John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 12

Lucius is supposed to have left Britain, preached among the Rhaetian Alps, and died at Chur or Coire, where he is still venerated as a saint. The Welsh legend makes him founder of the churches of Llandaff, Roath, etc. Lleurwg or Lleurfer (Light-bearer) is the Welsh rendering of Lucius.

[7] More than 2000 fragments of the fourteenth-century base of St.

Alban's shrine were discovered in 1872, built into the walls, and were pieced together again with extraordinary patience and skill, and re-erected on the original site.

[8] The Duke of Norfolk and his four unmarried sisters were at this time living at Arundel with their widowed mother.

[9] One recalls in this connection the cases of two of the most devout and accomplished Catholic writers of the nineteenth century, the Count de Montalembert and Kenelm Digby. Both expended the utmost enthusiasm and eloquence in their description of the religious life of the Middle Ages; and both resisted to the utmost, and not without bitterness, the entry into religion of members of their own immediate family circles.

[10] A contemporary of Bute's at Harrow and Christ Church. He had become a Catholic in 1871.

[11] In the preface to his translation of the Breviary, published six years later, Bute pays a handsome tribute to the "long pains and unwearied patience and kindness" which the learned Jesuit had expended in a.s.sisting him in the work. Father MacSweeney read the whole of it in proof, and contributed much valuable criticism, especially in connection with the translation of the Psalter.

[12] One of the testamentary dispositions of Edith Lady Loudoun, who had succeeded to the Scottish earldom in 1868 on the premature death of her brother, fourth and last Marquis of Hastings, curiously recalls a provision afterwards made by Bute in his own will. Lady Loudoun directed that her right hand should be severed after death, and buried apart from her body (which was interred in the family vault in Scotland) in the park at her husband's seat at Donington, her home before she inherited her brother's t.i.tle. Curiously enough, a similar provision had been made by her grandfather (and Bute's), the first Marquis of Hastings, the distinguished Governor-General of India, who died in Malta in 1826, his wife and children being at the time in Scotland. He was buried at Malta, but his right hand was by his wish carried to Loudoun, and placed in the grave destined for his wife.

When the latter was dying fourteen years later, her daughter Sophia, afterwards Marchioness of Bute, wrote a note to the parish minister, asking him to bring her a small iron box which he would find in the family vault. "There must be no delay," the missive ended. The young minister did Lady Sophia's bidding: the box was taken to her mother's deathbed, and two days later was enclosed in her coffin according to her husband's desire. This minister was the Rev. Norman Macleod, afterwards the chaplain and intimate friend of Queen Victoria.

{117}

CHAPTER VII

WINE-GROWING--LITERARY WORK--THE _SCOTTISH REVIEW_

1875-1886

Bute's domestic happiness was crowned, at the close of the year 1875, by the birth of his eldest (and for some years his only) child, the event taking place at Mountstuart on December 24, 1875. "At twenty minutes to five a.m. on Christmas Eve," he wrote to a friend, "the first cries of my daughter were heard, and the little thing is and has been in excellent health and strength. I cannot believe there is ever much likeness in babies to one parent or the other; but what she has _absolutely_, such as the colour of the eyes, formation of the ears, etc., is after me, and not after her mother ... She was baptised that evening at six, I asking the farmers round about. Mgr. Capel made a kind of little sermon for the occasion, very well done."

The autumn of the following year was marked by a Royal visit to the Isle of Bute--a rare event in those parts, and one which for that reason aroused all the greater interest and appreciation. H.R.H.

Prince Leopold was the guest of Lord and Lady Bute for four days at Mountstuart, arriving in the evening in Lord Glasgow's yacht _Valetta_ at the picturesque harbour of Rothesay, which was illuminated for the occasion. The Prince next day paid a kind of official visit to the {118} Aquarium (the chief public attraction of Rothesay), and had a most enthusiastic reception. On Sunday he attended service in the parish church, accompanied by the Protestant members of the house-party; and in the evening he was present at the Catholic service of vespers in Lord Bute's private chapel. A ball was given at Mountstuart during his visit; and he much enjoyed a cruise in the yacht round the islands, as well as a visit to the interesting colony of beavers which Bute had established some little time before on a spot adapted for their damming and tree-cutting operations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTELL COCH, GLAMORGAN]

