John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 22

On learning the result of the election, in which Bute defeated his opponent by a majority of forty votes, the Duke at once wrote:

Inveraray, _November_ 28, 1895.

The telegram this afternoon was very acceptable. I am glad that the University has not disgraced itself by electing _any one_ else than you at this juncture. As to Lord Peel himself, I suspect that he now feels very much relieved.

No one of the many congratulatory letters received by Bute on his re-election gave him more {207} sincere pleasure than the following, written by a member of the students' committee:

The 120 who won the election were the resident students of the university--those who, without distinction of sect or political partisanship, were most touched with the spirit and traditions of the place. We feel sure that you look on this circ.u.mstance as having a value far above the mere figures of the majority.

[Sidenote: 1896, A scheme that failed]

It was during his second term of office that Bute conceived the project--which would probably have occurred to no one but himself--of restoring the vast ruined Cathedral of St. Andrews, or a portion of it, for the purposes of a university church. The plan might, he thought, be realised if every member of the Scottish peerage could be induced to subscribe a thousand pounds towards it. But there were at least three reasons which militated against the success of the proposal. In the first place, the pedigrees of the peers of Scotland were in most cases a great deal longer than their purses; in the second, few of them were probably much interested in university education in general, or in St.

Andrews in particular; in the third, the majority of them were members of the Episcopalian body, not of the Established Church, to which the university church would as a matter of course be aggregated. It is curious that the only promise of substantial support received by the Catholic Rector towards a scheme which must, it is to be feared, be p.r.o.nounced fantastic, came from a wealthy n.o.bleman who was not a member of either the Episcopalian or the Established Church, but a devoted and almost fanatical Free Churchman.

{208}

Bute's academic labours and anxieties were diversified at this time by the preparation of a book in which he took great interest, on the subject of the "Arms of the Royal and Parliamentary Burghs of Scotland." The study of heraldry had always had an attraction for him, although he was perhaps, in practice, sometimes more inclined to follow his own fancy than the rigid rules of that most exact of sciences. "I call Bute a sentimental rather than a scientific herald," a friend much interested in the subject once said of him; and perhaps the criticism was a just one. In any case, his curious and out-of-the-way erudition found its scope in the production of this volume, which he published in collaboration with Mr. S. R. N. Macphail and Mr. H. W. Lonsdale in 1897. A copy with plates specially coloured under Bute's supervision, and handsomely bound, was presented by the Town Council of Rothesay to Queen Victoria, who accepted it very graciously.[9]

An acquisition which Bute was able to make at the beginning of 1896, and which gave him great satisfaction, appealing as it did to his intense veneration for the religious monuments of the past, was that of the ancient friary and chapel of the Greyfriars in Elgin. He restored the chapel in its original Franciscan simplicity, and made it over for the use of the Sisters of Mercy, already established in Elgin. The ancient stone tabernacle or sacrament-house, detached from the altar, was still preserved in the chapel; and a long letter from the Bishop of Aberdeen (then in Rome), among Bute's papers, shows that the {209} latter was engaged in the difficult task of trying to induce the Sacred Congregation of Rites to derogate from modern rules and practice, and to allow this interesting relic of the past to be again used for the purpose for which it had been originally intended.[10] Writing to the Provost of Elgin, in acknowledgment of a presentation made to him by the contractors and clerk of works employed at Greyfriars, Bute said with his usual felicity of expression:

My purchase was one on which I must congratulate myself, not only because in interest it has exceeded my expectation, but because it has enabled me to be of some service to Elgin by preserving an historical monument of considerable value to the town and district.

[Sidenote: 1896, Elected Provost of Rothesay]

Bute had several years before this been solicited to allow himself to be nominated to the provostship of the Royal Burgh of Rothesay. He had not seen his way at that time to accept the offer, but when it was renewed in the autumn of 1896, he signified his willingness to undertake the office, and he was unanimously elected on November 6, 1896. It was a source of legitimate pride to him to be called to the chief magistracy of the ancient burgh with which his family had been a.s.sociated for five hundred years, and in which five of his lineal ancestors had held the office of provost.[11] He applied himself to the duties {210} of the position with his habitual a.s.siduity and care, not infrequently travelling long distances to attend the meetings of the corporation, and presiding at them with a combined dignity and apt.i.tude for business which favourably impressed all with whom he was brought into contact. He only once took the chair in the police-court, sensibly leaving that department, as he had done at Cardiff, to the charge of those better versed in police administration than himself; nor, as it happened, was he qualified to preside at licensing-courts, owing to the fact that he was himself a licence-holder for the sale of the produce of his Cardiff vineyards.

