John, third Marquess of Bute, with his Mother aet 9
from a picture at Mount Stuart
JOHN PATRICK
THIRD MARQUESS OF
BUTE, K.T.
(1847-1900)
A MEMOIR
BY
THE RIGHT REV. SIR DAVID HUNTER BLAIR
BT., O.S.B.
AUTHOR OF "A MEDLEY Of MEMORIES," ETC.
WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1921
All rights reserved
TO THE MEMORY
OF MY FRIEND
PREFACE
Just twenty years have passed away since the death, at the age oflittle more than fifty, of the subject of this memoir—a period of timenot indeed inconsiderable, yet not so long as to render unreasonablethe hope that others besides the members of his family (who have longdesired that there should be some printed record of his life), and thesadly diminished numbers of his intimate friends, may be interested inlearning something of the personality and the career of a man who mayjustly be regarded as one of the not least remarkable, if one of theleast known, figures of the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Disraeli, when he published fifty years ago his most popular romance,thought fit to place on the title-page a motto from old Terence: "Nosseomnia haec salus est adulescentulis."[1] Was he really of opinion—itis difficult to credit it—that the welfare of the youth of hisgeneration depended on their familiarising themselves with the whollyimaginary life-story of "Lothair"? the romantic, sentimental, andsomewhat invertebrate youth who owed such{viii}fame as he achieved tothe fact that he was popularly supposed to be modelled on the youngLord Bute—though never, in truth, did any hero of fiction bear lessresemblance to his fancied prototype.
The present biographer ventures to think that the motto of Lothairmight with greater propriety figure on the title-page of this volume.For there is at least one feature in the life of John third Marquess ofBute which teaches a salutary lesson and points an undoubted moral to apleasure-loving generation, such a lesson and moral as it would be vainto look for in the puppet of Disraeli's Oriental fancy. If there isany characteristic which stands out in that life more saliently thananother, it is surely the strong and compelling sense of duty—a sense,it is to be noticed, acquired rather than congenital, for Bute was bynature and constitution, as an acute observer early remarked,[2]inclined to indolence—which runs all through it like a silver thread.Other traits, and marked ones, he no doubt possessed—among them apenetrating sense of religion, a curious tenderness of heart, asingular tenacity of purpose, and a deep veneration for all that isg