John, third Marquess of Bute, with his Mother aet 9
from a picture at Mount Stuart

JOHN PATRICK

THIRD MARQUESS OF
BUTE, K.T.

(1847-1900)

A MEMOIR

BY

THE RIGHT REV. SIR DAVID HUNTER BLAIR

BT., O.S.B.

AUTHOR OF "A MEDLEY Of MEMORIES," ETC.

WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1921

All rights reserved

TO THE MEMORY
OF MY FRIEND

PREFACE

Just twenty years have passed away since the death, at the age of little more than fifty, of the subject of this memoir—a period of time not indeed inconsiderable, yet not so long as to render unreasonable the hope that others besides the members of his family (who have long desired that there should be some printed record of his life), and the sadly diminished numbers of his intimate friends, may be interested in learning something of the personality and the career of a man who may justly be regarded as one of the not least remarkable, if one of the least known, figures of the closing years of the nineteenth century.

Disraeli, when he published fifty years ago his most popular romance, thought fit to place on the title-page a motto from old Terence: "Nosse omnia haec salus est adulescentulis."[[1]] Was he really of opinion—it is difficult to credit it—that the welfare of the youth of his generation depended on their familiarising themselves with the wholly imaginary life-story of "Lothair"? the romantic, sentimental, and somewhat invertebrate youth who owed such fame as he achieved to the fact that he was popularly supposed to be modelled on the young Lord Bute—though never, in truth, did any hero of fiction bear less resemblance to his fancied prototype.

The present biographer ventures to think that the motto of Lothair might with greater propriety figure on the title-page of this volume. For there is at least one feature in the life of John third Marquess of Bute which teaches a salutary lesson and points an undoubted moral to a pleasure-loving generation, such a lesson and moral as it would be vain to look for in the puppet of Disraeli's Oriental fancy. If there is any characteristic which stands out in that life more saliently than another, it is surely the strong and compelling sense of duty—a sense, it is to be noticed, acquired rather than congenital, for Bute was by nature and constitution, as an acute observer early remarked,[[2]] inclined to indolence—which runs all through it like a silver thread. Other traits, and marked ones, he no doubt possessed—among them a penetrating sense of religion, a curious tenderness of heart, a singular tenacity of purpose, and a deep veneration for all that is good and beautiful in the natural and supernatural world; but these were for the most part below the surface, though the pages of this record are not without evidence of them all. But in the whole external conduct of his life it may be said that the desire of doing his duty was paramount with him—his duty to God and to man; his duty, above all, to the innumerable human beings whose happiness and welfare his great position and manifold responsibilities rendered to some extent dependent on him; and, finally, his duty in such public offices as he was called on to fill, and from which his diffidence of character and aversion from anything like personal display would have naturally inclined him to shrink. If the writer has succeeded in presenting in these pages something of this aspect of the life and character of his departed friend with anything like the vividness with which, at the end of twenty years, they still remain impressed on his own memory, he will be well content.

"The true life of a man," wrote John Henry Newman nearly sixty years ago,[[3]] "is in his letters"; and no apology is needed for the inclusion in this volume of some, at least, of the large number of Lord Bute's letters which have been placed at the disposal of his biographer, and for the use of which he takes this opportunity of thanking the several owners. Bute possessed in a high degree the essential qualities of a good letter-writer—a remarkable command of language, the power of clear and forcible expression, and (not least) a salutary sense of humour; and his voluminous correspondence, especially in connection with his literary work, was always and thoroughly characteristic of himself.

The writer desires, in conclusion, to express his gratitude not only for the loan of Lord Bute's letters, but for the kind help he has received from many quarters in the elucidation (especially) of details regarding his childhood and youth. In this connection his thanks are particularly due to the late Earl of Galloway and his sisters for their interesting reminiscences of Bute's boyhood at Galloway House; and also to the family of the late Mr. Charles Scott Murray for some particulars of his life during the critical years of his early manhood.

+ DAVID OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR, O.S.B.
CHRISTMAS, 1920.

[[1]] "It is for the profit of young men to have known all these things." Terence, Eunuchus, v. 4, 18.

[[2]] Mgr. Capel. Post, p. [75]. See also p. [111].

[[3]] "It has ever been a hobby of mine, though perhaps it is a truism, not a hobby, that the true life of a man is in his letters.... Not only for the interest of a biography, but for the arriving at the insides of things, the publication of letters is the true method. Biographers varnish, they conjecture feelings, they assign motives, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods; but contemporary letters are facts." (Newman to his sister, Mrs. John Mozley, May 18, 1863.)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. EARLY LIFE. (1847-1861) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [1] II. HARROW AND CHRIST CHURCH. (1862-1866) . . . . . . . . . [18] III. RELIGIOUS INQUIRIES--RECEPTION POSTPONED--COMING
OF AGE. (1867, 1868) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [39] IV. DANESFIELD--RECEPTION INTO CATHOLIC CHURCH. (1867-1869) [60] V. THE WESTERN MAIL--ROME AND THE COUNCIL--RETURN
TO SCOTLAND. (1869-1871) . . . . . . . . . . . . . [83] VI. MARRIAGE--HOME AND FAMILY LIFE--VISIT TO
MAJORCA. (1871-1874) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [102] VII. LITERARY WORK--THE SCOTTISH REVIEW. (1875-1886) . . . . [117] VIII. LITERARY WORK--continued. (1886, 1887) . . . . . . . . [137] IX. FOREIGN TRAVEL--ST. JOHN'S LODGE--MAYOR OF
CARDIFF. (1888-1891) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [156] X. FREEDOM OF GLASGOW--WELSH BENEFACTIONS--ST. ANDREWS.
(1891-1894) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [179] XI. NOTES AND ANECDOTES--ST. ANDREWS (2)--PROVOST
OF ROTHESAY. (1894-1897) . . . . . . . . . . . . . [198] XII. ARCHITECTURAL WORK--PSYCHICAL RESEARCH--CONCLUSION.
(1898-1900) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [215]
APPENDICES
I. PRIZE POEM (HARROW SCHOOL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [231] II. HYMN ON ST. MAGNUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [236] III. HYMN: "OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS" . . . . . . . . . . . . . [238] IV. A PROVOST'S PRAYER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [240] V. RECOLLECTIONS. BY SIR R. ROWAND ANDERSON . . . . . . . [241] VI. OBITUARY. BY F. W. H. MYERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . [245] VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [247]
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [249]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

JOHN, THIRD MARQUESS OF BUTE ÆT 9, WITH HIS MOTHER [Frontispiece]
From a Painting by Mountstuart. Photo by F. C. Inglis, Edinburgh.
FACING PAGE
THE MARQUESS OF BUTE, ÆT 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [6] From a Pencil Drawing by Ross at Cardiff Castle. This
Drawing, executed for Lord Bute's great-grand-aunt (then
aged 92), daughter of the third Earl, George III's Prime
Minister, was left by her to her niece. Lady Ann Damson,
whose great-niece, Mrs. Clark of Tal-y-Garn, gave it in
1906 to Augusta, wife of John, fourth Marquess of Bute.
THE MARQUESS OF BUTE, ÆT 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [28]
THE COMMUNION OF ST. MARGARET, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND . . . . . . . [48]
CARDIFF CASTLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [56]
CASTELL COCH, GLAMORGAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [118]
THE GREAT HALL, MOUNTSTUART . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [134] Photo by Sweet, Rothesay.
FALKLAND PALACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [152] Photo by Valentine, Dundee.
FACSIMILE LETTER FROM THE MARQUESS OF BUTE TO MISS SKENE . . . [174]
THE MARQUESS OF BUTE AS MAYOR OF CARDIFF . . . . . . . . . . . [176]
THE MARQUESS OF BUTE AS LORD RECTOR OF ST. ANDREWS
UNIVERSITY. (1892-1897) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [202] Photo by Rodger, St. Andrews.
PLUSCARDEN PRIORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [216]

JOHN PATRICK

THIRD MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T.

(1847-1900)

CHAPTER I

EARLY LIFE

1847-1861

John Patrick, third Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, Mountjoy and Dumfries, holder of nine other titles in the peerages of Great Britain and of Scotland, and a baronet of Nova Scotia, was fifteenth in descent from Robert II., King of Scotland, who, towards the end of the fourteenth century, created his son John Stuart, or Steuart, hereditary sheriff of the newly-erected county of Bute, Arran and Cumbrae, making to him at the same time a grant of land in those islands. His lineal descendant, the sixth sheriff of Bute, who adhered faithfully to the monarchy in the Civil Wars, and suffered considerably in the royal cause, was created a baronet in 1627; and his grandson, a stalwart opponent of the union of Scotland with England, was raised to the peerage of Scotland as Earl of Bute, with several subsidiary titles, in 1702. Lord Bute's grandson, the third earl, was the well-known Tory minister and favourite of the young king, George III., and his mother—a faithful servant of his sovereign, a man of culture and refinement, admirable as husband, father, and friend, and withal, by the irony of fate, unquestionably the most unpopular prime minister who ever held office in England. His heir and successor made a great match, marrying in 1766 the eldest daughter and co-heiress of the second and last Viscount Windsor; and thirty years later he was created Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, and Viscount Mount joy. Lord Mountstuart, his heir, who predeceased his father, married Penelope, only surviving child and heiress of the fifth Earl of Dumfries and Stair; and the former of those titles devolved on his son, together with valuable estates in Ayrshire. The second marquess, who succeeded to the family honours the year before Waterloo, when he was just of age (he had already travelled extensively, and had paid a visit to Napoleon at Elba), earned the reputation of being one of the most enlightened and public-spirited noblemen of his generation. During the thirty-four years that he owned and controlled the vast family estates in Wales and Scotland, he devoted his whole energies to their improvement, and to promoting the welfare of his tenantry and dependents. His practical interest in agriculture was evinced by the fact that the arable land on his Buteshire property was trebled during his tenure of it; and foreseeing with remarkable prescience the great future in store for the port and docks of Cardiff, he spared neither labour nor means in their development. He was Lord-Lieutenant both of Glamorgan and of Bute, and discharged with tact and success the office of Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland in 1842, on the eve of the ecclesiastical crisis which ended in the secession of more than 400 ministers of the Establishment. His political opinions were in the best sense liberal, and he was a consistent advocate of Catholic Emancipation, even when that measure was opposed by the Duke of Wellington, whom he generally supported. A few hours before his death, which occurred at Cardiff Castle with startling suddenness in March, 1848, he had expressed the confident hope that his successor, if not he himself, would live to see Cardiff rival Liverpool as a great commercial seaport.

1847, Birth at Mountstuart

Lord Bute was twice married—first to Lady Maria North, of the Guilford family, by whom he had no issue; and secondly, three years before his death, to Lady Sophia Hastings, second daughter of the first Marquess of Hastings. By this lady, who survived him eleven years, he had one child, John Patrick, the subject of this memoir, who was born on September 12, 1847, at Mountstuart House, the older mansion of that name in the Isle of Bute, which was burnt down in 1877 and replaced by the great Gothic pile designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson. Old Mountstuart was an unpretending eighteenth-century house, built by James, second Earl of Bute (1690-1723), a few years before his early death. It was the favourite residence of his son the third earl, George III.'s prime minister, who is commemorated by an obelisk in the grounds not far from the house. The wings at the two extremities escaped the fire, and are incorporated in the modern mansion.

Here, then, on the fair green island which had been the home of his race for nearly five centuries, opened the life of this child of many hopes, who within a year was by a cruel stroke of fate to be deprived of the guardianship and guidance of his amiable and excellent father. The second marquess died, as has been said, deeply regretted, in the spring following the birth of his heir; and the manifold honours and possessions of the family devolved upon a baby six months old. Up to his thirteenth year the fatherless boy was under the constant and unremitting care of a devoted mother, whose memory he cherished with veneration to the end of his life. Sophia Lady Bute was a woman of warm heart and deep personal piety, tinged, however, with an uncompromising Protestantism commoner in that day than in ours. One of her fondest hopes or dreams was the conversion to her own faith of the numerous Irish Catholics whom the development of the port of Cardiff, and the rapid growth of the mining industry, had attracted to South Wales; and the venerable Benedictine bishop who had at that time the spiritual charge of the district, and for whom Lord Bute had a sincere regard and respect, used to tell of the band of "colporteurs" (peripatetic purveyors of bibles and polemical tracts) whom the marchioness engaged to hawk their wares about the mining villages of Glamorgan.

