John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 5

_Removes_.--Haunch venison, boiled leg of lamb, roast beef, green goose, rouleau of veal, ragout sausages, roast chicken, boiled turkey (Bechamel), braised rump beef, saddle mutton, turkey _a la royale_, forced calves' head, ducks, rouleau of venison, boiled chicken, tongues, hams.

_Entrees_.--Sweetbreads _a la Princesse_, lamb-cutlets au Jersey, compot of pigeons, fillet of chicken _a la royale_, filet de boeuf, kidneys au champagne, pork cutlets and tomato sauce, vol-au-vent.

_Game_.--Partridges, hares, grouse.

_Sweets_.--Ice pudding, Snowdon pudding, plum pie and cream, macaroni au gratin, Charlotte Russe, cabinet pudding, Italian cream, pastries (various), jellies (various).

The dinner, it was reported, "gave great satisfaction"; and it is only to be hoped that those of the guests who worked conscientiously through the _menu_ did not live to repent it.

Bute spent the rest of the autumn, after coming of age, quietly at Cardiff, reading much, and preparing {58} himself for the important step--his reception into the Catholic Church--which he now felt himself free to take. He had already begun to obey the dietary rules prescribed to the faithful (he found them always extremely trying, though he observed them strictly all his life).

My chief news [he wrote on October 24, 1868] is that I have begun to keep the laws of the Church about fasting and abstinence, and had my first fish dinner yesterday. The series of messes, fish and eggs and puddings, nearly made me sick.

In the same letter he refers to a more important matter, the breaking off of his projected marriage. He had formed an attachment to the sixth of the seven beautiful daughters of a well-known peer; but the rumours of his conversion, which was now known to be certainly impending, had caused the lady's parents to withdraw their sanction to the proposed engagement.

To-day's post [he writes] brings me a long letter from the d.u.c.h.ess of ----. It is very disheartening. Unless the woman _lies_, she will do everything in her power to prevent the marriage. She is, I think, too upright a woman to deceive.

[Sidenote: 1868, A ghostly warning]

This autumn was overshadowed for Bute by an event which he felt much for several reasons, the death (on November 10), when only in his twenty-seventh year, of his cousin the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings, to whose unfortunate career reference has already been made.

Bute had gone up to Scotland a few days previously, leaving at Cardiff Castle Mr. John Boyle (the brother of one of his former curators and a trustee of his father's {59} will), who on November 10 was expecting a friend to dinner. Seated in the library, he heard a carriage roll through the great courtyard and stop at the door. After an interval, thinking the bell must be broken, he came into the hall, but the butler, who was waiting there, a.s.sured him that no carriage had come.

Next morning he received a telegram announcing that Lord Hastings had died suddenly the night before. He only heard later, for the first time, that the arrival of a spectral carriage was said always to foretell the death of some member of the Hastings family.[11]

[1] Hartwell Grissell, M.A., of Brasenose, and for many years attached to the Papal Court.

[2] The late Father James MacSweeney, Bute's princ.i.p.al collaborator in his opus magnum, the translation of the Roman Breviary.

[3] The Senior Students (now called "Students") of Christ Church correspond to the Fellows of other colleges.

[4] The writer was told by Mr. Chamberlain himself, in his old age, that he had first worn a red chasuble at St. Thomas's Church on Whit Sunday, 1854. Dr. Neale, however, had certainly worn the Eucharistic vestments before that in his chapel at East Grinstead; and they were introduced at Wilmscote (Warwickshire) as early as 1849.

[5] "I remember when I was at Oxford," he said in his Rectorial address at St. Andrews a quarter of a century later (_post_, p. 187), "and was going one Long Vacation to Iceland in company with an English friend (now the secretary of one of Her Majesty's ministers), I stopped the yacht here [at St. Andrews] in order to show him with pride the only place in Scotland, as far as I know, whose appearance can boast any kinship with that of Oxford."

[6] See _post_, pp. 150, 151.

[7] "Isn't it perfectly monstrous," Bute is recorded to have once asked a lady in a London drawing-room, _a propos_ of nothing in particular, "that St. Magnus hasn't got an octave?" What the lady said or thought is not recorded, but Bute had the satisfaction of knowing, before his death, that Pope Leo XIII. had at least authorised the keeping of St.

Magnus's festival throughout Scotland; The Scots Benedictine Abbey of Fort Augustus is probably the only place in Christendom where the feast-day of the holy Earl (April 16) is annually celebrated by a solemn high Ma.s.s.

[8] The text of these two poems is given in Appendices II. and III.

[9] Patroness of George Whitefield (the inventor of Calvinistic Methodism), and founder of numerous chapels up and down England, which were under her absolute control. The adherents of this sect (known as the "Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion") for the most part joined the Congregationalist body later.

[10] "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised" (Prov. x.x.xi. 30).

[11] Mr. Boyle's grandson, who communicates this incident, adds: "My grandfather always told this story very solemnly, and with the fullest conviction of its truth, although he was not at all apt to believe in anything except the most positive and material facts."

