Just as the kingdom of heaven cometh not by observation, so neither do one’s own ideas, nor the good things one hears other people say; they fasten on us when we least want or expect them. It is enough if the kingdom of heaven be observed when it does come.
I do not read much; I look, listen, think and write. My most intimate friends are men of more insight, quicker wit, more playful fancy and, in all ways, abler men than I am, but you will find ten of them for one of me. I note what they say, think it over, adapt it and give it permanent form. They throw good things off as sparks; I collect them and turn them into warmth. But I could not do this if I did not sometimes throw out a spark or two myself.
Not only would Agamemnon be nothing without thevates sacerbut there are always at least ten good heroes to one good chronicler, just as there are ten good authors to one good publisher. Bravery, wit and poetry abound in every village. Look at Mrs. Boss [the original of Mrs. Jupp inThe Way of All Flesh] and at Joanna Mills [Life and Letters of Dr. Butler, I, 93]. There is not a village of 500 inhabitants in England but has its Mrs. Quickly and its Tom Jones. These good people never understand themselves, they go over their own heads, they speak in unknown tongues to those around them and the interpreter is the rarer and more important person. Thevates saceris the middleman of mind.
So rare is he and such spendthrifts are we of good things that people not only will not note what might well be noted but they will not even keep what others have noted, if they are to be at the pains of pigeon-holing it. It is less trouble to throw a brilliant letter into the fire than to put it into such form that it can be safely kept, quickly found and easily read. To this end a letter should be gummed, with the help of the edgings of stamps if necessary, to a strip, say an inch and a quarter wide, of stout hand-made paper. Two or three paper fasteners passed through these strips will bind fifty or sixty letters together, which, arranged in chronological order, can be quickly found and comfortably read. But how few will be at the small weekly trouble of clearing up their correspondence and leaving it in manageable shape! If we keep our letters at all we throw them higgledy-piggledy into a box and have done with them; let some one else arrange them when the owner is dead. The some one else comes and finds the fire an easy method of escaping the onus thrown upon him. So on go letters from Tilbrook, Merian, Marmaduke Lawson[364]—just as we throw our money away if the holding on to it involves even very moderate exertion.
On the other hand, if this instinct towards prodigality were not so great, beauty and wit would be smothered under their own selves. It is through the waste of wit that wit endures, like money, its main preciousness lies in its rarity—the more plentiful it is the cheaper does it become.
When I look at the articles on Handel, on Dr. Arnold, or indeed on almost any one whom I know anything about, I feel that such a work as theDictionary of National Biographyadds more terror to death than death of itself could inspire. That is one reason why I let myself go so unreservedly in these notes. If the colours in which I paint myself fail to please, at any rate I shall have had the laying them on myself.
The world will, in the end, follow only those who have despised as well as served it.
The world and all that has ever been in it will one day be as much forgotten as what we ate for dinner forty years ago. Very likely, but the fact that we shall not remember much about a dinner forty years hence does not make it less agreeable now, and after all it is only the accumulation of these forgotten dinners that makes the dinner of forty years hence possible.
The dead should be judged as we judge criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of a doubt. When no doubt exists they should be hanged out of hand for about a hundred years. After that time they may come down and move about under a cloud. After about 2000 years they may do what they like. If Nero murdered his mother—well, he murdered his mother and there’s an end. The moral guilt of an action varies inversely as the squares of its distances in time and space, social, psychological, physiological or topographical, from ourselves. Not so its moral merit: this loses no lustre through time and distance.
Good is like gold, it will not rust or tarnish and it is rare, but there is some of it everywhere. Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
Bodily offspring I do not leave, but mental offspring I do. Well, my books do not have to be sent to school and college and then insist on going into the Church or take to drinking or marry their mother’s maid.
I have often told my son that he must begin by finding me a wife to become his mother who shall satisfy both himself and me. But this is only one of the many rocks on which we have hitherto split. We should never have got on together; I should have had to cut him off with a shilling either for laughing at Homer, or for refusing to laugh at him, or both, or neither, but still cut him off. So I settled the matter long ago by turning a deaf ear to his importunities and sticking to it that I would not get him at all. Yet his thin ghost visits me at times and, though he knows that it is no use pestering me further, he looks at me so wistfully and reproachfully that I am half-inclined to turn tall, take my chance about his mother and ask him to let me get him after all. But I should show a clean pair of heels if he said “Yes.”
Besides, he would probably be a girl.
When I am dead, do not let people say of me that I suffered from misrepresentation and neglect. I was neglected and misrepresented; very likely not half as much as I supposed but, nevertheless, to some extent neglected and misrepresented. I growl at this sometimes but, if the question were seriously put to me whether I would go on as I am or become famous in my own lifetime, I have no hesitation about which I should prefer. I will willingly pay the few hundreds of pounds which the neglect of my works costs me in order to be let alone and not plagued by the people who would come round me if I were known. The probability is that I shall remain after my death as obscure as I am now; if this be so, the obscurity will, no doubt, be merited, and if not, my books will work not only as well without my having been known in my lifetime but a great deal better; my follies and blunders will the better escape notice to the enhancing of the value of anything that may be found in my books. The only two things I should greatly care about if I had more money are a few more country outings and a little more varied and better cooked food. [1882.]
P.S.—I have long since obtained everything that a reasonable man can wish for. [1895.]
I see Cecil Rhodes has just been saying that he was a lucky man, inasmuch as such honours as are now being paid him generally come to a man after his death and not before it. This is all very well for a politician whose profession immerses him in public life, but the older I grow the more satisfied I am that there can be no greater misfortune for a man of letters or of contemplation than to be recognised in his own lifetime. Fortunately the greater man he is, and hence the greater the misfortune he would incur, the less likelihood there is that he will incur it. [1897.]
Shall I be remembered after death? I sometimes think and hope so. But I trust I may not be found out (if I ever am found out, and if I ought to be found out at all) before my death. It would bother me very much and I should be much happier and better as I am. [1880.]
