John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 16

[1] "The Earliest Scottish Coronations": "The Coronation of Charles I.

at Holyrood"; "The Coronation of Charles II. at Scone." These appeared in the _Review_, 1887-1888, and were reprinted, with an additional article and an Appendix, in 1902, after Bute's death.

[2] "Giordano Bruno before the Venetian Inquisition" (July, 1888): "The Ultimate Fate of Giordano Bruno" (October, 1888).

[3] In his first trial (at Venice) Bruno tried to defend himself on the principle of "two-fold truth," maintaining that he had held and taught the errors imputed to him "as a philosopher, and not as an honest Christian."

[4] It does not appear on the official _Index Librorum Prohibitorum_ published at the Vatican Press.

[5] This may seem a severe judgment; but some contemporary French critics of Mr. Froude had much harder things to say about his literary honesty. "L'historien d' Henry VIII. et d'elizabeth," wrote M. de Wyzewa, "etait victime de ce q'un critique a appele 'la folie d'inexact.i.tude.' Il ne pouvait pas copier un doc.u.ment sans y introduire des variantes qui souvent en alteraient le sens."--"Rev. des Deux Mondes," tom. xv. (1903), p. 937.

[6] "Essays on Foreign Subjects" (1901), and "Essays on Home Subjects"

(1904).

[7] The occasion of this striking utterance was an annual meeting of the Scottish History Society, held subsequent to Bute's death.

[8] Reprinted in "Essays on Home Subjects" (1904), pp. 263, 264.

[9] Bishop Grant was, among other things, a noted hagiographer, having made profound studies of the lives and acts of the early Celtic saints of Scotland.

[10] See _ante_, p. 50. The writing of the article on St. Magnus was entrusted to Mrs. Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford, but illness prevented her from completing it, and Bute himself, as he says, "saw it through."

It was published in January, 1887.

[11] Although the high authority of the Bollandists (_Acta Sanctorum_, April, tom. II. p. 435) is on the side of the relics at Prague being actually those of St. Magnus of Orkney, King and Martyr, it is impossible not to remember that there was another St. Magnus (popularly known as St. Mang), monk of St. Gall and Apostle of the Algau, who was greatly venerated in Germany, and whose _cultus_ would seem more antecedently probable at Prague than that of the holy Norse Earl.

[12] In March, 1919, thirty-three years after Bute's second investigation of the supposed relics of St. Magnus, a discovery was made fully justifying his grave doubts as to the ident.i.ty of the bones interred in the north pillar of the choir of Kirkwall Cathedral. A casket was found in one of the _southern_ pillars of the choir, containing remains (including a skull with a clean cut in the parietal bone and a sword-cut through the jaw,) which there seems reason to believe may be the actual relics of St. Magnus.

[13] At Belmont Abbey, until recently cathedral of the diocese of Newport (in which Cardiff lay), the daily Divine office has been chanted by monks without intermission for more than sixty years; but their office is of course the Benedictine, not the Roman. The latter has been recited daily, and continuously, in Westminster Cathedral since its opening in 1902.

[14] The Oban pro-cathedral was a provisional structure of iron, but its interior was handsomely and even richly fitted up at Bute's expense. He usually gave the name of "tin temples" to the iron chapels which he set up in various parts of the country.

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CHAPTER IX

FOREIGN TRAVEL--ST. JOHN'S LODGE--MAYOR OF CARDIFF

1888-1891

Notwithstanding the increasing and incessant claims on his time and attention of literature, business, and family duties, there were few, if any, years in which Bute was not able to secure an interval of what to him was real enjoyment, in foreign travel. Even from such journeys--and they were not infrequent--as were undertaken purely for reasons of health, he seldom failed to derive both pleasure and profit.

"I am ordered abroad at once," he wrote on one occasion, "to drink the waters of Chales, in Savoy. They are, I believe, exceptionally nasty, but you know how I like being abroad, and I am quite in spirits at the prospect of the trip." He never travelled very far afield, his most distant journeyings having been, perhaps, to Petersburg (in Lord Rosebery's company) and to Teneriffe in 1891. The countries bordering on the Mediterranean, France and Italy, Spain and Portugal, Palestine, Egypt and Greece, were the scenes of most of his foreign sojournings; and in them all he found sources of continual and inexhaustible interest. He had travelled a good deal abroad with his mother in his childhood, and often recalls in his diary these early visits:

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_July_ 30, 1886. The very same rooms at the Belle Vue, Brussels, as we had when I came here in childhood.... The house is full of Americans, as like one another (to English eyes) as Chinese or negroes. It is impossible to tell them apart.[1]

At Dresden also, a few months later, he records his vivid recollections of an early visit to that capital. This was the year of his first pilgrimage to the shrine of Wagner at Bayreuth (he attended the festival there also in 1888 and 1891). Many of his letters to the editor of the _Scottish Review_ are dated from foreign addresses; and interspersed in these with business and literary details are numerous picturesque notes on the customs and doings of the people among whom he was living. The descriptions of the religious observances of the inhabitants of Sorrento have a certain piquancy, when one remembers that they were addressed to a minister of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Bute wrote on such matters _currente calamo_, and took for granted--no doubt with reason--that his friend would be as much interested in such matters as he was himself.