Lord Bute's upbringing as a child was, by the force of circumstances, under entirely feminine influences and surroundings; and to this fact was probably to some extent due the strain of shyness and sensitive diffidence which were among his life-long characteristics. He seems to have been inclined sometimes to resent, even in his early boyhood, the strictness of the surveillance under which he lived. His mother once took him from Dumfries House to call at Blairquhan Castle, driving thither in a carriage and four, as her custom was. While the ladies were conversing in the drawing-room, a young married daughter of the house took the little boy out to see the gardens, ending with a call at the head gamekeeper's. A day or two afterwards the châtelaine of Blairquhan received a letter from Lady Bute, expressing her dismay, indignation, and distress at learning that her precious boy had actually been taken to the kennels, and exposed to the risk of contact with half a dozen pointers and setters. When reminded many years later of this incident (which he had quite forgotten), Lord Bute said, in his quiet way: "Yes, I was kept wrapped in cotton wool in those days, and I did not always like it. The dogs would not have hurt me, and I am sure that I made friends with them."

1859, Death of Lady Bute

Lady Bute died in 1859, leaving behind her, both in Scotland and in Wales, the memory of many deeds of kindness and benevolence. Her husband had made no provision whatever in his will for the guardianship of his only son, who had been constituted a ward in Chancery two months after his father's death, his mother being nominated by the Lord Chancellor his sole guardian. Lady Bute's will recommended the appointment as her son's guardian of Colonel (afterwards Major-General) Charles Stuart, Sir Francis Hastings Gilbert, and Lady Elizabeth Moore, who was distantly related to the Bute family through the Hastings', and had been one of Lady Bute's dearest friends. Sir Francis Gilbert being at this time absent from England in the consular service, the Court of Chancery appointed as guardians the two other persons named by Lady Bute.

It seems unnecessary to describe in detail the prolonged friction and regrettable litigation which were the result of this dual guardianship of the orphaned boy; yet they must be here referred to, for it is beyond question that they were not only detrimental to his happiness and welfare during his early boyhood, but could not fail seriously to affect the development of his character in later years. The child was deeply attached to Lady Elizabeth Moore, who had assumed the entire charge of him after his mother's death; and his letters written at this period give evidence not only of this attachment, but of his very strong reluctance to leave her for the care of General Stuart, who insisted that it was time that a boy of nearly thirteen should be removed from the exclusively female custody in which he had been kept from babyhood. Lady Elizabeth, yielding partly to her own feelings, and partly to the earnest and repeated solicitations of her young ward, was ill-advised enough, instead of committing him as desired to the care of her co-guardian, to carry him off surreptitiously to Scotland, and to keep him concealed for some time in an obscure hotel in the suburbs of Edinburgh. Here is the boy's own account of the affair, written from this hotel to a relation in India[[1]] (he was between twelve and thirteen years of age):—

I prayed, I entreated, I agonised, I abused the general; I adjured her not to give me up to him. She was shaken but not convinced. So we went to Newcastle, to York, and to London, where I got a bad cold, my two teeth were pulled, etc., etc. We were delayed some time there, and meanwhile my prayers and adjurations were trebled: Lady E. was convinced, and promised not to let me go. She got one of the solicitors to the Bank of England in the City to write a letter to Genl. S. for her, as civil as possible, but declining to give me up; to which the general returned a furious answer, conveying his determination to appeal to the Vice-Chancellor about the matter. After a month we became convinced that the Vice-Chancellor would decide against us; and on the night of April 16th Lady E. left the hotel secretly, and with her maid and me shot the moon to Edinburgh, where we arrived at 7 next morning.[[2]]

The Marquess of Bute æt 2
from a drawing by R. T. Ross at Cardiff Castle

1859, Rival guardians

For a boy of twelve this is a sufficiently remarkable letter; but an even more precocious document is a draft letter dated a fortnight before the flight to Edinburgh, and composed entirely by young Bute, who recommended Lady Elizabeth to copy it and send it to her co-guardian as from herself!

DEAR GENERAL STUART,

You will, I am afraid, be much surprised upon the reception of this letter, but I trust that your love for Bute will make you accede to the request which I am about to make. B. has lately had much sorrow, and he has formed an attachment to me only to have it broken by separation, and in order to go among entire strangers to him—for in that light, I am sorry to say, I must regard you and Mrs. Stuart. With your consent, then, dear Genl. Stuart, I shall be happy to keep him with me until he is 14, when he will of course choose for himself. We could live with good Mr. Stacey very nicely at Dumfries House or Mountstuart, and I could occasionally bring him to England—or indeed you could come to see him at Mountstuart. I trust, dear Gen. Stuart, you will be the more inclined to accede to my request when I tell you that he has expressed to me the greatest reluctance at parting from me and going to you—a repugnance which I can only regard as very natural, for I was much grieved to see that you did not follow my advice in walking with him and consulting him (and believe me without so doing you will never gain his affections), while I have always done so, as was his poor mother's invariable custom.[[3]]

It does not appear whether this letter, which is dated from 23 Dover Street, and is entirely in the boy's own handwriting, exactly as given above, was actually sent by Lady Elizabeth. In any case General Stuart was not the man to submit to the compulsory separation from his ward which resulted from what the House of Lords afterwards characterised as the "clandestine, furtive, and fraudulent action" of Lady Elizabeth Moore. He at once laid the case before the Court of Chancery, which directed that the boy was to be immediately handed over to his care, and sent without delay to an approved private school, and in due time to Eton or Harrow, and then to one of the English universities. Lady Elizabeth absolutely refused to comply with the order of the Court, and was consequently removed in July, 1860, from the office of guardian. Meanwhile the case was complicated by the intervention of the Scottish tutor-at-law, Colonel James Crichton Stuart, who had been since the death of Lord Bute's father manager and administrator of the family estates in Scotland. Colonel Stuart obtained from the Scottish Courts an order that the boy should be sent to Loretto, a well-known school near Edinburgh, and that the Earl of Galloway should be the "custodier" of his person. The Court of Chancery promptly issued an injunction forbidding the tutor-at-law to interfere in any way with the boy's education, whereupon both Colonel Stuart and the English guardian appealed to the House of Lords. That tribunal gave its judgment on May 17, 1861, censuring the Court of Session for its delay in dealing with this important matter, confirming General Stuart as sole guardian, and sanctioning his scheme for the boy's education.

1861, Lords' decision

The House of Lords, in giving the decision which brought this long litigation to a close, had raised no objection to the continued residence of the young peer with the Earl of Galloway, an arrangement which had already been approved by the Court of Chancery. Bute had, in fact, at the time the judgment was pronounced, been living for some months with Lord and Lady Galloway at their beautiful place on the Wigtownshire coast; and this was certainly, as it turned out, the most favourable and beneficial solution of the difficult question of providing a suitable and congenial home for one who, whilst the possessor of three or four splendid seats in England and Scotland, had yet, by a pathetic anomaly, never known what home life was since his mother's death in 1859. At Galloway House he found himself for the first time the inmate of a large and cheerful family circle, including several young people of about his own age. "I am comfortably established here," he wrote to Lady Elizabeth Moore soon after his arrival in December, 1860. "This house is like Dumfries House, but much prettier. I have a charming room, not at all lonely. Lord and Lady G. are so kind to me, and the little girls treat me like a brother." "They are all very very kind to me," he wrote a week or two later, adding in the same letter that he had on the previous day attended two services in Lord Galloway's private chapel. "It is very plain," was the comment of the thirteen-year-old critic; "but the chaplain's sermons were all about the saints and the Church. Do you know what he called the Communion? a 'commemorative sacrifice!' In a subsequent letter he says, "Mr. Wildman (the chaplain) says that Mary should be called the 'Holy Mother of God.'"

1861, At Galloway House

These new religious impressions, contrasting sharply as they must have done with the narrow Evangelical teaching of his early days, are of interest in connection with his first schoolmaster's report of him some six months later, which will be mentioned in its proper place. "He was very fond," writes one of his former playfellows at Galloway House in those far-off days, "of sketching with pen and pencil religious processions and ceremonies, and his thoughts seemed to be constantly turned on religion. He liked having religious discussions with our family chaplain, who was a clever and well-read man." "Our dear father and mother," writes another member of the same large family, "told us that we must be very kind to him, as he had lost both his parents and was almost alone in the world. I remember seeing him in the library on the night of his arrival—a tall, dark, good-looking boy, looking so shy and lonely, but with very nice manners." "I recollect him," says the son of a neighbouring laird, who was about two years his senior, and was often at Galloway House, "rather a pathetic figure among the swarm of joyous young things there, distinct among them from never seeming joyous himself." This was doubtless the impression which his extreme diffidence generally made on strangers; and it is the pleasanter to read the further testimony of the playfellow already quoted: "His shyness soon wore off when he got away from the elders to play with us, and he entered with zest into all our amusements. He was intensely earnest about everything he took up, whether serious things or games. He was greatly attached to our brother Walter,[[4]] whose bright, cheery nature appealed to him. Walter was always full of fun and spirits and mischief; and Bute was delighted at this, and soon joined in it all. I remember our old housekeeper, after some great escapade, saying, "Yes, and the young marquis was as bad as any of you!" One of his hobbies was collecting from the seashore the skulls and skeletons of rabbits, birds, etc. I spent much time on the cliffs and rocks looking for these things, of which we collected boxes full. With his curious psychic turn of mind he liked to conduct some kind of ceremonies over these remains after dark, inviting us children to take part, sometimes dressed in white sheets. He loved legends of all kinds, and used often to tell them to us: I was very fond of hearing him, he told them so well. History, too, especially Scottish history, he liked very much. He wrote a delightful little history of Scotland for my youngest brother,[[5]] of whom he was very fond—a tiny boy then. It was all written in capital letters, with delightful and clever pen-and-ink sketches, one on every page."

These recollections of happy home life in a Scottish country house, nearly sixty years ago, call up a pretty picture of the orphan boy, whose childhood had been so strangely lonely and isolated, contented and at home in this charming family circle. That he was truly so is further testified by letters that passed about this time between him and his tutor-at-law, Colonel Crichton Stuart. In reply to a letter from Colonel Stuart, expressing a desire to hear from Bute himself whether he was comfortably settled at Galloway House, the boy wrote: "In answer to your request, I write to confirm Mr. A.'s statement regarding my happiness here. Lord and Lady Galloway did indeed receive me as a child of their own, which I felt deeply."

That these words were a sincere expression of the young writer's sentiments there is no reason to doubt; but thoughtful and advanced as he was in some ways for his years, he was too young to realise then—-possibly he did later on, though he very seldom spoke of his boyhood's days—how much more he owed to the Galloway family than mere kindness. It seemed, indeed, a special providence which had brought the orphaned marquis at this critical moment under influence so salutary and so much needed as that of the admirable and excellent family which had welcomed him to their beautiful home as one of themselves. The numerous letters written by Bute at this period, of which many have been preserved, are marked indeed by propriety of expression and a command of language remarkable in a boy of his age; but they also reveal very clearly a self-centred view of life even more extraordinary in so young a boy, and due, it cannot be doubted, to the singularity of his upbringing. Surrounded from babyhood by a circle of adoring females, in whose eyes the fatherless infant was the most precious and priceless thing on earth, he had grown up to boyhood penetrated, no doubt almost unconsciously, with an exaggerated and overweening sense of his own importance in the scale of creation, to which the wholesome influence of Galloway House provided the best possible corrective. Distinguished, high-principled, exemplary in every relation of life, Lord and Lady Galloway held up to their children, by precept and example, a constant ideal of duty, unselfishness and simplicity of life; and the young stranger within their gates was fortunate in being able to profit by that teaching. If his future life was to be marked by generous impulses and noble ambitions—if one of his most notable characteristics was to be a personal simplicity of taste and an utter antipathy to that ostentation which is not always dissociated from high rank and almost unbounded wealth—if he was to realise something of the supreme joy and satisfaction of working for others rather than for oneself; for all this he owed a debt of gratitude (can it be doubted?) to the kindly and gracious influences which were brought to bear on his sensitive nature during these years of his boyhood. He was received at Galloway House as a child of the family; and his companions spoke their minds to him with fraternal freedom. "You will never find your level, Bute," the eldest son of the house (whom he greatly liked and respected) once said to him, "until you get to a public school." He did not resent the remark, for his good sense told him that it was true. Harrow was the public school of the Galloway family; but it was not so much for that reason that Harrow was chosen for him rather than Eton, as because his wise and kind guardians believed, rightly or wrongly, that a boy in his peculiar position would be less exposed to adulation and flattery at the more democratic school on the Hill than at its great rival on Thames-side.

