Samuel Butler: a sketch | Page 7

I live almost the life of a recluse, seeing
very few people and going nowhere that I can help--I mean in the way
of parties and so forth; if my friends had their way they would fritter
away my time without any remorse; but I made a regular stand against
it from the beginning and so, having my time pretty much in my own
hands, work hard; I find, as I am sure you must find, that it is next to
impossible to combine what is commonly called society and work.
But the time saved from society was not all devoted to painting. He
modified his letter to the Press about "Darwin among the Machines"
and, so modified, it appeared in 1865 as "The Mechanical Creation" in
the Reasoner, a paper then published in London by Mr. G. J. Holyoake.
And his mind returned to the considerations which had determined him
to decline to be ordained. In 1865 he printed anonymously a pamphlet
which he had begun in New Zealand, the result of his study of the
Greek Testament, entitled The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ as given by the Four Evangelists critically examined. After
weighing this evidence and comparing one account with another, he
came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ did not die upon the cross. It is
improbable that a man officially executed should escape death, but the
alternative, that a man actually dead should return to life, seemed to
Butler more improbable still and unsupported by such evidence as he
found in the gospels. From this evidence he concluded that Christ
swooned and recovered consciousness after his body had passed into
the keeping of Joseph of Arimathaea. He did not suppose fraud on the
part of the first preachers of Christianity; they sincerely believed that
Christ died and rose again. Joseph and Nicodemus probably knew the
truth but kept silence. The idea of what might follow from belief in one
single supposed miracle was never hereafter absent from Butler's mind.
In 1869, having been working too hard, he went abroad for a long
change. On his way back, at the Albergo La Luna, in Venice, he met an
elderly Russian lady in whose company he spent most of his time there.

She was no doubt impressed by his versatility and charmed, as
everyone always was, by his conversation and original views on the
many subjects that interested him. We may be sure he told her all about
himself and what he had done and was intending to do. At the end of
his stay, when he was taking leave of her, she said:
"Et maintenant, Monsieur, vous allez creer," meaning, as he understood
her, that he had been looking long enough at the work of others and
should now do something of his own.
This sank into him and pained him. He was nearly thirty-five, and
hitherto all had been admiration, vague aspiration and despair; he had
produced in painting nothing but a few sketches and studies, and in
literature only a few ephemeral articles, a collection of youthful letters
and a pamphlet on the Resurrection; moreover, to none of his work had
anyone paid the slightest attention. This was a poor return for all the
money which had been spent upon his education, as Theobald would
have said in The Way of All Flesh. He returned home dejected, but
resolved that things should be different in the future. While in this
frame of mind he received a visit from one of his New Zealand friends,
the late Sir F. Napier Broome, afterwards Governor of Western
Australia, who incidentally suggested his rewriting his New Zealand
articles. The idea pleased him; it might not be creating, but at least it
would be doing something. So he set to work on Sundays and in the
evenings, as relaxation from his profession of painting, and, taking his
New Zealand article, "Darwin among the Machines," and another, "The
World of the Unborn," as a starting-point and helping himself with a
few sentences from A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, he gradually
formed Erewhon. He sent the MS. bit by bit, as it was written, to Miss
Savage for her criticism and approval. He had the usual difficulty about
finding a publisher. Chapman and Hall refused the book on the advice
of George Meredith, who was then their reader, and in the end he
published it at his own expense through Messrs. Trubner.
Mr. Sydney C. Cockerell told me that in 1912 Mr. Bertram Dobell,
second- hand bookseller of Charing Cross Road, offered a copy of
Erewhon for 1 pounds 10s.; it was thus described in his catalogue:

"Unique copy with the following note in the author's handwriting on
the half-title: 'To Miss E. M. A. Savage this first copy of