No extensive schemes were carried out in Rothesay during Bute's tenure of the provostship; but it is of interest to note that whereas the harbour had been greatly improved, and gas first introduced into the town, during the time (1829-1839) that his father was provost, he himself, during his term of office, made a large extension of the pier, and introduced the electric light. He also interested himself in the sanitary improvement of the burgh, and entertained the members of the Sanitary Congress, which met at Rothesay in 1898, at a garden party at Mountstuart. Following his own precedent at Cardiff, St. Andrews, and Falkland, he presented to the corporation a beautiful chain of office for the use of the provosts.

The occurrence of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee during Bute's provostship gave occasion for his further munificence; and in commemoration of the event he placed in the council-chambers a series of heraldic stained-gla.s.s windows. To each of the Town Councillors he presented a replica of the medal which he and the other provosts of Scottish burghs received at a special audience given to them by the {211} Queen. Bute gave pleasure to the councillors by reminding them that the Scriptural quotation on the obverse of the medal--"Longitudo dierum in dextera ejus, et in sinistra gloria"[12]--would probably be more familiar to them all in the rendering of the Scottish Paraphrase:

In her right hand she holds to view A length of happy days: Riches with splendid honours joined Are what her left displays.

Bute himself drafted the jubilee address from the corporation to her Majesty, and had it engrossed in facsimile after the original charter to the burgh of the year 1400 A.D., preserved in the British Museum.

Sealed with the ancient seal of the burgh, and enclosed in a box made of the old oak beams of the drawbridge of Rothesay Castle, lined with cloth of gold, the address was, at Bute's instance, presented to the Queen by H.R.H. the Duke of Rothesay (Prince of Wales). It was one of the very few addresses on exhibition in London, where it aroused considerable attention and admiration.

An anniversary of more personal interest to Bute in the spring of 1897 was his own "silver wedding day." The event was celebrated with quiet happiness in the family circle, and, later in the year, by a great reception in the Exhibition-building at Cardiff, at which some three thousand guests were entertained. Bute, who received a congratulatory {212} address on the occasion, enclosed in a silver casket, from his Town Council at Rothesay, gave public and permanent expression to his thankfulness for twenty-five years of happy married life, by inst.i.tuting both there and at Cardiff, what came to be known as the "Bute Dowry." This was the provision of an annual sum to be handed, on the recommendation of the munic.i.p.al authorities, to some girl or girls of the poorer cla.s.ses, to enable her to get married. The religious spirit in which Bute founded this benefaction is seen from a letter he addressed to the minister of Rothesay, announcing his intention of attending on the first occasion of the dowry being awarded:

Mountstuart, _December_ 23, 1897.

I will put on the chain, but not, I think, the gown, as I will leave the religious ceremony entirely to you; and I think it would be better if _you_ read John ii. 1-11 (as well as the pa.s.sage from Ephesians).

The only reason why I stipulated for the reading of John ii. 1-11 as a part of the ceremony, was to impress the idea that that marriage is truly blessed to which Jesus is called by humble prayer, and at which nothing takes place but the natural and harmless gaiety which is consonant with His sacred presence and approval. It does not matter at all who reads it.

[Sidenote: 1899, Failing health]

The success of Bute's three years' tenure of the office of provost was proved by the unanimity with which the council, at its conclusion, expressed its wish that he would accept re-election for another term.

This would have included the fifth centenary of the erection of the royal burgh, which it was proposed to celebrate in 1900; and Bute, notwithstanding his rapidly failing powers (of which no one {213} was more conscious than himself), consented to be nominated for a second term on certain conditions, one of which was that he should be permitted to resign the office immediately after the centenary. In his letter thanking the council for their invitation he thus alluded to his state of health:

I spoke of this, when I first entered on the provostship, by saying that I realised that circ.u.mstances might arise in which I should feel myself unable any longer to be of service to the burgh, and should consequently be obliged to resign; but that in any case nothing could reverse the past or delete the fact of the honour of the office having once been conferred upon me. Should the council re-elect me, I can only say the same thing again.... I take this opportunity of thanking each and all of the Members of Council for the honour they have paid me now for the second time, as well as for all the kindness which I have always received at their hands.

While fulfilling his munic.i.p.al duties at Rothesay to the satisfaction of every one concerned, Bute had continued, to the best of his ability, and with undiminished interest, to discharge his functions as Lord Rector of St. Andrews. He was still able to carry out, though not without fatigue and strain, what he called the "routine work" of his office; but he was no longer physically able to take the strenuous part he had formerly done in the government of the university, and the defence of her interests at the University Court and elsewhere. Early in 1897 he had heard with some dismay of the urgent desire of the students (who were doubtless very imperfectly acquainted with the condition of his health) that he should deliver a second Rectorial address, on the occasion of his re-election. To this {214} effort he felt absolutely unequal, and he wrote as follows to his a.s.sessor:

_Jan._ 19, 1897.

