HARROW AND CHRIST CHURCH
1862-1866
In September, 1861, Lord Bute completed his fourteenth year, attaining
the age of "minority" (as it is called in Scots law), which put him in
possession of certain important rights as regarded his property in the
northern kingdom. The young peer had from his childhood, as is shown
by his early correspondence with Lady Elizabeth Moore, been aware that
he would be entitled at the age of fourteen to exercise certain powers
of nomination in respect to the management of his Scottish estates.
Most of the members of the Lords' tribunal which had adjudicated on his
position in May, 1861, had evinced a curious ignorance of the nature,
if not of the very existence, of these prospective rights, and even
when informed of them had been inclined to question the expediency of
their being acted upon. Bute himself, however, was not only perfectly
aware of these rights, but resolved to exercise them; and we
accordingly find him, a few weeks after his fourteenth birthday,
writing as follows, from his private school, to his guardian, General
Stuart:--
May Place,
_November_ 25, 1861.
DEAR GEN. STUART,
I wish the necessary steps to be taken in the Court of Session for the
appointment of Curators {19} of my property in Scotland. The Curators
whom I wish to appoint are Sir James Fergusson, Sir Hastings Gilbert,
Lt.-Col. William Stuart, Mr. David Mure, Mr. Archibald Boyle, and
yourself.
I wish the Solicitor-General of Scotland to be employed as my legal
adviser in this buisness (_sic_).
I remain,
Your affectionate cousin,
BUTE AND DUMFRIES.
Bute was now entitled to choose from the number of these curators any
one to whose personal guardianship he was willing to be entrusted
during the seven years of his minority. His choice fell on Sir James
Fergusson of Kilkerran, M.P. for Ayrshire, who had recently married the
daughter of Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General of India; but he did not
immediately take up his residence with Sir James, as it was thought
best that he should continue, at any rate during the earlier part of
his public school life, to spend his holidays at Galloway House, where
he had become thoroughly at home. Lord Galloway's younger son Walter
was destined for Harrow School; and thither Bute preceded him after
spending two terms at May Place.
[Sidenote: 1862, Entrance at Harrow]
It was in the first term of 1862 that Bute entered the school at
Harrow, then under the headmastership of Montagu Butler. His position
was at first that of a "home boarder," and he was under the charge of
one of the masters, Mr. John Smith, known to and beloved by several
generations of Harrovians.
There was a rather well-known and self-important Mr. Winkley, quite a
figure among Harrow tradesmen (writes a school contemporary of Bute's,
son of a famous Harrow master, and himself afterwards {20} headmaster
of Charterhouse), a mutton-chop-whiskered individual who collected
rates, acted as estate agent, published (I think) the Bill Book, sold
books to the School, &c. He occupied the house beyond Westcott's, on
the same side of High Street, between Westcott's and the Park. There
John Smith resided with the Marquess of Bute.
Mr. Smith, whose mother lived at Pinner, used to visit her there every
Saturday, and to take over with him on these occasions one or two of
his pupils, who enjoyed what was then a pretty rural walk of three
miles, as well as the quaint racy talk of their master, and the
excellent tea provided by his kind old mother.
Another of his schoolfellows, Sir Henry Bellingham, writes:
I remember first meeting Bute on one of these little excursions. Mr.
Smith had told me that the tall, shy, quiet boy (he was a year younger
than me, but much bigger) had neither father, mother, brother nor
sister, and was therefore much to be pitied. I wondered why he did not
come more forward, and said so little either to Smith himself or to
Mrs. Smith; for Smith was a man who had great capabilities for drawing
people out, and was a general favourite with every one. The impression
I had of Bute during all our time at Harrow was always the same--that
of his very shy and quiet manner.
[Sidenote: 1862, A real palm branch]
Undemonstrative as he was by nature, Bute never forgot those who had
shown him any kindness, and he always preserved a grateful affection
for John Smith, who accompanied him more than once during the summer
holidays to Glentrool, Lord Galloway's lodge among the Wigtownshire
hills, and enjoyed some capital fishing there. Bute wrote to him in
{21} later years from time to time, and during the sadly clouded
closing period of the old man's life, when he was an inmate of St.
