Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: _John, third Marquess of Bute, with his Mother aet 9
from a picture at Mount Stuart_]
JOHN PATRICK
THIRD MARQUESS OF
BUTE, K.T.
(1847-1900)
A MEMOIR
BY
THE RIGHT REV. SIR DAVID HUNTER BLAIR
BT., O.S.B.
AUTHOR OF "A MEDLEY Of MEMORIES," ETC.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1921
All rights reserved
TO THE MEMORY
OF MY FRIEND
{vii}
PREFACE
Just twenty years have passed away since the death, at the age of
little more than fifty, of the subject of this memoir--a period of time
not indeed inconsiderable, yet not so long as to render unreasonable
the hope that others besides the members of his family (who have long
desired that there should be some printed record of his life), and the
sadly diminished numbers of his intimate friends, may be interested in
learning something of the personality and the career of a man who may
justly be regarded as one of the not least remarkable, if one of the
least known, figures of the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Disraeli, when he published fifty years ago his most popular romance,
thought fit to place on the title-page a motto from old Terence: "Nosse
omnia haec salus est adulescentulis."[1] Was he really of opinion--it
is difficult to credit it--that the welfare of the youth of his
generation depended on their familiarising themselves with the wholly
imaginary life-story of "Lothair"? the romantic, sentimental, and
somewhat invertebrate youth who owed such {viii} fame as he achieved to
the fact that he was popularly supposed to be modelled on the young
Lord Bute--though never, in truth, did any hero of fiction bear less
resemblance to his fancied prototype.
The present biographer ventures to think that the motto of _Lothair_
might with greater propriety figure on the title-page of this volume.
For there is at least one feature in the life of John third Marquess of
Bute which teaches a salutary lesson and points an undoubted moral to a
pleasure-loving generation, such a lesson and moral as it would be vain
to look for in the puppet of Disraeli's Oriental fancy. If there is
any characteristic which stands out in that life more saliently than
another, it is surely the strong and compelling sense of duty--a sense,
it is to be noticed, acquired rather than congenital, for Bute was by
nature and constitution, as an acute observer early remarked,[2]
inclined to indolence--which runs all through it like a silver thread.
Other traits, and marked ones, he no doubt possessed--among them a
penetrating sense of religion, a curious tenderness of heart, a
singular tenacity of purpose, and a deep veneration for all that is
good and beautiful in the natural and supernatural world; but these
were for the most part below the surface, though the pages of this
record are not without evidence of them all. But in the whole external
conduct of his life it may be said that the desire of doing his duty
was paramount with him--his duty to God and to man; his duty, above
all, to the innumerable human beings {ix} whose happiness and welfare
his great position and manifold responsibilities rendered to some
extent dependent on him; and, finally, his duty in such public offices
as he was called on to fill, and from which his diffidence of character
and aversion from anything like personal display would have naturally
inclined him to shrink. If the writer has succeeded in presenting in
these pages something of this aspect of the life and character of his
departed friend with anything like the vividness with which, at the end
of twenty years, they still remain impressed on his own memory, he will
be well content.
"The true life of a man," wrote John Henry Newman nearly sixty years
ago,[3] "is in his letters"; and no apology is needed for the inclusion
in this volume of some, at least, of the large number of Lord Bute's
letters which have been placed at the disposal of his biographer, and
for the use of which he takes this opportunity of thanking the several
owners. Bute possessed in a high degree the essential qualities of a
good letter-writer--a remarkable command of language, the power of
clear and forcible expression, and (not least) a salutary sense of
humour; and his voluminous correspondence, especially in connection
with his literary work, was always and thoroughly characteristic of
himself.
{x}
The writer desires, in conclusion, to express his gratitude not only
for the loan of Lord Bute's letters, but for the kind help he has
received from many quarters in the elucidation (especially) of details
regarding his childhood and youth. In this connection his thanks are
particularly due to the late Earl of Galloway and his sisters for their
interesting reminiscences of Bute's boyhood at Galloway House; and also
to the family of the late Mr. Charles Scott Murray for some particulars
of his life during the critical years of his early manhood.