Meanwhile a preparatory school had to be selected; and the choice fell on May Place, the well-known school conducted by Mr. Thomas Essex at Malvern Wells, where one of Lord Galloway's sons was just finishing his course. It was locally known as the "House of Lords" from its connection with the peerage; and the pupils included members of the ducal houses of Sutherland, Argyll, Manchester, and Leinster, as well as of many other well-known families. One who well remembers the first arrival at May Place of the young Scottish peer, then aged thirteen and a half, has described him as a slight tall lad, reserved and gentle in manner, and particularly courteous to every one. The shyness and also the reverence for sacred things which always distinguished him as a man were equally noticeable in him as a boy; and it is remembered that when he revisited the school three or four years later, during the Harrow holidays, and was asked where he would like to drive to, he chose to go and inspect an interesting old church in the neighbourhood. A school contemporary with whom he occasionally squabbled was William Sinclair, the future Archdeacon of London; and there was once nearly a pitched battle between them, in consequence of some caricatures which Sinclair drew, purporting to represent Bute's near relatives, but for which he afterwards handsomely apologised.

1861, First school report

Towards the end of Bute's first term at Malvern Wells, his master wrote to Lord Galloway the following account of his young pupil. The concluding sentence is of curious interest in view of what the future held in store. It seems to show that the reaction in his mind—a mind already thoughtful beyond his years—against the one-sided view of religion and religious history which had been impressed upon him from childhood had already begun.

May Place, Malvern Wells,
July 14, 1861.

Lord Bute is going on more comfortably than I could have expected. He is on excellent terms with his schoolfellows; and though he prefers "romps" to cricket or gymnastics, yet I am glad to see him making himself happy with the others. More manly tastes will, I think, come in time. His obedience and his desire to please are very pleasing; while his strong religious principles and gentlemanly tone are everything one could desire. His opinions on things in general are rather an inexplicable mixture. I was not surprised to find in him an admiration of the Covenanters and a hatred of Archbishop Sharpe; but I was certainly startled to discover, on the other hand, a liking for the Romish priesthood and ceremonial. I shall, of course, do my best to bring him to sounder views.

1861, At May Place

We have no evidence as to what methods were employed, or what arguments adduced, by the excellent preceptor in order to carry out the purpose indicated in the concluding lines of his letter. Bute himself never referred to the matter afterwards, but the result was in all probability nugatory. It is not within the recollection of the present writer, who was an inmate of May Place a year or two later, that any serious effort was ever made there to impress religious truths on the minds of the pupils, or indeed to impart to them any definite religious teaching at all. The views and opinions of the young Scot, although only in his fourteenth year, were probably already a great deal more formed on these and kindred subjects than those of his worthy schoolmaster. In any case the time available for detaching his sympathies from the "Romish" priesthood and ritual was short. The boy had come to school very poorly equipped in the matter of general education, as the term was then understood. In the correspondence between his rival guardians, when he was just entering his 'teens, allusion is made to the boy's "precocious intellect," also to the fact that he knew little Latin, no Greek, and (what was considered worse) hardly any French. Mathematics he always cordially disliked; and it is on record that all the counting he did in those early years was invariably on his fingers. His natural intelligence, however, and his aptitude for study soon enabled him to make up for much that had been lost owing to the haphazard and interrupted education of his childhood; and it was not long before he was pronounced intellectually equal to the not very exacting standard of the entrance examination at Harrow. A final reminiscence of his connection with May Place may here be recorded. He revisited his old school not long after his momentous change of creed; and being left alone awhile in the study took up a blank report that lay on the table, and filled it up as follows[[6]]:—

MONTHLY REPORT OF THE MARQUESS OF BUTE.

LATIN CONSTRUING . . . . . . Partially preserved.
LATIN WRITING . . . . . . . Ditto.
GREEK CONSTRUING . . . . . . Getting very bad from disuse.
GREEK WRITING . . . . . . . Ditto.
ARITHMETIC . . . . . . . . . Entirely abandoned.
HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . So-so.
GEOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . Improved by foreign travel.
DICTATION . . . . . . . . . Ditto by business letters.
FRENCH . . . . . . . . . . . Ditto by travelling.
DRAWING . . . . . . . . . . Grown rather rusty.
RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . Unhappily not to the taste
of the British public.
CONDUCT . . . . . . . . . . Not so bad as it is painted.

[[1]] Charles MacLean, to whom he referred more than thirty years later, in his Rectorial address at St. Andrews (p. [188]).

[[2]] During Bute's travels with Lady Elizabeth Moore, in the course of her efforts to retain the custody of her little ward, his most trusted retainer was one Jack Wilson. The pertinacity with which the child was pursued, and the extent of Wilson's devotion, are attested by the known fact that on one occasion he knocked a writ-server down the stairs of a Rothesay hotel where Bute was staying with Lady Elizabeth. Wilson was accustomed always to sleep outside his young master's door. He rose later to be head-keeper at Mountstuart, and died there on May 23, 1912.

[[3]] It seems right to mention that Bute had another reason, apart from his attachment to Lady Elizabeth Moore, for his apparently unreasonable hostility to his other guardian. One of his strongest feelings at this time was his almost passionate devotion to the memory of his mother; and he never forgot what he called General Stuart's "gross disrespect" in not accompanying her remains from Edinburgh, where she died, to Bute, where she was buried. "He left her body," wrote Bute to an intimate friend from Christ Church, Oxford, "to be attended on that long and troublesome journey, in the depth of winter, only by women, servants, and myself, a child of twelve."

[[4]] Hon. Walter Stewart, afterwards colonel commanding 12th Lancers (died 1908). He was about eighteen months younger than Bute.

[[5]] Hon. Fitzroy Stewart (died 1914). He was at this time just five years old.

[[6]] This anecdote was communicated to a weekly journal (M.A.P.) soon after Lord Bute's death, by the son of the master of his old school.

CHAPTER II

HARROW AND CHRIST CHURCH

1862-1866

In September, 1861, Lord Bute completed his fourteenth year, attaining the age of "minority" (as it is called in Scots law), which put him in possession of certain important rights as regarded his property in the northern kingdom. The young peer had from his childhood, as is shown by his early correspondence with Lady Elizabeth Moore, been aware that he would be entitled at the age of fourteen to exercise certain powers of nomination in respect to the management of his Scottish estates. Most of the members of the Lords' tribunal which had adjudicated on his position in May, 1861, had evinced a curious ignorance of the nature, if not of the very existence, of these prospective rights, and even when informed of them had been inclined to question the expediency of their being acted upon. Bute himself, however, was not only perfectly aware of these rights, but resolved to exercise them; and we accordingly find him, a few weeks after his fourteenth birthday, writing as follows, from his private school, to his guardian, General Stuart:—

May Place,
November 25, 1861.

DEAR GEN. STUART,

I wish the necessary steps to be taken in the Court of Session for the appointment of Curators of my property in Scotland. The Curators whom I wish to appoint are Sir James Fergusson, Sir Hastings Gilbert, Lt.-Col. William Stuart, Mr. David Mure, Mr. Archibald Boyle, and yourself.

I wish the Solicitor-General of Scotland to be employed as my legal adviser in this buisness (sic).

I remain,
Your affectionate cousin,
BUTE AND DUMFRIES.

Bute was now entitled to choose from the number of these curators any one to whose personal guardianship he was willing to be entrusted during the seven years of his minority. His choice fell on Sir James Fergusson of Kilkerran, M.P. for Ayrshire, who had recently married the daughter of Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General of India; but he did not immediately take up his residence with Sir James, as it was thought best that he should continue, at any rate during the earlier part of his public school life, to spend his holidays at Galloway House, where he had become thoroughly at home. Lord Galloway's younger son Walter was destined for Harrow School; and thither Bute preceded him after spending two terms at May Place.

1862, Entrance at Harrow

It was in the first term of 1862 that Bute entered the school at Harrow, then under the headmastership of Montagu Butler. His position was at first that of a "home boarder," and he was under the charge of one of the masters, Mr. John Smith, known to and beloved by several generations of Harrovians.

There was a rather well-known and self-important Mr. Winkley, quite a figure among Harrow tradesmen (writes a school contemporary of Bute's, son of a famous Harrow master, and himself afterwards headmaster of Charterhouse), a mutton-chop-whiskered individual who collected rates, acted as estate agent, published (I think) the Bill Book, sold books to the School, &c. He occupied the house beyond Westcott's, on the same side of High Street, between Westcott's and the Park. There John Smith resided with the Marquess of Bute.

Mr. Smith, whose mother lived at Pinner, used to visit her there every Saturday, and to take over with him on these occasions one or two of his pupils, who enjoyed what was then a pretty rural walk of three miles, as well as the quaint racy talk of their master, and the excellent tea provided by his kind old mother.

Another of his schoolfellows, Sir Henry Bellingham, writes:

I remember first meeting Bute on one of these little excursions. Mr. Smith had told me that the tall, shy, quiet boy (he was a year younger than me, but much bigger) had neither father, mother, brother nor sister, and was therefore much to be pitied. I wondered why he did not come more forward, and said so little either to Smith himself or to Mrs. Smith; for Smith was a man who had great capabilities for drawing people out, and was a general favourite with every one. The impression I had of Bute during all our time at Harrow was always the same—that of his very shy and quiet manner.

1862, A real palm branch

Undemonstrative as he was by nature, Bute never forgot those who had shown him any kindness, and he always preserved a grateful affection for John Smith, who accompanied him more than once during the summer holidays to Glentrool, Lord Galloway's lodge among the Wigtownshire hills, and enjoyed some capital fishing there. Bute wrote to him in later years from time to time, and during the sadly clouded closing period of the old man's life, when he was an inmate of St. Luke's Hospital, he gave him much pleasure by sending him annually a palm branch which had been blessed in his private chapel. More than twenty years after Bute's Harrow days, he received this appreciative letter from his former master:

St. Luke's Hospital,
Old Street, E.C.,
Easter Tuesday, 1887.

DEAR LORD BUTE,

I must try and write a few lines, asking you to pardon all defects.

The real Palm Branch was most welcome, with its special blessing: it is behind me as I write, and many happy thoughts and messages does it bring. God bless you for your most kind thought. I intend to forward it in due time to Gerald Rendall (late head of Harrow, then Fellow of Trin. Coll., Cambridge, now Principal of University College, Liverpool), as my share in furnishing his new home: he was married this vacation. The students, male and female, will be glad to see what a real Palm Branch is like. Your gift of last year is now in the valued keeping of Mrs. Edward Bradby, whose husband was a master of Harrow in your day, and, after fifteen years of hard and successful work at Haileybury, has taken up his abode at St. Katherine's Dock House, Tower Hill, with wife and children, to live among the poor and brighten their dull existence with music and pictures and dancing; besides inviting them, in times of real necessity, to dine with himself and his wife, in batches of eight and ten.

I look forward to the Review[[1]] with great interest. I show it to the Medical Gentlemen here, read what I can, and then forward it to my sister at Harrow for friends there.

I try to realise the old chapel on the beach, in which the branches were consecrated,[[2]] but fail utterly to do so. Whereabouts is it? I suppose you have a chapel in the house also, for invalids, &c., in bad weather.

God bless you all: Lady Bute and the children, especially the maiden who is working at Greek.[[3]]

Ever your grateful
J. S.

From John Smith's quasi-parental care, Bute passed in due time into the house of Mr. Westcott (afterwards Bishop of Durham), who occupied "Moretons," on the top of West Hill (now in the possession of Mr. M. C. Kemp). The future bishop, with all his attainments, had not the reputation of a very successful teacher in class, nor of a good disciplinarian; but as a house-master he had many admirable qualities, and was greatly beloved by his pupils. For him also Bute preserved a warm and lifelong sentiment of regard and gratitude; and to him, as to John Smith, he was accustomed to send every Easter a blessed palm from his private chapel, which Dr. Westcott preserved carefully in his own chapel at Auckland Castle. "See that the Bishop of Durham gets his palm," were Lord Bute's whispered words as he was lying stricken by his last illness in the Holy Week of 1900. The tribute of affectionate remembrance had been an annual one for more than thirty years.

1863, School friendships

Of all Bute's contemporaries at the great school, there were perhaps only two with whom he struck up a real and close friendship. One was Adam Hay Gordon of Avochie (a cadet of the Tweeddale family), who was with him afterwards at Christ Church, and was one of his few intimate associates there. The intimacy was not continued into later years, but the memory of it remained. "I heard with sorrow," Bute recorded in his diary on July 12, 1894, "of the death of one of my dearest friends, Addle Hay Gordon. Though at Harrow together, and very intimate at college, we had not met for many years. In my Oxford days I several times stayed in Edinburgh with him and his parents, in Rutland Square. We were as brothers."[[4]]

An even more intimate, and more lasting, friendship was that with George E. Sneyd, who was at Westcott's house with Bute, and who afterwards became his private secretary, married his cousin, Miss Elizabeth Stuart (granddaughter of Admiral Lord George Stuart) in 1880, and died in the same year as Adam Hay Gordon. "It is difficult to say," wrote Bute in January, 1894, "what this loss is to me. He had been an intimate friend ever since we were at Westcott's big house at Harrow—one of my few at all, the most intimate (unless Addle Hay Gordon) and the most trusted I ever had. He had a very important place in my will. For these two I had prayed by name regularly at every Mass I have heard for many, many years."

