MARRIAGE--HOME AND FAMILY LIFE--VISIT TO MAJORCA
1871-1874
Included in Bute's great inheritance were a considerable number of
advowsons, carrying the right of presentation to livings in the
Established Church. Nearly a dozen of these benefices were in
Glamorgan, two (St. Mary's and Roath) being within the town of Cardiff.
Bute was, of course, from the time of his conversion to the Roman
Church, legally disabled from the exercise of his right of patronage in
regard to these livings; but instead of allowing them to "lapse" (as
the technical phrase is[1]) he from time to time made over the next
presentations to two _quasi_-trustees, friends of his own, and members,
of course, of the Church of England. One of these "trustees" was for a
time Canon John David Jenkins, a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, with
whom Bute had become intimate during his university career. Dr.
Jenkins became vicar of Aberdare, one of the Bute livings, in 1870, and
we find Bute writing to an Oxford friend about a year later:
{103}
Canon Jenkins has just appointed the Revs. Puller[2] and Stuart to two
out of the three parishes here; and Puller, at any rate, will be
inducted in Ember week.
[Sidenote: 1871, Church Patronage in Wales]
The practice adopted by Bute with regard to the livings in his gift--a
practice probably unique among Roman Catholic patrons, and one which,
in the case of a man less conscientious and honourable than himself,
might have been open to obvious objections--was not continued by his
successor after his death; nor, indeed, could it have been, after the
assignment of next presentations ceased to be legally permissible. The
ten family livings in the county of Glamorgan fell accordingly, as
provided by the statute, to the gift of the University of Cambridge.[3]
The advowsons of other livings, in Monmouthshire and Northumberland,
were sold in Bute's lifetime or by his successor.
The friendship between Canon Jenkins and Bute was maintained until the
death of the former in 1876[4]; and he was one among the little group
of learned men--scholars, antiquarians, and ecclesiastics--much senior
in age to the young Scottish peer, whom he gathered round him at this
time, and often invited to share the solitude of his Welsh {104} castle
or his island home in Scotland. That it was something of a solitude,
and that he felt it to be so there are many indications in his letters
at this period. His only intimate friend of his own age was his old
schoolfellow George Sneyd, with whose views on many subjects, sincere
as was his affection for him, he was (as has been seen) in some
respects entirely out of sympathy. What he was longing for and looking
forward to, as he found himself approaching his twenty-fourth birthday,
was domestic happiness and the home life of which he had known so
little since his early boyhood; and this, as was natural, he hoped to
secure by an early and happy marriage.
In the summer of 1871 his name was connected by the rumour, or gossip,
of the day with that of the charming ward of a well-known Catholic
peeress, whose hospitality had often been extended to him on the
occasions of his visits to London. Bute took the opportunity, when
writing to an old friend on whose sympathy he could rely, to deny
categorically the truth of the rumour in question, and at the same time
to give expression with his usual frankness to the feelings of
dissatisfaction and discontent with which he was entering on his
twenty-fifth year.
Cardiff Castle,
_July_ 29, 1871.
MY DEAR MISS SKENE,
As there is, I fear, little chance of my being in Oxford just now, I
will not delay longer in replying to your kind letter.
I had not seen the reports to which you refer, although I knew that
they had been circulated by the scandalmongers of the press. I may
tell you at {105} once--I had meant to do so before--that there is no
truth in them whatever. There is no engagement between Miss ---- and
myself, and nothing is less likely than that there ever should be. I
will tell you all about it some day when I see you, or in a future
letter: I cannot write more about it at present, except to say that
here I am thrown out on the world again, feeling very lonely and
desolate. My future, indeed, looks pretty blank just now, as you may
imagine easily enough. There is nothing for it but to go on one's way,
trying to do one's duty--and literature. I have also a considerable
taste for art and archaeology, and happily the means to indulge them.
When I return from Ober Ammergau, whither I go next month, to see the
Passion Play, I shall do a little yachting in home waters, and then
return here for the autumn and winter. There is plenty to do here, of
course; and building, archaeology, and writing will perhaps help me to
forget my troubles. After Christmas this place will be unbearable, and
I think I shall go to Bute.
Yours ever very sincerely,
BUTE.