+ DAVID OSWALD HUNTER BLAIR, O.S.B.
CHRISTMAS, 1920.
[1] "It is for the profit of young men to have known all these things."
Terence, _Eunuchus_, v. 4, 18.
[2] Mgr. Capel. _Post_, p. 75. See also p. 111.
[3] "It has ever been a hobby of mine, though perhaps it is a truism,
not a hobby, that the true life of a man is in his letters.... Not
only for the interest of a biography, but for the arriving at the
insides of things, the publication of letters is the true method.
Biographers varnish, they conjecture feelings, they assign motives,
they interpret Lord Burleigh's nods; but contemporary letters are
facts." (_Newman to his sister, Mrs. John Mozley_, May 18, 1863.)
{xi}
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EARLY LIFE. (1847-1861) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. HARROW AND CHRIST CHURCH. (1862-1866) . . . . . . . . . 18
III. RELIGIOUS INQUIRIES--RECEPTION POSTPONED--COMING
OF AGE. (1867, 1868) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
IV. DANESFIELD--RECEPTION INTO CATHOLIC CHURCH. (1867-1869) 60
V. THE _WESTERN MAIL_--ROME AND THE COUNCIL--RETURN
TO SCOTLAND. (1869-1871) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
VI. MARRIAGE--HOME AND FAMILY LIFE--VISIT TO
MAJORCA. (1871-1874) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
VII. LITERARY WORK--THE _SCOTTISH REVIEW_. (1875-1886) . . . 117
VIII. LITERARY WORK--_continued_. (1886, 1887) . . . . . . . 137
IX. FOREIGN TRAVEL--ST. JOHN'S LODGE--MAYOR OF
CARDIFF. (1888-1891) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
X. FREEDOM OF GLASGOW--WELSH BENEFACTIONS--ST. ANDREWS.
(1891-1894) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
XI. NOTES AND ANECDOTES--ST. ANDREWS (2)--PROVOST
OF ROTHESAY. (1894-1897) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
XII. ARCHITECTURAL WORK--PSYCHICAL RESEARCH--CONCLUSION.
(1898-1900) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
APPENDICES
I. PRIZE POEM (HARROW SCHOOL) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
II. HYMN ON ST. MAGNUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
III. HYMN: "OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS" . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
IV. A PROVOST'S PRAYER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
V. RECOLLECTIONS. BY SIR R. ROWAND ANDERSON . . . . . . . 241
VI. OBITUARY. BY F. W. H. MYERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
{xiii}
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
JOHN, THIRD MARQUESS OF BUTE AET 9, WITH HIS MOTHER _Frontispiece_
_From a Painting by Mountstuart. Photo by F. C. Inglis, Edinburgh._
FACING PAGE
THE MARQUESS OF BUTE, AET 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
_From a Pencil Drawing by Ross at Cardiff Castle. This
Drawing, executed for Lord Bute's great-grand-aunt (then
aged 92), daughter of the third Earl, George III's Prime
Minister, was left by her to her niece. Lady Ann Damson,
whose great-niece, Mrs. Clark of Tal-y-Garn, gave it in
1906 to Augusta, wife of John, fourth Marquess of Bute._
THE MARQUESS OF BUTE, AET 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
THE COMMUNION OF ST. MARGARET, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND . . . . . . . 48
CARDIFF CASTLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
CASTELL COCH, GLAMORGAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
THE GREAT HALL, MOUNTSTUART . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
_Photo by Sweet, Rothesay._
FALKLAND PALACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
_Photo by Valentine, Dundee._
FACSIMILE LETTER FROM THE MARQUESS OF BUTE TO MISS SKENE . . . 174
THE MARQUESS OF BUTE AS MAYOR OF CARDIFF . . . . . . . . . . . 176
THE MARQUESS OF BUTE AS LORD RECTOR OF ST. ANDREWS
UNIVERSITY. (1892-1897) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
_Photo by Rodger, St. Andrews._
PLUSCARDEN PRIORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
{1}
JOHN PATRICK
THIRD MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T.
