal ancestors had held the office of provost.[11] He applied himself to the duties {210} of the position with his habitual assiduity and care, not infrequently travelling long distances to attend the meetings of the corporation, and presiding at them with a combined dignity and aptitude for business which favourably impressed all with whom he was brought into contact. He only once took the chair in the police-court, sensibly leaving that department, as he had done at Cardiff, to the charge of those better versed in police administration than himself; nor, as it happened, was he qualified to preside at licensing-courts, owing to the fact that he was himself a licence-holder for the sale of the produce of his Cardiff vineyards.

No extensive schemes were carried out in Rothesay during Bute's tenure of the provostship; but it is of interest to note that whereas the harbour had been greatly improved, and gas first introduced into the town, during the time (1829-1839) that his father was provost, he himself, during his term of office, made a large extension of the pier, and introduced the electric light. He also interested himself in the sanitary improvement of the burgh, and entertained the members of the Sanitary Congress, which met at Rothesay in 1898, at a garden party at Mountstuart. Following his own precedent at Cardiff, St. Andrews, and Falkland, he presented to the corporation a beautiful chain of office for the use of the provosts.

The occurrence of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee during Bute's provostship gave occasion for his further munificence; and in commemoration of the event he placed in the council-chambers a series of heraldic stained-glass windows. To each of the Town Councillors he presented a replica of the medal which he and the other provosts of Scottish burghs received at a special audience given to them by the {211} Queen. Bute gave pleasure to the councillors by reminding them that the Scriptural quotation on the obverse of the medal—"Longitudo dierum in dextera ejus, et in sinistra gloria"[12]—would probably be more familiar to them all in the rendering of the Scottish Paraphrase:

In her right hand she holds to view
A length of happy days:
Riches with splendid honours joined
Are what her left displays.

Bute himself drafted the jubilee address from the corporation to her Majesty, and had it engrossed in facsimile after the original charter to the burgh of the year 1400 A.D., preserved in the British Museum. Sealed with the ancient seal of the burgh, and enclosed in a box made of the old oak beams of the drawbridge of Rothesay Castle, lined with cloth of gold, the address was, at Bute's instance, presented to the Queen by H.R.H. the Duke of Rothesay (Prince of Wales). It was one of the very few addresses on exhibition in London, where it aroused considerable attention and admiration.

An anniversary of more personal interest to Bute in the spring of 1897 was his own "silver wedding day." The event was celebrated with quiet happiness in the family circle, and, later in the year, by a great reception in the Exhibition-building at Cardiff, at which some three thousand guests were entertained. Bute, who received a congratulatory {212} address on the occasion, enclosed in a silver casket, from his Town Council at Rothesay, gave public and permanent expression to his thankfulness for twenty-five years of happy married life, by instituting both there and at Cardiff, what came to be known as the "Bute Dowry." This was the provision of an annual sum to be handed, on the recommendation of the municipal authorities, to some girl or girls of the poorer classes, to enable her to get married. The religious spirit in which Bute founded this benefaction is seen from a letter he addressed to the minister of Rothesay, announcing his intention of attending on the first occasion of the dowry being awarded:

I will put on the chain, but not, I think, the gown, as I will leave the religious ceremony entirely to you; and I think it would be better if you read John ii. 1-11 (as well as the passage from Ephesians). The only reason why I stipulated for the reading of John ii. 1-11 as a part of the ceremony, was to impress the idea that that marriage is truly blessed to which Jesus is called by humble prayer, and at which nothing takes place but the natural and harmless gaiety which is consonant with His sacred presence and approval. It does not matter at all who reads it.

The success of Bute's three years' tenure of the office of provost was proved by the unanimity with which the council, at its conclusion, expressed its wish that he would accept re-election for another term. This would have included the fifth centenary of the erection of the royal burgh, which it was proposed to celebrate in 1900; and Bute, notwithstanding his rapidly failing powers (of which no one {213} was more conscious than himself), consented to be nominated for a second term on certain conditions, one of which was that he should be permitted to resign the office immediately after the centenary. In his letter thanking the council for their invitation he thus alluded to his state of health:

I spoke of this, when I first entered on the provostship, by saying that I realised that circumstances might arise in which I should feel myself unable any longer to be of service to the burgh, and should consequently be obliged to resign; but that in any case nothing could reverse the past or delete the fact of the honour of the office having once been conferred upon me. Should the council re-elect me, I can only say the same thing again.... I take this opportunity of thanking each and all of the Members of Council for the honour they have paid me now for the second time, as well as for all the kindness which I have always received at their hands.

While fulfilling his municipal duties at Rothesay to the satisfaction of every one concerned, Bute had continued, to the best of his ability, and with undiminished interest, to discharge his functions as Lord Rector of St. Andrews. He was still able to carry out, though not without fatigue and strain, what he called the "routine work" of his office; but he was no longer physically able to take the strenuous part he had formerly done in the government of the university, and the defence of her interests at the University Court and elsewhere. Early in 1897 he had heard with some dismay of the urgent desire of the students (who were doubtless very imperfectly acquainted with the condition of his health) that he should deliver a second Rectorial address, on the occasion of his re-election. To this {214} effort he felt absolutely unequal, and he wrote as follows to his assessor:

You must do what you can to prevent the students insisting on another address. They cannot know what they are asking. I can get through my ordinary business, but cannot attempt the impossible, such as a Rectorial address. If I did, my failure would be as annoying to them as it would be painful to myself. Please try to make them understand this.

I do not complain. "The night cometh when no man can work," sooner or later. It has come to me through overwork and anxiety as Rector, and it is perhaps better that way than many others. But I am sure that those on whose behalf I have incurred it would not try to goad me into a fiasco which could only be distressing to all concerned.

Bute probably knew well that this pathetic appeal to the good sense and good feeling of the St. Andrews students would not be made in vain. Between them and himself the feeling had never been otherwise than kindly and cordial, with no trace of the misunderstandings or bitterness which had sometimes clouded his relations with other sections of the university. They respected him as a great Scottish noble: they admired his zeal for, and jealousy of, the honour and reputation of their Alma Mater: they were proud of his position in the world of letters, of his deserved distinction as a munificent and discriminating patron of learning, science, and art. Most of all, they were grateful to him for his continual and unfailing kindness towards themselves—kindness which he had proved not only by the generosity of his public gifts, but by acts of private beneficence of which the outside world knew nothing, and which he himself would have been the last to wish made public.

[1] Lord Rosebery's brief tenure of the Premiership (1894-95) had just commenced at the date of this entertainment. He had been Foreign Secretary during the two previous years.

[2] The verdict was the unsatisfactory one of "Not Proven"—unsatisfactory, that is, to the public, although doubtless preferable from the prisoner's point of view to one of "Guilty." The present writer, who chanced to hear the concluding part of the case, well remembers the surprise caused, both within and without the court, by the judge's strong summing up in the prisoner's favour. A legal kinsman of the writer told him subsequently what he had never before heard—that a Scottish judge, unlike an English one, considered it his duty not merely to sum up the evidence impartially, but also to direct the jury how to regard it from the point of view of a trained mind.