Luke's Hospital, he gave him much pleasure by sending him annually a
palm branch which had been blessed in his private chapel. More than
twenty years after Bute's Harrow days, he received this appreciative
letter from his former master:
St. Luke's Hospital,
Old Street, E.C.,
_Easter Tuesday_, 1887.
DEAR LORD BUTE,
I must try and write a few lines, asking you to pardon all defects.
The real Palm Branch was most welcome, with its special blessing: it is
behind me as I write, and many happy thoughts and messages does it
bring. God bless you for your most kind thought. I intend to forward
it in due time to Gerald Rendall (late head of Harrow, then Fellow of
Trin. Coll., Cambridge, now Principal of University College,
Liverpool), as my share in furnishing his new home: he was married this
vacation. The students, male and female, will be glad to see what a
real Palm Branch is like. Your gift of last year is now in the valued
keeping of Mrs. Edward Bradby, whose husband was a master of Harrow in
your day, and, after fifteen years of hard and successful work at
Haileybury, has taken up his abode at St. Katherine's Dock House, Tower
Hill, with wife and children, to live among the poor and brighten their
dull existence with music and pictures and dancing; besides inviting
them, in times of real necessity, to dine with himself and his wife, in
batches of eight and ten.
I look forward to the _Review_[1] with great interest. {22} I show it
to the Medical Gentlemen here, read what I can, and then forward it to
my sister at Harrow for friends there.
I try to realise the old chapel on the beach, in which the branches
were consecrated,[2] but fail utterly to do so. _Whereabouts is it_?
I suppose you have a chapel in the house also, for invalids, &c., in
bad weather.
God bless you all: Lady Bute and the children, especially the maiden
who is working at Greek.[3]
Ever your grateful
J. S.
From John Smith's _quasi_-parental care, Bute passed in due time into
the house of Mr. Westcott (afterwards Bishop of Durham), who occupied
"Moretons," on the top of West Hill (now in the possession of Mr. M. C.
Kemp). The future bishop, with all his attainments, had not the
reputation of a very successful teacher in class, nor of a good
disciplinarian; but as a house-master he had many admirable qualities,
and was greatly beloved by his pupils. For him also Bute preserved a
warm and lifelong sentiment of regard and gratitude; and to him, as to
John Smith, he was accustomed to send every Easter a blessed palm from
his private chapel, which Dr. Westcott preserved carefully in his own
chapel at Auckland Castle. "See that the Bishop of Durham gets his
palm," were Lord Bute's whispered words as he was lying stricken by his
last illness in the Holy Week of 1900. The tribute of affectionate
{23} remembrance had been an annual one for more than thirty years.
[Sidenote: 1863, School friendships]
Of all Bute's contemporaries at the great school, there were perhaps
only two with whom he struck up a real and close friendship. One was
Adam Hay Gordon of Avochie (a cadet of the Tweeddale family), who was
with him afterwards at Christ Church, and was one of his few intimate
associates there. The intimacy was not continued into later years, but
the memory of it remained. "I heard with sorrow," Bute recorded in his
diary on July 12, 1894, "of the death of one of my dearest friends,
Addle Hay Gordon. Though at Harrow together, and very intimate at
college, we had not met for many years. In my Oxford days I several
times stayed in Edinburgh with him and his parents, in Rutland Square.
We were as brothers."[4]
An even more intimate, and more lasting, friendship was that with
George E. Sneyd, who was at Westcott's house with Bute, and who
afterwards became his private secretary, married his cousin, Miss
Elizabeth Stuart (granddaughter of Admiral Lord George Stuart) in 1880,
and died in the same year as Adam Hay Gordon. "It is difficult to
say," wrote Bute in January, 1894, "what this loss is to me. He had
been an intimate friend ever since we were at Westcott's big house at
Harrow--one of my few at all, the most intimate (unless Addle Hay
Gordon) and the most trusted I ever had. He had a very important place
in my will. For these two I had prayed by name regularly at every Mass
I have heard for many, many years."
