John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 1

John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T.

by David Hunter Blair.

PREFACE

Just twenty years have pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle-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 {viii} 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 t.i.tle-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 const.i.tution, 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 G.o.d and to man; his duty, above all, to the innumerable human beings {ix} 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.

{x}

The writer desires, in conclusion, to express his grat.i.tude 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 a.s.sign motives, they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods; but contemporary letters are facts." (_Newman to his sister, Mrs. John Mozley_, May 18, 1863.)

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 t.i.tles 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 c.u.mbrae, 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 t.i.tles, 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 {2} 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 t.i.tles 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 n.o.blemen 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 Emanc.i.p.ation, even when that {3} 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.

[Sidenote: 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 {4} 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 {5} the _chatelaine_ 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."

[Sidenote: 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 const.i.tuted 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 {6} 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 a.s.sumed 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 surrept.i.tiously 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 {7} 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]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Marquess of Bute aet 2_ from a drawing by R. T. Ross at Cardiff Castle]

[Sidenote: 1859, Rival guardians]

For a boy of twelve this is a sufficiently remarkable letter; but an even more precocious doc.u.ment 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 {8} 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 {9} 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.

[Sidenote: 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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 {10} 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 G.o.d.'"

[Sidenote: 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, {11} 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 amus.e.m.e.nts. 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 seash.o.r.e 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.