(1847-1900)
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
1847-1861
John Patrick, third Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, Mountjoy and
Dumfries, holder of nine other titles in the peerages of Great Britain
and of Scotland, and a baronet of Nova Scotia, was fifteenth in descent
from Robert II., King of Scotland, who, towards the end of the
fourteenth century, created his son John Stuart, or Steuart, hereditary
sheriff of the newly-erected county of Bute, Arran and Cumbrae, making
to him at the same time a grant of land in those islands. His lineal
descendant, the sixth sheriff of Bute, who adhered faithfully to the
monarchy in the Civil Wars, and suffered considerably in the royal
cause, was created a baronet in 1627; and his grandson, a stalwart
opponent of the union of Scotland with England, was raised to the
peerage of Scotland as Earl of Bute, with several subsidiary titles, in
1702. Lord Bute's grandson, the third earl, was the well-known Tory
minister and favourite of the young king, George III., and his
mother--a faithful servant of his sovereign, a man of culture and
refinement, admirable as husband, father, and friend, and withal, by
the irony of fate, unquestionably the most unpopular prime minister {2}
who ever held office in England. His heir and successor made a great
match, marrying in 1766 the eldest daughter and co-heiress of the
second and last Viscount Windsor; and thirty years later he was created
Marquess of Bute, Earl of Windsor, and Viscount Mount joy. Lord
Mountstuart, his heir, who predeceased his father, married Penelope,
only surviving child and heiress of the fifth Earl of Dumfries and
Stair; and the former of those titles devolved on his son, together
with valuable estates in Ayrshire. The second marquess, who succeeded
to the family honours the year before Waterloo, when he was just of age
(he had already travelled extensively, and had paid a visit to Napoleon
at Elba), earned the reputation of being one of the most enlightened
and public-spirited noblemen of his generation. During the thirty-four
years that he owned and controlled the vast family estates in Wales and
Scotland, he devoted his whole energies to their improvement, and to
promoting the welfare of his tenantry and dependents. His practical
interest in agriculture was evinced by the fact that the arable land on
his Buteshire property was trebled during his tenure of it; and
foreseeing with remarkable prescience the great future in store for the
port and docks of Cardiff, he spared neither labour nor means in their
development. He was Lord-Lieutenant both of Glamorgan and of Bute, and
discharged with tact and success the office of Lord High Commissioner
to the Church of Scotland in 1842, on the eve of the ecclesiastical
crisis which ended in the secession of more than 400 ministers of the
Establishment. His political opinions were in the best sense liberal,
and he was a consistent advocate of Catholic Emancipation, even when
that {3} measure was opposed by the Duke of Wellington, whom he
generally supported. A few hours before his death, which occurred at
Cardiff Castle with startling suddenness in March, 1848, he had
expressed the confident hope that his successor, if not he himself,
would live to see Cardiff rival Liverpool as a great commercial seaport.
[Sidenote: 1847, Birth at Mountstuart]
Lord Bute was twice married--first to Lady Maria North, of the Guilford
family, by whom he had no issue; and secondly, three years before his
death, to Lady Sophia Hastings, second daughter of the first Marquess
of Hastings. By this lady, who survived him eleven years, he had one
child, John Patrick, the subject of this memoir, who was born on
September 12, 1847, at Mountstuart House, the older mansion of that
name in the Isle of Bute, which was burnt down in 1877 and replaced by
the great Gothic pile designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson. Old
Mountstuart was an unpretending eighteenth-century house, built by
James, second Earl of Bute (1690-1723), a few years before his early
death. It was the favourite residence of his son the third earl,
George III.'s prime minister, who is commemorated by an obelisk in the
grounds not far from the house. The wings at the two extremities
escaped the fire, and are incorporated in the modern mansion.
Here, then, on the fair green island which had been the home of his
race for nearly five centuries, opened the life of this child of many
hopes, who within a year was by a cruel stroke of fate to be deprived
of the guardianship and guidance of his amiable and excellent father.
