John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 8

[Sidenote: 1869, at Mountstuart]

There were reasons why the feeling in the island of Bute about the young peer's change of religion was, as he expressed it, "much stiffer"

than it was in Cardiff. The sentiments of resentful surprise which the Presbyterians felt at the lord of the island embracing a faith so alien from their own was fostered and aggravated by the disappointment with {80} which the local Liberals learned that he was politically quite out of sympathy with the Whig principles of his kinsman and former tutor-at-law, the Liberal M.P. for Cardiff and Lord-Lieutenant of Butes.h.i.+re.[18] One Radical newspaper a.s.serted that Lord Bute had purposely delayed the profession of his new faith until after the general election, so that his influence as a Tory might help the Conservative candidate for the county to win the seat! And the Liberal _Buteman_ thought fit to devote a page, a month after Bute's reception into the Church, to reprinting a _catena_ of the articles commenting on that event which had appeared in the princ.i.p.al newspapers of the country. The feeling with which, in an age more tolerant or more indifferent, one peruses these journalistic effusions, is one of wonder, first at their extraordinary impertinence, and secondly at the cool audacity with which they sit in judgment on the action of one of whose character, personality, and motives they one and all show themselves to be in a state of absolutely abysmal ignorance. The _Times_ summed up a spiteful article by concluding that the "defection of an average curate would have said more for the Roman Catholic religion, and might be expected to lead to more lasting results"; the _Daily News_ announced that the new convert "had taken up his honours, wealth, and influence, and laid them in the lap of the Church of Rome,"

adding that it was "of course a pity when a man believed too much in religion"; a West of Scotland journal was "sure that the acquisition would, except in a pecuniary way, be of little advantage to those who had wheedled him out {81} of his wits and into their snares"; a Glasgow evening paper denounced the "Jesuitism" with which "his perverted lords.h.i.+p" had denied the fact of his reception in 1867, and the "fatal facility" with which he had been received in 1868; and another Scottish journal, after waxing eloquent over the "lithe figure, agile step, and penetrating eye of the handsome young peer," lamented that "the poorest labourer on his vast domains had an immediate access to truth and duty, to conscience, and to G.o.d, which since last Christmas was denied to his unfortunate lord." The _Glasgow Herald_, after admitting that Lord Bute "_was believed_ to be a studious, thoughtful youth, with high ideas of the responsibility of his position," dolefully goes on: "If, _as is most likely_, this perversion is the result of priestly influences acting upon a weak, ductile, and naturally superst.i.tious mind, we may expect a continual eclipse of all intellectual vigour."

One wonders if this sapient prophet ever had the grace to acknowledge the falsity of his forecast. The _Scotsman_ was an honourable exception to the general tone of the contemporary press. It announced the event "not in the slightest degree in the spirit of taunt or reproach"; and the final sentence of a temperate article repudiated any desire "to reproach Lord Bute with a change of religious opinion, which even those who most deeply regret it must admit to be made at great sacrifices and under the influence only of conscience."

On this reasonable and even generous note the subject may well be left.

A man of sensitive and impressionable nature, and one who was himself possessed by an almost pa.s.sionate love of truth, could not be insensible to public attacks on his {82} candour and honesty, or to mendacious statements of alleged facts, such as he refers to in his letter cited above. But he bore them all in silence, with the quiet dignity characteristic of him, and trusting to time for the vindication of the rect.i.tude of his motives and conduct. How amply this trust was justified was shown by the mutual respect, regard, and affection which daily grew and strengthened between him and his friends, neighbours, and dependents, not only in Bute, but on his extensive estates in other parts of the country, during the next thirty years.

[1] Hartwell Grissell. The letter was dated from Mountstuart, November 19, 1872.

[2] Mr. Buckle, in Vol. V. of his "Life of Disraeli," quotes Mr.

Montague Corry as writing (September 22, 1868): "Fergusson says no ingenuity can counteract the influence which certain priests and prelates have over him, chief among them being Monsignor Capel. The speedy result is inevitable."