[Sidenote: 1872, Engagement and Marriage]
Whatever may have been the disappointment or mortification occasioned
to Bute by the episode in his life referred to in the above letter,
they were amply compensated for, and indeed wholly forgotten, in the
happiness of the event which he was able to announce to his friends at
the close of this year. This was his engagement to the Hon. Gwendoline
FitzAlan Howard, eldest daughter of the first Lord Howard of Glossop by
his first wife. The marriage took place at the Oratory Church on April
16, 1872, Archbishop Manning officiating, assisted by five Oratorian
fathers. Bute's cousin, Lord Mauchline (afterwards Earl of Loudoun),
{106} wearing Highland dress, was the best man, the principal
bridesmaid being the Hon. Alice Howard of Glossop, who married Lord
Loudoun in 1880. Mgr. Capel said the Nuptial Mass and preached the
sermon; and the register was signed by the Duke of Cambridge, the Dukes
of Northumberland and Argyll, and Mr. Disraeli. The wedding aroused an
extraordinary amount of popular interest and even excitement; and the
_Spectator_ commented with satiric surprise on the fact that the London
newspapers devoted entire pages to describing the ceremony, which
actually occupied--but that perhaps was less astonishing--thirty
columns of the Cardiff _Western Mail_. How distasteful this public
excitement was to the chief actors in the ceremony may be gathered from
a letter written by Bute to a friend in Rome a fortnight later:
Cardiff Castle,
_April_ 29, 1872.
The whole thing went off very well; the religious part of it, which
most concerned us, was very well done, and, I hear, pleased and
impressed the many Protestants who were present. I suppose you will
have seen descriptions and pictures of it. You will understand that to
the principals the whole thing--I mean the secular part of it--was
absolutely detestable. As Lord Beauchamp says: "There is only one
thing more disagreeable than being married in London, and that is being
married in the country." Of course we have been extremely quiet ever
since, and expect to be so. My Lady is the last person in the world to
"rout one out" and want to make a flare-up and a splash.
The Pope sent presents to us both,[5] and I wrote to Mgr. Howard to
express our gratitude, enclosing {107} a letter of thanks in very
indifferent Latin, which I composed and we both signed; but it was not
to be given if it was contrary to etiquette.
I find it the custom of Protestants, when they are married by an
Archbishop, to present that dignitary with a pair of gloves--theirs
being always white kid sewn with gold. I think I shall have a pair of
cloth-of-gold _chirothecae_ made for Abp. Manning, and shall get Burges
to design them. I know the Roman ones are often made of spun silk, but
you can have them of other stuff, too, can you not?
A relique of St. Margaret of Scotland has been got for me, and I think
of having a bust made for it, of silver-gilt; but I have not yet
received it and don't know what it is like. I think also of sending to
Chur (Choire) for a relique of St. Lucius of Glamorgan (Lleurwg
Mawr).[6] _A propos_ of Reliques, they have been making wonderful
discoveries of the shrine of St. Alban in his abbey.[7]
[Sidenote: 1872, Reception at Cardiff]
Lord and Lady Bute had gone immediately after their marriage to
Cardiff, where they received a very cordial welcome, the mayor reading
an address to them at the Castle gates. "I assure you," said Bute in
his brief reply, "that my wife comes here to-day with a sincere desire
to do what is right, and to be of service not to me only, but to all by
whom {108} she is surrounded, and among whom her life is to be
henceforth spent." It is sufficient to say here that Bute's
anticipations of the new happiness that this step would bring into his
life were more than justified by the event. "I cannot but thank God,
and congratulate myself, on this marriage," he wrote in May, 1872; "and
I hope and believe that it will bring me many blessings." A little
later he wrote to the same friend:
I have done two good things (besides some foolish ones) since my
twenty-first birthday; the first on December 8, 1868, when I was
reconciled to the Catholic Church; the second on April 16, 1872, when
the same Church blessed my happy marriage. It is a satisfaction to
feel that twice in one's life, at any rate, one has done what one is
certain never to repent of nor to regret. Do you not agree with me?
Bute's marriage brought him into intimate relations, and indeed some
degree of kinship, with some of the ancient Catholic families of
England, of whom he had up to that time known very little. Profoundly
interested as he always was in every phase of religious belief and
practice, he welcomed the opportunity now afforded him of witnessing a
traditionally religious life as unostentatious as it was obviously
sincere, and contrasting alike with the austere Puritanism of his
childish days and the fussy restlessness which was the chief
characteristic of the earlier adherents of the advanced school of
Anglicanism. Writing of some Catholics of the old school, to whose
country home he and his wife had been paying a visit, he says:
They have edifying habits of piety, but of a very Low Church type--the
school of "Hymns Antient {109} and Modern without the Appendix," red
baize boxes in galleries, family prayers and daily Mass in the most
unadorned of private chapels, and an absolute minimum of ritual. You
will understand that the unassuming simplicity of it all appeals to a
person like me--especially when I see the goodness that accompanies it.
