Letters between Samuel Butler and Miss Savage

15 Clifford's Inn E.C. [ End of Feb. or beginning of March , 1871]

Dear Miss Savage,

...I have nearly finished my book, and am rewriting and correcting the whole: will you read the MS. by small instalments, each about the size of a good long letter, at a time? If so I will send you some at once. It is meant to be entertaining, and is not more than 200 printed pages. I am not at all sure that I shall publish it, and you may save me from committing a grave indiscretion.

Will you or will you not? I should be very glad of your opinion...

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[ Two days or so later ]

I send a lot of the MS. to save the trouble of sending it in smaller pieces; you need only read a little at a time. Make a cross, please, in pencil, wherever you disapprove, and I shall know what you mean. If not you can tell me when we meet...The passage I like best is my reflections on my attempted conversion of Chowbok. [And now, July 27th, 1901, this is one of those which I dislike most and would most willingly cancel. S.B.]

[ End of April, or first day or two of may , 1871]

My Dear Miss Savage,

Can you name a time and place when and where I can trespass on your good nature further? And yet I cannot call it trespassing, for one can only trespass on things that have bounds, and your good-nature has none.

I have condensed, cut out, transposed, amended, emended, and otherwise improved the MS., but there are a few points about which I am still in doubt, and should be very thankful for a little further advice...They have hung one picture for me at the Academy; it does not look well but that is not their fault. I was there all yesterday [probably varnishing day]; it is a capital exhibition.--This morning I have been to the International which is also a capital exhibition, much better than I expected, and in such pretty galleries.

As regards the World of the Unborn, I have seized on what you said about having come here to avoid the prosing of the didactic old parties in the World of the Unborn, and have made it so far as it will go an apology for having been so didactic. The next chapter opens with it...

Hotel d'Italia, Arona [ Sunday, Sept. 11th, 1871]

Dear Miss Savage,

Yes, the window with the canvas in it that you can see from Fetter Lane' is my window. Will you and Miss Johnson come some day and see my rooms?...I liked Fobello. Ask me about the offertory when I come back, and the selling the wax arms and legs; and the pictures (votive) of the women in leggings and short blue petticoats trimmed with scarlet, falling from the tops of high ash trees when gathering leaves for the cattle, and the saints with very large gridirons who appeared underneath them and broke their fall; and the woman who was tossed by a cow, and the outrushing of the whole family to see what the matter was; and the dreadful little fat man in blue tail coat and brass buttons who stood in the middle of the picture and broke a blood vessel at the saint till the blood on the ground stood upright as an heap, and he points reproachfully to it as he implores his patron saint's assistance; and the woman who was dug out of the avalanche, and the gentleman who built a chapel and then brought his wife and all the servants to see how beautiful it was--so there they stand in every attitude of ecstasy...

[Mrs. Briggs was then editing The Drawing-Room Gazette --of which I am happy to see there are no copies in the British Museum, and Miss S. persuaded me into writing a few articles for it. S.B.]

[ Nov., 1871]

Dear Miss Savage,

I did not understand that I was to have tickets for Jephthah, and bought my own yesterday. I certainly was not promised them; however, if Mrs. Briggs likes to strike the bargain with me I'm ready enough; I'll write her half a column of criticism for every concert that I go to for which she gives me a ticket--but I only want Handel's oratorios--I would have added 'and things of that sort', but there are no 'things of that sort' except Handel's.

I send you your Taine. I cannot sympathise with all this eulogy of the Brownings; I have dipped into bits of Aurora Leigh and have been exhausted after ten lines; I detest it: as for the passages quoted in the P.M.G. translation, the first is revolting, the second, trite --'The letter killeth but the spirit maketh alive' of our old friend Paul is quite enough for practical purposes, and is not amplified with advantage. When it comes to saying 'art is life' I give it up; it is rubbish. I do not like that woman, so I fought shy of Taine, who, too,--for I did read some of him rapidly--seemed to me to be much cry and little wool.

Nettleship brought an unpleasant picture of a black beast against a tapestry background (he said it was moonlight, but that was absurd) and two skins of snakes hard by, and wanted us to admire it, the other day; I disliked it very much, but I liked it better than I do Mrs. Browning, or Mr., either, for the matter of that...

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[ End of Nov., 1871]

Dear Miss Savage,

I fancied myself pretty safe from detection; the Heatherleys detected me two years ago, and I implored their silence. They both read it. I hate the book, but there it is; I have never summoned up courage to read it. On its being sent out to me when I was in N.Z. I opened two or three pages, and was so disgusted that I never touched it from that day to this, but I cribbed a few sentences here and there from recollection (not more than two or three) for my MS. [i.e. of Erewhon. ]

I am afraid my criticism of Jephthah was too flippant, I wrote it and Mrs. Briggs seized it at once and put it in with all its faults. I never can see my own folly till some days after I have committed it. I am not to be trusted to write three lines unless I can keep them three weeks. Shall I write a short criticism on Israel in Egypt for this week? If so drop a postcard at once.

Did you notice the bit of naughtiness in my review of Jephthah about Handel's evidently having Polyphemus in view when he wrote the overture? If, as they say, whether truly or not--for I doubt it--he wrote his overtures last with a view to summing up the spirit of the whole work, it is noticeable that he should have reverted so nearly to 'the monster Polyphe-eme' for his overture to Jephthah --was it unconsciously present to his mind that God's treatment of Jephthah's daughter was something like that of Polyphemus in respect of Acis?

I am crawling on with the rewriting of my MS. [i.e. Erewhon ] but can only write on Sundays. Also I have begun my picture of the Fobello christening.

Yours very truly,

S.Butler

[I forget whether this picture ever got finished--yes it did--I sent it in to the Academy and it was rejected--quite rightly. I know I gave it to somebody, but forget who. I wish I had destroyed it. S.B., July 23rd, 1901.]

[ Monday, Dec. 18th, 1871]

Dear Miss Savage,

Trübner and Co. have my book again. They never so much as looked at it before, and said they supposed it was something to do with the contagious diseases act. Now I am to pay their reader a guinea for reading it and giving an opinion: I shall then have the right to bully him and tell him he is a fool if he does not like it.

I toned down that description of the organ which I read you the other day and which you did not like.

[She was quite right, if I could tone it down more, or tone it out of the book I would do so. S.B., July 27th, 1901.]

I have made another misquotation, but I am afraid I cannot get it into the book--it is 'And those who came to pray remained to scoff'. I think this is quite as nice as the one I got in.

[ Early 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

I write a line to say that I have just had from Trübner and Co. a very favourable report of my MS. I could wish nothing handsomer. Still Trübner does not say whether he will take the risk or no. When and where shall I meet you and show you the letter? I dare say it is all humbug and you will see through it directly, but I have bolted it whole.

If Trübner won't take the risk I'll get the money from somewhere or other.

[Henry Hoare lent me the money to do it with--otherwise I do not know what I should have done. S.B.]

[ Probably about Feb. 1st , 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

Three lines to say that the first proof has reached me; only about 12 pages to the end of the scene with Chowbok in the woodshed: I am not in doubt, or I would send the proof. It reads very well and the type is excellent, even Pauli who has been the most freezing critic hitherto (in so far as he could be got to listen to a passage here and there) thawed a little as he read: the fact is he is frightened out of his wits about it, and expects my father to cut me off with a shilling, but he dares not say this because he knows I should fly at him if he advised me to let my father's will enter in the matter at all.

[ March, 1872]

...I know you are ill. I knew you were ill yesterday, and yet I plagued you with my book. I thought at times how selfish I was--nevertheless I did it. I think you had better tell me about your 'presumptuous resolution'. 'Twill do no harm: my impression is that I shall not think it presumptuous.

I strongly suspect that your people plague you--very strongly; it is a wicked world, and there are few who fail to make themselves unpleasant if they have the power to do so...

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[ I should think March 29th, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

Erewhon is out, and will be advertised to-morrow: I have your copy: the sample copy, i.e. the first issued: I have written your name in it to make sure: also an inscription in which there is bad grammar and bad writing. Shall you be coming down to Crane Court? If so please to call and you shall have it: otherwise I will take it to Miss Johnson's.

Yours,
S. Butler.

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C. [ About April 3rd or 4th, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

I have been meaning to write or call, or both, for days but the Academy is too near and I have been at my stupidest, as soon as the day's work was done. Thank you for your letter of which the sarcastic part was delightful, and the praising, if possible, more so. I know I shall become one of the most tedious bores in England if I only get the chance.

I have heard nothing more about the book except the verdict of one or two friends' friends; on the whole I think their reports sound well, but am always sceptical about what my friends say unless it is by way of scolding. Mr. Heatherley said it did not drag and that it interested him throughout. I lay great stress on Gogin's liking it; he would not stand being bored beyond reasonable limits.--A friend of Pauli's, one of the proctors this year, read it and satisfied Pauli of his approval--handsomely. Giles--who has brains--read it through from end to end--twice: beginning again as soon as he had done: he told me it had not fetched him up anywhere for want of interest, and I think from his manner that he meant it.

I fancy I see my way to getting some reviews, but it is rather early yet. I have got to finish my pictures and send them in to-day, so no more from

Yours,
S. Butler

['Sending in day' must have been late this year, for I see that Erewhon was advertised in the Saturday Review for March 30th as 'just published', i.e. in the course of the preceding week.

It seems to have been out some few days, but I may have had a few advance copies. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street April 29th, 1872

My dear Mr. Butler,

You will have found my message in your door. As it was shut I rushed home again, thinking you might be on your way. The fact was I found it would be impossible to expect a 'quite hour' as the claimant says inasmuch as other people were coming with whom I should be expected to spend the evening, if I imprudently remained within their reach. However, your letter delivered me from their hands, or rather claws, for one of the wretches said imprudently but providentially, 'I suppose that letter is from the ----s', and then my mother asked me if they wanted me to do anything for them, and I at once with wonderful presence of mind said, 'yes, millinery mourning', and so I escaped. I improve every day in dissimulation in lying--but they are bores by nature and robbers of fatherless children by profession.

Mrs. X was X's mother, not his mother-in-law, and though he has a very affectionate nature I don't think he could care for her very much. His mother-in-law is adorable, and he adores her, but his mother had a way of worrying her children's lives out, and they must be the happier for her death. She had the most unselfish and self-sacrificing children, but you would have thought to hear her talk that she was a sort of King Lear.

I like your notion for a novel very much, I am sure it will be good. But there is no hurry. I don't feel in any hurry because I don't want you to write yourself out before I die, and I would rather wait than want in fifty years time--but I don't think you will write yourself out in fifty years. I am sorry to hear that you are still so far from the 'quite well' that you talked about in your last note. I am more satisfied not to see than to see you if I think you are resting...

Yours truly,
E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C. [A bout June 16th, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

I send you a letter from my father which you can return at your leisure. I bounced about the success of my book through mistaken policy, and said I believed I had it in my power to put my name in the front rank among the writers of my time and country--an unwise and boastful thing to say, and I had better not have said it; but it doesn't matter, for whatever I said would have been wrong. I only tell you because it will explain one passage in the letter.

How about this for a subject?

A hero, young, harum scarum, with keen sense of fun, and few scruples, allows himself to be converted and reconverted at intervals of six months or so, for the sum of £100 on each occasion, from the Church of Rome to Methodism, by each of two elderly maiden relatives who have a deep interest in the soul of the hero and in the confusion of one another.

Also he hangs an awful threat over his father, (who is a respectable country parson, and has forbidden him the house on account of his notorious wild oats and loose conversation) to the effect that he will go down to the village inn, the night before the next communion Sunday, and take the Sacrament coram populo [if it should be populo --I think it should, but I had better have said 'in public'.] This threat shall hang like a sword of Damocles over the father's head.

But I am very doubtful about a novel at all; I know I should regard it as I did Erewhon, i.e., as a mere peg on which to hang anything that I had a mind to say. The result would be what you complain of in Middlemarch: the only question is whether after all that matters much, provided the things said are such as the reader will recognize as expressions of his own feelings, and as awakening an echo within himself, instead of being written to show off the cleverness of the writer...

S. Butler

June 22nd, 1872

Dear Miss Savage,

It's all very well but I cannot settle down to writing a novel and trying to amuse people when there is work wants doing which I believe I am just the man to do, and which it seems to me is crying to be done. I shall never be quiet till I have carried out the scheme that is in my head.

[Then followed a sketch of my intentions as regards The Fair Haven --which grew out of a pamphlet I published in 1865, on the evidences for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. S.B.]

By the way, I did not mean the hero to be sentimental towards the old flirt, but I meant the old flirt in the end to be sentimental about the hero, and to wind up a long theological argument during which her attention has evidently been wandering, by flinging her arms about his neck and saying she would do anything for him if he would only love his Saviour.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C. [ Probably July, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

So that is what you want me to do. 'To sit down with the foregone conclusion to write a novel, etc.' with oddity rather than originality for the result. No. If I have talent it may be safely let alone to work its own way out: if I have not, it does not matter two straws what I do--only the best thing would be for me to do nothing. If I do write a novel after what I have got on hand now, I shall write two or three bad ones first, and then a better one, or two, but I must be allowed two failures first. What I am doing now The Fair Haven is a genuine thing done not because some one wants me to do it, but because I am bursting with it.

