Erewhon revisited twenty years later, both by the original discoverer of the country and by his son

Front matter

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Author's Preface

TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION

I FORGET when, hut not very long after I had published "Erewhon" in 1872, it occurred to me to ask myself what course events in Erewhon would probably take after Mr. Higgs, as I suppose I may now call him, had made his escape in the balloon with Arowhena. Given a people in the conditions supposed to exist in Erewhon, and given the apparently miraculous ascent of a remarkable stranger into the heavens with an earthly bride — what would be the effect on the people generally f

There was no use in trying to solve this problem before, say, twenty years should have given time for Erezvhonian developments to assume something like permanent shape, and in 1892 / was too busy with books now published to be able to attend to Erewhon. It was not till the early winter of 1900, i.e., as nearly as may be thirty years after the date of Higgs's escape, that I found time to deal with the question above stated, and to anszvcr it, according to my lights, in the book zvliich I nozv lay before the public.

I have concluded, I believe rightly, that the events described in Chapter XXIV. of ''Erewhon'' woidd give rise to such a cataclysmic change in the old Erezvhonian opinions as zvould result in the development of a new religion. Now the development of all new religions follows much the same general course. In all cases the vi Author's Preface

times are more or less out of joint — older fcdths are losing their hold upon the masses. At such times, let a personality appear, strong in itself, and made to seem still stronger by association with some supposed transcendent miracle, and it will he easy to raise a Lo here! that will attract many followers. If there be a single great, and apparently well-authenticated, miracle, others will accrete round it; then, in all religions that have so originated, there will follow temples, priests, rites, sincere believers, and unscrupidous exploiters of public credidity. To chronicle the events that followed Higgs's balloon ascent without shewing that they were much as they have been under like conditions in other places, would be to hold the mirror up to something very wide of nature.

Analogy, however, between courses of events is one thing — historic parallelisms abound; analogy between the mam actors in events is a very different one, and one, moreover, of which few examples can be found. The development of the new ideas in Erewhon is ai familiar one, but there is no more likeness between Higgs and the founder of any other religion, than there is between Jesus Christ and Mahomet. He is a typical middle-class Englishman, deeply tainted with priggishness in his earlier years, but in great part freed from it by the sweet uses of adversity.

If I may be allowed for a moment to speak about myself, I would say that I have never ceased to profess myself a member of the more advanced wing of the English Broad Church. What those who belong to this wing believe, I believe. What they reject, I reject. No two people think absolutely alike on any subject, hut when I converse with advanced Broad Churchmen I

Author's Preface vii

find myself in substantial harmony with them. I believe — and should he very sorry if I did not believe — that, mutatis mutandis, such men mill find the advice given on pp. 250-253 and 259-263 of this book much what, under the supposed circumstances, they would themselves give.

Lastly, I should express my great obligations to Mr. R. A. Streatfeild of the British Museum, who, in the absence from England of my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones, has kindly supervised the corrections of my book as it passed through the press.

SAMUEL BUTLER.

May I, 1901

Contents

PACK

Introduction by Morehy Acklom .... xiii

CHAPTER

Introduction

For all admirers of Samuel Butler special interest attaches to Erewhon Revisited. It is the last book that he wrote, though not the latest published. Not only this, but being a sequel to one of his own books written some thirty years before, and being concerned with substantially the same locality and the same people, it affords us a parallax, as it were, by means of which we may appraise the evolution of Butlers mind and style during the mature years of his life and thought.

There are great differences between Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited. The former is very little of a story and very much of a satirical comment on the customs and ideals of late-Victorian England. In fact, with the exception of the description of Higgs' discovery of the lost country Erewhon, and of his escape from it about a year later in an amateur balloon with his stolen Erewhonian bride, there is practically no action and no story. In Erewhon Revisited, on the other hand, we have an exceedingly clever and interesting story with a good deal of ingenious action which suggests that if Butler had not been so exclusively concerned with matters of larger importance, he might have written good detective yarns. Erewhon Revisited is also a satire, but in this case the satire is narrowed down to two principal matters instead of embracing the whole of modern social conduct. The

xiii xiv Introduction

objects of attack are the professorial class and the dogmas of tlie Christian Church.