A school contemporary, who records Bute's close friendship with George Sneyd, mentions (as do others) his fancy for keeping Ligurian bees in his tiny study-bedroom. "My only recollection of his room at Harrow, where I once visited him," writes Sir Herbert Maxwell, "is of an arrangement whereby bees entered from without into a hive within the room, where their proceedings could be watched." A brother of Sir Redvers Buller, who boarded in the adjoining house, has recorded that "Bute's bees" were a perfect nuisance to him, as they had a way of flying in at his window instead of their own, and disturbing him at his studies or other employments.

1863, Harrow school prizes

"At Harrow," said one of Bute's obituary notices, "the young Scottish peer was as poetical as Byron." This rather absurd remark is perhaps to some extent justified by one episode in Bute's school career. "I have a general recollection of him," writes a correspondent already quoted, "as a very amiable, though reserved, boy, not given to games, who astonished us all by securing the English Prize Poem. He won this distinction (the assigned subject was 'Edward the Black Prince') in the summer of 1863, when only fifteen years of age." "His winning this prize in 1863, when quite young," writes the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in the same form as Bute at Harrow and knew him well, "was his most notable exploit. There is a special passage about ocean waves and their 'decuman,' which has often been quoted as a remarkable effort on the part of a young boy.[[5]] He was very quiet and unassuming in all his ways."

A further honour gained by Bute in the same year (1863) was one of the headmaster's Fifth Form prizes for Latin Verse; but the text of this composition (it was a translation from English verse) has not been preserved. The fact of his winning these two important prizes is a sufficient proof that, if not "as poetical as Byron," he had a distinct feeling for poetry, and that generally his industry and ability had enabled him to make up much, if not all, of the leeway caused by the imperfect and desultory character of his early education. In other words he passed through his school course with credit and even distinction; and that he preserved a kindly memory of his Harrow days is sufficiently shown by the fact that he took the unusual step—unusual, that is, in the case of the head of a great Roman Catholic family—of sending all his three sons to be educated at the famous school on the Hill.

Bute's career at Harrow, like his private school course, was an unusually short one, extending over only three years. He left the school in the first term of 1865, presenting to the Vaughan Library at his departure a small collection of books, which it may be of some interest to enumerate. They were Pierotti's Jerusalem Explained, 2 vols. folio; Digby's Broadstone of Honour, 3 vols.; Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, 3 vols.; Miss Proctor's Legends and Lyrics; Gil Blas, 2 vols. (illustrated); Don Quixote; Napier's Memoirs of Montrose, 3 vols.; and Memoirs of Dundee, 2 vols.

He further evinced his interest in his old school by presenting to it, five years after leaving, a portrait of John first Marquess of Bute (then Lord Mountstuart), wearing the dress of the school Archery Corps of that day (1759). This portrait (which is a copy of a well-known painting by Allan Ramsay) now hangs in the Vaughan Library.

1865, Pilgrimage to Palestine

It was characteristic of the young Harrovian that, his school-days over, he took the very first opportunity to turn his steps towards the East, in which from his earliest boyhood he had always been curiously interested. It was not the first occasion of his leaving England, for he had visited Brussels and other cities several times with his mother during his childhood, and used in later years to note in his diary the half-forgotten recollections of places which he had seen in those early and happy days. But his visit to Palestine in the spring of 1865—the first of many journeys to the Holy Land—was an entirely new experience; and to this youth of seventeen, thoughtful and religious-minded beyond his years, it was no mere pleasure trip, but a veritable pilgrimage. "I am sending you a copy," he wrote to a friend at Oxford in the autumn of this year, "of a document which I value more than anything I have ever received in my life: the certificate of my visit to the Holy Places of Jerusalem given to me by the Father Guardian of the Franciscan convent on Mount Sion. Here it is:

In Dei Nomine. Amen. Omnibus et singulis praesentes literas inspecturis, lecturis, vel legi audituris, fidem notumque facimus Nos Terrae Sanctæ Custos, devotum Peregrinum Illustrissimum Dominum Dominum Joannem, Marchionem de Bute in Scotia, Jerusalem feliciter pervenisse die 10 Mensis Maii anni 1865; inde subsequentibus diebus præcipua Sanctuaria in quibus Mundi Salvator dilectum populum Suum, immo et totius generis humani perditam congeriem ab inferi servitute misericorditer liberavit, utpote Calvarium ... SS. Sepulchrum ... ac tandem ea omnia sacra Palestinæ loca gressibus Domini ac Beatissimæ ejus Matris Mariæ consecrata, à Religiosis nostris et Peregrinis visitari solita, visitasse.

In quorum fidem has scripturas Officii Nostri sigillo munitas per Secretarium expediri mandavimus.

Datis apud S. Civitatem Jerusalem, ex venerabili Nostro Conventu SS. Salvatoris, die 29 Maii, 1865.

L.S. De mandato Reverendiss. in Christo Patris
F. REMIGIUS BUSELLI, S.T.L., secret.

+ Sigillum Guardiani Montis Sion.

(There is an image of the Descent of the H. Spirit, and of the Mandatum.)

"It touched and interested me extremely," Bute said many years later, "to find myself described in this document as 'devotus Peregrinus,' and this for more than one reason. The phrase, in the first place, seemed to link me, a mere schoolboy, with the myriads of devout and holy men, saints and warriors, who had made the pilgrimage before me. 'Illuc enim ascenderunt tribus, tribus Domini.' And then I remembered that I descended lineally through my mother's family, the Hastings', from a very famous pilgrim, the 'Pilgrim of Treves,' the Hebrew who went to Rome during the great Papal Schism, sat himself down on one of the Seven Hills, and dubbed himself Pope. When Martin V. (Colonna) was recognised as lawful Pope, my ancestor returned to Rome and, I believe, reverted to the Judaism from which he had temporarily lapsed. But this celebrated journey earned him the title, par excellence, of the Pilgrim of Treves; and the name of Peregrine has been borne since, all through the centuries, by many of his descendants, of whom I am one." All this is so curiously characteristic of Lord Bute's half serious, half whimsical (and always original) manner of regarding out-of-the-way corners of history and genealogy, that it seems worth reproducing in this place.

THE MARQUESS OF BUTE, ÆT. 17.

1866, Steeplechasing at Oxford

Soon after his return from his Palestine journey, Bute was duly matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, and he went into residence in the October term. He was one of the last batch of peers who entered the university on the technical footing of "noblemen," with the privilege of wearing a distinctive dress, sitting at a special table in hall, and paying double for everything. Among his contemporaries at the House were the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Rosebery, the seventh Duke of Northumberland, and Lords Cawdor, Doune, and Willoughby de Broke. His cousin, the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings, who was five years his senior, had not long before gone down from the university, had been married for a year, and was at the height of the meteoric career which came to a premature and inglorious end just when Bute attained his majority. The latter had that strong sense of family attachment which is so marked a characteristic of Scotsmen; and noblesse oblige was a maxim which for him had a very real and serious meaning. It is certain that the contemplation of his cousin's wasted life not only distressed him deeply, but tended to confirm in him an almost exaggerated antipathy to the extravagant craze for racing, gambling and betting, which was the form of "sport" most prevalent among the young men of family and fashion who were his contemporaries at Oxford. Bute's entire want of sympathy with such pursuits and such ideals thus inevitably cut him off from anything like intimate intercourse with the predominant members of the undergraduate society of his college. He would not be persuaded to frequent their clubs or share in their amusements, which to him would have been no amusements at all; although he was elected a member of "Loders," to which the noblemen and gentlemen-commoners of the House as a matter of course belonged. He was, however, induced, on the representations of one of his friends (probably Hay Gordon) to own and nominate a horse in the university steeplechases (or "grinds," as they were called). "Some one, I do not know who," writes one of his contemporaries, "had informed him that I was the proper person to ride his horse. When I interviewed him on the subject (which I did with some trepidation, as he was exceedingly shy and stiff with strangers), he evinced not the slightest interest either in his horse or the contest in which it was to take part. The animal came in only third, but Bute showed neither disappointment nor pleasure in anything it did or failed to do either on this or on subsequent occasions." Another anecdote in connection with this episode of "Bute's steeplechaser" is related by one of his fellow-undergraduates, who was charged, or had charged himself, with the duty of informing the owner of this unprofitable horse (for which, by the way, he had paid a good round sum) that it was among the "Also Rans" in the Christ Church grinds. "Ah! indeed?" was his only comment; "but now I want to know," he continued eagerly, "if you can help me to solve a much more important question. What real claim had the [Greek: kremastoí kêpoi] (the hanging gardens) of Semiramis at Babylon, to be classified, as they were in ancient times, among the Seven Wonders of the World?"

Whilst on the subject of Bute's diversions at Christ Church (though steeplechasing, even vicariously, can hardly be said to have been one of them), reference may appropriately be made to a rather remarkable entertainment which he gave by way of repaying the hospitalities extended to him by his companions, including some of his former school-fellows at Harrow. It took the form of a fancy-dress ball, which came off in the fine suite of rooms which he occupied in the north-west corner of Tom Quad (since subdivided). Here is the invitation card, surmounted with the emblazoned arms of the House, which was sent out:

MARQUESS OF BUTE
AT HOME

La Morgue Bal Masqué
IV. I. Tom. R.S.V.P.

"La Morgue" was the room, adjacent to his own, which was, as a matter of fact, used as a mortuary when any death occurred within the college. The young host received his guests at the entrance to this apartment in the character of his Satanic Majesty, attired in a close-fitting garment of scarlet and black, with wings, horn, and tail; and most of the guests figured as dons, eminent churchmen, and other well-known personages in the university, the stately dean being, of course, represented, as well as Mrs. Liddell, who afterwards expressed regret that she had not been present in person. A fracas in the refreshment room resulted in a jockey (the Hon. H. Needham) being arrested by a policeman, who conducted him to the police-office before the culprit discovered that the supposed constable was one of his fellow-revellers. The affair was altogether so successful that Bute designed to repeat it a year later; but the authorities of the House, who had given no permission for the original entertainment, peremptorily forbade its repetition.[[6]]

1865, Oxford friends

Bute had come into residence at Oxford a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday; and the above reminiscences show that with all his serious-mindedness he possessed, as indeed might have been expected, something also, at that period, of what Disraeli called "the irresponsible frivolity of immature manhood." His amiability of character and remarkable personal courtesy prevented him from being in any degree unpopular; but his intimate friends at Oxford were undoubtedly very few; and it is curious that the most intimate of them all was not an undergraduate, or an Oxford man at all, but a lady much his senior, Miss Felicia Skene, daughter of a well-known man of letters and friend of Walter Scott, long resident in Oxford. Miss Skene was herself a person of remarkable attainments and qualities, one of them being a rare gift of sympathy, which seems to have won the heart of the solitary young Scotsman from the first day of their acquaintance. Bute corresponded with her constantly and regularly, not only during his undergraduate days, but for many years subsequently; and his letters show to how large a degree he gave her his confidence in matters of the most intimate interest to himself. One of the earliest of these is dated from Dumfries House, Ayrshire, in the Christmas vacation following his first term at Oxford.

Dumfries House,
Cumnock,
Christmas Day [1865].

MY DEAR MISS SKENE,

A happy Xmas to you. Mine is comfortable, if not merry nor ideal. Let me say in black and white that I mean to pay for the meat and wine ordered by the doctor for the poor woman you mention.... Money I cannot send. I have little more than £100 to spend myself. My allowance is £2000, and I have overdrawn £1630, with a draft for £1000 coming due. I am trying to raise the wind here: it seems absurd that I should be "hard up," but it is a long story. I am only sorry that the offerings I should make at this time to the "Little Child of Bethlehem" are not procurable.

Ever yours most truly,
BUTE.

1865, At Dumfries House

Bute had now finally left Galloway House, which had been his holiday residence during his Harrow days; and his home when not at Oxford was at Dumfries House, his Ayrshire seat, then in the occupation of Sir James and Lady Edith Fergusson. "I saw a good deal of him when he was living at Dumfries House under the tutelage of Sir James Fergusson," writes one who had known him from childhood. "He used to come down to the smoking-room at night arrayed in a gorgeous garment of pale blue and gold: I think he said he had had it made on the pattern of a saintly bishop's vestment in a stained glass window of the Harrow Chapel. Sir James was anxious to make a sportsman of Bute, and bought a hunter or two for him. I remember his coming out one day with Lord Eglinton's hounds, but I never saw him take the field again." The tyro, as a matter of fact, got a toss in essaying to jump a hedge; and so mortified was he by this public discomfiture that he not only never again appeared in the hunting-field, but he never quite forgave Sir James for being the indirect cause of the misadventure.

