John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 13

So you see I have lots of work in hand.

Bute took an infinity of pains over his English Breviary, polishing and repolishing his version of the mediaeval Latin text over and over again, and correcting and revising the proofs with such meticulous care as greatly to add to the expense of the production (which was defrayed by himself, not by the publishers) and also to the delay in bringing out the work. Probably few books of the size and character of these two portly volumes were ever printed with a smaller proportion of typographical errors; but Bute professed himself far from satisfied with the work on its appearance. Sending a copy to a friend, he wrote:

There are a good many things in it--blunders and {128} oversights (mostly mine, not the printers', who have done their work extraordinarily well)--which make me anything but contented with it. I am on the whole, seeing the book in print, least dissatisfied with the rendering of the _prayers_, in which I venture to think I have not quite failed to reproduce to some extent the measured and sonorous dignity of the original Latin.

Reviewers, as a rule, received the Breviary with respectful admiration, their tributes being, however, paid in many cases less to the work itself than to the astonishing industry of the translator. Bute himself was disappointed at the slowness of the sale. "I hope," he wrote to a friend at Oxford, "you will speak of it if occasion offers, as the circulation is not large." And some months later he wrote again, "I am very glad that you find the Breviary of use, and that there are others who do the same. It is not, however, a feeling as yet very widely disseminated among the public, seeing that I am still 300 out of pocket by having published it."

There was, in truth, no very considerable body of educated English-speaking readers to whom these two ponderous and necessarily expensive tomes were likely to appeal. The Catholic clergy had no money to spare for literary luxuries, and felt no special need of an English version of their familiar office-book: the Catholic laity, devoid for the most part of all liturgical taste, and nurtured on modern methods and manuals of devotion, knew and cared little about the ancient and official prayer of the Church, either in Latin or in English; and thus those chiefly interested in this really monumental work, to which the translator had devoted such prolonged and unwearied labour, proved to be, not (pathetically enough) his own co-religionists, but a small group of scholars and devotees mostly {129} belonging to one section of the Church of England, and including liturgiologists of acknowledged eminence. In some religious houses, however, both of men and women, the Breviary was introduced, and greatly valued, as a means of instructing novices and others in the Divine Office; and in a certain number of Anglican communities, especially in the United States, it was brought into use as the regular office-book. Bute always heard with sincere gratification of any instances of this which were brought to his knowledge.[7]

[Sidenote: 1882, The _Scottish Review_]

Next to the Breviary, the "_beloved child_" of his brain, which was published in the autumn of 1879, Bute's chief literary labours may be said to have been in connection with the quarterly _Scottish Review_, to which he first became a contributor in 1882, and of which he afterwards a.s.sumed the control, purchasing the periodical outright in 1886. A series of his letters dealing with the _Review_, all eminently characteristic of the writer, have been preserved, mostly addressed to the editor, the Rev. W. Metcalfe, an Established Church minister of Paisley, who was afterwards closely a.s.sociated with him during his Rectorship of St. Andrews University, and was during a long series of years one of his most intimate friends and most regular correspondents.

One of his first letters, in reply to one suggesting certain subjects for possible articles from his pen, shows the complete frankness with which, when necessary, he acknowledged his own ignorance.

{130}

Dumfries House, _October_ 10, 1882.

I am sensible of the kindness of your offer, but I know my own limitations. About prehistoric antiquities I can write nothing, for I know nothing; and of the Scots Men-at-Arms I know if possible even less. For the latter subject I could no doubt "mug up," as Arthur Pendennis did for his articles in the _Pall Mall Gazette_; but _cui bono_? As for early Scottish Christianity, the subject is too vast: you might almost as well ask me for an article on the history of the human race. It must be done in _fragments_. I think I might try my hand on some sc.r.a.p, say the ancient Celtic Hymns, in Latin; and I am now taking steps to ascertain if there are known to be any more of such compositions than I already possess--also to get a legible transcript of one of mine, a (to me) illegible lithographic facsimile of an ancient Codex.... As to the Men-at-Arms, I am of opinion that Mrs.

Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford would do this well. She is somewhat of an invalid, and spends much time in study, in which she has the advantage both of great natural ability and of her ill.u.s.trious great-grandfather's admirable library. She is (unreasonably) diffident; but were the article once written, I feel sure you would not find yourself in search of any excuse not to print it.

[Sidenote: 1883, Contributions to the _Scottish Review_]

Bute's own paper on "Ancient Celtic Latin Hymns" appeared in February, 1883, and was the first of over twenty articles contributed by him to the _Scottish Review_.[8] Other articles followed, dealing respectively with St. Patrick, the Scottish Peerage, and the Bayreuth Festival, which he attended for the first time in 1886, the same year in which he acquired {131} control of the _Review_. The last-named article has a particular interest of its own, as having been written by a man quite devoid (as he himself frankly acknowledged)[9] of any aesthetic appreciation of music, but who was yet moved and impressed to an extraordinary degree by the Wagnerian cycle as presented at Bayreuth. "Had you not better," he writes to the editor in sending the Bayreuth article, "submit my _Festival_ to some expert musician of Wagnerian mind, that he may add a few technicalities at appropriate places? (I have indicated in pencil where I think this may fitly be done.)"

The article on St. Patrick aroused some interest, especially in the perennial question of the Saint's birthplace--a subject to which Bute makes whimsical reference in a letter relating to hoped-for contributions from the Rev. Colin Grant,[10] the learned priest of Eskadale.

He (G.) is at all sorts of things at this moment, including a memoir of Simon Lord Lovat, also a {132} formal attack on a priest (one M----) who writes an article every six months, making St. Patrick be born in a new place every time, as readily as if he were a kind of early Celtic Homer or Gladstone. Grant swears by Dumbarton; but whenever he crushes M---- in one place it is only to find him giving birth to the Saint again in a new one.

[Sidenote: 1886, A troublesome Greek]

A note to the editor of the _Review_ on the proper designation of a Greek named Bikelas, who had contributed an article, shows the extreme attention paid by Bute to such comparatively subsidiary points. The note was addressed from Dresden, which Lord and Lady Bute were visiting after their pilgrimage to Bayreuth, and where they prolonged their stay for several days (in spite of their usual eagerness to get home), in order to witness there another performance of the Nibelungen Tetralogy which they had seen at Bayreuth a few days previously.

_Sept._ 14, 1886.

Bikelas kicks against being called "the K. Bikelas": he wants the t.i.tle "Mr." I tell him that we usually give foreigners the t.i.tle they use themselves--not "Mr." Thus we say "M." not "Mr." Grevy--"Signor" not "Mr." Depretis--Herr not "Mr." von Hartmann--"Senor" not "Mr."

Canovas." Greeks are vulgarly designated "M.," which must be wrong, as, whatever they are, they are not Frenchmen, nor are we. It is a mere blunder founded on ignorance. They themselves always use the style [Greek: _ho kurios_]--e.g. [Greek: _ho_ K. _peparregopoulos_].

Consequently I maintain that they should be called in English "the K."

So-and-so.[11]

{133}

Under Bute's regime the columns of the _Scottish Review_ were open to capable writers professing any religion or none; but he seems to have found the lat.i.tudinarian views of "[Greek: _ho K. Bikelas_]" as troublesome as his t.i.tle.

_December_ 11, 1886.

B. is very tiresome indeed. The fact is, the man has lived more at Paris than has been good for him, and looks on anybody taking any interest in religion as a folly to be apologised for. This is a state of mind which will appear as strange and shocking in this country as it would in his own. I told him therefore that I thought I must "cook"

his most free-thinking paragraphs, and he a.s.sented. Now he insists on having it all scepticised. I suppose that I must do as he wishes, and leave him--and ourselves--to the fate that may befall us. I fear, however, he won't be redeemed even by being sandwiched in between the Unknowable in front and the miracles of St. Magnus behind. There is, however, just the hope that the country ministers who do the notices won't see what he's driving at.

