NOTES AND ANECDOTES--SECOND RECTORSHIP OF ST. ANDREWS--PROVOST OF
ROTHESAY
1894-1897
Although Bute (who was not given to exaggeration) found occasion to
write at the end of 1894, in his usual brief summary of the events of
the past twelve-month, "The whole year has been spent in the struggle
for the University of St. Andrews," he nevertheless found time, with
the ordered industry which was one of his marked characteristics, not
only for the numerous other duties incumbent on him, but also for the
social amenities which the _debut_ of his only daughter had brought
into his retired life. His note on the Caledonian ball in London,
which he attended this year, is amusing, if not altogether appreciative:
The ball was doubtless a great success as regarded the charity which
benefited by it; but it was mismanaged, crowded, and hot beyond
expression, and the dancing was a mere rough-and-tumble (as seems to be
the way now), with neither science, grace, nor even an elementary idea
of time. The poetry of motion seems to be asleep.
A dinner given to Lord Rosebery[1] by his old {199} contemporaries at
Christ Church, which Bute attended, must have evoked curious memories
of long-past days.
R's cynical witticisms (when the doors were shut) on the state of
politics were quite startling: we were all his political opponents
except one. The well-remembered names and changed faces were rather
pathetic.
Bute has a note on the famous Ardlamont murder trial, which was
arousing general interest in the early days of 1894:
Lord Kingsburgh said that ten of the jury were determined to hang
Monson, and _he_ was determined they should not, as he did not consider
the evidence legally conclusive. Nobody doubts M.'s guilt morally.[2]
[Sidenote: 1894, Maiden speech in Parliament]
On June 4 Bute made his maiden speech in Parliament (it was his last as
well as his first,) in reference to certain petitions he had occasion
to present on the affairs of St. Andrews University. He wrote of this
to Dr. Metcalfe:
I had a conversation with Lord Salisbury on Saturday, and consequently
made my maiden speech in the House of Lords to-day. There were only
two {200} or three Peers present, but I was so nervous that I don't
know what I said. However, Lord Windsor told me that I had been
perfectly smooth and lucid, so I suppose I repeated mechanically the
few sentences I had prepared.
A sequel, and to himself a very interesting one, to Bute's new and
intimate connection with St. Andrews was his acquisition of the site of
the ancient priory of canons-regular adjoining the ruined cathedral.
Part of this was occupied by a modern villa, around and under which
Bute carried out a series of exploratory excavations which must have
been somewhat disconcerting to the occupants of the house. The
discoveries consequent on these digging operations (_Scotice_
"howkings"), including that of a hitherto unknown vaulted chamber
beneath the old refectory, were a very welcome diversion from the
harassing duties of the Lord Rectorship. Bute always undertook and
pursued such researches with the acutest zest and interest. "I think,"
a friend wrote of him with kindly humour, "some of the happiest hours
of his life were spent standing by, wrapped in his long cloak and
smoking innumerable cigarettes, while a band of workmen, directed by
one of his many architects, dug out the foundations of a mediaeval
lady-chapel, or broke through a nineteenth-century wall in search of a
thirteenth-century doorway."
How seriously Bute took his unremitting efforts "to save St. Andrews,"
as his own expression was, is shown in a characteristic passage of one
of his letters describing a recent discovery among the priory remains:
A head of Christ in stone, seemingly life-size, has just been found
under the earth at the Priory. {201} I would I could take this as an
intimation of His favour towards the [Greek: _temenos_] of His [Greek:
_protokletos_].[3] I have written for much prayer at the grave of the
Apostle, primarily thanksgiving for the graces bestowed upon him in
time and eternity.
Bute had of course visited more than once the tomb of St. Andrew at
Amain, of which he speaks in the striking peroration, already quoted,
of his Rectorial address. At his request the Archbishop of Amalfi sent
him a large number of photographs, including some of the tomb, and one,
specially taken, of the skull of the Apostle, which Bute, who attached
much importance to craniological evidence, greatly valued.
