RELIGIOUS INQUIRIES--RECEPTION POSTPONED--COMING OF AGE
1867, 1868
A well-meaning person thought well to compile and publish, some years
ago, a volume in which a few distinguished Roman Catholics, and a great
number of mediocrities, were invited to describe the process and
motives which led them "to abandon" (as some cynic once expressed it)
"the errors of the Church of England for those of the Church of Rome."
Lord Bute, who was among the many more or less eminent people who
received and declined invitations to contribute to this symposium, was
certainly the last man likely to consent to recount his own religious
experiences for the benefit of a curious public. It is, therefore, all
the more interesting that in a copy of the book above referred to,
belonging to one of his most intimate friends,[1] was preserved a
memorandum in Bute's writing, which throws an interesting light on
some, at least, of the causes which were contributory to his own
submission to the Roman Church.
I came to see very clearly indeed that the Reformation was in England
and Scotland--I had not studied it elsewhere--the work neither of God
nor of the people, its real authors being, in the former country, {40}
a lustful and tyrannical King, and in the latter a pack of greedy,
time-serving and unpatriotic nobles. (Almost the only real patriots in
Scotland at that period were bishops like Elphinstone, Reid, and
Dunbar.)
I also convinced myself (1) that while the disorders rampant in the
Church during the sixteenth century clamoured loudly for reform, they
in no way justified apostacy and schism; and (2) that were I personally
to continue, under that or any other pretext, to remain outside the
Catholic and Roman Church, I should be making myself an accomplice
after the fact in a great national crime and the most indefensible act
in history. And I refused to accept any such responsibility.
[Sidenote: 1860, Attraction to Roman Church]
The late Jesuit historian, Father Joseph Stevenson, who spent a great
number of years in laborious study (for his work in the Record Office)
of the original documents and papers of the Reformation period, frankly
avowed that it was what he learned in these researches, and no other
considerations whatever, which convinced him--an elderly Anglican
clergyman of the old school--that the Catholic Church was the Church of
God, and the so-called Reformation the work of His enemies. It was one
of his colleagues in the Society of Jesus[2] who quoted this to Lord
Bute, and his emphatic comment was, "That is a point of view which I
thoroughly appreciate." As to Bute himself, there were undoubtedly
many sides of his character to which the appeal of the ancient Church
would be strong and insistent. Her august and venerable ritual, the
ordered splendour of her ceremonial, the deep significance of her
liturgy and worship, {41} could not fail to attract one who had learned
to see in them far more than the mere outward pomp and beauty which are
but symbols of their inward meaning. The love and tenderness and
compassion with which she is ever ready to minister to the least of her
children would touch the heart of one who beneath a somewhat cold
exterior had himself a very tender feeling for the stricken and the
sorrowful. The marvellous roll of her saints, the story of their
lives, the record of their miracles, would stir the imagination and
kindle the enthusiasm of one who loved to remember, as we have seen,
that the blood of pilgrims flowed in his veins, and found one of his
greatest joys in visiting the shrines, following in the footsteps,
venerating the remains, and verifying the acts of the saints of God in
many lands, even in the remotest corners of Christendom. His mind and
heart and soul found satisfaction in all these things; but most of all
it was the historic sense which he possessed in so peculiar a degree,
the craving for an exact and accurate presentment of the facts of
history, which was one of his most marked characteristics--it was these
which, during his many hours of painful and laborious searching into
the records of the past, were the most direct and immediate factors in
convincing his intellect, as his heart was already convinced, that the
Catholic and Roman Church, and no other, was the Church founded by
Christ on earth, and that to remain outside it was, for him, to incur
the danger of spiritual shipwreck.
Dr. Liddon, who was at this time a Senior Student of Christ Church, and
resident in the college (he became Ireland Professor of Exegesis four
years later, and a Canon of St. Paul's in the same year), {42} was wont
to say that Bute was far too busy, during his undergraduate career, in
"reconsidering and reconstructing his religious position," to give more
than a secondary place to his regular academic studies. His reading,
which, undistracted by any of the ordinary dissipations of university
life, he pursued with unflagging ardour, sitting at his books often far
into the night, ranged over the whole field of comparative religion.