Sir James Fergusson, as Bute's guardian, probably felt it necessary to take this view in self-vindication. The fact, however, was, as is abundantly shown by the letter in the text, as well as by the authentic history of Bute's conversion as given in preceding pages, that the event was brought about by his own study, thought, and prayer, and was in no sense due to the influence of Capel, or of any other "priests or prelates."

[3] Alexandrina Lady Portarlington (a daughter of the third Marquess of Londonderry) was sister-in-law to the seventh Duke of Marlborough, Bute's host at Blenheim. Lord and Lady North, who were received into the Church about this time, were not very distant neighbours of Blenheim, living at Wroxton Abbey, near Banbury.

[4] Second baronet of Gatcombe, Hants. He died in 1869, in his eighty-third year.

[5] A former curate of Dr. F. G. Lee at Aberdeen. He became a canon of Westminster and president of St. Edmund's College, Ware.

[6] M.A. of Aberdeen University; afterwards the distinguished Jesuit writer and preacher.

[7] Became a Jesuit, rector of Wimbledon College, and later first Master of Campion Hall, Oxford.

[8] This was Aug. Theiner's "Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum atque Scotorum, historiam ill.u.s.trantia, 1216-1547," published at Rome in 1864.

[9] More than a dozen years later Bute wrote to his friend regretting her ignorance of "the dead languages," and recommending her to begin the study of Hebrew!

[10] Miss Skene had lived with her father at Athens continuously from her eighteenth to her twenty-fourth year, and was well acquainted with the language and literature of modern Greece.

[11] The allusion, no doubt, is to his projected translation of the Roman Breviary, published eleven years later.

[12] The convent of _Marie Reparatrice_, founded at Harley House, Marylebone, in 1862. It was transferred in 1899 to Willesden, and a year later to its present site at Chiswick.

[13] The temporary chapel, now used as the Sisters' community-room.

Bishop Grant was at this time acting as chaplain to the nuns, and saying Ma.s.s for them daily. Bute attended this Ma.s.s for a week previous to his reception, breakfasting afterwards with the bishop (who was giving him a course of instruction) in the convent parlour.

[14] _Ante_, Chapter I, p. 11.

[15] Charles Scott Murray, who had just got his commission in the 1st Life Guards.

[16] The writer was misinformed as to this. There had been a Catholic chapel at Rothesay since 1839; and a larger church (St. Andrew's) had been opened two years before Bute's conversion. The number of Catholics at this time was probably between two and three hundred.

[17] See _post_, pp. 102, 103. This book had just been published at Oxford. Two volumes of selections from Canon Jenkins's MSS. writings were issued in 1879, after his death.

[18] Colonel James Frederick Crichton Stuart, Liberal for Cardiff from 1857 to 1880.

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CHAPTER V

THE WESTERN MAIL--ROME AND THE COUNCIL--RETURN TO MOUNTSTUART

1869-1871

Although Bute's attraction towards a life of simplicity and retirement was, even in his early manhood, as it remained throughout his life, one of his most marked characteristics, he never allowed this to interfere with such public duties as he conceived to be rendered inc.u.mbent on him by the responsibilities of his position. His first public appearance in Cardiff, apart from the celebrations connected with his majority, seems to have been in his capacity as chairman of the local Benefit and Annuitants Society, when he acquitted himself to the general satisfaction. In 1869 he accepted the honorary colonelcy of the Glamorgan Artillery Volunteers. "It seemed to be expected of me," he wrote to a friend, "and though there was never a man of less military proclivities than myself, I regard the Volunteer movement as an excellent one, and desire to encourage it.[1] I look forward also, under proper guidance, to learning something about {84} guns, though I fear ours can hardly be said to be altogether up-to-date. But I hope to be instrumental in bringing about some improvement in that respect."

On November 11, 1869, he appeared in uniform at the inspection of the regiment at the new drill-hall, which he had just erected at a cost of over 10,000.