Bute's view about the application of the term "British" to his countrymen is expressed in a note referring to an article written for the number of January, 1887, by Amin Na.s.sif, a Syrian _protege_ of his, translated from the Arabic by Professor Robertson, and prefaced by a rather mysterious foreword, apparently from Bute's pen.

I would not call Na.s.sif's article "Egypt under the British," but "Egypt under the English invasion."[12] I dislike the word "British," which really only means Cymro-Celtic. It has a tendency to confound us with {134} the English, and to obscure to the popular mind the extent to which our forefathers in 1706 tried to make us a mere English province.[13] To every one their due: to the Westminster Parliament that of the bombardment of Alexandria and the rest of it.

The appearance of the first number of the _Review_ published subsequent to Bute a.s.suming control of the periodical is referred to with some complacency, in a letter written from Mountstuart on April 16, 1887:

It seems to me the best number of the _S.R._ that I have ever seen.

But as I have had more to do with it than with any other, I probably see it with prejudiced eyes. The first newspaper notice or two will display it in its true light, in the same way that the impressions of Moliere's housekeeper on his literary efforts were a precursor of those of his public audiences.

The "first newspaper notice" which came to hand, that in the _Ayr Observer_, evoked a comment which seemed to show that Bute was not then so hardened as he afterwards became to the depreciatory remarks of "irresponsible reviewers."

_May_ 9, 1887.

The _Ayr Observer_ man had clearly not even glanced at any of the articles except the first and one other (to which he was attracted by my name as of local interest). He seems to believe the word "Byzantine," now seen by him for the first time, to be a synonym for "German" or "Russian." As none of the sentences pa.r.s.e, I conceive that the notice was {135} written in the small hours (from a dogged determination not to go to bed without getting it done), after separating from some scene freely enlivened by alcoholic stimulants.

[Sidenote: 1887, A London garden party]

A long letter to the editor written on June 18, 1887, contains, _inter alia_, lamentations on the writer's "hard fate" at having to return to London in mid-summer, and attend, incidentally, a crowded garden party there.

Fancy leaving this place [Mountstuart] at its very best, in order to be jammed in a stuffy back garden in London, in a hollow surrounded by houses, for hours on a midsummer's afternoon.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GREAT HALL, MOUNTSTUART]

I see astrologically that Mars has a good deal to say with regard to the *******;[14] it may possibly mean sunstroke or apoplexy as well as dynamite. Really one would think they ought to provide not only an ambulance tent and nurses, but also a dead-house and a competent staff of undertakers.[15]

William Skene, the eminent Celtic scholar and historiographer-royal for Scotland, had proposed writing an article for the _Review_ on the question of reunion between the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Churches; and this gave Bute an opportunity of ventilating his deep-seated animosity against what he considered the hopelessly Erastian element inherent {136} in, and (as he believed) essential to, Anglicanism. He wrote from Raby Castle on October 11, 1887:

If Dr. Skene advocates Bishop Wordsworth's views, he is likely to find himself strongly controverted in the next number. What the Bishop means by reunion is the unconditional surrender of the Scottish nation to a foreign body, whose marriages form 2 per cent. of those celebrated in Scotland. This seems to me simply insane impertinence. A reunion between Presbyterians and Catholics looks to me far less unlikely; for the very essence of the Presbyterian position--that the sacramental character of Order belongs only to the presbyterate, the episcopate being merely its full exercise--is at least a discutable[16] question with _us_, and we are already agreed on Christ's Divine Headship "on earth as it is in heaven": whereas the Anglicans have nailed their colours to the mast on the first point, and have abandoned every shred of Catholic principle on the second. Their doing this last is indeed the sole reason why they exist at all, either in England or in Scotland.