P.S.—This note I leave unaltered. I am glad to see that I had so much sense thirteen years ago. What I thought then, I think now, only with greater confidence and confirmation. [1893.]
Copies Sold
Cash Profit
Cash Loss
Total Profit
Total loss
Value of stock
Erewhon
3843
62
10
10
—
69
3
10
—
6
13
0
The Fair Haven
442
—
41
2
2
—
27
18
2
13
4
0
Life and Habit
640
—
4
17
1½
7
19
1½
—
12
16
3
Evolution Old & New
541
—
103
11
10
—
89
13
10
13
18
0
Unconscious Memory
272
—
38
13
5
—
38
13
5
—
Alps and Sanctuaries
332
—
113
6
4
—
110
18
4
22
8
0
Selections from Previous Works
120
—
51
4
10½
—
48
10
10½
2
14
0
Luck or Cunning?
284
—
41
6
4
—
13
18
10
27
7
6
Ex Voto
217
—
147
18
0
—
111
8
0
36
10
0
Life and Letters of Dr. Butler
201
—
216
18
0
—
193
18
0
23
0
0
The Authoress of the Odyssey
165
—
81
1
3
—
59
10
3
21
11
0
The Iliad in English Prose
157
—
89
4
8
—
77
6
8
11
18
0
A Holbein Card
6
—
8
1
9
—
8
1
9
—
A Book of Essays
0
—
3
11
9
—
—
3
11
9
62
10
10
960
17
6
77
2
11½
779
18
1½
195
11
6
To this must be added my book on the Sonnets in respect of which I have had no account as yet but am over a hundred pounds out of pocket by it so far—little of which, I fear, is ever likely to come back.
It will be noted that my public appears to be a declining one; I attribute this to the long course of practical boycott to which I have been subjected for so many years, or, if not boycott, of sneer, snarl and misrepresentation. I cannot help it, nor if the truth were known, am I at any pains to try to do so.[369]
If I deserve to be remembered, it will be not so much for anything I have written, or for any new way of looking at old facts which I may have suggested, as for having shown that a man of no special ability, with no literary connections, not particularly laborious, fairly, but not supremely, accurate as far as he goes, and not travelling far either for his facts or from them, may yet, by being perfectly square, sticking to his point, not letting his temper run away with him, and biding his time, be a match for the most powerful literary and scientific coterie that England has ever known.
I hope it may be said of me that I discomfited an unscrupulous, self-seeking clique, and set a more wholesome example myself. To have done this is the best of all discoveries.
I will not say that the more than coldness with which my books are received does not frighten me and make me distrust myself. It must do so. But every now and then I meet with such support as gives me hope again. Still, I know nothing. [1890.]
Of course I am jealous of theéclatthat Flinders Petrie, Layard and Schliemann get for having unburied cities, but I do not see why I need be; the great thing is to unbury the city, and I believe I have unburied Scheria as effectually as Schliemann unburied Troy. [The Authoress of the Odyssey.] True, Scheria was above ground all the time and only wanted a little common sense to find it; nevertheless people have had all the facts before them for over 2500 years and have been looking more or less all the time without finding. I do not see why it is more meritorious to uncover physically with a spade than spiritually with a little of the very commonest common sense.
When I am dead I would rather people thought me better than I was instead of worse; but if they think me worse, I cannot help it and, if it matters at all, it will matter more to them than to me. The one reputation I deprecate is that of having been ill-used. I deprecate this because it would tend to depress and discourage others from playing the game that I have played. I will therefore forestall misconception on this head.
As regards general good-fortune, I am nearly fifty-five years old and for the last thirty years have never been laid up with illness nor had any physical pain that I can remember, not even toothache. Except sometimes, when a little over-driven, I have had uninterrupted good health ever since I was about five-and-twenty.
Of mental suffering I have had my share—as who has not?—but most of what I have suffered has been, though I did not think so at the time, either imaginary, or unnecessary and, so far, it has been soon forgotten. It has been much less than it very easily might have been if the luck had not now and again gone with me, and probably I have suffered less than most people, take it all round. Like every one else, however, I have the scars of old wounds; very few of these wounds were caused by anything which was essential in the nature of things; most, if not all of them, have been due to faults of heart and head on my own part and on that of others which, one would have thought, might have been easily avoided if in practice it had not turned out otherwise.
For many years I was in a good deal of money difficulty, but since my father’s death I have had no trouble on this score—greatly otherwise. Even when things were at their worst, I never missed my two months’ summer Italian trip since 1876, except one year and then I went to Mont St. Michel and enjoyed it very much. It was those Italian trips that enabled me to weather the storm. At other times I am engrossed with work that fascinates me. I am surrounded by people to whom I am attached and who like me in return so far as I can judge. In Alfred [his clerk and attendant] I have the best body-guard and the most engaging of any man in London. I live quietly but happily. And if this is being ill-used I should like to know what being well-used is.
I do not deny, however, that I have been ill-used. I have been used abominably. The positive amount of good or ill fortune, however, is not the test of either the one or the other; the true measure lies in the relative proportion of each and the way in which they have been distributed, and by this I claim, after deducting all bad luck, to be left with a large balance of good.
Some people think I must be depressed and discouraged because my books do not make more noise; but, after all, whether people read my books or no is their affair, not mine. I know by my sales that few read my books. If I write at all, it follows that I want to be read and miss my mark if I am not. So also withNarcissus. Whatever I do falls dead, and I would rather people let me see that they liked it. To this extent I certainly am disappointed. I am sorry not to have wooed the public more successfully. But I have been told that winning and wearing generally take something of the gilt off the wooing, and I am disposed to acquiesce cheerfully in not finding myself so received as that I need woo no longer. If I were to succeed I should be bored to death by my success in a fortnight and so, I am convinced, would my friends. Retirement is to me a condition of being able to work at all. I would rather write more books and music than spend much time over what I have already written; nor do I see how I could get retirement if I were not to a certain extent unpopular.