I am raising the intellectual side of my man--whose name is Richard Purdoe Davies, and making him a more subtle, foggy, hazy, mystical creature--well up to the latest Spectator cant.

He now 'hardly belongs to any of the more precise and definite schools of Theological thought', and though many 'earnest reformers within the body of the church' will sympathize with not a few of his opinions 'it yet remains to be seen whether his conclusions will succeed in commending themselves', etc.

His brother, whose name is Hesketh Davies, reviews him very candidly, sympathetically but not slavishly--I have improved the MS. since you saw it. You told me that you sat up to read it and that next day you felt cross and ill, but that is all you said about it, so I fear you did not find it quite up to par--I dare say I shall not find it so when I read it again.

S. Butler

Saturday afternoon [ Probably July, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

I am just returned to town. I have had a letter from Miss D...and did not like it. I will not write in her book; I will keep out of her way, and please do not get me into it. Where am I to take the picture to? you did not tell me when and where. What is this advice you are going to give me? Am I to be scolded? I don't mind being scolded, but I don't like being told that I am to be scolded, and not knowing what for. Forgive me. I am hot and cross and dusty.

The trade has taken about 500 copies of my new edition, so now there are a good many booksellers who have an interest in trying to sell the book, which may galvanize it into life again till my second edition is sold out. If this is so I shall not lose more than £25 by the whole matter. Trübner does not expect that a third thousand will be called for.

[No moulds were taken, so that as the demand was very strong, it was necessary to reset the whole work. Trübner ought to have told me about moulds--of which I had never heard. The demand fell off immediately on the announcement of my being the author which appeared in the Athenæum, May 25th, 1872. The sale has never quite died, though of late years it has been small. I am about £69.0.0 to the good with it, as near as I can remember. S.B., July 29th, 1901.]

15 Clifford's Inn [ Probably, July, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

I want to use that story you told me about a lady who said her prayers when she saw you were looking and did not say them when she thought you were asleep. Of course I shall alter it past recognition. I want it for R. P. Davies' childhood which I am now writing. I have introduced many details from my own recollection and I think you will like what I have done, only I am afraid you will say that it is too funny for the book. I must have that story, and knowing that you will consent have already used it.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

15 Clifford's Inn [ Probably end of July, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

Miss Johnson is quite right in saying that it is immoral to transfer a non-transferable ticket for the Old Bond Street Gallery, and not immoral to do so for the Royal Academy soiree. In the first place the R.A. people cannot have you up before the police-court if they find you out--or at any rate will not do so--whereas the Old Bond Street people very likely would. The R.A. has practically no weapon against you but your own finer and more delicate sense of honour--I should say 'us', and 'our'--and cannot expect that this should bear the same strain as the coarser sense of fear on which the Old Bond Street can rely.

Besides the prize is greater: a brilliant evening and a first rate supper are worth cheating for; and though cheating for the sake of a shilling would be unworthy of Miss Johnson, she may be excused for doing so for the sake of at least six or seven shillings...

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

Poste Restante, Interlaken, Switzerland [ Friday, Sept. 13th, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

I returned here the night before last and found your letter and enclosures awaiting me. Thank you for enclosing, and thank you for your letter, but I never said that the Miss ----'s were two old cats; they are two old cats, but upon my word and honour I have not the remotest recollection of having said so.

I am not enjoying myself at all. You are quite right. I do not idle well. I will try to mend. I am going up to Grindelwald this afternoon, and will go en pension for a fortnight at the best hotel, and there are sure to be some people there who will suit me and who will let me bore them. I have not seen a soul save waiters and chambermaids this four or five weeks, and it is not good for me.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

Grindelwald [ Monday, Sept. 23rd, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

I am coming home shortly--say in a week or ten days. It has turned cold--very--heavy snow, and cold raw feeling everywhere. I have done no work, and am sick of doing nothing; besides, I am better--really--and I want to finish my book and get back to painting.

You ask me about Rossetti. I dislike his face, and his manner, and his work, and I hate his poetry, and his friends. He is wrapped up in self-conceit and lives upon adulation. I spent a whole evening in his company at H. Wallis's, W. B. Scott being the only other except Wallis, Rossetti and myself. I was oppressed by the sultry reticence of Rossetti's manner which seemed to me assumed in order to conceal the fact that he had nothing worth saying to say. I liked W. B. Scott well enough--the other two were horrid...

S.B.

[ About Oct. 8th or 9th, 1872]

Dear Miss Savage,

Yes--go on lying [i.e. about The Fair Haven ] . You lied well to Miss Collingridge, but you must not give any one any hints at all; do as I do, lie to every one except yourself. I rather despise you for having told me that you told Mr. S. anything at all; you ought to have told him everything and then sworn to me that you had told him nothing: if I had ever found you out, I should have thought none the worse of you...

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[ Early 1873]

Dear Miss Savage,

Darwin [i.e. Frank Darwin] is with me, and I cannot write much.--You say you hope I do not like Joshua Davidson. Of course I don't. I hate it.

I send another sheet of The Fair Haven and another will follow this afternoon or to-morrow. You are now over the stupidest part, and from henceforth the mischief becomes worse and worse, till within a few pages of the end. You see I was obliged to feed them a little at first in order to encourage them to swallow the rest.

I am in statu quo --perfectly well taking no medicine, and free from any pain, but unable to walk more than 200 yards without bringing on a relapse...

S.B.

24. Miss Savage to Butler

Feb. 28th, 1873

Do you know that I was very nearly deprived of that beautiful stick you gave me? I have been staying at Primrose Hill, and on Sunday morning I chanced to look out of window--a providential circumstance which should be a sufficient answer to the sceptic--and saw my staff, 'sole palfrey now', lying on the steps of the garden; presently Julius Bertram approached it with a saw in his hand, of course I screamed out 'Murder', and thus saved my stick. He was going to saw it up into a perch for Toby. Toby is a green parrot.

Pantomime of Conjugal Felicity

Act 1.

A friend of mine who knows the Arnolds (Echo Arnolds) was paying an afternoon visit to Mrs. Arnold. Mr. A. A. comes in from the Echo. He places himself by his wife. He takes her hand affectionately, and placing it on his knee he strokes it caressingly from the wrist to-wards the tip.

Act 2.

He then being hungry takes the little bit of cake that is in his wife's saucer, and puts it into his own mouth. He then departs into an inner chamber, and presently returning with a cup of tea and a lump of cake, he breaks off a lump of the latter, and tenderly, delicately, exquisitely places it in his wife's mouth.

At this point of the Pantomime my friend judged it discreet to depart, and I can tell you no more. But is it not delightful? Does it not make you long to be married? It does me. I wish I were Mrs. A. A. for I have an itching palm which in the fourth Act would find itself in tingling contact with Mr. A. A.'s ears. If they were young people one could forgive them--but middle-aged! one might say elderly!

[PS. to a letter of six very pleasant pages which I have destroyed, not without regret. S.B.]

March 8th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

I have read the two sheets of The Fair Haven --they are wonderful. How glad I am that I happen to know you, otherwise I might never have read your books--it is such a chance my reading a new book, and just fancy my going down to my grave without having read either of them. I should certainly have come back. When will The Fair Haven be ready altogether? I long to read it straight through.

[Then followed a whole page of commendation of various points in the book--which I omit. S.B.]

Poor Purdoe! (I won't call him Pickard.) I wish his fate were not so tragic; I should like him to be living on, smug and happy. But you were quite right to kill him: it was much best. That he recovered from his delusion and died of the recovery, gives a stamp of probability to his having written the book, and all through you have individualized him so thoroughly that one can scarcely be surprised at people taking it all for his true convictions and for the satire being all unconscious. But what 'sanglant' satire it is!

You have individualized Purdoe (for I tell you I will not have him as Pickard) all through without any seeking after it. That is why I am so sure you would write such a beautiful novel. George Elliot and Mrs. Olliphant are so dreadfully afraid that the reader will not see what they mean that they keep on explaining at you till you get offended and bored...The moral is this--that I want a novel--ever so many novels--and that I have come to look upon you as an admirable novel-making machine, and that you ought to be set going.

I have had a weekful of small miseries. I went to the club to vent my ill humour on my friends there, and found them all gone in a mass (of three) to hear the debate on the Irish University Bill, and there were only my enemies in the club--with whom I am always beautifully polite...Apropos of my enemies I must just tell you this. The day that only my enemies were at the club old Miss Andrews wished I might have a good, husband. One could easily see that she was inwardly gloating over something very different. So I smiled sweetly and said 'thank you, Miss Andrews, the same to you, and many of them', whereon she retreated growling to her table where she was writing in her diary. I hoped she wrote it down; I was greatly delighted with my little victory.

I have quite made up my mind about Cromwell from my knowledge of his descendants [Miss Andrews was descended from Cromwell. S.B.] and I have known several. I should say he was vindictive, fanatical, superstitious, egotistical, selfish--but I forgot that you burn my letters, so it would be a pity to waste so much valuable information. I shall keep it for some one else who doesn't. Good bye. Are you getting stronger? Thank you a thousand times for sending me those last two sheets.

E.M.A. Savage

PS. The debate on the Irish University Bill is transferred to the club. They are at it hammer and tongs: I wonder what it is about. Do you know? If you do, please write and tell me. When it is over there will be some chance of having a little rational society again. Besides Purdoe I have had another pleasure this week. Little Miss Thomas came to the club to pay me a visit. She was dressed in a greyish green soft sunny looking stuff, and she looked more like a little rosebud than ever. I have quite forgiven her her share in the club difficulties in consideration of her pink cheeks, and pretty white throat.

March 9th, 1873

Dear Miss Savage,

I have walked too much and am again a prisoner, but under promise of release in four or five days if I am good, but otherwise under threat of a longer business.

You praise my book too much, and I don't believe a word of it. The reason why I did not write at the reader (if I have not) was simply because I dared not. It would have been unsafe for me to do so for whatever I did had to be done with a view to stupid people not seeing through it at all, and very clever people being in a good deal of doubt. Under other conditions I should probably have out-Olliphanted Mrs. Olliphant, and so with that other woman.

As for your novelette, what does it matter whether the plot is new or old--your own or somebody else's? The plot is nothing. I never could make one. If I write a novel I shall take one and alter it. Still I think your plot could easily be altered into something that would steer clear of the one you have unearthed and which frightens you. I send the enclosed as a specimen which you can doubtless rearrange much better. Only pray do something--no matter what, while doing it ideas will strike you that will never strike you till you begin to do. You are letting great talents and excellent opportunities go to waste. I am quite sincere--not being given to flatter nor liking to be flattered--not when I see through it. And yet I do not know; I suppose I do like it even then. We all do.

I do not know what I shall write next. I do not want to write anything in particular, and shall paint until an idea strikes me which I must work out or die, like The Fair Haven. I shall do nothing well unless con amore, and under diabolical inspiration. I should hope however that attacks on The Fair Haven will give me an opportunity for excusing myself, and if so I shall endeavour that the excuse may be worse than the fault it is intended to excuse.

If I do a novel I shall send you the plot to hack and rearrange for me before I do it.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

March 10th, 1873

...I am afraid that affectation is your great fault. I have thought so before--now I am sure. I flatter you! What nonsense--when you must know that I do not say a quarter of what I think, or else you are not so sharp as I think you are. You said I flattered you before, about Erewhon, and then when all the critics set themselves to sing your praises in chorus my small commendations must have seemed very tame and flat. Please don't pretend to be so modest. I shall only think you want more praise, and then you will have none. I don't think you quite understood me. I intended to say that if the sole aim and object of your book had been the delineation of Pickard Owen's character he could not have been more completely and vividly put before us.

PS. I have christened your kitten 'Purdoe', a good name for a cat. I baptized it with ink.

[ About March 18th, 1873]

Dear Miss Savage,

I am still laid up and am getting sick of it. The Fair Haven will be out on Saturday. Trübner is to do it. Smith Elder and Co. were frightened, and even considered the scheme of the book unjustifiable. Smith urged me as politely as he could not to do it, and evidently thinks I shall get myself into disgrace even among freethinkers. It's all nonsense. I dare say I shall get into a row--at least I hope I shall.

I am reading Middlemarch and have got through two-thirds. I call it bad, and not interesting: there is no sweetness in the whole book, and though it is stuffed full of epigrams one feels that they are lugged in to show the writer off. The book seems to me to be a long-winded piece of studied brag, clever enough I dare say, but to me at any rate singularly unattractive...

S.B.

[ The Fair Haven got me into no social disgrace that I have ever been able to discover. I might attack Christianity as much as I chose and nobody cared one straw; but when I attacked Darwin it was a different matter. For many years Evolution Old and New and Unconscious Memory made a shipwreck of my literary prospects; I am only now beginning to emerge from both the literary and social injury which those two perfectly righteous books inflicted on me. I dare say they abound with small faults of taste, but I rejoice in having written both of them. S.B., July 24th, 1901.]

March 24th, 1873

When am I to have my Fair Haven? I have a commission to write some tracts, not religious ones-- Dieu merci; but almost as bad, about the medical act and the registration of births. I am supplied with pamphlets and speeches on the subject, but reading them makes me so very stupid that by the time I know all about it I shall not be in a condition to write anything. I dare say you will never have another letter from me.

My life was full of small miseries last week. I was very late in the morning, so took a cab to catch the train. Then I forgot to get out at the right station, and had to come back again. So I spent a shilling and was later than if I had walked slowly to the train. That happened on Monday, and I was cheated out of my sixpence on Tuesday, and lost a glove on Wednesday. These are things that turn one's hair grey before the time. But that is enough of my woes. Having lost sixpence I must economize...

15 Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street, March 25th, 1873

Dear Miss Savage,

I had become ashamed of that silly plot even before I got your letter of yesterday. I will have no sensation, and no mechanically constructed plot at all; only such incidents as naturally grow out of the initial conditions, but I will try to make the incidents interesting. All else is humbug. Thank you for the trouble you took...

I am more a prisoner than ever--completely laid up, but quite well, and I do not find the time hang particularly heavy. You can have your Fair Haven whenever you like to call for it, or I can send it either to Crane Court or to the woman's club. Do not come, if you call here, before 4.30.

What do you mean by pretending that your letter was possibly the last I should ever receive from you? You frighten me. My mother is ill--very ill. It is not likely that she will recover--

'I had rather
It had been my father.'

I am pained about it--she is at Mentone, and though my father writes as if he had no hope, they clearly do not want me to come, which is as well, for though in such a case I should travel, yet the less I am on my feet the better--I ought to keep them up. What pains me is that I cannot begin to regain the affection now which Alas! I have long ceased to feel.

I have finished Middlemarch --it is very bad indeed. I am sorry for your little troubles; I wish I could think that you had none others--but it is a bad world. Why don't you write a story?

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

March 3lst, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

I have done wrong and lent Colymbia to a friend with-out your permission, but I hope that you will forgive me in consideration of the reason for it. At the club last Friday at lunch time the Miss L.s proclaimed, ' We know who the author of Colymbia is.' Whereupon Mrs. Gelstone promptly cried out, 'Oh so do I, I know who is the author of Colymbia. ' In the evening she told the story, and I naturally asked who he was. Then she said that she had not the faintest idea who wrote it, but that she could not stand the L.s' airs. I was so pleased with her that I lent her Colymbia on the spot.

Send a copy of The Fair Haven to the Literary World. They will be sure to believe in it and it will be great fun. It has an immense circulation--all the dissenters read it. May I lend mine to old Granville? If he asks more questions about Bickersteth, I can say he is gone back to America...

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[ Colymbia was an imitation of Erewhon, by my old friend Dr. Dudgeon, who, however, said nothing to me about it. Trübner got it up as like Erewhon as he could--the page and type being identical--evidently in order to make people think that the book was written by me; Dudgeon had nothing to do with this. Perhaps I was jealous, but Colymbia did not please me. S.B., July 31st, 1901.]

[I think I must have gone off to Mentone to my mother's deathbed in haste without writing to Miss Savage. S.B., July 31st, 1901.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., April 10th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

If you please I want very much to know how you are. So will you write and tell me? I want also to know about The Fair Haven whether it has been reviewed, and how, and in what papers? You should have heard me discoursing about it yesterday. I said it was a sweet book (so it is) and most convincing--it had been lent to me by a religious friend, in hopes that it would do me good, and it had done me good. My friend (the one whom Miss Collingridge so longs to know) declined to borrow it, but is going to tell his clergy-people friends what an excellent work it is, and how efficacious in removing doubts.

I said I did not know the author; the book had been lent me by an earnest friend. I was enchanted with myself but longed for an appreciative audience. Miss Collingridge came on Sunday. She said she had been told that your book would shortly be published. I said you were not writing a book at all--at least not that I was aware of. She was evidently pleased at being better informed than I was.

She wanted to know if you had written Colymbia. I said 'from internal evidence I should say decidedly not'. Mrs. Gelstone was sure you had written it, and Miss Drew was inclined to the notion. Perhaps you have. I know you are one of the most deceitful of men; but I hope you haven't. It is amusing, and if I had never read Erewhon I dare say I should like it better than I do, but it doesn't do after Erewhon. It is ingenious, but there is no imagination in it--or very little. The style wants distinction and there are very careless sentences here and there, I liked the idea of the Turtle Dynasty and I enjoyed the Transcendental Geography, but you can fancy how my narrow-minded old Toryism was shocked at the theories set forth about marriage. It drags a little here and there--a good deal I mean. I don't know whether it is meant to be an imitation of Erewhon but it appears to be a very close one. How absurd of people to fancy you would be imitating yourself.

[She is evidently not quite easy in her mind that I had not been doing this, just a little frightened. S.B., July 31st, 1901.]

I hope you have heard better news of your mother, and that you are yourself happier altogether than when I saw you.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. I am going to-night to the Hall of Eleusis. Ernestine Rose and other suffrageous women are going to hold forth on Female Franchise. Generally I carefully avoid public meetings, but I could not resist the Eleusinian mysteries.

[I wrote a short letter on my return from Mentone on, I imagine, April 12th or 15th, for my mother was buried on the 10th and I probably started for England on the 11th. I have destroyed the letter. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, April 19th, 1873

...I shall send you some Balzac...I shall find something for you. Not that I want you to write novels like Balzac--heaven forbid! But then I don't think you could if you tried, and if you could, I am sure you wouldn't, so it doesn't matter; but he was a great novelist and you should see what his work was like. Good-bye. I was very glad to find you so much better than I expected.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

...PS. I am afraid the joke at the beginning of my letter is not very brilliant but I have only been thinking about it since last night...By all means let your friend Mr. Hoare make you go more into society, but if he hopes thereby to get more Bulwer, I flatter myself that he will be disappointed. I haven't been dunning you for [a] novel this twelvemonth past for that! You can tell Mr. Darwin that his experiments on sneezing were incomplete. I have used his system for warding off sneezes, for several months past and find its efficacy wear out with time.

[I forget whether Miss Savage ever sent me any Balzac, but if she did I will undertake to say that I never read any. S.B., July 31st, 1901.

I destroy a letter I sent on April 26th saying that my pictures were rejected for the Academy, that I was now quite well again and working at Heatherley's. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, April 28th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

...Do you want me to condole with you about your portrait being rejected for the Academy? I shall do no such thing. I am glad it is rejected, though I am sorry for your disappointment. They ought to have let in the other picture though.

Your friend Mr. McCormick is going to have a bazaar of ladies' work by way of getting his church out of debt. My mother is busy knitting muffatees for it. I have not been asked to contribute, but I have a sweet little pincushion which was given me in the year 1857, and has remained done up in tissue paper ever since, so I shall send that; it will probably realize sixpence, which Mr. McCormick shall be very welcome to have. You might send a few copies of The Fair Haven to be raffled for, on the second day, for I cannot encourage you to hope that they would be bought up on the first day.

I am going to lend my copy to old Miss Andrews just to see what she will make of it. I shall tell her that Mrs. Gammell's son the clergyman lent it to me. I shall write 'James Gammell, Oatwood Parsonage' on the fly-leaf. She has seen the old lady and will believe my romance. She begged me last night to apologize to you for never having thanked you for your present of Erewhon. She means to do so as soon as she has time. She thinks you would do a great deal of good by writing short things in the style of Erewhon.

I spent last Sunday with Mrs. Gammell. She asked after you as she generally does. She was very sorry for you when she heard you had lost your mother. 'He must feel it dreadfully', she said, 'Mothers are such divinities to their sons.' The sweet old soul has six sons herself who all adore her, besides her son-in-law who adores her too.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

May 3rd, 1873

Eh bien! il existe par milliers en Europe et en Amérique des chrétiens qui lui donneront (à Strauss a chaque instant raison en détail, et qui pourtant persisteront à se dire chrétiens, par la raison toute simple que la plupart de ces critiques de détail passent pardessus le christianisme qu'ils professent.

Revue des Deux Mondes-- 15 March [1873]

You see, my dear Mr. Bickersteth, that les beaux esprits se rencontrent, and that there are 'milliers' of persons who have found their representative man in our late lamented brother Pickard. To say nothing of Miss Andrews, who declares that Pickard's arguments always have been hers. It was delightful to see the easy way in which elle s'est donnée dans le piège. It will not be delightful for me, however, when she finds out how she has been tricked--nothing short of my expulsion from the club will satisfy the descendant of Cromwell. I hope you will stand my friend with Mr. Hoare [Charles, not Henry. S.B.] when the crisis comes, and in the meantime put off connecting The Fair Haven with Erewhon as long as you can.

The old woman is in a most vindictive frame of mind just now, because of the resolution that I am going to propose to-morrow night which is to let one of the club rooms. I know it won't be carried, but it is right to propose it. Most of the members say that it will be impossible for the club to exist if we have only two rooms and Miss Andrews continues a member. I retort by saying that if one is to indulge one's antipathies the club ought to consist of as many cells as a county gaol.

Poor old Miss Andrews. I am still fond of her; I told her the most tremendous lies about The Fair Haven. I wrote first of all on the fly-leaf, 'J.B. Surgey, Brading, April 1st, 1873'. Then I asked if she would like to look through it, but said that I could only let her have it till Monday. She accepted, and I must say I quaked a little lest she should see your hand in it. However on Monday she gave it back, telling me that it was most interesting, and asking for a longer loan of it, as a friend of hers was greatly delighted with it, and would like to finish it. But of course, my friend had lent it to me for a week only, and was going back to the Isle of Wight, and so I couldn't.

She said she had been most interested in the memoir 'That is the part I have not yet read,' said I. So then she began to tell me all about Pickard and Bickersteth, and the events of their childhood, and spoke with strong reprobation of their mother, expressing surprise that the sons should have continued to feel so much reverence for her. She also told me the anecdote of the lady visitor [See my letter to Miss Savage of July 1872--the last but one. S.B.]

I then asked her opinion of the rest of the book, declaring that though the arguments used might be very convincing to those who believed already, those who did not believe would scarcely be influenced by them. She said she had not had time to read it thoroughly, but enough to understand the scope, and then she began to talk quite learnedly about the gospels and their authoriticity, and said that the arguments used by Pickard were those she had always used. But she spoke slightingly of poor Pickard; I am sorry to say she called him 'half educated' but she deeply commiserated his unhappy end.

She then enquired about the person who lent me the book, and I described him as anxious about my soul, and gave her full particulars concerning him, which are quite authentic all except the lending me the book, and the interest in my soul. I lent him Erewhon not long ago, and on Saturday last I had a note from him in which he says 'how can I thank you enough for lending me that glorious book Erewhon ' . I send you his letter, for his raptures are quite lyrical.

I did as he requested about the R.A. catalogue, and actually went on Monday, though I have not a new bonnet and scarcely dare look my friends in the face when my old one is on my head. I tell you this because I made the sacrifice not for him, but for Erewhon: such devotion is not often met with, and I don't expect that you will ever appreciate the greatness of my sacrifice, for as the Working Man said the other night at the suffrage meeting in the Hall of Eleusis 'the depths of a woman's feelings can only be fathomed by a woman herself' (which, if not a very good reason for giving women votes, is at all events the best I have heard.) However, as you are going to be a great novelist you will have to begin the fathoming process as soon as possible, and it would not be a bad exercise for you to try to fathom my feelings under the circumstances.

I have been reading one of Henry Kingsley's novels, or rather I began to read it. Hear the beginning: a new governess arrives in a cab, and presently enters the drawing room with her bonnet in her hand, and her hair all tumbling down on one side. She is 'a lovely apparition' on the appearance of which 'my father' a clergyman--a widower with 6 children 'stood like one amazed, and then, like the chivalrous gentleman that he was, he darted forward and kissed her, saying, "My love, we will try to make you happy, indeed we will."' It is not surprising to find that the governess did not improve in tidiness, and that the clergyman's sons took to kissing her too. However, as they were only boys, they were generally rebuffed by a box on the ears.

I have also been reading the Parisians. It is a pity Bulwer died so early; if he had lived another fifty years or so he might have written some novels to my mind.

[From the following letter it appears that I was already on the high way to the ruin which followed in due course. Henry Hoare, then acting head of Hoare's bank, Fleet Street, started a lot of companies--in which the other partners of the bank, or at any rate several of them, took shares.