Rome, _February_ 15, 1888.

We had a magnificent voyage, which made me feel immediately in a most robust and lively condition. I find, however, that a calm in the Bay of Biscay, such as we had, is considered ill-omened by the sailors; and one of the pa.s.sengers committed {158} suicide on the night before we left Gibraltar. Curiously enough, the same thing happened in the same circ.u.mstances on another occasion which I remember of a calm in the same spot. We landed at Naples last Sat.u.r.day. The lewdness, cruelty, etc., of the Neapolitans seems as bad as usual; but some non-Neapolitan clergy have lately been introduced, who say Ma.s.s very reverently, and preach and pray in the vernacular. I hear they are beginning to do much good. We arrived here yesterday, and are fasting to-day (Ash Wednesday) in great discomfort. Rome is crowded. The Scotch deputation (about 140 persons) is to be received by the Pope to-morrow at 10.30 a.m.

Bute read the address to Pope Leo XIII. on behalf of the Scottish pilgrimage, which had come to Rome to join with the rest of Christendom in congratulating the venerable Pontiff on the celebration of his sacerdotal jubilee. From Sorrento, where he afterwards spent several weeks, he wrote to Dr. Metcalfe on Holy Sat.u.r.day:

The people had their fill (I should hope) of services, and especially of preaching, yesterday (Good Friday). They began with a procession round the town at 4 a.m., which I did _not_ join, commemorative of the procession to Calvary. The Liturgy began in the cathedral at 8, and ended at 11. At 1 a man began preaching in the cathedral and went on till 4.15--I wonder he could do it. The church was full, and all, even small boys and girls, very attentive. He preached nine sermons, or rather one enormous sermon in nine points, with short and very sweet Italian anthems sung between each. Many of the congregation were affected to tears. The service of _Tenebrae_ began at 5 and lasted an hour and a half; then they began another procession through the streets, this time in commemoration of Christ being {159} borne to the grave. A spectator said to me quite cheerily that this procession was going the round of seven churches; and that there would be a sermon in each. At 9.30 p.m. I heard from our garden the town band (which accompanied the procession) still playing in the distance sacred music and funeral marches. The people are now buying at the confectioners'

small lambs made of the least indigestible sugar procurable, so that they may "eat the lamb this night" without violating the Lenten law of abstinence from flesh meat.

[Sidenote: 1888, Easter at Sorrento]

A long letter addressed to the same correspondent on Easter Monday seems worth reproducing almost in its entirety. It affords testimony, more convincing than any words of a biographer could be, of Bute's extraordinary interest in the religious services of his Church, and of the vivid and even moving eloquence which inspired his pen when describing the worship and the devotion of the simple Campanian folk among whom he was temporarily sojourning:

The people go on hearing sermons. There were at least two delivered in the Cathedral on Sunday, at 7 and 10 a.m. These preachments have their peculiar features, besides their length. They seem very often to conclude with an _extempore_ prayer. I call it _extempore_, although it is of course prepared beforehand, and, in the works at any rate of St. Alfonso Liguori, these prayers are printed along with the sermons to which they belong; but no MS. is used. When the prayer begins the people generally kneel down, and sometimes the preacher asks them to join with him, in which case he prays very slowly, and they repeat after him. One day I went into the large Church of the Saviour at Meta. There was barely standing-room. A man was preaching against {160} blasphemous swearing. After a time he dictated to the congregation a sort of pledge never to commit this sin again, and many of them repeated it after him. He then, after the manner of old precentors I have heard of in the Highlands, when the people could not read, sang an hymn line by line, the people singing every line after him. After this he knelt down in the pulpit and offered a long and vehement _extempore_ prayer; and when this was over he rose and began on the same subject again. I then left.

