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 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.
1869, Launching a newspaper
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 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 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.
1869, Papal infallibility
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 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: