Samuel Butler: A Sketch
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Henry Festing Jones >> Samuel Butler: A Sketch
"No," said Heatherley, "I did not like it. Country air has no body."
The consequence was that, whenever there was a holiday and the school
was shut, Heatherley employed the time in mending the skeleton;
Butler's picture represents him so engaged in a corner of the studio.
In this way he got his model for nothing. Sometimes he hung up a
looking-glass near one of his windows and painted his own portrait.
Many of these he painted out, but after his death we found a little
store of them in his rooms, some of the early ones very curious. Of
the best of them one is now at Canterbury, New Zealand, one at St.
John's College, Cambridge, and one at the Schools, Shrewsbury.
This is Butler's own account of himself, taken from a letter to Sir
Julius von Haast; although written in 1865 it is true of his mode of
life for many years:
I have been taking lessons in painting ever since I arrived. I was
always very fond of it and mean to stick to it; it suits me and I am
not without hopes that I shall do well at it. I live almost the life
of a recluse, seeing very few people and going nowhere that I can
help--I mean in the way of parties and so forth; if my friends had
their way they would fritter away my time without any remorse; but I
made a regular stand against it from the beginning and so, having my
time pretty much in my own hands, work hard; I find, as I am sure you
must find, that it is next to impossible to combine what is commonly
called society and work.
But the time saved from society was not all devoted to painting. He
modified his letter to the 'Press' about "Darwin among the Machines"
and, so modified, it appeared in 1865 as "The Mechanical Creation" in
the 'Reasoner', a paper then published in London by Mr. G. J.
Holyoake. And his mind returned to the considerations which had
determined him to decline to be ordained. In 1865 he printed
anonymously a pamphlet which he had begun in New Zealand, the result
of his study of the Greek Testament, entitled 'The Evidence for the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ as given by the Four Evangelists
critically examined'. After weighing this evidence and comparing one
account with another, he came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ did
not die upon the cross. It is improbable that a man officially
executed should escape death, but the alternative, that a man
actually dead should return to life, seemed to Butler more improbable
still and unsupported by such evidence as he found in the gospels.
From this evidence he concluded that Christ swooned and recovered
consciousness after his body had passed into the keeping of Joseph of
Arimathaea. He did not suppose fraud on the part of the first
preachers of Christianity; they sincerely believed that Christ died
and rose again. Joseph and Nicodemus probably knew the truth but
kept silence. The idea of what might follow from belief in one
single supposed miracle was never hereafter absent from Butler's
mind.
In 1869, having been working too hard, he went abroad for a long
change. On his way back, at the Albergo La Luna, in Venice, he met
an elderly Russian lady in whose company he spent most of his time
there. She was no doubt impressed by his versatility and charmed, as
everyone always was, by his conversation and original views on the
many subjects that interested him. We may be sure he told her all
about himself and what he had done and was intending to do. At the
end of his stay, when he was taking leave of her, she said:
"Et maintenant, Monsieur, vous allez creer," meaning, as he
understood her, that he had been looking long enough at the work of
others and should now do something of his own.
This sank into him and pained him. He was nearly thirty-five, and
hitherto all had been admiration, vague aspiration and despair; he
had produced in painting nothing but a few sketches and studies, and
in literature only a few ephemeral articles, a collection of youthful
letters and a pamphlet on the Resurrection; moreover, to none of his
work had anyone paid the slightest attention. This was a poor return
for all the money which had been spent upon his education, as
Theobald would have said in 'The Way of All Flesh'. He returned home
dejected, but resolved that things should be different in the future.
While in this frame of mind he received a visit from one of his New
Zealand friends, the late Sir F. Napier Broome, afterwards Governor
of Western Australia, who incidentally suggested his rewriting his
New Zealand articles. The idea pleased him; it might not be
creating, but at least it would be doing something. So he set to
work on Sundays and in the evenings, as relaxation from his
profession of painting, and, taking his New Zealand article, "Darwin
among the Machines," and another, "The World of the Unborn," as a
starting-point and helping himself with a few sentences from 'A First
Year in Canterbury Settlement', he gradually formed 'Erewhon'. He
sent the MS. bit by bit, as it was written, to Miss Savage for her
criticism and approval. He had the usual difficulty about finding a
publisher. Chapman and Hall refused the book on the advice of George
Meredith, who was then their reader, and in the end he published it
at his own expense through Messrs. Trubner.