Butler's antipathy for college professors as a class is heartily reciprocated by the professors. Witness Professor Lyon Phelps' characterization of The Way of All Flesh as a ''diabolical novel," and Professor Stewart P. Sherman's recent vitriolic attack on Butler's whole life and character in the columns of The Evening Post. Yet it is rather amusing to contemplate that Butler himself stood for the Slade Professorship of Fine Arts in Cambridge University in 1886, and apparently almost succeeded in capturing the appointment. It is an interesting speculation to picture what would have been the mutual reaction of Butler as a professor on Cambridge, and of a Cambridge professorship on Butler. Hiere is no doubt» however, that Butler's views on professors had evolved considerably in the thirty years which lay between Ere7ifhon and Erc^ifhon Reinsitetf. In Erewhon, though he certainly says that they

seemed to devote themselves to the avoidance of every opinion with which they were not perfectly familiar and regarded their own brains as a sort of sanctuary t(^ which if an opinion had once resorted, none other was to attack it.

Erewhon (Chapter xxii).

he does speak of them as kindly, hospitable gentlemen, whereas in Erczvhon Rcinsited he represents Hanky and Panky, the professors, respectively, of Worldly Wisdom and Unworldly Wisdom in the University of Bridgeford, as despicable hypocrites who begin by attempting to swindle Higgs, whom they suppose to

Introduction xv

be a poverty stricken under-keeper of the royal forests, out of a nugget of gold. And this sort of contemptuous depreciation of the honour and moral rectitude of the professorial class runs throughout the volume.

When v^e come to consider Butler's attack on Christian dogma in llrcwhon Revisited, we have to deal with a matter very much older and more fundamental in his character than his distrust and dislike of professors, and we have to allow for the fact that in spite of Butler's multifarious interests in other directions, in art, in science, in music, and in general literature, his basic interest was theology. This idea may seem a strange one at first sight, but it will be confirmed by a study of Butler's work in its entirety.

Butler, moreover, was the son of a Canon and the grandson of a Bishop, and was brought up in an atmosphere of theological narrowness such as is almost iTiconceivaljlc today; and it was as impossible for him fo escape being permanently interested in theology as it was for his ({uestioning, doubting soul to stay within the fold of comfortable conformity.

The story of his lapse from orthodoxy, while he was preparing for ordination in the Anglican (Episcopal) Church has often been told and need not be repeated here. The fact is that though by 1863 Butler supposed that he had given up belief in the credibility of Christianity, and the authority of its entire ecclesiastical system, theology remained his really dominant preoccupation until the end of his life. The reason that so little of it appeared in Erewhon is probably that he was at that time relieving his mind on the subject for a time by writing The Fair Haven, an xvi Introduction

apparent defense of the accuracy of the gospel accounts of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, but in reahty a searching and ingenious attack upon the veracity and mental equipment of the Evangelists. The Fair Haven was published the year after Ere^ whon, under a pseudonym, and to Butler's great joy was hailed by the Low Church journals of Great Britain as a serious work in defense of Christianity. It was the revelation of its true authorship and its true meaning that did more than anything else to create the suspicion and dislike of Butler which the orthodox abundantly showed him from that time on.

In his own preface to Eren^hon Revisited (see page v) Butler himself says that it was soon after the publication of Erezvhon that it suggested itself to him to ask what effect a supposed miracle, such as the ascension of the mysterious visitor, Higgs, into the sky in his secretly manufactured balloon, would have on the religious beliefs and system of a simple, credulous and imperfectly civilised people such as the Erewhonians. However, it appears that this idea, which Mr. Henry Resting Jones in his monumental biography, Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon, calls "the chief motive of Erewhon Revisited'^ struck Butler before Erewhon was written, for we find it in the concluding paragraph of his pamphlet. The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as contained in the Four Gospels critically examined. This suggestion which is elaborated in The Fair Haven (Chapter viii) is as follows:

To me it appears that if they (the ApostlesJ be taken simply as honest but uneducated men, subjected to a very unusual course of exciting

Introduction xvii

incidents in an enthusiastic age and country, we shall find that nothing less than the foundation of Christianity could well have come about ... if I have realized to myself rightly the effect which a well proved miracle would have upon such men as the Apostles, in such times as those they lived in, I think I may be justified in saying that the single supposed miracle of the Resurrection is sufficient to account for all that followed.