[Sidenote: 1875, The Cardiff vintage]

From his boyhood Bute had been a lover of animals, though, unlike the young hero of "The Mill on the Floss" (who "was very fond of animals--that is, of throwing stones at them"), he took no interest whatever in their destruction. Besides the beavers, to whose const.i.tutions the dampness of the Bute climate ultimately proved fatal, he introduced a number of kangaroos (or rather wallabies) into the sheltered woods round Mountstuart; and his visitors used to view with surprise these agile little marsupials leaping about among the bushes, as much at home as, and indeed much less shy than, the familiar hare or rabbit of our English coverts. The acclimatisation of exotic shrubs in the grounds of his island home (where the prevailing mildness of temperature encouraged such experiments) was always a source of interest to him; whilst at Cardiff he derived particular pleasure from the success of his efforts to grow grapes there for wine-producing purposes. Vines were selected from the colder districts of France, and were planted in 1875 on the slopes of Castell Coch, near Cardiff, in light fibrous loam soil. One particular vine, the _Gamay Noir_ (a favourite in the Paris {119} district), so flourished that a second and larger vineyard was propagated from it. Forty gallons of wine were made in the second year after planting, and after two or three bad seasons so good a vintage was secured in 1881 that the wine, p.r.o.nounced by connoisseurs to resemble good still champagne, was all sold at excellent prices. The record year, however, was 1893, when the entire crop of forty hogsheads, or over a thousand dozen, of the wine realised a price which recouped all the expenses incurred during the previous eighteen years. Dr. Lawson Tait, as famous for his taste in wine as for his surgical skill, bought some of it; and when sold with the rest of his cellar after his death it fetched 115_s._ a dozen.[1] The success of Bute's viticultural experiments aroused very general interest in England; and it is perhaps worth while putting on record, as a good specimen of the now discredited art of the punster, a notice of the new industry which appeared, now nearly half a century ago, in the princ.i.p.al comic paper of the day:

The Marquis of Bute has, it appears, a Bute-iful vineyard at Castle Coch, near Cardiff, where it is to be hoped such wine will be produced that in future Hock will be superseded by Coch, and the unp.r.o.nounceable vintages of the Rhine will yield to the unp.r.o.nounceable vintages of the Taff. Cochheimer is as yet a wine _in potentia_, but the vines are planted, and the gardener, Mr. Pettigrew, antic.i.p.ates no petty growth.

No distinctive name was, as a matter of fact, ever given to the wine made from the Castle Coch grapes; {120} and Bute on more than one occasion asked good Welsh scholars (including some of the Cardiff clergy) to dinner, in order to consult with them as to this point. The site of one of the vineyards was a place called Swanbridge (Pont-yr-alarch), and it was suggested that "Sparkling Pont-yr-alarch"[2] would look well in a wine merchant's list. "True,"

was Bute's comment, made in the serious vein in which he loved to treat such subjects: "yet I fear that such a name would militate against the casual demand for my wine in hotels or restaurants. One can hardly imagine the ordinary diner calling for a bottle of Pont-yr-alarch at the beginning of his meal, still less asking for a second bottle at a more advanced stage of the repast. All orders for this particular vintage would have, in practice, to be given in writing." The wine continued to be anonymous; and Bute, who frequently had it served at his own table, used to puzzle his guests by asking their candid opinion of it. "Well, now, Lord Bute," said a distinguished connoisseur once, after tasting the 1893 vintage and rolling it over his palate _secundum artem_, "this is what I should call an _interesting_ wine." "I wonder what Sir H---- M---- exactly meant by that," Bute would sometimes say afterwards, recalling the incident.