[Sidenote: 1894, Winter sports in Scotland]
The winter of 1894-1895 was an unusually severe one, even in the mild
and sheltered Isle of Bute; and Bute, always complacent towards the
frolics of the younger generation, speaks of curling, sleighing, and
tobogganing as the order of the day, and of the "extraordinary descent
of a snow-covered slope by Mr. S---- (a distinguished architect at that
time a guest at Dumfries House) upon, or rather with, a tea-tray." He
writes further, in this connection, of his schoolboy sons:
J---- and N---- seem both devoted to curling; and this fact, and the
way in which it associates them with the people, delights me.[4]
{202}
The latter reference is interesting, and even pathetic, recalling as it
does the pleasure Bute himself had always taken from his boyhood,
notwithstanding his natural shyness, in associating on kindly terms,
whether at weddings or less formal social gatherings, whenever
opportunity offered, with his humbler neighbours in Buteshire and
elsewhere. It was this characteristic, combined with his singular
courtesy and unpretentiousness of manner, which won the affection as
well as the respect of the reserved and undemonstrative people among
whom, for the most part, his life was spent.[5]
[Illustration: _The Marquess of Bute, Lord Rector of St. Andrews
University, 1892-1897_]
A letter written in March, 1895, just after the death of Professor
Blackie, gives a thumbnail sketch of that eccentric scholar, who was as
unconventional in dress as in everything else:
The last time I met him (by invitation) he was dressed in a long velvet
gown bound with a bright cherry-coloured sash, and a big _sombrero_
hat. There was a middle-aged lady present, to whom he introduced me,
and whom he insisted on my _kissing_. I think we kissed to please him.
His accent (pronunciation) was so vile in Greek, and I believe in
Gaelic, as almost to argue a physical defect of ear.
In this same spring Bute visited Sanquhar, where {203} he had lately
bought back the ancient Crichton Peel tower, which the first Earl of
Dumfries had sold to the Buccleuch family in 1639. "The Duke," he
notes, "had allowed the tower to fall almost completely down. I bought
some mugs here--'Presents from Sanquhar'--for the children, and found
on investigation that they were made in Germany!"
An interesting little bit of Fife folk-lore is noted on April 6:
I found the children of Falkland rolling Easter eggs downhill, calling
the day "Pace (Pasch) Saturday." It was a week too soon, according to
the Kalendar; but one little girl said that Pace Saturday was always
the first Saturday in April.
[Sidenote: 1895, Lord Acton]
Bute received this summer a letter, which pleased him much, from the
eminent historian Lord Acton, a recently "capped" doctor of St. Andrews
University, to whom Bute had presented a hood made in the mediaeval
fashion.[6]
The Athenaeum,
_July_ 5, 1895.
DEAR LORD BUTE,
I have just received the historic and venerable hood you are so very
kind as to bestow on me. It has a very real value to me as coming from
you, personally as well as from your sovereign position in the
university to which I am proud to belong; and I beg to thank you for it
as heartily and sincerely as it is possible to acknowledge an act of
friendship.
If I was not one of your own recommendation,[7] {204} I shall deem
henceforward that you have adopted me, just as if you had named me for
the distinguished honour I have received.
Believe me, most sincerely and gratefully yours,
ACTON.
Towards the close of his three years' Rectorship, Bute showed his
interest in the city, as well as the university, of St. Andrews, by
presenting to it a handsome chain of office for the use of the
provosts. A member of the council, who had himself passed the civic
chair, wrote thus to him in reference to this gift:
_February_ 3, 1893.
I need not say what our appreciation is of your most handsome act. In
an informal conversation held yesterday by the Provost, Dr. Anderson
and myself, it was agreed that while it was in the power of any wealthy
man to perform the mere act, yet there was only one nobleman in the
three kingdoms who could perform it in the delicate and gracious way in
which it will now come before the Town Council.
In the early autumn of 1895 Bute was able, in the course of a cruise in
his yacht _Christine_, to revisit the Orkneys, and to set foot again in
Kirkwall, Egilsay, and other spots sacred in his eyes to the memory of
St. Magnus, as he had done when a youth of twenty, nearly thirty years
previously. "These islands," he notes, "are far more picturesque than
I remember them before, and I am much struck by the number, industry,
and wealth of their inhabitants."
