Samuel Butler: a sketch | Page 8

Erewhon with
the author's best thanks for many invaluable suggestions and
corrections.'" When Mr. Cockerell inquired for the book it was sold.
After Miss Savage's death in 1885 all Butler's letters to her were
returned to him, including the letter he wrote when he sent her this
copy of Erewhon. He gave her the first copy issued of all his books that
were published in her lifetime, and, no doubt, wrote an inscription in
each. If the present possessors of any of them should happen to read
this sketch I hope they will communicate with me, as I should like to
see these books. I should also like to see some numbers of the
Drawing-Room Gazette, which about this time belonged to or was
edited by a Mrs. Briggs. Miss Savage wrote a review of Erewhon,
which appeared in the number for 8th June, 1872, and Butler quoted a
sentence from her review among the press notices in the second edition.
She persuaded him to write for Mrs. Briggs notices of concerts at
which Handel's music was performed. In 1901 he made a note on one
of his letters that he was thankful there were no copies of the
Drawing-Room Gazette in the British Museum, meaning that he did not
want people to read his musical criticisms; nevertheless, I hope some
day to come across back numbers containing his articles.
The opening of Erewhon is based upon Butler's colonial experiences;
some of the descriptions remind one of passages in A First Year in
Canterbury Settlement, where he speaks of the excursions he made with
Doctor when looking for sheep-country. The walk over the range as far
as the statues is taken from the Upper Rangitata district, with some
alterations; but the walk down from the statues into Erewhon is
reminiscent of the Leventina Valley in the Canton Ticino. The great
chords, which are like the music moaned by the statues are from the
prelude to the first of Handel's Trois Lecons; he used to say:
"One feels them in the diaphragm--they are, as it were, the groaning
and labouring of all creation travailing together until now."
There is a place in New Zealand named Erewhon, after the book; it is
marked on the large maps, a township about fifty miles west of Napier

in the Hawke Bay Province (North Island). I am told that people in
New Zealand sometimes call their houses Erewhon and occasionally
spell the word Erehwon which Butler did not intend; he treated wh as a
single letter, as one would treat th. Among other traces of Erewhon
now existing in real life are Butler's Stones on the Hokitika Pass, so
called because of a legend that they were in his mind when he
described the statues.
The book was translated into Dutch in 1873 and into German in 1897.
Butler wrote to Charles Darwin to explain what he meant by the "Book
of the Machines": "I am sincerely sorry that some of the critics should
have thought I was laughing at your theory, a thing which I never
meant to do and should be shocked at having done." Soon after this
Butler was invited to Down and paid two visits to Mr. Darwin there; he
thus became acquainted with all the family and for some years was on
intimate terms with Mr. (now Sir) Francis Darwin.
It is easy to see by the light of subsequent events that we should
probably have had something not unlike Erewhon sooner or later, even
without the Russian lady and Sir F. N. Broome, to whose promptings,
owing to a certain diffidence which never left him, he was perhaps
inclined to attribute too much importance. But he would not have
agreed with this view at the time; he looked upon himself as a painter
and upon Erewhon as an interruption. It had come, like one of those
creatures from the Land of the Unborn, pestering him and refusing to
leave him at peace until he consented to give it bodily shape. It was
only a little one, and he saw no likelihood of its having any successors.
So he satisfied its demands and then, supposing that he had written
himself out, looked forward to a future in which nothing should
interfere with the painting. Nevertheless, when another of the unborn
came teasing him he yielded to its importunities and allowed himself to
become the author of The Fair Haven, which is his pamphlet on the
Resurrection, enlarged and preceded by a realistic memoir of the
pseudonymous author, John Pickard Owen. In the library of St. John's
College, Cambridge, are two copies of the pamphlet with pages cut out;
he used these pages in forming the MS. of The Fair Haven. To have

published this book as by the author of Erewhon would