[Sidenote: 1875, Order of the Thistle]

The year 1875 was marked for Bute by an incident which gratified him not a little, namely, the {121} bestowal on him by Queen Victoria of the Knighthood of the Thistle. It was characteristic of him that he did not accept this honour, as some n.o.blemen of high rank and large possessions might easily have done, as a mere matter of course. He regarded it, on the contrary, as a recognition of the services he had endeavoured to render to education, learning, and the civic life; and he valued and appreciated it accordingly. Apart from any question of personal merit, he was gratified, as a patriotic Scot, by his admission into the most exclusive order of chivalry in the kingdom, and one which had been conferred for generations on the most eminent of his countrymen. He had held for some years the Grand Cross of two distinguished Papal Orders--those of St. Gregory and of the Holy Sepulchre; but on the occasion of his next ceremonial visit to Rome and to the Pope, it was remarked at the Vatican (where such details never pa.s.s unnoticed) that he was not wearing the Pontifical decorations, but only the insignia of the Scottish Order.[3]

The loyal affection cherished by Bute for his few near relatives has already been mentioned; and it may therefore be easily imagined with what sympathetic interest he learned in the summer of 1875 that his cousin Lady Flora Hastings, elder sister of Lord Loudoun, had been received into the Catholic Church, and was in consequence being subjected to a species of domestic persecution which seems strange in these more tolerant days, but was {122} by no means uncommon fifty years ago. Bute wrote as to this to an intimate friend:

_Jan._ 10, 1876.

The treatment to which she has been submitted at home has naturally been extremely trying and painful to her;[4] but she has endured it with admirable patience, being reinforced and supported by the remarkable kindness of her brother. Loudoun's behaviour has indeed been considerate to a degree that can hardly be imagined, and far more so than could have been at all expected. You will understand, without my saying more, what we all feel about this. Norfolk has been kindness itself to her, and so, too, have others.

An interesting sequel to the reference in the last sentence was the happy engagement concluded in 1877 between the Duke of Norfolk and Lady Flora. As first cousins respectively to the bride and bridegroom, Lord and Lady Bute were of course very specially interested in this marriage, which took place at the Oratory on November 21, 1877. "We are all occupied all day here," Bute wrote from a London hotel on November 16, "talking about the wedding next week, and some of us with other things besides talk, for there is much business to be done and settled."

Neither on this nor on any other occasion did Lord and Lady Bute care to remain away from their own home longer than was absolutely necessary. Bute wrote a few days afterwards from Lord Glasgow's seat in Fife, where they were paying a short visit:

{123}

We quitted London--as usual, with much satisfaction--the very day after the ceremony, which was decorously done, and the mob of sightseers was, I am inclined to think, better behaved (anyhow inside the church) than at our marriage five years ago. Lord Beaconsfield, who was in the front row next to Princess Louise, sat throughout the function wrapped in his long drab overcoat, and gazing at the altar with Sphinx-like immobility. He told me at the reception afterwards that he had thought the music (which at Norfolk's express wish was plain-chant throughout) "strangely impressive."

The bridegroom, by the way, forgot to order a carriage to take them away after the ceremony, but finding his father-in-law's carriage at the church door, handed in the bride with great presence of mind. They were just driving off when Mr. Hastings came out fuming, and insisted on a seat in his own carriage. So they all drove away together, quite in violation, I imagine, of the established etiquette on such occasions.

[Sidenote: 1877, Burning of Mountstuart]

Bute's hopes of spending the winter of 1877-1878 quietly at his old home near Rothesay were rudely frustrated by the catastrophe of December 3, 1877, when Mountstuart House was practically burnt to the ground, only the two wings (one of them containing the little private chapel) escaping the flames. He wrote early in December, in reply to a letter of condolence:

Many thanks for the kind expressions in your letter. It has all been, of course, very distressing. Nearly all moveables (including books and pictures) were most fortunately saved,[5] but the confusion is {124} and has been so great that I am practically bookless for a while, and feel like a snail that has lost its sh.e.l.l. But the Breviary is slowly proceeding.

