John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K.T. (1847-1900) Part 14

The withers of the historiographer-royal were probably quite unwrung by this rather polemical outburst, the fact being that Dr. Skene had (as he himself mildly explained) no sympathy at all with Bishop Wordsworth's views on reunion, which his article was designed not to support but to confute.[17]

[1] The vintage of 1885 was also a very good one. "The Mayor of Cardiff," Bute noted in his diary in July, 1892, "has bought three dozen of my 1885 wine--like, but in his opinion better (and I really think it is) than, my Falernian here."

[2] It may be worth while to point out that the suggested Welsh name for the wine is based on a mistaken etymology. The word "Swanbridge"

has nothing to do with swans, but is from the Norse or Danish proper name Sweyn (Swegen, Swain or Svend). The narrow neck of land connecting the place, at low tide, with the island of Sully is the "bridge" or "brigg" forming the second half of the word. Norse names are common all along the south coast of Glamorgan.

[3] It is to be observed, in reference to this, that the occasion referred to was that of an exclusively Scottish deputation to Pope Pius IX.--an occasion on which Bute doubtless thought it congruous and becoming to appear wearing only the decoration of the highest Order of Scottish chivalry.

[4] By a singular sequence of events, the persecuting parent (who was afterwards created Lord Donington) followed his daughter's example a few years later, and died a devout member of the Catholic Church in 1895.

[5] Much of the credit of this was due to the sailors from the Clyde guards.h.i.+p, who arrived on the scene in time to render invaluable service in the work of salvage.

[6] The writer has been reminded, since the above sentence was penned, that another standing order to the librarian was to purchase annually one or two works of fiction among those most in demand during the current year.

[7] A tale (possibly _ben trovato_) in this connection was told of a certain nun, a blonde of very homely appearance, whose intonation in choir of the antiphon, "I am black but comely," provoked such unseemly giggles in the community, that the Superior promptly ordered the English Breviary to be discarded, and the Latin one adopted in its place.

[8] Afterwards reprinted in book form (_post_, p. 143, note). A complete bibliography of Bute's published writings is given in Appendix VI.

[9] "Since I have been here," he wrote in January, 1887, from Oban, where he had built a church and established a choir of men and boys for the daily celebration of the Liturgy, "I have been attending choir myself very regularly. I have no natural musical gifts at all, as you (being musical yourself) are well aware; but I think it better to put on a surplice when here, as it shows fellow-feeling." The Emperor Charlemagne, we are told, presided regularly over the choir in his private chapel; but beyond the fact that he coughed or sneezed (_sternutabat_) when he wished the lessons to stop, we do not hear of his taking any audible part in the service. Probably both he and Lord Bute, having inst.i.tuted a choir to do the singing, thought it best themselves to follow the injunction which is, or was, posted up in the ante-chapel of Magdalen College, Oxford, bidding visitors "join in the service silently."

[10] One of the most deeply learned men of his time in Scotland, especially on the lore and history of the early Celtic Church. He was appointed to the See of Aberdeen in 1889, but--to the great loss of Scottish learning--died only six weeks after his episcopal consecration. See _post_, p. 147.

[11] The articles contributed by this writer were, as a matter of fact, signed [Greek: _Demetrios Bikelas_, and appear in the index under the name of D. Bikelas. In some reviews of his writings he is, however, styled "the K." His "Seven Essays on Christian Greece," translated by Bute, appeared in book form in 1890.

[12] The t.i.tle of the article as published was "Egypt on the Eve of the English Invasion." It was anonymous.

[13] One cannot but recall, in this connection, Mr. Putney Giles's words to Lothair in regard to the preparations for the celebration of his majority. "Great disappointment would prevail among your Lords.h.i.+p's friends in Scotland, if that country on this occasion were placed on the same level as a mere English county. It must be regarded as a Kingdom."--"Lothair," Chap. XXVII.

[14] The asterisked word is, of course, "Jubilee." Some time before this Bute had written: "I am dabbling, among other things, in astrology, and find it a curious and in some ways fascinating study."

See _post_, p. 176.

[15] A curious parallel to this curious pa.s.sage occurs in a letter written by Disraeli to Lady Chesterfield on July 14, 1887 ("Life," vol.

vi. p. 169). "Garden parties in London are wells, full of dank air.

Sir William Gull told me that if the great garden parties in future are held at Buckingham Palace and Marlboro' House instead of Chiswick and so on, his practice will be doubled."