Lady Margaret MacRae (Bute's only daughter) has a.s.sured the writer that on the eve of her father's death at Dumfries House (October 8, 1900), she was an ear-witness of a phenomenon precisely similar to that described in the text.

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CHAPTER IV

DANESFIELD--RECEPTION INTO CATHOLIC CHURCH

1867-1869

The conversion of Bute to the Roman Church, as to which his mind was practically made up before the end of 1866, though the actual step was delayed until nearly two years later, was brought about, as we have seen, chiefly by his own reading and reflection, combined with the impression wrought on his mind by foreign travel--not, it is to be noted, mainly in Catholic countries, but in those Eastern lands where he had every opportunity of studying at first hand the various forms of worship and belief in which he was so deeply interested. None of his companions on these extended journeys were Roman Catholics, nor apparently in any degree sympathetic with the spirit in which the young Scottish pilgrim visited those historic spots. A casual note in one of his journals reveals the fact that he defrayed in most cases the entire expenses of his fellow-travellers on these trips; but though he thus secured companionship, there is no evidence that his varied journeyings were carried out in society particularly congenial to him. At Oxford, as has been already said, his only really intimate friends (in a host of acquaintances) were a lady already middle-aged, and two undergraduates, whose loyal affection for him certainly {61} did not include any intelligent sympathy with his religious aspirations. It was not until the Christmas vacation of 1866, when his conversion was to all intents and purposes an accomplished fact, that he became for the first time intimate with a Catholic family, and through them with one who was destined to be the actual instrument of his reception into the Latin Communion. Let us pause for a moment at the turning-point in his life which we have now reached, and look back some eighteen months to the beginning and the development of this new friendship.

[Sidenote: 1867, Danesfield]

Not far from the old town of Marlow, among chalky downs starred in early summer with ma.s.ses of golden St. John's wort, stood in those days the pretty country seat of Danesfield, the home of Mr. Charles Scott Murray, a Catholic gentleman of Scottish descent and good estate. He had married a daughter of the twelfth Lord Lovat, and had a large family; and both his country home and his house in Cavendish Square were centres of much pleasant hospitality. Lord Bute stayed with him several times at Danesfield, and made there, early in 1867, the acquaintance of the Rev. T. W. (afterwards Monsignor) Capel, who acted as chaplain in the beautiful private chapel (one of Pugin's finest works) attached to the house. "Lord Bute was often at Danesfield in those days," writes a daughter of the house, "and I remember him sitting for hours talking to my mother--almost always on religious subjects--and watching her embroidering vestments for the chapel."

With the chaplain also he held many conversations, and informed himself through him about many points in Catholic practice and observance. But he was already, as has been {62} seen, practically convinced of the truth of the Roman claims; and he subsequently took occasion more than once emphatically to deny that there was any truth whatever in the popular idea that he had been "converted" by Mgr. Capel. Writing to an intimate friend,[1] four or five years later, on the subject of a biography of that prelate which it was proposed to publish, he says:

If it does come out, the only thing I hope they won't put in is that he "converted" me, which would be, to put it plainly, a mere lie. Mgr. C.

performed the ceremony of reception in December, 1868. I chose him for the purpose because, having several times met him at the Scott Murrays'

the year before, I knew him fairly well, and was pleased with his clear and simple way of explaining certain things I wished to know. I received much spiritual help from him at a time when I was greatly in need of such help, and yet was unable, for certain reasons, to take the final step; and I was, and am, grateful to him for this and for much else. But that I was in any sense "converted" by him is simply untrue.[2]

[Sidenote: 1867, Converts to Roman Church]

Bute was greatly attracted by the kindness, good sense, and sterling Catholic piety of his host {63} at Danesfield, and had a sincere regard and affection for both him and his wife, and indeed for the whole family. "His initial shyness once overcome," one of them writes, "he became like one of ourselves. He shared all our home life, came to Ma.s.s and Benediction with us as a matter of course, and talked quite simply of how he longed to be a 'real' Catholic." Of his postponed reception he wrote to Mr. Scott Murray in much the same terms (though more briefly) as he had written to his friend at Oxford.

April 16, 1867.

MY DEAR MR. SCOTT MURRAY,

It is all over for the present. I have yielded to the pressure of the Court of Chancery, my guardians, and the Oxford people, and given them a promise not to be received until I am of age. I do a.s.sure you that the state of hopelessness in which I am is sad to a degree. When I see you next I can tell you, if you like, the details of a very wretched business.

I have a favour to ask, which is that you will get for me one of those crosses such as you have hanging on your beads. I hope you will not refuse me this kindness, although I remain external to the Faith.

Believe me always, with many thanks for all your kindness, most sincerely yours,

BUTE.

A letter to the same correspondent, towards the close of the year, mentions the names of some recent or prospective converts to the Roman Church, in whom Bute was naturally interested.