Chapter 1

Transcribed by from the 1921 W. Heffer & Sons edition by David Price, email [email protected]

{Samuel Butler About 1866: p0.jpg}

THE SAMUEL BUTLER COLLECTION AT SAINT JOHN'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE

A Catalogue and a Commentary

BY HENRY FESTING JONES AND A. T. BARTHOLOMEW

CAMBRIDGE W. HEFFER & SONS LTD. 1921

It seems to me, the more I think of it, that the true life of anyone is not the one they live in themselves, and of which they are themselves conscious, but the life they live in the hearts of others. Our bodies and brains are but the tools with which we work to make our true life, which is not in the tool-box and tools we ignorantly mistake for ourselves, but in the work we do with them; and this work, if it be truly done, lives more in others than in ourselves.

S. BUTLER, 1895.

[THIS EDITION IS LIMITED TO 750 COPIES]

Preface

The Butler Collection was not all given to St. John's at once. I sent up some pictures and some books in 1917; and at intervals I have sent more, always keeping a list of what has gone. Now that I have no more to send seems the proper time for a Catalogue to be issued, and it is made from the lists which I kept, and which were in part printed in _The Eagle_, put in order by A. T. Bartholomew and annotated by myself. I am responsible for the notes and am the person intended when "I" and "me" occur. Bartholomew is responsible for the classification, for verifying, for checking, and for the bibliographical part.

In time the collection will no doubt increase as new editions or translations of Butler's books appear and as further books are published referring to him. All such I intend to include in the collection; and I hope that other Butlerians will see fit to make additions to it.

I think that the notes give all necessary explanations; but I may perhaps say here that many of the pictures were made before Butler contemplated writing such a book as _Alps and Sanctuaries_. When he was preparing that book he went to the places therein described and made on the spot many black and white drawings for reproduction; but he found that this method would take too long, so he made others of the black and white drawings from oil and water-colour sketches which he had done previously, and this is why some of the pictures are dated many years before the book was published.

Among the books, under _Alps and Sanctuaries_ (p. 18), is Streatfeild's copy of that work; and under _The Way of All Flesh_ (p. 21) is his copy of that book. Both these copies are said to have been "purchased." I bought them from the dealer to whom Streatfeild sold them when his health broke down and he moved from his rooms. I have no doubt that he would have given them to me if I had asked for them, but he was not in a condition to be troubled about business.

St. John's College has contributed 30 pounds towards the expenses of printing and publishing this catalogue. I offer them my most cordial thanks for their generosity. I am also deeply indebted to them for finding space in which to house the collection. I shrank from the responsibility of keeping it myself. I remembered also that an individual dies; even a family may become extinct; but St. John's College, we hope, will enjoy as near an approach to immortality as can be attained on this transient globe. I am sure that Butler would be pleased if he could know that during that period this collection will be preserved and will be accessible to all who wish to visit it.

H. F. J.

120, MAIDA VALE, W. 9, _December_, 1920.

Contents

I. PICTURES, SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS BY OR RELATING TO SAMUEL BUTLER . . . 1

II. BOOKS AND MUSIC WRITTEN BY BUTLER . . . 15

III. BOOKS, ETC., ABOUT BUTLER . . . 24

IV. BOOKS, ETC., RELATING TO BUTLER AND HIS SUBJECTS . . . 28

V. BOOKS, FORMERLY THE PROPERTY OF SAMUEL BUTLER . . . 32

VI. ATLASES AND MAPS, FORMERLY THE PROPERTY OF SAMUEL BUTLER . . . 39

VII. MUSIC, FORMERLY THE PROPERTY OF SAMUEL BUTLER . . . 41

VIII. MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, FORMERLY THE PROPERTY OF OR RELATING TO SAMUEL BUTLER . . . 44

IX. PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS, FORMERLY THE PROPERTY OF OR RELATING TO SAMUEL BUTLER . . . 47

X. PORTRAITS, FORMERLY THE PROPERTY OF OR RELATING TO SAMUEL BUTLER . . . 49

XI. EFFECTS, FORMERLY THE PERSONAL PROPERTY OF SAMUEL BUTLER . . . 51

Illustrations

SAMUEL BUTLER. ABOUT 1866 . . . _Frontispiece_

From a photograph taken by his sister, Mrs. Bridges, in the garden at Langar soon after his return from New Zealand.