It is this feeling on my own part—omnipresent with me when I am doing my best to please, that is to say, whenever I write—which is the cause why I do not, as people say, “get on.” If I had greatly cared about getting on I think I could have done so. I think I could even now write an anonymous book that would take the public as much asErewhondid. Perhaps I could not, but I think I could. The reason why I do not try is because I like doing other things better. What I most enjoy is running the view of evolution set forth inLife and Habitand making things less easy for the hacks of literature and science; or perhaps even more I enjoy taking snapshots and writing music, though aware that I had better not enquire whether this last is any good or not. In fact there is nothing I do that I do not enjoy so keenly that I cannot tear myself away from it, and people who thus indulge themselves cannot have things both ways. I am so intent upon pleasing myself that I have no time to cater for the public. Some of them like things in the same way as I do; that class of people I try to please as well as ever I can. With others I have no concern, and they know it so they have no concern with me. I do not believe there is any other explanation of my failure to get on than this, nor do I see that any further explanation is needed. [1890.]
Two or three people have asked me to return to the subject of my supposed failure and explain it more fully from my own point of view. I have had the subject on my notes for some time and it has bored me so much that it has had a good deal to do with my not having kept my Note-Books posted recently.
Briefly, in order to scotch that snake, my failure has not been so great as people say it has. I believe my reputation stands well with the best people. Granted that it makes no noise, but I have not been willing to take the pains necessary to achieve what may be called guinea-pig review success, because, although I have been in financial difficulties, I did not seriously need success from a money point of view, and because I hated the kind of people I should have had to court and kow-tow to if I went in for that sort of thing. I could never have carried it through, even if I had tried, and instinctively declined to try. A man cannot be said to have failed, because he did not get what he did not try for. What I did try for I believe I have got as fully as any reasonable man can expect, and I have every hope that I shall get it still more both so long as I live and after I am dead.
If, however, people mean that I am to explain how it is I have not made more noise in spite of my own indolence in matter, the answer is that those who do not either push the themselves into noise, or give some one else a substantial interest in pushing them, never do get made a noise about. How can they? I was too lazy to go about from publisher to publisher and to decline to publish a book myself if I could not find some one to speculate in it. I could take any amount of trouble about writing a book but, so long as I could lay my hand on the money to bring it out with, I found publishers’ antechambers so little to my taste that I soon tired and fell back on the short and easy method of publishing my book myself. Of course, therefore, it failed to sell. I know more about these things now, and will never publish a book at my own risk again, or at any rate I will send somebody else round the antechambers with it for a good while before I pay for publishing it.
I should have liked notoriety and financial success well enough if they could have been had for the asking, but I was not going to take any trouble about them and, as a natural consequence, I did not get them. If I had wanted them with the same passionate longing that has led me to pursue every enquiry that I ever have pursued, I should have got them fast enough. It is very rarely that I have failed to get what I have really tried for and, as a matter of fact, I believe I have been a great deal happier for not trying than I should have been if I had had notoriety thrust upon me.
I confess I should like my books to pay their expenses and put me a little in pocket besides—because I want to do more for Alfred than I see my way to doing. As a natural consequence of beginning to care I have begun to take pains, and am advising with the Society of Authors as to what will be my best course. Very likely they can do nothing for me, but at any rate I shall have tried.
One reason, and that the chief, why I have made no noise, is now explained. It remains to add that from first to last I have been unorthodox and militant in every book that I have written. I made enemies of the parsons once for all with my first two books. [ErewhonandThe Fair Haven.] The evolution books made the Darwinians, and through them the scientific world in general, even more angry thanThe Fair Havenhad made the clergy so that I had no friends, for the clerical and scientific people rule the roast between them.
I have chosen the fighting road rather than the hang-on-to-a-great-man road, and what can a man who does this look for except that people should try to silence him in whatever way they think will be most effectual? In my case they have thought it best to pretend that I am non-existent. It is no part of my business to complain of my opponents for choosing their own line; my business is to defeat them as best I can upon their own line, and I imagine I shall do most towards this by not allowing myself to be made unhappy merely because I am not fussed about, and by going on writing more books and adding to my pile.
Why should I write about this as though any one will wish to read what I write?
People sometimes give me to understand that it is a piece of ridiculous conceit on my part to jot down so many notes about myself, since it implies a confidence that I shall one day be regarded as an interesting person. I answer that neither I nor they can form any idea as to whether I shall be wanted when I am gone or no. The chances are that I shall not. I am quite aware of it. So the chances are that I shall not live to be 85; but I have no right to settle it so. If I do as Captain Don did [Life of Dr. Butler, I, opening of Chapter VIII], and invest every penny I have in an annuity that shall terminate when I am 89, who knows but that I may live on to 96, as he did, and have seven years without any income at all? I prefer the modest insurance of keeping up my notes which others may burn or no as they please.
I am not one of those who have travelled along a set road towards an end that I have foreseen and desired to reach. I have made a succession of jaunts or pleasure trips from meadow to meadow, but no long journey unless life itself be reckoned so. Nevertheless, I have strayed into no field in which I have not found a flower that was worth the finding, I have gone into no public place in which I have not found sovereigns lying about on the ground which people would not notice and be at the trouble of picking up. They have been things which any one else has had—or at any rate a very large number of people have had—as good a chance of picking up as I had. My finds have none of them come as the result of research or severe study, though they have generally given me plenty to do in the way of research and study as soon as I had got hold of them. I take it that these are the most interesting—or whatever the least offensive word may be:
1. The emphasising the analogies between crime and disease. [Erewhon.]
2. The emphasising also the analogies between the development of the organs of our bodies and of those which are not incorporate with our bodies and which we call tools or machines. [ErewhonandLuck or Cunning?]