[16] This odd synonym for "discussible" seems almost an [Greek: _hapax legomenon_]. The Oxford Dictionary gives but one example of its use, from an article in the _Sat.u.r.day Review_ of 1893.

[17] Dr. Skene's article did not, as a matter of fact, appear in the _Review_.

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CHAPTER VIII

LITERARY WORK (_CONTINUED_)

1886, 1887

"They will say that we are dull, of course," Bute wrote to his editor in 1887, discussing the contents of a forthcoming number of the _Scottish Review_. "But they say that anyhow, without reading us, whatever we put in or leave out." Bute did not always feel sure that his own contributions, written as they were with an immensity of care and painstaking, were not open to this charge. "I feel rather low about the 'Coronations,'"[1] he wrote a few weeks later. "It seems to me dull, very long, and intensely technical.... It is true that the Lord Lyon has returned my proof with a note calling the article 'most valuable,' and saying he could scarcely suggest any improvement. So far so good; but then he is a professional State Master of Ceremonies."

At other times Bute appeared rather to resent the charge of "heaviness"

not infrequently applied to his _Review_. "They call us _ponderous_--it is their favourite adjective," he wrote in this mood a little later. "It is easy to bandy epithets, but I should say that we are positively _light_ in comparison with {138} some other quarterlies I could name. I was drowsing for two hours last night over one of them, which I can designate by no other word than _stodgy_."

Nevertheless it must be frankly admitted that Bute did not possess the power of treating with any kind of light touch (or perhaps of inspiring others to do the same) the various interesting and important subjects which were the staple of the _Review_. The gift of humour he certainly possessed, and in a high degree: he could see as well as any man the incongruous and ridiculous side of the most serious subject: he liked a good story, and could tell one himself, with a sort of solemn jocosity which, combined with his singular felicity in the choice of language, added vastly to the effect of the anecdote. Moreover, he could write as well as talk wittily, as is evident from the caustic and sometimes mordant humour which characterises many of his letters. But this feature is almost or wholly absent from his published writings; and in these he seems to have adopted the principle which Dr. Johnson certainly practised as well as preached: "The dignity of literature is little enhanced by what pa.s.ses for humour and wit; and the true man of letters will do well to reserve his jests for the ears of his private friends, and to treat serious subjects, on the printed page, in a serious manner."

Bute hardly seemed to realise that the following of the sage counsel just quoted could be any bar to the popularity of the _Review_ with the general reader; and he was at times almost querulous with what he called the "unaccountable apathy" of the Scottish public in particular.

"I think," he wrote to a literary friend, "you ought to pitch strongly into the Scottish people for their distaste for anything like serious reading. I am told that of the books borrowed from {139} the Edinburgh Public Library for home perusal, more than 75 per cent. are works of fiction. One thing which I have particularly noticed about them is cra.s.s ignorance of their own history, to a point which is really quite astonis.h.i.+ng."

In order to increase the circulation of the _Review_, and make it if possible self-supporting ("a state of things which, for the sake of the principle involved," wrote Bute, "I am extremely desirous to bring about,") the desperate expedient was proposed of transferring the _Review_ to London, following the precedents of the _Edinburgh_ and the _North British_. But this was too much for Bute's _amor patriae_. He wrote to the Oxford friend from whom the suggestion had emanated:

_October_ 1, 1887.

One might, of course, do better business by dropping it as a _Scottish_ review, and starting another English magazine in London under the same name, and with a continuity of numeration. This, however, would be to destroy in its very essence the attempt to keep going a Scottish quarterly in Scotland. It must be owned that the apathy of the Scottish public is quite enough to drive any one to such a course, and it would be entirely their own fault if it were taken.

[Sidenote: 1888, Bute's historical method]

A typical example of Bute's method of treating subjects drawn from the byways of history may be seen in his studies on the trial and execution of Giordano Bruno,[2] whose memory a noisy party in Italy was at that time (1888) endeavouring to exalt as that of an innocent victim and martyr. The opinion of educated Catholics might have been thought pretty well made up as to the justice of the {140} sentence on the notorious Neapolitan philosopher and ex-Dominican, of whom not a Roman Inquisitor, but a Protestant divine, had said that he was "a man of great capacity, with infinite knowledge, but not a particle of religion." Bute, however, approached the subject in his usual att.i.tude of complete intellectual detachment, with no trace of _parti pris_.