Some criticism may be made of Butler for the exact manner in which he carries out his representation of the incidents following on such a supposed miracle in Erewhon Revisited. The illegitimate birth of Higgs' son of a mother whose name, Yram, is an obvious travesty of "Mary," was fiercely assailed by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch in the London Daily Nezvs as a scandalous parallel to the nuptials of Mary and Joseph, ''offensive by inadvertence almost incredible" ; but Butler absolutely denied any intention of satirising Christ, both privately in a letter to Mrs. J. A. Fuller Maitland (Feb. 10, 1901) and publicly in a protest against Quiller Couch's criticism which caused the latter to apologise and admit that he was mistaken. It is interesting to note that it is in this protest of his to the editor of the Daily News that Butler reveals "the second leading idea of the book," that of a father trying to win the love of a hitherto unknown son by selfsacrifice, and succeeding — a pathetic commentary on his recognition of the failure of his own filial relation. The obvious parodies of creeds, commandments, scriptures and other portions of the Church's ritual, such as:

xviii Introduction

"When the righteous man tumeth away from the righteousness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is a Httle naughty and wrong, he will generally be found to have gained in amiability what he has lost in righteousness." — Sunchild Sayings, Chapter xiii, v. 15.

may also be considered in bad taste, though Butler supposed himself to have removed from the book all obvious causes of offense on the suggestion of Mrs. J. A. F. Maitland, mentioned above; but it is hardly possible for any man to satirise the birth and growth of a new religion without more or less parodying the religious formularies of his own generation, and Erewhon Revisited is no exception to this.

The story in the book is simplicity itself. Higgs, the discoverer of Erewhon, twenty years after his mysterious evasion, returns to see what the country is now like; and discovers that he himself has become the central figure of a new religion, owing to his unexplained disappearance sky-ward and from the garbled recollection of his claims that he had a father in Heaven. He also discovers that he left behind him an unsuspected son who has now become a person of some importance in the community. He is just in time to attend the dedication of the great temple to himself as the Sunchild, and endeavors to interrupt the service and reveal himself as an ordinar}^ human being. His efforts are defeated and he is hustled secretly out of the country to prevent an upheaval.

Although, as has already been explained, the underlying idea in the story is the exploitation of a theolog-

Introduction xix

ical conception, no intending reader may fear reading the book on that account. Butler's humour is as lively as ever, his character-drawing is as satirical, and his eye for social defects and absurdities as acute. For instance, in his description of the professors at the mayoress' reception :

There was Dr. Downie,* Professor of Logomachy, and perhaps the most subtle dialectician in Erewhon. He could say nothing in more words than any man of his generation. His text-book on The Art of Obscuring Issues had passed through ten or twelve editions, and was in the hands of all aspirants for academic distinction. He had earned a high reputation for sobriety of judgment by resolutely refusing to have definite views on any subject ; so safe a man was he considered, that while still quite young he had been appointed to the lucrative post of Thinker in Ordinary to the Royal Family. There was Mr. Principal Crank, with his sister Mrs. Quack ; Professors Gabb and Bawl, with their wives and two or three erudite daughters. (Chapter viii.) ;

in his attack on our reformatory system when he describes the ^'Deformatory" at Fairmead; in his gibing at our fashionable girls' boarding-schools, in his picture of Madame Lafrime's school, where the successful marriages of the pupils are recorded on the panels of the school hall, and in his parody of our up-to-date journalism in the report of the temple dedication as given in The Sunch'ston Journal, his pen shews no sign of having lost its force or point. He deals very

* "Downy," some thirty years ago, was English semi-slang for sly or sophisticated.