[Sidenote: 1888, Church services at Sorrento]

On the Feast of St. Benedict there were special services in the Benedictine convent church here. Before Benediction, the Archbishop officiating, the whole congregation sang the _Te Deum_ together by heart, in Latin. Then the Archbishop began to preach, from the altar--a series of puns on the name of Benedict (_Benedetto_, "Blessed"), very well done. He spoke of the blessedness of the servants of G.o.d, here and hereafter, and in reference, no doubt, to the nuns behind their grating as well as to the women in the church, made allusion to the special blessedness of the women who serve G.o.d. This was followed by a long _extempore_ prayer, the people (who had stood while he preached) sinking on their knees. He besought a blessing on himself and his flock, naming the different cla.s.ses of his people in turn with great simplicity and fervour. The final supplication that all--not one being missing from the flock--might at last be brought together in the glory of heaven, was very moving. Then he gave the Sacramental benediction.

The use of the vernacular seems to be very considerable. At the parochial Ma.s.s on Sundays, besides the sermon, and Italian prayers before Ma.s.s begins, at certain moments the whole congregation repeat Italian prayers together. The similarity of their language to Latin robs the latter of much of its terror. Many of the commoner Latin hymns, etc., they seem all to know by heart quite familiarly. {161} I have spoken of the _Te Deum_. On Sat.u.r.day they all sang the Litany, repeating every clause after the precentors. On Thursday, while the Sacrament for next day's Communion was being carried to the Chapel of Repose, the whole congregation sang on their knees the hymn of Thomas Aquinas upon the Last Supper; and the sublimity of the words, the spectacle of the kneeling mult.i.tude, and the solemnity of the procession moving through the church, made a very impressive whole.

The clergy here are all extremely clean and respectable-looking, and very decorous and reverential, both out of church and in. And this remark applies also to the whole of the Divinity students, and the whole choir and staff of the Cathedral. The music--even when poor--is very grave and solemn; the services are conducted (and evidently prepared) with the utmost care, and a certain effect of subdued splendour is produced--with the air of being produced incidentally and unintentionally--by the real costliness and richness, combined with scrupulous cleanliness and neatness, of every object and garment employed, in their several degrees.

The admirably conducted services in the Cathedral have had a damaging effect on the Anglican chapel, some of the congregation of which have been a.s.siduously attending them, to the not unnatural annoyance of the clergyman in charge, whose own domestic circle is not unaffected by the contagion. The erratic sheep, when summoned to private interviews of remonstrance, meet their pastor with questions as to what possible grounds Bishop Sandford of Gibraltar can have for pretending to possess and exercise Episcopal authority in the diocese of Sorrento.

I hope these details may interest you.

It may be said that practically every one of Bute's journeyings to foreign lands either partook {162} more or less of the nature of a pilgrimage, or else was made in search of health. Pre-eminent among the first cla.s.s were his frequent visits to the Holy Land, of which some account has already been given. Except for occasional references in his letters, we have little about these from his own pen. "My latest pilgrimage to the Holy Places," he writes on one occasion, "has been extraordinarily blessed to me." It is of interest in this connection to cite some pa.s.sages inserted in the fly-leaf of a copy of Stanley's "Sinai and Palestine," presented by Bute to a friend. They are not in his own handwriting--except the Latin quotation (from St.

Luke xii. 34) at the end--nor is there any evidence as to their authorship; but their sentiment is undoubtedly one which would strongly appeal to him:

The attractions of Rome and Jerusalem are not comparable, and should not be compared. The interest of Rome is of course by far the more varied. Not all who journey thither go to venerate the Tombs of the Apostles. There are those to whom the Palace of the Caesars appeals more than do basilicas built by Popes, who regard the Colosseum rather as the monument of emperors than as the palaestra of martyrs, to whom the Mamertine prison speaks of Catiline rather than of St. Peter.[2]

People throng {163} to Rome not only to pray, but to study art, antiquities, and music, to enjoy the most cosmopolitan society in Europe, sometimes to hunt foxes on the Campagna. Jerusalem, on the other hand, is a city of faith, and (roughly speaking) all who visit it do so as pilgrims. _Illuc enim ascenderunt tribus, tribus Domini_.

Rome has a thousand charms--Jerusalem one, but that one transcendent.

Its sacred soil has been trodden by the feet of G.o.d made man, and it is the Holy City as no other city can ever be. _Ubi enim thesaurus vesler est, ibi cor vestrum erit_.[3]

The last words, written by Bute himself at the foot of the ma.n.u.script just quoted, are of particular interest, referring, as they doubtless do, to his long-cherished resolve that his heart, after his death, should mingle with the sacred dust of the Mount of Olives.

[Sidenote: At Ober-Ammergau]

The visits to the Ober-Ammergau Pa.s.sion-play, which Bute made in 1871, in company with Bishop Clifford and two Oxford friends, again in 1880 with his wife, and also in 1890, were undertaken, too, in the pilgrim spirit. "We start for Ober-Ammergau on Monday," he wrote on September 11, 1880, "and are both hoping to reap spiritual good from our stay there." A letter to his old friend at Oxford on his return home gives some interesting impressions: