Mount Stuart, B ute, preparing the ground for Mount Stuart Classic sprint. Johnny Dumfries (Picture Eric Dymock)
Johnny Bute was a curiously split personality. I was out of Formula 1 by 1986 when he drove for Lotus but I came to know him well when I lived on Bute 2001-2009. His misfortune was to play second fiddle to Ayrton Senna; his triumph was to win Le Mans with Jaguar in 1988. Torn between being 7th Marquess and a private ambitious talented racing driver, he never quite came to terms with himself. John Colum Crichton-Stuart (1958-2021) epitomised a dilemma that faces the regal or the celebrated. Anonymity was impossible.
Earl of Windsor, Viscount Mountjoy, Baron Mount Stuart, Baron Cardiff, Viscount of Air and Lord Crichton of Sanquar and Cumnock, Earl of Bute, Viscount Kingarth, and Lord Mountstuart Cumra and Inchmarnock and most crucially No 774 on The Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune estimated at £158 million. An ancestor astutely married into a family whose properties rested on the richest seams of South Wales steam coal. Johnny Bute desperately wanted ordinariness, affected unaffectedness and while, quite genuinely his titles were almost an embarrassment, when he inherited Mount Stuart the family seat on the Isle of Bute, an astonishing building of rich red sandstone and marble begun in the 19th century and in some senses never quite finished, he found it daunting. He did not like to think looking after it was a call of duty, yet he took it seriously. Over 80 people worked for the estate and associated businesses.
Mount Stuart Classic could have been developed as a Scottish Goodwood -style celebration. It ran only twice,, with a collection of Fomrula 1 and classic road cars beside the family seat. (picture Eric Dymock)
He told me “I always have a problem with that word duty. It’s a fact isn’t it? You’re presented with a fact. My father was going to hand all this down to me and my brother and sister in varying degrees, so you either deal with it or run away from it. Duty seems slightly different. I had a job to do, and I was either going to do it properly, or just run away from it, which was a very tempting option I have to say …”
He was Johnny Bute, like his father, of whom when he died he wrote sensitively. “I once asked him what I should do when I grew up. ‘I don’t mind what you do, just make sure you do it properly.’ His comment set a precedent in our relationship. It was taken for granted that he looked after the family business and that I was free to pursue my own life. This freedom was a great gift and a mark of his unselfish and generous nature (but) as a result his working life was isolated and lonely.”
So, I suspect, was that of John Colum Crichton-Stuart (1958-2021).
The sprint course. ran past Mount Stuart (picture Eric Dymock)