XX Introduction

trenchantly, moreover, with the ethical value of ideas of eternal punishment and eternal bliss in comparing them humorously with the classic myths of Sisyphus, th« Danaids and Tantalus, while his burlesque of the differences of High Church and Low Church in the two schools of the Sunchild followers, who wore their clothes respectively wrong side and right side foremost, through a dispute as to Higgs' original method of dressing, will be found delightful by all except the parties ridiculed.

More than this, he has put his finger on the fatal flaw in the whole mystical basis of religion in the conversations of Higgs with Mr. Balmy * in Chapter xiv, the epitome of the matter being where Mr. Balmy expresses his belief in the efficacy of spiritual enlightenment when the latter is contradicted by facts of actual experience :

"A spiritual enlightenment from within," returned Mr. Balmy, "is more to be relied on than any merely physical affluence from external objects. Now, when I shut my eyes, I see the balloon ascend a little way, but almost immediately the heavens open, the horses descend, the balloon is transformed, and the glorious pageant careers onward till it vanishes into the heaven of heavens. Hundreds with whom I have conversed assure me that their experience has been the same as mine. . . ." (Chapter xiv.)

Butler seems somewhat more constructive in Erewhon Revisited than he is in Erewhon. In the lesson

♦Another Victorian slang word signifying much the same as our "dippy."

Introduction xxi

read at the dedication of the temple to the Sunchild, and in Dr. Gurgoyle's book, The Physics of Vicarious Existence, we find outlined a definite theory of the nature of God which corresponds closely to the theory already given by Butler in a series of articles in The Examiner, of London, and after his death published in a small volume entitled God the Known and God the Unknown. This latter is a peculiar piece of work, and shows that Butler was very much more alive to absurdities and inconsistencies in other people's ideas than he was to those in his own; but it is evidence that Butler is speaking largely in his own person in this instance in Erewhon Revisited. There is also (in Chapter xxiv) some sensible advice given to the propagators of Sunchildism, which by his own confession in the Preface (page vii) is intended for the authorities of the Christian Church.

Apart from this we find a certain amount of worldly wisdom which lifts the book to a higher philosophical plane than its predecessor. For instance:

In our spiritual and intellectual world tjwo parties more or less antagonistic are equally necessary. Those who are at the head of science provide us with the one party; those whom we call our churchmen are the other. Both are corrupt, but we can spare neither, for each checks as far as it can the corruptions of the other. (Chapter xxv.)

And is there not another place in which it is said, 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," as though it were not the last word upon the subject? If a man should not do evil xxii Introduction

that good may come, so neither should he do good that evil may come. (Chapter vii.)

Not the least important duty of posterity towards itself lies in passing righteous judgment on the forebears who stand up before it. They should be allowed the benefit of a doubt, and peccadilloes should be ignored; but when no doubt exists that a man was ingrainedly mean and cowardly, his reputation must remain in the Purgatory of Time for a term varying from, say, a hundred to two thousand years. After a hundred years it may generally come down, though it will still be under a cloud. After two thousand years it may be mentioned in any society without holding up hands in horror. Our sense of moral guilt varies inversely as the squares of its distance in time and space from ourselves.

Not so with heroism; this loses no lustre through time and distance. Good is gold; it is rare, but it will not tarnish. Evil is like dirty water — plentiful and foul, but it will run itself clear of taint. (Chapter xi.)

Passages such as these show that Butler had evolved considerably since the writing of Erewhon, but there is even more difference in the tone of the two books. Erewhon Reznsited is less genial and less playful, the satire is sharper, the parody more pointed than in the earlier volume. He had felt that the literary, scientific, and religious worlds had agreed to defeat him by a conspiracy of silence, and unquestionably the belief had embittered him. It will be noted that the impression he gives of Erewhon in the first book is that it is a sort of Arcadia. He says of its people that they were :

Introduction xxiii

of a physical beauty which was simply amazing, the women were vigorous and had a most majestic gait, their expression was divine. The men were as handsome as the women beautiful. . .

agam :

they are the very best bred people that ever I fell in with. . .

and again:

men and women who delight me entirely by their simplicity, unconsciousness of self and kindly, genial manners.