The second marquess died, as has been said, deeply regretted, in the
spring following the birth of his heir; and the manifold {4} honours
and possessions of the family devolved upon a baby six months old. Up
to his thirteenth year the fatherless boy was under the constant and
unremitting care of a devoted mother, whose memory he cherished with
veneration to the end of his life. Sophia Lady Bute was a woman of
warm heart and deep personal piety, tinged, however, with an
uncompromising Protestantism commoner in that day than in ours. One of
her fondest hopes or dreams was the conversion to her own faith of the
numerous Irish Catholics whom the development of the port of Cardiff,
and the rapid growth of the mining industry, had attracted to South
Wales; and the venerable Benedictine bishop who had at that time the
spiritual charge of the district, and for whom Lord Bute had a sincere
regard and respect, used to tell of the band of "colporteurs"
(peripatetic purveyors of bibles and polemical tracts) whom the
marchioness engaged to hawk their wares about the mining villages of
Glamorgan.
Lord Bute's upbringing as a child was, by the force of circumstances,
under entirely feminine influences and surroundings; and to this fact
was probably to some extent due the strain of shyness and sensitive
diffidence which were among his life-long characteristics. He seems to
have been inclined sometimes to resent, even in his early boyhood, the
strictness of the surveillance under which he lived. His mother once
took him from Dumfries House to call at Blairquhan Castle, driving
thither in a carriage and four, as her custom was. While the ladies
were conversing in the drawing-room, a young married daughter of the
house took the little boy out to see the gardens, ending with a call at
the head gamekeeper's. A day or two afterwards {5} the _chatelaine_ of
Blairquhan received a letter from Lady Bute, expressing her dismay,
indignation, and distress at learning that her precious boy had
actually been taken to the kennels, and exposed to the risk of contact
with half a dozen pointers and setters. When reminded many years later
of this incident (which he had quite forgotten), Lord Bute said, in his
quiet way: "Yes, I was kept wrapped in cotton wool in those days, and I
did not always like it. The dogs would not have hurt me, and I am sure
that I made friends with them."
[Sidenote: 1859, Death of Lady Bute]
Lady Bute died in 1859, leaving behind her, both in Scotland and in
Wales, the memory of many deeds of kindness and benevolence. Her
husband had made no provision whatever in his will for the guardianship
of his only son, who had been constituted a ward in Chancery two months
after his father's death, his mother being nominated by the Lord
Chancellor his sole guardian. Lady Bute's will recommended the
appointment as her son's guardian of Colonel (afterwards Major-General)
Charles Stuart, Sir Francis Hastings Gilbert, and Lady Elizabeth Moore,
who was distantly related to the Bute family through the Hastings', and
had been one of Lady Bute's dearest friends. Sir Francis Gilbert being
at this time absent from England in the consular service, the Court of
Chancery appointed as guardians the two other persons named by Lady
Bute.
It seems unnecessary to describe in detail the prolonged friction and
regrettable litigation which were the result of this dual guardianship
of the orphaned boy; yet they must be here referred to, for it is
beyond question that they were not only detrimental to his happiness
and welfare during his {6} early boyhood, but could not fail seriously
to affect the development of his character in later years. The child
was deeply attached to Lady Elizabeth Moore, who had assumed the entire
charge of him after his mother's death; and his letters written at this
period give evidence not only of this attachment, but of his very
strong reluctance to leave her for the care of General Stuart, who
insisted that it was time that a boy of nearly thirteen should be
removed from the exclusively female custody in which he had been kept
from babyhood. Lady Elizabeth, yielding partly to her own feelings,
and partly to the earnest and repeated solicitations of her young ward,
was ill-advised enough, instead of committing him as desired to the
care of her co-guardian, to carry him off surreptitiously to Scotland,
and to keep him concealed for some time in an obscure hotel in the
suburbs of Edinburgh. Here is the boy's own account of the affair,
written from this hotel to a relation in India[1] (he was between
twelve and thirteen years of age):--
I prayed, I entreated, I agonised, I abused the general; I adjured her
not to give me up to him. She was shaken but not convinced. So we
went to Newcastle, to York, and to London, where I got a bad cold, my
two teeth were pulled, etc., etc. We were delayed some time there, and
meanwhile my prayers and adjurations were trebled: Lady E. was
convinced, and promised not to let me go. She got one of the
solicitors to the Bank of England in the City to write a letter to
Genl. S. for her, as civil as possible, but declining to give me up; to
which the general returned a furious answer, conveying his
determination to appeal to the Vice-Chancellor about {7} the matter.