3. The clearing up the history of the events in connection with the death, or rather crucifixion, of Jesus Christ; and a reasonable explanation, first, of the belief on the part of the founders of Christianity that their master had risen from the dead and, secondly, of what might follow from belief in a single supposed miracle. [The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ,The Fair HavenandErewhon Revisited.]
4. The perception that personal identity cannot be denied between parents and offspring without at the same time denying it as between the different ages (and hence moments) in the life of the individual and, as a corollary on this, the ascription of the phenomena of heredity to the same source as those of memory. [Life and Habit.]
5. The tidying up the earlier history of the theory of evolution. [Evolution Old and New.]
6. The exposure and discomfiture of Charles Darwin and Wallace and their followers. [Evolution Old and New,Unconscious Memory,Luck or Cunning? and “The Deadlock in Darwinism” in theUniversal Reviewrepublished inEssays on Life,Art and Science.][376]
7. The perception of the principle that led organic life to split up into two main divisions, animal and vegetable. [Alps and Sanctuaries, close of Chapter XIII:Luck or Cunning?]
8. The perception that, if the kinetic theory is held good, our thought of a thing, whatever that thing may be, is in reality an exceedingly weak dilution of the actual thing itself. [Stated, but not fully developed, inLuck or Cunning? Chapter XIX, also in some of the foregoing notes.]
9. The restitution to Giovanni and Gentile Bellini of their portraits in the Louvre and the finding of five other portraits of these two painters of whom Crowe and Cavalcaselle and Layard maintain that we have no portrait. [Letters to theAthenæum, &c.]
10. The restoration to Holbein of the drawing in the Basel Museum calledLa Danse. [Universal Review, Nov., 1889.]
11. The calling attention to Gaudenzio Ferrari and putting him before the public with something like the emphasis that he deserves. [Ex Voto.]
12. The discovery of a life-sized statue of Leonardo da Vinci by Gaudenzio Ferrari. [Ex Voto.]
13. The unearthing of the Flemish sculptor Jean de Wespin (called Tabachetti in Italy) and of Giovanni Antonio Paracca. [Ex Voto.]
14. The finding out that theOdysseywas written at Trapani, the clearing up of the whole topography of the poem, and the demonstration, as it seems to me, that the poem was written by a woman and not by a man. Indeed, I may almost claim to have discovered theOdyssey, so altered does it become when my views of it are adopted. And robbing Homer of theOdysseyhas rendered theIliadfar more intelligible; besides, I have set the example of how he should be approached. [The Authoress of the Odyssey.]
15. The attempt to do justice to my grandfather by writingThe Life and Letters of Dr. Butlerfor which, however, I had special facilities.
16. InNarcissusandUlyssesI made an attempt, the failure of which has yet to be shown, to return to the principles of Handel and take them up where he left off.
17. The elucidation of Shakespeare’sSonnets. [Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered.]
I say nothing here about my novel [The Way of All Flesh] because it cannot be published till after my death; nor about my translations of theIliadand theOdyssey. Nevertheless these three books also were a kind of picking up of sovereigns, for the novel contains records of things I saw happening rather than imaginary incidents, and the principles on which the translations are made were obvious to any one willing to take and use them.
The foregoing is the list of my “mares’-nests,” and it is, I presume, this list which made Mr. Arthur Platt call me the Galileo of Mares’-Nests in his diatribe on myOdysseytheory in theClassical Review. I am not going to argue here that they are all, as I do not doubt, sound; what I want to say is that they are every one of them things that lay on the surface and open to any one else just as much as to me. Not one of them required any profundity of thought or extensive research; they only required that he who approached the various subjects with which they have to do should keep his eyes open and try to put himself in the position of the various people whom they involve. Above all, it was necessary to approach them without any preconceived theory and to be ready to throw over any conclusion the moment the evidence pointed against it. The reason why I have discarded so few theories that I have put forward—and at this moment I cannot recollect one from which there has been any serious attempt to dislodge me—is because I never allowed myself to form a theory at all till I found myself driven on to it whether I would or no. As long as it was possible to resist I resisted, and only yielded when I could not think that an intelligent jury under capable guidance would go with me if I resisted longer. I never went in search of any one of my theories; I never knew what it was going to be till I had found it; they came and found me, not I them. Such being my own experience, I begin to be pretty certain that other people have had much the same and that the soundest theories have come unsought and without much effort.
The conclusion, then, of the whole matter is that scientific and literary fortunes are, like money fortunes, made more by saving than in any other way—more through the exercise of the common vulgar essentials, such as sobriety and straightforwardness, than by the more showy enterprises that when they happen to succeed are called genius and when they fail, folly. The streets are full of sovereigns crying aloud for some one to come and pick them up, only the thick veil of our own insincerity and conceit hides them from us. He who can most tear this veil from in front of his eyes will be able to see most and to walk off with them.
I should say that the sooner I stop the better. If on my descent to the nether world I were to be met and welcomed by the shades of those to whom I have done a good turn while I was here, I should be received by a fairly illustrious crowd. There would be Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, Leonardo da Vinci, Gaudenzio Ferrari, Holbein, Tabachetti, Paracca and D’Enrico; the Authoress of theOdysseywould come and Homer with her; Dr. Butler would bring with him the many forgotten men and women to whom in my memoir I have given fresh life; there would be Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck; Shakespeare also would be there and Handel. I could not wish to find myself in more congenial company and I shall not take it too much to heart if the shade of Charles Darwin glides gloomily away when it sees me coming.
i.Translation from an Unpublished Work of Herodotus
ii.The Shield of Achilles,with Variations
iii.The Two Deans
iv.On the Italian Priesthood
Butler wrote these four pieces while he was an undergraduate at St. John’s College,Cambridge.He kept no copy of any of them,but his friend the Rev. Canon Joseph McCormick,D.D.,Rector of St. James’s,Piccadilly,kept copies in a note-book which he lent me.The only one that has appeared in print is“The Shield of Achilles,”which Canon McCormick sent toThe Eagle,the magazine of St. John’s College,Cambridge,and it was printed in the number for December1902,about six months after Butler’s death.