{24}
A school contemporary, who records Bute's close friendship with George
Sneyd, mentions (as do others) his fancy for keeping Ligurian bees in
his tiny study-bedroom. "My only recollection of his room at Harrow,
where I once visited him," writes Sir Herbert Maxwell, "is of an
arrangement whereby bees entered from without into a hive within the
room, where their proceedings could be watched." A brother of Sir
Redvers Buller, who boarded in the adjoining house, has recorded that
"Bute's bees" were a perfect nuisance to him, as they had a way of
flying in at his window instead of their own, and disturbing him at his
studies or other employments.
[Sidenote: 1863, Harrow school prizes]
"At Harrow," said one of Bute's obituary notices, "the young Scottish
peer was as poetical as Byron." This rather absurd remark is perhaps
to some extent justified by one episode in Bute's school career. "I
have a general recollection of him," writes a correspondent already
quoted, "as a very amiable, though reserved, boy, not given to games,
who astonished us all by securing the English Prize Poem. He won this
distinction (the assigned subject was 'Edward the Black Prince') in the
summer of 1863, when only fifteen years of age." "His winning this
prize in 1863, when quite young," writes the Archbishop of Canterbury,
who was in the same form as Bute at Harrow and knew him well, "was his
most notable exploit. There is a special passage about ocean waves and
their 'decuman,' which has often been quoted as a remarkable effort on
the part of a young boy.[5] {25} He was very quiet and unassuming in
all his ways."
A further honour gained by Bute in the same year (1863) was one of the
headmaster's Fifth Form prizes for Latin Verse; but the text of this
composition (it was a translation from English verse) has not been
preserved. The fact of his winning these two important prizes is a
sufficient proof that, if not "as poetical as Byron," he had a distinct
feeling for poetry, and that generally his industry and ability had
enabled him to make up much, if not all, of the leeway caused by the
imperfect and desultory character of his early education. In other
words he passed through his school course with credit and even
distinction; and that he preserved a kindly memory of his Harrow days
is sufficiently shown by the fact that he took the unusual
step--unusual, that is, in the case of the head of a great Roman
Catholic family--of sending all his three sons to be educated at the
famous school on the Hill.
Bute's career at Harrow, like his private school course, was an
unusually short one, extending over only three years. He left the
school in the first term of 1865, presenting to the Vaughan Library at
his departure a small collection of books, which it may be of some
interest to enumerate. They were Pierotti's _Jerusalem Explained_, 2
vols. folio; {26} Digby's _Broadstone of Honour_, 3 vols.; Victor
Hugo's _Les Miserables_, 3 vols.; Miss Proctor's _Legends and Lyrics_;
Gil Blas, 2 vols. (illustrated); _Don Quixote_; Napier's _Memoirs of
Montrose_, 3 vols.; and _Memoirs of Dundee_, 2 vols.
He further evinced his interest in his old school by presenting to it,
five years after leaving, a portrait of John first Marquess of Bute
(then Lord Mountstuart), wearing the dress of the school Archery Corps
of that day (1759). This portrait (which is a copy of a well-known
painting by Allan Ramsay) now hangs in the Vaughan Library.