After a month we became convinced that the Vice-Chancellor would decide
against us; and on the night of April 16th Lady E. left the hotel
secretly, and with her maid and me shot the moon to Edinburgh, where we
arrived at 7 next morning.[2]
[Illustration: _The Marquess of Bute aet 2_ from a drawing by R. T. Ross
at Cardiff Castle]
[Sidenote: 1859, Rival guardians]
For a boy of twelve this is a sufficiently remarkable letter; but an
even more precocious document is a draft letter dated a fortnight
before the flight to Edinburgh, and composed entirely by young Bute,
who recommended Lady Elizabeth to copy it and send it to her
co-guardian as from herself!
DEAR GENERAL STUART,
You will, I am afraid, be much surprised upon the reception of this
letter, but I trust that your love for Bute will make you accede to the
request which I am about to make. B. has lately had much sorrow, and
he has formed an attachment to me only to have it broken by separation,
and in order to go among entire strangers to him--for in that light, I
am sorry to say, I must regard you and Mrs. Stuart. With your consent,
then, dear Genl. Stuart, I shall be happy to keep him with me until he
is 14, when he will of course choose for himself. We could live with
good Mr. Stacey very nicely at Dumfries House or Mountstuart, and I
could occasionally bring him to England--or indeed you could come to
see him at Mountstuart. I trust, dear Gen. Stuart, you will be the
more inclined to accede to my request when I tell you that he has {8}
expressed to me the greatest reluctance at parting from me and going to
you--a repugnance which I can only regard as very natural, for I was
much grieved to see that you did not follow my advice in walking with
him and consulting him (and believe me without so doing you will never
gain his affections), while I have always done so, as was his poor
mother's invariable custom.[3]
It does not appear whether this letter, which is dated from 23 Dover
Street, and is entirely in the boy's own handwriting, exactly as given
above, was actually sent by Lady Elizabeth. In any case General Stuart
was not the man to submit to the compulsory separation from his ward
which resulted from what the House of Lords afterwards characterised as
the "clandestine, furtive, and fraudulent action" of Lady Elizabeth
Moore. He at once laid the case before the Court of Chancery, which
directed that the boy was to be immediately handed over to his care,
and sent without delay to an approved private school, and in due time
to Eton or Harrow, and then to one of the English universities. Lady
Elizabeth absolutely refused to comply with the order of the Court, and
was consequently removed in July, 1860, from the office of guardian.
Meanwhile the case was complicated by the intervention of the Scottish
tutor-at-law, Colonel {9} James Crichton Stuart, who had been since the
death of Lord Bute's father manager and administrator of the family
estates in Scotland. Colonel Stuart obtained from the Scottish Courts
an order that the boy should be sent to Loretto, a well-known school
near Edinburgh, and that the Earl of Galloway should be the "custodier"
of his person. The Court of Chancery promptly issued an injunction
forbidding the tutor-at-law to interfere in any way with the boy's
education, whereupon both Colonel Stuart and the English guardian
appealed to the House of Lords. That tribunal gave its judgment on May
17, 1861, censuring the Court of Session for its delay in dealing with
this important matter, confirming General Stuart as sole guardian, and
sanctioning his scheme for the boy's education.