Every form of ancient faith, Judaism, Buddhism, Islamism, the beliefs
of old Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as the creeds and worship of
Eastern and Western Christendom, were the subject of his studies and
his thoughts; and the more he read and pondered, the more clear became
his conviction that in the Roman Church alone could his mind, his
heart, and his imagination find rest and satisfaction. No external
influence of any kind helped to bring him to that conclusion. In the
conduct of his studies and the arrangement of his reading he freely
sought and obtained the advice and assistance of tutors and professors,
both belonging to the House and outside it. But from no Roman Catholic
source did he ask or receive counsel or direction at this time; and he
once said that during the first year of his Oxford course he was not
even aware of the existence of a Roman Catholic church in the
university city. Two or three Catholic undergraduates were in
residence at Christ Church in his time, but he was not intimate with
any of them. He was fond of taking long walks, then, as always, almost
the only form of bodily exercise he favoured, though he was a good
swimmer and fencer; and it was in company with his most intimate
friend, Adam Hay Gordon, that he once, after a visit to Wantage (the
associations {43} of which with King Alfred greatly interested him),
penetrated to the ancient Catholic chapel of East Hendred, not far
distant. He was greatly moved at learning that this venerable
sanctuary was one of the very few in England in which, it was said, the
lamp before the tabernacle had never been extinguished, and Mass had
been celebrated all through the darkest days of penal times; and he
knelt so long in prayer before the altar that he had twice to be
reminded by his companion of the long walk home they had in prospect.
This pilgrimage--Bute always considered it as such, and spoke of it
with emotion long years afterwards--took place in the autumn of 1866;
and before he left Oxford for the Christmas vacation of that year he
had made up his mind to seek admission without delay into the Catholic
fold, and (as he hoped) to make his first communion as a Catholic
before the Easter festival of the following year.
[Sidenote: 1866, Decision taken]
Absorbed in his studies, and cheered and encouraged by the dawn of
religious certainty, and his growing confidence in the sureness of the
ground on which his feet were placed, Bute had, it is probable,
reckoned little, if at all, on the storm of opposition, protest, and
resentment which was bound to break out the moment his proposed change
of religion became known. Lady Edith Fergusson, his guardian's wife,
for whom he had a sincere affection, first learned his intention from
himself during his Christmas sojourn at Dumfries House. The news came
as a great blow to Sir James, who, with all his good qualities, had no
intellectual equipment adequate to meeting the reasoned arguments of
his young ward; and he fled up to London to take counsel with Bute's
English guardians. The tidings caused consternation in the {44} Lord
Chancellor's Court, and (it was said) in a Court even more august; and
the cry was for a scapegoat to bear the brunt of the general wrath.
Who and where was the subtle Jesuit, the secret emissary of Rome, who
had hatched the dark plot, had "got hold of" the guileless youth, and
inveigled him away from the simple faith of his childhood? Public
indignation was heightened rather than allayed by the impossibility of
identifying this sinister conspirator. _Non est inventus_. He had, in
fact, no more existence than Mrs. Harris. The circumstances of the
case were patent and simple. A young man of strong religious
instincts, good parts, and studious habits, had, after much reading,
grave consideration (and, it might be added, earnest prayer, but that
was outside the public ken), come to the conclusion that the religion
of the greater part of Christendom was right and that of the British
minority wrong. And what made matters worse was that he had in his
constitution so large a share of native Scottish tenacity, that there
seemed no possibility of inducing him to change his mind. The obvious,
and only alternative, policy was delay. Get him to put off the evil
day, and all might yet be well. The _mot d'ordre_ was accordingly
given; and a united crusade was entered on by kinsfolk and
acquaintance, guardians, curators, and tutors-at-law, the Chancellor
and his myrmidons, the family solicitors, and finally the dons and
tutors at Oxford, to extract from the prospective convert, at whatever
cost, a promise not to act on his convictions at least until after
attaining his majority. After that--well, anything might happen; and
if during the interval of nearly two years he were to take to drink or
gambling, to waste his substance on riotous living (like his {45}
unfortunate cousin), or generally to go to the devil--it would be of
course very regrettable, but anyhow he would be rescued from Popery,
and that was the only thing that really mattered.
