Samuel Butler: A Sketch | Page 8

brass clocks of the
thirteenth century. Then comes the question: Who will be man's
successor? To which the answer is: We are ourselves creating our own
successors. Man will become to the machine what the horse and the
dog are to man; the conclusion being that machines are, or are
becoming, animate.
In 1863 Butler's family published in his name 'A First Year in
Canterbury Settlement', which, as the preface states, was compiled
from his letters home, his journal and extracts from two papers
contributed to the 'Eagle'. These two papers had appeared in the 'Eagle'
as three articles entitled "Our Emigrant" and signed "Cellarius." The
proof-sheets of the book went out to New Zealand for correction and
were sent back in the Colombo, which was as unfortunate as the
'Burmah', for she was wrecked. The proofs, however, were fished up,
though so nearly washed out as to be almost undecipherable. Butler
would have been just as well pleased if they had remained at the
bottom of the Indian Ocean, for he never liked the book and always
spoke of it as being full of youthful priggishness; but I think he was a
little hard upon it. Years afterwards, in one of his later books, after
quoting two passages from Mr. Grant Allen and pointing out why he
considered the second to be a recantation of the first, he wrote: "When

Mr. Allen does make stepping-stones of his dead selves he jumps upon
them to some tune." And he was perhaps a little inclined to treat his
own dead self too much in the same spirit.
Butler did very well with the sheep, sold out in 1864, and returned via
Callao to England. He travelled with three friends whose acquaintance
he had made in the colony; one was Charles Paine Pauli, to whom he
dedicated 'Life and Habit'. He arrived in August, 1864, in London,
where he took chambers consisting of a sitting-room, a bedroom, a
painting-room and a pantry, at 15, Clifford's Inn, second floor (north).
The net financial result of the sheep-farming and the selling out was
that he practically doubled his capital, that is to say he had about 8,000
pounds. This he left in New Zealand, invested on mortgage at 10 per
cent., the then current rate in the colony; it produced more than enough
for him to live upon in the very simple way that suited him best, and
life in the Inns of Court resembles life at Cambridge in that it reduces
the cares of housekeeping to a minimum; it suited him so well that he
never changed his rooms, remaining there thirty-eight years till his
death.
He was now his own master and able at last to turn to painting. He
studied at the art school in Streatham Street, Bloomsbury, which had
formerly been managed by Henry Sass, but, in Butler's time, was being
carried on by Francis Stephen Cary, son of the Rev. Henry Francis
Cary, who had been a school-fellow of Dr. Butler at Rugby, and is well
known as the translator of Dante and the friend of Charles Lamb.
Among his fellow-students was Mr. H. R. Robertson, who told me that
the young artists got hold of the legend, which is in some of the books
about Lamb, that when Francis Stephen Cary was a boy and there was a
talk at his father's house as to what profession he should take up, Lamb,
who was present, said:
"I should make him an apo-po-pothe-Cary."
They used to repeat this story freely among themselves, being, no
doubt, amused by the Lamb-like pun, but also enjoying the malicious
pleasure of hinting that it might have been as well for their art
education if the advice of the gentle humorist had been followed.
Anyone who wants to know what kind of an artist F. S. Cary was can
see his picture of Charles and Mary Lamb in the National Portrait
Gallery.

In 1865 Butler sent from London to New Zealand an article entitled
"Lucubratio Ebria," which was published in the 'Press' of 29th July,
1865. It treated machines from a point of view different from that
adopted in "Darwin among the Machines," and was one of the steps
that led to 'Erewhon' and ultimately to 'Life and Habit'. The article is
reproduced in 'The Note-Books of Samuel Butler' (1912).
Butler also studied art at South Kensington, but by 1867 he had begun
to go to Heatherley's School of Art in Newman Street, where he
continued going for many years. He made a number of friends at
Heatherley's, and among them Miss Eliza Mary Anne Savage. There
also he first met Charles Gogin, who, in 1896, painted the portrait of
Butler which is now in the National Portrait Gallery. He described
himself as an artist in