[Sidenote: 1895, Bute opposed by Lord Peel]
A cause of special satisfaction to Bute, and that for more than one
reason, was his re-election, at the end {205} of November, 1895, to the
Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews University. Viscount Peel had been
nominated for the office by the party opposed to Bute's policy, and the
Master of Balliol had sent to the students a printed testimonial to
Lord Peel's qualifications, and an urgent appeal to them to support his
candidature. "This," wrote a member of the professorial staff to Bute,
"is quite a new departure in Rectorial elections, and its legality is,
I should say, as questionable as its taste." He adds in the same
letter:
We had a very large and influential meeting [in London] last evening of
the St. Andrews Graduates' Association. The President, Sir Benjamin
Ward Richardson, made a very strong speech in your favour. It was
followed by what was virtually an ovation, so enthusiastic was the
whole assemblage.
A letter to the press, shortly before the election, stated that the
writer could not understand how any man of honour and intelligence,
_knowing all the facts_, could possibly stand in opposition to Bute.
His comment on this letter was as follows:
I cannot for a single moment believe that Lord Peel knows the facts, or
that he in the least realises the fearfully burdensome nature of the
duties. His only alternative, if elected, would be either to take that
yoke upon him, or to neglect the duty of doing so. The writers of some
things that have appeared in the papers seem to be under the impression
that the Lord Rector's sole duty is to deliver a literary address!
I enclose a letter received a few months ago: you may show it to any
one you please. It may be good for some people at this juncture to
know what the great Presbyterian Duke thinks.
{206}
The last sentence, of course, refers to the Duke of Argyll, Chancellor
of St. Andrews University since 1851, whose eminent abilities and
distinguished personal character placed him at that time in the very
forefront of the Scottish nobility. The Duke had written:
Inveraray,
_March_ 7, 1895.
I wish I could accept your invitation, but in my present state of
health, barely recovered from a sharp attack of this insidious
epidemic, it is impossible. You have always made Falkland very
pleasant to me, and I enjoy seeing the great public spirit with which
you discharge all your duties. I hope I need not assure you of the
indignation with which I have seen the attempt to arouse a sectarian
spirit against you,[8] whose whole course of conduct has been so
signally liberal, in the best sense of that much-abused word.
On learning the result of the election, in which Bute defeated his
opponent by a majority of forty votes, the Duke at once wrote:
Inveraray,
_November_ 28, 1895.
The telegram this afternoon was very acceptable. I am glad that the
University has not disgraced itself by electing _any one_ else than you
at this juncture. As to Lord Peel himself, I suspect that he now feels
very much relieved.
No one of the many congratulatory letters received by Bute on his
re-election gave him more {207} sincere pleasure than the following,
written by a member of the students' committee:
The 120 who won the election were the resident students of the
university--those who, without distinction of sect or political
partisanship, were most touched with the spirit and traditions of the
place. We feel sure that you look on this circumstance as having a
value far above the mere figures of the majority.
[Sidenote: 1896, A scheme that failed]
It was during his second term of office that Bute conceived the
project--which would probably have occurred to no one but himself--of
restoring the vast ruined Cathedral of St. Andrews, or a portion of it,
for the purposes of a university church. The plan might, he thought,
be realised if every member of the Scottish peerage could be induced to
subscribe a thousand pounds towards it. But there were at least three
reasons which militated against the success of the proposal. In the
first place, the pedigrees of the peers of Scotland were in most cases
a great deal longer than their purses; in the second, few of them were
probably much interested in university education in general, or in St.
Andrews in particular; in the third, the majority of them were members
of the Episcopalian body, not of the Established Church, to which the
university church would as a matter of course be aggregated. It is
curious that the only promise of substantial support received by the
Catholic Rector towards a scheme which must, it is to be feared, be
pronounced fantastic, came from a wealthy nobleman who was not a member
of either the Episcopalian or the Established Church, but a devoted and
almost fanatical Free Churchman.
