John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 17

The new theatre looks like a railway station, and the stage arrangements are considerably more elaborate than they were nine years ago. The crowd, too, was infinitely greater, but its behaviour was on the whole decent, except for some attempts to applaud (emanating, I fear, from our countrymen), {164} which were extremely distressing.

The play itself was not less impressive than I remember it; and I was pleased with the simplicity and piety of the people, who seem unspoilt by the leap within recent years of their retired village into fame. I ventured to express, through a German-speaking friend, my satisfaction on this point to one of the most respected inhabitants of the place (one of the princ.i.p.al actors); and his reply (of which my friend gave me a translation) pleased me very much. "G.o.d be thanked," he said, "that is true; but it would not be so if we accepted the many offers made to us to give representations of the Pa.s.sion-play in various cities of Europe. Also it is well for our people that the play is given but once in ten years; for in the intervals we lead our accustomed quiet life in this valley, and a new generation of children has time to grow up in the old traditions of the place."[4]

Bute refers later, in letters written from Bayreuth, to what he calls the "outrage" of applause from the audience during the performance of _Parsifal_, in terms which indicates how strongly he felt the religious appeal of the Wagnerian drama:

Bayreuth, _July_ 23, 1888.

On Sunday the illiterate part of the audience insisted on applauding Acts II. and III. of _Parsifal_, in spite of all the protests of the cultured hearers; and the effect was most distressing and shocking.

The {165} allusions to the Eucharist are of such a nature that it was almost as unseemly as it would be to clap a church choir during the Communion Service; and putting aside the gross irreverence and unseemliness of such conduct, it is an outrage and fraud on the public, who are at these moments wrapped in religious thought, and whom it is brutal and shameful to disturb by a revolting noise.

In his diary for 1891, Bute notes that he had written a letter to Frau Wagner, begging her to take steps to prevent any applause during the representation of _Parsifal_; but it is not recorded if this appeal had the desired effect.

[Sidenote: Incognito in Sicily]

The travels on the Continent were carried out without any sort of ostentation; and Bute found it even expedient occasionally to preserve his incognito when abroad. Thus he wrote on one occasion to one of his oldest friends:

_Ascension Day_, 1882.

Aci Reale, Sicily.

The outside of your letter gave me, I confess, less pleasure than any I have ever had from you. You know the state of Sicily, and the way brigands have with people whom they believe to have money.

Consequently, when ordered here by the doctors I was urged both in Naples and Messina to drop my t.i.tle absolutely; and I am known here only as "B. Crichton Stuart." You may thus imagine the discontent with which I saw "The Marquess of Bute" staring me in the face out of the letter-rack in the hall.

Pray be most careful both to address me only as B.C.S., and also to keep your knowledge of my whereabouts most strictly to yourself. I need not point out the great annoyance and possible danger to which you might otherwise expose me.

I have been very ailing for more than a year. {166} Sometimes I feel as though the horizon of life were closing in, and wish I could recall the rest of the verse beginning:

When languor and disease invade This trembling house of clay....[5]

But the warmth and sunshine here are helping me. I propose, when my "cure" is over (for good or evil), to go to Greece, and look for quarters in Athens where I may spend the winter with my wife and child.

I prefer this place to Italy, at least to Naples, whose people on the whole impress me as the off-scourings of humanity. The great difference between Sicily and Italy strikes me very much: it is, perhaps, due to the fact that Sicily belongs (I believe), both geographically and geologically, to Africa.

From Egypt, where he spent one spring, being ordered a spell of dry desert air by the doctors, he wrote characteristically to a friend (a Benedictine monk), then resident in a remote corner of Brazil:

Helouan, Egypt.

I deserve your reproaches for not writing before. But really one has a feeling (I know _I_ have) that writing to a distant address is, literally and physically, an heavier undertaking than writing to a near one. Query: If some philosophers are right in thinking that s.p.a.ce, as well as time, is purely subjective, may not this have something to do with it?

One or two notes from his diary in Egypt are interesting:

"_March_ 7. Amin Na.s.sif brought a "professed {167} sorcerer to see me"

(a later note adds, "I believe him to be a pure impostor").

"_March_ 15. Tried the ascent of the great Pyramid, but collapsed from giddiness half-way. Margaret [his daughter, then aged sixteen] had no difficulty."[6]

"_April_ 6. Monophysite Copts do not now reserve the B. Sacrament (although they formerly did so), because the species was once eaten by a snake, which was then eaten by a priest, who died in consequence!"

"_April_ 24 (Alexandria). At the Greek Catholic church the new French Consul was received with extraordinary honour by three priests, vested respectively in red, white, and blue! There was no sermon, but a speech in which the benefits conferred by France on Syria and Egypt were highly praised."

[Sidenote: 1891, Trip to Teneriffe]

Another journey which may be mentioned here was his trip to Teneriffe in the spring of 1891. His health at this time was far from robust, and was indeed causing some anxiety to his friends; but he was determined as usual to gain from his visit intellectual profit as well as (if possible) some benefit to his health. He wrote to H. D.

Grissell on March 16, 1891:

Orotava, Teneriffe.

I date to you from this eccentric place, whither I have come to try and patch myself together by a stay of a few weeks. Of course these islands are utterly unknown to me, and the vegetation in particular is at first sight quite startlingly novel. The air is delicious, but I feel the want of sun, and there is much cold wind. As Piazzi Smyth speaks much of the clouds here, I suspect that this stupendous {168} mountain (of which we rarely see the top, and only in early morning or late evening) has much to do with it.