[3] Bute felicitously applies to St. Andrews, seat of the first-called ([Greek: prôtóklêtos]) of the Apostles, the word [Greek: témenos]—land "cut off" and assigned or dedicated to divine or sacred purposes. Syracuse was of old the [Greek: témenos] of Ares (Mars), as the Acropolis at Athens was that of Pallas Athene.

[4] Bute himself was a keen curler, thoroughly enjoying a spell at the "roaring game" with his country neighbours. A family tradition records how, night falling before the end of a hotly-contested march on The Moss, above Mountstuart, Bute sent for footmen to bear lighted candles round the rink, so that the game might be concluded that evening.

[5] See ante, p. 96. The popular appreciation of such kindly intercourse could hardly be shown more neatly, and at the same time more humorously, than it was on the occasion of a garden party given at Mountstuart, some years later, in celebration of the majority of Bute's eldest son and successor. Sir Charles Dalrymple, who was present, remarked on the success of the fête to one of the guests, a Buteshire farmer. "Ou ay," was the reply, "it was just grand a'thegither; and the young Mairquis—did ye obsairve, Sir Charles?—he was mixing fine."

[6] It is probable that the hood given to Lord Acton was a facsimile of that worn by Bute himself with his academic robes. This was copied by the university robe-maker (but in richer material and colours) from the ancient form of hood as worn by a Scots Benedictine monk who occasionally acted as his chaplain.

[7] University College, Dundee, had the right of presenting certain candidates for the Honorary Doctorate of St. Andrews University; and Lord Acton was one of those so nominated.

[8] The allusion is to an unworthy effort which had been made in certain quarters to stir up an odium theologicum against Bute, in connection with the proposed transference of Blairs College to St. Andrews.

[9] A supplementary volume, "The Arms of the Baronial and Police Burghs of Scotland," in which Messrs Stevenson and Lonsdale collaborated, was published in 1903.

[10] An attempt had been made in Belgium, at the time of the Gothic revival, to restore the ancient use of detached Sacrament-houses, but it had been very decidedly negatived by the Roman authorities. In 1863 the Sacred Congregation of Rites definitely prohibited the placing of the tabernacle elsewhere than in the middle of the altar.

[11] Portraits of four of these—the second and fourth Earls, John Viscount Mountstuart, and the second Marquess, were presented by Bute to the Town Council of Rothesay.

[12] "Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and glory."—Prov. iii. 16. Bute's Presbyterian friends and neighbours knew and respected his familiarity with, and veneration for, the Scriptures. "He was a Bible-loving man, and very religious-minded," one of them said of him: "I have heard that he always opened the meetings [of the Town Council] with a prayer he wrote himself." See as to this, Appendix IV.

CHAPTER XII

PLUSCARDEN—BUTE AS ARCHITECT—PSYCHICAL
INTERESTS—CONCLUSION

1898-1900

The latest addition made by Bute to his large landed possessions in Scotland was one which on several accounts was the source of much interest to him during the last years of his life. Just as the chief attraction of Falkland, which he purchased in 1887, had been the fact that it included the ancient royal palace and its hereditary Keepership, so the principal inducement to him to acquire, as he did in 1897 from the Earl of Fife, the Morayshire estate of Pluscarden, was that he thereby came into possession also of one of the most beautiful and interesting ecclesiastical relics in Scotland.[1] This was the roofless church, as well as considerable remains of the domestic buildings, of Pluscarden Priory, founded by King Alexander III. seven centuries before for monks of the little-known Order of the Cabbage-valley.[2] In {216} the middle of the fifteenth century Pluscarden had passed into Benedictine possession; and connected with this change of ownership were several architectural problems of the kind which it always interested Bute to attempt to solve. He had a dislike of the word "restoration," as applied to ancient edifices which were, and still are, so often spoiled in the process; but he expended much time and care, and not inconsiderable sums of money, in putting the different portions of the venerable buildings—choir, chapter-house, dormitory, and calefactory—into such repair as was possible. He was deeply moved and gratified at being able to arrange, in the summer of 1898, for the celebration of Mass (the first for fully three hundred years) by a Scottish Benedictine monk, in the perfectly-preserved oratory of the prior's lodgings.

It was characteristic of Bute's scrupulous regard for tradition and order, that before taking possession of Pluscarden he applied to Rome, through the Bishop of Aberdeen, for a sanatio, in other words, a sanction of his acquisition of the property of the Church, and asked if he should, as a preliminary step, give the refusal of the buildings to the Benedictines of Fort Augustus. A reply was received in September, 1897, from Cardinal Ledochowski, Prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda, to the effect that such an offer was not necessary, and that the great benefactions already made by Lord Bute to the Catholic Church were to be considered as ample compensation.

Pluscarden Priory was the last, and to himself not the least interesting, of the many ancient and historic buildings to the maintenance of which Bute was in a position to apply his profound archæological knowledge as well as the architectural skill and taste which made him, as it was expressed by one well qualified to pronounce an opinion, "the best unprofessional architect of his generation." It will be appropriate in this place to give a brief conspectus of the principal building operations which he undertook in the course of the thirty-two years between his coming of age and his too early death.

The restoration and partial rebuilding of Cardiff Castle was the earliest work of the kind undertaken by Bute. The lofty tower conspicuous on the southwest of the castle enclosure, the restoration of the great southern curtain wall, with its covered way, and the erection of the noble staircase were among the most important of his building operations at Cardiff, which included also the discovery and partial restoration of the old Roman walls and gateway, the re-excavation of the moat, and the clearing and re-marking the sites of the mediæval friaries of the Dominicans and Franciscans. Most of the work at Cardiff was carried out under the direction of the distinguished architect William Burges, who was responsible for the whole of the fanciful and elaborate interior decoration both of the castle and of Castell Coch, the thirteenth-century fortress some five miles north of Cardiff. This castle, which was in a completely ruined condition, was restored by Bute, under Burges's direction, to its original state; and experts in such works have pronounced it one of the most perfect restorations ever carried out.

Two anecdotes of Burges, whose personality and {218} genius were both somewhat of the eccentric order, may be here related on the authority of a distinguished and venerable member of his own profession, who knew him well. Bute invited him to come and see his new house at Mountstuart, then nearly complete, and took him into the great drawing-room, where he called his attention to the ceiling with its lining of panelled mirrors, on which were painted clusters of grapes and vine-leaves. Burges looked up, shrugged his shoulders, muttered "I call that damnable," and walked on.

Burges was accustomed to keep with him in his office a favourite terrier, which made itself occasionally disagreeable to visitors who called. When it was pointed out that the effect of this might be to keep away possible clients, Burges only grumbled out, "A good thing too! I have far too many as it is." Once a sporting friend came in to see him, bringing his own terrier, which he boasted was the best ratter in the country. Burges would not hear of this, and the matter was at once put to the test. The office-boy was sent out to some neighbouring purlieu for a sack of rats: a rat-pit was extemporised out of drawing-boards, architectural folios, and other paraphernalia of the office; and an elderly and distinguished client who chanced to call, intent on business, found the rat-hunt in full cry, and the eminent architect and his friend in their shirt-sleeves, hallooing on their respective champions to the slaughter.

Bute contributed handsomely to the restoration funds of such historic edifices as St. John's Church at Cardiff and others on his Glamorgan estate; and he re-roofed and put in complete repair the small twelfth-century church of Cogan, near Cardiff, which {219} had fallen into decay. It may be of interest, in this connection, to quote a letter which he addressed to his brother-in-law and fellow-Catholic, Lord Merries, who had consulted him as to the propriety of his subscribing to the restoration fund of Selby Abbey, which had been in great part destroyed by fire:

The question is one of some delicacy; but its solution is facilitated by the circular which you have sent me, which specifies various objects for which subscriptions are invited. I can only advise you in accordance with my own practice in such matters. You may reasonably decline to provide such adjuncts or accessories to Anglican worship as pulpits and litany-desks, service-books and altar-cloths, lecterns and candlesticks. But to give a donation towards the actual rebuilding of a most venerable monument of Christian piety (which your ancestors probably helped originally to erect) is a thing which, I conceive, you may very properly do—and all the more so in view of your official connection with the county.[3]

Bute's native and titular island, which within its comparatively small area contains perhaps as many interesting remains of feudal and ecclesiastical antiquity as any district in the kingdom, afforded him, of course, many opportunities of applying his archæological and architectural knowledge to the congenial task of repairing and preserving these venerable fragments of the past. Prominent among them is the ruined eleventh-century castle in the middle of Rothesay, of which Bute was hereditary keeper, and of which he restored the gateway, drawbridge, and moat, clearing away the mean modern {220} tenements abutting on the castle, and also re-building and re-roofing the great hall. The ruined church of St. Blane, also of the eleventh century, was likewise partially restored by Bute four years before his death, when a large number of interesting objects were discovered among the foundations of the early Celtic buildings.[4] Bute also restored the ancient castle of Wester Kames, and rebuilt the wall round the venerable chapel of St. Michael in North Bute, to preserve it from further depredations.

The greatest architectural enterprise undertaken by Bute in his native island, or, indeed, anywhere else, was the erection, from the designs of Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Rowand Anderson, of the palatial house of Mountstuart, which replaced the plain old mansion burned down in 1877. This great pile of pink sandstone, with its curious upper storey of brick and oak, vast marble hall and staircase, high-pitched roofs, corbelled oriel windows, and beautiful private chapel with vaulted crypt, was begun in 1879, and at Bute's death twenty-one years later was still unfinished. His characteristic slowness in completing any architectural work which absorbed him is treated of, with much else of interest in the same connection, by Sir R. Rowand Anderson in his valuable appreciation of Bute in his relation to architecture and architects.[5]

Bute's acquisition in 1887 of the estate of Falkland, carrying with it the hereditary keepership of the ancient royal palace, gave him even more scope {221} than Mountstuart for indulging what some one once designated his "passion for stone and lime," or, as the phrase would run in England, for bricks and mortar. Falkland appealed to him not only as an architect, but as an antiquarian. The varied beauty of its sadly-dilapidated buildings, and the long and romantic story of the palace and its occupants, were to him of equally absorbing interest. He spared neither time nor money in his work of restoring the historic pile to something of its ancient grandeur; and it was said that for a number of years he devoted the whole available income of the estate to his building operations at the palace. The corridors and floors were laid with oak and teak; many of the rooms were elaborately panelled in oak, and their ceilings emblazoned with heraldic and other devices; while in the Chapel Royal, the royal pew and ancient pulpit, and the magnificent oaken screen, were completely and carefully restored.[6] Besides the costly interior work, mostly in the main or southern block, Bute executed much judicious excavation in and about the palace; and it was a great satisfaction to him to discover in the garden the foundations of the great twelfth-century round tower, dating from the time when Falkland was in the possession of the Earls of Fife. Another interesting work was the restoration of the old royal tennis-court, which Bute was accustomed to say had been, he believed, last used for play in the reign of James V., the father of Mary Queen of Scots.

Mention has already been made of Bute's purchase of the site and remains of the Augustinian priory of St. Andrews, where he did a great deal of careful excavation and made many valuable discoveries. At Elgin, too, as has been seen, he was able to acquire the interesting old monastery and church of the Greyfriars; and it was a particular happiness to him, as it has been also to his youngest son, who inherited his property in the county of Elgin, that this unpretending sanctuary—now a convent of Sisters of Mercy—should have been once again, after more than three centuries, made available for the religious worship to which it was originally dedicated.

It is unnecessary, even were it possible, to give anything like a catalogue raisonné of Bute's less important architectural achievements. For more than thirty years, in the graphic phrase cited by one of the most distinguished members of the profession, "his hands were never out of the mortar-tub." No one familiar with the multitudinous and varied work executed under his immediate supervision during those years could fail to be struck by the catholicity of his taste, as well as by his curious and detailed knowledge of all architectural styles and periods. The feudal massiveness of Cardiff and Castell Coch, of Rothesay Castle and Mochrum, the graceful Gothic of Pluscarden, the Franciscan austerity of Elgin, the rich Renaissance and Jacobean details of Falkland, the Byzantine perfection of Sancta Sophia (copied by him in miniature at Galston)—all these appealed to him, each in its degree, with equal interest and force; and this catholicity of taste was reflected not only in the new buildings which he raised, but in the ancient buildings which he {223} repaired, re-roofed, or restored with such careful reverence. Every detail of such work was personally supervised by himself; and he would be equally at home, and equally absorbed, in working out an heraldic design for the roof of an abbey church,[7] excavating among the almost shapeless ruins of a mediæval cathedral,[8] elaborating a purely Greek scheme of decoration for the oratory of his house in London,[9] or studying the details of the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, the upper basilica of Assisi, and the Gothic dome of Zaragoza,[10] in order to reproduce something of their varied beauties in his exquisite private chapel at Mountstuart. The transparent honesty which was part of his character was manifested in such restorations as he undertook at Cardiff, Rothesay, and St. Andrews, where at the cost of some æsthetic sacrifice, and often at much added expense (for the materials had sometimes to be brought from afar), he carried out the work in a stone different in colour from the ancient building, so that there should be no possible future confusion between the old and the new. Altogether it must be said that to Bute's other titles of honour is to be added that of a noble patron of a noble art. He enriched his native land with many splendid edifices, and he probably did more than any man of his generation to preserve and secure for posterity the venerable and priceless relics of his country's' past. Cor suum dabat in consummationem operum, et vigilia sua ornabat in perfectionem.[11]

One of the last publications issued by Bute (it {224} appeared in 1899) was a book entitled "The Alleged Haunting of B—— House," a curious, if not altogether convincing, account of certain phenomena said to have occurred at a country residence in Perthshire, which Bute had leased for the purpose of psychical investigation. He had always, and more especially in the later years of his life, been attracted by such questions, and was at the time of his death a vice-president of the Society for Psychical Research. He was particularly interested in the subject of second sight, of which he endeavoured to obtain first-hand evidence by instituting inquiries among the Catholic Highlanders of north-west Scotland; but the person whom he commissioned to conduct the inquiry was to a great extent baffled by the insuperable reluctance of the Highlanders to communicate on such matters with a stranger. Bute himself maintained a very open mind as to all such phenomena, although he did not of course dispute their objective possibility. He had a profound distrust of paid and professional mediums, and was fully alive to the physical, moral, and spiritual risks attendant on all such researches unless conducted with due precaution and under proper guidance.

