SAMUEL BUTLER

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 141, 11 December 1935, Page 20

SAMUEL BUTLER

VICTORIAN IN REVOLT

CENTENARY THIS MONTH

CAREER IN THE ARTS

(By "Scncx.") ■Until twenty years ago, had you asked an English scholar to name the most famous work of Samuel Butler he would have told you that Butler was the author of "Hudibras." Incredible as it may seem today, Butler was almost unknown in England save amongst the people who cared for ideas. Bernard Shaw knew him and contemptuously pointed out that whereas the citizens of Calataflmi, in Sicily, had named a street the Via Samuel Butler, the English remained obstinately unaware of the identity of the great man. Mr. Shaw's petulance, it may be said, was perhaps not without a personal -tinge, for Samuel tfutler,- the original thinker, was th« spiritual father of Bernard Shaw the pedlar of ideas,- and to ignore the' one was to underrate the spiritual significance of the other. But in this instance Mr. Shaw was right. Samuel Butler was a great man and until after his death and the publication of "The Way of All Flesh" there was a general failure to regard him with the importance he deserved, and his very name was confused with that of a seventeenth century satirist. FARMED IN DOMINION. Butler, who was born a century ago on December 4, reared in an English rectory, and acquired a love of Italy and of the music of Handel in childhood, was unable to accept the doctrine of infant baptism and so shut out from that Church which was to have given him a career. Equipped with £4000 by a grudging father he came to New Zealand in 1859 and. then, five years later, sold out his sheep-run, invested his doubled capital at a safe 10 per cent, and returned to England before turning thirty, to take chambers in Cliffords Inn and spend the remaining thirty-eight years of his life there, bachelor, musing, and - industriously taking notes. His first ambition on returning to England was to paint. He studied under Stephen Cary (of whom Charles Lamb had said that he should be made an apothe-Cary) and devised pictures which a friend termed "very curious.". He had done sonw writing in New Zealand, had even been in charge of "The Press" in Christchurch during the absence of the editor and contributed to this paper.the sketch Darwin Among the Machines," which was one of, the drafts for "Erewhon." But by the time he had reached his middle thirties he was merely a painter who had had one picture hung on the line at the Royal Academy, who had published some odd papers, a collection of his letters home under the title "A First Year in Canterbury Settlement," and a pamphlet on the evidence of the Resurrection. Then, in Venice, he met an old Russian whom he greatly admired and she stung him into action with the remark that he was a clever young man but had been regarding the work of others long enough and should turn to work of his own. The first result of this new endeavour was "Erewhon," formed gradually in his mind and submitted, as he wrote it, to Miss Eliza Mary Ann Savage, who was his chief critic and adviser as long as she lived. There was the usual difficulty in finding a publisher. Chapman and Hall rejected the book on the advice of George Meredith, who was their reader, and finally Butler had to bring out the work himself. Though in the next few years "Erewhon" was translated into German and Dutch the sales in England fell to two copies a week as soon as popular curiosity as to the name of the author was satisfied. Today the book has a significance that we may scarcely blame the Victorians for failing to discover; the immense : developments of modern technology have revealed a .dangerous possibility of men reaching the position of the early Erewhonians and becoming to machines as the dog and the horse are to man. But how serious was Butler in his suggestions in the book? It is difficult to judge In one place he declares that the work came about because "the machines, being of themselves unable to struggle, have got man to do their struggling for them: as long as he fulfils this function, duly all goes well with him—at leasthe thinks so; but the moment he fails to do his best for.the advancement, of machinery . . . he is left behind. . . . and will be made uncomfortable in a variety of ways and perhaps, die." In another place he wrote: "When I first got hold of the idea I developed it in mere fun and because it amused me and I thought would amuse others . . . but I developed It in 'Erewhon' with the intention of implying: 'See how easy it is to, be plausible and what absurd propositions can be defended by a little ingenuity and distortion and departure from strictly scientific methods.'" In other words "Erewhon" was one gun fired in Butlerls long battle with Darwinism, and the dialetical methods employed in the book were intended to satirise the "Analogy" of Bishop Butler, who was no relation to the author of "Erewhon," but who had written in defence of revealed religion. "THE WAY OF ALL FLESH.'; "Erewhon" had convinced Miss Savage that Butler should write a novel and- in due-course Butler was convinced, too. The hovel upon whicn he-began to work was "The Way of All Flesh!'; he laboured at it from 1872 to 1884 and then, on the death of Miss Savage,; he put,'it aside and never touched, it again. It was not published for. almost twenty- years. Though this remarkable picture of Victorian England/ expressed ; Butler's revolt against the domination of his' father and .gave with extraordinary emphasis, an account of conditions of life which led Butler to say: "1 had to steal my birthright; I stole it and was bitterly punished,", it did not free him from his obsession with authority. He was still in rebellion; he set up Handel above Beethoven, exalted Bellini above Titian, and Ferrari over all sculptors. After a long period of financial trouble (a banker friend had persuaded him to call in his New Zealand mortgages and invest his money in companies promoting patent gas meters, stearr. engines, and tanning extracts, which promptly failed and left him much the poorer), his father's death ended his money troubles and he was able to concentrate on work again. But in the meantime he published "Life and Habit," which linked man's survival to race memory and the useful habits acquired by his ancestors; "Evolution Old and New" and "Unconscious Memory," which included a chapter on the quarrel with Darwin that, by now, had become a personal feud, and "Alps and Sanctuaries," which H. M. Tomlinson has called one of the finest travel books in the language. INVESTMENT IN ORATORIO. The book was illustrated with his own sketches and after its publication he turned again to music, which led him to the realisation that Handol had been as unfortunate in speculation as Butler after him and which, in turn, led to a project for an oratorio on the Stock Exchange. "How would Handel have treated the subject?" ho wondered. "Would he have sent lh3

'stedfast funds' up above par and maintained them on an inverted pedal with all the other markets fluctuating i'niquitously around them?" This came to nothing, but the good people of Varallesi had read "Alps and Sanctuaries" and knew that he had hinted of his intention to write a book on them in turn. They entertained him at a civic dinner, and "now," he said, "there's nothing for it but to write the book at once." The volume, when it appeared, was titled "Ex Voto."

Back at music once more he became full of a project for an oratorio on the "Odyssey." The libretto, based on Charles Lamb's "Adventures of Ulysses," might be inexact, so he r»read the original Greek. It was a revelation, but of a totally unexpected nature, as usual. He dashed off to Sicily to confirm his theory; there was no possible doubt about it, he wrote. The author of the "Odyssey" was a woman and in her descriptions she had used the topography of Trapani, Mount Eryx, and the Aegadean Islands. Everything he found confirmed his view. To complete the job he translated the great poem into English prose, then translated the "Iliad," and finally went to Greece to make a final check on his facts. Everything, he decided, agreed with this interpretation.

These things were not done easily. For many years he had a well-organised existence, latterly with a servant to aid him, and worked, arranged his notes or read at the British Museum day after day. His audience remained few because people complained about his style. They did not know when he was serious; his constant jesting, his use of humour to advance his argument irritated them. But he continued his fight which, viewed from one angle, might be termed a life-long crusada against excessive zeal, as Aldous Huxley has said. Until the end, which threatened in his admired Italy in 1902, he continued to read, to keep his notebooks, and arrange his ideas. He was full of plans even at the last, preparing for a revision of "The Way of All Flesh," a new edition of "Ex Voto" with the errors removed. He was intent on more painting and more composing. Just before the illness which proved fatal he had rounded out his career with "Erewhon Re\^sited," which stole the thunder of the pragmatists by its argument that whether or not a miracle occurs is of no significance provided that the people believe in it. And this Erewhonian adventure was the last and first of his life. After weeks of illness at Palermo he was removed to Naples and then to London. In a nursing home in St. John's Wood he died on June 18, 1902.