Miss Skene not only acted to some extent as Bute's almoner during his Oxford days (it is fair to say that the "hard-up" condition alluded to in the above letter was due at least as much to his lavish almsgiving as to any personal extravagance), but was his adviser in regard to other matters. "Mrs. Leighton [wife of the Warden of All Souls] has invited me," runs one of his notes, "to come and meet a Scottish bishop (St. Andrews) at dinner, and asks me in the same letter to give 'out of my abundance' a cheque to enlarge the Penitentiary chapel. Now I dislike Scots Episcopalian bishops (not individually but officially), their genesis having been unblushingly Erastian, and their present status in Scotland being schismatic and dissenting; and my 'abundance' at present consists of a heavy overdraft at the bank. Read and forward the enclosed reply, unless you think the lady will take offence, which can hardly be."

He often copied for his friend extracts which struck him from books he was reading. "I have transcribed for you," he wrote a few weeks after his nineteenth birthday, "the account of the death of Krishna from the Vishnu Purána. A hunter by accident shot him in the foot with an arrow. When he saw what he had done he prostrated himself and implored pardon. Krishna granted it and translated him at once to heaven. 'Then the illustrious Krishna, having united himself with his own pure, spiritual, inexhaustible, inconceivable, unborn, undecaying, imperishable and universal spirit, which is one with Vásundera, abandoned his mortal body and the condition of the threefold qualities.' To my mind this description of the great Saviour becoming one with universal spirit approaches the sublime."

At the end of his first summer term (June, 1866) Bute made his second tour in the East—a more extended one this time, visiting not only Constantinople and Palestine, but Kurdistan and Armenia. His tutor, the Rev. S. Williams, accompanied him, as well as one or two friends, including Harman Grisewood, one of his associates at the House, and one of the few with whom he maintained an intimacy after their Oxford days. A diary kept by Bute of the first portion of this tour has been preserved: it describes his doings with great minuteness, and is a remarkable record for a youth of eighteen to have written. In Paris nothing seems to have much interested him except the churches, and long antiquarian conversations with the Vicomte de Vogüé and others. "I again visited the Comte de V.,"[[7]] runs one entry. "We got into the Cities of Bashan, and stayed there three or four hours." Many pages are devoted to a detailed description of Avignon, and later of St. John's Church at Malta, of Syracuse, Catania, and Messina. At Malta he visited the tomb of his grandfather (the first Marquess of Hastings, who died when governor of Malta in 1826), and "was much pleased with it." Describing the high mass in the Benedictine Church at Catania, he says, "At the end, during the Gospel of St. John, the organist (the organ is one of the finest in the world) played a military march so well that I, at least, could hardly be persuaded that the loud clear clash, the roll of the drums, the ring of the triangle, and the roar of the brass instruments were false. It seemed to me that this passage, which was admirably executed, harmonised wonderfully well with the awful words of the part of the Mass which it accompanied."

1866, Ascent of Mount Etna

The young diarist's vivid descriptive powers are well shown in his narrative of the ascent of Etna, and the impression it made on him:

We dined [at Nicolosi] on omelet, bread, and figs, and the nastiest wine, and at about 7 p.m. started on mules. These beasts had saddles more uncomfortable than words can describe. Their pace was about 2-½ miles per hour, which it was too easy to reduce, but quite impossible to accelerate. Mine had for bridle a cord three feet long, tied to one of several large rings on one side of its head. The journey lasted till 1.30 a.m. or later.... About 1 in the morning, Mr. W. and one guide having long dropped far behind, where their shrieks and yells (now growing hoarse from despair) could be faintly heard in the darkness far down the mountain, we emerged upon the summit between the peaks; and at the same time the full moon, silver, intense, rose from behind the lower summit, and shed a flood of light over the tremendous scene of desolation. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing visible but cinders and sky. At every step we sank eighteen inches into the black dust as we stumbled on in single file in perfect silence. A couple of miles ahead rose the great crater peak, with patches of snow at its foot and the eternal white cloud emanating and writhing from the summit. After an hour's rest at the Casa Inglese, a miserable hovel at the foot of the Cone, we started, wrapped in plaids, the cold being intense. Mr. W. had now rejoined us. The Cone is a hill about the size of Arthur's Seat, covered with rolling friable cinders, from which rise clouds of white sulphureous dust. The ascent took rather more than an hour. Mr. W. gave out half-way up, declaring he should faint. The pungent sulphur-smoke came sweeping down the hill-side, choking and blinding one. Eyes were smarting, lungs loaded, throat burnt, mouth dry and nostrils choked. On we struggled till the very ground gave forth curling clouds of smoke from every cranny. A few more steps and we were on the summit, at the very edge of the crater, which yawned into perdition within a few inches of one's foot. It is an immense glen, surrounded by a chain of heights, with tremendously precipitous sides, bright yellow in the depths, whence rises continually the cloud of smoke. The whole scene is exactly like Doré's illustrations of the Inferno.... The sun rose over Italy as we sat with our heads wrapped up and handkerchiefs in our mouths; but there was no view at all, the height is too stupendous. The horror of the whole place cannot be depicted. We were delighted to get back to the Casa Inglese, where we remounted our mules and crept away.

1866, Impressions of Eastern travel

From Sicily the travellers visited Smyrna and Chios on their way to Constantinople. Pages of the diary are taken up with descriptions of churches, and functions attended in them, and it is of interest to note that, profoundly interested as Bute was in the Greek churches and the Greek liturgy, his religious sympathies were entirely with the Latin communion. The "spiritual deadness," as he calls it, of the schismatic churches of the East, repelled and dismayed him. "It strikes me as essentially dreadful," he writes of a visit to the Church of the Transfiguration at Syra, "that the Photian Tabernacle everywhere enshrines a deserted Saviour. The daily sacrifice is not offered; the churches are closed and cold, save for a few hours on Sunday and festivals; visits to the B. Sacrament are unknown. Pictures are exposed to receive an exaggerated homage, unknown and undreamt of in the West. But it is absolutely true to say that the Perpetual Presence (to which no reverence at all is offered, by genuflection or otherwise) receives less respect than one ordinarily pays to any place of worship whatever, even a meeting-house or synagogue." Later, recording a visit to the Greek cathedral at Pera, he describes the service there as "the most disagreeable function I ever attended: the church crammed with people in a state of restlessness and irreverence characteristic of Photian schismatics; and the whole service as much spoiled as slurring, drawling, utter irreverence, bad music, and bad taste could spoil it. After breakfast I attended the High Mass at the Church of the Franciscans—a different thing indeed from the Photian Cathedral; and I went back there in the afternoon for Vespers and Benediction."

It has been sometimes said that Bute, during the period immediately preceding his reception into the Catholic Church, was even more drawn towards the "Orthodox" form of belief than he was to the prevailing religion of Western Christendom. The above extracts show that the very reverse was the case. Genuine and earnest worship stirred and impressed him everywhere: thus he writes, after witnessing an elaborate ceremonial (including the dance of the dervishes) in a mosque at Constantinople: "I left the mosque very much wrought up and excited. There are those who are not impressed by this. There are those also who laugh at a service in a language they do not know: there are those who see nothing august or awful even in the Holy Mass." Slovenliness, irreverence, tepidity in religion were what pained and repelled him; and finding those characteristics everywhere in the liturgical services of those whom he called the Photians, he was so far from being attracted towards any idea of joining their communion, that he returned to England, and to Oxford, after this Eastern journey, with the whole bent of his religious aspirations set more and more in the direction of the Catholic and Roman Church. His conversion was, in fact, accomplished before the end of this year, although circumstances, as will be seen, compelled the postponement for a considerable time of the public and formal profession of his faith.

[[1]] The Scottish Review, which Lord Bute controlled at this time, and to which he contributed many articles.

[[2]] This was the chapel on the edge of the sea, among the Mountstuart woods, which had been built for the convenience of the people living and working near the house. Lord Bute used it as a domestic chapel until the new chapel at Mountstuart was opened. He was buried there in 1900.

[[3]] Lord Bute's only daughter, Lady Margaret Crichton-Stuart, then in her twelfth year, and under the tutelage of a Greek governess.

[[4]] Adam Hay Gordon married in 1873 the beautiful granddaughter of Sir Robert Dalrymple Horn Elphinstone, and died without issue, as above recorded, in July, 1894.

[[5]] "'Tis said that when upon a rocky shore The salt sea billows break with muffled roar,
And, launched in mad career, the thundering wave
Leaps booming through the weedy ocean cave;
Each tenth is grander than the nine before.
And breaks with tenfold thunder on the shore.
Alas! it is so on the sounding sea;
But so, O England, it is not with thee!
Thy decuman is broken on the shore:
A peer to him shall lave thee never more!"

The text of the whole poem is given in [Appendix I].

[[6]] The particulars of this whimsical incident in Bute's university career have been kindly furnished by Mr. Algernon Turnor, C.B., who was his contemporary at Christ Church. It was he who rode—though not to victory—the steeplechaser mentioned in the text. Mr. Turner married in 1880 Lady Henrietta Stewart, one of Bute's early playmates and companions at Galloway House.

[[7]] Eugene Vicomte de Vogüé, whom Bute wrongly styles "Comte" in his diary, was a few months his junior. One of the most brilliant and charming men of his generation, he was in turn soldier, diplomatist, politician, and littérateur. He became a member of the Academy in 1888 and died in 1910. He published books and articles on a great variety of subjects, all marked with the profoundly religious feeling which characterised him.

CHAPTER III

RELIGIOUS INQUIRIES—RECEPTION POSTPONED—COMING OF AGE

1867, 1868

A well-meaning person thought well to compile and publish, some years ago, a volume in which a few distinguished Roman Catholics, and a great number of mediocrities, were invited to describe the process and motives which led them "to abandon" (as some cynic once expressed it) "the errors of the Church of England for those of the Church of Rome." Lord Bute, who was among the many more or less eminent people who received and declined invitations to contribute to this symposium, was certainly the last man likely to consent to recount his own religious experiences for the benefit of a curious public. It is, therefore, all the more interesting that in a copy of the book above referred to, belonging to one of his most intimate friends,[[1]] was preserved a memorandum in Bute's writing, which throws an interesting light on some, at least, of the causes which were contributory to his own submission to the Roman Church.

I came to see very clearly indeed that the Reformation was in England and Scotland—I had not studied it elsewhere—the work neither of God nor of the people, its real authors being, in the former country, a lustful and tyrannical King, and in the latter a pack of greedy, time-serving and unpatriotic nobles. (Almost the only real patriots in Scotland at that period were bishops like Elphinstone, Reid, and Dunbar.)

I also convinced myself (1) that while the disorders rampant in the Church during the sixteenth century clamoured loudly for reform, they in no way justified apostacy and schism; and (2) that were I personally to continue, under that or any other pretext, to remain outside the Catholic and Roman Church, I should be making myself an accomplice after the fact in a great national crime and the most indefensible act in history. And I refused to accept any such responsibility.

1860, Attraction to Roman Church

The late Jesuit historian, Father Joseph Stevenson, who spent a great number of years in laborious study (for his work in the Record Office) of the original documents and papers of the Reformation period, frankly avowed that it was what he learned in these researches, and no other considerations whatever, which convinced him—an elderly Anglican clergyman of the old school—that the Catholic Church was the Church of God, and the so-called Reformation the work of His enemies. It was one of his colleagues in the Society of Jesus[[2]] who quoted this to Lord Bute, and his emphatic comment was, "That is a point of view which I thoroughly appreciate." As to Bute himself, there were undoubtedly many sides of his character to which the appeal of the ancient Church would be strong and insistent. Her august and venerable ritual, the ordered splendour of her ceremonial, the deep significance of her liturgy and worship, could not fail to attract one who had learned to see in them far more than the mere outward pomp and beauty which are but symbols of their inward meaning. The love and tenderness and compassion with which she is ever ready to minister to the least of her children would touch the heart of one who beneath a somewhat cold exterior had himself a very tender feeling for the stricken and the sorrowful. The marvellous roll of her saints, the story of their lives, the record of their miracles, would stir the imagination and kindle the enthusiasm of one who loved to remember, as we have seen, that the blood of pilgrims flowed in his veins, and found one of his greatest joys in visiting the shrines, following in the footsteps, venerating the remains, and verifying the acts of the saints of God in many lands, even in the remotest corners of Christendom. His mind and heart and soul found satisfaction in all these things; but most of all it was the historic sense which he possessed in so peculiar a degree, the craving for an exact and accurate presentment of the facts of history, which was one of his most marked characteristics—it was these which, during his many hours of painful and laborious searching into the records of the past, were the most direct and immediate factors in convincing his intellect, as his heart was already convinced, that the Catholic and Roman Church, and no other, was the Church founded by Christ on earth, and that to remain outside it was, for him, to incur the danger of spiritual shipwreck.