One of the chief ornaments of the judicial bench, who knew Bute well, once observed of him that if his vocation had been to the law, he might have reasonably looked to attain the highest honours of that profession:

Industry, learning, patience, impartiality, capacity for work, a remarkable power of grasping facts and weighing evidence, clearness of expression, and a single-minded desire for truth—if these, combined with a noble presence and a lofty integrity {225} of character, are qualifications for judicial office, Bute possessed them all, and in a high degree.

Such qualities, or most of them, were no doubt equally serviceable when brought to bear on the obscure phenomena of psychical research, which Bute approached with the same unprejudiced detachment as he did the study of astrology, or the problems from the nooks and corners of history with which he loved to grapple. A friend ventured to ask him, not very long before his death, if he grudged the many hours he had devoted to these recondite investigations. He replied emphatically in the negative, adding after a pause: "I cannot conceive any Christian, or, indeed, any believer in life after death, not being painfully and deeply interested in such questions. For my own part, I have never doubted that there is permitted at times a real communication between the dead and the living, but I am bound to say that I have never personally had any first-hand evidence of such communication which I could call absolutely convincing." The last words were spoken with a certain melancholy earnestness which made a deep impression on the hearer. That Bute's interest in these matters had no frightening or depressing effect on himself is shown clearly enough from a note in his diary in which, after referring to his own rapidly-declining health, he adds: "My study of things connected with the S.P.R. has had the effect of very largely robbing death of its terrors."[12]

With the resignation of his Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews at the end of his second term of office, {226} Bute's public work may be said to have come to an end. He had, as has been seen, conditionally accepted his re-election as Provost of Rothesay, but as the time drew near his resumption of the office was seen to be impossible. It was, in fact, in August, 1899, three months before the time due for the election, that he was struck down with what proved to be the beginning of his fatal illness. He rallied for a time, and his mind remained as unclouded, and his interest in many things as keen, as they had ever been; but it became before long increasingly evident that there was no prospect of any return to the activities of the past. 1900 was the year of the Passion-play at Ober-Ammergau; and he had always hoped to go thither once again with his family, and to renew in their company the well-remembered impressions made by his three previous visits. When this could not be, he rejoiced that his children were able to make the pilgrimage under the escort of an old friend, and he interested himself in every detail of their journey.

As time passed on, and his weakness increased, reading and writing, which had been the chief solace of his life, were of course no longer possible to him. He suffered little bodily pain during his last illness, but much weariness and depression, which he bore with his usual quiet fortitude and patience; and the gradual declension of his remarkable mental faculties, his keen intellect, vivid imagination, and retentive memory, was (it is a consolation to believe) far less distressing to himself than it was to the devoted watchers at his sick-bed. In the summer of 1900 he was removed to Dumfries House, in the hope that its more bracing air might be beneficial to him. He had always, as has been already remarked, loved {227} the beautiful old home of his Crichton ancestors, which both within and without was one of the most notable works of the brothers Adam, although the amenity of its surroundings had been to some extent spoiled by the numerous coalpits. "Falkland is probably, the most luxurious of my houses," he had once remarked, "but I think Dumfries House is, perhaps, the homeliest of them all." The improvement to his health wrought by this change was unhappily only transient: he grew gradually weaker, and on October 9, 1900, a few hours after being attacked by a second stroke, he quietly breathed his last, being then in the fifty-fourth year of his age.

Bute was buried, according to his own wish, in the chapel close to the sea, within the grounds of Mountstuart, which he had fitted up some twenty years previously for Catholic worship. The funeral service was all the more impressive because of hired pomp and grandeur there was absolutely none. His coffin, made by his own carpenters, was borne by his own workmen from Dumfries House to the little wayside station, whence it was conveyed to the sea, and thence across the Firth of Clyde to Kilchattan Bay, in Bute, where a great assemblage awaited its arrival, and followed it for nearly five miles on foot, the only carriage being that of the widow. One who was present thus describes the sad procession:

Through the russet and gold of the October woods it passed, preceded by the cross and a long array of bishops and clergy, and followed by the young sons, the Duke of Norfolk, Lords Loudoun, Glasgow, and Herries, and many other notable people. Night was falling as our cortége reached the little chapel on {228} the shore where the remains were to rest; and the pine torches carried by the assistants threw a sombre glare on the coffin, on which were laid a black and gold pall, and the dead peer's coronet and the chain and green velvet mantle of the Thistle. Vespers of the dead were sung: black-robed sisters watched by the bier all night; and next morning the dirge was chanted, the requiem mass celebrated, the five absolutions reserved for prelates and great nobles solemnly pronounced. The single bell tolled from the little turret as the mourners silently dispersed, leaving John Lord Bute to rest in peace within the ivy-covered walls washed by the waves which encircled his island home.

A few days after the last sad rites, Bute's widow, with her daughter and three sons, left England for the Holy Land, in order to carry out his long-cherished desire that his heart should be interred in the sacred soil of Olivet. It was reverently laid in the tiny garden of the Franciscans, outside the humble chapel known as Dominus Flevit—"The Lord wept"—the traditional spot, half-way up the holy mountain, where the Saviour shed tears over the approaching fate of the beloved city. An oleander tree alone marks the place of sepulture; but at the entrance of the little sanctuary is affixed a marble tablet bearing the following inscription:[13]

PAX ESTO AETERNA
ANIMAE PIENTISSIMAE
JOANNIS PATRICII MARCHIONIS III DE BUTE
IN SCOTIA
VII ID OCTOBR
ANNO DOMINI MDCCCC
MORTEM IN CHRISTO OBEUNTIS
CUJUS COR
IN TERRAM SANCTAM
SUPREMA TESTAMENTI CAUTIONE
DELATUM
GUENDOLINA CONJUX
IN HORTO
HUIC DOMINUS FLEVIT AEDICULAE
ANNEXO
QUATUOR ADSISTENTIBUS FILIIS
ID NOVEMBR EODEM ANNO
PROPRIIS RELIGIOSE MANIBUS
SEPELIVIT

[1] Conversing with a friend not long before his death, Bute thus characteristically referred to the point of view from which he regarded his acquisition of these two interesting estates. "Having bound myself to provide landed property of a certain value for my younger sons, I looked about for places which I might play with during my own life, and leave to them afterwards. Hence Falkland and Pluscarden."