[Sidenote: 1865, Pilgrimage to Palestine]
It was characteristic of the young Harrovian that, his school-days
over, he took the very first opportunity to turn his steps towards the
East, in which from his earliest boyhood he had always been curiously
interested. It was not the first occasion of his leaving England, for
he had visited Brussels and other cities several times with his mother
during his childhood, and used in later years to note in his diary the
half-forgotten recollections of places which he had seen in those early
and happy days. But his visit to Palestine in the spring of 1865--the
first of many journeys to the Holy Land--was an entirely new
experience; and to this youth of seventeen, thoughtful and
religious-minded beyond his years, it was no mere pleasure trip, but a
veritable pilgrimage. "I am sending you a copy," he wrote to a friend
at Oxford in the autumn of this year, "of a document which I value more
than anything I have ever received in my life: the certificate of my
visit to the Holy Places of Jerusalem given to me by the Father
Guardian of the Franciscan convent on Mount Sion. Here it is:
{27}
[Illustration: Emblem]
In Dei Nomine. Amen. Omnibus et singulis praesentes literas
inspecturis, lecturis, vel legi audituris, fidem notumque facimus Nos
Terrae Sanctae Custos, devotum Peregrinum Illustrissimum Dominum Dominum
Joannem, Marchionem de Bute in Scotia, Jerusalem feliciter pervenisse
die 10 Mensis Maii anni 1865; inde subsequentibus diebus praecipua
Sanctuaria in quibus Mundi Salvator dilectum populum Suum, immo et
totius generis humani perditam congeriem ab inferi servitute
misericorditer liberavit, utpote Calvarium ... SS. Sepulchrum ... ac
tandem ea omnia sacra Palestinae loca gressibus Domini ac Beatissimae
ejus Matris Mariae consecrata, a Religiosis nostris et Peregrinis
visitari solita, visitasse.
In quorum fidem has scripturas Officii Nostri sigillo munitas per
Secretarium expediri mandavimus.
Datis apud S. Civitatem Jerusalem, ex venerabili Nostro Conventu SS.
Salvatoris, die 29 Maii, 1865.
L.S. De mandato Reverendiss. in Christo Patris
F. REMIGIUS BUSELLI, S.T.L., secret.
+ Sigillum Guardiani Montis Sion.
(There is an image of the Descent of the H. Spirit, and of the
_Mandatum_.)
"It touched and interested me extremely," Bute said many years later,
"to find myself described in this document as 'devotus Peregrinus,' and
this for more than one reason. The phrase, in the first place, seemed
to link me, a mere schoolboy, with the myriads of devout and holy men,
saints and warriors, who had made the pilgrimage before me. 'Illuc
enim ascenderunt tribus, tribus Domini.' And then I remembered that I
descended lineally through my mother's family, the Hastings', from a
very famous pilgrim, the 'Pilgrim of Treves,' the Hebrew who went to
Rome during the great Papal Schism, sat himself down on one of the
Seven Hills, and dubbed himself Pope. When Martin V. (Colonna) was
recognised as lawful Pope, {28} my ancestor returned to Rome and, I
believe, reverted to the Judaism from which he had temporarily lapsed.
But this celebrated journey earned him the title, _par excellence_, of
the Pilgrim of Treves; and the name of Peregrine has been borne since,
all through the centuries, by many of his descendants, of whom I am
one." All this is so curiously characteristic of Lord Bute's half
serious, half whimsical (and always original) manner of regarding
out-of-the-way corners of history and genealogy, that it seems worth
reproducing in this place.
[Illustration: THE MARQUESS OF BUTE, AET. 17.]