FACSIMILE OF POST-CARD FROM S. BUTLER TO H. F. JONES, FLORENCE, SEPT. 3, 1892 . . . _face p._ 23

Butler was staying in Florence on his way home from his first visit to Sicily. The old Greek painting referred to is reproduced as the frontispiece to _The Authoress of the Odyssey_ (1897). Mlle. V. is Mlle. Vaillant, as to whom see _the Memoir_. The "nose" belonged to the editor of a Swiss paper whom I had met at Fusio.

SAMUEL BUTLER WHEN AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE. ABOUT 1858 . . . _face p._ 52

This is taken from a photographic group of Butler and three friends. The friends are omitted, as I have failed to identify them.

I. PICTURES, SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS BY OR RELATING TO SAMUEL BUTLER

By his will Butler bequeathed his pictures, sketches, and studies to his executors to be destroyed or otherwise disposed of as they might think best, the proceeds (if any) to fall into residue. They were not sold: some were given to Shrewsbury School; some to the British Museum; one, an unfinished sketch of the back of the house in which Keats died on the Piazza di Spagna, Rome, to the Keats and Shelley Memorial there; many were distributed among his friends, Alfred Cathie taking fifteen and I taking all that were left over. Alfred lives in Canal Road, Mile End, and, this being on the route of the German air-raids, he was anxious to put his pictures in a place of safety. Accordingly it was arranged between us in 1917 that I should buy them from him. When he heard that I was giving them to St. John's, he desired that I should not buy all, because he wished to give two of them himself to the College. Accordingly, I bought only thirteen, and the remaining two, viz. no. 28, Leatherhead Church, and no. 59, Chiavenna, 1887, were given to St. John's College by Alfred.

There are but few sketches or pictures by Butler between 1888 and 1896. This is because his sketching was interrupted by his having to take up photography for the preparation of _Ex Voto_. Almost before this book was published (1888) he had plunged into _The Life and Letters of Dr. Butler_, and in 1892 he added to his absorbing occupations the problem of the _Odyssey_. Thus he had little leisure or energy for the labour of painting; and this labour was always great. He could not leave his outline until he had got it right, and there was a perpetual chase after the changing shadows. And when he had got the outline it was so constantly disappearing under the colour that he took to making "a careful outline on a separate sheet of paper"; this was to be kept, after he had traced the drawing on to the paper which was to receive the colour, and to be referred to continually while he proceeded. When he met with the camera lucida, which he bought in Paris, and which is among the objects given to St. John's, he thought his difficulties were solved and wrote to Miss Savage, 9 October, 1882: "I have got a new toy, a camera lucida, which does all the drawing for me, and am so pleased with it that I am wanting to use it continually." To which in 1901 he added this note: "What a lot of time I wasted over that camera lucida, to be sure!" It did all the drawing for him, but it distorted the perspective so that the outlines of the many sketches which he produced with its help were a disappointment.

The camera lucida having failed, his hopes were next fixed upon photography, which, by rapidly and correctly recording anything he felt a desire to sketch, was to give him something from which he could afterwards construct a picture. So he took an immense number of snap- shots, of which many are at St. John's, but he never did anything with them. Nos. 62 and 63, which were done by Sadler from Butler's photographs, show how he would have proceeded if he had not had too many other things to do.

It was not until 1896, when _The Life of Dr. Butler_ appeared, that he was able to return seriously to sketching, and by that time he was over sixty and too old to be burdened with the paraphernalia necessary for oils; he therefore confined himself to water-colours.

Some of the pictures in this list were included in the list in _The Eagle_, vol. xxxix., no. 175, March 1918, and the remainder in the succeeding number, June 1918. In making the present catalogue I have corrected such errors and misprints as I noticed in _The Eagle_, and I have re-arranged and renumbered the items so as to make them run in chronological order. I have also amplified some of the notes. I have placed the sketches and drawings in order of date because to examine them in that order helps the spectator to realise the progress made by Butler in his artistic studies.

SAMUEL BUTLER

1. Black and white outline sketch: Civita Vecchia, 1854.

Butler went abroad with his family, his second visit to Italy, for the winter of 1853-4. They travelled through Switzerland to Rome and Naples, starting in August 1853, and Butler thus missed the half-year at school. I am sorry that I have not found any more finished drawing made by him on this occasion.