[Sidenote: 1861, Lords' decision]
The House of Lords, in giving the decision which brought this long
litigation to a close, had raised no objection to the continued
residence of the young peer with the Earl of Galloway, an arrangement
which had already been approved by the Court of Chancery. Bute had, in
fact, at the time the judgment was pronounced, been living for some
months with Lord and Lady Galloway at their beautiful place on the
Wigtownshire coast; and this was certainly, as it turned out, the most
favourable and beneficial solution of the difficult question of
providing a suitable and congenial home for one who, whilst the
possessor of three or four splendid seats in England and Scotland, had
yet, by a pathetic anomaly, never known what home life was since his
mother's death in 1859. At Galloway House he found himself for the
first time the inmate of a large and cheerful family circle, including
several young people of about his own age. "I {10} am comfortably
established here," he wrote to Lady Elizabeth Moore soon after his
arrival in December, 1860. "This house is like Dumfries House, but
much prettier. I have a charming room, not at all lonely. Lord and
Lady G. are so kind to me, and the little girls treat me like a
brother." "They are all very very kind to me," he wrote a week or two
later, adding in the same letter that he had on the previous day
attended two services in Lord Galloway's private chapel. "It is very
plain," was the comment of the thirteen-year-old critic; "but the
chaplain's sermons were all about the saints and the Church. Do you
know what he called the Communion? a 'commemorative sacrifice!' In a
subsequent letter he says, "Mr. Wildman (the chaplain) says that Mary
should be called the 'Holy Mother of God.'"
[Sidenote: 1861, At Galloway House]
These new religious impressions, contrasting sharply as they must have
done with the narrow Evangelical teaching of his early days, are of
interest in connection with his first schoolmaster's report of him some
six months later, which will be mentioned in its proper place. "He was
very fond," writes one of his former playfellows at Galloway House in
those far-off days, "of sketching with pen and pencil religious
processions and ceremonies, and his thoughts seemed to be constantly
turned on religion. He liked having religious discussions with our
family chaplain, who was a clever and well-read man." "Our dear father
and mother," writes another member of the same large family, "told us
that we must be very kind to him, as he had lost both his parents and
was almost alone in the world. I remember seeing him in the library on
the night of his arrival--a tall, dark, good-looking boy, {11} looking
so shy and lonely, but with very nice manners." "I recollect him,"
says the son of a neighbouring laird, who was about two years his
senior, and was often at Galloway House, "rather a pathetic figure
among the swarm of joyous young things there, distinct among them from
never seeming joyous himself." This was doubtless the impression which
his extreme diffidence generally made on strangers; and it is the
pleasanter to read the further testimony of the playfellow already
quoted: "His shyness soon wore off when he got away from the elders to
play with us, and he entered with zest into all our amusements. He was
intensely earnest about everything he took up, whether serious things
or games. He was greatly attached to our brother Walter,[4] whose
bright, cheery nature appealed to him. Walter was always full of fun
and spirits and mischief; and Bute was delighted at this, and soon
joined in it all. I remember our old housekeeper, after some great
escapade, saying, "Yes, and the young marquis was as bad as any of
you!" One of his hobbies was collecting from the seashore the skulls
and skeletons of rabbits, birds, etc. I spent much time on the cliffs
and rocks looking for these things, of which we collected boxes full.
With his curious psychic turn of mind he liked to conduct some kind of
ceremonies over these remains after dark, inviting us children to take
part, sometimes dressed in white sheets. He loved legends of all
kinds, and used often to tell them to us: I was very fond of hearing
him, he told them so well. History, too, especially Scottish history,
{12} he liked very much. He wrote a delightful little history of
Scotland for my youngest brother,[5] of whom he was very fond--a tiny
boy then. It was all written in capital letters, with delightful and
clever pen-and-ink sketches, one on every page."
These recollections of happy home life in a Scottish country house,
nearly sixty years ago, call up a pretty picture of the orphan boy,
whose childhood had been so strangely lonely and isolated, contented
and at home in this charming family circle. That he was truly so is
further testified by letters that passed about this time between him
and his tutor-at-law, Colonel Crichton Stuart. In reply to a letter
from Colonel Stuart, expressing a desire to hear from Bute himself
whether he was comfortably settled at Galloway House, the boy wrote:
"In answer to your request, I write to confirm Mr. A.'s statement
regarding my happiness here. Lord and Lady Galloway did indeed receive
me as a child of their own, which I felt deeply."
