John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 9

declared war against Prussia. In a letter to H. D. Grissell, dated five days before the occupation of Rome by the troops of Victor Emmanuel, Bute tells how he first heard of the momentous event:

Cardiff Castle, _September_ 15, 1870.

How can I tell in what a state this may find you at Rome? the Pope perhaps gone to Malta, and the whole place in revolution, tempered only by the presence of Italian troops.

My first act on returning to England was to go to Clifton to see [Bishop] Clifford. He was away, but two of his chaplains received me and told me {91} of the definition, of which I have now received from you the awful description. My mind bowed itself at once before the definition, and I believed the doctrine _ex animo_. I have since found that many most pious Catholics, most heartily willing to believe anything on the Church's authority, do not see that that authority exists in this case. They argue in this way: I. It is admitted that an OEc.u.menical Council approved by the Pope can bind the soul. II. To be OEc.u.menical it is necessary for the Council to be _closed_, the decrees signed by a majority of the Fathers, then published and received in the whole world. III. This is not at present the case with the Vatican Council.[4]--_Ergo_.

Whether there is anything in all this I am not personally concerned to enquire. There seems to me no doubt that external disobedience and denial of the doctrine are, as things now are, sinful; though some may, and doubtless do, hold a hope that G.o.d will some day teach us by His Church that this definition of the Vatican Council is not, after all, part of the revealed truth. Such thoughts sometimes make me unhappy, and I endeavour (which is what our confessors advise) to drown them by practical Catholic work and such attempts at piety as I am capable of.

I repeat--from the moment of the definition I had not one doubt of the truth of the doctrine in the bottom of my soul. The conviction that the doctrine is truly part of G.o.d's Eternal Truth--even though it may not yet be officially made known to us as part of that "faith" of which St. Paul speaks when he says, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with G.o.d through our Lord JESUS Christ"--still remains in me; and it seems to me that I could never cease to hold it until, or unless, the Church laid down the contrary. {92} Let us leave the matter here: I shall write no more of it.

Our voyage home was very happy and successful. We travelled across Corsica by carriage, after a week in a quiet Sardinian bay, in sight of Garibaldi's home at Caprera. We were nearly three weeks between Nice and Cannes, where Lady Sebright left us; then about a fortnight at the Balearic Isles--Palma is charming. We touched at some Spanish ports, pa.s.sed ten days at Gibraltar, and ran up from Cadiz for a week at Seville; then eight days at Lisbon and Cintra. Never in England or out of it have I seen cathedrals worked so splendidly as the few Spanish I saw. I could not have conceived the grandeur of the fabric, establishment, and functions of Seville--_infinitely better than St.

Peter's_. Not having witnessed any great solemnity, I fail to imagine what they must be like. Some of the Peninsular practices are very interesting, such as the use of the double ambon, and the Portuguese practice of administering a gla.s.s chalice with wine to communicants.[5]

George Lane Fox was married to Miss Slade by the Archbishop [Manning]

on Sat.u.r.day. I gave her for a marriage present that rosary of emeralds you used to admire so much; and she at once wrote to ask my consent to its being altered into a necklace! which I refused to give.

G---- (from Parker's) is down here working at my books; he wears a ca.s.sock, with red worsted slippers embroidered with coloured gla.s.s beads. H told me (1) that Llandaff Cathedral was only a whited sepulchre, and (2) that he doubted if Liddon {93} would ever succeed in introducing Christianity into St. Paul's Cathedral.[6]

Thank G.o.d, it is only within the Church (and that, one trusts and hopes, but for a season) that consciences have been disturbed by the troubles of the Definition. These have had no apparent effect on the accession of converts. Lord Robert Montagu has just been received, and I hear of others. I had lately a long discussion with a clever, well-read, and agreeable Protestant, and he told me it appeared to him quite immaterial, once granted the infallibility of the Church--the only real question--in what precise place or person it resided.

[Sidenote: 1870, Foundations at Cardiff]

I have set up a great screen and rood in the Fathers of Charity's church here, and got it opened daily from 2 to 8 p.m., which enables me sometimes to pay a visit to the _Santissimo_. The change seems appreciated, and many persons come to pray. I hope Our Lord will sanctify them out of His holy Tabernacle.

I am about starting a convent of Sisters of the Good Shepherd about a mile from this town, in a beautiful spot. Their church will contain a tribune for the public, and they will sing High Ma.s.s, Vespers, and Benediction on Sundays and holidays of obligation. Burges is to do the chapel, wherein I propose to erect a large gothic baldequin. The building is now an old barn. The whole will, I think, though simple, be very nice, and a great consolation to me.

I expect to be here till the end of this month, and after that I have a few visits to pay; but I hope to be in Bute by November 1, and intend to stay there all the winter. The place is very charming, {94} and is my real home. I have not been there since I became Catholic, and the people are all, I fear, very strongly prejudiced; so I am afraid I shall have rather a rough time of it--at least at first. Will you not leave Rome and all its troubles, and pay a good long visit to Sneyd and me in a country where the Church is in a missionary character? If so, come and pa.s.s Christmas at least with me in Bute. We shall be delighted to see you, and you will be away from all sorts of disagreeable things, for a time at least.