A few months previous to the date just mentioned, Bute had, not without serious consideration, embarked on an enterprise which, while entailing heavy expenditure on himself, was to have a considerable and permanent effect on the industrial and political life not only of the rapidly-growing town of Cardiff, but of the whole of South Wales. This was the launch of the _Western Mail_ newspaper, of which the first number was published in May, 1869. At this time the princ.i.p.al paper in the district was the Liberal (weekly) _Cardiff Times_, started in 1857, the year in which Colonel James Frederick Crichton Stuart was first elected M.P. for Cardiff. Bute was entirely out of sympathy with the political views of his kinsman, and had openly declared himself on coming of age an adherent of the Conservative party. He wrote to a friend at Oxford after the formation of Mr. Gladstone's first Ministry:

I suppose I may call myself--you would certainly call me--an old-fas.h.i.+oned Tory. The inclusion of Bright in the Cabinet shows that the new Government is Radical, naked and unashamed. And whatever else I am, anyhow I am not a Radical.

[Sidenote: 1869, Launching a newspaper]

Deeply and intelligently interested as he was in the future development of Cardiff, which he was to do so much to promote, Bute's conviction was that a really healthy public opinion in the district {85} could not be created or maintained if only one school of politicians was to have the chance of making its voice heard. This was the main reason which determined him, with full foreknowledge of the heavy financial burden it would entail on him, of starting and supporting a Conservative daily paper in the heart of Liberal Wales. The local Liberals were, of course, disappointed and indignant; and the "Leap of the wolf into the fold," as they described the new journalistic venture, was very bitterly commented on both in the _Cardiff Times_ and in its successor, the _South Wales Daily News_. The "underhand influence of the Castle,"

the "Castle propaganda," the "pouring out of gold from the Castle coffers," were the constant theme of discussion in the opposition press, whose acrimony was not diminished by the steadily growing power and influence of the Conservative organ. Yet although Bute was for some years the actual owner of the _Western Mail_, not the slightest trace of his personal influence is to be found in its columns during those early years, nor the least suggestion that he made use of the paper to serve any private ends of his own. "Not a single line that has ever appeared in the _Western Mail_ has been written or inspired by the Marquis of Bute," wrote the Editor when his paper had reached a position of security and success; and the statement was literally and exactly true. The _Western Mail_ won the confidence of the people by strongly upholding their rights at such times of crisis as the serious upheaval in the coal and iron industries in 1873; and one of its most appreciated tributes was that received from a leading Nonconformist minister: "Though you are Conservative in name you are Liberal in practice." After eight {86} years' connection with the paper Bute relinquished all financial interest in it in 1877. He considered himself that this journalistic enterprise had cost him from first to last not less than 50,000. "I have never grudged it," he once simply said when questioned on the subject.

With these new interests at home, Bute did not lose sight of his intention (expressed in a letter quoted in the last chapter) of spending the winter of 1869 and the succeeding spring in Rome, and he arrived there in the last days of November, taking up his residence at the Palazzo Savielli in the Piazza SS. Apostoli. He wrote shortly before Christmas:

It is of particular interest to me to find myself living within a stone's-throw of the building which sheltered for so many years my unfortunate kinsmen (if I may be allowed so to call them) the exiled Stuarts.[2] Their cenotaph by Canova in St. Peter's (paid for by their Hanoverian supplanter on the throne!) strikes me always as one of the most pathetic and beautiful monuments of modern Rome.

[Sidenote: 1869, Papal infallibility]

Bute was of course drawn to Rome, like so many others at this time, by the event on which the eyes of all Christendom were turned with curious if widely varying interest--namely, the opening of the Vatican Council by Pius IX. Bute was present at the solemn inauguration on December 8, when more than 700 mitred prelates walked in procession to St. Peter's, preceded by the splendid silver {87} processional cross, set with precious stones, which he had presented to the Pontiff a few days previously. A day or two after the imposing ceremony he records a curious little incident in a letter to a friend:

I heard that the t.i.tular Abbot of Westminster, the head of the Benedictine Order in England, called to report his arrival on some high dignitary, dressed not in his habit but in the get-up of an elderly English clergyman. He was told that if he wanted to process with the abbots he must attire himself accordingly, and was asked if he possessed the insignia of his office. "Certainly," he replied. "I have the ring of the Abbots of Westminster," pulling out of his waistcoat pocket the identical ring worn by f.e.c.kenham, the last abbot in the reign of Queen Mary! The lamentable sequel to the story is that as he was mounting the steps into St. Peter's on the opening day of the Council, the precious ring, which he had not taken the trouble to get fitted to his finger, fell off, rolled down the steps, and was never heard of again. If this is true it seems very deplorable.