Mr. Sydney C. Cockerell told me that in 1912 Mr. Bertram Dobell,
second-hand bookseller of Charing Cross Road, offered a copy of
'Erewhon' for 1 pound 10s.; it was thus described in his catalogue:
"Unique copy with the following note in the author's handwriting on
the half-title: 'To Miss E. M. A. Savage this first copy of
'Erewhon' with the author's best thanks for many invaluable
suggestions and corrections.'" When Mr. Cockerell inquired for the
book it was sold. After Miss Savage's death in 1885 all Butler's
letters to her were returned to him, including the letter he wrote
when he sent her this copy of 'Erewhon'. He gave her the first copy
issued of all his books that were published in her lifetime, and, no
doubt, wrote an inscription in each. If the present possessors of
any of them should happen to read this sketch I hope they will
communicate with me, as I should like to see these books. I should
also like to see some numbers of the 'Drawing-Room Gazette', which
about this time belonged to or was edited by a Mrs. Briggs. Miss
Savage wrote a review of 'Erewhon', which appeared in the number for
8th June, 1872, and Butler quoted a sentence from her review among
the press notices in the second edition. She persuaded him to write
for Mrs. Briggs notices of concerts at which Handel's music was
performed. In 1901 he made a note on one of his letters that he was
thankful there were no copies of the 'Drawing-Room Gazette' in the
British Museum, meaning that he did not want people to read his
musical criticisms; nevertheless, I hope some day to come across back
numbers containing his articles.
The opening of 'Erewhon' is based upon Butler's colonial experiences;
some of the descriptions remind one of passages in 'A First Year in
Canterbury Settlement', where he speaks of the excursions he made
with Doctor when looking for sheep-country. The walk over the range
as far as the statues is taken from the Upper Rangitata district,
with some alterations; but the walk down from the statues into
Erewhon is reminiscent of the Leventina Valley in the Canton Ticino.
The great chords, which are like the music moaned by the statues are
from the prelude to the first of Handel's 'Trois Lecons'; he used to
say:
"One feels them in the diaphragm--they are, as it were, the groaning
and labouring of all creation travailing together until now."
There is a place in New Zealand named Erewhon, after the book; it is
marked on the large maps, a township about fifty miles west of Napier
in the Hawke Bay Province (North Island). I am told that people in
New Zealand sometimes call their houses Erewhon and occasionally
spell the word Erehwon which Butler did not intend; he treated wh as
a single letter, as one would treat th. Among other traces of
Erewhon now existing in real life are Butler's Stones on the Hokitika
Pass, so called because of a legend that they were in his mind when
he described the statues.
The book was translated into Dutch in 1873 and into German in 1897.
Butler wrote to Charles Darwin to explain what he meant by the "Book
of the Machines": "I am sincerely sorry that some of the critics
should have thought I was laughing at your theory, a thing which I
never meant to do and should be shocked at having done." Soon after
this Butler was invited to Down and paid two visits to Mr. Darwin
there; he thus became acquainted with all the family and for some
years was on intimate terms with Mr. (now Sir) Francis Darwin.
It is easy to see by the light of subsequent events that we should
probably have had something not unlike 'Erewhon' sooner or later,
even without the Russian lady and Sir F. N. Broome, to whose
promptings, owing to a certain diffidence which never left him, he
was perhaps inclined to attribute too much importance. But he would
not have agreed with this view at the time; he looked upon himself as
a painter and upon 'Erewhon' as an interruption. It had come, like
one of those creatures from the Land of the Unborn, pestering him and
refusing to leave him at peace until he consented to give it bodily
shape. It was only a little one, and he saw no likelihood of its
having any successors. So he satisfied its demands and then,
supposing that he had written himself out, looked forward to a future
in which nothing should interfere with the painting. Nevertheless,
when another of the unborn came teasing him he yielded to its
importunities and allowed himself to become the author of 'The Fair
Haven', which is his pamphlet on the Resurrection, enlarged and
preceded by a realistic memoir of the pseudonymous author, John
Pickard Owen. In the library of St. John's College, Cambridge, are
two copies of the pamphlet with pages cut out; he used these pages in
forming the MS. of 'The Fair Haven'. To have published this book as
by the author of 'Erewhon' would have been to give away the irony and
satire. And he had another reason for not disclosing his name; he
remembered that as soon as curiosity about the authorship of
'Erewhon' was satisfied, the weekly sales fell from fifty down to
only two or three. But, as he always talked openly of whatever was
in his mind, he soon let out the secret of the authorship of 'The
Fair Haven', and it became advisable to put his name to a second
edition.