Always yours most sincerely, BUTE.

Before leaving Cardiff for his home in Scotland, which he had not visited for two years, Bute attended the annual congress of the Iron and Steel Inst.i.tute at Merthyr, was present at the banquet given to the congress by the South Wales ironmasters, and accompanied several of the excursions to the great works in the district in which he was interested. The letter which he wrote on the day of his arrival in Bute to his old friend at Oxford showed what his feeling was about the usurpation of the States of the Church by the Sardinian monarch.

Mountstuart, Rothesay, _October_ 26, 1870.

MY DEAR MISS SKENE,

I ought to have written to you long ago, and really do not know what to say--except "mea culpa." There will be much to tell you when we next meet.

I am quite firm, thank G.o.d, in the Church. I have outgrown any "convert enthusiasm" I may ever have possessed; but I have long ceased to think of anything else even as a possibility, or to {95} feel anything novel in Catholic practices. I am quite quiet, and I think, thank G.o.d, so far doing pretty well.

You ask me about Rome. As to politics, my feeling in favour of the Temporal Power is very strong. Of course it had its faults, the extreme leniency of the criminal tribunals being probably the worst; but, putting the question of right aside, a Christian could inst.i.tute no comparison between the Italian and the Pontifical Governments.

Religiously, Rome is neither so good nor so bad as the extreme people would make it out. It was very edifying, and there was a great deal of piety--more conspicuous, perhaps, among the foreigners than the Romans, but of course that was to be expected, as the former came on purpose.

The sanctuaries of Rome are very precious, especially the Holy Reliques and the graves of the Martyrs, and I love them very much.

At the same time I think that this dreadful Revolution may be possibly a scourge in the hand of G.o.d to bring about His Will, though every Catholic must be appalled at the wickedness of the new Pontius Pilate and his accomplices. Perhaps the fiery trial may destroy some abuses, stop some things one does not like to see, and bring about others more profitable to Rome herself and to us.

As to the Greeks in America, it is impossible for me, I am sorry to say, to have anything to do with supplying them with my own or any other Liturgical books for use in their (as we believe) schismatic worship.

Always most sincerely yours, BUTE.

[Sidenote: 1870, The Roman situation]

It is evident from one or two of his letters already quoted, that Bute, who was well aware of the strong feeling aroused among the people of his t.i.tular island by his conversion to the Roman Church, {96} had felt some natural apprehension as to their possible att.i.tude towards him when he returned after a somewhat prolonged absence to live amongst them. "I have been getting along very comfortably here," he wrote soon after his arrival at Mountstuart, "but have so far no opportunity of knowing what the people think of me behind my back." A letter addressed a little later to the same correspondent in Oxford is interesting in this connection.

Mountstuart, _November_ 10.

I am getting on very well here up to this, and doing my best to popularise myself by going about among the people. Yesterday, for example, I attended both a funeral and a marriage. I believe this was much appreciated, and at the marriage I was very warmly received, was begged to do them the honour of signing the "lines," etc., etc. The oddest part of the matter was that at the funeral the Rothesay tag-rag outside _cheered_ me as I left the churchyard. I thought the prayers at both ceremonies (of course extemporary) were intended to do me a little good: there was nothing in them with which I could not heartily concur, but a good deal of stress was laid on the "One Oblation offered once for all"--"the full and free Redemption which is by faith in Christ's death," etc., which are, I find, commonly supposed to be ideas irreconcileable with the teaching of the Holy Roman Church--why, I can't conceive, unless it is for want of reading St. Alphonsus Liguori.

Here at Rothesay we have a chapel and schools, a superannuated bishop, Dr. Gray, and a young Scottish priest educated in France, Mr. George Smith, a man of piety and learning.[7] The whole {97} island contains about 500 Catholics, either Highlanders or Irish. I have had one of the rooms here made into a chapel, than which no meeting-house can be barer. Ma.s.s is said here on Sundays and holidays, preceded by a very simple English service. Last Sunday I was at Largs, on the mainland opposite, and heard an early Ma.s.s in a very poor cottage--said in the kitchen on a small chest of drawers. The house was crowded by the congregation, standing on the stairs, in the pa.s.sages, and all the rooms. They are wonderfully devout. Out of the East I never saw such a sight.

Yours ever most sincerely, BUTE.

[Sidenote: 1870, Life at Mountstuart]

Bute spent nearly the whole winter and spring of 1870-1871 at his beautiful Scottish home, to which he was deeply attached. As he came to know his neighbours better--and he took much pains to cultivate friendly relations with them all--the stiffness, which was, perhaps, as much the result of his own shyness and reserve as of their lack of sympathy with his religious opinions, to a great extent wore off, and his simplicity, courtesy, good sense, and kindness of heart won for him little by little the high place in their regard which he ever afterwards maintained. He was from the first on the friendliest terms with the Presbyterian clergy of the island as well as with his own pastor, and had also established very cordial relations with Mr.