[Sidenote: 1867, Oxford alarmed]
In the midst of these alarums and excursions the young peer returned to
Christ Church for the Lent term of 1867, and found himself the object
of much more public attention and solicitude than he at all
appreciated. "Life is odious here at present," he wrote to the always
faithful friend of whose sympathy he was sure, "and I am having a worse
time even than I had during all the rows about my guardianship.
Luckily I am better able to bear it, and nothing will ever change my
resolution."
Dr. Liddon concerned himself very actively with the project of getting
Bute to agree to delay in carrying out his purpose; and with him was
associated Dr. Mansel, at that time a Fellow of St. John's and
Professor of Church History (he became Dean of St. Paul's in 1868).
There were some advanced churchmen among the Senior Students[3] of that
day, including the Rev. R. Benson, first superior of the Cowley
brotherhood, and the Rev. T. Chamberlain of St. Thomas's, who claimed
to be the first clergyman to have worn a chasuble in his parish church
since the Reformation.[4] Such men as these would naturally {46} point
out that Bute could get all that he wanted in their section of the
Anglican Church; but by another of the Students, Mr. Septimus Andrews,
who afterwards followed Bute into the Catholic Church and became an
Oblate of St. Charles, he was encouraged to remain faithful to his
convictions, in spite of the strong pressure brought to bear on him
from all quarters. It was even said that Dr. Pusey (who seems to have
taken no part in the agitation of the time) was to be asked to approach
Dr. Newman in his retirement at Edgbaston, and beg him to use his
influence to secure the delay which was all that was now hoped for.
There is no evidence that this step was actually taken; but the
success, such as it was, of these reiterated appeals for postponement
of the final and definitive step is attested by the following deeply
interesting letter, written by Bute to his friend at Oxford at the
beginning of the Easter vacation of 1867.
[Sidenote: 1867, A sad letter]
122, George St.,
Edinburgh,
_Maundy Thursday_, 1867.
MY DEAR MISS SKENE,
On this day, which was to have seen my First Communion, I do not
believe I should have the heart to write and tell you that it has all
failed, if it were not for a sort of hard, cold, listless feeling of
utter apathy to everything Divine which is new to me, but which has, as
it were, petrified me since my fall.
The long and short is that the Protestants--_i.e._ the Lord Chancellor
and his Court; my Guardians; my friends and relations; and Mansel,
Liddon, and Co. have extorted from me a promise not to become a
Catholic till I am of age. They are {47} jubilant with the jubilation
of devils over a lost soul; but I am hopeless and weary to a degree.
There remains nothing to say now, except that I am utterly wrecked. I
have not dared to pray since. I have heard Mass twice, but I looked on
with an indifference greater than if I had been at a play. I feel no
moral principle either. It is simply all up. Instead of feeling these
holy days, the thought of the suffering of Christ simply haunts me like
a nightmare. I try to drown it and drive it away.
There is no use in going on this way. It is a triumph for which
Mansel, etc., are _thanking God_ (_!_). I know what my own position
is. It is hopeless, and graceless, and godless.
Most sincerely yours,
BUTE AND DUMFRIES.
If the well-meaning divines and others who had wrung from Bute, under
the severest moral pressure, the much-desired promise, had had an
opportunity of perusing the above letter, the "jubilation" of which he
speaks would surely have been considerably modified. It is a sad
enough document to have been written by a youth in his twentieth year,
to whom his opening manhood seemed to offer, from a worldly point of
view, everything that was most brilliant and most desirable. The day
on which it was dated, and the thought of all that day was to have been
to him, and yet was not, naturally deepened the depression under which
it was penned, and led him perhaps to exaggerate the condition of
spiritual dereliction which he so pathetically described. But if his
life was not in reality wrecked, if he had not in truth (and we know
that he had not) lost all sense of moral principles, it is impossible
to avoid the reflection that no thanks for this are due {48} to those
who seem utterly to have misapprehended the strength and sincerity of
his religious convictions, and the very grave responsibility they
incurred (to say nothing of the risk to himself) in persuading him to
stifle them, even for a time. It was their hope, doubtless, that the
delay they had secured would ultimately lead to the abandonment of his
purpose; but nothing is more certain that while resolved to abide
faithfully by his promise, he was inflexibly determined to follow his
conscience and carry out his declared intention at the very moment that
he was free to do so. This resolution taken, his wonted tranquillity
returned, and he went back to Christ Church for the summer term to
resume undisturbed, and with a mind at rest, his quiet life of study
and other congenial occupations. Reproduced here is a rough sketch
from his pen, dated at this time (May 13, 1867), but not otherwise
described. The drawing, which is not devoid of charm and power,
depicts apparently the Communion of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland.