One result of his submitting the MS. of 'Erewhon' to Miss Savage was
that she thought he ought to write a novel, and urged him to do so.
I have no doubt that he wrote the memoir of John Pickard Owen with
the idea of quieting Miss Savage and also as an experiment to
ascertain whether he was likely to succeed with a novel. The result
seems to have satisfied him, for, not long after 'The Fair Haven', he
began 'The Way of All Flesh', sending the MS. to Miss Savage, as he
did everything he wrote, for her approval and putting her into the
book as Ernest's Aunt Alethea. He continued writing it in the
intervals of other work until her death in February, 1885, after
which he did not touch it. It was published in 1903 by Mr. R. A.
Streatfeild, his literary executor.
Soon after 'The Fair Haven' Butler began to be aware that his letter
in the 'Press', "Darwin among the Machines," was descending with
further modifications and developing in his mind into a theory about
evolution which took shape as 'Life and Habit'; but the writing of
this very remarkable and suggestive book was delayed and the painting
interrupted by absence from England on business in Canada. He had
been persuaded by a college friend, a member of one of the great
banking families, to call in his colonial mortgages and to put the
money into several new companies. He was going to make thirty or
forty per cent, instead of only ten. One of these companies was a
Canadian undertaking, of which he became a director; it was necessary
for someone to go to headquarters and investigate its affairs; he
went, and was much occupied by the business for two or three years.
By the beginning of 1876 he had returned finally to London, but most
of his money was lost and his financial position for the next ten
years caused him very serious anxiety. His personal expenditure was
already so low that it was hardly possible to reduce it, and he set
to work at his profession more industriously than ever, hoping to
paint something that he could sell, his spare time being occupied
with 'Life and Habit', which was the subject that really interested
him more deeply than any other.
Following his letter in the 'Press', wherein he had seen machines as
in process of becoming animate, he went on to regard them as living
organs and limbs which we had made outside ourselves. What would
follow if we reversed this and regarded our limbs and organs as
machines which we had manufactured as parts of our bodies? In the
first place, how did we come to make them without knowing anything
about it? But then, how comes anybody to do anything unconsciously?
The answer usually would be: By habit. But can a man be said to do
a thing by habit when he has never done it before? His ancestors
have done it, but not he. Can the habit have been acquired by them
for his benefit? Not unless he and his ancestors are the same
person. Perhaps, then, they are the same person.
In February, 1876, partly to clear his mind and partly to tell
someone, he wrote down his thoughts in a letter to his namesake,
Thomas William Gale Butler, a fellow art-student who was then in New
Zealand; so much of the letter as concerns the growth of his theory
is given in 'The Note-Books of Samuel Butler' (1912).
In September, 1877, when 'Life and Habit' was on the eve of
publication, Mr. Francis Darwin came to lunch with him in Clifford's
Inn and, in course of conversation, told him that Professor Ray
Lankester had written something in 'Nature' about a lecture by Dr.
Ewald Hering of Prague, delivered so long ago as 1870, "On Memory as
a Universal Function of Organized Matter." This rather alarmed
Butler, but he deferred looking up the reference until after
December, 1877, when his book was out, and then, to his relief, he
found that Hering's theory was very similar to his own, so that,
instead of having something sprung upon him which would have caused
him to want to alter his book, he was supported. He at once wrote to
the 'Athenaeum', calling attention to Hering's lecture, and then
pursued his studies in evolution.
'Life and Habit' was followed in 1879 by 'Evolution Old and New',
wherein he compared the teleological or purposive view of evolution
taken by Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck with the view taken
by Charles Darwin, and came to the conclusion that the old was
better. But while agreeing with the earlier writers in thinking that
the variations whose accumulation results in species were originally
due to intelligence, he could not take the view that the intelligence
resided in an external personal God. He had done with all that when
he gave up the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He
proposed to place the intelligence inside the creature ("The Deadlock
in Darwinism," post).
