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 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 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.
1847, Birth at Mountstuart
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 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 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."
1859, Death of Lady Bute
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 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 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]]
The Marquess of Bute æt 2
from a drawing by R. T. Ross at Cardiff Castle
1859, Rival guardians
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!
DEAR GENERAL STUART,
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 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 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.
1861, Lords' decision
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 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.'"
1861, At Galloway House
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, 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, 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 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 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 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.
1861, First school report
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.
May Place, Malvern Wells,
July 14, 1861.
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.
1861, At May Place
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 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 the study took up a blank report that lay on the table, and filled it up as follows[[6]]:—
MONTHLY REPORT OF THE MARQUESS OF BUTE.
LATIN CONSTRUING . . . . . . Partially preserved.
LATIN WRITING . . . . . . . Ditto.
GREEK CONSTRUING . . . . . . Getting very bad from disuse.
GREEK WRITING . . . . . . . Ditto.
ARITHMETIC . . . . . . . . . Entirely abandoned.
HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . So-so.
GEOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . Improved by foreign travel.
DICTATION . . . . . . . . . Ditto by business letters.
FRENCH . . . . . . . . . . . Ditto by travelling.
DRAWING . . . . . . . . . . Grown rather rusty.
RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . Unhappily not to the taste
of the British public.
CONDUCT . . . . . . . . . . Not so bad as it is painted.
[[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.
[[5]] Hon. Fitzroy Stewart (died 1914). He was at this time just five years old.
[[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.