[2] The Valliscaulians ("Val des Choux" was the name of their first house, in Burgundy), founded about 1193 by Viard, a Carthusian lay-brother, had about thirty houses, most of them in France. There were none in England, but three in Scotland—Pluscarden, Beauly, and Ardchattan, of which the last two became Cistercian priories a century before the Reformation. The Order dwindled and became finally extinct about thirty years prior to the French Revolution.

[3] Lord Merries held the office of Lord-Lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorks from 1880 until his death in 1908.

[4] These are described in much detail, and copiously illustrated, in the "Proceedings of the Soc. of Antiq. of Scotland" (vol. x. 3rd series, pp. 307 seq.).

[5] This appreciation, specially written by the distinguished architect for the present biography, is given in Appendix V.

[6] Lord Bute's second son (and successor as Keeper of Falkland Palace), the late Lieut.-Col. Lord Ninian Stuart, M.P., who fell gallantly in action in 1915, further enriched the Chapel Royal in 1906, by hanging on its walls some magnificent Flemish "verdure" tapestries of the seventeenth century.

[11] "He gave his heart to the consummation of his works, and by his watchful care brought them to perfection."—Ecclesiast. xxxviii. 31.

[13] Written by Dowager Lady Bute, and translated into Latin at her request by the author of this memoir.

APPENDIX I (p. 2)

ENGLISH PRIZE POEM

When the long requiem's assuaging strain
Sounds high and solemn through the holy fane,
And loud and frequent in the darkened pile
The organ's heavy swell is heard the while,
Askest thou, pilgrim stranger, wherefore low,
In prayer unceasing, mournful hundreds bow;
Why choral hymns unceasingly arise,
And thuribles with incense cloud the skies,
While dying tapers glimmer pale and low
Upon the bloodless alabaster brow
That only represents the hero now?
Read sculptured on a grave that royal name,
So often blown abroad by noisy fame:
Yes; low as other men, the caitiff tomb
Has dared to shroud his splendour in its gloom!
Edward, who once the Knight of England shone,
Lies cold and stiff beneath this sculptured stone.
The brilliant Phosphor of a brighter day
Too soon in night is passed for aye away!
The lordly thistle blooms in purple pride;
The shamrock clusters by her sheltering side;[1]
And, though from each full many a spray is riven,
Unshaken yet they rise to friendly heaven.
The golden lily, even in her tears,
Full many a flower of vernal promise bears;
{232} The pomegranate hangs fruitful on the tree;
The olive waves o'er many an eastern sea;
And strong beneath her eagle's sable wings
The pine upon her fir-clad mountains clings;
The rose alone, the fairest of them all,[2]
Is doomed to see her bud of promise fall!
The green genista's golden bloom is shed,
Her brightest offspring numbered with the dead.
O! plundered flower, O! doubly plundered bloom
Whose fairest fragrance only feeds the tomb!
'Tis said that when upon a rocky shore
The salt sea billows break with muffled roar,
And, launched in mad career, the thundering wave
Leaps booming through the weedy ocean cave;
Each tenth is grander than the nine before,
And breaks with tenfold thunder on the shore.
Alas! it is so on the sounding sea;
But so, O England, it is not with thee!
Thy decuman is broken on the shore:
A peer to him shall lave thee never more!

Ring forth, O mournful harp—no nobler strain
Than this to-day shall e'er be thine again.
See where amid her ruined towns and towers
France broods upon her country's shattered powers.
Ask her his glories—at the fatal name
Her olive cheek grows red with burning shame,
The tear starts flashing to her careworn eye,
She points where stiff and cold her children lie,
Beneath the bloody sod of many a plain,
By victor Edward's dreaded arrows slain;
From where on Cressy's dark and trodden ground
Two kings were slain and princes died around,
To where Limoges' streets ran red with blood,
And lives of thousands fed the crimson flood;
Or where, again, in Poitiers' fatal lane
The flower of all her gay noblesse were slain,
And trodden down amid the gory clay,
In useless valour threw their lives away;
{233} While many a lordly tower and holy spire
Fell blackened ruins to the invader's fire.

But not upon thy fields, O France, alone
Like meteor shot from sphere of light he shone.
Rise, Spain, and witness how thy fair Castile
Has bled upon Najarra's fatal hill,
When sullen Najarilla's voiceless flow
Rang to the buckler's clang and falchion's blow,
And legions melted as a morning's snow.
But own that, when before his victor brand
He stretched defenceless all the humbled land,
It then was Edward's voice that stemmed the tide,
And Guzman only for his treason died.
Ungrateful Pedro! gilt and sceptred slave!
Ill hast thou merited the crown he gave!

"The crown he gave," and now, alas! has he
Who was the heir to England's sovereignty
No diadem except the cerecloth band,
No sceptre but the taper in his hand!
The glory that embalms his brilliant name
Alone is deathless through the voice of fame;
Or where, adorned in many a loyal heart,
It burns unmoved till life itself shall part—
It lives undying there. What other throne
So meet for him who called those hearts his own?

But O! when history with frigid eye
Shall write the lengthened list of deeds gone by,
And deal with justice, passionless but true,
The meed deserved the living never knew,
Forbid it, Heaven! her voice divine should stay
The tide of praise that swells his name to-day.
Tell how, when victory had wreathed his arms,
And peace at length replaced war's dread alarms,
(Such peace is theirs who can resist no more)
When captive led from France's vanquished shore
A conquered monarch graced the victor's car,
The splendid trophy of the finished war.
Say how, eclipsed in an inferior's guise,
He scorned to feed with show the people's eyes;
{234} And spurning Roman conqueror's gaudy pride,
Rode, humble, by the French usurper's side.
Such deed as this shall live to mock decay
When time has borne war's fading wreaths away.

The golden corn shall wave on Cressy's plain,
The thrush shall sing in Poitier's woods again;
The rosemaries upon Najarra's hill
Shall perfume Najarilla's noiseless rill;
The fields of France shall bloom in verdant pride,
Unstained by ruthless conquest's crimson tide;
The summer roses bloom in far Castile—
While, levelled by the dart we all must feel,
The mortal victor lies—a wreck of clay,
Once brilliant and as perishing as they.
There mark the armour that in life he wore
Hangs o'er his dreamless head! O never more
Shall coat so princely fence so meet a heart!
And still, as if demanding ne'er to part,
There yet the leopards in their sanguine shield
Alternate with the lilies' heavenly field.

One step aside, and blazing through the gloom,
The pinnacles that deck the martyr's[3] tomb
Rise high and glittering o'er the golden urn;
And there for aye the dying tapers burn,
As if they cried to men in protest high
That soon their earthly honours all must die;
But that upon the Christian's sainted shade
Alone is bound a wreath that cannot fade.
O! ye who lie together, levelled here,
In life so sundered and in death so near—
He who has shed men's blood to win a throne,
And he who for Religion shed his own;
What thoughts unnumbered on the rapid mind
Arise, with mingled grief and awe combined!