On the same sheet is another sketch which seems to be a design for a
stained glass window representing Scottish Saints.
[Illustration: THE COMMUNION OF ST. MARGARET, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND]
[Sidenote: 1867, A long vacation cruise]
A great part of the Long Vacation of 1867 was spent by Bute in a cruise
to the north of Scotland and to Iceland, in the yacht _Ladybird_, which
he had recently purchased. "On Sundays in my yacht," he writes to a
friend from Edinburgh on July 13, 1867, "I am to conduct Presbyterian
services. There is a book of prayers approved by the Church of
Scotland for the purpose: instead of sermon, some immense bit of
Scripture, _e.g._ the whole Epistle to the Romans." This letter, by
the way, is dated "Feast of S. Anicete"--a rare instance of
hagiographical inaccuracy on the writer's part. {49} July 13 is not
the festival of St. Anicetus, P.M. (who is commemorated on April 17),
but of an earlier Pope and Martyr, St. Anacletus.
Bute visited St. Andrews during this cruise--a fact to which he made
interesting reference on a memorable occasion many years
subsequently.[5] It {50} was, however, in quest of the relics of
another ancient saint and martyr, dear for centuries to Scottish
Christians under the title of St. Magnus of Orkney, that Bute spent
much time in far northern waters during the summer of 1867. Magnus
Earl of Orkney, if not a martyr in the technical sense any more than
St. Oswald (called King and Martyr) and some others of the early
English Saints, was yet a Christian hero who died a violent death at
the hands of his enemies. It was in the little island of Egilshay that
he was slain in A.D. 1116 by his treacherous cousin Haco; and there
Bute landed from his yacht, kissing (as he records) the sacred ground
as he touched the land, and recommending--he does not say with what
result--his companion, Mr. George Petrie, F.S.A., to do the same.
After visiting the ancient church, dedicated to the saint, though its
round tower is probably far older than the time of St. Magnus, Bute
spent a long time at Kirkwall in the study of its noble cathedral,
where he obtained leave to take the reputed bones of the saint from
their resting-place in the great pier on the north side of the choir.
A minute inspection of these bones, conducted by himself, Mr. Petrie,
two local doctors, and an apothecary, convinced him that the skull (an
unusually large one, of a very degenerate type, with an old sword-cut
in it over which there was a new growth of bone) was not in the least
likely to be that of St. Magnus; and there were other remains in the
cavity, clearly those of a different person. This conclusion was
confirmed by subsequent investigations (nineteen {51} years later)
which Bute made in Orkney, and to which reference is made on a later
page.[6] These details are worth mention, as testifying to the
scrupulous care with which he was always anxious to examine any
supposed relic of antiquity (whether the remains of a saint or anything
else) before giving credence to its authenticity.
[Sidenote: 1867, St. Magnus of Orkney]
To the memory, and for the personality, of St. Magnus himself, Bute
always cherished a lively devotion and veneration,[7] which was shown
not only in some of his later writings, but in a hymn of seven stanzas
which he composed at this time in honour of the saint, and which was
printed in the _Orcadian_ over the signature "Oxonian." It is a free
paraphrase of the Latin vesper hymn assigned to St. Magnus in the
Aberdeen Breviary on his feast day (April 16), and has more merit than
was claimed for it by its author, who described it in a letter to Mr.
Petrie as "a very indifferent attempt." Another poetical composition
of his dating from this period was a pretty set of verses entitled "Our
Lady of the Snows," which was published anonymously this year in the
_Union Review_ (then edited by Dr. F. J. Lee) after being declined by
the editor of the _Month_.[8] He wrote to Miss Skene from Thurso on
July 16, 1867:
{52}
I am tickled pleasurably by the opinion of the editor of the _Union_
about my little poem. Are we to conclude that the standard of the
_Month_ is the higher of the two, as it rejects what the Union admits,
and even describes as "feeling and beautiful"? I confess that till now
that had not been the result produced on my mind by a comparison of
their respective "Poet's Corners."