Dr. Liddon, who was at this time a Senior Student of Christ Church, and resident in the college (he became Ireland Professor of Exegesis four years later, and a Canon of St. Paul's in the same year), was wont to say that Bute was far too busy, during his undergraduate career, in "reconsidering and reconstructing his religious position," to give more than a secondary place to his regular academic studies. His reading, which, undistracted by any of the ordinary dissipations of university life, he pursued with unflagging ardour, sitting at his books often far into the night, ranged over the whole field of comparative religion. Every form of ancient faith, Judaism, Buddhism, Islamism, the beliefs of old Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as the creeds and worship of Eastern and Western Christendom, were the subject of his studies and his thoughts; and the more he read and pondered, the more clear became his conviction that in the Roman Church alone could his mind, his heart, and his imagination find rest and satisfaction. No external influence of any kind helped to bring him to that conclusion. In the conduct of his studies and the arrangement of his reading he freely sought and obtained the advice and assistance of tutors and professors, both belonging to the House and outside it. But from no Roman Catholic source did he ask or receive counsel or direction at this time; and he once said that during the first year of his Oxford course he was not even aware of the existence of a Roman Catholic church in the university city. Two or three Catholic undergraduates were in residence at Christ Church in his time, but he was not intimate with any of them. He was fond of taking long walks, then, as always, almost the only form of bodily exercise he favoured, though he was a good swimmer and fencer; and it was in company with his most intimate friend, Adam Hay Gordon, that he once, after a visit to Wantage (the associations of which with King Alfred greatly interested him), penetrated to the ancient Catholic chapel of East Hendred, not far distant. He was greatly moved at learning that this venerable sanctuary was one of the very few in England in which, it was said, the lamp before the tabernacle had never been extinguished, and Mass had been celebrated all through the darkest days of penal times; and he knelt so long in prayer before the altar that he had twice to be reminded by his companion of the long walk home they had in prospect. This pilgrimage—Bute always considered it as such, and spoke of it with emotion long years afterwards—took place in the autumn of 1866; and before he left Oxford for the Christmas vacation of that year he had made up his mind to seek admission without delay into the Catholic fold, and (as he hoped) to make his first communion as a Catholic before the Easter festival of the following year.

1866, Decision taken

Absorbed in his studies, and cheered and encouraged by the dawn of religious certainty, and his growing confidence in the sureness of the ground on which his feet were placed, Bute had, it is probable, reckoned little, if at all, on the storm of opposition, protest, and resentment which was bound to break out the moment his proposed change of religion became known. Lady Edith Fergusson, his guardian's wife, for whom he had a sincere affection, first learned his intention from himself during his Christmas sojourn at Dumfries House. The news came as a great blow to Sir James, who, with all his good qualities, had no intellectual equipment adequate to meeting the reasoned arguments of his young ward; and he fled up to London to take counsel with Bute's English guardians. The tidings caused consternation in the Lord Chancellor's Court, and (it was said) in a Court even more august; and the cry was for a scapegoat to bear the brunt of the general wrath. Who and where was the subtle Jesuit, the secret emissary of Rome, who had hatched the dark plot, had "got hold of" the guileless youth, and inveigled him away from the simple faith of his childhood? Public indignation was heightened rather than allayed by the impossibility of identifying this sinister conspirator. Non est inventus. He had, in fact, no more existence than Mrs. Harris. The circumstances of the case were patent and simple. A young man of strong religious instincts, good parts, and studious habits, had, after much reading, grave consideration (and, it might be added, earnest prayer, but that was outside the public ken), come to the conclusion that the religion of the greater part of Christendom was right and that of the British minority wrong. And what made matters worse was that he had in his constitution so large a share of native Scottish tenacity, that there seemed no possibility of inducing him to change his mind. The obvious, and only alternative, policy was delay. Get him to put off the evil day, and all might yet be well. The mot d'ordre was accordingly given; and a united crusade was entered on by kinsfolk and acquaintance, guardians, curators, and tutors-at-law, the Chancellor and his myrmidons, the family solicitors, and finally the dons and tutors at Oxford, to extract from the prospective convert, at whatever cost, a promise not to act on his convictions at least until after attaining his majority. After that—well, anything might happen; and if during the interval of nearly two years he were to take to drink or gambling, to waste his substance on riotous living (like his unfortunate cousin), or generally to go to the devil—it would be of course very regrettable, but anyhow he would be rescued from Popery, and that was the only thing that really mattered.

1867, Oxford alarmed

In the midst of these alarums and excursions the young peer returned to Christ Church for the Lent term of 1867, and found himself the object of much more public attention and solicitude than he at all appreciated. "Life is odious here at present," he wrote to the always faithful friend of whose sympathy he was sure, "and I am having a worse time even than I had during all the rows about my guardianship. Luckily I am better able to bear it, and nothing will ever change my resolution."

Dr. Liddon concerned himself very actively with the project of getting Bute to agree to delay in carrying out his purpose; and with him was associated Dr. Mansel, at that time a Fellow of St. John's and Professor of Church History (he became Dean of St. Paul's in 1868). There were some advanced churchmen among the Senior Students[[3]] of that day, including the Rev. R. Benson, first superior of the Cowley brotherhood, and the Rev. T. Chamberlain of St. Thomas's, who claimed to be the first clergyman to have worn a chasuble in his parish church since the Reformation.[[4]] Such men as these would naturally point out that Bute could get all that he wanted in their section of the Anglican Church; but by another of the Students, Mr. Septimus Andrews, who afterwards followed Bute into the Catholic Church and became an Oblate of St. Charles, he was encouraged to remain faithful to his convictions, in spite of the strong pressure brought to bear on him from all quarters. It was even said that Dr. Pusey (who seems to have taken no part in the agitation of the time) was to be asked to approach Dr. Newman in his retirement at Edgbaston, and beg him to use his influence to secure the delay which was all that was now hoped for. There is no evidence that this step was actually taken; but the success, such as it was, of these reiterated appeals for postponement of the final and definitive step is attested by the following deeply interesting letter, written by Bute to his friend at Oxford at the beginning of the Easter vacation of 1867.

1867, A sad letter

122, George St.,
Edinburgh,
Maundy Thursday, 1867.

MY DEAR MISS SKENE,

On this day, which was to have seen my First Communion, I do not believe I should have the heart to write and tell you that it has all failed, if it were not for a sort of hard, cold, listless feeling of utter apathy to everything Divine which is new to me, but which has, as it were, petrified me since my fall.

The long and short is that the Protestants—i.e. the Lord Chancellor and his Court; my Guardians; my friends and relations; and Mansel, Liddon, and Co. have extorted from me a promise not to become a Catholic till I am of age. They are jubilant with the jubilation of devils over a lost soul; but I am hopeless and weary to a degree.

There remains nothing to say now, except that I am utterly wrecked. I have not dared to pray since. I have heard Mass twice, but I looked on with an indifference greater than if I had been at a play. I feel no moral principle either. It is simply all up. Instead of feeling these holy days, the thought of the suffering of Christ simply haunts me like a nightmare. I try to drown it and drive it away.

There is no use in going on this way. It is a triumph for which Mansel, etc., are thanking God (!). I know what my own position is. It is hopeless, and graceless, and godless.

Most sincerely yours,
BUTE AND DUMFRIES.

If the well-meaning divines and others who had wrung from Bute, under the severest moral pressure, the much-desired promise, had had an opportunity of perusing the above letter, the "jubilation" of which he speaks would surely have been considerably modified. It is a sad enough document to have been written by a youth in his twentieth year, to whom his opening manhood seemed to offer, from a worldly point of view, everything that was most brilliant and most desirable. The day on which it was dated, and the thought of all that day was to have been to him, and yet was not, naturally deepened the depression under which it was penned, and led him perhaps to exaggerate the condition of spiritual dereliction which he so pathetically described. But if his life was not in reality wrecked, if he had not in truth (and we know that he had not) lost all sense of moral principles, it is impossible to avoid the reflection that no thanks for this are due to those who seem utterly to have misapprehended the strength and sincerity of his religious convictions, and the very grave responsibility they incurred (to say nothing of the risk to himself) in persuading him to stifle them, even for a time. It was their hope, doubtless, that the delay they had secured would ultimately lead to the abandonment of his purpose; but nothing is more certain that while resolved to abide faithfully by his promise, he was inflexibly determined to follow his conscience and carry out his declared intention at the very moment that he was free to do so. This resolution taken, his wonted tranquillity returned, and he went back to Christ Church for the summer term to resume undisturbed, and with a mind at rest, his quiet life of study and other congenial occupations. Reproduced here is a rough sketch from his pen, dated at this time (May 13, 1867), but not otherwise described. The drawing, which is not devoid of charm and power, depicts apparently the Communion of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland. On the same sheet is another sketch which seems to be a design for a stained glass window representing Scottish Saints.

THE COMMUNION OF ST. MARGARET, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND

1867, A long vacation cruise

A great part of the Long Vacation of 1867 was spent by Bute in a cruise to the north of Scotland and to Iceland, in the yacht Ladybird, which he had recently purchased. "On Sundays in my yacht," he writes to a friend from Edinburgh on July 13, 1867, "I am to conduct Presbyterian services. There is a book of prayers approved by the Church of Scotland for the purpose: instead of sermon, some immense bit of Scripture, e.g. the whole Epistle to the Romans." This letter, by the way, is dated "Feast of S. Anicete"—a rare instance of hagiographical inaccuracy on the writer's part. July 13 is not the festival of St. Anicetus, P.M. (who is commemorated on April 17), but of an earlier Pope and Martyr, St. Anacletus.

Bute visited St. Andrews during this cruise—a fact to which he made interesting reference on a memorable occasion many years subsequently.[[5]] It was, however, in quest of the relics of another ancient saint and martyr, dear for centuries to Scottish Christians under the title of St. Magnus of Orkney, that Bute spent much time in far northern waters during the summer of 1867. Magnus Earl of Orkney, if not a martyr in the technical sense any more than St. Oswald (called King and Martyr) and some others of the early English Saints, was yet a Christian hero who died a violent death at the hands of his enemies. It was in the little island of Egilshay that he was slain in A.D. 1116 by his treacherous cousin Haco; and there Bute landed from his yacht, kissing (as he records) the sacred ground as he touched the land, and recommending—he does not say with what result—his companion, Mr. George Petrie, F.S.A., to do the same. After visiting the ancient church, dedicated to the saint, though its round tower is probably far older than the time of St. Magnus, Bute spent a long time at Kirkwall in the study of its noble cathedral, where he obtained leave to take the reputed bones of the saint from their resting-place in the great pier on the north side of the choir. A minute inspection of these bones, conducted by himself, Mr. Petrie, two local doctors, and an apothecary, convinced him that the skull (an unusually large one, of a very degenerate type, with an old sword-cut in it over which there was a new growth of bone) was not in the least likely to be that of St. Magnus; and there were other remains in the cavity, clearly those of a different person. This conclusion was confirmed by subsequent investigations (nineteen years later) which Bute made in Orkney, and to which reference is made on a later page.[[6]] These details are worth mention, as testifying to the scrupulous care with which he was always anxious to examine any supposed relic of antiquity (whether the remains of a saint or anything else) before giving credence to its authenticity.

1867, St. Magnus of Orkney

To the memory, and for the personality, of St. Magnus himself, Bute always cherished a lively devotion and veneration,[[7]] which was shown not only in some of his later writings, but in a hymn of seven stanzas which he composed at this time in honour of the saint, and which was printed in the Orcadian over the signature "Oxonian." It is a free paraphrase of the Latin vesper hymn assigned to St. Magnus in the Aberdeen Breviary on his feast day (April 16), and has more merit than was claimed for it by its author, who described it in a letter to Mr. Petrie as "a very indifferent attempt." Another poetical composition of his dating from this period was a pretty set of verses entitled "Our Lady of the Snows," which was published anonymously this year in the Union Review (then edited by Dr. F. J. Lee) after being declined by the editor of the Month.[[8]] He wrote to Miss Skene from Thurso on July 16, 1867:

I am tickled pleasurably by the opinion of the editor of the Union about my little poem. Are we to conclude that the standard of the Month is the higher of the two, as it rejects what the Union admits, and even describes as "feeling and beautiful"? I confess that till now that had not been the result produced on my mind by a comparison of their respective "Poet's Corners."