Hoare persuaded me (and I wanted little persuading) to get my money home from New Zealand and put it into his companies. These [were] a patent steam-engine company, a patent gas meter company, a company for pressing jute in India, and one for making an extract from hemlock bark in Canada, which was to pay at least sixty per cent, and revolutionize the leather trade. Pauli, a barrister, and Jason Smith, a barrister, were infatuated with this last as much as I was, and Pauli borrowed what little money he could on a reversion due to him on the death of his father and mother. This reversion was already pledged to myself, indeed I had advanced him more than its whole amount, but so confident were we all that I released his reversion that he might borrow a thousand pounds and invest it in the Canada Tanning Extract Co. Ltd. of which Hoare made both Pauli and myself directors. I can plead no excuse for any of us but the confidence that Hoare's bank would not countenance any such schemes without having had the best advice concerning them. We did not know that Hoare had been plunging for some time, and we did not know that old family bankers ought to be and generally are the very last people in the world who should be able to advise on commercial undertakings. They and we were all fools together; no one was morally very guilty, and it is so long ago that I would not say anything about it unless it were necessary in explanation of some letters that will follow. S.B., August 8th, 1901.]

May 13th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

You will find plenty of amusement in your new occupation. Inventors are an odd race, judging from the one or two that I have seen. I dare say you will be ruined, but then you know experience cannot be bought too dearly. Besides, who knows but you may be drawn to Christianity in the hour of your affliction and poverty (see The Fair Haven ) and may come to see the genuineness of Matthew's gospel, and to appreciate the Parable of Dives and Lazarus, and the Rock would say that that would be cheap at the price. But then on the other hand, you may become rich, very rich, a millionaire, a great capitalist and be knighted for having made a gigantic fortune with your patent steam-engine. Well! I have no objection. I should like to know a Rich Man, but then while you are making yourself rich you will be doing nothing for me--I mean you will not be writing books that delight me more than anything else. So on the whole I think I had rather you were not rich.

Another descendant of Cromwell has turned up [at the club] and she is a most offensive person. Fancy! She presumed to say that the members ought not to drink beer or wine! Of all the characters in the whole range of History from the Creation of the World to the present time Cromwell is to me the most detestable. Perhaps in prehistoric times among the gorillas there may have been some as bad, but let us hope not.

Talking of descendants I have had a little alarm to-day; we have been applied to by a certain Samuel Redgrave, who is making a Biographical Dictionary, for particulars concerning my Grandfather, and I was led to look in the Catalogue of the British Museum, and there I found two whole pages devoted to the biographies of a certain Thomas Savage, who murdered his master's maidservant. I have been feeling very murderous, and particularly towards our maidservants, which is probably a family characteristic cropping up in me. I dare say Thomas is an uncle a few degrees removed. This is the more likely as I never heard of any of our family being called Thomas...

Good-bye, Dives, and good luck to your companies.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., May 19th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

...I was disappointed at the Positivists last night. No worship or ceremony at all--something like a mechanics institution, only more dismal and joyless. The male Positivists are, to put it mildly, very plain; the females were such frights and so hideously dressed that Mrs. Gelstone and I decided that in common kindness to them we ought not to go there again. The males might leave the positive and take to making comparisons which, modesty apart could not fail to be fatal to the other females.

At the top of the room there is written up an injunction that we are to live for others. St. Paul is the favourite hero with the sect; there are three portraits of him on the walls; all the other great men have only one. The lecture was good but dull; the lecturer was tall and handsome, and is the first Englishman whom I have heard pronounce the French names Guizot and Broglie properly (Gwizot and Bry in case you don't know). The audience were emotional and solemn; judging from slight indications I should say that the working man is the object of their supreme adoration, and that the present ministry figure in their imagination as a sort of substitute for the devil. There was a notice on the wall inviting the faithful to pay subscriptions of not less than three shillings a year to the 'Sacerdotal Fund'. There was also a calendar on the wall. Moses gives his name to the first month, and Frederick the Great to the eleventh. I think that's all. Good-bye. Thanks for your visit yesterday, it did me good.

I am feeling cross and worried and ill, but I hope to go to Brighton next week for a few days. My mother has just come back from Chislehurst. My aunt has a passion for having all the doors and all the windows of the house always open. You can imagine how pleasant that is with this biting North Wind. We don't make our visits too long there. My aunt has always a cold, or neuralgia or rheumatism--sometimes all at once--but they are caused by anything except draughts. As for me, I get bored there, although my aunt is extremely sharp and clever. Her dog Prince is the be-all and end-all of her affections, and one has always to be bowing down and worshipping him. I take my revenge by telling her anecdotes of my cat, which bore her. But I am boring you which I don't want to do. So no more.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[ About May 20th, 1873]

Dear Miss Savage,

...I have been painting all day. I paint very badly and am beginning to fear that between two stools etc., and yet I don't know. [If I had had any sense I might have, at any rate, guessed. S.B., August 8th, 1901.]

I went to an evening party at Hoare's the other night, and stood for an hour cheek by jowl with the Archbishop of York [Thompson] and the Bishop of Bath and Wells, but neither of them knew who I was. Mrs. Charles Hoare is delighted with The Fair Haven and says that Henry Hoare 'ought to read it'. She is going to show it to the Bishop.

You say the Positivists were ugly. You should have seen the people at Hoare's, the other night. They were hideous, but there were all sorts of great guns among them. I think clever people always are ugly.

Yours in haste,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., [ About June 3rd or 4th, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

Your little study in the R.A. is lovely.

I return the letter from your synthetic friend. [This refers to a letter written to me by the late Revd. Archer Gurney re The Fair Haven: he pricked my conscience by taking the book au sérieux and expressing warm sympathy with many of the writer's views. He wrote so nicely and kindly that for fear I should show the letter about, I tore it up as soon as I had got it back from Miss Savage. S.B., August 8th, 1901.] It is lovely, so artless! I hope you will read his words of faith and cheer and please lend the book to me. Have you answered the letter? What could you say? I am afraid whatever you did say would take the 'bloom off the peach' of his sympathetic admiration. What a horrible handwriting. If instead of wasting his time trying to find out whether his mind is analytic or synthetic, he had tried to improve his writing it would be better for his correspondents.

He is not the only one completely deceived by the book. Mr. Ainger, the reader of the Temple, sent it to a friend of a friend of mine, whom he wished to convert...

Yours sincerely,

E. M. A. Savage

106 Adelaide Road, Primrose Hill, N. W. [ Probably June 24th, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

...They are all very good people here so I have brought them The Fair Haven. The sweet old mother-in-law has just begun it, and is charmed with your father for flatly refusing to box your ears. She is very religious. Julius Bertram is very religious too, but he has been uttering of late some very unorthodox opinions concerning Providence, so I am improving the occasion. Even if I don't convert him I may 'destroy his belief in the religion of his tribe'. I wish you could come and see me, and that you would if you could. Come and have tea with the dear old Granny and me. She has a great affection for you as the nephew of her old school fellow. [My aunt afterwards Mrs. Bather--a very nice woman. See her charming letters in my Life of Dr. Butler. S.B.] She did not like your other aunt I am sure, for though I put rather insidious questions to her, all she says is 'She was good-looking, and afterwards she married Mr. Lloyd', whereas if she had liked her she would talk about her for an hour.

I told you about old Mrs. Bertram. Fancy! Fancy! Although she was always hinting that her children stinted her of the necessaries of life, she left a hundred and thirty pounds in an old stocking hidden away among her clothes. She has left me some very handsome things in the way of lace etc. but I decline the legacy: I think she behaved quite wickedly, and I will have nothing of hers. Good-bye. Do pay me a visit.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[From a letter of mine dated June 25th I see that I said I would go and have tea with her at Beaumont Street on the following Sunday, but would not go to Adelaide Road. I am sorry, chiefly because it now pains me to have refused Miss Savage anything that would have been a pleasure to her, but also to a less extent, because I should like to have heard more about my aunt Mrs. Bather. I remember her as a kind good soul--as much so as any woman who ever lived--but I had no idea how charming a personality she was, till I came to read her letters many a long year later than 1873.

My letter to Miss Savage wound up: Still I should like to see any one who disliked my aunt Mrs. Lloyd...I am getting very much interested with my novel (i.e. Ernest Pontifex-- shortly to be rewritten.) S.B., August 10th, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, July 14th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

I send you a little bouquet of leaves from my note-book, and other religious scraps. I don't think they can be of use to you, but the two miraculous conversions may amuse you. The prayer is a confidential document distributed among the congregation of All Saints' to be used secretly. I stole it from one of the faithful for you. I send you the two verses [1] because you are to be a rich man you know, it may interest you to learn exactly what your fate will be. The information in Scripture is less explicit. Besides, considered Darwiniacally the verses are interesting. I am 'grilling' to see the novel. So you have told the world about The Fair Haven. Miss Drew came home from a dinner party having heard all about it the other day. I am sorry that I let that dear old Granny read it: I am afraid she will hear all about it and think I meant to take her in. She got hold of the book, and I couldn't take it away. It is now circulating among a clan of McGregor friends of hers at South Kensington; they are devoted followers of Garibaldi's and I presume addicted to the vice of protestantizing Italians. I should think the book would quite suit them.

Of course I shall like the novel if you like it--when am I to say I do?

I came home only a day or two ago. I like staying at Primrose Hill. It is the only place I do like staying at. I think it is because there is no mistress of the house to bother one. One is not obliged to be bland and amiable all day long, and one can do as one likes entirely. I don't even go to church, although the Bertrams are so devoted to theirs. While I was there they had the feast of the anniversary of the Dedication, and Emily Bertram used to go to church about four times a day during the Octave. This is the way invitations are sent out in that ritualistic neighbourhood:

'Dear Mr. Bertram, will you give us the pleasure of your company to supper next Monday week after evensong?' 'Dear Miss Savage, Mr. and Miss Bertram are coming to dine with us next Wednesday, and we hope to have the pleasure of seeing you with them. Excuse this short notice as we did not know till early service this morning that you were at 106. Dinner at 6 o'clock so there will be plenty of time for evensong at 8.' I am happy to say that when 8 o'clock came there was only one volunteer for evensong.

I am very much better than I was. My want of strength reached a pitch that was comic. A fortnight ago, however, I went for a day into the country and wandered in hay fields and so got hay fever, from which I am only just recovering. Very silly of me to go into the hay fields, for the result is invariable; but I am not what Miss Karstens calls 'Providential'.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. I am going to hear Ristori this afternoon.

The faithful of All Saints' are quaking with fear lest the Bishop of London should appoint a Low Church parson in place of Father Richards deceased.

[1] The verses are:-

As it fell out upon a day
Rich Dives sickened and died.
There came two serpents out of Hell
His soul thereto to guide.

Rise up, Rise up, brother Dives,
And come along with me--
There's a place in hell prepared for you
To sit upon a serpent's knee.

For the conversions and the Prayer, see at the end of the letter. S,B.

PRAYER.

for All Saints', Margaret Street, June 16th, 1873.

Almighty and everlasting God, Who dost govern all things in Heaven and earth, mercifully hear the supplications of us Thy servants, and of Thy loving kindness, send we pray Thee, unto this Parish a Priest who by faithfulness in teaching and holiness of life may be well pleasing unto Thee, and by watchfulness and zeal may promote Thy glory and the salvation of souls: through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The following being the case, I will not send you any of the roses I have brought with me from Mr. Bertram's garden; who knows what effect they might have on you!

A CONVERT IN THE YEAR 427

There was a man at Calaman, of high rank who, when advanced in years, conceived a great repugnance to the Christian religion. He had a Christian Daughter and son-in-law, that year baptized.

They entreated him with many tears to become Christian; but he positively refused and drove them from him, with violent indignation. His son-in-law, bethought himself of going to the Chapel of S. Stephen and there praying for him to the utmost of his power, that God would give him grace to believe, without delay, in Christ.

He did so, with many sobs and tears and the ardour of sincere devotion. Departing, he took with him some flowers from the Altar and when it was night placed them at the sick man's head.

He slept--but before day-break, he called out desiring they would send for the Bishop. He declared himself a believer and, to the astonishment and joy of all, was baptized.

So long as he lived, he had in his mouth the words 'O Christ receive my spirit', though he did not know that these were the last words of blessed Stephen, when stoned by the Jews,--they were also his last words--A.D. 427. Wiseman.

Illustrated Catholic Magazine, July, 1873.

'NOWHERE or NOW HERE'

A poor infidel was dying and in a last gasp of defiance he told his boy to write on a slate 'God is nowhere'. The child wrote the letters irregularly and read it aloud thus--God is now here. The man was appalled, anguish and contrition came, and he died a penitent.

Church Times, June 20th.

[I wrote July 21st before going for a three weeks' outing to Dieppe, and promised some of my novel on my return. S.B.]

...Thank you for your bouquet. There are no more reviews of The Fair Haven, but some one has written a pamphlet Jesus v. Christianity which I send, keep it, please, till I return. The book moves very slowly--still it moves--sooner or later it will go. [It never did!] Erewhon comes out with my name this week 5th Edn. 100 copies ordered but at this moment I am £50 in debt with it.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[On August 16th I wrote again, evidently in answer to a letter from Miss Savage which seems to have disappeared S.B.]

I send you the first 15 pp. of my novel, and will send as many more in a week. I have given up my music and write an hour in the evenings instead. I am painting an 'important' picture...

[Then followed a description of my picture, 'Heatherley's Holiday'--which was hung in the R.A. for 1874. S.B.]