"There is much obscurity about the whole matter," he wrote from Sorrento on March 21, 1888, "but I flatter myself that my paper will at least be a triumph of impartiality, of absolutely colourless neutrality." It is sufficient to record here that his conclusion, after many months of patient sifting of evidence, much of it drawn from contemporary sources. .h.i.therto unexplored, was much the same as that of Bruno's accusers and judges in Venice and in Rome. He wrote as follows to Dr. Metcalfe, before his articles appeared in print:

What I fail to understand is why they executed him at all. If the Church Courts had kept him to themselves and imprisoned him for life, he could not have done any one any harm, and might with advancing age have repudiated and repented some of his blasphemous utterances (one being that Christ was not G.o.d, but only a magician of extraordinary cunning).[3] In the case of this obscure and repulsive vagabond, whose chief literary work could not be printed to-day without the author being prosecuted for obscenity, there was surely no need of a terrible public example, such as might have been (and was) urged in the case of the burning of Servetus.

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[Sidenote: 1888, Garibaldi's Autobiography]

Equally characteristic of his zeal for what he calls "colourless neutrality" in the presentment of historic facts are his observations on a proposed article for the _Review_ on the autobiography of Garibaldi, then recently published. As to this he writes (February, 1888):

Perhaps the Contessa M---- C---- could do it; and if the book is on the Index (which is not unlikely),[4] she could easily get a dispensation by stating her object in wis.h.i.+ng to read it. I suppose she is not a Garibaldian, by the way? that would never do. She should express as little opinion of any sort as possible--I don't mean, of course, that she should abstain from stating known facts--and should leave the man to speak for himself by an a.n.a.lysis and a string of quotations, which must be given from the Italian text, and severely literal.

The above example--many others could of course be cited--are sufficient to indicate the spirit of rigid impartiality in which Bute treated, and desired that others should treat, historical questions of every kind, and his almost pa.s.sionate endeavours to follow in all such researches the old maxim, _Audi alteram partem_. It must be confessed, however--indeed he himself practically owned--that were his historiographical principles universally adopted, English literature, if not the cause of historic truth, would be the poorer. "Most history," he said in one of his addresses to a body of university students, "is not history at all, but romance, sometimes fascinating but seldom trustworthy, coloured, as it often is deeply, with the prejudices and prepossessions of its {142} writers.

Names--facts--dates--there is true history; but when a man gets beyond that, when he begins to dissect characters, to attribute motives, to a.n.a.lyse principles of action, then in nine cases out of ten he ceases to be a historian and becomes a romancer. Gibbon, with his enormous erudition, could have presented to us all the details of Rome's decline as they really were---he has given us instead a travesty of them distorted by his own devilish hatred of Christianity. Macaulay, whose whiggery may have been all very well on the hustings, disgusts us by intruding it into every page of his so-called "History of England."

Froude vaunts that his history of the English Reformation is entirely based on original doc.u.ments; by which he really means that he has used all those which have helped him in his self-imposed task of whitewas.h.i.+ng Henry VIII., and has suppressed all the rest.[5] I need not give other instances."

Bute might have pointed to his own laborious work on Scottish Chronology in ill.u.s.tration of his theory of how history should be written--the immense folio volumes, specially constructed for the purpose, in which day by day and year by year he inserted dates, with the barest and briefest statement of facts bearing on the history of Scotland and her early kings, as he encountered them in the course of his omnivorous reading. He could hardly have seriously maintained the paradox that history in this skeleton {143} form was the only true history worthy of the name. But no historic student (and he disclaimed for himself any higher t.i.tle) ever aimed more anxiously than he did, in every line that he wrote, to set forth the plain facts of history absolutely uncoloured by any views or prepossessions of his own. It was this marked characteristic, coupled (it is not necessary to say contrasted) with his complete and unquestioning loyalty to the teachings of his Church, which, especially to those who knew him, gave a unique interest to everything that came from his pen. Genuine erudition--a virile independence of thought and judgment--an engaging personal diffidence and a complete absence of anything like obtrusion of the writer's own opinions, combined with a gift of expression and a command of language which often soars to real, if sober, eloquence--these qualities may all be found in the essays which he wrote during the years which were the most intellectually productive of his life; and it is well that they have been rescued from the _pozzo profondo_ of the pages of a provincial periodical of limited circulation, and are accessible, in two handsome volumes,[6] to all who care to read them.

[Sidenote: 1888, Tribute from Lord Rosebery]

It may be well at this point, and in this connection, to cite an interesting tribute to Bute's literary abilities paid by one who had been among the earliest friends of his dawning manhood, and whose own distinction in the world of letters gives a particular value to his judgment. Lord Rosebery said of him as follows:--[7]