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 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]]
Mountstuart,
September 23, 1872.
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.
1873, Oxford revisited
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.