[ Probably August 17th, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I found the following maxim in an article on Confucius in a Spanish review for 1848:--

Deben los hijos corregir suavamente las faltas de sus padres; si no reciben la correction conrespeto y reverencia, vuelran à amonestarles; si advirtieren à mal, sufran con paciencia sin tenerles mala voluntad.'

[I suppose the above should be translated 'Children should gently reprove their parents for their faults, and if they do not take correction with all due respect, they should proceed to admonish them; if they are offended with this, let them [i.e. the parents? Or the children?] put up with it without baring malice.' S.B.]

I asked for the Review for 1871 and 1872 and by and by they brought me the vol. for 1848, and told me it was the last they had. Of course I was cross, so the attendant by way of smoothing things said very apologetically, 'you see Miss, there is always a little delay in getting these foreign works'. The idea of a little delay of a quarter of a century tickled my fancy, so I got good humoured again.

My grandfather built Chelsea Church in 1819 and restored the Temple in 1840.

In two delightful novels by a namesake of mine about 1846 and 1847 High Church is made great fun of, so I think you may make Theobald High Church if you wish to do so.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[Of course the new edition of Erewhon had been printed off some days before I came upon the extract from the Spanish Review on Confucius--I am vexed. Miss Savage in the same letter also sent the following, but did not say whose it is. Of course I ought to know, and equally of course I do not.

'Dieu m'a grevé je le greverai,
Jamais joi ne le servirai,
Je le ennui.

Riche serai, si povre suis,
si il me het je herrai lui,
Preingne ses
erres.

22 Beaumont Street, [ Probably August 18th, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

'Never have I been so calm, so soothed, so happy, so filled with a blessed Peace &c.' as this morning when the first instalment of your novel came. I was delighted to have it, and still more delighted to read it, and I am delighted that you should have done it, and not anybody else. If it goes on as it begins it will be a perfect novel, or as nearly so as may be.

[Then followed some very sensible criticism, all of which I very gratefully attended to. S.B.]

I send the tract--[ Jesus v. Christianity. S.B.] Is it not funny that these men should see through the argumentative chapters, but not through the Christ-Ideal chapter--but perhaps it was wilful? It is not very entertaining, but I read it all through. I can't say I understand what it is about, and I feel no more inclined to worship the 'Verifiable Everywhere' than I did in my young days to worship God Almighty. In fact I prefer the latter as there was more to be got out of him than there is out of the 'Everywhere'.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

The following (to a lady, a member of Miss Savage's club) was sent me by mistake but Miss Savage gave me leave to keep it. S.B.]

[ About August 30th, 1873]

...I thank you very much for the books. The Lundis are delightful, but I tied up the Virgil and redirected it to you. I know nothing whatever about Virgil, so why read 500 pages of criticism about him? Montaigne I know, and Renan I know, and Flaubert and Bossuet a La Belle Cordière and Madame de Boufflers, and my mind concerning most of them is tolerably well settled; therefore I shall enjoy Sainte Beuve; but Virgil is quite a different thing. Besides Sainte Beuve did not mean me to read it, or he would have translated the quotations. I should have come round to see you last night, but it was 8 o'clock when I got to the Club. My feelings bade me go, but my body, which was very tired, wanted me to stay, so at last to put an end to the debate I referred to Virgil to decide the point, and opening the book at random my eye lighted on 'ferat ipse tridentem', which clearly signified supper. So I called down the tube to them to take their three-pronged fork, and make some buttered toast.

Believe me, yours faithfully,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., August 30th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

When am I to have more MS.? You said in about a week, and it is now a fortnight. I read what you sent two more times--once to try to find fault and once for complete enjoyment. As far as it goes it is perfect (at least it is so to my mind) and if you go on as you have begun (and I dare say you will) it will be a beautiful book. Of course one of the grandsons is to resemble old Pontifex--it is very clever of you to suggest the hero's character by minutely describing the grandfather's; it will save the ticketing and labelling that novelists are given to, and which bore one so dreadfully; and then the characters in spite of all the ticketing and labelling manage to make themselves out as something quite different.

I like the Preface also [i.e. to The Fair Haven ] but it does not seem to me to attain quite the perfection we expect from you. However, as, though I read it carefully two or three times, I could not lay my finger on anything, I came to the conclusion that the fault was in myself.

[Indeed it was nothing of the kind--the preface is very bad, and I am ashamed of it. S.B., August 10th, 1901]

I am glad to hear that you are painting a picture. I wish I could see it. I am going one day to give you some more painting rags; they only want tearing up, but I have been so much disinclined to exertion this last week or two that I think I must have a tumour in my brain. I have been reading Maudsley and he says that people who have a tumour in the brain are disinclined to exertion; their intellects remain as clear as ever, and the only symptom is what their friends call laziness. But Maudsley says that when they are dead (they always die in the most unexpected manner) and their brains taken out and 'the hemispheres sliced' and a tumour found at the 'base of the pyramids'--the friends are very sorry for their unkindness. (I dare say they are not, but of course they say so to Maudsley.)...

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, [ Probably Sept. 3rd, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am not very well, having had a cold, which has brought on a slight feverish attack, like those I used have last year. So I am very cross, and therefore find great pleasure in finding fault as much as possible, and making the little molehills in your MS. as much like mountains as I can. It does me good--but not very much, for the molehills are not many.

This chapter is quite as delightful as the first though in a different way, of course. I like it, I think, the best of the two, but you must soigner the composition a little more --near about the middle there is quite a constellation of sentences beginning 'but' and 'yet', which coming one after the other are not pretty--and on the page that you have numbered 7 there is a sentence which is, to say the least, clumsy.

And I don't like 'reflex reflection'. I think you have been caught by the jingle of the words; would not 'reflex thought' mean the same thing and sound better? or do you intend 'reflex reflection' for a 'sotiltee' (as the cookery book I have been studying calls complicated and curious dishes) which my brain is too dull to penetrate? For me saying 'reflex reflection' would be something like saying 'spherical sphere'.

And leave off writing as soon as you are tired--it is when we are tired and thus enfeebled that the wee bit of exaggeration (such as on reading your MS. again you will see I have pencilled) becomes too strong for us.

Is the narrator of the story to be an impartial historian or a special pleader? The inconvenience of special pleading in a story is that one's sympathies are apt to go over to the other side. One's sympathies do not go over to Pontifex as yet, but there might be danger further on. You (I mean the teller of the story) are too severe upon people who say 'if I were you'. When people say that they only mean 'if I were in your place, surrounded by the same circumstances, but with my own physique, morale, and intellect'. I don't think people ever mean anything else, but I don't object to your saying this in a story; it is not in reference to the MS. that I have remarked upon it, so I don't think I need have said anything about it, and as I am giving way to unnecessary remarks I will say good-bye.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Sept. 9th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

[After explaining about the letter she had sent me by mistake. S.B.]

I found the bit of French poetry in my little note book, but I don't know who it is by, nor where I got it from.

By all means keep the letter to Miss Wilson, if it is of 'use' to you. But Alas! I took great pains with it, and to say the truth it was more with a view of showing off my best hand writing (a thing I don't often treat you to I am afraid) than for any other purpose that I wrote to her. Whenever I am very cunning, I generally overreach myself. But how did it happen that you did not guess that I had made a blunder?

...or do you mean that our minds are made by fortuitous concourse of ideas, which ferment and brew themselves into something without our having anything to say to it ourselves? That is what is called Unconscious Cerebration, is it not? And so we are quite irresponsible ourselves. Well I am quite agreeable, but wish the fates had decided to brew Erewhon in my brain, not in yours.

As for yawning and sneezing being involuntary, with all respect to Mr. Darwin, I beg to say that they are not. Perhaps yawning may be so sometimes, when you have past your dinner time two or three hours, but never else. Do you ever yawn when you are alone? Even if you are ever so tired? [Yes I do, often. S.B]. You only yawn when you are in the company of people who bore you, and a yawn is always the result of a sly suggestion to your muscles; it is only a polite fiction to call it an involuntary action--it is a deliberate hint.

As regards sneezing I have before explained to you, that Mr. Darwin notwithstanding, I hold it to be caused by Diabolic agency. A reflex action indeed! If Mr. Darwin knew how a Sneeze will sometimes lie in wait for you, for an hour at a time, and then, the moment you are off your guard, will seize you and sneeze you, he would know better than to talk about reflex actions.

I do not think you have specially pleaded as yet. Of course you must have a personality, and a decided one or you would choose some other form for your story. If the narrator is one of the dramatis personæ he is bound to give his own version of the story. I am sure that you will be easily able to show that he in no wise distorts facts or motives. Thus the faintest hint that you have not been one of fortune's victims would prove fast enough that you are speaking generally, in the Fortune passage.

I think you must also remember that though you adopt pretty much your own character, and speak your own feelings and convictions, yet that you have chosen the disguise of an old man of seventy-three, and that you must speak and act as such. Now a man of seventy-three would scarcely talk as you do, unless he was constantly in your company and was a very docile old man indeed--and I don't think the old man who is telling the story is at all docile.

Please excuse this long letter. I can only say I did not mean it--it is the result of a reflex action of the muscles over which I have no control. I must ask you also to excuse these scraps of paper to which my poverty but not my will consents. I have no more. This is my last scrap, so you will have no more letters from me yet awhile. With this piece of good news I say farewell.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

When am I to have more MS.?

[Probably October, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I return the MS. It is delightful--not more delightful than it was before, but as you say softened, or rather the keenness more dissimulated.

Do you recollect the story of Mimer the Smith? He had a contest with another smith as to which was the better workman, and he made a sword that was to be tried upon his rival, who on his side made a suit of armour which he asserted would resist any weapon of Mimer's making. So he put on his armour and sate himself down on a block of wood, and Mimer placed the sword on helmet. 'Do you feel anything?' said he. 'No,' said the other. So Mimer pressed on his sword, and it went right through the helmet and his rival's head. 'Do you feel anything?' he again said. 'No,' said the other scornfully. So Mimer went on pressing slowly, and asking every now and then if the other felt anything, but he still answerd 'no', till at last the sword touched the wooden block. 'Do you feel anything now?' said Mimer. 'No,' said the other. Then Mimer said, 'Get up and shake yourself,' and as the other did so he fell into two pieces. I think you are very much like Mimer, but more so in The Fair Haven than in this. Your preface will be a 'get up and shake yourself'. [How impotent it all was! S.B., August 14th, 1901.]

I heard some one last night criticizing The Fair Haven. The person was quite up to the intention of it, but disapproved, and was finding fault with the style and composition; and what do you think was the fault found? It was that you were too fond of digressions! You began to tell a story and then went off on to something quite different. As an instance of faulty construction they mentioned the nocturnal adventure, how instead of going straight to the point, you interrupted the anecdote with a discourse about something else. Such nonsense! They could not see that it was precisely that sort of thing that made the memoir read like a real one. If the story had been told 'smartly', people would not have been taken in. I had to listen in silence, which was dreadfully irritating for my tongue was itching to set them right. But I won't talk about your books at the club, so I had to bear it. They were perfectly secure too. They said the book would do no harm--the argumentative part was so weak and loose!!! They reminded me of Mimer's rival.

I did not tell you that last Monday I had an encounter with a Ruskinite, and got considerably worsted--made a fool of myself in fact. Miss Collingridge had kindly recommended me to a lady who is a very useful good woman and who does good for Ruskin. She keeps a school, and I was wanted to teach some classes. In the course of conversation Roche was mentioned, and I, forgetting my position said that Roche's 'teaching was the best in the world'. She asked me if I did not think it had a very bad moral effect upon the character. To which I answered that I thought it had the very happiest effect upon the character. Then she sneered and said something about 'mere proficiency', and I said that the most moral way of teaching a language, was to teach it as well as one possibly could teach it. Then I woke to the fact that I had made a fool of myself, and so I took my leave.

Of course I ought to have abused Roche, and taken my own way when I got the classes. Her 'moral effect' was something like saying 'It has a higher moral effect upon the character to paint a picture not so well as one possibly can, without the hope of selling it, than to do one's very best with the hope of getting something for it'. But how can a Ruskinite appreciate Roche, who is a Frenchman with a great sense of humour, heaps of common sense, and rather a keen eye to the main chance?

Talking of the main chance, I went with the other deputies to the committee yesterday: I was disappointed for Mr. Hoare was not there, and I had intended him to be my antagonist and victim. However, we delivered our minds, which is a great thing...If we do turn the club into a company, you shall be one of the directors as you seem fond of that sort of thing. It will probably cost you a trifle like a hundred a year, but you will be having so many other sources of wealth, that you won't mind that.

I wish you would tell me again what you said about the Jesus of History. Did you say anything or did I dream you did? I have been racking my brains about it for the last 24 hours, and they won't stand much more racking. However, don't write on purpose; when you do write tell me...