{208}
Bute's academic labours and anxieties were diversified at this time by
the preparation of a book in which he took great interest, on the
subject of the "Arms of the Royal and Parliamentary Burghs of
Scotland." The study of heraldry had always had an attraction for him,
although he was perhaps, in practice, sometimes more inclined to follow
his own fancy than the rigid rules of that most exact of sciences. "I
call Bute a sentimental rather than a scientific herald," a friend much
interested in the subject once said of him; and perhaps the criticism
was a just one. In any case, his curious and out-of-the-way erudition
found its scope in the production of this volume, which he published in
collaboration with Mr. S. R. N. Macphail and Mr. H. W. Lonsdale in
1897. A copy with plates specially coloured under Bute's supervision,
and handsomely bound, was presented by the Town Council of Rothesay to
Queen Victoria, who accepted it very graciously.[9]
An acquisition which Bute was able to make at the beginning of 1896,
and which gave him great satisfaction, appealing as it did to his
intense veneration for the religious monuments of the past, was that of
the ancient friary and chapel of the Greyfriars in Elgin. He restored
the chapel in its original Franciscan simplicity, and made it over for
the use of the Sisters of Mercy, already established in Elgin. The
ancient stone tabernacle or sacrament-house, detached from the altar,
was still preserved in the chapel; and a long letter from the Bishop of
Aberdeen (then in Rome), among Bute's papers, shows that the {209}
latter was engaged in the difficult task of trying to induce the Sacred
Congregation of Rites to derogate from modern rules and practice, and
to allow this interesting relic of the past to be again used for the
purpose for which it had been originally intended.[10] Writing to the
Provost of Elgin, in acknowledgment of a presentation made to him by
the contractors and clerk of works employed at Greyfriars, Bute said
with his usual felicity of expression:
My purchase was one on which I must congratulate myself, not only
because in interest it has exceeded my expectation, but because it has
enabled me to be of some service to Elgin by preserving an historical
monument of considerable value to the town and district.
[Sidenote: 1896, Elected Provost of Rothesay]
Bute had several years before this been solicited to allow himself to
be nominated to the provostship of the Royal Burgh of Rothesay. He had
not seen his way at that time to accept the offer, but when it was
renewed in the autumn of 1896, he signified his willingness to
undertake the office, and he was unanimously elected on November 6,
1896. It was a source of legitimate pride to him to be called to the
chief magistracy of the ancient burgh with which his family had been
associated for five hundred years, and in which five of his lineal
ancestors had held the office of provost.[11] He applied himself to
the duties {210} of the position with his habitual assiduity and care,
not infrequently travelling long distances to attend the meetings of
the corporation, and presiding at them with a combined dignity and
aptitude for business which favourably impressed all with whom he was
brought into contact. He only once took the chair in the police-court,
sensibly leaving that department, as he had done at Cardiff, to the
charge of those better versed in police administration than himself;
nor, as it happened, was he qualified to preside at licensing-courts,
owing to the fact that he was himself a licence-holder for the sale of
the produce of his Cardiff vineyards.
No extensive schemes were carried out in Rothesay during Bute's tenure
of the provostship; but it is of interest to note that whereas the
harbour had been greatly improved, and gas first introduced into the
town, during the time (1829-1839) that his father was provost, he
himself, during his term of office, made a large extension of the pier,
and introduced the electric light. He also interested himself in the
sanitary improvement of the burgh, and entertained the members of the
Sanitary Congress, which met at Rothesay in 1898, at a garden party at
Mountstuart. Following his own precedent at Cardiff, St. Andrews, and
Falkland, he presented to the corporation a beautiful chain of office
for the use of the provosts.
The occurrence of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee during Bute's
provostship gave occasion for his further munificence; and in
commemoration of the event he placed in the council-chambers a series
of heraldic stained-glass windows. To each of the Town Councillors he
presented a replica of the medal which he and the other provosts of
Scottish burghs received at a special audience given to them by the
{211} Queen. Bute gave pleasure to the councillors by reminding them
that the Scriptural quotation on the obverse of the medal--"Longitudo
dierum in dextera ejus, et in sinistra gloria"[12]--would probably be
more familiar to them all in the rendering of the Scottish Paraphrase:
In her right hand she holds to view
A length of happy days:
Riches with splendid honours joined
Are what her left displays.
Bute himself drafted the jubilee address from the corporation to her
Majesty, and had it engrossed in facsimile after the original charter
to the burgh of the year 1400 A.D., preserved in the British Museum.