“On the Italian Priesthood”is a rendering of the Italian epigram accompanying it which,with others under the heading“Astuzia,Inganno,”is given inRaccolta di Proverbi Toscani di Giuseppe Giusti (Firenze, 1853).
v.A Psalm of Montreal
This was written in Canada in1875.Butler often recited it and gave copies of it to his friends.Knowing that Mr. Edward Clodd had had something to do with its appearance in theSpectatorI wrote asking him to tell me what he remembered about it.He very kindly replied, 29thOctober, 1905:
“The‘Psalm’was recited to me at the Century Club by Butler.He gave me a copy of it which I read to the late Chas. Anderson,Vicar of S. John’s,Limehouse,who lent it to Matt. Arnold(when inspecting Anderson’s Schools)who lent it to Richd. Holt Hutton who,with Butler’s consent,printed it in theSpectatorof18thMay, 1878.”
The“Psalm of Montreal”was included inSelections from Previous Works (1884)and inSeven Sonnets,etc.
vi.The Righteous Man
Butler wrote this in1876;it has appeared before only in1879in theExaminer,where it formed part of the correspondence“A Clergyman’s Doubts”of which the letter signed“Ethics”has already been given in this volume(see p.304ante). “The Righteous Man”was signed“X.Y.Z.”and,in order to connect it with the discussion,Butler prefaced it with a note comparing it to the last six inches of a line of railway;there is no part of the road so ugly,so little travelled over,or so useless generally,but it is the end,at any rate,of a very long thing.
vii.To Critics and Others.
This was written in1883and has not hitherto been published.
viii.For Narcissus
These are printed for the first time.The pianoforte score ofNarcissuswas published in1888.The poem(A)was written because there was some discussion then going on in musical circles about additional accompaniments to theMessiahand we did not want any to be written forNarcissus.
The poem(B)shows how Butler originally intended to open Part II with a kind of descriptive programme,but he changed his mind and did it differently.
ix.A Translation Attempted in Consequence of a Challenge
This translation into Homeric verse of a famous passage fromMartin Chuzzlewitwas a by-product of Butler’s work on theOdysseyand theIliad.It was published inThe Eaglein March, 1894,and was included inSeven Sonnets.
I asked Butler who had challenged him to attempt the translation and he replied that he had thought of that and had settled that,if any one else were to ask the question,he should reply that the challenge came from me.
x.In Memoriam H. R. F.
This appears in print now for the first time.Hans Rudolf Faesch,a young Swiss from Basel,came to London in the autumn of1893.He spent much of his time with us until14thFebruary, 1895,when he left for Singapore.We saw him off from Holborn Viaduct Station;he was not well and it was a stormy night.The next day Butler wrote this poem and,being persuaded that we should never see Hans Faesch again,called it an In Memoriam.Hans did not die on the journey,he arrived safely in Singapore and settled in the East where he carried on business.We exchanged letters with him frequently;he paid two visits to Europe and we saw him on both occasions.But he did not live long.He died in the autumn of1903at Vien Tiane in the Shan States,aged32,having survived Butler by about a year and a half.
xi.An Academic Exercise
This has never been printed before.It is a Farewell,and that is why I have placed it next after the In Memoriam.The contrast between the two poems illustrates the contrast pointed out at the close of the note on“The Dislike of Death” (ante, p. 359):
“The memory of a love that has been cut short by death remains still fragrant though enfeebled,but no recollection of its past can keep sweet a love that has dried up and withered through accidents of time and life.”
In the ordinary course Butler would have talked this Sonnet over with me at the time he wrote it,that is in January, 1902;he may even have done so,but I think not.From2ndJanuary, 1902,until late in March,when he left London alone for Sicily,I was ill with pneumonia and remember very little of what happened then.Between his return in May and his death in June I am sure he did not mention the subject.Knowing the facts that underlie the preceding poem I can tell why Butler called it an In Memoriam;not knowing the facts that underlie this poem I cannot tell why Butler should have called it an Academic Exercise.It is his last Sonnet and is dated“Sund. Jan.12th 1902,”within six months of his death,at a time when he was depressed physically because his health was failing and mentally because he had been“editing his remains,”reading and destroying old letters and brooding over the past.One of the subjects given in the section“Titles and Subjects”(ante)is“The diseases and ordinary causes of mortality among friendships.”I suppose that he found among his letters something which awakened memories of a friendship of his earlier life—a friendship that had suffered from a disease,whether it recovered or died would not affect the sincerity of the emotions experienced by Butler at the time he believed the friendship to be virtually dead.I suppose the Sonnet to be an In Memoriam upon the apprehended death of a friendship as the preceding poem is an In Memoriam upon the apprehended death of a friend.
This may be wrong,but something of the kind seems necessary to explain why Butler should have called the Sonnet an Academic Exercise.No one who has readShakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsideredwill require to be told that he disagreed contemptuously with those critics who believe that Shakespeare composed his Sonnets as academic exercises.It is certain that he wrote this,as he wrote his other Sonnets,in imitation of Shakespeare,not merely imitating the form but approaching the subject in the spirit in which he believed Shakespeare to have approached his subject.It follows therefore that he did not write this sonnet as an academic exercise,had he done so he would not have been imitating Shakespeare.If we assume that he was presenting his story as he presented the dialogue in“A Psalm of Montreal”in a form“perhaps true,perhaps imaginary,perhaps a little of the one and a little of the other,”it would be quite in the manner of the author ofThe Fair Havento burlesque the methods of the critics by ignoring the sincerity of the emotions and fixing on the little bit of inaccuracy in the facts.We may suppose him to be saying out loud to the critics: “You think Shakespeare’s Sonnets were composed as academic exercises,do you?Very well then,now what do you make of this?”And adding aside to himself: “That will be good enough for them;they’ll swallow anything.”
xii.A Prayer
Extract from Butler’s Note-Books under the date of February or March1883:
“‘Cleanse thou me from my secret sins.’I heard a man moralising on this and shocked him by saying demurely that I did not mind these so much,if I could get rid of those that were obvious to other people.”