During his sojourn in Rome Bute had opportunities, which he was not likely to neglect, of meeting many interesting people, and hearing much at first hand, and from both sides, of the weighty matters under discussion at the Council. The prelate of whom he saw most, and to whom he was very sincerely attached, was Mgr. Clifford, Bishop of Clifton, who with the Archbishops of Paris, Vienna, and St. Louis, and Bishop Dupanloup of Orleans, were prominent among the opponents of the definition of Papal Infallibility. With the leaders of the opposite party also he had from time to time considerable intercourse, and in a letter addressed to {88} him nearly thirty years later by the venerable Cardinal Gibbons, now (1920) the sole survivor of the Fathers of the Council, his Eminence reminded Bute of a long drive he had taken with himself and Archbishop Spalding of Baltimore, a very strong pro-definitionist, and of their interesting talk on that occasion about the great subject of the day. Bute's own habit of mind, and the influence exercised on his judgment by Bishop Clifford, undoubtedly predisposed him to sympathise with those opposed to the definition; and he shared the apprehensions of many of his friends among that party--apprehensions not justified in the event--that the step if carried through might result in a serious defection from the Church. A subsequent letter from him, however, will show what with instant and edifying submission of heart and mind he accepted the decree when once it had been promulgated by the supreme authority which he never for a moment questioned.

[Sidenote: 1870, Society in Rome]

Bute was not so preoccupied with these grave matters but that he found time for a certain amount of social intercourse with the distinguished and cosmopolitan society gathered that winter in the Eternal City. He made friends with the Papal Zouaves, and often accepted the hospitality of the officers of that pleasant international corps, with one of whom, Captain the Hon. Walter Maxwell, he became very intimate. He liked to watch the Zouaves at rifle-practice in the Borghese Gardens, visited the officers on guard at the Colosseum and elsewhere, and entertained them once at a famous supper of which the recollection long survived in the corps. About Christmas time he was present at a great reception given at the Palazzo Bonimi by Mr. and Mrs. Delabarre Bodenham, and records a {89} "twenty minutes' conversation with Archbishop Manning, in a quite empty little room opening out of the reception hall." Soon after New Year he attended a dinner given in a cafe in the Corso by the British Committee of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, and made a speech reported by one of those present to be "the best speech of the evening and very well received." His name is also recorded as having been present at many notable religious functions--among others the imposing funeral service, in the church of the Holy Apostles, of the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, at which the Pope a.s.sisted and gave the final absolution. Bute saw much, during these weeks in Rome, of the savants and scholars--by no means all sympathisers with the Papal regime--then resident in the city, and his modesty of demeanour, earnestness, and intelligence made a very favourable impression on the varied society with which he was brought into contact. In those days he liked to be amused as well as interested; and there was plenty of amus.e.m.e.nt to be found at that time in the kaleidoscopic throngs of visitors which the unique and unrivalled charms of Rome attracted within her gates. One of his most agreeable acquaintances--quite outside ecclesiastical and antiquarian circles--was Olivia Lady Sebright, the clever and charming sister of an Irish peer who had been his contemporary at Oxford. Her lively persiflage was doubtless a pleasant and piquant contrast to the discourses of Bute's learned acquaintances; and it was often jestingly remarked in Anglo-Roman society that Lady Sebright seemed to do all the talking and Lord Bute all the listening. He alludes to her in one of his letters as "a very vivacious lady, who would {90} have her joke even in the Catacombs."

Lady Sebright was included in the party which Bute invited to join him in the yachting cruise in the Mediterranean which he made after leaving Italy in the summer of 1870.

Bute did not remain in Rome for the final Congregation of the Council on July 18, 1870, when 533 bishops voted in favour of the _schema_ "De Ecclesia," with the added clauses on Papal Infallibility. Two only voted "Non placet," the Bishops of Ajaccio and of Little Rock, U.S.A.[3] The decree was immediately confirmed by the Pope in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm; and on the same day Napoleon III.