DOUGLAS YEOMAN BLAKISTON

2. Pencil drawing: Samuel Butler, 1854.

Reproduced in the _Memoir_, ch. iii. On the back of this drawing is the beginning of a water-colour sketch. It was in a book with others mentioned in the _Memoir_ as having been given to Shrewsbury School (I. 44). I have no doubt that the sketch on the back is by Butler, and represents part of the Rectory house at Langar.

The Rev. D. Y. Blakiston was born in 1832. He studied art at the Royal Academy Schools especially under W. Dobson, R.A. From about 1850 to 1865 he painted in London and at St. Leonard's, and exhibited at the Royal Academy. About 1865 he entered at Downing College, took Orders in 1869, and was presented to the living of East Grinstead in 1871, which he held till his retirement soon after 1908. He died in 1914. Throughout his life he made a practise of sketching his friends. I suppose he must have met and sketched Butler on some occasion when Butler was in London staying with his cousins the Worsleys. The artist's son, the Rev. H. E. D. Blakiston, when President of Trinity College, Oxford, gave me a cutting from _The East Grinstead Observer_ containing a full obituary of him. It is among the papers at St. John's College, and is referred to in the Postscript to the Preface to my _Memoir_ of Butler.

HENRY FESTING JONES

3. My first attempt at a drawing in pencil and ink of Butler's Homestead, Mesopotamia, New Zealand.

I did it in 1910 or thereabouts from a faded photograph taken about 1863 and lent to Butler by J. D. Enys. _Also_ Emery Walker's reproduction of my first attempt which was not used in the _Memoir_.

4. My second attempt, which was reproduced in the _Memoir_.

SAMUEL BUTLER

5. Water-colour: A view in Cambridge.

Probably done when Butler was an undergraduate, and given to St. John's some years ago. I found it in the book wherein I found Blakiston's drawing (no. 2).

6. Oil Painting: Family Prayers.

On the ceiling he wrote "I did this in 1864, and if I had gone on doing things out of my own head instead of making studies I should have been all right." (_Memoir_, I. 115.) Reproduced in the _Memoir_, ch. xxiv., and referred to, ch. viii.

7. Oil Painting: His own head.

"He painted at home as well as at Heatherley's, and by way of a cheap model hung up a looking-glass near the window of his painting room and made many studies of his own head. He gave some of them away and destroyed and painted over others, but after his death we found a number in his rooms--some of the earlier ones very curious" (_Memoir_, ch. viii.). This is one of the earlier ones. It is inscribed, "S.B., Feb. 18, 1865." We found also a still more curious one which was given to Gogin, who was interested in it as being the work of an untaught student. See also no. 36.

JOHN LEECH

8. Five pencil drawings on one card.

John Leech died in 1864, the year in which Butler returned from New Zealand. There was a sale of his drawings by his sisters, and I remember going to see them as a boy, but I do not remember when; it was, no doubt, soon after the artist's death. The house was in Radnor Place, Bayswater. His sisters afterwards kept a small girls' school, and my sister Lilian went there. I have placed these Leech drawings here in order of date on the assumption that Butler bought them at the sale. He had another drawing by Leech, which used to hang in his chambers, and was given to his cousin, Reginald Worsley.

SAMUEL BUTLER

9. Oil Painting: Interior of Butler's sitting-room, 15, Clifford's Inn.

There is something written in pencil on the panelling in the left-hand bottom corner. I believe the words to be "Corner of my room, Augt. 1865, S.B." Reproduced in the _Memoir_, ch. xv.

Here are shown Butler's books, including Bradshaw's Guide and Whitaker's Almanack, of which he speaks somewhere as being indispensable. I admit that I cannot identify them, but he used to keep them among the books in these shelves. I do not think he ever possessed that equally indispensable book the Post Office Directory. But he had more books than those shown in this painting. Between his sitting-room and his painting- room was a short passage in which was a cupboard, and this contained the rest. I do not remember how many there were, but not enough to invalidate the statement he made to Robert Bridges (_Memoir_ II. 320), "I have, I verily believe, the smallest library of any man in London who is by way of being literary."

10. Water-colour: Dieppe, The Castle, 1866.

Butler was at Dieppe with Pauli in 1866. (_Memoir_, ch. viii.)