[Sidenote: 1867, Lady Elizabeth Moore]
Bute continued his yachting cruise from Orkney to Iceland, and spent
there his twentieth birthday, viewing the volcano of Hecla in full
eruption, as he had seen Etna a year previously. One of his birthday
letters was from Lady Elizabeth Moore, with whom he had renewed a
regular correspondence, and who was now happy in the belief that her
former ward's secession from Protestantism was postponed _sine die_.
Her letters are always characteristically kind and affectionate, if
every phrase is not altogether judicious.
MY VERY DEAR COUSIN,
You are much in my thoughts this day.... My most affectionate good
wishes on your entering your twenty-first year. May the Almighty bless
and protect you. May you be preserved from evil doings and _erroneous
opinions_, and prove a bright example of good to others in the elevated
position of life in which God has placed you. Ten years ago I spent
September 12 at St. Andrews with a little boy, the cherished object of
his mother's deepest affection. We little thought how soon he would be
deprived of that excellent parent, and how cruel would be the
consequences that followed her sad loss. You have wonderfully escaped
the dangers and survived the difficulties of your too eventful life in
early youth. May the future be more calm, more happy! ... Your
mother's _bequest_ to me has {53} been a source of more anxiety than
you can ever know. My consolation is that I firmly did my duty towards
my cousin who trusted me, and towards her orphan child.
Lady Elizabeth wrote a week later:
MY DEAREST BUTE,
I was charmed to receive your letter of the 16th, _with most
interesting details_. I pass it on to-day to Sir James Fergusson, who
merits that attention. I am thankful you are safe out of cold, dreary,
_dangerous_ Iceland, though in after times it will be amusing to talk
of your travels in such a curious unvisited country. You are a dear
good Boy for writing so often, and I thank you _very very_ much; only
it vexed me to be forced to remain so long silent. On your birthday we
drank your health "with a sentiment," and the servants had a bottle of
wine for the festive occasion, and Mungo [Bute's dog] was decorated
with a new ribbon.... Mr. Henry Stuart has been extremely civil in
sending me boxes of game and fruit from Mountstuart. There were great
doings on the 12th at Rothesay, from which I gather _you_ are now
considered Somebody, instead of being Nobody (which I always felt you
were wrong in ever permitting). If Sir J. F. had been Guardian long
ago, such a state of things would not have existed.
Bute was called away from Oxford, soon after his return for the October
term, to attend the funeral at Cheltenham of his last surviving aunt,
Lady Selina Henry. His mother had had three sisters, but he had never
been intimate with any of them, although he appreciated their personal
piety more, perhaps, than they did his. "When I return," he wrote from
Cheltenham to his Oxford {54} friend, "I shall be able, perhaps, to add
to your knowledge of the ultra-Protestant school, as I have already
added to my own. It is wonderful how holy some people are in spite of
everything." Bute always recalled with pleasure the extreme piety of
some of his Protestant forbears, notably that of his
great-great-grandmother, Selina ninth Countess of Huntingdon,[9] after
whom Lady Selina Henry was named. He gave an old engraved portrait of
this esteemed ancestress, who was as homely-looking as she was pious,
to an intimate friend, with these words written under it by himself:
"Fallax est gratia et vana pulchritudo: mulier timens Dominum ipsa
laudabitur."[10]
Not only tolerant of, but conspicuously fair-minded towards, the
religious views of others, Bute gave evidence of this, as well as of
his deep interest in theological questions, in a letter written early
in 1868 on the subject of the _Filioque_ clause in the Creed, which
divides East from West. Himself persuaded of the truth of the doctrine
on this, as on all other points, held in the Latin Church, he could not
pass unchallenged defective or disingenuous arguments even on the right
side.
It is really breaking a fly on the wheel to attack the argument of the
writer in the _Rock_.
What he says is this: If the Spirit proceeds from the Father only, and
not from the Father and the Son, then the Father, by this attribute of
emitting {55} the Spirit, which the Son has not, is of a nature so
different from that of the Son that they cannot be of one substance.
This visibly ludicrous position can be shown to be an absurdity thus:
The Son is by generation, the Spirit by procession, which is a much
greater difference between them than there is between the Father and
the Son by the Father's being Spirit-emitting and the Son not.