Sealed with the ancient seal of the burgh, and enclosed in a box made
of the old oak beams of the drawbridge of Rothesay Castle, lined with
cloth of gold, the address was, at Bute's instance, presented to the
Queen by H.R.H. the Duke of Rothesay (Prince of Wales). It was one of
the very few addresses on exhibition in London, where it aroused
considerable attention and admiration.
An anniversary of more personal interest to Bute in the spring of 1897
was his own "silver wedding day." The event was celebrated with quiet
happiness in the family circle, and, later in the year, by a great
reception in the Exhibition-building at Cardiff, at which some three
thousand guests were entertained. Bute, who received a congratulatory
{212} address on the occasion, enclosed in a silver casket, from his
Town Council at Rothesay, gave public and permanent expression to his
thankfulness for twenty-five years of happy married life, by
instituting both there and at Cardiff, what came to be known as the
"Bute Dowry." This was the provision of an annual sum to be handed, on
the recommendation of the municipal authorities, to some girl or girls
of the poorer classes, to enable her to get married. The religious
spirit in which Bute founded this benefaction is seen from a letter he
addressed to the minister of Rothesay, announcing his intention of
attending on the first occasion of the dowry being awarded:
Mountstuart,
_December_ 23, 1897.
I will put on the chain, but not, I think, the gown, as I will leave
the religious ceremony entirely to you; and I think it would be better
if _you_ read John ii. 1-11 (as well as the passage from Ephesians).
The only reason why I stipulated for the reading of John ii. 1-11 as a
part of the ceremony, was to impress the idea that that marriage is
truly blessed to which Jesus is called by humble prayer, and at which
nothing takes place but the natural and harmless gaiety which is
consonant with His sacred presence and approval. It does not matter at
all who reads it.
[Sidenote: 1899, Failing health]
The success of Bute's three years' tenure of the office of provost was
proved by the unanimity with which the council, at its conclusion,
expressed its wish that he would accept re-election for another term.
This would have included the fifth centenary of the erection of the
royal burgh, which it was proposed to celebrate in 1900; and Bute,
notwithstanding his rapidly failing powers (of which no one {213} was
more conscious than himself), consented to be nominated for a second
term on certain conditions, one of which was that he should be
permitted to resign the office immediately after the centenary. In his
letter thanking the council for their invitation he thus alluded to his
state of health:
I spoke of this, when I first entered on the provostship, by saying
that I realised that circumstances might arise in which I should feel
myself unable any longer to be of service to the burgh, and should
consequently be obliged to resign; but that in any case nothing could
reverse the past or delete the fact of the honour of the office having
once been conferred upon me. Should the council re-elect me, I can
only say the same thing again.... I take this opportunity of thanking
each and all of the Members of Council for the honour they have paid me
now for the second time, as well as for all the kindness which I have
always received at their hands.
While fulfilling his municipal duties at Rothesay to the satisfaction
of every one concerned, Bute had continued, to the best of his ability,
and with undiminished interest, to discharge his functions as Lord
Rector of St. Andrews. He was still able to carry out, though not
without fatigue and strain, what he called the "routine work" of his
office; but he was no longer physically able to take the strenuous part
he had formerly done in the government of the university, and the
defence of her interests at the University Court and elsewhere. Early
in 1897 he had heard with some dismay of the urgent desire of the
students (who were doubtless very imperfectly acquainted with the
condition of his health) that he should deliver a second Rectorial
address, on the occasion of his re-election. To this {214} effort he
felt absolutely unequal, and he wrote as follows to his assessor:
_Jan._ 19, 1897.
You must do what you can to prevent the students insisting on another
address. They cannot know what they are asking. I can get through my
ordinary business, but cannot attempt the impossible, such as a
Rectorial address. If I did, my failure would be as annoying to them
as it would be painful to myself. Please try to make them understand
this.
I do not complain. "The night cometh when no man can work," sooner or
later. It has come to me through overwork and anxiety as Rector, and
it is perhaps better that way than many others. But I am sure that
those on whose behalf I have incurred it would not try to goad me into
a fiasco which could only be distressing to all concerned.
Bute probably knew well that this pathetic appeal to the good sense and
good feeling of the St. Andrews students would not be made in vain.
