I imagined that, the duties being light and the remuneration (I venture to think) adequate, a chaplain could easily be found; but the difficulties seem endless. Whether the cause be chronic ill-health, constitutional indolence, or an entire want of interest in the Liturgy, I know not; but so far no priest has been found in England or Scotland able or willing to celebrate the daily sung Mass. Kindly set on foot inquiries among the unattached clergy of Rome, popularly known as preti di piazza—many of them, I believe, estimable priests, unoccupied through no fault of their own—and see if one can be found to supply our needs. Unexceptionable references would be, of course, required.
This and other difficulties were in time overcome, and the daily choral office was duly carried out for a period extending over several years, and was much appreciated by the numerous Catholic visitors who frequented Oban during the summer and autumn. Unfortunately it was not found possible to continue the daily services for any long time after the death of the founder.
Bute expressed, with his usual frankness, his sentiments on the subject of the rather nondescript festivals commonly known as "church openings":
Chiswick House,
April 17, 1886.
I am suffering much at present from the persistent wish of my Lord of Argyll to have what he calls an "opening" of the tin temple[[14]] in August—i.e. during the tourist and shooting season. This anomalous celebration is not designed in honour of the inauguration for public worship, which was last Sunday; nor its ecclesiastical blessing, which is arranged for an earlier date, nor the inception of the Divine office—but something in the nature of the "opening" of the Westminster Aquarium, a new Dissenting Chapel, municipal washhouses, or a fancy fair, with (I presume) tickets, placards, and posters, and probably excursion-trains. The bishop seems moved by a conviction that the local Protestants are anticipating a junketing of this kind with even more eagerness than the Catholics. But he is a gentleman; and I am sure when he knows how I hate the whole thing he will give it up.
1886, Church building in Scotland
Besides the pro-cathedral at Oban, Bute was interesting himself this year (1886) in building a church at a mining town in Ayrshire, near Loudoun Castle, the ancestral home of his mother's family. Discarding, as usual, conventional ideas, he chose for his model the great church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, of which the church at Galston was a carefully-executed miniature copy. One of the first solemn services held in it was a Requiem Mass celebrated for Lord Loudoun's sister, Flora Duchess of Norfolk, who died on April 11, 1887. Lord and Lady Bute attended her funeral at Arundel, and also that of Clara Lady Howard of Glossop, Lady Bute's sister-in-law, whose death occurred a few days later.
[[1]] "The Earliest Scottish Coronations": "The Coronation of Charles I. at Holyrood"; "The Coronation of Charles II. at Scone." These appeared in the Review, 1887-1888, and were reprinted, with an additional article and an Appendix, in 1902, after Bute's death.
[[2]] "Giordano Bruno before the Venetian Inquisition" (July, 1888): "The Ultimate Fate of Giordano Bruno" (October, 1888).
[[3]] In his first trial (at Venice) Bruno tried to defend himself on the principle of "two-fold truth," maintaining that he had held and taught the errors imputed to him "as a philosopher, and not as an honest Christian."