SAMUEL BUTLER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 53, Issue 15, 28 October 1932, Page 3

SAMUEL BUTLER

SECRETS OF A DIARY. WRITERS IMPRESSIONS. THINKER'S PHILOSOPHY. The following extracts are from the Diaries of the late Edward Chudleigh, who sailed to New Zealand in 1861. They were published in a recent issue of the "Loudon Times." , From the Plains of Canterbury he frequently climbed the gorges to Samuel Butler's mountain stronghold of Mesopotamia, to help Butler with his work, or to keep him company. The diarist, who was the son of a Cornish rector, was just If) when he landed in the country, and had been educated at an English Public School. His spelling and punctuation are faithfully followed here. The little leathercovered books in which his daily doings end impressions are recorded are stained with rain and the mud-waters of flooded rivers, and worn with long miles of travel in a saddle-bag. Except for haying "sold Mr Butler 2 bullocks at 15£ a head" at a chance meeting during a cattle-drive across S. Canterbury (April 26, 1862), Chudleigh's first recorded meeting with Butler occurred on December 3 of that year, at Mt. Peel, the 100,000-acre run at the foot of the mountains, belonging to Mr J. B. Acland, where Chudleigh was then a "cadet." Butler, 26 years of age, and quite without fame, seems to have made a curious impression on him:—

"Dark as a Maori." Mr Butler, the person Pattison lives with, came here to-day he is one of the cleaverest men in N.Z. he is a little man and nearly as dark as a Mowray (Maori), and is at present very nearly if not quite an infidel, and yet I believe would not do a dishonourable thing to save his life, he admires a man that sticks to his belief no matter what it is. Dec. 17. We went on horseback to the out-hut, 20 miles in the hills, Irvine and I went on to Butler's, 5 miles further up the river. Butler's house is surrounded by hills 6, 8 and 0 thousands ft., the tops covered with snow a very grand sight indeed. t, A three-days' exploration further into the mountains follows, during which the diarist finds the remains of four moa, and secures three of the gigantic legbones,' "one for Butler." Then, he and Butler ride 80 miles through difficult country, enlisting shearers. Two men are rescued from the swollen rapids of the Rangitata, which looks "awfully dreary," and the horses sometimes "lie down with fright" when scrambling down the dizzy cliff tracks. At the end of ary, 1863, all hands are hard at work from o a.m. till 7 p.m. bringing in the sheep and shearing them. On Saturday afternoon the diarist "had to set to with the gloves for the edification of the station" with a half-caste Maori of "enormous strength" but "beautiful temper," and on Sunday "Butler gave me a little book called the Rocky Island" to read during hours of rest. The following Sunday, being "very fine," is spent in a tour round Butler's property, and the following description of the "country which inspired "Erewhon" is given:— I saw some most beautiful and grand seanery. I was on a hill about 1500 ft above 'the Rangitata, the snow-topped hills rise 8 and 9 thousand feet on my light and left, then lovely valleys covered with bush that you can follow up till they die away in the blue of ■ the distant mountains whoes tips shoot up into a sky of spotless blew, at my feetthere is line undulating country spotted with small lakes or lagoons, and then come the Rangitata plains. The river loses its dreariness in distance and looks lit for any picture, here downs come in again, which very gradually rise into endless snow. I cannot describe the grandeur of this place. I wish I could paint it. This was the brighter side of the picture, but Mesopotamia was a place of moods. .For four days the weather held up the shearing, and then Chudleigh had to go down the mountain to another job. His horse had been lamed, and then, the night before he left, had departed in search of quieter pastures, so he had to borrow Butler's Sultan, "a very springey horse,'' which, however, carried him without stirrups safely through clouds of sand and showers of spray, whipped up from the rivers, and through great black drifts of smoke from "an enormous fire on the Plains," blotting out every landmark on the track when darkness overcame him. Meetings with Butler are recorded fairly frequently during the ensuing months; in the little storm-wrecked hut up at Mesopotamia ; at Mt. Peel; and at Mr Charles Tripp's stationhouse, where Mrs Tripp (Bishop Harper's daughter) found his "peculiar nature and wild theories upsetting,'' and "did not like it when Butler tried to convert the maid to his ideas," as she has left on record. But "he played the piano beautifully, and would do so for hours."