[Sidenote: 1866, Steeplechasing at Oxford]
Soon after his return from his Palestine journey, Bute was duly
matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, and he went into residence in
the October term. He was one of the last batch of peers who entered
the university on the technical footing of "noblemen," with the
privilege of wearing a distinctive dress, sitting at a special table in
hall, and paying double for everything. Among his contemporaries at
the House were the Duke of Hamilton, Lord Rosebery, the seventh Duke of
Northumberland, and Lords Cawdor, Doune, and Willoughby de Broke. His
cousin, the fourth and last Marquess of Hastings, who was five years
his senior, had not long before gone down from the university, had been
married for a year, and was at the height of the meteoric career which
came to a premature and inglorious end just when Bute attained his
majority. The latter had that strong sense of family attachment which
is so marked a characteristic of Scotsmen; and _noblesse oblige_ was a
maxim which for him had a very real and serious meaning. It is certain
that the contemplation of his cousin's wasted life not only distressed
him deeply, but tended to confirm in him an almost exaggerated {29}
antipathy to the extravagant craze for racing, gambling and betting,
which was the form of "sport" most prevalent among the young men of
family and fashion who were his contemporaries at Oxford. Bute's
entire want of sympathy with such pursuits and such ideals thus
inevitably cut him off from anything like intimate intercourse with the
predominant members of the undergraduate society of his college. He
would not be persuaded to frequent their clubs or share in their
amusements, which to him would have been no amusements at all; although
he was elected a member of "Loders," to which the noblemen and
gentlemen-commoners of the House as a matter of course belonged. He
was, however, induced, on the representations of one of his friends
(probably Hay Gordon) to own and nominate a horse in the university
steeplechases (or "grinds," as they were called). "Some one, I do not
know who," writes one of his contemporaries, "had informed him that I
was the proper person to ride his horse. When I interviewed him on the
subject (which I did with some trepidation, as he was exceedingly shy
and stiff with strangers), he evinced not the slightest interest either
in his horse or the contest in which it was to take part. The animal
came in only third, but Bute showed neither disappointment nor pleasure
in anything it did or failed to do either on this or on subsequent
occasions." Another anecdote in connection with this episode of
"Bute's steeplechaser" is related by one of his fellow-undergraduates,
who was charged, or had charged himself, with the duty of informing the
owner of this unprofitable horse (for which, by the way, he had paid a
good round sum) that it was among the "Also Rans" in the Christ Church
{30} grinds. "Ah! indeed?" was his only comment; "but now I want to
know," he continued eagerly, "if you can help me to solve a much more
important question. What real claim had the [Greek: kremastoi kepoi]
(the hanging gardens) of Semiramis at Babylon, to be classified, as
they were in ancient times, among the Seven Wonders of the World?"
Whilst on the subject of Bute's diversions at Christ Church (though
steeplechasing, even vicariously, can hardly be said to have been one
of them), reference may appropriately be made to a rather remarkable
entertainment which he gave by way of repaying the hospitalities
extended to him by his companions, including some of his former
school-fellows at Harrow. It took the form of a fancy-dress ball,
which came off in the fine suite of rooms which he occupied in the
north-west corner of Tom Quad (since subdivided). Here is the
invitation card, surmounted with the emblazoned arms of the House,
which was sent out:
MARQUESS OF BUTE
AT HOME
La Morgue Bal Masque
IV. I. Tom. R.S.V.P.
"La Morgue" was the room, adjacent to his own, which was, as a matter
of fact, used as a mortuary when any death occurred within the college.
The young host received his guests at the entrance to this apartment in
the character of his Satanic Majesty, attired in a close-fitting
garment of scarlet and black, with wings, horn, and tail; and most of
the guests figured as dons, eminent churchmen, and other well-known
personages in the university, the stately dean being, of course,
represented, as well as {31} Mrs. Liddell, who afterwards expressed
regret that she had not been present in person. A fracas in the
refreshment room resulted in a jockey (the Hon. H. Needham) being
arrested by a policeman, who conducted him to the police-office before
the culprit discovered that the supposed constable was one of his
fellow-revellers. The affair was altogether so successful that Bute
designed to repeat it a year later; but the authorities of the House,
who had given no permission for the original entertainment,
peremptorily forbade its repetition.[6]
[Sidenote: 1865, Oxford friends]
Bute had come into residence at Oxford a few weeks after his eighteenth
birthday; and the above reminiscences show that with all his
serious-mindedness he possessed, as indeed might have been expected,
something also, at that period, of what Disraeli called "the
irresponsible frivolity of immature manhood." His amiability of
character and remarkable personal courtesy prevented him from being in
any degree unpopular; but his intimate friends at Oxford were
undoubtedly very few; and it is curious that the most intimate of them
all was not an undergraduate, or an Oxford man at all, but a lady much
his senior, Miss Felicia Skene, daughter of a well-known man of letters
and friend of Walter Scott, long resident in Oxford. Miss Skene was
herself a person of remarkable attainments and qualities, one of them
being a rare gift of sympathy, which seems to have won the heart of the
solitary young Scotsman from the first {32} day of their acquaintance.