Between them and himself the feeling had never been otherwise than
kindly and cordial, with no trace of the misunderstandings or
bitterness which had sometimes clouded his relations with other
sections of the university. They respected him as a great Scottish
noble: they admired his zeal for, and jealousy of, the honour and
reputation of their Alma Mater: they were proud of his position in the
world of letters, of his deserved distinction as a munificent and
discriminating patron of learning, science, and art. Most of all, they
were grateful to him for his continual and unfailing kindness towards
themselves--kindness which he had proved not only by the generosity of
his public gifts, but by acts of private beneficence of which the
outside world knew nothing, and which he himself would have been the
last to wish made public.
[1] Lord Rosebery's brief tenure of the Premiership (1894-95) had just
commenced at the date of this entertainment. He had been Foreign
Secretary during the two previous years.
[2] The verdict was the unsatisfactory one of "Not
Proven"--unsatisfactory, that is, to the public, although doubtless
preferable from the prisoner's point of view to one of "Guilty." The
present writer, who chanced to hear the concluding part of the case,
well remembers the surprise caused, both within and without the court,
by the judge's strong summing up in the prisoner's favour. A legal
kinsman of the writer told him subsequently what he had never before
heard--that a Scottish judge, unlike an English one, considered it his
duty not merely to sum up the evidence impartially, but also to direct
the jury how to regard it from the point of view of a trained mind.
[3] Bute felicitously applies to St. Andrews, seat of the first-called
([Greek: _protokletos_]) of the Apostles, the word [Greek:
_temenos_]--land "cut off" and assigned or dedicated to divine or
sacred purposes. Syracuse was of old the [Greek: _temenos_] of Ares
(Mars), as the Acropolis at Athens was that of Pallas Athene.
[4] Bute himself was a keen curler, thoroughly enjoying a spell at the
"roaring game" with his country neighbours. A family tradition records
how, night falling before the end of a hotly-contested march on The
Moss, above Mountstuart, Bute sent for footmen to bear lighted candles
round the rink, so that the game might be concluded that evening.
[5] See _ante_, p. 96. The popular appreciation of such kindly
intercourse could hardly be shown more neatly, and at the same time
more humorously, than it was on the occasion of a garden party given at
Mountstuart, some years later, in celebration of the majority of Bute's
eldest son and successor. Sir Charles Dalrymple, who was present,
remarked on the success of the fete to one of the guests, a Buteshire
farmer. "Ou ay," was the reply, "it was just grand a'thegither; and
the young Mairquis--did ye obsairve, Sir Charles?--he was _mixing
fine_."
[6] It is probable that the hood given to Lord Acton was a facsimile of
that worn by Bute himself with his academic robes. This was copied by
the university robe-maker (but in richer material and colours) from the
ancient form of hood as worn by a Scots Benedictine monk who
occasionally acted as his chaplain.
[7] University College, Dundee, had the right of presenting certain
candidates for the Honorary Doctorate of St. Andrews University; and
Lord Acton was one of those so nominated.
[8] The allusion is to an unworthy effort which had been made in
certain quarters to stir up an _odium theologicum_ against Bute, in
connection with the proposed transference of Blairs College to St.
Andrews.
[9] A supplementary volume, "The Arms of the Baronial and Police Burghs
of Scotland," in which Messrs Stevenson and Lonsdale collaborated, was
published in 1903.
[10] An attempt had been made in Belgium, at the time of the Gothic
revival, to restore the ancient use of detached Sacrament-houses, but
it had been very decidedly negatived by the Roman authorities. In 1863
the Sacred Congregation of Rites definitely prohibited the placing of
the tabernacle elsewhere than in the middle of the altar.
[11] Portraits of four of these--the second and fourth Earls, John
Viscount Mountstuart, and the second Marquess, were presented by Bute
to the Town Council of Rothesay.
[12] "Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches
and glory."--Prov. iii. 16. Bute's Presbyterian friends and neighbours
knew and respected his familiarity with, and veneration for, the
Scriptures. "He was a Bible-loving man, and very religious-minded,"
one of them said of him: "I have heard that he always opened the
meetings [of the Town Council] with a prayer he wrote himself." See as
to this, Appendix IV.
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