1867, Lady Elizabeth Moore

Bute continued his yachting cruise from Orkney to Iceland, and spent there his twentieth birthday, viewing the volcano of Hecla in full eruption, as he had seen Etna a year previously. One of his birthday letters was from Lady Elizabeth Moore, with whom he had renewed a regular correspondence, and who was now happy in the belief that her former ward's secession from Protestantism was postponed sine die. Her letters are always characteristically kind and affectionate, if every phrase is not altogether judicious.

MY VERY DEAR COUSIN,

You are much in my thoughts this day.... My most affectionate good wishes on your entering your twenty-first year. May the Almighty bless and protect you. May you be preserved from evil doings and erroneous opinions, and prove a bright example of good to others in the elevated position of life in which God has placed you. Ten years ago I spent September 12 at St. Andrews with a little boy, the cherished object of his mother's deepest affection. We little thought how soon he would be deprived of that excellent parent, and how cruel would be the consequences that followed her sad loss. You have wonderfully escaped the dangers and survived the difficulties of your too eventful life in early youth. May the future be more calm, more happy! ... Your mother's bequest to me has been a source of more anxiety than you can ever know. My consolation is that I firmly did my duty towards my cousin who trusted me, and towards her orphan child.

Lady Elizabeth wrote a week later:

MY DEAREST BUTE,

I was charmed to receive your letter of the 16th, with most interesting details. I pass it on to-day to Sir James Fergusson, who merits that attention. I am thankful you are safe out of cold, dreary, dangerous Iceland, though in after times it will be amusing to talk of your travels in such a curious unvisited country. You are a dear good Boy for writing so often, and I thank you very very much; only it vexed me to be forced to remain so long silent. On your birthday we drank your health "with a sentiment," and the servants had a bottle of wine for the festive occasion, and Mungo [Bute's dog] was decorated with a new ribbon.... Mr. Henry Stuart has been extremely civil in sending me boxes of game and fruit from Mountstuart. There were great doings on the 12th at Rothesay, from which I gather you are now considered Somebody, instead of being Nobody (which I always felt you were wrong in ever permitting). If Sir J. F. had been Guardian long ago, such a state of things would not have existed.

Bute was called away from Oxford, soon after his return for the October term, to attend the funeral at Cheltenham of his last surviving aunt, Lady Selina Henry. His mother had had three sisters, but he had never been intimate with any of them, although he appreciated their personal piety more, perhaps, than they did his. "When I return," he wrote from Cheltenham to his Oxford friend, "I shall be able, perhaps, to add to your knowledge of the ultra-Protestant school, as I have already added to my own. It is wonderful how holy some people are in spite of everything." Bute always recalled with pleasure the extreme piety of some of his Protestant forbears, notably that of his great-great-grandmother, Selina ninth Countess of Huntingdon,[[9]] after whom Lady Selina Henry was named. He gave an old engraved portrait of this esteemed ancestress, who was as homely-looking as she was pious, to an intimate friend, with these words written under it by himself: "Fallax est gratia et vana pulchritudo: mulier timens Dominum ipsa laudabitur."[[10]]

Not only tolerant of, but conspicuously fair-minded towards, the religious views of others, Bute gave evidence of this, as well as of his deep interest in theological questions, in a letter written early in 1868 on the subject of the Filioque clause in the Creed, which divides East from West. Himself persuaded of the truth of the doctrine on this, as on all other points, held in the Latin Church, he could not pass unchallenged defective or disingenuous arguments even on the right side.

It is really breaking a fly on the wheel to attack the argument of the writer in the Rock.

What he says is this: If the Spirit proceeds from the Father only, and not from the Father and the Son, then the Father, by this attribute of emitting the Spirit, which the Son has not, is of a nature so different from that of the Son that they cannot be of one substance.

This visibly ludicrous position can be shown to be an absurdity thus: The Son is by generation, the Spirit by procession, which is a much greater difference between them than there is between the Father and the Son by the Father's being Spirit-emitting and the Son not. Therefore, if this difference between the Father and the Son be sufficient to make them of different substances, how much more shall the Son and the Spirit be of different substances!

Which is absurd.

His characteristic reverence in approaching such subjects is shown in the postscript of this letter, dated from Christ Church, March 26, 1868:

I have a great shrinking from writing or speaking upon this awful matter. But as you wanted it, here it is.

1868, To Russia with Lord Rosebery

In the Long Vacation of this year—his last as an Oxford undergraduate—Bute again spent some weeks in a yachting cruise, not this time in Eastern waters, but in the North Sea and the Baltic, his companion being Lord Rosebery, who was just his own age, and had matriculated at Christ Church in the same term as himself. At the end of August he returned home in view of his impending majority, which was celebrated in September all over his extensive estates with much rejoicing, the principal festivities being held at Cardiff. "It will be a great ordeal," he wrote a few days previously, "and one which I wish it were possible to avoid." It was in truth only the strong sense of duty by which he was ever actuated that enabled him to overcome his natural repugnance to appearing as the principal figure in such demonstrations; but when the time came he enacted his part with dignity and success, and won golden opinions everywhere. His personal appearance, hitherto unknown to thousands of those who acclaimed him in the streets, prepossessed them in his favour. "His well-knit and stalwart form," writes one of those present, "and the combined expression of amiability and decision of character stamped upon his countenance, struck all present." And the same observer commends in the young peer's speeches on this occasion, the "simplicity of style, conciseness of expression and depth of sentiment which showed him to be a man of thought and reflection, and one thoroughly alive to the great responsibility entailed on him by the heritage of wealth." His principal speech was delivered at a great dinner given him by more than three thousand of the tradesmen and workers of Cardiff, and it very favourably impressed all who heard it. In reply to the toast of his health, he said:

I tell you that when I come into this great and growing town, and see the vast number of men who are nourished by its growing prosperity, and when I feel the ties of duty which bind me to them; when I consider the hopes which they fix on me and the affectionate and precious regard with which for my father's sake they look on me; when it comes home to me that I must perforce do great good or great evil to them; and when, on the other hand, my self-knowledge sets before me my own few years, my inexperience, my weakness, my many faults, my limited ability, my loneliness, the weight of responsibility which lies on me seems sometimes absolutely crushing. But it will not do to be crushed by it, and I do not mean to be. I mean to try to do my best for this place to the end of my life, and to do this I would ask you to help me.

CARDIFF CASTLE.

1868, Rejoicings at Cardiff

The rejoicings at Cardiff, which lasted a full week, included the public roasting of two oxen, one in the old river-bed, the other at the head of the west dock. The Corporation also entertained Bute to a banquet, of which the bill of fare is worth reproducing, as a specimen of the Gargantuan scale on which such things were done in mid-Victorian days:

Soups.—Mock turtle, ox-tail, Julienne, vermicelli.

Fish.—Turbot and lobster sauce, mullet à la cardinal, crimped cod and oyster sauce, filets de sole.

Removes.—Haunch venison, boiled leg of lamb, roast beef, green goose, rouleau of veal, ragout sausages, roast chicken, boiled turkey (Bechamel), braised rump beef, saddle mutton, turkey à la royale, forced calves' head, ducks, rouleau of venison, boiled chicken, tongues, hams.

Entrées.—Sweetbreads à la Princesse, lamb-cutlets au Jersey, compôt of pigeons, fillet of chicken à la royale, filet de boeuf, kidneys au champagne, pork cutlets and tomato sauce, vol-au-vent.

Game.—Partridges, hares, grouse.

Sweets.—Ice pudding, Snowdon pudding, plum pie and cream, macaroni au gratin, Charlotte Russe, cabinet pudding, Italian cream, pastries (various), jellies (various).

The dinner, it was reported, "gave great satisfaction"; and it is only to be hoped that those of the guests who worked conscientiously through the menu did not live to repent it.

Bute spent the rest of the autumn, after coming of age, quietly at Cardiff, reading much, and preparing himself for the important step—his reception into the Catholic Church—which he now felt himself free to take. He had already begun to obey the dietary rules prescribed to the faithful (he found them always extremely trying, though he observed them strictly all his life).

My chief news [he wrote on October 24, 1868] is that I have begun to keep the laws of the Church about fasting and abstinence, and had my first fish dinner yesterday. The series of messes, fish and eggs and puddings, nearly made me sick.

In the same letter he refers to a more important matter, the breaking off of his projected marriage. He had formed an attachment to the sixth of the seven beautiful daughters of a well-known peer; but the rumours of his conversion, which was now known to be certainly impending, had caused the lady's parents to withdraw their sanction to the proposed engagement.

To-day's post [he writes] brings me a long letter from the Duchess of ——. It is very disheartening. Unless the woman lies, she will do everything in her power to prevent the marriage. She is, I think, too upright a woman to deceive.

1868, A ghostly warning

This autumn was overshadowed for Bute by an event which he felt much for several reasons, the death (on November 10), when only in his twenty-seventh year, of his cousin the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings, to whose unfortunate career reference has already been made. Bute had gone up to Scotland a few days previously, leaving at Cardiff Castle Mr. John Boyle (the brother of one of his former curators and a trustee of his father's will), who on November 10 was expecting a friend to dinner. Seated in the library, he heard a carriage roll through the great courtyard and stop at the door. After an interval, thinking the bell must be broken, he came into the hall, but the butler, who was waiting there, assured him that no carriage had come. Next morning he received a telegram announcing that Lord Hastings had died suddenly the night before. He only heard later, for the first time, that the arrival of a spectral carriage was said always to foretell the death of some member of the Hastings family.[[11]]

[[1]] Hartwell Grissell, M.A., of Brasenose, and for many years attached to the Papal Court.

[[2]] The late Father James MacSweeney, Bute's principal collaborator in his opus magnum, the translation of the Roman Breviary.

[[3]] The Senior Students (now called "Students") of Christ Church correspond to the Fellows of other colleges.

[[4]] The writer was told by Mr. Chamberlain himself, in his old age, that he had first worn a red chasuble at St. Thomas's Church on Whit Sunday, 1854. Dr. Neale, however, had certainly worn the Eucharistic vestments before that in his chapel at East Grinstead; and they were introduced at Wilmscote (Warwickshire) as early as 1849.

[[5]] "I remember when I was at Oxford," he said in his Rectorial address at St. Andrews a quarter of a century later (post, p. [187]), "and was going one Long Vacation to Iceland in company with an English friend (now the secretary of one of Her Majesty's ministers), I stopped the yacht here [at St. Andrews] in order to show him with pride the only place in Scotland, as far as I know, whose appearance can boast any kinship with that of Oxford."

[[6]] See post, pp. [150], [151].

[[7]] "Isn't it perfectly monstrous," Bute is recorded to have once asked a lady in a London drawing-room, à propos of nothing in particular, "that St. Magnus hasn't got an octave?" What the lady said or thought is not recorded, but Bute had the satisfaction of knowing, before his death, that Pope Leo XIII. had at least authorised the keeping of St. Magnus's festival throughout Scotland; The Scots Benedictine Abbey of Fort Augustus is probably the only place in Christendom where the feast-day of the holy Earl (April 16) is annually celebrated by a solemn high Mass.

[[8]] The text of these two poems is given in [Appendices II]. and [III].

[[9]] Patroness of George Whitefield (the inventor of Calvinistic Methodism), and founder of numerous chapels up and down England, which were under her absolute control. The adherents of this sect (known as the "Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion") for the most part joined the Congregationalist body later.

[[10]] "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised" (Prov. xxxi. 30).

[[11]] Mr. Boyle's grandson, who communicates this incident, adds: "My grandfather always told this story very solemnly, and with the fullest conviction of its truth, although he was not at all apt to believe in anything except the most positive and material facts."

Lady Margaret MacRae (Bute's only daughter) has assured the writer that on the eve of her father's death at Dumfries House (October 8, 1900), she was an ear-witness of a phenomenon precisely similar to that described in the text.

CHAPTER IV

DANESFIELD—RECEPTION INTO CATHOLIC CHURCH

1867-1869

The conversion of Bute to the Roman Church, as to which his mind was practically made up before the end of 1866, though the actual step was delayed until nearly two years later, was brought about, as we have seen, chiefly by his own reading and reflection, combined with the impression wrought on his mind by foreign travel—not, it is to be noted, mainly in Catholic countries, but in those Eastern lands where he had every opportunity of studying at first hand the various forms of worship and belief in which he was so deeply interested. None of his companions on these extended journeys were Roman Catholics, nor apparently in any degree sympathetic with the spirit in which the young Scottish pilgrim visited those historic spots. A casual note in one of his journals reveals the fact that he defrayed in most cases the entire expenses of his fellow-travellers on these trips; but though he thus secured companionship, there is no evidence that his varied journeyings were carried out in society particularly congenial to him. At Oxford, as has been already said, his only really intimate friends (in a host of acquaintances) were a lady already middle-aged, and two undergraduates, whose loyal affection for him certainly did not include any intelligent sympathy with his religious aspirations. It was not until the Christmas vacation of 1866, when his conversion was to all intents and purposes an accomplished fact, that he became for the first time intimate with a Catholic family, and through them with one who was destined to be the actual instrument of his reception into the Latin Communion. Let us pause for a moment at the turning-point in his life which we have now reached, and look back some eighteen months to the beginning and the development of this new friendship.