11. Small water-colour drawing: Dieppe, 1866.

This is in the portfolio of miscellaneous drawings, etc., by Butler, Gogin, and Sadler, no. 81.

12. Oil Painting: Two heads done as a study at Heatherley's.

I showed this to Gaetano Meo, and he remembered that the man was Calorossi, a model, whose brother went to Paris and became known as the proprietor of a studio there. The woman, he said, was Maria, another model. The background is Dieppe. I suppose that Butler did this study in the autumn of 1866, using nos. 10 and 11, the water-colours of Dieppe, or some other sketch made on the spot, for the background. The idea was to make portraits of two heads with a landscape background in the manner of Giovanni Bellini.

13. Drawing of a cast of the Antinous as Hermes.

Inscribed "Samuel Butler for probationership, December 28th 1868." Done, I suppose, at South Kensington.

14. Drawing of a hand and foot.

Probably also done at South Kensington.

15. Black and white drawing of a fir tree.

This, I suspect, was made while Butler was under the influence of Ruskin's _Elements of Drawing_--say about 1870. He threw off that influence later.

16. Four water-colour notes in one frame.

One is inscribed "S.B." and another "Kingston, near Lewes." I suppose that they are all on the South Downs, and they are all early--say 1870.

JAMES FERGUSON

17. Crayon drawing: Butler playing Handel, 1870 (?).

Reproduced in the _Memoir_ (I. ix.). Ferguson was a fellow art-student with Butler.

SAMUEL BUTLER

18. Oil Painting: The Valle di Sambucco, above Fusio.

The sambucco or sambuco is the elder tree. Butler, writing of this valley (_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. xxvi.; new ed. ch. xxv.), says: "Here, even in summer, the evening air will be crisp, and the dew will form as soon as the sun goes off; but the mountains at one end of it will keep the last rays of the sun. It is then the valley is at its best, especially if the goats and cattle are coming together to be milked."

19. Water-colour: The Rocca Borromeo, Angera, Lago Maggiore. Entrance to the Castle. 1871.

The birthplace of S. Carlo Borromeo. It was over this gateway as well as over the gateway of Fenis (no. 53), that he told me there ought to be a fresco of Fortune with her Wheel (_Memoir_, ch. xx.) The Rocca Borromeo, Angera, and Arona are mentioned in _Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. xxiv. (new edn., ch. xxiii.), and several times in the _Memoir_, _e.g._ ch. ix., xvi.

20. Water-colour: The Rocca Borromeo. A Room in the Castle. 1871.

I am not sure whether or not this is the room in which S. Carlo Borromeo was born. One view of that room is in _Alps and Sanctuaries_ ch. xxiv. (new edition, ch. xxiii). This may be the same room looking towards the left and showing a piece of window-seat and shutter.

21. Water-colour: Amsteg. 1871.

22. Water-colour: Fobello. A Christening. 1871.

This was to have been a picture for the Academy, but he did not finish it. Here are shown women with short skirts and leggings. They dress like this so that they can climb into the ash trees and pull off the leaves which they throw down upon the grass to be mixed up with the hay. (_Memoir_, ch. ix.)

23. Oil Painting: Varallo-Sesia. The Washing Place. 1871.

"Butler made three oil sketches at Varallo all the same size, about 16x20. One is the washing place outside the town." (_Diary of a Journey_, p. 16). The other two were both done in the Piazza on the Sacro Monte. One was given to the Municipio of Varallo-Sesia; the other to the Avvocato Francesco Negri of Casale-Monferrato.

24. Oil Painting: Monte Bisbino, near Como. 1876.

_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. xxi. The white sanctuary on the summit shines like a diamond in some lights.

25. Oil Painting: From S. Nicolao, Mendrisio. 1876.

_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. xxi.

GEORGE McCULLOCH

26. Two lots of studies of women, about 1876.

McCulloch was a friend and fellow art-student of Butler's, and is mentioned in the _Memoir_, "an admirable draughtsman."

SAMUEL BUTLER

27. Oil sketch: Low wall and grass in front, snowy mountains behind. It must be a view in the Leventina Valley.

28. Water-colour inscribed "S.B.": Leatherhead Church.

Butler was particularly pleased with the dormer windows, an unusual feature in a church roof. This must have been done somewhere about 1877, but there is no evidence. This is one of the pictures given by Alfred.