But some of our "advanced" Anglican friends would stare if they saw the
good old-fashioned practices which prevail in old Catholic circles. I
only wish they could.
[Sidenote: 1873, Old English Catholic homes]
A visit to Arundel Castle in the year following his marriage gave him
evident pleasure; and a letter thence gives a pleasant glimpse of the
home circle in that historic Catholic home:
The party here is an entirely family one;[8] and Whitsuntide and the
Month of Mary [May] add by a shade to the amount of church-going, which
is considerable here always: for, as you know, they are a very devout
as well as a very merry and very nice family. I am rather looking
forward to the procession of the Blessed Sacrament on Sunday week for
Corpus Christi. The "Fete-Dieu" in the streets of an English country
town will be rather an experience.
We have been down at the sea for the last month. We have no London
address, neither of us caring for the place, where no one left me an
house and where I have not the least intention of buying one.
Having at this time, as mentioned above, no London residence, Lord and
Lady Bute spent their year chiefly between Cardiff and Mountstuart,
with occasional visits to Dumfries House, for which Bute had always a
particular affection. The stay at {110} Cardiff after their marriage
was unexpectedly prolonged owing to Lady Bute being laid up there with
scarlet fever, while he had the misfortune to break his arm. As soon
as they could travel they went to Mountstuart for the autumn and
winter, and Bute dictated thence the following letter, the last
sentence of which illustrates the curious displeasure with which,
notwithstanding his theoretical and archaeological admiration of
monastic institutions, he always received the news of any friends of
his own entering a religious order:[9]
Mountstuart,
_September_ 23, 1872.
You will perceive by the handwriting that I am still incapable of using
my right hand, which is, indeed, tied up with a piece of wood. I am
glad to say that my Lady is now very nearly well; and I trust that her
escape from the climate of Cardiff will soon complete her recovery.
The quiet routine of my life here is the same as formerly. My Lady
plays the harmonium in our little chapel: we venture on nothing more
than hymns, and get along pretty well.
The histories one hears from Rome seem all to be so "cooked" to suit
the varying views of people who retail them, that one really feels
quite uncertain as to how things are going on. I am told that there is
an Italianising party among the Cardinals, from which much trouble may
be expected in the event--may it be very far distant!--of the election
of a successor to Pius IX.
{111}
I greatly regret to report that H---- G----[10] in a convent as a
Redemptorist novice. I can only say that I most sincerely trust, as
far as I lawfully may, that he may soon find that he has made a mistake.
[Sidenote: 1873, Oxford revisited]
The reference to the learned Jesuit Father MacSweeney in the following
letter, written to his old Oxford friend in the spring of 1873, shows
that Bute was now entering on what was to be the most considerable
literary work of his life, namely, the translation into English of the
entire Roman Breviary.
Mountstuart,
_April_ 27, 1873.
We are really coming south for a little, after a peaceful sojourn here
of many months; and I hope for an opportunity of seeing you. I am not
forgetful, and it will be a great pleasure. There is not much to bring
me to Oxford now, as except yourself and very few others I have no
friends there now, and I have not the footing I should have had if I
had taken my degree. One day, however, I am to come, and my wife is to
be "lionised" by old Mr. Parker, between whom and me archaeology has
formed ties. I have also business with the erudite Jesuit Fr.
MacSweeney,[11] who has just been sent there. Most of my Oxford
friends are married and changed and away--and I suppose I am very much
changed myself. I fear I am not less indolent than I was, and my life
is devoid of stirring incidents. My luxury is art, and perhaps the
favourite pursuit Antiquarianism, as {112} History is the favourite
reading. I study, too, a little science. I wish I were better as
regards devotion--I want stirring up in that; but my associations of
that kind are so much with the South, and so difficult to adapt (though
I know I ought to try to adapt them) to the environment in which one
has to live. We are both, however, looking forward to a Mediterranean
trip next winter.
The projected visit to Oxford--Bute's first since his change of
religion five years previously--duly came off, and he thus refers to it:
To "do" Oxford in a day is suggestive of the American tourists who "do"
Rome in three; but my wife saw the most noteworthy things under the
skilled guidance of old Parker, whom I fear we unduly fatigued. You
may imagine the feelings and memories that came over me as I led my
young wife through Christ Church. It is difficult to estimate exactly
what I owe to Oxford, but the debt is a heavy one.... Materially the
place seemed to me very little changed. The newest thing I noticed was
St. Barnabas's, which impressed me. Only I wish they'd had the courage
to Romanise it enough to put the Altar so--
[Illustration: Sketch of altar arrangements]
Apropos of Americans "doing" Italy, Story told me that Gibson, the
American sculptor, once met and talked with a countryman of his, who
was "doing" Italy in some incredibly short space of time. "Yes, I
guess I have been nearly everywhere," he said (the conversation took
place in a North Italian {113} railway-carriage), "and one place that
struck me very much was--I can't remember the name, but it begins with
R." Gibson suggested Ravenna, Reggio, Recanati, and other names. "No,
no, it was a shorter name than any of those: there was a big church
with a dome, and a colonnade and fountains in front." "Good heavens!
