B. is very tiresome indeed. The fact is, the man has lived more at Paris than has been good for him, and looks on anybody taking any interest in religion as a folly to be apologised for. This is a state of mind which will appear as strange and shocking in this country as it would in his own. I told him therefore that I thought I must "cook" his most free-thinking paragraphs, and he assented. Now he insists on having it all scepticised. I suppose that I must do as he wishes, and leave him—and ourselves—to the fate that may befall us. I fear, however, he won't be redeemed even by being sandwiched in between the Unknowable in front and the miracles of St. Magnus behind. There is, however, just the hope that the country ministers who do the notices won't see what he's driving at.
Bute's view about the application of the term "British" to his countrymen is expressed in a note referring to an article written for the number of January, 1887, by Amin Nassif, a Syrian protégé of his, translated from the Arabic by Professor Robertson, and prefaced by a rather mysterious foreword, apparently from Bute's pen.
I would not call Nassif's article "Egypt under the British," but "Egypt under the English invasion."[[12]] I dislike the word "British," which really only means Cymro-Celtic. It has a tendency to confound us with the English, and to obscure to the popular mind the extent to which our forefathers in 1706 tried to make us a mere English province.[[13]] To every one their due: to the Westminster Parliament that of the bombardment of Alexandria and the rest of it.
The appearance of the first number of the Review published subsequent to Bute assuming control of the periodical is referred to with some complacency, in a letter written from Mountstuart on April 16, 1887:
It seems to me the best number of the S.R. that I have ever seen. But as I have had more to do with it than with any other, I probably see it with prejudiced eyes. The first newspaper notice or two will display it in its true light, in the same way that the impressions of Molière's housekeeper on his literary efforts were a precursor of those of his public audiences.
The "first newspaper notice" which came to hand, that in the Ayr Observer, evoked a comment which seemed to show that Bute was not then so hardened as he afterwards became to the depreciatory remarks of "irresponsible reviewers."
May 9, 1887.
The Ayr Observer man had clearly not even glanced at any of the articles except the first and one other (to which he was attracted by my name as of local interest). He seems to believe the word "Byzantine," now seen by him for the first time, to be a synonym for "German" or "Russian." As none of the sentences parse, I conceive that the notice was written in the small hours (from a dogged determination not to go to bed without getting it done), after separating from some scene freely enlivened by alcoholic stimulants.
1887, A London garden party
A long letter to the editor written on June 18, 1887, contains, inter alia, lamentations on the writer's "hard fate" at having to return to London in mid-summer, and attend, incidentally, a crowded garden party there.