[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 Ma.s.s 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 G.o.d_ (_!_). I know what my own position is. It is hopeless, and graceless, and G.o.dless.
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 doc.u.ment 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 gla.s.s window representing Scottish Saints.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 t.i.tle 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.signed 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 ent.i.tled "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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body (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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.