The San Francisco call., 1905-03-31
FAVORED BY FORTUNE.


No family in the peerage has been
more favored by fortune than the
Butes. He hourishes in an honor
able ancestry" is the proud motto of
the house, but its vast possessions
were not, as might be inferred from
this, won by the sword, gained in the
public service or even paid for by
hard earned cash. They are due
chiefly to the fact that the founder of
the family was the illegitimate son of
q King, Robert II of Scotland. The
Welsh property, with its coal fields
more valuable far than gold mines,
was acquired by marriage. The fore
shores of Cardiff, which with their
huge docks are the source of SO much
wealth, were bought from the corpo-
ration for an annual dinner which is
10 longer given. Things have just
come the way of these lucky folk and
they have taken them. Now every
hour of the twenty-four, whether he
be sleeping or waking, working or
playing, brings the young Marquis in
something like $40.
His affairs are managed by able
hands and he has no need to bother
his head about them. Although an
excellent linguist, speaking several
languages, including Russian, f1uently,
he is not a man of marked intellec-
tual tastes. He has mingled little in
society and, guarded carefully by his
mother when at home, few girls have
had anything like a fair chance to
catch him. Travel, sport and natural
history are the things that he cares
for most. At present he is somewhere
in Africa hunting and exploring. He
has done some notable things in the
way of big game shooting and in this
respect he differs curiously from his
father, the late Marquis, who never
fired a gun in his life, and though a
splendid business man on occasion
was probably more devoted to his
magnificent library than anything
else. 1t is a singular instance of the
tricks played by heredity that the
young man who has inherited this
priceless collection cares nothing for
it. He should have been a bibliophile,
yet long before he had done with his
teens, indeed from quite early boy
hood, he became a naturalist and by
the time he was 8 there was hardly
a bird of the air nor a beast of the
field nor a plant with whose habits
he was not familiar.
The outdoor life to which he is de-
voted insures him superb health and
he probably gets more delight out of
nature than his father ever found in
books. For the rest he has the clear
head and keen judgment of the Scotch
man to guide him safely through life.
Though it is from his Welsh estates
that the bulk of his income comes,
Scotland has by long way first place
in his affections. He always wears
kits when there, insists on his at
tendants donning the Highland cos
tune and keeps a piper, who wakes
the household at daybreak with the
skirl Of the bagpipes.
The date of the wedding has not yet
been fixed. 1t goes -s.thout saying that
ii will be a grand one, but 1t will
scarcely attract the attention that was
bestowed on the marriage of Lord
Bute's father, the "'Lothair" of Dis
raeli's romance, whose going over to
Rome" while he was at Oxford had
caused a prodigious sensation. Lon
don papers devoted whole pages to the
account of the ceremony and the West
ern Mail, published in Cardiff, whooped
IL up to the extent of thirty columns
And-irony CT ironies-Disraeii, who
had satirized the whole crowd, was one
Of the five witnesses who signed the
register. Among the splendid jewels
which the Marquis of those days Law
ished on his bride was a magnificent
diamond tiara with design in Hebrew
signifying that "A virtuous woman is
crown to her husband" Right
worthy has she proved herself of it
and il is understood it will be one of
her wedding gifts to the Irish girl she
has chosen for her sons wife