That these words were a sincere expression of the young writer's
sentiments there is no reason to doubt; but thoughtful and advanced as
he was in some ways for his years, he was too young to realise
then---possibly he did later on, though he very seldom spoke of his
boyhood's days--how much more he owed to the Galloway family than mere
kindness. It seemed, indeed, a special providence which had brought
the orphaned marquis at this critical moment under influence so
salutary and so much needed as that of the admirable and excellent
family which had welcomed him to their beautiful home as one of
themselves. The numerous letters {13} written by Bute at this period,
of which many have been preserved, are marked indeed by propriety of
expression and a command of language remarkable in a boy of his age;
but they also reveal very clearly a self-centred view of life even more
extraordinary in so young a boy, and due, it cannot be doubted, to the
singularity of his upbringing. Surrounded from babyhood by a circle of
adoring females, in whose eyes the fatherless infant was the most
precious and priceless thing on earth, he had grown up to boyhood
penetrated, no doubt almost unconsciously, with an exaggerated and
overweening sense of his own importance in the scale of creation, to
which the wholesome influence of Galloway House provided the best
possible corrective. Distinguished, high-principled, exemplary in
every relation of life, Lord and Lady Galloway held up to their
children, by precept and example, a constant ideal of duty,
unselfishness and simplicity of life; and the young stranger within
their gates was fortunate in being able to profit by that teaching. If
his future life was to be marked by generous impulses and noble
ambitions--if one of his most notable characteristics was to be a
personal simplicity of taste and an utter antipathy to that ostentation
which is not always dissociated from high rank and almost unbounded
wealth--if he was to realise something of the supreme joy and
satisfaction of working for others rather than for oneself; for all
this he owed a debt of gratitude (can it be doubted?) to the kindly and
gracious influences which were brought to bear on his sensitive nature
during these years of his boyhood. He was received at Galloway House
as a child of the family; and his companions spoke their minds to him
with fraternal freedom. "You {14} will never find your level, Bute,"
the eldest son of the house (whom he greatly liked and respected) once
said to him, "until you get to a public school." He did not resent the
remark, for his good sense told him that it was true. Harrow was the
public school of the Galloway family; but it was not so much for that
reason that Harrow was chosen for him rather than Eton, as because his
wise and kind guardians believed, rightly or wrongly, that a boy in his
peculiar position would be less exposed to adulation and flattery at
the more democratic school on the Hill than at its great rival on
Thames-side.
Meanwhile a preparatory school had to be selected; and the choice fell
on May Place, the well-known school conducted by Mr. Thomas Essex at
Malvern Wells, where one of Lord Galloway's sons was just finishing his
course. It was locally known as the "House of Lords" from its
connection with the peerage; and the pupils included members of the
ducal houses of Sutherland, Argyll, Manchester, and Leinster, as well
as of many other well-known families. One who well remembers the first
arrival at May Place of the young Scottish peer, then aged thirteen and
a half, has described him as a slight tall lad, reserved and gentle in
manner, and particularly courteous to every one. The shyness and also
the reverence for sacred things which always distinguished him as a man
were equally noticeable in him as a boy; and it is remembered that when
he revisited the school three or four years later, during the Harrow
holidays, and was asked where he would like to drive to, he chose to go
and inspect an interesting old church in the neighbourhood. A school
contemporary with whom he occasionally squabbled was William Sinclair,
the future Archdeacon of London; and there was {15} once nearly a
pitched battle between them, in consequence of some caricatures which
Sinclair drew, purporting to represent Bute's near relatives, but for
which he afterwards handsomely apologised.
[Sidenote: 1861, First school report]
Towards the end of Bute's first term at Malvern Wells, his master wrote
to Lord Galloway the following account of his young pupil. The
concluding sentence is of curious interest in view of what the future
held in store. It seems to show that the reaction in his mind--a mind
already thoughtful beyond his years--against the one-sided view of
religion and religious history which had been impressed upon him from
childhood had already begun.
May Place,
Malvern Wells,
July 14, 1861.
Lord Bute is going on more comfortably than I could have expected. He
is on excellent terms with his schoolfellows; and though he prefers
"romps" to cricket or gymnastics, yet I am glad to see him making
himself happy with the others. More manly tastes will, I think, come
in time. His obedience and his desire to please are very pleasing;
while his strong religious principles and gentlemanly tone are
everything one could desire. His opinions on things in general are
rather an inexplicable mixture. I was not surprised to find in him an
admiration of the Covenanters and a hatred of Archbishop Sharpe; but I
was certainly startled to discover, on the other hand, a liking for the
Romish priesthood and ceremonial. I shall, of course, do my best to
bring him to sounder views.