29. Oil Painting: Montreal, Canada, from the Mountain, about 1877.

30. Oil Painting: Calpiogna, Val Leventina. 1877.

Evening, looking down the valley.

31. Oil Painting: Three sketches on one panel, scenes in the Val Leventina.

They are near Faido, but I cannot further identify them.

32. Oil Painting: Calonico.

_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. v.

33. Oil Painting: Tengia.

_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. iv.

34. Oil Painting: Prato.

Other views of Prato appear in _Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. iii.

35. Oil Painting: Lago Tom, Piora, Val Leventina. 1877.

Ch. vi. in _Alps and Sanctuaries_ is headed "Piora." "Piora in fact is a fine breezy upland valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of cow about it." Butler thought he knew what went on in Piora and, as he proceeds through the valley, he says: "Here I heard that there were people, and the people were not so much asleep as the simple peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by nine o'clock in the evening. For now was the time when they had moved up from Ronco, Altanca, and other villages in some numbers to cut the hay, and were living for a fortnight or three weeks in the chalets upon the Lago di Cadagna. As I have said, there is a chapel, but I doubt whether it is attended during this season with the regularity with which the parish churches of Ronco, Altanca, etc., are attended during the rest of the year. The young people, I am sure, like these annual visits to the high places, and will be hardly weaned from them. Happily the hay will always be there, and will have to be cut by someone, and the old people will send the young ones."

The foregoing passage throws light upon that other passage in _Life and Habit_, ch. ii., about S. Paul, which concludes thus: "But the true grace, with her groves and high places, and troops of young men and maidens crowned with flowers, and singing of love and youth and wine--the true grace he drove out into the wilderness--high up, it may be, into Piora, and into such-like places. Happy they who harboured her in her ill report."

After Ernest has received Alethea's money, and while he and Edward Overton are returning from Christina's funeral, in ch. lxxxiv. of _The Way of All Flesh_, he tells his godfather his plans for spending the next year or two. He has formed a general impression that the most vigorous and amiable of known nations--the modern Italians, the old Greeks and Romans, and the South Sea Islanders--have not been purists. He wants to find out what such people do; they are the practical authorities on the question--What is best for man?

"Let us," he says, "settle the fact first and fight about the moral tendencies afterwards."

"In fact," said I laughingly, "you mean to have high old times."

"Neither higher nor lower," was the answer, "than those people whom I can find to have been the best in all ages."

Accordingly Ernest left England and visited "almost all parts of the world, but only staying in those places where he found the inhabitants unusually good-looking and agreeable." "At last in the spring of 1867 he returned, his luggage stained with the variation of each hotel advertisement 'twixt here and Japan. He looked very brown and strong, and so well-favoured that it almost seemed as if he must have caught some good looks from the people among whom he had been staying."

We are not told what particular countries Ernest went to; Japan is mentioned, but less because Ernest went there than because the name of a distant place was wanted to justify and complete the echo of the description of Sir Walter Blunt in I. _Hen. IV._ i. 64:

Stained with the variation of each soil Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours.

Butler confided to me verbally that Ernest visited, among other places, Piora, and that he stayed there "when the mowing grass was about." {8}

36. Oil Painting: inscribed, "S. Butler. Sketch of his own head. April 1878."

This is one of the series of portraits of himself referred to in the note to no. 7. Another of these later portraits was given after his death to Christchurch, New Zealand; and another to the Schools, Shrewsbury. This one was given by Butler to me soon after it was painted, and it remained in my possession till 1911, when I gave it to St. John's College. It is reproduced as the frontispiece to vol. I. of the _Memoir_.

37. Oil Sketch: Calonico.

_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. v. On a panel with no. 38, Rossura, on the other side.

38. Oil Sketch: Rossura. The altar by the porch of the church. 1878.

On a panel with no. 37, Calonico, on the other side.

39. Oil sketch on a panel: Rossura, from inside the porch looking out.

"I know few things more touching in their way than the porch of Rossura church." (_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. iv.)

"The church is built on a slope, and the porch, whose entrance is on a lower level than that of the floor of the church, contains a flight of steps leading up to the church door. The porch is there to shelter the steps, on and around which the people congregate and gossip before and after service, especially in bad weather. They also sometimes overflow picturesquely, and kneel praying on the steps while service is going on inside." (_Memoir_, I. 284-5.)