Bute corresponded with her constantly and regularly, not only during
his undergraduate days, but for many years subsequently; and his
letters show to how large a degree he gave her his confidence in
matters of the most intimate interest to himself. One of the earliest
of these is dated from Dumfries House, Ayrshire, in the Christmas
vacation following his first term at Oxford.
Dumfries House,
Cumnock,
_Christmas Day_ [1865].
MY DEAR MISS SKENE,
A happy Xmas to you. Mine is comfortable, if not merry nor ideal. Let
me say in black and white that I mean to pay for the meat and wine
ordered by the doctor for the poor woman you mention.... Money I
cannot send. I have little more than L100 to spend myself. My
allowance is L2000, and I have overdrawn L1630, with a draft for L1000
coming due. I am trying to raise the wind here: it seems absurd that I
should be "hard up," but it is a long story. I am only sorry that the
offerings I should make at this time to the "Little Child of Bethlehem"
are not procurable.
Ever yours most truly,
BUTE.
[Sidenote: 1865, At Dumfries House]
Bute had now finally left Galloway House, which had been his holiday
residence during his Harrow days; and his home when not at Oxford was
at Dumfries House, his Ayrshire seat, then in the occupation of Sir
James and Lady Edith Fergusson. "I saw a good deal of him when he was
living at Dumfries House under the tutelage of Sir James Fergusson,"
writes one who had known him from {33} childhood. "He used to come
down to the smoking-room at night arrayed in a gorgeous garment of pale
blue and gold: I think he said he had had it made on the pattern of a
saintly bishop's vestment in a stained glass window of the Harrow
Chapel. Sir James was anxious to make a sportsman of Bute, and bought
a hunter or two for him. I remember his coming out one day with Lord
Eglinton's hounds, but I never saw him take the field again." The
tyro, as a matter of fact, got a toss in essaying to jump a hedge; and
so mortified was he by this public discomfiture that he not only never
again appeared in the hunting-field, but he never quite forgave Sir
James for being the indirect cause of the misadventure.
Miss Skene not only acted to some extent as Bute's almoner during his
Oxford days (it is fair to say that the "hard-up" condition alluded to
in the above letter was due at least as much to his lavish almsgiving
as to any personal extravagance), but was his adviser in regard to
other matters. "Mrs. Leighton [wife of the Warden of All Souls] has
invited me," runs one of his notes, "to come and meet a Scottish bishop
(St. Andrews) at dinner, and asks me in the same letter to give 'out of
my abundance' a cheque to enlarge the Penitentiary chapel. Now I
dislike Scots Episcopalian bishops (not individually but officially),
their genesis having been unblushingly Erastian, and their present
status in Scotland being schismatic and dissenting; and my 'abundance'
at present consists of a heavy overdraft at the bank. Read and forward
the enclosed reply, unless you think the lady will take offence, which
can hardly be."
He often copied for his friend extracts which {34} struck him from
books he was reading. "I have transcribed for you," he wrote a few
weeks after his nineteenth birthday, "the account of the death of
Krishna from the Vishnu Purana. A hunter by accident shot him in the
foot with an arrow. When he saw what he had done he prostrated himself
and implored pardon. Krishna granted it and translated him at once to
heaven. 'Then the illustrious Krishna, having united himself with his
own pure, spiritual, inexhaustible, inconceivable, unborn, undecaying,
imperishable and universal spirit, which is one with Vasundera,
abandoned his mortal body and the condition of the threefold
qualities.' To my mind this description of the great Saviour becoming
one with universal spirit approaches the sublime."
At the end of his first summer term (June, 1866) Bute made his second
tour in the East--a more extended one this time, visiting not only
Constantinople and Palestine, but Kurdistan and Armenia. His tutor,
the Rev. S. Williams, accompanied him, as well as one or two friends,
including Harman Grisewood, one of his associates at the House, and one
of the few with whom he maintained an intimacy after their Oxford days.