[Sidenote: 1861, At May Place]
We have no evidence as to what methods were employed, or what arguments
adduced, by the excellent preceptor in order to carry out the purpose
{16} indicated in the concluding lines of his letter. Bute himself
never referred to the matter afterwards, but the result was in all
probability nugatory. It is not within the recollection of the present
writer, who was an inmate of May Place a year or two later, that any
serious effort was ever made there to impress religious truths on the
minds of the pupils, or indeed to impart to them any definite religious
teaching at all. The views and opinions of the young Scot, although
only in his fourteenth year, were probably already a great deal more
formed on these and kindred subjects than those of his worthy
schoolmaster. In any case the time available for detaching his
sympathies from the "Romish" priesthood and ritual was short. The boy
had come to school very poorly equipped in the matter of general
education, as the term was then understood. In the correspondence
between his rival guardians, when he was just entering his 'teens,
allusion is made to the boy's "precocious intellect," also to the fact
that he knew little Latin, no Greek, and (what was considered worse)
hardly any French. Mathematics he always cordially disliked; and it is
on record that all the counting he did in those early years was
invariably on his fingers. His natural intelligence, however, and his
aptitude for study soon enabled him to make up for much that had been
lost owing to the haphazard and interrupted education of his childhood;
and it was not long before he was pronounced intellectually equal to
the not very exacting standard of the entrance examination at Harrow.
A final reminiscence of his connection with May Place may here be
recorded. He revisited his old school not long after his momentous
change of creed; and being left alone awhile in {17} the study took up
a blank report that lay on the table, and filled it up as follows[6]:--
MONTHLY REPORT OF THE MARQUESS OF BUTE.
LATIN CONSTRUING . . . . . . Partially preserved.
LATIN WRITING . . . . . . . Ditto.
GREEK CONSTRUING . . . . . . Getting very bad from disuse.
GREEK WRITING . . . . . . . Ditto.
ARITHMETIC . . . . . . . . . Entirely abandoned.
HISTORY . . . . . . . . . . So-so.
GEOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . Improved by foreign travel.
DICTATION . . . . . . . . . Ditto by business letters.
FRENCH . . . . . . . . . . . Ditto by travelling.
DRAWING . . . . . . . . . . Grown rather rusty.
RELIGION . . . . . . . . . . Unhappily not to the taste
of the British public.
CONDUCT . . . . . . . . . . Not so bad as it is painted.
[1] Charles MacLean, to whom he referred more than thirty years later,
in his Rectorial address at St. Andrews (p. 188).
[2] During Bute's travels with Lady Elizabeth Moore, in the course of
her efforts to retain the custody of her little ward, his most trusted
retainer was one Jack Wilson. The pertinacity with which the child was
pursued, and the extent of Wilson's devotion, are attested by the known
fact that on one occasion he knocked a writ-server down the stairs of a
Rothesay hotel where Bute was staying with Lady Elizabeth. Wilson was
accustomed always to sleep outside his young master's door. He rose
later to be head-keeper at Mountstuart, and died there on May 23, 1912.
[3] It seems right to mention that Bute had another reason, apart from
his attachment to Lady Elizabeth Moore, for his apparently unreasonable
hostility to his other guardian. One of his strongest feelings at this
time was his almost passionate devotion to the memory of his mother;
and he never forgot what he called General Stuart's "gross disrespect"
in not accompanying her remains from Edinburgh, where she died, to
Bute, where she was buried. "He left her body," wrote Bute to an
intimate friend from Christ Church, Oxford, "to be attended on that
long and troublesome journey, in the depth of winter, only by women,
servants, and myself, a child of twelve."
[4] Hon. Walter Stewart, afterwards colonel commanding 12th Lancers
(died 1908). He was about eighteen months younger than Bute.
[5] Hon. Fitzroy Stewart (died 1914). He was at this time just five
years old.
[6] This anecdote was communicated to a weekly journal (_M.A.P._) soon
after Lord Bute's death, by the son of the master of his old school.
{18}