(afterwards Sir) Charles Dalrymple, then and for the following fifteen years member for the county, and resident in the island. This cordial acquaintanceship ripened, after the marriages of Bute and of Dalrymple, into a warm {98} friendship between the two families which terminated only with death.[8]

Liturgical matters engrossed at this time, as always, a good deal of Bute's attention, and are dealt with in many of his letters. Thus, in March, 1871, he writes very seriously about the "truly scandalous proceedings" at the London pro-cathedral, news of which had reached him in Scotland, and which the context shows to have consisted in the wearing of dalmatics instead of folded chasubles at some Lenten function in the church in question. As will be seen from a later letter, he arranged for the ceremonial of Holy Week and Easter to be carried out as far as possible in his tiny chapel at Mountstuart; and we find him giving minute instructions to his friend Grissell, who was to spend that season as his guest in Bute, as to bringing the requisites for the celebrations, including "18 yellow candles, rather slim and 18 inches long, a paschal candle 3 feet long and 1- inches thick, a book on ceremonies, five grains of incense, and a wooden clapper for Maundy Thursday." "We had the rites of the Holy Week," he wrote subsequently to Miss Skene, "performed in my little chapel, for the first time in Bute since the change of religion three centuries ago. They seldom, if ever, take place in Scotland, and our priest here had never (so he told me) officiated in his life before on Good Friday!

You may be surprised to hear that, having no choir to execute the liturgical chant, we adopt as far as {99} we can the methodist style of singing emotional hymns during the services."

[Sidenote: 1871, Bute as philologist]

After Easter Bute stayed for a while in London, and then returned to Cardiff, where he remained in residence for the greater part of the year. He took regular lessons in Welsh at this time from one of the Cardiff clergy, and quickly mastered the language scientifically, though he never learned to speak it fluently.

The science of philology (the late Dean Howell wrote) seemed to cost Lord Bute no effort, for he was a born philologist, and appeared to penetrate and solve linguistic difficulties as it were by instinct.

Another thing that used to astonish me was his familiarity with, and wide knowledge of, the Authorised Version of the Bible; for at that time (1871) he could not have been more than 23 or 24 years of age.

His retentive memory (which I have never seen equalled) enabled him to quote exactly lengthy pa.s.sages; and if I chanced to quote a Welsh word from Scripture for ill.u.s.trative purposes, he would give the English rendering of the whole pa.s.sage from memory with ease and perfect accuracy. His tastes and accomplishments were essentially mediaeval; and history, art, and archaeology had for him an inexhaustible charm.

Bute had a little before this shown his practical interest in art by not only presiding at a Fine Art Exhibition in the drill-hall which he had erected, but by exhibiting there valuable plate and pictures, including a painting executed by himself. A little later he was in the chair at the annual meeting held at Cardiff of the Palestine Exploration Fund, recounting in very interesting fashion his own travels in that country. And in July, 1871, he took an {100} active part in the congress of the British Archaeological Inst.i.tute held at the Town Hall, entertaining the members at a reception at the Castle and a banquet at Caerphilly. He also spoke at the congress, taking many of the distinguished visitors by surprise with the extent of his knowledge and information on the subjects special to the Inst.i.tute.

[Sidenote: 1871, Belmont and Llanthony]

Soon after the meeting of the Archaeological Congress, Bute left England for Ober Ammergau to witness the Pa.s.sion Play, which had been postponed for a year owing to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. He then joined his yacht at St. Malo, and after a cruise off Devon, Cornwall, and the Channel Islands returned to Cardiff for the autumn. During this time he paid several visits to the Benedictine Priory at Belmont, near Hereford, where his liturgical tastes found satisfaction in the solemn rendering of the Divine service by the monastic community. One of the fathers then resident there[9] has some interesting recollections of these periodical visits:

Lord Bute came to Belmont three or four times, I think, in the year before his marriage. He left on us the impression of a modest, una.s.suming, and extremely intelligent young man with serious tastes, who seemed quite at home in the simple surroundings of a monastery. He frequented the Divine Office regularly, and followed all the Church functions with interest. He joined the Fathers at coffee after meals, and conversed very pleasantly, telling us sometimes of his Cardiff interests or of his early experiences and travels. He was a good deal with {101} Prior Vaughan,[10] of course; but as I was acting guestmaster and about his own age, I walked out with him several times, and we talked of many subjects, chiefly, perhaps, archaeological or theological topics. I remember his telling me of a conversation with a Protestant clergyman who came to interview him, possibly with hope of influencing an unformed mind. Lord Bute proposed for discussion the precise theological value of the verse on the Precious Blood[11]--

"Cujus una stilla salvum facere Totum mundum quit ab omni scelere;"

and I gathered that they soon came to an end of the poor parson's divinity, and of his efforts to "s.n.a.t.c.h a brand from the burning."