A diary kept by Bute of the first portion of this tour has been
preserved: it describes his doings with great minuteness, and is a
remarkable record for a youth of eighteen to have written. In Paris
nothing seems to have much interested him except the churches, and long
antiquarian conversations with the Vicomte de Voguee and others. "I
again visited the Comte de V.,"[7] {35} runs one entry. "We got into
the Cities of Bashan, and stayed there three or four hours." Many
pages are devoted to a detailed description of Avignon, and later of
St. John's Church at Malta, of Syracuse, Catania, and Messina. At
Malta he visited the tomb of his grandfather (the first Marquess of
Hastings, who died when governor of Malta in 1826), and "was much
pleased with it." Describing the high mass in the Benedictine Church
at Catania, he says, "At the end, during the Gospel of St. John, the
organist (the organ is one of the finest in the world) played a
military march so well that I, at least, could hardly be persuaded that
the loud clear clash, the roll of the drums, the ring of the triangle,
and the roar of the brass instruments were false. It seemed to me that
this passage, which was admirably executed, harmonised wonderfully well
with the awful words of the part of the Mass which it accompanied."
[Sidenote: 1866, Ascent of Mount Etna]
The young diarist's vivid descriptive powers are well shown in his
narrative of the ascent of Etna, and the impression it made on him:
We dined [at Nicolosi] on omelet, bread, and figs, and the nastiest
wine, and at about 7 p.m. started on mules. These beasts had saddles
more uncomfortable than words can describe. Their pace was about 2-1/2
miles per hour, which it was too easy to reduce, but quite impossible
to accelerate. Mine had for bridle a cord three feet long, tied to one
of several large rings on one side of its head. The journey lasted
till 1.30 a.m. or later.... About {36} 1 in the morning, Mr. W. and
one guide having long dropped far behind, where their shrieks and yells
(now growing hoarse from despair) could be faintly heard in the
darkness far down the mountain, we emerged upon the summit between the
peaks; and at the same time the full moon, silver, intense, rose from
behind the lower summit, and shed a flood of light over the tremendous
scene of desolation. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing
visible but cinders and sky. At every step we sank eighteen inches
into the black dust as we stumbled on in single file in perfect
silence. A couple of miles ahead rose the great crater peak, with
patches of snow at its foot and the eternal white cloud emanating and
writhing from the summit. After an hour's rest at the Casa Inglese, a
miserable hovel at the foot of the Cone, we started, wrapped in plaids,
the cold being intense. Mr. W. had now rejoined us. The Cone is a
hill about the size of Arthur's Seat, covered with rolling friable
cinders, from which rise clouds of white sulphureous dust. The ascent
took rather more than an hour. Mr. W. gave out half-way up, declaring
he should faint. The pungent sulphur-smoke came sweeping down the
hill-side, choking and blinding one. Eyes were smarting, lungs loaded,
throat burnt, mouth dry and nostrils choked. On we struggled till the
very ground gave forth curling clouds of smoke from every cranny. A
few more steps and we were on the summit, at the very edge of the
crater, which yawned into perdition within a few inches of one's foot.
It is an immense glen, surrounded by a chain of heights, with
tremendously precipitous sides, bright yellow in the depths, whence
rises continually the cloud of smoke. The whole scene is exactly like
Dore's illustrations of the Inferno.... The sun rose over Italy as we
sat with our heads wrapped up and handkerchiefs in our mouths; but
there was no view at all, the height is too stupendous. The {37}
horror of the whole place cannot be depicted. We were delighted to get
back to the Casa Inglese, where we remounted our mules and crept away.
