Bute's keen and practical interest in educational matters, and especially in the promotion of higher studies throughout the country, had naturally brought him into relation, at different times of his life, with several of the national universities. With Oxford, since his student days there at the most memorable crisis in his life, he had little subsequent connection. He refers occasionally in his letters to the disadvantage which he had suffered from having been prevented by circumstances from taking his degree; and Oxford never saw fit to honour him, or herself, by conferring on him an honorary degree in recognition of his services to learning and scholarship. He never, however, lost his interest in his original Alma Mater; and nothing gave him greater pleasure, during the closing years of his life, than the news of the removal of the restrictions which had hitherto prevented Roman Catholic students from frequenting the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A friend, head of one of the Oxford Halls, was visiting him in London some time subsequently, and informed him that there were already, in consequence of this change of policy, more than seventy Catholic undergraduates in residence at that university. Bute, who was at that time quite an invalid, raised himself on his couch, and said with the quiet emphasis with which he always spoke when strongly moved: "I wish there were seven hundred." He only visited Oxford once or twice after his marriage, but his continued affection for it was evinced in many ways; and the Catholic church and mission there, as in so many places, benefited by his munificence.[[4]]
The establishment of a University College at Cardiff was to Bute naturally a matter of great interest, of which he gave many practical proofs. He accepted the presidency of the institution in 1890, when he contributed generously to the foundation of a chair of engineering; and six years later he gave a special donation of £10,000 to the funds. Besides his inaugural address, he gave another, in 1891, to the pupils of the science and art schools. His many gifts to the college included a complete set of the valuable Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists; and he was particularly gratified by the very appreciative acknowledgment of this present which he received from the librarian. Bute proposed Mr. Gladstone as the first Chancellor of the University of Wales. Although profoundly opposed to some of the political views of that statesman, he had an admiration for his character and attainments; and he looked on it as a special honour, some years later, to receive the Honorary Doctorate of St. Andrews on the same occasion as the veteran Liberal leader.
1892, Honorary Doctorates
The first of the Scottish universities with which Bute found himself practically connected was that of Glasgow, to which he presented in 1877 the noble hall, for graduation and other ceremonies, since known as the Bute Hall. Two years later, in recognition of this splendid gift, which is said to have cost him nearly £50,000, the Honorary Doctorate of Laws was bestowed on him by the university. He received the same honour from Edinburgh in 1882, and from St. Andrews in 1893, the first year of his rectorship. In 1883 he was invited to stand for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University, being nominated in the Conservative interest against Mr. Fawcett as the Liberal candidate. John Ruskin was also nominated. A regrettable element of religious animus was introduced into the contest, but the leading Glasgow journal warmly supported Bute. Mr. Fawcett was elected, the figures being—Fawcett 796, Bute 690, Ruskin 329.
By his appointment in 1889 as a member of the Scottish Universities Commission, Bute came, of course, into intimate relation with the affairs of all the four universities. He was an active member of the Commission, attending its meetings regularly, and giving much time and attention to the important questions which came up for discussion and solution. But as a member of a mixed body of this kind, of which some—and these not the least distinguished—were sure to hold, and to express, views sharply conflicting with his own, Bute was not, it must be frankly said, at his best or happiest. The candid biographer must admit that, with all his admirable qualities, he was not of a temperament that could easily or patiently brook opposition to his matured views. The absolute impartiality and freedom from prejudice with which, as we have seen, he approached the consideration of any subject, literary or other, on which he had to form an opinion, made him, perhaps not unnaturally, all the more tenacious of that opinion when once formed. "I know no one," remarked one of his friends and admirers, "to whom the description of Horace, Justum et tenacem propositi virum, could be applied with greater truth"; and the tribute was a deserved one. But he did not always find it easy to realise that the views of those opposed to him might be as considered and as conscientious as his own; and he was, perhaps, too apt to regard their opposition in the light of personal hostility to himself. "It might, I think, have been observed," he wisely says in one of his university addresses, with reference to Peter de Luna's disputed claim to the Papacy, "that where so many learned and able persons were divided in opinion, a difference of judgment from one side or the other did not necessarily imply moral obliquity." It is not suggested that Bute imputed "moral obliquity" to those who differed from him either on the Universities Commission, or afterwards in the vexed questions which he had to encounter at St. Andrews. But that he resented their action, and in some cases even with a certain bitterness, is clear from many passages of his correspondence; and this feeling was in one instance sufficiently acute to interrupt and suspend a friendship which had lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, though it is pleasant to add that the breach was entirely healed, and cordial relations resumed, long before his death.
1892, Rectorial address
Bute's election to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews took place on November 24, 1892. "I had great difficulty in accepting," he wrote to his friend Dr. Metcalfe, "because I had already declined Glasgow[[5]] on the grounds of want of unanimity and probable inability to fulfil the duties, and only accepted St. Andrews on an assurance of unanimity, and that the duties are almost nominal." The latter hope was disproved by the event; but whether light or heavy, Bute entered on the duties of his office with his usual conscientious resolve to fulfil them all to the utmost of his ability,[[6]] and for the benefit of the ancient seat of Scottish learning which he had loved and venerated from his earliest years. He alluded in his inaugural address, with charming simplicity, to these childish memories, "associated with that of the only parent whom I ever knew, and with those of friends of hers, nearly all of whom are now passed away":
I dimly recall the old garden of St. Leonard's and a variety of mechanical toys working by wind and water, with which Sir Hugh Playfair had adorned it. I remember gazing from St. Andrews at the great comet which there was about the time of the Indian Mutiny; and when we were living in the Principal of St. Mary's House, my kinsman, Charles MacLean,[[7]] came home wounded from India and stayed with us, and with his maimed hand gave me some elementary lessons in fortification, with wet sand in a box. I find in my diary, under date of July 20, 1889: "To St. Andrews ... saw the last of the old garden of St. Mary's College, where I used to play (and eat unripe pears) as a child: they are going to build the library extension over it." Well, I can only hope that the fruits of the tree of knowledge, to the cultivation of which that spot is now dedicated, may prove less crude and more wholesome than the grosser dainties, to the attractions of which I there formerly yielded.
It was an undoubted satisfaction to the new Lord Rector to be able to nominate, as he did in the month following his own election, to the office of his assessor his old friend and fellow-worker on the Scottish Review. He gives his reasons, with his usual clearness, in a letter addressed to Dr. Metcalfe himself:
I have come to the conclusion to nominate you, because you are a man of public position versed in these matters—you are (if you will allow me to say so) on most friendly and even intimate terms with me for years past—we are, I believe, after many conversations with you, quite at one upon University questions—and you are almost bound to be persona grata, having quite recently received the Honorary Doctorate of the University. Besides which, I think that an outside expert is better adapted to see questions fairly than somebody who is necessarily inside some local groove.