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Sunday [ Postmark on envelope Nov. 3rd, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I saw yesterday in The Times, that His Grace the Archbishop would pontificate and preach to-night in Islington, and I suppose there he is pontificating at this very moment. 'What is to Pontificate? and what is pontification? I appeal to you for information, as you are the historian of all the Pontifexes, to say nothing of your being a successor of the Apostles once removed. I should think you would be able to tell me. If you can't I shall write to His Grace the Archbishop himself, and enclose a halfpenny post card for a reply. If Mrs. Gelstone were in London, she would march straight off to Islington and find out, but I haven't half energy enough for such an enterprise. I like better to trouble you. I am not asking out of mere idle curiosity, but because I have sixpence at stake, so please forgive

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont St., W., Friday [ about Nov. 10th, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

The most embarrassing thing in the world is the embarrassment of riches. Why will you embarrass me so? I shall be obliged soon to give up being your Molière's housemaid if you don't become less versatile. I like what you sent me on Monday immensely. It is very clever, and I know you would be able to carry it on through a long book most successfully--but it would be a tremendous tour de force. Upon the whole I think I like the direct method best. We should all be astonished by your genius if you used the indirect method, but I think we should like the book better if you used the direct way. (I speak for myself and the other housemaids, not for the crème de la crème of intellectual society.) In this chapter, too, the special pleading is quite apparent though the pleader is more of an abstraction. But I prefer an advocate of flesh and blood. Especially if he is to be an actor in the story. Then, if you used this way, you would have to modify greatly, or perhaps sacrifice, the beautiful first chapter; and that would grieve me dreadfully. There is no reason why the narrator of the story (you have never told me his name) should not occasionally indulge in irony. He could do so very effectively from time to time. So, really, I think you could combine the advantages of both ways. Is that what you mean by 'dodging'? If so, by all means dodge. What I mean is that he should be, like a man who, when he does not find his ordinary tool, sharp enough for the occasion, takes up a keener one for the moment. I don't think by the direct way you will necessarily turn the reader's sympathies into the wrong channel. That is the danger of special pleading, and, as I said before, there is as much (more perhaps) of special pleading in this chapter as in the others--at least to those who see through it; and in a novel it will scarcely be a gain that simple and literal-minded people should be taken in. A novel is not a book like The Fair Haven. As regards the hero, if his first appearance is in this chapter, he is scarcely introduced to us favourably; he does not quite make a good impression. There are some delicious bits. What the young persons fail to see is good, and so is the concluding bit about the church.

Please forgive me for not writing before. As you are not a Christian perhaps you will. I was going out to dinner on Monday and was busy with my toilette. About two months ago I sold all my clothes (except what I stood upright in) and the consequence thereof is that when I do go out I have to work like half a dozen seamstresses. [I will undertake to say she sold her clothes to help some poor friend who was in difficulties.--1901. S.B.] I did not come home till Tuesday night, and yesterday and to-day have both been very busy ones. I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon in playing bezique with an old lady who came to spend the day. I was obliged to go to the club on important business in the evening, but when I got there I was so tired that I was incapable of writing to you then.

I met Mr. Heatherley last Monday. He told me about your picture. Are you going to keep it for the R.A. or are you going to send it to the B.A.? I hope you are better than when I saw you last.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Do you know I don't think the last time or two when I have seen you that you looked so happy as you used to be. I am afraid your relations with your family trouble you more than you choose to allow--or what is it?

By the way, agreeable is spelt with two e's. I mention this because you never will put more than one.

[No doubt by this time I was waking up to the fact that Hoare's companies which were to make our fortunes would be more likely to do what they did in fact do. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., Sunday [ postmark Nov. 24th, 1873]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I give you notice that I am coming to consult you to-morrow upon matters of the greatest importance...I give notice also that I am not going to let the conversation wander to such frivolous topics as The Fair Haven or the Pontifexes. Apropos of the latter I like the third chapter very much...I think you are a little too redundant here and there. [Then followed instances--all perfectly just. S.B.]

I do not mind Alethea having blue eyes much, as she is not the heroine, but I like people with dark eyes best. Best of all pale hazel clear and bright--warmed by golden specks. I saw a beautiful Jewess with just such eyes about two months ago. Her hair was a beautiful red but harsh in texture and wanting gloss; and the lower part of he face was decidedly coarse, but her eyes and nose, and the setting of her eyes were seraphic.

However, in your first novel you should not try to make your people interesting by anything unusual in their personal appearance. In your fourth or fifth novel you may give us a heroine with golden eyes. I can wait for her.

PS. I shall come to-morrow at half past five, but no punctually. I am not a punctual person, thank heaven! and I wish nobody else was. Ah! I could tell you a pitiful story of my sufferings last Friday in consequence of the vicious desire that some people have 'to be in time', as they complacently call it. But I won't lacerate your feelings as I know you have a tender heart that bleeds for others' woes. However, I did get a feverish attack, and could hardly hold my head up. I am better to-day: to-morrow I shall be quite well.

[I have destroyed a letter from myself, and two letters from Miss Savage. S.B., August 16th, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street

Dec. 15th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am afraid from what you say that you have bronchitis, in that case I think the prescription I sent you yesterday might do you more harm than good. You must have a fire in your bedroom, and sleep with your window shut; you must not go from a warm room into a cold one. Please attend to these directions and you will soon get well. I don't know of anything nasty in the way of physic that would do you good, or I would tell you of it with pleasure.

I like your critic. Who is he? [I forget all about this. S.B.] But why didn't he find you out before? Don't you think he was rather stupid for not doing so? However it is a good critique. I think he is rather hard on priest-craft. I rather like it, as you know.

The sweet passage in the loves of Theobald and Christina [in my novel. S.B.] is delightful. 'Grant that he may be beheaded' is lovely. Also 'the moon had risen and the arbour was getting damp'. You must write a play some day.

Christina was the name of the lady who prayed (when she was being looked at by me--or rather by the little Owens) in The Fair Haven. She was the wife of a Mr. McIntosh a great contractor who had made an enormous fortune. He was the son of the man who made an enormous fortune by making canals in Scotland, and he was a railway contractor. He had a great lawsuit with the Gt. Wn. Railway which you may have heard of; the mention of it makes lawyers' mouths water. He thought it great fun and worth a thousand pounds a month just for the excitement of the thing.

He was not exactly what you call a good man. I believe he had a plurality of wives, which offended our friend who prayed; so she was separated or divorced from him. All this happened before my recollection, but there was a certain mysteriousness about her; she was so profoundly respected, and always looked upon with a sort of veneration, which puzzled me very much when I was a small child, for there was nothing about her to account for such distinction, except that she was a Victim and a Martyr.

Her children were most beautifully devoted to her, and she accepted all their sacrifices as her due. Her eldest son was the most devoted of all; he never left her, and never even seemed to wish to do so. However, poor fellow, he died when he was about 45, whereon she came to London, and stayed with us for about three months, but long before she went we one and all of us came to the conclusion that if we had been married to her, we would have had a plurality of wives, or a plurality of anything that would have had the effect of making her go.

She had been a great beauty in her youth, and looked wonderfully young when she was really quite an old woman. Poor thing! she is dead now, so I suppose I ought not to say anything against her--but that eldest son of hers was a saint and a martyr. Nobody could hay any conception what he must have gone through unless they lived with her. The father was a bad man, for he wouldn't give his children a penny because they had taken her part, and they only have what came to them from settlements, which compared with his immense fortune was the merest trifle. I don't know what has made me inflict all this upon you, but you called Theobald's affianced bride Christina, and that set me off--so it is your own fault.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Mrs. Westlake is getting very ugly. I am so glad. Theobald is delightful too. He is not so ambitious for himself as Christina is for him--just as it should be with a pair of lovers. How happy they will be together.

22 Beaumont Street, Dec. 16th, 1873

My dear Mr. Butler,

I enclose the following--

[The enclosure was as follows:--

Mr. Gladstone on Bishop Butler

Mr. James Knowles sends to the Spectator the following extract from a letter written by the Premier to him.

10 Downing Street, Whitehall, Nov. 9th

'...I have no formulated opinion for or against Evolution. Bishop Butler taught me 45 years ago to suspend my judgment on things I knew I did not understand. Even with his aid I may often have been wrong. And oh! that this age knew the treasure it possesses in him, and neglects.

Yours sincerely,
W.E. Gladstone.']

What a pity that you did not send Mr. Gladstone a copy of the first edition of The Fair Haven. He might then have said 'Oh what a treasure we possess in Pickard Owen!' What a pretty letter he writes too. Nobody writes to me like that. I wish some of my friends would begin their sentences with 'And oh!' It is so nice and takes off from the dryness of a communication.

I hope you are better, please let me know. And oh! if you knew the treasure we possess in Butler, you would take care of him; you would indeed.

I am very glad to have your explanation about the cheese. It is indeed very hard that a man cannot buy sausages without having his action misconstrued. Nevertheless as you may have been more anxious to clear your self in my opinion than to speak the truth, and to show, you how large-hearted and wide-minded I really am, and how tolerant of others' less elevated tastes, I enclose an advertisement of some beautiful blue mouldy cheese.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Dec. 20th, 1873

Dear Miss Savage,

I send you some scraps. They are only sketches, just as they happened to come, and not re-written, for I am sticking to my plan of covering the canvas first. Still they will form a ground to work on. I shall go on just letting myself run on anyhow for the present.

My cold is better, and having done no work for a fortnight, I am rested, and am not now overworked. The lump on my neck is smaller, and I don't get deaf immediately that any one has bored me for more than five minutes--in fact I am rested, but I am pulled down. Please return the sketches when read...

Yours,

S. Butler

Jan. 7th, 1874

My dear Mr. Butler,

I think Miss Andrews is a little toquée. She says she has known you from a child, and it was through her persuasion and encouragement that you took to literature. I am sure, I for one, am much obliged to her if this was so.

[I never saw Miss Andrews but once for a quarter of an hour at Miss Savage's club, when Miss Savage introduced me to her, and she got a promise of an Erewhon out of me. Yes, she was Cromwellian in her face, very. S.B., August 17th, 1901]

I heard all this from a member of the club, who was reading the Examiner with the Review of The Fair Haven, and passing comments as she went along.

'Oh,' she said, 'here's a review of that book by Miss Andrews's clever friend.' So I asked a few questions and found that Miss Andrews had known you from a child. I suggested that perhaps the lady had made a mistake and that Miss Andrews had meant Josephine Butler. So she drew herself up stiffly and said, 'Oh dear no, there was no mistake, I am not in the habit of making such mistakes. She was speaking of Mr. Butler, the author of Erewhon. She knows all of them.'

I: All of whom?

SHE: All the Butlers.

I: Good gracious! She must have an extensive acquaintance.

SHE: I meant, Miss Savage, all Mr. Butler's family, not everyone of the name of Butler.

I: I beg your pardon, I did not mean to be rude, but are you sure she said she knew his family?

SHE: Quite sure. His father is a clergyman somewhere in the country, and he was very much opposed to his son's taking to literature. But she encouraged him, and it was her encouragement that decided him.

I: She must have had great influence with him.

SHE: She has. He consults her about everything that he writes.

Here in spite of all my efforts I could not help one little giggle; then I said:-

I suppose he consulted her about The Fair Haven?

SHE: No. He knew she would have disapproved of the plan of the work; but she regrets very much that he did not consult her.

Here I finally exploded, and the lady's astonished look was so comic, that I couldn't stop for ever so long. At last I was obliged to tell her that Miss Andrews had been drawing on her imagination for all these details. So you see, my dear Mr. Butler, the necessity for your taking great care of yourself, and of outliving Miss Andrews. She is a very tough old person, and it may be difficult to do so,' but it must be done, or she will be writing a memoir of you founded on the records of her fancy.

Good-bye, yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[ Postmark Jan. 23rd, 1874]

...Miss Johnson did ask me to meet you, and I went on Wednesday, but you never came. Why not? I was very sorry not to see you, but the keen edge of my disappointment was taken off by something having just occurred to put me out of temper, and I was in a tearing rage. I was rather glad that you should not see me in a tantrum.

I think very likely the paper I saw addressed to you at the club was a prospectus of the Socratic Society. Probably the Socrats have elected you a member. I have heard all about them. If Miss Andrews has not sent you the paper, it is most likely you are involved in my disgrace. There is no doubt, however, that she is cracked, or she would not have talked about you as she did. I have been invited to be a Socrat too. I have also been invited to go on a committee for the reform of the lunacy laws, or at any rate to speak at public meetings. I shouldn't mind the latter, if I were paid for it. I don't know anything about lunacy laws but I could confine myself to generalities, enlarge, for instance, on the wickedness of a younger brother putting his elder brother into an asylum for the sake of enjoying his estates. I think perhaps that a more accurate knowledge would only be embarrassing. You know how delighted I shall be to have some more Pontifexes.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

106 Adelaide Road, Primrose Hill, [ Postmark Jan. 31st, 1874]

My dear Mr. Butler,

Many thanks for your letter and the preface. The latter did not arrive with the letter, but I dare say it came later in the evening after I had left home. However, I no longer want it. My own copy took advantage of a box of odds and ends being left open for a few minutes, to dive to the bottom, and there to lie for two or three weeks. It might have remained there for months or years, if I had not wanted to make a bonnet out of the odds and ends, and so the creature was discovered. My bonnet is a fright. I never made so ugly a one before, and ascribe the failure to the perversity of the odds and ends, which were corrupted by the evil communications of your preface.