you surely don't mean _Rome_?" said Gibson, aghast. "Yes, that was
it--Rome. I knew it was a short name, but I couldn't recall it for the
moment." This is a fact, as newspapers sometimes say after telling a
more than usually unbelievable story.
[Sidenote: 1873, A winter in Majorca]
The second winter after his marriage Bute had the pleasure of spending
in the south which he loved so well, and in more congenial and
sympathetic company than he had always secured for his bachelor
journeyings, even those which in some degree partook of the nature of a
pilgrimage. "Our plan," he wrote on November 6, 1873, "is to dawdle
through France and winter by the Mediterranean--we have been thinking
of the Island of Majorca." The project was successfully carried out,
and we see, from a letter written early in the following spring to the
same friend, how much quiet enjoyment he was deriving from the rest and
sunshine which he found in the Balearic Isles. The latter part of the
letter refers to the recent death of his first cousin Edith Countess of
Loudoun, who, it will be remembered, had been one of the party that
accompanied him to the Holy Land a few weeks after his reception into
the Roman Church.
Bendinat,
Palma, Mallorca,
_February_ 24, 1874.
This is a very fair place indeed, the best of it being the climate.
I'm nearly always happy when {114} I'm abroad, particularly in the
Mediterranean. I suppose there's something in fogs and perpetual rain
and cold and darkness which is especially uncongenial to me. Also
there are no business and bothers here to speak of, which is certainly
a great change from home. We have the quiet and peace which we both
enjoy and value, and I am glad to say that I have been getting on very
well with the Breviary; for whereas I had hoped before returning to
have reached Ascension Day, I now venture to think of the third Sunday
after Pentecost.
A drawback (my Lady reminds me) to our residence here is its distance
from any church, our only accessible service being one Low Mass each
Sunday. There's an impressive, and very Spanish, Cathedral at Palma,
with functions well and carefully done; but it is remote from us here.
The death of Edith[12] was a great shock to me, as well as a source of
sincere sorrow. _Requiescat in pace_. We shall all go the same way in
the long run, 100 years {115} hence it'll be all the same; but it does
seem rather hard that the axe should fall on the neck of all of us
(however much it may grieve or inconvenience the survivors), and cut us
off from the only world we have any experience of. Not, for the matter
of that, that it's much worth stopping in--still, it's all we've got.
However, crying over this spilt milk--and I confess to having shed some
tears since I heard the news--will never put it back into the pitcher,
so perhaps there is not much use in crying. But I am sincerely
grateful for your kind sympathy.
[Sidenote: 1874, Domestic happiness]
Later in the same year, after his return to England, Bute took
occasion, in a letter to his ever-faithful friend at Oxford, to repel
with indignation some malevolent rumours which had reached him to the
effect that he had not found in his home life the happiness which he
had anticipated.
Not one jot of truth is there, or has there ever been, in these
iniquitous calumnies. Our happiness indeed is complete, and the terms
on which we live completely affectionate and intimate. I find myself
more attached to G. the longer I have the privilege and honour of
living with her, and of seeing, as St. Augustine says of St. Monica,
"her walk with God, how godly and holy it is, and to us-ward so sweet
and gentle."
This letter was written from Heath House, Weybridge--"a little house,"
writes Bute, "which we have hired for a month or two. I go hence to
London nearly every day to read Hebrew with a Rabbi [this was in view
of the new version of the Psalms for his projected translation of the
Breviary], and all sorts of things with a Jesuit. Besides the sacred
language 'in which the Eternal spoke,' and certain branches {116} of
Liturgiology, I continue, as formerly, to read history and
science--very humbly.
"We go to Scotland this month, but perhaps shall be at Cardiff for
Christmastide, though Mountstuart, as you know, is the home of our
predilection."
Before Christmas of this year, which Bute spent not at Cardiff but at
Mountstuart, he published (anonymously) a little book containing a
translation of the Christmas Offices from the Roman Breviary. "I hope
and believe," he wrote, "that it may be of some service to those (there
must be many) who desire to follow with intelligence the Liturgy of
that holy season, but are prevented from doing so by their partial or
total ignorance of the language of the Church. For this reason I
should wish the booklet made known through the ordinary channels--a
matter in which I confess to thinking our Catholic publishers very much
less enterprising and business-like than those who cater for devout
Anglicans. But for this state of things, I fear, _non c'e remedio_."