In 1880 he continued the subject by publishing 'Unconscious Memory'.
Chapter IV of this book is concerned with a personal quarrel between
himself and Charles Darwin which arose out of the publication by
Charles Darwin of Dr. Krause's 'Life of Erasmus Darwin'. We need not
enter into particulars here, the matter is fully dealt with in a
pamphlet, 'Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler: A Step towards
Reconciliation', which I wrote in 1911, the result of a
correspondence between Mr. Francis Darwin and myself. Before this
correspondence took place Mr. Francis Darwin had made several public
allusions to 'Life and Habit'; and in September, 1908, in his
inaugural address to the British Association at Dublin, he did Butler
the posthumous honour of quoting from his translation of Hering's
lecture "On Memory," which is in 'Unconscious Memory', and of
mentioning Butler as having enunciated the theory contained in 'Life
and Habit'.
In 1886 Butler published his last book on evolution, 'Luck or Cunning
as the Main Means of Organic Modification'? His other contributions
to the subject are some essays, written for the 'Examiner' in 1879,
"God the Known and God the Unknown," which were republished by Mr.
Fifield in 1909, and the articles "The Deadlock in Darwinism" which
appeared in the 'Universal Review' in 1890 and some further notes on
evolution will be found in 'The Note-Books of Samuel Butler' (1912).
It was while he was writing 'Life and Habit' that I first met him.
For several years he had been in the habit of spending six or eight
weeks of the summer in Italy and the Canton Ticino, generally making
Faido his headquarters. Many a page of his books was written while
resting by the fountain of some subalpine village or waiting in the
shade of the chestnuts till the light came so that he could continue
a sketch. Every year he returned home by a different route, and thus
gradually became acquainted with every part of the Canton and North
Italy. There is scarcely a town or village, a point of view, a
building, statue or picture in all this country with which he was not
familiar. In 1878 he happened to be on the Sacro Monte above Varese
at the time I took my holiday; there I joined him, and nearly every
year afterwards we were in Italy together.
He was always a delightful companion, and perhaps at his gayest on
these occasions. "A man's holiday," he would say, "is his garden,"
and he set out to enjoy himself and to make everyone about him enjoy
themselves too. I told him the old schoolboy muddle about Sir Walter
Raleigh introducing tobacco and saying: "We shall this day light up
such a fire in England as I trust shall never be put out." He had
not heard it before and, though amused, appeared preoccupied, and
perhaps a little jealous, during the rest of the evening. Next
morning, while he was pouring out his coffee, his eyes twinkled and
he said, with assumed carelessness:
"By the by, do you remember?--wasn't it Columbus who bashed the egg
down on the table and said 'Eppur non si muove'?"
He was welcome wherever he went, full of fun and ready to play while
doing the honours of the country. Many of the peasants were old
friends, and every day we were sure to meet someone who remembered
him. Perhaps it would be an old woman labouring along under a
burden; she would smile and stop, take his hand and tell him how
happy she was to meet him again and repeat her thanks for the empty
wine bottle he had given her after an out-of-door luncheon in her
neighbourhood four or five years before. There was another who had
rowed him many times across the Lago di Orta and had never been in a
train but once in her life, when she went to Novara to her son's
wedding. He always remembered all about these people and asked how
the potatoes were doing this year and whether the grandchildren were
growing up into fine boys and girls, and he never forgot to inquire
after the son who had gone to be a waiter in New York. At Civiasco
there is a restaurant which used to be kept by a jolly old lady,
known for miles round as La Martina; we always lunched with her on
our way over the Colma to and from Varallo-Sesia. On one occasion we
were accompanied by two English ladies and, one being a teetotaller,
Butler maliciously instructed La Martina to make the sabbaglione so
that it should be forte and abbondante, and to say that the Marsala,
with which it was more than flavoured, was nothing but vinegar. La
Martina never forgot that when she looked in to see how things were
going, he was pretending to lick the dish clean. These journeys
provided the material for a book which he thought of calling "Verdi
Prati," after one of Handel's most beautiful songs; but he changed
his mind, and it appeared at the end of 1881 as 'Alps and Sanctuaries
of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino' with more than eighty
illustrations, nearly all by Butler. Charles Gogin made an etching
for the frontispiece, drew some of the pictures, and put figures into
others; half a dozen are mine. They were all redrawn in ink from
sketches made on the spot, in oil, water-colour, and pencil. There
were also many illustrations of another kind--extracts from Handel's
music, each chosen because Butler thought it suitable to the spirit
of the scene he wished to bring before the reader. The introduction
concludes with these words: "I have chosen Italy as my second
country, and would dedicate this book to her as a thank-offering for
the happiness she has afforded me."