He wrote the sonnet in1900or1901.In the first quatrain“spoken”does not rhyme with“open”;Butler knew this and would not alter it because there are similar assonances in Shakespeare,e.g.“open”and“broken”in Sonnet LXI.
xiii.Karma
I am responsible for grouping these three sonnets under this heading.The second one beginning“What is’t to live”appears in Butler’s Note-Book with the remark, “This wants much tinkering,but I cannot tinker it”—meaning that he was too much occupied with other things.He left the second line of the third of these sonnets thus:
“Them palpable to touch and view.”
I have“tinkered”it by adding the two syllables“and clear”to make the line complete.
In writing this sonnet Butler was no doubt thinking of a note he made in1891:
“It is often said that there is no bore like a clever bore.Clever people are always bores and always must be.That is,perhaps,why Shakespeare had to leave London—people could not stand him any longer.”
xiv.The Life after Death
Butler began to write sonnets in1898when he was studying those of Shakespeare on which he published a book in the following year. (Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered,&c.)He had gone to Flushing by himself and on his return wrote to me:
24Aug.1898. “Also at Flushing I wrote one myself,a poor innocent thing,but I was surprised to find how easily it came;if you like it I may write a few more.”
The“poor innocent thing”was the sonnet beginning“Not on sad Stygian shore,”the first of those I have grouped under the heading“The Life after Death.”It appears in his notebooks with this introductory sentence:
“Having now learned Shakespeare’s Sonnets by heart—and there are very few which I do not find I understand the better for having done this—on Saturday night last at the Hotel Zeeland at Flushing,finding myself in a meditative mood,I wrote the following with a good deal less trouble than I anticipated when I took pen and paper in hand.I hope I may improve it.”
Of course I liked the sonnet very much and he did write“a few more”—among them the two on Handel which I have put after“Not on sad Stygian shore”because he intended that they should follow it.I am sure he would have wished this volume to close with these three sonnets,especially because the last two of them were inspired by Handel,who was never absent from his thoughts for long.Let me conclude these introductory remarks by reproducing a note made in1883:
“Of all dead men Handel has had the largest place in my thoughts.In fact I should say that he and his music have been the central fact in my life ever since I was old enough to know of the existence of either life or music.All day long—whether I am writing or painting or walking,but always—I have his music in my head;and if I lose sight of it and of him for an hour or two,as of course I sometimes do,this is as much as I do.I believe I am not exaggerating when I say that I have never been a day since I was13without having Handel in my mind many times over.”
And the Johnians practise their tub in the following manner:—They select 8 of the most serviceable freshmen and put these into a boat and to each one of them they give an oar; and, having told them to look at the backs of the men before them, they make them bend forward as far as they can and at the same moment, and, having put the end of the oar into the water, pull it back again in to them about the bottom of the ribs; and, if any of them does not do this or looks about him away from the back of the man before him, they curse him in the most terrible manner, but if he does what he is bidden they immediately cry out:
“Well pulled, number so-and-so.”
For they do not call them by their names but by certain numbers, each man of them having a number allotted to him in accordance with his place in the boat, and the first man they call stroke, but the last man bow; and when they have done this for about 50 miles they come home again, and the rate they travel at is about 25 miles an hour; and let no one think that this is too great a rate for I could say many other wonderful things in addition concerning the rowing of the Johnians, but if a man wishes to know these things he must go and examine them himself. But when they have done they contrive some such a device as this, for they make them run many miles along the side of the river in order that they may accustom them to great fatigue, and many of them, being distressed in this way, fall down and die, but those who survive become very strong and receive gifts of cups from the others; and after the revolution of a year they have great races with their boats against those of the surrounding islanders, but the Johnians, both owing to the carefulness of the training and a natural disposition for rowing, are always victorious. In this way, then, the Johnians, I say, practise their tub.
And in it he placed the Fitzwilliam and King’s College Chapel and the lofty towered church of the Great Saint Mary, which looketh towards the Senate House, and King’s Parade and Trumpington Road and the Pitt Press and the divine opening of the Market Square and the beautiful flowing fountain which formerly Hobson laboured to make with skilful art; him did his father beget in the many-public-housed Trumpington from a slavey mother and taught him blameless works; and he, on the other hand, sprang up like a young shoot and many beautifully matched horses did he nourish in his stable, which used to convey his rich possessions to London and the various cities of the world; but oftentimes did he let them out to others and whensoever any one was desirous of hiring one of the long-tailed horses he took them in order, so that the labour was equal to all, wherefore do men now speak of the choice of the renowned Hobson. And in it he placed the close of the divine Parker, and many beautiful undergraduates were delighting their tender minds upon it playing cricket with one another; and a match was being played and two umpires were quarrelling with one another; the one saying that the batsman who was playing was out and the other declaring with all his might that he was not; and while they two were contending, reviling one another with abusive language, a ball came and hit one of them on the nose and the blood flowed out in a stream and darkness was covering his eyes, but the rest were crying out on all sides:
“Shy it up.”
And he could not; him, then, was his companion addressing with scornful words:
“Arnold, why dost thou strive with me since I am much wiser? Did not I see his leg before the wicket and rightly declare him to be out? Thee, then, has Zeus now punished according to thy deserts and I will seek some other umpire of the game equally-participated-in-by-both-sides.”
And in it he placed the Cam and many boats equally rowed on both sides were going up and down on the bosom of the deep rolling river and the coxswains were cheering on the men, for they were going to enter the contest of the scratchean fours; and three men were rowing together in a boat, strong and stout and determined in their hearts that they would either first break a blood vessel or earn for themselves the electroplated-Birmingham-manufactured magnificence of a pewter to stand on their ball tables in memorial of their strength, and from time to time drink from it the exhilarating streams of beer whensoever their dear heart should compel them; but the fourth was weak and unequally matched with the others and the coxswain was encouraging him and called him by name and spake cheering words:
“Smith, when thou hast begun the contest, be not flurried nor strive too hard against thy fate, look at the back of the man before thee and row with as much strength as the Fates spun out for thee on the day when thou fellest between the knees of thy mother, neither lose thine oar, but hold it tight with thy hands.”
