Mountstuart,
April 27, 1873.
We are really coming south for a little, after a peaceful sojourn here of many months; and I hope for an opportunity of seeing you. I am not forgetful, and it will be a great pleasure. There is not much to bring me to Oxford now, as except yourself and very few others I have no friends there now, and I have not the footing I should have had if I had taken my degree. One day, however, I am to come, and my wife is to be "lionised" by old Mr. Parker, between whom and me archæology has formed ties. I have also business with the erudite Jesuit Fr. MacSweeney,[[11]] who has just been sent there. Most of my Oxford friends are married and changed and away—and I suppose I am very much changed myself. I fear I am not less indolent than I was, and my life is devoid of stirring incidents. My luxury is art, and perhaps the favourite pursuit Antiquarianism, as History is the favourite reading. I study, too, a little science. I wish I were better as regards devotion—I want stirring up in that; but my associations of that kind are so much with the South, and so difficult to adapt (though I know I ought to try to adapt them) to the environment in which one has to live. We are both, however, looking forward to a Mediterranean trip next winter.
The projected visit to Oxford—Bute's first since his change of religion five years previously—duly came off, and he thus refers to it:
To "do" Oxford in a day is suggestive of the American tourists who "do" Rome in three; but my wife saw the most noteworthy things under the skilled guidance of old Parker, whom I fear we unduly fatigued. You may imagine the feelings and memories that came over me as I led my young wife through Christ Church. It is difficult to estimate exactly what I owe to Oxford, but the debt is a heavy one.... Materially the place seemed to me very little changed. The newest thing I noticed was St. Barnabas's, which impressed me. Only I wish they'd had the courage to Romanise it enough to put the Altar so—
Apropos of Americans "doing" Italy, Story told me that Gibson, the American sculptor, once met and talked with a countryman of his, who was "doing" Italy in some incredibly short space of time. "Yes, I guess I have been nearly everywhere," he said (the conversation took place in a North Italian railway-carriage), "and one place that struck me very much was—I can't remember the name, but it begins with R." Gibson suggested Ravenna, Reggio, Recanati, and other names. "No, no, it was a shorter name than any of those: there was a big church with a dome, and a colonnade and fountains in front." "Good heavens! you surely don't mean Rome?" said Gibson, aghast. "Yes, that was it—Rome. I knew it was a short name, but I couldn't recall it for the moment." This is a fact, as newspapers sometimes say after telling a more than usually unbelievable story.
1873, A winter in Majorca
The second winter after his marriage Bute had the pleasure of spending in the south which he loved so well, and in more congenial and sympathetic company than he had always secured for his bachelor journeyings, even those which in some degree partook of the nature of a pilgrimage. "Our plan," he wrote on November 6, 1873, "is to dawdle through France and winter by the Mediterranean—we have been thinking of the Island of Majorca." The project was successfully carried out, and we see, from a letter written early in the following spring to the same friend, how much quiet enjoyment he was deriving from the rest and sunshine which he found in the Balearic Isles. The latter part of the letter refers to the recent death of his first cousin Edith Countess of Loudoun, who, it will be remembered, had been one of the party that accompanied him to the Holy Land a few weeks after his reception into the Roman Church.
Bendinat,
Palma, Mallorca,
February 24, 1874.