In the spring of 1883 he began to compose music, and in 1885 we
published together an album of minuets, gavottes, and fugues. This
led to our writing 'Narcissus', which is an Oratorio Buffo in the
Handelian manner--that is as nearly so as we could make it. It is a
mistake to suppose that all Handel's oratorios are upon sacred
subjects; some of them are secular. And not only so, but, whatever
the subject, Handel was never at a loss in treating anything that
came into his words by way of allusion or illustration. As Butler
puts it in one of his sonnets:
He who gave eyes to ears and showed in sound
All thoughts and things in earth or heaven above -
From fire and hailstones running along the ground
To Galatea grieving for her love -
He who could show to all unseeing eyes
Glad shepherds watching o'er their flocks by night,
Or Iphis angel-wafted to the skies,
Or Jordan standing as an heap upright -
And so on. But there is one subject which Handel never treated--I
mean the Money Market. Perhaps he avoided it intentionally; he was
twice bankrupt, and Mr. R. A. Streatfeild tells me that the British
Museum possesses a MS. letter from him giving instructions as to the
payment of the dividends on 500 pounds South Sea Stock. Let us hope
he sold out before the bubble burst; if so, he was more fortunate
than Butler, who was at this time of his life in great anxiety about
his own financial affairs. It seemed a pity that Dr. Morell had
never offered Handel some such words as these:
The steadfast funds maintain their wonted state
While all the other markets fluctuate.
Butler wondered whether Handel would have sent the steadfast funds up
above par and maintained them on an inverted pedal with all the other
markets fluctuating iniquitously round them like the sheep that turn
every one to his own way in the 'Messiah'. He thought something of
the kind ought to have been done, and in the absence of Handel and
Dr. Morell we determined to write an oratorio that should attempt to
supply the want. In order to make our libretto as plausible as
possible, we adopted the dictum of Monsieur Jourdain's Maitre a
danser: "Lorsqu'on a des personnes a faire parler en musique, il
faut bien que, pour la vraisemblance, on donne dans la bergerie."
Narcissus is accordingly a shepherd in love with Amaryllis; they come
to London with other shepherds and lose their money in imprudent
speculations on the Stock Exchange. In the second part the aunt and
godmother of Narcissus, having died at an advanced age worth one
hundred thousand pounds, all of which she has bequeathed to her
nephew and godson, the obstacle to his union with Amaryllis is
removed. The money is invested in consols and all ends happily.
In December, 1886, Butler's father died, and his financial
difficulties ceased. He engaged Alfred Emery Cathie as clerk, but
made no other change, except that he bought a pair of new hair
brushes and a larger wash-hand basin. Any change in his mode of life
was an event. When in London he got up at 6.30 in the summer and
7.30 in the winter, went into his sitting-room, lighted the fire, put
the kettle on and returned to bed. In half an hour he got up again,
fetched the kettle of hot water, emptied it into the cold water that
was already in his bath, refilled the kettle and put it back on the
fire. After dressing, he came into his sitting-room, made tea and
cooked, in his Dutch oven, something he had bought the day before.
His laundress was an elderly woman, and he could not trouble her to
come to his rooms so early in the morning; on the other hand, he
could not stay in bed until he thought it right for her to go out; so
it ended in his doing a great deal for himself. He then got his
breakfast and read the Times. At 9.30 Alfred came, with whom he
discussed anything requiring attention, and soon afterwards his
laundress arrived. Then he started to walk to the British Museum,
where he arrived about 10.30, every alternate morning calling at the
butcher's in Fetter Lane to order his meat. In the Reading Room at
the Museum he sat at Block B ("B for Butler") and spent an hour
"posting his notes"--that is reconsidering, rewriting, amplifying,
shortening, and indexing the contents of the little note-book he
always carried in his pocket. After the notes he went on till 1.30
with whatever book he happened to be writing.