O! for a worthier art with skill to paint
The light eternal that surrounds the saint:
And justly mete the song of swelling praise
The hero's virtues force our hearts to raise!
{235} Shades of the great, the holy, and the brave,
Whose earthly vestment slumbers in the grave,
Teach us by bright example each to tread
The heavenward pathway hallowed by the dead.
What though the trembling element of earth
May swell again the clay that gave it birth;
What though again the wanton breeze reclaim
The vital breath it lent to warm your frame;
Not less ye live because our feebler race
Your lordly presence now no more shall grace.
Where'er the wild and careless winds can blow,
Where'er the ocean's cold, dark waters flow,
Where'er the heart heroic dares to die,
There—there your fadeless memory lives for aye,
Till Ruin claims her universal sway,
And worn-out Time himself shall pass away.

[2] The symbols of the chief powers of Europe are taken from a royal masque in the reign of Henry VIII. The pomegranate represents Spain, the olive Italy, and the pine-cone Germany.

APPENDIX II (p. 51)

HYMN ON ST. MAGNUS

(Written by Bute at Kirkwall during a visit to Orkney,
in July, 1867, æt. 19.)

Glory be to Jesus
In the highest heaven,
For His grace triumphant
Unto Magnus given—
Wondrous grace that made him,
Looking on the Cross,
For the love of Jesus
Count all things but loss.

Born to all earth's splendour,
Cradled by a throne,
He in very childhood
Knew God's love alone;
Nazareth's holy stripling
Boyhood's pattern made;
Through the years of manhood
By his Saviour stayed.

Like to Paul converted
From a world of sin,
He into our Master's
Sheepfold entered in—
Till God's love within him
Lit and warmed him through,
As the bush of Horeb
Burned but ever grew.

With the saintly maiden.
Whom he made his bride,
For ten years a virgin
Lay he side by side;
{237} Like unto the angels
Of our God in heaven,
Who in carnal wedlock
Give not nor are given.

From the Lord's own altar
Haled, the martyr died;
Him the Lord's own offering
His last breath supplied.
Earthy lilies stricken
Perish on the ground,
But God's witness dying
Fadeless glory found.

Jesus, by whose mercy
Magnus was victorious,
Give us grace to follow
In his footsteps glorious;
So by Thee, our Saviour,
Truth, and life, and way,
We may come where he is
In undying day.

Glory to the Father,
Glory to the Son,
Glory to the Spirit,
Three, and three in one,
Glory from his creatures
Both in earth and heaven
To the King of Martyrs
Endlessly be given. Amen.

APPENDIX III (p. 51)

"OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS"

The world is very foul and dark,
    And sin has marred its outline fair;
But we are taught to look above,
    And see another image there.
And I will raise my eyes above—
    Above a world of sin and woe,
Where sinless, griefless, near her Son,
    Sits Mary on her throne of snow.

Mankind seems very foul and dark,
    In some lights that we see it in,
Lo! as the tide of life goes by,
    How many thousands lie in sin.
But I will raise my eyes above—
    Above the world's unthinking flow,
To where, so human yet so fair,
    Sits Mary on her throne of snow.

My heart is very foul and dark;
    Yes, strangely foul sometimes to me
Glare up the images of sin
    My tempter loves to make me see.
Then may I lift my eyes above—
    Above these passions vile and low,
To where, in pleading contrast bright,
    Sits Mary on her throne of snow!

And oft that throne, so near our Lord's,
    To earth some of its radiance lends;
And Christians learn from her to shun
    The path impure that hellward tends,
{239} For they have learnt to look above—
    Above the prizes here below,
To where, crowned with a starry crown,
    Sits Mary on her throne of snow.

Blest be the whiteness of her throne;
    That shines so purely, grandly there!
With such a glory passing bright,
    Where all is bright and all is fair!
God make me lift my eyes above,
    And love its holy radiance so
That some day I may come where still
    Sits Mary on her throne of snow.

APPENDIX IV (p. 211)

A PROVOST'S PRAYER

The following was the prayer always said by Bute at the opening of the meetings of the Town Council of Rothesay, during the term of his provostship. It was composed by himself, or rather compiled from two prayers contained in the Roman Breviary—one the Collect for Whit-Sunday, and the other a prayer at the end of the Litany of the Saints.

"O God, Who dost teach the hearts of Thy people by sending to them the light of Thine Holy Spirit; grant unto us that the same Thy Spirit may inspire us in all our doings by His heavenly grace, and bless us therein by His continual help, that every prayer and work of ours may begin from Thee and by Thee be duly ended, and that we, who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may so by Thee be enabled to act according to Thy will, which is our sanctification; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen."

APPENDIX V (p. 220)

RECOLLECTIONS BY SIR R. ROWAND ANDERSON

I quite appreciate your desire that I should send you something of my recollections of the late Marquis of Bute, for whom I had the honour of doing some important work. Lord Bute's architects certainly had considerable opportunity of meeting him and getting to know him as he appeared in their department, for one of the outstanding facts of his life was that he was never out of the mortar-tub.

It was one of his brothers-in-law, the late Lord Herries, I think, who used to tell him that he would go down to posterity as the Brick-and-Mortar Lord. But no one who had the privilege of knowing him ever associated his works with any of the ideas of quantity, monotony, and mere utilitarianism, which the mention of the humblest of building materials might conjure up in the minds of people who had not that privilege. Quantity of production, and expenditure of time and money had no prescribed relations to each other when time or money was required to procure the most appropriate material, or time was required to determine the precise design. I remember saying to him once, when something had been delayed till I thought it must be tiresome to him, "Why not let it be finished, and off your mind?" His reply was, "But why should I hurry over what is my chief pleasure? I have comparatively little interest in a thing after it is finished." That saying supplied the key to much that, without it, might be misconstrued in the annals of his architectural undertakings. What he did not consider of importance was allowed to go through at once. What he thought of importance he made a matter for his personal thought, and no detail was so small as to be secure of passing unobserved, or so apparently insignificant {242} that an indefinite delay might not be suffered till he had determined whether it was to be converted into a feature, or at least the vehicle of an allusion to some idea which interested him.

The fact is that Lord Bute possessed great imagination, learning, and taste, and an inexhaustible patience and power of calm deliberation before coming to any conclusion which he deemed to be of any importance; and it so came about that he seldom, if ever, changed his mind and ordered anything to be altered after it had once been done.

I have heard a tale which was supposed to exemplify the nicety of his taste and the grand scale on which he gratified it. The story may have been meant for a parable only, but it narrated circumstantially how that his architect had imported a shipload of marble columns from Italy, and put them up in a certain palace which he was building for the Marquis, but that when his lordship came to see them, behold, they were not of the exact tint which he wanted, so incontinently they were thrown out, and another shipload was brought, which turned out, of course, to be perfection, of which the pillars themselves, as they stand there to-day, are the lively proof.

That the story of the throwing out of the pillars, like the tale of the three hundred and sixty Celtic Crosses in Iona, which were said to have been thrown into the sea, is apocryphal, I gravely suspect. The thing which it professes to relate never occurred in connection with any work in which I was concerned, and I think I would have heard of it had it happened in any of Lord Bute's other undertakings, at least in Scotland. The unlikely part of the story is that he had allowed himself to be landed with a vast quantity of the wrong stuff for such an important purpose. The rest of it, his fabled measures for getting himself out of the difficulty, is quite true to his character. I, at least, never knew him to be diverted from his intention on the score of delay or cost.