Perhaps it hid itself out of spite in order that Miss Collingridge (who had borrowed The Fair Haven and it) might be wrongfully accused of keeping it back, for I certainly thought she had never returned it.

Apropos of Miss Collingridge, she asked me the other day whether your novel was good. You had told a friend of hers, her most intimate friend, or a most intimate friend, I don't exactly know which she said, that you were busy about one. I disclaimed all knowledge of it; I always do disclaim with Miss Collingridge, or she would soon make me tell her every word of what you are writing.

Miss Johnson, whom I saw yesterday, has asked me I go there on Wednesday, but I am almost afraid I shall not be able to go. I shall be very much disappointed if I can't as you are to be there.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

March 13th, 1874

My dear Mr. Butler,

Miss Johnson told me to write to you to ask why you neither went to have tea with her yesterday, nor wrote to refuse the invitation. With the usual amiability of her sex she inclines to believe that you did not go because you were to meet me, the same thing having happened before, but I need not say that I do not accept an explanation of the mystery so uncomplimentary to myself. Seriously, I am afraid you are ill.

I went to hear Sir Samuel Baker at the R. Institution last Friday. Very unentertaining; a few platitudes about the slave trade, and a good deal of talk about the necessity of christianizing Egypt, which, however, was not at all sincere.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Sunday, March 15th, 1874

Dear Miss Savage,

I have had a very great shock, which made me forget to answer Miss Johnson's note. Her note came just at the same time.

My friend Henry Hoare, late head of Hoare's bank, has been, unknown to me, rushing into the wildest speculation, and has come to grief. Pauli and I ought to have suspected that something was wrong, but we had such confidence in him that we had no idea that he was Plunging. So little did we suspect, that on his asking us to hold shares for him with any amount of liability on them--many thousands of pounds--we had no hesitation in taking the liability upon ourselves. His income was between £40,000 and £50,000 a year, and in his position, the bare idea that he was gambling all this away never crossed our minds.

Only the day before he smashed he got Pauli and to take up shares for him with liabilities amounting to £8000 between us, he well knowing that we had conception of his real position. Of course we ought have asked him why he did not take up the shares himself--but there!

And then our companies! I still believe and hope that the one of which I am a director will turn out right, an I see no flaw yet in the others, but the source from which they have come is tainted, and both Pauli and I are very anxious.

Please excuse me to Miss Johnson. I will write or call. Don't tell her what has happened. At the Bank they say that we are safe as regards our liabilities. [This proved be so. August 19th, 1901] Of course they turned him out of the Bank at once. He thought he could treble his income; fancy wanting to treble £40,000 a year! Don't show this letter to any one.

Yours,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, March 17th, 1874

My dear Mr. Butler,

I have just got your letter. I am dreadfully sorry, more than I can say. Of course you and Mr. Pauli were bound to believe Mr. Hoare under pain of being supernaturally 'cute, and not yourselves at all, but quite different people and not at all nice. It is much better that you should be as you are, and I am very glad of it. At least I like you very much better. You see, my friend La Rochefoucauld is quite right when he says there is always something in the misfortunes of our dearest friends which is pleasing.

All the same, dear Mr. Butler, I wish that no misfortune had happened to you, and I am very very sorry for your pain and disappointment. I am afraid the worry and overwork will do you harm, but you will let Mr. Pauli do the hardest of the work. He is stronger than you are.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Please don't forget that I am unhappy about you, and let me know how you are. But only just a word. Don't write a letter, you will have enough to do. I would rather go without news of you than add to your overwork. But you will send me just a word, won't you?

Thursday [ March 20th, 1874]

[In answer to one of mine which I have destroyed. SB.]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I don't think there is anybody quite so good as you are. When I know some one who is, I will tell you. No, indeed you did not write too harshly, considering the moment and your fears and belief, you wrote even indulgently. Thank you for writing to me so soon. If you knew how glad I was to have your letter, you would be glad that you did write so soon. But I am grieved when I think that you will still be worried and overworked and interrupted by business matters, and I am not at all inclined not to think 'harshly' of Mr. Hoare. However, I shall not say what I think to you. I saw Miss Johnson at the club to-day. She told me to ask you to tea on Monday. So I hope I shall see you. It will be a very great pleasure if I see you looking well. So please dear Mr. Butler, be as well as you can.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

I am very good too. I have never once thought of the Pontifexes till this minute. I am the most unselfish woman in the world.

22 Beaumont Street, April 11th, 1874

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am quite shocked when I think of the way in which you break your word. Did you not say you would let me know how you are? However, if you will send me an abject apology, I will be good enough to look over the heinousness of your conduct. Seriously I want to know how you are, and whether your worries are subsiding. Don't write a long letter, you know, just a line please.

I saw a lady the other day who enquired after you--Miss Palmer. [Then a well-known public singer, and a very nice woman. S.B.] You will remember her on the club committee? I had not seen her for nearly two years, to have talk with, so I gave her a sketch of your career. She had seen reviews of Erewhon, and was delighted when I told her you had written it. She was seized with a desire to read it, which desire I am graciously pleased to gratify. She is one of the nicest women I have ever known. I have a little match-making plan in my head concerning her; but I shall not tell you about it, as the other person is a clergyman and you would not sympathize.

By the bye I was invited to meet a distinguished nonconformist divine the other day--and a descendant of Fuller.

I wanted to talk to them, and to see what non-conformist divines are like, but I was sat down to whist with three other worldlies, so the divines sat in a corner and talked together. One of them I was rather inclined to like: he was the principal of a Presbyterian college. From the way they talked I should say they looked at Theology from a business point of view.

I have been very unhappy lately. I have not slept for two nights, and Thursday and to-day I have had no appetite, and you know how gourmande I am. Yesterday I saw you at your window and felt dreadfully inclined to rush in and ask your advice, but common sense prevailed and I went on my way. I wish I had not common sense, for then I should have told you all about the matter, and that would have relieved me very much.

The fact is I have been doing what I don't often do. I have been doing right. And you know when once one sets about doing right what a deal of harm one does, and one can't stop it; that's the worst--and it gets beyond one's own control. In this case a friend of mine who has a passion for doing right, and who does no end of harm with the greatest self-complacency was necessarily acquainted with the affair, and I had to restrain her. So I was stubborn, and even violent, and managed her at last. But it shall be a lesson to me.

This is a weary world, I think I shall go into a convent--that is the only place for such bunglers as I. At all events the mischief one does is kept within four walls. Good-bye, and don't forget that I want to know how you are.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, April 22nd, 1874

My dear Mr. Butler,

I wish I were your maiden aunt with a large fortune, I should have so much pleasure in scratching you out of my will. This is the dozenth time I have been invited to Miss Johnson's on purpose to meet you. Fortunately for you, the weather is so heavenly to-day that I can't settle to schemes of vengeance, but to-morrow if it rains hard, and the wind is NE. I shall call at your house and poke holes through your pictures with my stick, and break a looking-glass whereby you will be unlucky for seven years.

Did anything dreadful happen to prevent you? Has the Bank of England been wanting to treble its income, and come to grief? or by some special miracle have all the sovereigns been turned to brass in one night? Miss Johnson said she had been carrying a letter to you in her pocket and had forgotten to send it--but that should not have prevented your coming. Nevertheless as there seem to be some extenuating circumstances I will not break the looking-glass, but will only poke holes in the pictures.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I have destroyed a short note of April 30th condoling with me on the supposed rejection of my picture 'Heatherley's Holiday', which proved to be hung after all, and also on the serious illness of my sister. I replied that both my pictures were hung and that my sister was better, and out of danger. I said 'I never was seriously alarmed.

'"Her friends recovered from their fright
The fever 'twas that died".'

I have also destroyed a short letter dated May 12th, chiefly about my pictures in the Academy.

On June 4th, I wrote saying that I was to start for Canada on the following Wednesday to report concerning the Canada Tanning Extract Co.'s works, and should return about August 1st. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, June 5th, 1874

My dear Mr. Butler,

...Remember I am the most untravelled person within three realms, and a voyage to Canada appears tremendous to me. My notions about Canada are as vague as Stopford Brooke's 'aspirations', but I am very glad to hear that you are going to have such a grand holiday.

I was going to pay you a visit on Monday and bring you a great bundle of paint rags, but I shall not come now, you will be too busy, and you shall have the rags when you come back, but I am dreadfully cross at being disappointed of the little (I mean great) pleasure I was promising myself. However, I forgive you and wish you all the enjoyment that any one can have in a voyage to Canada and back. Good-bye.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

St. Lawrence Hall, Montreal, Friday, July 10th, 1874

Dear Miss Savage,

I am rapidly regaining health, and hope to be quite well again by my return in the last days of July. I have got some really charming literary pabulum among the French Canadians. I was not prepared to find myself so completely in a French and not an English country. I am to stay with an 'habitant' to-morrow, in order that may go to mass on Sunday and inspire the village with confidence in the company. Madame Vigneau has had so many lodgers since we started, that she has become quite rich, and out of gratitude has had a four-dollar mass said for the company. This is the best mass that money can buy in these parts; the cheapest is 25 cents or one shilling; the average is about half a dollar. I have instructed our agent to have an occasional mass said on our account, about 6 two-dollar masses a year for each set of weeks. This I am told will be about the right thing. There are bears and wolves and great cariboo deer in our woods--as big as oxen but I have not seen any. This trip is just what I wanted to set me up in health. I will write as soon as I come back.

Yours,

S. Butler

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., August 2nd , 1874

Dear Miss Savage,

I leave again at once for America. I am in a bad way. Cannot help it. Must do the best I can. This comes of knowing rich bankers. You have been a good kind friend to me and I thank you--poor requital for your patience under all the boredom that I have inflicted on you--but there! My position is not desperate; that is all I can say. I am to take complete control over the whole thing; if I fail I return in a few months penniless; if I succeed, I am all right, but shall have to stay a long time. I am much better in health and my life in America will, I doubt not, do me a great deal of good. If I fail I shall have to write novels for my bread; I WILL too.

I shall write in America, if I find I have any spare time, and prepare for a rainy day. Yes my novel will at last go ahead; but it must be quite innocent, for I am now reconciled to my father, and must be careful not to go beyond scepticism of the mildest kind. I shall have to change the scheme, but shall try to keep the earlier chapters. No. I will not be didactic--at least I will watch and pray that I may not be so, but being didactic is a sin that doth most easily beset me. I will write from America and send my address. It is all I shall do to get away by Wednesday, but if you are able to come and bid me good-bye, say from 5.30 to 6 to-morrow Monday, please do so. Charles Hoare is behaving well. Henry Hoare is bad and dangerous.

Yours,

S. Butler

Montreal, Friday, Sept. 11 th , 1874

My dear Miss Savage,

I arrived here about three weeks ago, not feeling too well or comfortable; I have been mending ever since and am now very well. I think I shall pull this Co. through, and recover my money. I cannot speak positively, but at any rate I have a free hand. All will depend upon whether we can sell the stuff we make--we can make it well enough, good, and much at the estimated cost, but the market does not seem to support us, so far; this is our weak point, and it is just the one that I am least able to influence. The work is neither heavy nor uninteresting, and the pay will keep me well enough so long as I remain here. I don't see how a man could be much luckier than to run right against such a position, at the very moment that he wanted it, and to jump without apprenticeship or training into a post such as many try for in vain all their lives long.

There was a violent agitation made to recall me as soon as my back was turned, by the friends of the man whom I am replacing, but it was hitherto failed, and I think seems likely to fail, but there is no knowing. West--the man whom I am replacing--cabled home 'Butler will get the Co.'s affairs into confusion--better send somebody else'. I knew nothing of this message; then Hoare put his oar in and cabled West 'Tell Butler wait my letter--avoid precipitation'. When West showed me this, I said I could pay no attention to it, as I was only responsible to the board. Then West cabled back that I would not delay taking charge without an order from the board, and that I showed utter incapacity--again without my knowledge. The next day I received a cable 'You are sole agent of the company--act accordingly' and West got one as I afterwards learned from Pauli 'Follow Butler's directions; show this to him', but he never did show it to me. Then came letters from Pauli giving [a] full account of the intrigues--as far as I can see they will fail.

I go to bed early and get up early. I am much better than I was three months ago, and am sure to get better and better, as I did in New Zealand. A year or two here will do me no harm, and will be a cheap price to pay, if I can save the company and return to a modest competence again, as before all these companies were started.

The water-melons here are very good. There are some good pears too, but too expensive--and after all fruit hardly counts; a country can only deserve credit for food that it has known how to make nice by art. Fruit is no test of country's aptitude for cooking. I may get a little writing done, but very little; the Co. requires all the energy and attention I can give it, but as I said, the work is interesting.

There is a good high hill behind the town, some 700 or 800 feet high with rocky ground and native forest. I never saw so good a natural pleasure ground to any city--and the views over the St. Lawrence and far away to the Adirondack mountains are delightful. And the colour is splendid. I can get to the best parts in an easy hour's walk, and go to them almost every day as soon as the office is closed. This is a great pleasure to me.