Scene:The Court of St. John’s College,Cambridge.Enter the two deans on their way to morning chapel.
Junior Dean: Brother, I am much pleased with Samuel Butler,I have observed him mightily of late;Methinks that in his melancholy walkAnd air subdued when’er he meeteth meLurks something more than in most other men.
Senior Dean: It is a good young man. I do bethink meThat once I walked behind him in the cloister,He saw me not, but whispered to his fellow:“Of all men who do dwell beneath the moonI love and reverence most the senior Dean.”
Junior Dean: One thing is passing strange, and yet I know notHow to condemn it; but in one plain brief wordHe never comes to Sunday morning chapel.Methinks he teacheth in some Sunday school,Feeding the poor and starveling intellectWith wholesome knowledge, or on the Sabbath mornHe loves the country and the neighbouring spireOf Madingley or Coton, or perchanceAmid some humble poor he spends the dayConversing with them, learning all their cares,Comforting them and easing them in sickness.Oh ’tis a rare young man!
Senior Dean: I will advance him to some public post,He shall be chapel clerk, some day a fellow,Some day perhaps a Dean, but as thou saystHe is indeed an excellent young man—
Enter Butler suddenly without a coat,or anything on his head,rushing through the cloisters,bearing a cup,a bottle of cider,four lemons,two nutmegs,half a pound of sugar and a nutmeg grater.
Curtain falls on the confusion of Butler and the horror-stricken dismay of the two deans.
(Con arte e con inganno, si vive mezzo l’anno;Con inganno e con arte, si vive l’altra parte.)
In knavish art and gathering gearThey spend the one half of the year;In gathering gear and knavish artThey somehow spend the other part.
The City of Montreal is one of the most rising and, in many respects, most agreeable on the American continent, but its inhabitants are as yet too busy with commerce to care greatly about the masterpieces of old Greek Art. In the Montreal Museum of Natural History I came upon two plaster casts, one of the Antinous and the other of the Discobolus—not the good one, but in my poem, of course, I intend the good one—banished from public view to a room where were all manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, etc., and, in the middle of these, an old man stuffing an owl.
“Ah,” said I, “so you have some antiques here; why don’t you put them where people can see them?”
“Well, sir,” answered the custodian, “you see they are rather vulgar.”
He then talked a great deal and said his brother did all Mr. Spurgeon’s printing.
The dialogue—perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps a little of the one and a little of the other—between the writer and this old man gave rise to the lines that follow:
Stowed away in a Montreal lumber roomThe Discobolus standeth and turneth his face to the wall;Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed and set at naught,Beauty crieth in an attic and no man regardeth:O God! O Montreal!
Beautiful by night and day, beautiful in summer and winter,Whole or maimed, always and alike beautiful—He preacheth gospel of grace to the skin of owlsAnd to one who seasoneth the skins of Canadian owls:O God! O Montreal!
When I saw him I was wroth and I said, “O Discobolus!Beautiful Discobolus, a Prince both among gods and men!What doest thou here, how camest thou hither, Discobolus,Preaching gospel in vain to the skins of owls?”O God! O Montreal!
And I turned to the man of skins and said unto him, “O thou man of skins,Wherefore hast thou done thus to shame the beauty of the Discobolus?”But the Lord had hardened the heart of the man of skinsAnd he answered, “My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon.”O God! O Montreal!
“The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar—He has neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs;I, Sir, am a person of most respectable connectionsMy brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon.”O God! O Montreal!
Then I said, “O brother-in-law to Mr. Spurgeon’s haberdasher,Who seasonest also the skins of Canadian owls,Thou callest trousers ‘pants,’ whereas I call them ‘trousers,’Therefore thou art in hell-fire and may the Lord pity thee!”O God! O Montreal!
“Preferrest thou the gospel of Montreal to the gospel of Hellas,The gospel of thy connection with Mr. Spurgeon’s haberdashery to the gospel of the Discobolus?”Yet none the less blasphemed he beauty saying, “The Discobolus hath no gospel,But my brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon.”O God! O Montreal!
The righteous man will rob none but the defenceless,Whatsoever can reckon with him he will neither plunder nor kill;He will steal an egg from a hen or a lamb from an ewe,For his sheep and his hens cannot reckon with him hereafter—They live not in any odour of defencefulness:Therefore right is with the righteous man, and he taketh advantage righteously,Praising God and plundering.
The righteous man will enslave his horse and his dog,Making them serve him for their bare keep and for nothing further,Shooting them, selling them for vivisection when they can no longer profit him,Backbiting them and beating them if they fail to please him;For his horse and his dog can bring no action for damages,Wherefore, then, should he not enslave them, shoot them, sell them for vivisection?
But the righteous man will not plunder the defenceful—Not if he be alone and unarmed—for his conscience will smite him;He will not rob a she-bear of her cubs, nor an eagle of her eaglets—Unless he have a rifle to purge him from the fear of sin:Then may he shoot rejoicing in innocency—from ambush or a safe distance;Or he will beguile them, lay poison for them, keep no faith with them;For what faith is there with that which cannot reckon hereafter,Neither by itself, nor by another, nor by any residuum of ill consequences?Surely, where weakness is utter, honour ceaseth.
Nay, I will do what is right in the eye of him who can harm me,And not in those of him who cannot call me to account.Therefore yield me up thy pretty wings, O humming-bird!Sing for me in a prison, O lark!Pay me thy rent, O widow! for it is mine.Where there is reckoning there is sin,And where there is no reckoning sin is not.