There is nothing of this in Erewhon Revisited. The Erewhonians are here presented to us precisely as an equivalent company of Europeans, and from the advertisements of the shops around the College of Spiritual Athletics, it is obvious that bad temper, suspicion, and back-biting were no uncommon thing among them.

Apart from this difference in the general tone, it will be obvious, I think, to any reader that Erewhon Revisited is the more vigorous book of the two, and an astonishingly young piece of work for a man of 65 to write.

The history of the book is easy to discover. Although the main idea around which it is built had been in Butler's mind for many years, the first hint that he intended to write a sequel to Erezvhon appears in a letter from him to Miss Savage (the original of Althea in The Way of All Flesh) in February, 1877. It was not until October, 1896, that he definitely announced in conversation to the publisher, Fisher Unwin, that xxiv Introduction

he was going to write the sequel. In 1900 he wrote to Dean Pigou, of Bristol, that he intended to "make a second journey to Erewhon in the person of my supposed son, and to report sundry developments." Much of the book was written by the beginning of February, 1 90 1, and in March of that year Longmans refused to publish the book, even at Butler's own expense, for fear of giving offense to their High Church Anglican clientele. This was a blow to Butler, but Bernard Shaw now appeared as his good angel. He read the manuscript and reported to Butler that he found his hero "as interesting as ever," and proceeded to arrange a meeting between Butler and Grant Richards, the London publisher, who was to be inveigled to lunch by the announcement that Bernard Shaw was going to have a celebrated author, name not given, to meet him. The result was that Grant Richards agreed to publish the book, and not only to publish it but to bear the entire financial risk — the first time that such a proposition had ever been made to Butler ! The book was finished at Harwich, during a week-end at the beginning of April, 1 901. The first copy reached Butler's hands on the nth of October. It was favorably reviewed in The Times and The Daily Chronicle, and especially well by Edith Sichel in The Monthly Review. The motto on the title page of the original edition, taken from the Tenth Book of the Iliad —

Him do I hate even as I hate hell fire

Who says one thing and hides another in his heart

voices the life-long protest of Butler against the entire machinery of shams and humbug with which the structure of civilization seems inextricably interwoven.

Introduction xxv

Erewhon Revisited was written more easily and with less revision than any other of his books. The simple directness of its style is due not only to continual conscious effort on Butler's part, but to his use in the story of genuine incidents which had happened to himself or come within his cognizance. For instance, Professor Hanky's sermon about the evidences for Sunchildism, at the temple dedication ceremonies, is taken almost word for word from an appeal in The Times of December 8th, 1892, written by Sir G. G. Stokes and Lord Halsbury, for the Christian Evidence Society. Higgs' experiences as a pavement artist belong by rights to one of the tenants of the house that Butler owned at Peckham; Higgs' second journey to Erewhon is taken from Butler's own experience at Canterbury, New Zealand ; and the honest lawyer, Mr. Alfred E. Cathie, of 15 Clifford Inn, is, of course, Alfred Emery Cathie, his confidential clerk and friend — and so in many other instances.

Butler's own verdict on Erewhon Revisited contained in a letter to Mr. O. T. J. Alpers of Christchurch, New Zealand, is ''Erewhon Revisited I prefer to Erewhon, I confess" ; and it seems not unlikely that many readers will agree with him. It is a little difficult in this coimtry and at this time to realize the theological bitterness which obtained even a few years ago in English literary circles, but even making allowance for this and for the amount of energy which Butler used in fighting it, Erewhon Revisited, I think it will be admitted, is a stronger book than the original Erewhon; and, characteristically, perhaps the hardest knock, in a book full of hard knocks, is contained in the Preface (pages vi-vii) :

xxvi Introduction

If I may be allowed for a moment to speak about myself, I would say that I have never ceased to profess myself a member of the more advanced wing of the English Broad Church. What those who belong to this wing believe, I believe. What they reject, I reject. No two people think absolutely alike on any subject, but when I converse with advanced Broad Churchmen I find myself in substantial harmony with them.