Therefore, if this difference between the Father and the Son be
sufficient to make them of different substances, how much more shall
the Son and the Spirit be of different substances!
Which is absurd.
His characteristic reverence in approaching such subjects is shown in
the postscript of this letter, dated from Christ Church, March 26, 1868:
I have a great shrinking from writing or speaking upon this awful
matter. But as you wanted it, here it is.
[Sidenote: 1868, To Russia with Lord Rosebery]
In the Long Vacation of this year--his last as an Oxford
undergraduate--Bute again spent some weeks in a yachting cruise, not
this time in Eastern waters, but in the North Sea and the Baltic, his
companion being Lord Rosebery, who was just his own age, and had
matriculated at Christ Church in the same term as himself. At the end
of August he returned home in view of his impending majority, which was
celebrated in September all over his extensive estates with much
rejoicing, the principal festivities being held at Cardiff. "It will
be a great ordeal," he wrote a few days previously, "and one which I
wish it were possible to avoid." It was in truth only the strong sense
of duty by which he was {56} ever actuated that enabled him to overcome
his natural repugnance to appearing as the principal figure in such
demonstrations; but when the time came he enacted his part with dignity
and success, and won golden opinions everywhere. His personal
appearance, hitherto unknown to thousands of those who acclaimed him in
the streets, prepossessed them in his favour. "His well-knit and
stalwart form," writes one of those present, "and the combined
expression of amiability and decision of character stamped upon his
countenance, struck all present." And the same observer commends in
the young peer's speeches on this occasion, the "simplicity of style,
conciseness of expression and depth of sentiment which showed him to be
a man of thought and reflection, and one thoroughly alive to the great
responsibility entailed on him by the heritage of wealth." His
principal speech was delivered at a great dinner given him by more than
three thousand of the tradesmen and workers of Cardiff, and it very
favourably impressed all who heard it. In reply to the toast of his
health, he said:
I tell you that when I come into this great and growing town, and see
the vast number of men who are nourished by its growing prosperity, and
when I feel the ties of duty which bind me to them; when I consider the
hopes which they fix on me and the affectionate and precious regard
with which for my father's sake they look on me; when it comes home to
me that I must perforce do great good or great evil to them; and when,
on the other hand, my self-knowledge sets before me my own few years,
my inexperience, my weakness, my many faults, my limited ability, my
loneliness, the weight of responsibility which lies on me seems
sometimes absolutely crushing. But it will not do to be {57} crushed
by it, and I do not mean to be. I mean to try to do my best for this
place to the end of my life, and to do this I would ask you to help me.
[Illustration: CARDIFF CASTLE.]
[Sidenote: 1868, Rejoicings at Cardiff]
The rejoicings at Cardiff, which lasted a full week, included the
public roasting of two oxen, one in the old river-bed, the other at the
head of the west dock. The Corporation also entertained Bute to a
banquet, of which the bill of fare is worth reproducing, as a specimen
of the Gargantuan scale on which such things were done in mid-Victorian
days:
_Soups_.--Mock turtle, ox-tail, Julienne, vermicelli.
_Fish_.--Turbot and lobster sauce, mullet _a la cardinal_, crimped cod
and oyster sauce, filets de sole.
_Removes_.--Haunch venison, boiled leg of lamb, roast beef, green
goose, rouleau of veal, ragout sausages, roast chicken, boiled turkey
(Bechamel), braised rump beef, saddle mutton, turkey _a la royale_,
forced calves' head, ducks, rouleau of venison, boiled chicken,
tongues, hams.
_Entrees_.--Sweetbreads _a la Princesse_, lamb-cutlets au Jersey,
compot of pigeons, fillet of chicken _a la royale_, filet de boeuf,
kidneys au champagne, pork cutlets and tomato sauce, vol-au-vent.
_Game_.--Partridges, hares, grouse.
_Sweets_.--Ice pudding, Snowdon pudding, plum pie and cream, macaroni
au gratin, Charlotte Russe, cabinet pudding, Italian cream, pastries
(various), jellies (various).
The dinner, it was reported, "gave great satisfaction"; and it is only
to be hoped that those of the guests who worked conscientiously through
the _menu_ did not live to repent it.