The outcome of Bute's sojourn in the Canary Islands was a remarkable paper, "On the Ancient Language of the Inhabitants of Teneriffe," which he read at the meeting that summer of the British a.s.sociation at Cardiff, and afterwards published in the _Scottish Review_. Like most of his writings on such recondite subjects, it was more or less "caviare to the general"; but it aroused considerable attention among philologists, who recognised it as a genuine and valuable contribution to linguistic science. Professor Sayce wrote to him from Queen's College, Oxford:

_October_ 17, 1891.

Many thanks for your kindness in sending me your monograph on the extinct language of Teneriffe. I wish that all linguistic investigations had been conducted with similar care and caution; we should have had fewer difficulties to contend with in the study of linguistic science. You have shown us exactly what are the materials on which we can base our opinion on the ancient language of Teneriffe, and how far those materials can be trusted. For this reason your paper seems to me to be of very real value.

It seems right to refer in this place to another and later tribute paid by another and equally distinguished man of science, who in his estimate of Bute's remarkable attainments makes special allusion to the article we are now considering. Sir William Huggins, who was very intimate with him in the later years of his life, wrote as follows:

The Marquess of Bute was one of those, the deeper side of whose mind and character could be duly {169} appreciated only by those who had the privilege of his friendship. A man of great natural gifts, he was highly cultured on many sides; and the extent and the variety of his information on a vast variety of subjects was really remarkable. No scientist[7] could discuss a scientific matter with him without being struck by the clear-sighted way in which he saw into the heart of the matter, and the fairness and patience with which he would weigh and consider it from various points of view. These qualities were well shown in the very interesting and valuable paper on "The Ancient Language of the Natives of Teneriffe" contributed by him to the British a.s.sociation when it met at Cardiff.... Lord Bute's sensitive nature revolted from the killing of any living thing. But he was keenly interested in natural history, and had a knowledge of many creatures and of their habits as intimate and searching as that of the most scientific sportsman.

[Sidenote: Home in Regent's Park]

The reference in the last paragraph recalls the fact that when (in 1888) Lord Bute first acquired a London domicile, purchasing the twenty-seven years' lease of St. John's Lodge, in Regent's Park, he was particularly interested in finding himself in close proximity to both the Zoological and the Botanic Gardens. A priest who was often his guest there used to say that he could walk on the terrace, with its matchless view of garden and park and forest trees, and recite his Office in perfect quietness, with the tumult of London reduced to a distant hum, and the silence only occasionally broken by the roar of wild beasts in the "Zoo" not far away. Bute was {170} a fellow of both societies, and often strolled in one or other of the gardens with his guests or members of his family of a Sunday afternoon, talking freely with the custodians of animals and plants, and not infrequently astonishing them with the variety of his knowledge. One of his guests was looking, in the Botanic Gardens, at a remarkable and recently-acquired collection of dwarf j.a.panese trees, and observed that Lord Bute would be interested in seeing them. "Yes," was the reply, "his lordship knows a lot about plants. But then, he knows a lot about most things, don't he, sir?"[8]

[Sidenote: 1888, Hospitalities in London]

That Bute did know "a lot about most things" was undoubtedly true; and what used often to strike those who were intimate with him was the singular _orderliness_ of his knowledge. "His memory was prodigious,"

writes one who often consulted him on points of history, "and he seemed to me to keep everything which he had ever learned or read stored away, so to speak, in watertight compartments of his brain, ready for instant use when called for." But he never paraded his knowledge of history or anything else, and one of his most engaging characteristics was the extreme respect and, indeed, deference which he paid to acknowledged masters of any branch of learning or science. He welcomed the opportunity which his occasional periods of residence in London afforded him of offering hospitality to such. "My experience of men of intellectual eminence," he once said, "has been that they are not only interesting, {171} but as a rule extremely agreeable." Among those who from time to time were his guests at St. John's Lodge were men of such varied distinction as Lord Halsbury, Lord Rosebery, Mr. W. H. Mallock, Sir Ernest A. W. Budge, F.S.A., Cardinal Vaughan, Sir William Huggins, Mr. Walter Birch, Mr. Westlake, Sir William Crookes, Mr. F. W. H.

Myers, etc. Later on, after the presentation of his only daughter, his charming house in Regent's Park (which, as well as its s.p.a.cious gardens, he did much to improve and adorn) became the centre of much agreeable hospitality of a more general kind. Bute himself was pleased to think that the entertainments given there in the beautiful ball-room--lit from garlands of Venetian gla.s.s, and opening on to the illuminated grounds--were popular and appreciated by society. "I really think," he wrote, "that people enjoy making up parties to come to us on these occasions. Regent's Park is a _terra incognita_ to a great many Londoners; and there is perhaps a certain piquancy about a place which almost simulates to be a country house and is yet only a shilling cab-fare from Piccadilly Circus."

In 1888, the same year in which he acquired his London residence, Bute paid his first visit to Falkland, his new possession in Fife--his first, that is, as owner of the estate and keeper of the ancient palace; for (as he notes in his diary) he had visited it as a boy of thirteen, nearly thirty years previously, in the company of Lady Elizabeth Moore, and had been there before more than once with his mother. The firstfruits of his new connection with the place was a carefully-written paper on "David Duke of Rothesay," the hapless heir of Robert III., said to have been starved to death in Falkland Palace in March, {172} 1402.[9] Of this article the friendly critic already quoted[10] appreciatively writes:

Lord Bute's qualities as a historian appear conspicuously in the lecture on David Duke of Rothesay, where the scanty material available about this unfortunate prince is treated in a truly scientific spirit.

The zeal for truth shown in it is only equalled by his n.o.ble desire, even at the eleventh hour, to do justice to the poor lad so cruelly murdered by his contemporaries and misrepresented by posterity.