[[13]] Notes from a Diary (1873-1881), vol. ii. p. 101.
CHAPTER X
FREEDOM OF GLASGOW—BENEFACTIONS TO WALES—
LORD RECTOR OF ST. ANDREWS
1891-1894
An incident which gave Bute sincere pleasure, during the year of his mayoralty of Cardiff, was the presentation to him of the freedom of the city of Glasgow, which took place on October 7, 1891. The honour was conferred on him, according to the burgess-ticket which he received, "in recognition of the distinguished services he has rendered to Scotland, by erecting and gifting[[1]] to Glasgow the Bute Hall, by his personal contributions to literature, and by the warm sympathy he has ever shown in whatever is fitted to promote the interests of art and science."
Bute replied to the presentation in a speech which he himself described in anticipation as "maddeningly dull," but which was nevertheless very well received; and on the same day he performed the opening ceremony of the new Mitchell Library, delivering an address which he thought, in contrast with the other, appeared "almost lively, with a tendency even to flippancy." It was not his first public appearance in Glasgow; for some time before this he had made an oration at the opening of the new Jesuit College of St. Aloysius, and had warmly congratulated Scottish Catholics on taking another step in the resumption of a tradition which identified higher culture with the Catholic Church.[[2]]
Cherishing as he did, to the end of his life, feelings of grateful affection towards all those who had shown him kindness during his somewhat solitary childhood, Bute was sincerely grieved to hear, in the autumn of 1892, of the death of Lady Elizabeth Moore, one of his earliest and most devoted friends. The temporary estrangement between them caused by his change of religion had long passed away; and only nine days before her death, on the occasion of her eighty-eighth birthday, his daughter had written to her a letter of good wishes which Lord and Lady Bute and all their children signed. He wrote thus feelingly of this loss:
Of her affection for me, and mine for her, I cannot speak too strongly. It is an event which finally cuts me off (till my own death) from the generation to which my mother belonged, and in which I was born.... A great friend of my mother's, and a second mother to me; and I am ever grateful to her for her defence of me against General Stuart and others in 1860.