This, in the face of Butler's public and contemptuous rejection for the previous 40 years of all that the English Church held, taught, feared, believed or hoped, is about as severe a criticism of the good faith of the Anglican clergy as could well be made — for it is hardly thinkable that he intended his claim of loyalty to the Church to be taken seriously.

Butler died within six months of the publication of this last work of his, and true to his own conception of vicarious existence, he is really now beginning to live.

We are not so much better or so much more sensible or so much more honest than the Victorians, that we can feel Butler is not needed today. Even here he might conceivably find a target or two at which to aim his barbed shafts — a large and opulent figure of Liberty in our sea-gate, for instance, with the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act in force behind it might strike him as humorous; or, perhaps, the sight of the Mayor of the greatest city in the western hemisphere gravely awarding the "Freedom of the City'* to an alien who adventures thither for the acknowledged purpose of peddling the supposititious bonds of an imaginary republic.

Introduction xxvii

Yes, undoubtedly Samuel Butler died too soon; but he left something of himself behind him that is increasing in strength and influence day by day and year by year. His works are a priceless mental tonic to those who are inclined to believe that whatever is is right, or to jog along comfortably in a mental rut. It is hard often to read him without warm indignation at the ingenious way in which he can always find something to laugh at in our most cherished beliefs and institutions; but the idol-breaker has always been necessary to the progress of mankind.

It is difficult, in view of Butler's personal, self-centered existence and his complacent admiration for Samuel Butler, to call him a really great man; but there is no doubt whatever, that if greatness be measured by service and usefulness in the kingdom of the mind and morals, he does deserve that overworked adjective "great."

He irritates, but he does make the reader think for himself — provided, of course, that such a proceeding is' possible for him.

He denies absolutely that there is any virtue in moral cowardice, any sanctity in time-honored humbug or any holiness in official assininity ; and for this the men of a later day, who are perhaps a little better prepared than his own generation to listen and learn and laugh, owe him their gratitude.

MOREBY ACKLOM.

New York, February, ip^o.

Chapter I Ups And Downs Of Fortune — My Father Starts For Erewhon

Before telling the story of my father's second visit to the remarkable country which he discovered now some thirty years since, I should perhaps say a few words about his career between the publication of his book in 1872, and his death in the early summer of 1 89 1. I shall thus touch briefly on the causes that occasioned his failure to maintain that hold on the public which he had apparently secured at first.

His book, as the reader may perhaps know, was published anonymously, and my poor father used to ascribe the acclamation with which it was received, to the fact that no one knew who it might not have been written by. Omne ignotum pro magnifico, and during its month of anonymity the book was a frequent topic of appreciative comment in good literary circles. Almost coincidently with the discovery that he was a mere nobody, people began to feel that their admiration had been too hastily bestowed, and before long opinion turned all the more seriously against him for this very reason. The subscription, to which the Lord Mayor had at first given his cordial support, was curtly announced as closed before it had been opened a week; it had met with so little success that I will not specify the amount eventually handed over, not without protest, to my father ; small, however, at is was, he narrowly escaped being prosecuted for trying to obtain money under false pretences.

The Geographical Society, which had for a few days received him with open arms, was among the first to turn upon him — not, so far as I can ascertain, on account of the mystery in which he had enshrouded the exact whereabouts of Erewhon, nor yet by reason of its being persistently alleged that he was subject to frequent attacks of alcoholic poisoning — but through his own want of tact, and a highly-strung nervous state, which led him to attach too much importance to his own discoveries, and not enough to those of other people. This, at least, was my father's version of the matter, as I heard it from his own lips in the later years of his life.