1867, Danesfield

Not far from the old town of Marlow, among chalky downs starred in early summer with masses of golden St. John's wort, stood in those days the pretty country seat of Danesfield, the home of Mr. Charles Scott Murray, a Catholic gentleman of Scottish descent and good estate. He had married a daughter of the twelfth Lord Lovat, and had a large family; and both his country home and his house in Cavendish Square were centres of much pleasant hospitality. Lord Bute stayed with him several times at Danesfield, and made there, early in 1867, the acquaintance of the Rev. T. W. (afterwards Monsignor) Capel, who acted as chaplain in the beautiful private chapel (one of Pugin's finest works) attached to the house. "Lord Bute was often at Danesfield in those days," writes a daughter of the house, "and I remember him sitting for hours talking to my mother—almost always on religious subjects—and watching her embroidering vestments for the chapel." With the chaplain also he held many conversations, and informed himself through him about many points in Catholic practice and observance. But he was already, as has been seen, practically convinced of the truth of the Roman claims; and he subsequently took occasion more than once emphatically to deny that there was any truth whatever in the popular idea that he had been "converted" by Mgr. Capel. Writing to an intimate friend,[[1]] four or five years later, on the subject of a biography of that prelate which it was proposed to publish, he says:

If it does come out, the only thing I hope they won't put in is that he "converted" me, which would be, to put it plainly, a mere lie. Mgr. C. performed the ceremony of reception in December, 1868. I chose him for the purpose because, having several times met him at the Scott Murrays' the year before, I knew him fairly well, and was pleased with his clear and simple way of explaining certain things I wished to know. I received much spiritual help from him at a time when I was greatly in need of such help, and yet was unable, for certain reasons, to take the final step; and I was, and am, grateful to him for this and for much else. But that I was in any sense "converted" by him is simply untrue.[[2]]

1867, Converts to Roman Church

Bute was greatly attracted by the kindness, good sense, and sterling Catholic piety of his host at Danesfield, and had a sincere regard and affection for both him and his wife, and indeed for the whole family. "His initial shyness once overcome," one of them writes, "he became like one of ourselves. He shared all our home life, came to Mass and Benediction with us as a matter of course, and talked quite simply of how he longed to be a 'real' Catholic." Of his postponed reception he wrote to Mr. Scott Murray in much the same terms (though more briefly) as he had written to his friend at Oxford.

April 16, 1867.

MY DEAR MR. SCOTT MURRAY,

It is all over for the present. I have yielded to the pressure of the Court of Chancery, my guardians, and the Oxford people, and given them a promise not to be received until I am of age. I do assure you that the state of hopelessness in which I am is sad to a degree. When I see you next I can tell you, if you like, the details of a very wretched business.

I have a favour to ask, which is that you will get for me one of those crosses such as you have hanging on your beads. I hope you will not refuse me this kindness, although I remain external to the Faith.

Believe me always, with many thanks for all your kindness, most sincerely yours,

BUTE.

A letter to the same correspondent, towards the close of the year, mentions the names of some recent or prospective converts to the Roman Church, in whom Bute was naturally interested.

Dumfries House,
Christmas Eve, 1867.

I was for two nights at Blenheim at the end of term; they were rather full of Lady Portarlington's[[3]] conversion, and told me also that the young Norths had been received and their mother was about to be. We heard there also of the reception of Lord Granard and Lord Louth—an unusual event, I imagine, in Ireland.

I met at Blenheim an old Admiral, Sir Lucius Curtis[[4]] (at least eighty), who became a Catholic, he told me, soon after Newman, more than twenty years ago. Two men connected with Aberdeen, George Akers of Oriel[[5]] and William Humphrey,[[6]] the Bishop of Brechin's chaplain, are both going over, I hear, almost at once. Akers is, I believe, an able man; but a more distinguished convert is Clarke, fellow of St. John's[[7]] (and a famous rowing man). George Lane Fox and Hartwell Grissell are both certain, I believe. So you see Oxford is moving.

1868, Fatality at Christ Church

The friendship between Bute and Capel, begun at Danesfield, was strengthened during the summer term of 1868, the latter part of which Mr. Capel spent at Oxford, in residence at the Catholic presbytery. He arrived there a day or two after a sad fatality at Christ Church, the shock of which was deeply felt by all—even the most wild and thoughtless—of the members of the House. A letter from Bute thus describes it:

Ch. Ch., May 14, 1868.

One of the most frightful accidents I have ever known took place here last night. A man called Marriott, whom I knew well, one of the sporting set (he rode my horse in a steeplechase only last term), fell out of the top windows of Peckwater, and died in about half an hour. You may conceive what a state Ch. Ch. is in.... Mr. Capel is coming next Wednesday, and I am sure his visit will do good. Indeed I think this opportunity an admirable one, when the sight of death has awakened many from the dream of sensuality in which they habitually lie asleep.

A letter to the same correspondent next day gives a curious picture of the state of feeling at the House:

Ch. Ch., May 15, 1868.

Another fatal accident! What days we are living in. Yesterday afternoon some undergraduates were shooting crows with saloon pistols about Magdalen Walks, when one of them got shot through the stomach and died almost at once. He was an Exeter man.

We are all in black and white at the House, and very sad and depressed. Last night a number of us dined at the "Mitre," so as to keep away from the House. It was a strange meal—much noisy talk and a good deal drunk, but every now and then came long miserable pauses, and talk about Marriott in low, frightened tones. Afterwards they came down to my rooms for coffee, and as we sat here we could hear the passing bell tolling from St. Aldate's. Some, almost in desperation, rushed off to the billiard-room and played pool in a gloomy sort of way. It was anything to keep away out of the House. I assure you the gloom and misery of it all are excessive. I hear men saying that they simply dare not die.

I do feel that Mr. Capel will find men here not unprepared to listen to him. Left to themselves, they are evidently making desperate efforts to forget it all....

I had seen him lying in the ground-floor room where he died—totally unconscious, and breathing with great difficulty. The Senior Censor came in when I was there, and read over him the prayers for the dying. This was the very clergyman who told me a few months ago that he did not believe in prayer.... I went into the room again after the men had gone to the billiard-room. It was the room of a friend of his: the walls covered with pictures of horses and actresses, and whips and spurs and pipes. The body lay on a mattress on the floor, covered with a sheet. It was all dreadful, and I tried in vain in that room to say a De Profundis for him. As I went out I met men coming in carrying the coffin.

A letter three days later gives an account of the funeral:

Oxford, May 18.

We all assembled in the cathedral, in mourning, at 2.30 p.m. The Dean read the funeral service, making repeated and most painful slips of the tongue. Then the choir sang a really lovely anthem, "In the sight of the unwise he seemed to die, but he is at peace." All were much moved; and the man next me was, I think, crying, as indeed I was myself. We walked in procession, two and two, to Peck., then formed a lane to Canterbury Gate, through which the hearse passed, his friends following it down to the station. All in profound silence, broken only by the tramp of feet and the tolling of the bell. Everything inky black, except as much of the Dean's surplice as a huge black scarf and stole let be seen. The coffin was all black, with no cross or anything else to relieve it. I heard great disgust expressed at the godless gloom of it all.

I have mentioned Mr. Capel's visit to several; and they have all hailed it, I may say, with pleasure. What has happened here has made many think and say, "Now is the time to arise from sleep." Only they are so chained by the habits of their lives and by the fear of what the worldly consequences may be if they follow their consciences.

1868, Capel at Oxford

Mr. Capel, of whose visit to Oxford, and its possible results, his friend entertained such sanguine hopes, was at that time a man of very attractive personality, pleasing alike in appearance, manner, and address, and possessed of a singular gift of eloquence. Bute's hope, no doubt, was that his earnestness, sympathy, and tact might have a soothing effect on the nerves of his friends, still quivering from the shock of the recent catastrophe; and to some extent his anticipations were justified. Several of the undergraduates made Mr. Capel's acquaintance, and were pleased and touched by his unaffected kindness. One of them, he found, had been for some months resolved to make his submission to Rome; and by Mr. Capel's advice he asked for an interview with the Dean and frankly informed him of his intention, adding, apparently, that he thought it highly probable that his example would be followed by others. Capel wrote on May 31 to Mrs. Scott Murray:

The Dean of Christ Church is in a great state of mind, having just heard from B—— not only of his own decision, but of the likelihood of others taking a like step. Pusey, I hear, has written to the Dean to the effect that any secessions which might take place were to be attributed not to the teaching of the High Church party, but to his (the Dean's) bad government of the college! Meanwhile Liddon has issued a peremptory mandate prohibiting the undergraduates of the House from making my acquaintance. As Bute puts it, this is a clear case of shutting the stable door after the horse had been stolen. All those who want to know me, I think, already do.

Dr. Liddon expressed a desire, a little later, to meet Mr. Capel, who thus describes the interview:

I saw Liddon for an hour and a half on Saturday. Our meeting was quite cordial: our conversation quite courteous, but quite unsatisfactory, for he kept shifting his ground, and slipped away like an eel from every point I raised. To me his mind seems as confused as Pusey's, which is saying much. Yet to a section of people here he is more than Pope, a little God, whose every word they accept as an oracle from heaven. Poor good people! It is hard to understand such idolatry: it is, I think, a peculiar product of Oxford, and of one school here.

Bute is in admirable dispositions, and during the month of May has been leading the life of a true Christian. The long delay has tried him much: yet his spiritual progress since last summer has been extraordinary. I am simply amazed at some of the things he has told me. May our dear Lord be eternally blessed for all He has done, and is doing, for this soul so dear to Him.

1868, Religious studies

The long vacation of 1868 was, as has been seen, chiefly devoted to a yachting tour in the North Sea, and a visit to Russia, undertaken by Bute in the companionship of Lord Rosebery. The autumn months after the celebration of his majority were spent quietly at Cardiff and in Scotland, as much time as he could spare being given to a course of reading recommended to him by Mr. Capel, partly by way of preparation for his reception into the Church of his choice. He refers to this in an interesting letter to his attached friend at Oxford, written soon after his coming of age.

October 5, 1868.

You may imagine how busy I have been and am since my birthday. Still I find time every day for some serious reading, as to which I have had competent advice. I am going through some of the writings of S. Cyprian, S. Ambrose, and S. Gregory, and doing a little liturgical study. Then there are the 12th cent. lives of Ninian and Kentigern, and Adamnan's Columba, all of great interest to me; and I have sent for Boethius's lives of the Bishops of Aberdeen. Theiner's great work, not long ago published in Rome,[[8]] I find most valuable, and throwing a flood of light on the mediæval relations between Scotland and the Holy See.

For devotion I have St. Bernard (his Letters): a very simple prayer-book, such as children use; and the Latin Psalter. I wish you were able to use this;[[9]] there is a beauty and fulness of meaning in the Latin version which I think no modern language can give—except, you will say (and as to that you have a right to speak)[[10]] possibly Greek. I sometimes dream of trying my hand at a new English version of the Psalms; but that is part of a larger scheme which it is perhaps presumptuous of me even to think of.[[11]]

It was natural that when the long-anticipated time at length came for actually taking the step prepared for with such anxious deliberation, Bute should turn to the only Catholic priest with whom he was in any degree intimate. More than thirty years later Monsignor Capel, who had then been for some time resident in California, wrote in a San Francisco newspaper a short account of Bute's conversion, the steps that led up to it, and his own part in receiving him into the Church.

A course of reading was suggested, I seeing him from time to time. Newman's pathetic hymn, "Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom," was often on his lips. In course of time he was fully convinced that the true Church is an organic body, a Divine institution, the source of all spiritual power and jurisdiction, and the channel of sacramental grace, under the Vicar of Christ, the Bishop of Rome.

Finally, after an hour of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the convent chapel at Harley House, London,[[12]] he determined to ask admission to the Church.

1868, Third visit to Holy Land

Bute's conditional baptism, profession of faith, and first Communion took place quite privately on December 8, 1868 (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), in the chapel of the Sisters of Notre Dame, Southwark.[[13]] Mr. Capel officiated at all these acts, with the authorisation of the Bishop of Southwark (Dr. Grant), who himself assisted at them. The event was not generally known until the New Year, and it was generally believed, and has indeed often been stated since, that the reception took place on Christmas Eve. The young neophyte left England a few days after the event, and was well out of hearing by the time the excited comments of the public and the press on his action had begun to make themselves audible.