Bute spent the rest of the autumn, after coming of age, quietly at
Cardiff, reading much, and preparing {58} himself for the important
step--his reception into the Catholic Church--which he now felt himself
free to take. He had already begun to obey the dietary rules
prescribed to the faithful (he found them always extremely trying,
though he observed them strictly all his life).
My chief news [he wrote on October 24, 1868] is that I have begun to
keep the laws of the Church about fasting and abstinence, and had my
first fish dinner yesterday. The series of messes, fish and eggs and
puddings, nearly made me sick.
In the same letter he refers to a more important matter, the breaking
off of his projected marriage. He had formed an attachment to the
sixth of the seven beautiful daughters of a well-known peer; but the
rumours of his conversion, which was now known to be certainly
impending, had caused the lady's parents to withdraw their sanction to
the proposed engagement.
To-day's post [he writes] brings me a long letter from the Duchess of
----. It is very disheartening. Unless the woman _lies_, she will do
everything in her power to prevent the marriage. She is, I think, too
upright a woman to deceive.
[Sidenote: 1868, A ghostly warning]
This autumn was overshadowed for Bute by an event which he felt much
for several reasons, the death (on November 10), when only in his
twenty-seventh year, of his cousin the fourth and last Marquess of
Hastings, to whose unfortunate career reference has already been made.
Bute had gone up to Scotland a few days previously, leaving at Cardiff
Castle Mr. John Boyle (the brother of one of his former curators and a
trustee of his father's {59} will), who on November 10 was expecting a
friend to dinner. Seated in the library, he heard a carriage roll
through the great courtyard and stop at the door. After an interval,
thinking the bell must be broken, he came into the hall, but the
butler, who was waiting there, assured him that no carriage had come.
Next morning he received a telegram announcing that Lord Hastings had
died suddenly the night before. He only heard later, for the first
time, that the arrival of a spectral carriage was said always to
foretell the death of some member of the Hastings family.[11]
[1] Hartwell Grissell, M.A., of Brasenose, and for many years attached
to the Papal Court.
[2] The late Father James MacSweeney, Bute's principal collaborator in
his opus magnum, the translation of the Roman Breviary.
[3] The Senior Students (now called "Students") of Christ Church
correspond to the Fellows of other colleges.
[4] The writer was told by Mr. Chamberlain himself, in his old age,
that he had first worn a red chasuble at St. Thomas's Church on Whit
Sunday, 1854. Dr. Neale, however, had certainly worn the Eucharistic
vestments before that in his chapel at East Grinstead; and they were
introduced at Wilmscote (Warwickshire) as early as 1849.
[5] "I remember when I was at Oxford," he said in his Rectorial address
at St. Andrews a quarter of a century later (_post_, p. 187), "and was
going one Long Vacation to Iceland in company with an English friend
(now the secretary of one of Her Majesty's ministers), I stopped the
yacht here [at St. Andrews] in order to show him with pride the only
place in Scotland, as far as I know, whose appearance can boast any
kinship with that of Oxford."
[6] See _post_, pp. 150, 151.
[7] "Isn't it perfectly monstrous," Bute is recorded to have once asked
a lady in a London drawing-room, _a propos_ of nothing in particular,
"that St. Magnus hasn't got an octave?" What the lady said or thought
is not recorded, but Bute had the satisfaction of knowing, before his
death, that Pope Leo XIII. had at least authorised the keeping of St.
Magnus's festival throughout Scotland; The Scots Benedictine Abbey of
Fort Augustus is probably the only place in Christendom where the
feast-day of the holy Earl (April 16) is annually celebrated by a
solemn high Mass.
[8] The text of these two poems is given in Appendices II. and III.
[9] Patroness of George Whitefield (the inventor of Calvinistic
Methodism), and founder of numerous chapels up and down England, which
were under her absolute control. The adherents of this sect (known as
the "Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion") for the most part joined the
Congregationalist body later.
[10] "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth
the Lord, she shall be praised" (Prov. xxxi. 30).
[11] Mr. Boyle's grandson, who communicates this incident, adds: "My
grandfather always told this story very solemnly, and with the fullest
conviction of its truth, although he was not at all apt to believe in
anything except the most positive and material facts."
Lady Margaret MacRae (Bute's only daughter) has assured the writer that
on the eve of her father's death at Dumfries House (October 8, 1900),
she was an ear-witness of a phenomenon precisely similar to that
described in the text.
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