In Bute's own chapel he was accustomed to have the church offices (with
the exception, of course, of the Mass) recited in the vernacular.
"Christmas went well here," he wrote to a friend in January, 1875. "We
had the Monsignor [Capel] down. Mattins and Lauds were said in
English, the altar being incensed at the _Benedictus_; and Mgr. C.
treated us to a short and rather eloquent _fervorino_ after the gospel
at Mass. By the way, the progress of my Breviary is most
discouragingly slow: _eppur si muove_."
[1] "Lapsed" livings are those in the gift of Catholics, who are
legally incapable of presenting to them. By statutes passed in 1603
and 1715, the patronage of such livings is vested, according to their
situation, in the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. All such
benefices in Glamorgan were assigned to Cambridge.
[2] The Rev. F. W. Puller, the well-known Anglican divine and
controversialist, resigned the vicarage of Roath in 1880 to join the
Society of St. John the Evangelist at Cowley.
[3] The Welsh Disestablishment Act of 1920 has, of course, abolished
private patronage in Wales.
[4] Canon Jenkins had held one of the "missionary fellowships" founded
at Jesus by his namesake Sir Leoline Jenkins in the seventeenth
century, and had accordingly gone out to Natal in 1853, and become a
canon of Maritzburg. He had returned to Oxford when Bute came into
residence at Christ Church, and was successively dean and bursar of
Jesus between 1864 and 1870. A fine portrait of him by Holman Hunt
hangs in the common-room of his college.
[5] Pius IXth's wedding gifts were beautiful cameos set in gold.
[6] The (probably mythical) "king of Britain" whom Bede reports to have
written to Pope Eleutherius asking for instruction in Christianity.
Lucius is supposed to have left Britain, preached among the Rhaetian
Alps, and died at Chur or Coire, where he is still venerated as a
saint. The Welsh legend makes him founder of the churches of Llandaff,
Roath, etc. Lleurwg or Lleurfer (Light-bearer) is the Welsh rendering
of Lucius.
[7] More than 2000 fragments of the fourteenth-century base of St.
Alban's shrine were discovered in 1872, built into the walls, and were
pieced together again with extraordinary patience and skill, and
re-erected on the original site.
[8] The Duke of Norfolk and his four unmarried sisters were at this
time living at Arundel with their widowed mother.
[9] One recalls in this connection the cases of two of the most devout
and accomplished Catholic writers of the nineteenth century, the Count
de Montalembert and Kenelm Digby. Both expended the utmost enthusiasm
and eloquence in their description of the religious life of the Middle
Ages; and both resisted to the utmost, and not without bitterness, the
entry into religion of members of their own immediate family circles.
[10] A contemporary of Bute's at Harrow and Christ Church. He had
become a Catholic in 1871.
[11] In the preface to his translation of the Breviary, published six
years later, Bute pays a handsome tribute to the "long pains and
unwearied patience and kindness" which the learned Jesuit had expended
in assisting him in the work. Father MacSweeney read the whole of it
in proof, and contributed much valuable criticism, especially in
connection with the translation of the Psalter.
[12] One of the testamentary dispositions of Edith Lady Loudoun, who
had succeeded to the Scottish earldom in 1868 on the premature death of
her brother, fourth and last Marquis of Hastings, curiously recalls a
provision afterwards made by Bute in his own will. Lady Loudoun
directed that her right hand should be severed after death, and buried
apart from her body (which was interred in the family vault in
Scotland) in the park at her husband's seat at Donington, her home
before she inherited her brother's title. Curiously enough, a similar
provision had been made by her grandfather (and Bute's), the first
Marquis of Hastings, the distinguished Governor-General of India, who
died in Malta in 1826, his wife and children being at the time in
Scotland. He was buried at Malta, but his right hand was by his wish
carried to Loudoun, and placed in the grave destined for his wife.
When the latter was dying fourteen years later, her daughter Sophia,
afterwards Marchioness of Bute, wrote a note to the parish minister,
asking him to bring her a small iron box which he would find in the
family vault. "There must be no delay," the missive ended. The young
minister did Lady Sophia's bidding: the box was taken to her mother's
deathbed, and two days later was enclosed in her coffin according to
her husband's desire. This minister was the Rev. Norman Macleod,
afterwards the chaplain and intimate friend of Queen Victoria.
{117}