You must do what you can to prevent the students insisting on another address. They cannot know what they are asking. I can get through my ordinary business, but cannot attempt the impossible, such as a Rectorial address. If I did, my failure would be as annoying to them as it would be painful to myself. Please try to make them understand this.

I do not complain. "The night cometh when no man can work," sooner or later. It has come to me through overwork and anxiety as Rector, and it is perhaps better that way than many others. But I am sure that those on whose behalf I have incurred it would not try to goad me into a fiasco which could only be distressing to all concerned.

Bute probably knew well that this pathetic appeal to the good sense and good feeling of the St. Andrews students would not be made in vain.

Between them and himself the feeling had never been otherwise than kindly and cordial, with no trace of the misunderstandings or bitterness which had sometimes clouded his relations with other sections of the university. They respected him as a great Scottish n.o.ble: they admired his zeal for, and jealousy of, the honour and reputation of their Alma Mater: they were proud of his position in the world of letters, of his deserved distinction as a munificent and discriminating patron of learning, science, and art. Most of all, they were grateful to him for his continual and unfailing kindness towards themselves--kindness which he had proved not only by the generosity of his public gifts, but by acts of private beneficence of which the outside world knew nothing, and which he himself would have been the last to wish made public.

[1] Lord Rosebery's brief tenure of the Premiership (1894-95) had just commenced at the date of this entertainment. He had been Foreign Secretary during the two previous years.

[2] The verdict was the unsatisfactory one of "Not Proven"--unsatisfactory, that is, to the public, although doubtless preferable from the prisoner's point of view to one of "Guilty." The present writer, who chanced to hear the concluding part of the case, well remembers the surprise caused, both within and without the court, by the judge's strong summing up in the prisoner's favour. A legal kinsman of the writer told him subsequently what he had never before heard--that a Scottish judge, unlike an English one, considered it his duty not merely to sum up the evidence impartially, but also to direct the jury how to regard it from the point of view of a trained mind.

[3] Bute felicitously applies to St. Andrews, seat of the first-called ([Greek: _protokletos_]) of the Apostles, the word [Greek: _temenos_]--land "cut off" and a.s.signed or dedicated to divine or sacred purposes. Syracuse was of old the [Greek: _temenos_] of Ares (Mars), as the Acropolis at Athens was that of Pallas Athene.

[4] Bute himself was a keen curler, thoroughly enjoying a spell at the "roaring game" with his country neighbours. A family tradition records how, night falling before the end of a hotly-contested march on The Moss, above Mountstuart, Bute sent for footmen to bear lighted candles round the rink, so that the game might be concluded that evening.

[5] See _ante_, p. 96. The popular appreciation of such kindly intercourse could hardly be shown more neatly, and at the same time more humorously, than it was on the occasion of a garden party given at Mountstuart, some years later, in celebration of the majority of Bute's eldest son and successor. Sir Charles Dalrymple, who was present, remarked on the success of the fete to one of the guests, a Buteshire farmer. "Ou ay," was the reply, "it was just grand a'thegither; and the young Mairquis--did ye obsairve, Sir Charles?--he was _mixing fine_."

[6] It is probable that the hood given to Lord Acton was a facsimile of that worn by Bute himself with his academic robes. This was copied by the university robe-maker (but in richer material and colours) from the ancient form of hood as worn by a Scots Benedictine monk who occasionally acted as his chaplain.

[7] University College, Dundee, had the right of presenting certain candidates for the Honorary Doctorate of St. Andrews University; and Lord Acton was one of those so nominated.

[8] The allusion is to an unworthy effort which had been made in certain quarters to stir up an _odium theologic.u.m_ against Bute, in connection with the proposed transference of Blairs College to St.

Andrews.

[9] A supplementary volume, "The Arms of the Baronial and Police Burghs of Scotland," in which Messrs Stevenson and Lonsdale collaborated, was published in 1903.

[10] An attempt had been made in Belgium, at the time of the Gothic revival, to restore the ancient use of detached Sacrament-houses, but it had been very decidedly negatived by the Roman authorities. In 1863 the Sacred Congregation of Rites definitely prohibited the placing of the tabernacle elsewhere than in the middle of the altar.

[11] Portraits of four of these--the second and fourth Earls, John Viscount Mountstuart, and the second Marquess, were presented by Bute to the Town Council of Rothesay.