[Sidenote: 1866, Impressions of Eastern travel]
From Sicily the travellers visited Smyrna and Chios on their way to
Constantinople. Pages of the diary are taken up with descriptions of
churches, and functions attended in them, and it is of interest to note
that, profoundly interested as Bute was in the Greek churches and the
Greek liturgy, his religious sympathies were entirely with the Latin
communion. The "spiritual deadness," as he calls it, of the schismatic
churches of the East, repelled and dismayed him. "It strikes me as
essentially dreadful," he writes of a visit to the Church of the
Transfiguration at Syra, "that the Photian Tabernacle everywhere
enshrines a deserted Saviour. The daily sacrifice is not offered; the
churches are closed and cold, save for a few hours on Sunday and
festivals; visits to the B. Sacrament are unknown. Pictures are
exposed to receive an exaggerated homage, unknown and undreamt of in
the West. But it is absolutely true to say that the Perpetual Presence
(to which no reverence at all is offered, by genuflection or otherwise)
receives less respect than one ordinarily pays to any place of worship
whatever, even a meeting-house or synagogue." Later, recording a visit
to the Greek cathedral at Pera, he describes the service there as "the
most disagreeable function I ever attended: the church crammed with
people in a state of restlessness and irreverence characteristic of
Photian schismatics; and the whole service as much spoiled as slurring,
drawling, utter irreverence, bad music, and bad taste could spoil it.
After breakfast I {38} attended the High Mass at the Church of the
Franciscans--a different thing indeed from the Photian Cathedral; and I
went back there in the afternoon for Vespers and Benediction."
It has been sometimes said that Bute, during the period immediately
preceding his reception into the Catholic Church, was even more drawn
towards the "Orthodox" form of belief than he was to the prevailing
religion of Western Christendom. The above extracts show that the very
reverse was the case. Genuine and earnest worship stirred and
impressed him everywhere: thus he writes, after witnessing an elaborate
ceremonial (including the dance of the dervishes) in a mosque at
Constantinople: "I left the mosque very much wrought up and excited.
There are those who are not impressed by this. There are those also
who laugh at a service in a language they do not know: there are those
who see nothing august or awful even in the Holy Mass." Slovenliness,
irreverence, tepidity in religion were what pained and repelled him;
and finding those characteristics everywhere in the liturgical services
of those whom he called the Photians, he was so far from being
attracted towards any idea of joining their communion, that he returned
to England, and to Oxford, after this Eastern journey, with the whole
bent of his religious aspirations set more and more in the direction of
the Catholic and Roman Church. His conversion was, in fact,
accomplished before the end of this year, although circumstances, as
will be seen, compelled the postponement for a considerable time of the
public and formal profession of his faith.
[1] The _Scottish Review_, which Lord Bute controlled at this time, and
to which he contributed many articles.
[2] This was the chapel on the edge of the sea, among the Mountstuart
woods, which had been built for the convenience of the people living
and working near the house. Lord Bute used it as a domestic chapel
until the new chapel at Mountstuart was opened. He was buried there in
1900.
[3] Lord Bute's only daughter, Lady Margaret Crichton-Stuart, then in
her twelfth year, and under the tutelage of a Greek governess.
[4] Adam Hay Gordon married in 1873 the beautiful granddaughter of Sir
Robert Dalrymple Horn Elphinstone, and died without issue, as above
recorded, in July, 1894.
[5] "'Tis said that when upon a rocky shore
The salt sea billows break with muffled roar,
And, launched in mad career, the thundering wave
Leaps booming through the weedy ocean cave;
Each tenth is grander than the nine before.
And breaks with tenfold thunder on the shore.
Alas! it is so on the sounding sea;
But so, O England, it is not with thee!
Thy decuman is broken on the shore:
A peer to him shall lave thee never more!"
The text of the whole poem is given in Appendix I.
[6] The particulars of this whimsical incident in Bute's university
career have been kindly furnished by Mr. Algernon Turnor, C.B., who was
his contemporary at Christ Church. It was he who rode--though not to
victory--the steeplechaser mentioned in the text. Mr. Turner married
in 1880 Lady Henrietta Stewart, one of Bute's early playmates and
companions at Galloway House.
[7] Eugene Vicomte de Voguee, whom Bute wrongly styles "Comte" in his
diary, was a few months his junior. One of the most brilliant and
charming men of his generation, he was in turn soldier, diplomatist,
politician, and _litterateur_. He became a member of the Academy in
1888 and died in 1910. He published books and articles on a great
variety of subjects, all marked with the profoundly religious feeling
which characterised him.
{39}