The destruction of his birthplace was, of course, far from leaving Bute in any sense homeless; for Cardiff Castle as well as Dumfries House, the fine old seat of the Crichtons, were still at his disposition, and to these he added in course of time two other country-places in Scotland, besides leasing for a term of years first the Duke of Devonshire's cedar-shaded villa at Chiswick, and later the beautiful domain of St. John's Lodge, in Regent's Park, which was almost as much a _rus in urbe_ as Holland House itself. Superficially, and in one respect, he may thus be said to have resembled the anonymous duke in Disraeli's most popular novel, who was the owner of so many magnificent seats that he could never feel (it was his one grievance) that he possessed a home. But Bute, who considered it a matter of duty and conscience to spend a certain time at all his places in turn, contrived to find in each of them the _Lar domestico_ (as the Portuguese call it) which makes a house a veritable home. Happy in the society of his wife and growing family (three sons were born to him between 1880 and 1887) and surrounded by the books which he loved, he was well contented to live remote from cities, although quite devoid of any instincts whatever for the sports which alone make country life tolerable to so many Englishmen. A good swimmer and fencer (as we have seen) in his early manhood, he indulged in middle life in no other bodily exercise than that of country walks; and even in these, given a congenial companion, what is called the "object of the walk" was often forgotten in the interest of some conversation on {125} topics strangely remote from the picturesque surroundings of a Scottish country house. One who was often his a.s.sociate in such rambles, perhaps on the high moorlands above Mountstuart, recalls how they would pause at some notable point of view, and how his companion, gazing with unseeing eye (though in reality far from insensible to the beauties of nature) at the matchless panorama of woods and mountains, sea, and sky spread out before them, would dismiss the prospect, as it were, with a wave of the hand, and continue his discourse on the claim of some mediaeval anti-pope to the recognition of Christendom, or the precise relation between the liturgical language employed by the Coptic Church and the tongue of ancient Egypt as spoken by the Pharaohs.

[Sidenote: 1877, Bute as a landowner]

Bute was scrupulous and exact in the performance of his duties as a landowner; he kept himself informed of all the details connected with the management of his extensive estates, and never grudged the demands on his time and patience made by the lawyers, agents, and others for business interviews extending over many hours and sometimes even days.

That he found these prolonged transactions irksome and fatiguing enough is clear from some expressions in his correspondence; and it was always a pleasure and relief to him to get back to his books and literary work, which were, perhaps, on the whole the chief interest of his life.

Although he expended annually a considerable sum on the equipment of his libraries, Bute was no bibliophile in the sense in which that word is now often used. Tall-paper copies, first editions, volumes unique for their rarity, and publications de luxe had no interest for him at all. What he aimed at was to surround himself with a first-rate working library, furnished especially with those {126} works of reference--_sources_, as the French term is--most likely to be of service to him in the historical and liturgical researches with which he was chiefly occupied. His librarian had standing orders, in the case of new books of interest and utility, to purchase three copies, so that wherever he chanced to be resident he found the tools of his craft ready to his hand.[6] A letter written in the autumn of 1877 shows that the work at that time occupying most of his attention was his translation of the Roman Breviary, which after several years of a.s.siduous (though not, of course, continuous) labour was now nearing its completion.

Mountstuart, _August_ 28, 1877.

At last I am relieved from a more than usually tedious spell of business with lawyers and factors, and am able to fulfil my promise to tell you of my liturgical _opus magnum_ (I call it so, though my office has been but the humble one of the translator). For the present, keep the matter to yourself.

I have been engaged since the winter of 1870 in translating the whole of the Roman Breviary into English; and the MS. is nearly finished, and the printing now going on. I expect it will be published next year. I have learnt Hebrew (more or less) for the purpose, and done an amount of reading which it quite frightens me to think of. This translation is _my beloved child_. I send you a volume of proof, and will give you a copy of the two volumes when they come out. Please keep it quiet: I don't want to be badgered about it, as I should be if people knew that I was doing it.

{127}

I am executing a paraphrase in English prose, with a critical commentary, introduction, notes, a.n.a.lysis, and all the rest of it, of the Scots metrical romance upon the Life of William Wallace, written by "Blind Harry" in the XVth century.

From my Scotch historical reading, I am gradually compiling a skeleton chronology of the History of Scotland, with references to every fact: it is intended to stretch from the fall of Macbeth to that of Mary--_i.e._ the national, Catholic, and feudal period.

And--pleasure after business--I have in hand a translation of the Targum (Paraphrastic Commentary by the Jewish Fathers) upon the Song of Solomon, from the Latin version published at Antwerp in 1570. This has just been rejected by the Jesuits for one of their publications as "dull." As I did not compose it, I feel free to differ from their verdict. I think now of offering it to _Good Words_. It is mystic (not fleshly) and very wild, picturesque, and diffuse--indeed, in my opinion, touching not infrequently on the sublime.