I remember a case which is somewhat in point, his choice of the railings for the gallery of the great hall of his house, or, rather, palace of Mountstuart, although the case is more interesting as an illustration of his mind in a more important aspect. I had proposed, in accordance with my duty, a design strictly in keeping with the mediæval character of the building. Lord Bute, however, had seen and {243} remembered the ancient and curious bronze railings which stand round the tomb of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, and he determined to take, what was to him the opportunity of erecting a facsimile of them in Scotland. I went, therefore, to Aix and made measured drawings of them on the spot. By his directions I had the copies cast in Edinburgh, and they stand now in their place in Mountstuart in all the variety and yet unity of their originals. They are not Florentine, but if you ask me what should have prevented a Florentine nobleman from erecting them in his palace in Florence, I could not tell you. Sentimentally, at any rate, they would have been appropriate. I refer, of course, to the historical fact, of which I am sure the Marquis was aware, that it was no other than Charlemagne who relieved the Florentines from the tyranny of the Longobards, and conferred upon them the freedom of a municipal government.

The influence of the art of Peter de Luna, as seen in the style which was chosen by Lord Bute in matters connected with the Chapel at Mountstuart, occurs to mind in this context. That the famous Spaniard was an architect, or a discriminating patron of architecture, Saragossa testifies; but he was more to Lord Bute, he was the Pope, the Benedict XIII., whose papal bull confirmed the foundation charter of St. Andrews University. He was not acknowledged as Pope by England or Italy, but he was acknowledged by Scotland, and that went a long way with Lord Bute. That his lordship reflected on the possibility of his choice giving pain to any one who did not accept de Luna's pontificate is, I think, unlikely, seeing that without question, he was confiding the execution of his whole ideas to an architect who was actually a member of a Reformed Church. I pointedly omit to make any allusion in this context to the traditional authorship of the design of the Cathedral of Cologne.

Lord Bute's mind was steeped in history; and on that account, though he by no means always bowed the knee to authority, his ideas, like his conversation, in matters of architecture were always interesting. Soon after the first occasion on which he did me the honour to consult me, he told me that he made it his practice not to give all his undertakings into the hands of any one architect, that he liked always to be in touch with several of the profession; it was to his advantage, he was good enough to say, as well {244} as his pleasure, to hear the opinions of different men on the things of their trade. If I may judge by the numbers of specialists in very different departments, whom I used to meet on my visits to his lordship, he had a satisfaction in their conversation and their ways of looking at things which was perhaps similar to that which Sir Walter Scott records in his Journal that he had found in the conversation of Robert Stevenson, the engineer to the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses.

So far as I know, Lord Bute never had any building done for himself in this country after any varieties of the style of Ancient Greece. That this abstention in his particular case should be credited only to his wise sense of its unfitness for his purposes in a climate such as ours, must be the opinion of any one, who, like myself, ever had the privilege of visiting the remains of Ancient Greece in his company, and of observing the extraordinarily deep impression which they made on him.

P.S.—By way of footnote to the paragraph in which I mention Peter de Luna, I may say that it was on a visit which I made to Saragossa on Lord Bute's behalf that I was fortunate enough to procure a cast of de Luna's now mummified head. The cast I have now confided to the care of St. Andrews University.

APPENDIX VI (p. 225)

OBITUARY NOTICE BY MR. F. W. H. MYERS

Magnus civis obît. The death of the Marquis of Bute has removed from earth a great chieftain, a great magnate, a great proprietor, yet withal a figure, a character, which carried one back into the Ages of Faith. Many will mourn the close of that life,—magnificent at once and munificent; far-governing, and yet gently thoughtful in minute detail. Some will miss in more intimate fashion the massive simplicity of his presence; the look in his eyes of trustfulness at once and tenacity—that look which we call doglike, when we mean to imply that dogs are nobler than men. The youth whose vast wealth and eager religion suggested (it was said) to Lord Beaconsfield the idea of his "Lothair" had become constantly wealthier and more religious as years went on. Amid the palaces of his structure and of his inheritance he lived a life simple and almost solitary; a life of long walks and long conversations on the mysteries of the world unseen. To a fervent Roman Catholicism he joined a ready openness to the elements of a more Catholic faith. That same yearning for communion with the invisible which showed itself in his Prayer-books and Missals, his Byzantine Churches restored, his English Churches built, showed itself also in the great crystal hung in his chapel at St. John's Lodge; as it were the mystic focus of that green silence in the heart of London's roar; and in the horoscope of his nativity painted on the dome of his study at Mountstuart; and in that vaster, strange-illumined vault of Mountstuart's central hall.

{246} Hardly had such a sight been seen since Hephæstus wrought in flaming gold the Signs of Heaven, and zoned the Shield of Achilles with the firmament and the sea. For in like manner at Lord Bute's bidding was that great vault encircled with a translucent zone which pictured the constellations of the Ecliptic; the starry lights represented by prisms inserted in that "dome of many-coloured glass." Therethrough, as through a fictive Zodiac, travelled the sun all day; with many a counterchange of azure stains or emerald on the broad floor below, and here and there the dazzling flash of a sudden-kindled star. It seemed the work of one who wished, by sign at least and symbol, to call down "an intermingling of heaven's pomp" upon that pavement which might have been traversed only by the pacings of earthly power and pride.

Through such scenes their fashioner would walk; weary and weighted often with the encumbering flesh; but always in slow meditative brooding on the Spiritual City, and a house not made with hands. "A cruel superstition!" he said once of those who would presume to fetter or forbid our communication with beloved and blessed Souls behind the veil. A cruel superstition indeed! and hardly with any truer word upon his lips might a man pass from the company of those who listen, to those who speak.[1]

APPENDIX VII

BIBLIOGRAPHY

(This list does not include certain articles separately reprinted from the Scottish Review, and all contained later in the two volumes of "Essays on Home and Foreign Subjects," published after his death.)

Order of Divine Service for Christmas Day, according to the Use of the Church of Rome. 1875.

Address delivered November 20, 1893, at University of St. Andrews (inaugural address as Lord Rector). 1894.

A Form of Prayer following the Church Office, for the use of Catholics unable to hear Mass upon Sundays and Holidays. 1896.

The Arms of the Royal and Parliamentary Burghs of Scotland (in collaboration with J. R. N. Macphail and H. W. Lonsdale). 1897.

The Alleged Haunting of B—— House (in collaboration with A. G. Freer). 1899.

The Blessing of the Waters on the Eve of the Epiphany (in collaboration with E. A. W. Budge). 1901.

The Arms of the Baronial and Police Burghs of Scotland (in collaboration with J. H. Stevenson and H. W. Lonsdale). 1903.

The Inquisition in the Canary Islands: Catalogue of a collection of original MSS. formerly belonging to the Holy Office. 1903.

