“EREWHON” BUTLER

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 69, 14 December 1935, Page 9

“EREWHON” BUTLER

Centenary of His Birth

(By

Iau Donnelly.)

In January, 1860, one of the emigrant ships entering Lyttelton Harbour carried among its passengers a young Englishman who had been away from Cambridge long enough only to have learned that his conscience would not allow him to enter Holy Orders. On that January day 75 years ago, Samuel Butler was 25; the next four years he was destined to spend in the Canterbury Settlement. Last week saw the hundredth anniversary of the birth of this distinguished pioneer, whose writing has exercised a potent influence on the thought of days beyond his own. For many years after his return to England, Butler lived in lodgings at Clifford’s lun, and only last year, when this pleasant architecture was demolished to make way for modern Hats, the anti-demolitionists urged that the buildings merited preservation for their Butler associations alone. Sentimental voices may also be heard in Canterbury proclaiming to a heedless world the belief that Butler’s decaying cottage at Mesopotamia Station should be kept in national trust. However, in Christchurch a few links with Butler survive. In the Public Library is a self-portrait which the artist painted after bis return to Loudon, ami the librarian can be persuaded to show a visitor the manuscript, of "The Fair Haven,” which was obtained for the institution by the late Mr. Justice Alpers. There is also the manuscript of the first French translation of “Erewhou,” presented to the library a few years ago by the translator, Valery Labaud. His First Book. For New Zealanders. Butler’s first book, “A First Year in Canterbury Settlement,” has special interest because of. the key iti gives to a cultivated migrant's mind. Butler was a good observe)’, and he hud a delightful of humour. This is his introductory impression of Christchurch: "It is larger than Lyttelton and more scattered, but not so pretty. Here, too. the men are shaggy, clear-complexion-cd, brown and healthy-looking, and

wear exceedingly rowdy hats. I put up at Mr. Bowland Davis's, and as no one during the evening seemed much inclined to talk to me, I listened to the conversation. The all-engrossing topics seemed to be sheep, horses, dogs, cattle, English grasses, paddocks, bush and so forth. From 7 o'clock in the evening till 12 at night I cannot say I heard much else. These were the exact things I wanted to hear, and I listened until they had been repeated so many times that 1 almost grew tired of the subject.” Although those comments were made so fliany years ago, they are just such as might be made to-day by any young Englishman who fell among certain colonial company. What he saw and heard is still to be seen and heard. Butler was born at Langar Rectory, Nottingham, on December 4, 1835, the son of the Rev. Thomas Butler. After leaving Cambridge in 1858, he went to London to prepare for ordination. His father’s wish was that he should enter the Church, but Butler’s own desire was to become an artist. He was willing enough to fall in with the paternal wishes but for the fact that he doubted the efficacy of infant baptism. Since there was no possibility of reconciling the differing wishes of father and sou, Butler took the more drastic course of trying his fortune in a new country. He settled to sheep-farming in Canterbury, made money, and after four years sold his laud. When he arrived back in England he was independent enough to be able to study art, as he had wished to do in the first place. Then for 30 years he produced books which he had to publish at his own expense, the only one on which he made a profit being “Erewhon.” This apparent failure did hot worry him, for he was, in the strictest sense, a literary amateur. Of his books he said: "I never make them; they grow; they come to me and insist upon being written. If I had not liked the subjects I should have kicked, and nothing would have got me to do them at all. As I did like the subjects and the books came and said they were to be written, 1 grumbled a little and wrote them.” Fiction and Satire. The books by which Butler is best known now are “Erewhon,” one of the finest satirical romances in the English language; “The Way of All Flesh,” a novel which he was writing from 1872 until 1884; and “The Note Books of Samuel Butler.” Neither the “Note Books” nor “The Way of All Flesh” appeared until after his death in 1902. The first serviceable piece of publicity Butler bad was in Bernard Shaw’s preface to "Major Barbara.” Shaw mentioned there the influence that Butler’s thought had exercised upon his own; it is easy to see why Butler should have appealed to Shaw and, indeed, why he should continue to be an intellectual force. By birth he was a Victorian; but in outlook be was so far beyond his time that much of his thinking might be that of the brightest minds of our own day. “Erewhon,” the genesis of which, by the way, was a letter written to the “Press..” Christchurch, in 15153. contains ideas which the contemporary world is not yet far enough advanced to put into practice, but which are more or less generally recognised as being sensible and humane.

This, for example, is the Erewhonian outlook on sickness and crime: “If a man falls into ill-health, or catches any disorder, or fails bodily in any way before lie is TO years old, lie is "tried "before a jury of his countrymen, and if convicted is held up to public scorn and sentenced more or less severely as the case may be. . . . But if a man forges a cheque, or sets his house on fire, or robs with violence from the person, or docs any other such things as are criminal iu our country, he is takeu to a hospital and most carefully tended at the public expense, or if be is in good circumstances, he lets it be known to all bis friends that lie is suffering from a severe state of immorality, just as we do when we are ill. and they come to visit him with great solicitude . . . bad conduct is held to be the result of pre-natal or post-natal misfortune.” So Butler, it can be seen, is on the side of the reformers who arc still agitating for a different method of treating criminality.

The theme of “The Way of All Flesh” Is essentially modern. It is autobiographical, so obviously so that Butler would not publish it while any members of ills family were alive. The book is really a description of the conflict between one generation and another. Butler could not agree with the bleakness of life at Langar Rectory, and there is sail anger in the portraits he draws of bis father and mother. Of the “Note Books.’’ two volumes have now been published, and they arc among the most fascinating books of their kind .n English. There you can find Butler in all his moods.

(Week-end radio programmes on page »2.)