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 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.
1870, Foundations at Cardiff
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, 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.
Always yours most sincerely,
BUTE.
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.
Mountstuart,
Rothesay,
October 26, 1870.