O Critics, cultured Critics!Who will praise me after I am dead,Who will see in me both more and less than I intended,But who will swear that whatever it was it was all perfectly right:You will think you are better than the people who, when I was alive, swore that whatever I did was wrongAnd damned my books for me as fast as I could write them;But you will not be better, you will be just the same, neither better nor worse,And you will go for some future Butler as your fathers have gone for me.Oh! How I should have hated you!
But you, Nice People!Who will be sick of me because the critics thrust me down your throats,But who would take me willingly enough if you were not bored about me,Or if you could have the cream of me—and surely this should suffice:Please remember that, if I were living, I should be upon your sideAnd should hate those who imposed me either on myself or others;Therefore, I pray you, neglect me, burlesque me, boil me down, do whatever you like with me,But do not think that, if I were living, I should not aid and abet you.There is nothing that even Shakespeare would enjoy more than a good burlesque ofHamlet.
(A)
(To be written in front of the orchestral score.)
May he be damned for evermoreWho tampers with Narcissus’ score;May he by poisonous snakes be bittenWho writes more parts than what we’ve written.We tried to make our music clearFor those who sing and those who hear,Not lost and muddled up and drownedIn over-done orchestral sound;So kindly leave the work aloneOr do it as we want it done.
(B)
Part II
Symphony
(During which the audience is requested to think as follows:)
An aged lady taken illDesires to reconstruct her will;I see the servants hurrying forThe family solicitor;Post-haste he comes and with him bringsThe usual necessary things.With common form and driving quillHe draws the first part of the will,The more sonorous solemn soundsDenote a hundred thousand pounds,This trifle is the main bequest,Old friends and servants take the rest.’Tis done! I see her sign her name,I see the attestors do the same.Who is the happy legatee?In the next number you will see.
(Attempted in consequence of a challenge.)
“‘Mrs. Harris,’ I says to her, ‘dont name the charge, for if I could afford to lay all my feller creeturs out for nothink I would gladly do it; sich is the love I bear ’em. But what I always says to them as has the management of matters, Mrs. Harris,’”—here she kept her eye on Mr. Pecksniff—“‘be they gents or be they ladies—is, Dont ask me whether I wont take none, or whether I will, but leave the bottle on the chimley piece, and let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged.’” (Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. XIX).
“ως εφατ αυταρ εyώ μιν αμειβομένη προσέειπον,‘δαιμονίη, Άρρισσιαδέω αλοχ' αντιθέοιο,μη θην δη περι μίσθον ανείρεο, μήδ’ ονόμαζετοίη yάρ τοι εyων αyανη και ηπίη ειμί,η κεν λαον απαντ’ ει μοι δύναμίς yε παρείη,σίτου επηετανου βιότου θ’ αλις ενδον εόντος,ασπασίως και αμισθος εουσα περιστείλαιμι[εν λέκτρω λέξασα τανηλεyέος θανάτοιοαυτή, ος κε θάνησι βροτων και πότμον επίσπη]αλλ’ εκ τοι ερέω συ δ’ ενι φρεσι βάλλεο σησιν’”—οσσε δέ οι Πεξνειφον εσέδρακον ασκελες αιεί—“‘κείνοισιν yαρ πασι πιφαυσκομένη αyορεύωειτ’ ανδο’ ειτε yυναίχ’ οτέω τάδε ερyα μέμηλεν,ω φίλε, τίπτε συ ταυτα μ’ ανείρεαι; ουδέ τί σε χρηιδμέναι η εθέλω πίνειν μέθυ, ηε και ουχίει δ’ αy’ επ’ εσχάροφιν κάταθες δέπας ηδέος οινου,οφρ’ εν χερσιν ελω πίνουσά τε τερπομένη τε,χείλεά τε προσθεισ’ οπόταν φίλον ητορ ανώyη.’”
Feb. 14th, 1895
To
H. R. F.
Out, out, out into the night,With the wind bitter North East and the sea rough;You have a racking cough and your lungs are weak,But out, out into the night you go,So guide you and guard you Heaven and fare you well!
We have been three lights to one another and now we are two,For you go far and alone into the darkness;But the light in you was stronger and clearer than ours,For you came straighter from God and, whereas we had learned,You had never forgotten. Three minutes more and thenOut, out into the night you go,So guide you and guard you Heaven and fare you well!
Never a cross look, never a thought,Never a word that had better been left unspoken;We gave you the best we had, such as it was,It pleased you well, for you smiled and nodded your head;And now, out, out into the night you go,So guide you and guard you Heaven and fare you well!
You said we were a little weak that the three of us wept,Are we then weak if we laugh when we are glad?When men are under the knife let them roar as they will,So that they flinch not.Therefore let tears flow on, for so long as we liveNo such second sorrow shall ever draw nigh us,Till one of us two leaves the other aloneAnd goes out, out, out into the night,So guard the one that is left, O God, and fare him well!
Yet for the great bitterness of this griefWe three, you and he and I,May pass into the hearts of like true comrades hereafter,In whom we may weep anew and yet comfort them,As they too pass out, out, out into the night,So guide them and guard them Heaven and fare them well!
. . .
The minutes have flown and he whom we loved is gone,The like of whom we never again shall see;The wind is heavy with snow and the sea rough,He has a racking cough and his lungs are weak.Hand in hand we watch the train as it glidesOut, out, out into the night.So take him into thy holy keeping, O Lord,And guide him and guard him ever, and fare him well!
We were two lovers standing sadly byWhile our two loves lay dead upon the ground;Each love had striven not to be first to die,But each was gashed with many a cruel wound.Said I: “Your love was false while mine was true.”Aflood with tears he cried: “It was not so,’Twas your false love my true love falsely slew—For ’twas your love that was the first to go.”Thus did we stand and said no more for shameTill I, seeing his cheek so wan and wet,Sobbed thus: “So be it; my love shall bear the blame;Let us inter them honourably.” And yetI swear by all truth human and divine’Twas his that in its death throes murdered mine.