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vineyard at Castle Coch, near Cardiff, where it is to be hoped such wine will be produced that in future Hock will be superseded by Coch, and the unpronounceable vintages of the Rhine will yield to the unpronounceable vintages of the Taff.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.