INDEX

Argyll, George 8th Duke of, witnesses Bute's marriage, 106; letters to Bute from, 206

Breviary, Roman, Bute's first idea of translating the, 70, note; work begun, 115, 116; his "beloved child," 126; published, 129

— — 2nd Marquess of, character of, 2; early death of, 3; Provost of Rothesay, 210

— — 3rd Marquess of, his descent, 1; childhood of, 3, 4; litigation about, 5, 6; at Galloway House, 9-14; at private school, 14-17; at Harrow, 19-26; first visits Holy Land, 26, 27; at Ch. Ch., 28 et seq.; travels in East, 34-38; religious studies of, 39-43; postpones reception, 40, 63; facsimile of sketch by, 49; his cruise to Iceland, 52; and St. Magnus, 50, 150, 151; poems written by, 24, 25, 51, 231-239; to Russia, 55, 68; comes of age, 55-57; at Danesfield, 61; received into Roman Church, 71, 72; to Rome, 74; to Palestine, 75; on his conversion, 77, 78; the newspaper press on, 80, 81; founds Western Mail, 84-86; at Rome during Vatican Council, 86-90; at Cardiff and Mountstuart, 78, 90-98; as philologist, 99; marriage of, 105, 106; visits Majorca, 113, 114; his love of animals, 118, 169; created K.T., 121; as landowner, 125; acquires Scottish Review, 129; his contributions to it, 130, 143; as historical student, 143; a Home Ruler for Scotland, 149; and foreign travel, 156-168; incog. in Sicily, 165; mayor of Cardiff, 173, 174; receives freedom of Glasgow, 179; Lord-Lieutenant of Buteshire, 180; his benefactions to S. Wales, 181, 182; Hon. LL.D. of three Scottish universities, 185; on Universities Commission, ib.; Lord Rector of St. Andrews, 187 et seq.; interested in Jews, 195, 196; makes maiden speech in Parliament, 199; re-elected Lord Rector, 206; as a herald, 208; acquires Greyfriars, Elgin, 208, 209; Provost of Rothesay, 209-213; "silver wedding day" of, 211; purchases Pluscarden Priory, 215; his achievements as a builder, 217-222; his interest in psychical research, 224, 225; end of his public work, 226; last illness and death of, 226, 227; funeral of, 227; his heart taken to Jerusalem, 228; obituary notice of, by F. W. H. Myers, 245; bibliography of, 247

Bute, Gwendoline, Marchioness of, marriage of, 105; takes her husband's heart to Jerusalem, 228

Capel, Rev. T. W. (Mgr.), at Danesfield, 61; at Oxford, 67 et seq.; his interview with Liddon, 68; receives Bute into Church, 71; preaches at Oxford, 71, 72, 79; at Nice, 73; to Palestine, 74-76; at Mountstuart, 116, 117

Cardiff, coming-of-age celebrations at, 56, 57; Western Mail started at, 84; wine-growing at, 118-120; Bute mayor of, 173, 174; arms of, 174, note; University College at, 184: restoration of castle at, 217

Christ Church (Oxford), Bute at, 28 et seq.; his contemporaries at, ib.; he gives ball at, 30; fatal accident at, 65, 66; revisited by Bute, 112

Crichton-Stuart, Col. Jas. Frederick; Bute's tutor-at-law, 8, 12; M.P. for Cardiff, 80, 84; death of, 180

— — Lady Margaret, 22, note; psychical experience of, 59, note, 117, 152, 167

Disraeli, B., witnesses Bute's marriage, 106; at Norfolk's marriage, 123; his novel of "Lothair," 124, 134, note

FALKLAND, purchased by Bute, 152; visit to, 171; Easter eggs at, 203; restorations at, 221

— Sir James, curator to Bute, 19; at Dumfries House, 32, 43, 53; on Bute's conversion 62, note

Gladstone, W. E., first Chancellor of University of Wales, 185; Hon. LL.D. of St. Andrews University, ib.

Glasgow, Bute receives freedom of, 179; presents Bute Hall to, 185; Hon LL.D. of, ib.

Grant, Bishop Colin (of Aberdeen), and the Scottish Review, 131; Bute's grief at the death of, 147

Jerusalem, Bute's first visit to, 26, 27; subsequent pilgrimages to, 34, 75; compared with Rome, 162; Bute's heart buried at, 228

Liddon, Dr. H. P., at Ch. Ch., 41, 45; his interview with Capel, 68; at St. Paul's, 92, 93

—, Edith Countess of, accompanies Bute to Palestine, 74, 76; death of, 113-115

Magnus, St., visit to shrine of, 50; relics of, 50, 150, 151; Bute's hymn on, 51, 238; investigations as to, 150, 151, 204

Manning, Archbishop, in Rome, 89, 92; officiates at Bute's marriage, 105; cloth-of-gold gloves for, 107

Maxwell-Scott of Abbotsford, Hon. Mrs., and the Scottish Review, 130, 148, 150, note

Metcalfe, Rev. Dr., editor of Scottish Review, 129; assessor to Bute at St. Andrews, 188, 189

Moore, Lady Elizabeth, co-guardian to Bute, 5; removed from office, 8; letters from, 52, 53; death of, 180

Mountstuart, old house of, 3; Bute at, 94-98, 111; beavers and wallabies at, 118; burnt down, 123; description of new house at, 220; Bute buried at, 227

Norfolk, Henry 15th Duke of, at Arundel, 109; marriage of, 122; Mayor of Sheffield, 177

Oxford, Bute at, see Christ Church; Mgr. Capel at, 67, 71; visit of Lord and Lady Bute to, 111, 112; St. Barnabas' Church at, 112; Bute's interest in, 184

Pius IX., Pope, receives Bute, 74; opens Vatican Council, 86; prorogues Council, 91, note; sends marriage presents to Bute, 106

ROME, Bute's first visit to, 74; during Vatican Council, 86-90; his views on situation in, 91, 95, 110; anecdote of American in, 112; with Scottish pilgrimage in, 158; compared with Jerusalem, 162

Rosebery, Archibald 5th Earl of, at Ch. Ch., 28; to Russia with Bute, 55, 68; his tribute to Bute, 143; speech of, at R. Academy banquet, 177; Ch. Ch. dinner given to, 198

ST. ANDREWS, Bute's visits to, 49, etc., 188, 200; Lord Rector, 187 et seq.; his rectorial address at, 143, 187, 193; he acquires priory-buildings at, 200; his re-election at, 206, 207; proposed restoration of cathedral at, 267 [Transcriber's note: no such page exists in the source book]

Scottish Review, the, Bute's connection with, 21, note; acquired by him, 129; his articles in, 130, 136 et seq.; proposed transference to London of, 139; Bute's contributions to, 143

Vatican Council, the, 86; opened by Pius IX., ibid.; prorogued, 91, note; decree of the, 90, 91

Victoria, Queen, golden jubilee of, 135, 172; diamond jubilee of, 210; address of Rothesay corporation, to, 211

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900), a Memoir

John, third Marquess of Bute, with his Mother aet 9 from a picture at Mount Stuart

PREFACE