The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

Prefatory Note

The Origin of Species was published in the autumn of 1859, and Butler arrived in New Zealand about the same time and read the book soon afterwards.  In 1880 he wrote in Unconscious Memory (close of Chapter 1):  “As a member of the general public, at that time residing eighteen miles from the nearest human habitation, and three days’ journey on horseback from a bookseller’s shop, I became one of Mr. Darwin’s many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote a philosophic dialogue (the most offensive form, except poetry and books of travel into supposed unknown countries, that even literature can assume) upon the Origin of Species.  This production appeared in the Press, Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1861 or 1862, but I have long lost the only copy I had.”

The Press was founded by James Edward FitzGerald, the first Superintendent of the Province of Canterbury.  Butler was an intimate friend of FitzGerald, was closely associated with the newspaper and frequently wrote for it.  The first number appeared 25th May, 1861, and on 25th May, 1911, the Press celebrated its jubilee with a number which contained particulars of its early life, of its editors, and of Butler; it also contained reprints of two of Butler’s contributions, viz.  Darwin among the Machines, which originally appeared in its columns 13 June, 1863, and Lucubratio Ebria, which originally appeared 29 July, 1865.  The Dialogue was not reprinted because, although the editor knew of its existence and searched for it, he could not find it.  At my request, after the appearance of the jubilee number, a further search was made, but the Dialogue was not found and I gave it up for lost.

In March, 1912, Mr. R. A. Streatfeild pointed out to me that Mr. Tregaskis, in Holborn, was advertising for sale an autograph letter by Charles Darwin sending to an unknown editor a Dialogue on Species from a New Zealand newspaper, described in the letter as being “remarkable from its spirit and from giving so clear and accurate a view of Mr. D.’s theory.”  Having no doubt that this referred to Butler’s lost contribution to the Press, I bought the autograph letter and sent it to New Zealand, where it now is in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch.  With it I sent a letter to the editor of the Press, giving all further information in my possession about the Dialogue.  This letter, which appeared 1 June, 1912, together with the presentation of Darwin’s autograph, stimulated further search, and in the issue for 20th December, 1862, the Dialogue was found by Miss Colborne-Veel, whose father was editor of the paper at the time Butler was writing for it.  The Press reprinted the Dialogue 8th June, 1912.

When the Dialogue first appeared it excited a great deal of discussion in the colony and, to quote Butler’s words in a letter to Darwin (1865), “called forth a contemptuous rejoinder from (I believe) the Bishop of Wellington.”  This rejoinder was an article headed “Barrel-Organs,” the idea being that there was nothing new in Darwin’s book, it was only a grinding out of old tunes with which we were all familiar.  Butler alludes to this controversy in a note made on a letter from Darwin which he gave to the British Museum.  “I remember answering an attack (in the Press, New Zealand) on me by Bishop Abraham, of Wellington, as though I were someone else, and, to keep up the deception, attacking myself also.  But it was all very young and silly.”  The bishop’s article and Butler’s reply, which was a letter signed A. M. and some of the resulting correspondence were reprinted in the Press, 15th June, 1912.

At first I thought of including here the Dialogue, and perhaps the letter signed A. M. They are interesting as showing that Butler was among the earliest to study closely the Origin of Species, and also as showing the state of his mind before he began to think for himself, before he wrote Darwin among the Machines from which so much followed; but they can hardly be properly considered as germs of Erewhon and Life and Habit.  They rather show the preparation of the soil in which those germs sprouted and grew; and, remembering his last remark on the subject that “it was all very young and silly,” I decided to omit them.  The Dialogue is no longer lost, and the numbers of the Press containing it and the correspondence that ensued can be seen in the British Museum.

Butler’s other two contributions to the Press mentioned above do contain the germs of the machine chapters in Erewhon, and led him to the theory put forward in Life and Habit.  In 1901 he wrote in the preface to the new and revised edition of Erewhon:  “The first part of Erewhon written was an article headed Darwin among the Machines and signed ‘Cellarius.’  It was written in the Upper Rangitata district of Canterbury Province (as it then was) of New Zealand, and appeared at Christchurch in the Press newspaper, June 13, 1863.  A copy of this article is indexed under my books in the British Museum catalogue.”

The article is in the form of a letter, and the copy spoken of by Butler, as indexed under his name in the British Museum, being defective, the reprint which appeared in the jubilee number of the Press has been used in completing the version which follows.

Further on in the preface to the 1901 edition of Erewhon he writes:  “A second article on the same subject as the one just referred to appeared in the Press shortly after the first, but I have no copy.  It treated machines from a different point of view and was the basis of pp. 270-274 of the present edition of Erewhon.  This view ultimately led me to the theory I put forward in Life and Habit, published in November, 1877. {41} I have put a bare outline of this theory (which I believe to be quite sound) into the mouth of an Erewhonian professor in Chapter XXVII of this book.”

This second article was Lucubratio Ebria, and was sent by Butler from England to the editor of the Press in 1865, with a letter from which this is an extract: 

“I send you an article which you can give to FitzGerald or not, just as you think it most expedient—­for him.  Is not the subject worked out, and are not the Canterbury people tired of Darwinism?  For me—­ is it an article to my credit?  I do not send it to FitzGerald because I am sure he would put it into the paper. . . .  I know the undue lenience which he lends to my performances, and believe you to be the sterner critic of the two.  That there are some good things in it you will, I think, feel; but I am almost sure that considering usque ad nauseam etc., you will think it had better not appear. . . .  I think you and he will like that sentence:  ’There was a moral government of the world before man came into it.’  There is hardly a sentence in it written without deliberation; but I need hardly say that it was done upon tea, not upon whiskey . . .

“P.S.  If you are in any doubt about the expediency of the article take it to M.

“P.P.S.  Perhaps better take it to him anyhow.”

The preface to the 1901 edition of Erewhon contains some further particulars of the genesis of that work, and there are still further particulars in Unconscious Memory, Chapter ii, “How I wrote Life and Habit.”

The first tentative sketch of the Life and Habit theory occurs in the letter to Thomas William Gale Butler which is given post.  This T. W. G. Butler was not related to Butler, they met first as art-students at Heatherley’s, and Butler used to speak of him as the most brilliant man he had ever known.  He died many years ago.  He was the writer of the “letter from a friend now in New Zealand,” from which a quotation is given in Life and Habit, Chapter V (pp. 83, 84).  Butler kept a copy of his letter to T. W. G. Butler, but it was imperfectly pressed; he afterwards supplied some of the missing words from memory, and gave it to the British Museum.