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 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.
CASTELL COCH, GLAMORGAN
1875, The Cardiff vintage
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 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; 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.
1875, Order of the Thistle
The year 1875 was marked for Bute by an incident which gratified him not a little, namely, the 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 by no means uncommon fifty years ago. Bute wrote as to this to an intimate friend:
Jan. 10, 1876.
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.
1877, Burning of Mountstuart
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 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 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.
1877, Bute as a landowner
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 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.
Mountstuart,
August 28, 1877.
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.
So you see I have lots of work in hand.
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 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 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]]
1882, The Scottish Review
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.
Dumfries House,
October 10, 1882.
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.
1883, Contributions to the Scottish Review
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 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 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.
1886, A troublesome Greek
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.
Sept. 14, 1886.
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.
December 11, 1886.
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 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."
May 9, 1887.
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 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.
1887, A London garden party
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.
THE GREAT HALL, MOUNTSTUART
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 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.
[[17]] Dr. Skene's article did not, as a matter of fact, appear in the Review.