By a strange coincidence, General Stuart himself died two days later. The death of Colonel J. B. Crichton Stuart, Bute's former tutor-at-law, had occurred in the previous year; and the Lord-Lieutenancy of Buteshire, which he had held since 1859, was in due course offered to Bute and accepted by him. He performed all the duties pertaining to the office with the scrupulous conscientiousness which characterised him; and he told a friend, some time afterwards, that he had been particularly gratified by the Lord Chancellor expressing his approbation of the care which he (Bute) had exercised in the recommendation of persons for the commission of peace in his titular county.
1892, Benefactions to South Wales
In September, 1892, Bute attended the meeting of the National Eisteddfod, and delivered an address with which he was himself extremely dissatisfied, though it is only fair to say that on such occasions he was the severest critic of his own orations, with which his audiences appeared well content. He had always been warmly interested in the Eisteddfodan, had subscribed liberally to their funds, and had presided and given an address at a previous meeting held at Cardiff in 1882. He also gave generous assistance to the Cymrodorion Society for its publication of Welsh Records, and enabled the Cardiff Library, by his subscription of £1000, to acquire the valuable MSS. which had belonged to Sir Thomas Phillips. Nor was it only the cause of learning which he assisted by his judicious benefactions. Every scheme set on foot for the benefit of the districts with which he was connected found in him a generous supporter. To King Edward VII.'s Hospital (then the Glamorgan and Monmouthshire Infirmary) he gave a site for the new building worth some £5000, having before this paid off the debt on the institution. For many years he maintained entirely a cottage hospital at Aberdare; he gave a large donation to the building fund of the Merthyr Hospital, and a still larger one to the Seamen's Hospital at Cardiff, and contributed liberally both to the "Rest" at Porthcawl, and to the Miners' Relief Fund for Monmouthshire and South Wales.
Unostentatious as were his innumerable charities, it is right that these things (which include his benefactions in South Wales alone) should be recorded. Bute's name was known in his lifetime, and has been handed down to posterity, as that of a munificent patron of scholarship and learning, of science and architecture and art. He richly deserves this tribute; but it is not to be forgotten that he was also a wise, discriminating,[[3]] and most generous benefactor of a score of institutions designed only for the relief of the distressed, the needy, and the suffering. Every one knew him to be a scholar, and a friend and patron of scholars, but it was only his innermost circle of friends, and the countless beneficiaries of his far-reaching generosity, who knew how truly, how continually, his heart was open to the calls of mercy and of charity.
Bute never hesitated about expressing his opinion of men whom the world called famous, but whose claim to any such distinction he failed to recognise. Writing of Lord Randolph Churchill, whom he had met at luncheon in September, 1892, he says:
He seemed to me ill-informed, ill-mannered, and stupid. I used to know him slightly at Oxford, and thought little of him there. I wonder whether his wife writes his speeches.
His notes on Royalties are, on occasion, quite as frank as on any one else. After attending the Lord Mayor's dinner in October, 1892, he wrote:
The Maharajah of Baroda (it is a mere ignorant vulgarism to call him "the Gaikwar") spoke, I found, much better English than the Duke of ——. The latter went off home from the Lady Mayoress's boudoir, whither we men were taken to smoke, without returning to the drawing-room to wish her good-night.
1892, Relations with Universities
The closing weeks of 1892 were marked by an event which brought Bute into intimate connection with the oldest of the four Scottish Universities, namely, his unanimous election as Lord Rector of St. Andrews. The honour was one which he very greatly appreciated, and the duties of the office would have been not only extremely interesting, but altogether congenial to him, had he not been involved by the peculiar circumstances of the time in a series of highly contentious questions, which, in his somewhat enfeebled state of health, caused him for a period of time extending over several years considerable trouble and anxiety.