Yours,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., Oct. 15 th , 1874

My dear Mr. Butler,

Thank you very much for your letter; I was just beginning to feel disappointed at the mails coming in and no letter for me, when it arrived and I need not say how glad I was to have it. I was very glad to hear that you were in better healt, but I fancy that you did not write in the best of spirits You insisted too much on your good luck, and that makes one think that you were trying rather too much to make yourself believe in it. However, whatever luck you may have I think you have rather more than your share. I thought so after that last time I saw you, and you told me what you had been doing buying back other people's shares in the company. You have great and varied talents, genius, I should say, and you have so much capacity for so many kinds of enjoyment. You were born with a sweet temper, an unselfish disposition, and a natural inclination to deal righteously with your creatures [Now, I doubt whether either Jones or Alfred would say that I had a sweet temper. Of course I think I have--but neither I nor poor dear Miss Savage are competent judges. S.B., August 24th, 1901] and power of mind enough to cultivate the inclination, and yet you want to be rich. I call you a most unreasonable man. Let the poor stupid disagreeable people have the money (I think they very often do); they want it poor things. When you get that modest competence you speak of, I shall look upon you as defrauding somebody or other.

We have been having rather a sad time, here at home. My poor father has been very ill and is so still, with only the prospect of a very slow recovery...Poor Daddy! He is wonderfully patient and good. He is very sweet tempered and unselfish; I wish I were of more use to him, but my mother nurses him. I can only go for the doctor. I am very clever at going for the doctor, I always was. So you see I have been having some trouble and anxiety; I am very fond of my father. I wish I were as fond of my mother, but I suppose that would be too much of good luck.

I gave away your paint rags the other day, and when I had done so I felt as if I had burnt your ships...

Since I wrote the above last week I am happy to say that my father has taken a turn for the better, and is now able to be moved down to Brighton for a little change. His appetite is coming back. The doctor says he is not to be pestered with food, but that he was to have milk and rum or brandy, and he had nothing else for a day or two. I mention this as the Canadians seem to want to starve you. You can't starve on rum and milk you know, so with a cask of rum and a cow you may defy Canadian diet. Another thing--you should take your rum and milk through a straw. I read somewhere or other, some time or other, a paper by a great French Physician in which he said that milk is much more easily digested, and much more nourishing taken through a straw. I mentioned this to Daddy, and he immediately was impatient to have a straw, so I got him some straws, and he took his milk with relish and began to mend from that moment.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Montreal, Friday, Nov. 6th, 1874

Dear Miss Savage,

Thank you for yours. [Later wrongly dated October 15th, 1875, and now rightly placed. S.B., August 24th, 1901.] I am still alive, but I have fallen among thieves. Well--I believe I may also say that the thieves have fallen among me. Foley, our vendor, tried to intimidate me the other day; he raved and stormed and threatened, but it was no use. I never lost my temper, nor even paraded my guns, so that he had to give up. Since then he has written me an anonymous letter, which the handwriting experts at the Bank assure me is by him. What a fool as well as what a scoundrel!

I think still that we shall pull through but the market is still unsatisfactory, and it is on this that all depends.

I have been reading a translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Is it good? To me it seems perhaps the very worst book I ever read. No Englishman could have written such a book. I cannot remember a single good page or idea, and the priggishness is the finest of its kin that I can call to mind. Is it all a practical joke? If it really is Goethe's Wilhelm Meister that I have been reading, I am glad I have never taken the trouble to learn German. What a wretch Carlyle must be to run Goethe as he has done.

I was rather pleased with myself too the other day when an American in the train told me I spoke English with a strong London accent. I laughed my sweetest laugh and said, 'Now can you Americans mimic the accent?' 'No,' rejoined the other, 'I can't say that I can exactly imitate it myself, but I have a son who can do very nicely.' I again laughed my sweetest, and said 'allow me to congratulate you'. I also made rather nice 'familiar misquotation'--I wad that he were dead, but he's nae like to dee. It is an improvement is it not?

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

Dec. 3rd, 1874

My dear Mr. Butler,

I read Wilhelm Meister before I went into my teens, and am happy to say that I quite agree with you in finding it tiresome. I was quite as good a judge then as I am now--at least the books I liked then I like now, and the books I didn't like then I don't like now. To say the truth I didn't understand what it was all about, and as Goethe requires so much explanation, it is quite possible that I may not understand now what he would be after. You know I don't like things with a depth of meaning in them: I like things that are obvious to the meanest intellects. I shall not read Wilhelm Meister again.

The more I have read about Goethe the more I dislike him. There is a meanness about him which is truly feminine. When he wanted to quarrel with Madame von Stein, he brought up against her that she had persisted in drinking coffee too freely, against his repeatedly expressed wish. Now why could not he quarrel with her like a man? I cannot imagine anything more exasperating to the lady than to have such miserable pretexts brought forward seriously. And probably he persuaded himself that that was really a very good reason for being faithless. Mr. Lewes thinks so, and it was in his biography that I read about it. Her rival was addicted to drinking ardent spirits, but it does not appear that Goethe made the habit a subject of serious complaint.

Apropos of faithlessness Mr. A---- has paid Miss B---- £160. The trial was fixed for a Tuesday, and on the Sunday preceding she sent in her surrender, and came to terms, so she is free to play the same little game over again, and has a nice little sum in her pocket. I wish somebody would jilt me. I am told that some of his witnesses rather regret the compromise; they had got their 'things' ready for their appearance in court, and what can be harder than to be baulked of an opportunity for displaying one's finery? You men, who are clothed but not dressed, cannot, I dare say, understand the feeling. Miss Kempe is quite candid about it, and I sympathize with her.

Thank you very much for your letter, I was very glad to have it, but am grieved that you are still so uncheerful. Shall I preach resignation and talk about discipline? At any rate I am glad that the 'thieves' are being disciplined to, and have no doubt that after they have been among you once or twice more they will become your very obedient servants. I haven't the smallest doubt that you will succeed and make the company pay [!S.B.] but I won't hope so, for I am not lucky--this I believe is the true reason of my disinterestedness in not hoping that you will soon be back again.

I am sorry to hear of your burning anything that you have written, I dare say you will have burnt something that I should have enjoyed. I hope you are doing a little to your novel. I have been reading French cookery books lately. I should very much like to send you out one or tvo--but you don't really care for good things--it is your only fault that you don't. It is all hypocrisy your saying that you care, you only say so because you hope I shall sympathize more with you.

Write to me again soon, please, and be sure to tell me whether you have had anything nice to eat, and tell me what you are writing.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Montreal, Friday , Jan . 8 th , 1875

Dear Miss Savage,

...Please excuse a short scrawl for I am in the very thick of the combat, and have the closing and balancing of the year's accounts to attend to. The time is now come when it is to be seen whether the thieves have fallen among me, or I among the thieves. I have done my utmost, and so have they. If I find that I have not beaten them I shall resign and return home. If I have beaten them and can see that they are done as they obviously ought to be I will stay. I never had such a time as I have had lately, and the Board at home fast asleep and considering me suspicious. I have no idea which will conquer but think it likely that my opponents will do so. I have made no false or stupid move since I have been here, and, as I have said, shall resign at once unless I find myself supported. I shall know which it is to be in about 3 weeks.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, Jan. 21 st , 1875

My dear Mr. Butler,

Just two or three lines to thank you for your letter received last night. It was very welcome, for I was really uncomfortable about you--indeed I was uncomfortable to the extreme pitch of counting up the weeks since the date of your last letter, as the pricks on the calendar on my wall will testify.

I am in two minds about you, and don't know whether I should be glad or sorry about what you tell me. I shall be sorry if you are beaten but then you will be so much happier in London writing and painting and amusing yourself--and I shall be glad if you succeed, but then you will have to stay in Canada, and be killed by bad cooking and ennui. You see I am quite disinterested, and don't mention what I should like best. And I would not wish for you to cone back not even if I were to see a piebald horse, when, as you know, the wishes you wish then are all fulfilled...I did not know that if you write 'Private and Confidential' on your letters you could be as libellous as you please. I should like to have the words stamped on the top of all my writing paper...I have not got an almanack for this year, so don't drive me to the pitch of wanting to count the weeks between your letters.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I destroyed a very reproachful little letter dated March 20th, and when I came to the autumn of 1875 was sorry that I had done so. The burden of the letter was to say that it was plain I should let a hundred years go by without writing to her, so long as she did not write to me--and that she would have written sooner but she had lost my address.

Doubtless the determination that I should be made to write, two or three times before she would answer is the reason why I heard nothing from her between August and December, 1875.

Knowing how much she had been piqued and pained by my silence in the spring I wrote three times in the autumn without eliciting an answer. Then I was forgiven. I never was placed in a much more difficult position. To write was to encourage false hopes--not to write was to be grossly unkind--so I wrote, and I suppose this was right. S.B., August 26th, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, Saturday, March 27th, 1875

My dear Mr. Butler,

You will have got my hasty note [destroyed by me. S.B., August 23rd, 1901] by this time I hope. I am dreadfully vexed that I could not write sooner, not on your account of course, but on my own as I shall have to wait so long for news of you, and I am impatient for news--the last account was too exciting for me not to want to hear from you very soon again; and now I shall have to wait a month I dare say. Well--it is my own fault, but I would rather it were somebody else's that I could vent my spite upon. I can't long be angry with myself you know. Perhaps you will soon be coming home?

Do you begin to like the country better? And have you had anything good to eat yet? I have been keeping house at the club for five weeks, and have been thinking of little else than things to eat. Do you know it is quite a mistake to suppose that women are indifferent to what they eat? I have always looked upon myself as a gourmande because I like good things, and thought I was an exception--but not at all. I am only less hypocritical, and though I say it, who shouldn't, more intelligent.

Oh! if you only knew what I have to put up with about the gravy and the undercut, and the sauces and the fat. No; women are very unintelligent feeders, but they are anything but indifferent. They are a hundred times worse than men. I have been very much worried and fatigued with the club--all the same I cannot say that I dislike it. Miss Kempe [afterwards 2nd wife of H. Stacy Marks, R.A., S.B.] is an honourable exception; when she gets what she wants she is contented, and as in my time she nearly always has what she wants she is a pleasant person to deal with. It is also easy to supply her wants. She was asking after you the other day and told me to give you her love next time I wrote.

I was at a dinner party about two months ago, and heard a gentleman say that he had not read Erewhon but that Dr. Reid had told him it was the finest book that had been written for years. I don't know who Dr. Reid is, but he must be an intelligent person. I tell you this to show you that Erewhon is still talked about. Good-bye and write to me very soon, please. It was a month yesterday since I had your last letter.

E.M.A. Savage

Montrea, Friday, April 23 rd, 1875

Dear Miss Savage,

I am coming home, leaving in about three weeks time, partly because my neck warns me that I shall break down unless I have a change, and partly because I shall never make the board understand the position if I do not see them.

I shall probably return here again after a flying visit to England, but I may stay in England altogether, there is no knowing. The voyage in itself will, I doubt not, rest me sufficiently--you need not be uneasy about me, there is nothing seriously wrong. I will let you know as soon as I return.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[Either along with this, or in some earlier letter, which I have not found, I seem to have sent my 'Psalm of Montreal'. I did not find the MS. of the poem. S.B., August 23rd, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, W., April 29 th, 1875

My dear Mr. Butler,

The poem is delightful, and a great deal too good to be kept to myself. So I took it to the club, and looked about for some congenial soul to share it with me. I saw Miss Drew, and hinted to her that I wanted a private conference with her; so we retired to the dressing-room, where among the damp waterproofs and goloshes, I read it to her very great delectation. She is tremendously orthodox, but can never resist fun. Then I gave it to Miss Kempe to take to Mr. Heatherley, who sent word that he liked it but thought you were hard on Spurgeon, who, it seems, is very fond of the fine arts! ! I wish you would send it to some magazine, but I suppose it should be slightly softened for the Public? but you would know best.

[The 'Psalm of Montreal' appeared in the Spectator, May 18th 1878, and was reprinted at the end of my Selections book. S.B., August 23rd, 1901]

I am rejoiced to hear that you still hate [too strong a word. S.B.] Canada, and hope you will get nothing good to eat or you might want to stay there, I wish you were here, for I am full of perplexities, and should like to consult you, which I can't do by letter, not even if I put 'private and confidential' at the head of my letter, for my story besides being libellous would be long--too long.

I have been very busy at the club. I have been keeping house for nine weeks, with only one week's rest. We have had no end of bother with our servants. Our cook was ill, and obliged to go to Hospital, and while she was away, we had a succession of fiends in the shape of charwomen, who had whole harems of husbands, though they only confessed to one; still I am sure only a plurality of spouses could have consumed so much. Then I had a housemaid, a Scotch widow, of a certain age, who had never been in service before, an intensely stupid, slow, and easily flurried person. She was religious too, and had many scruples concerning the Sabbath. There were three things, however, which she loathed more than breaking the Sabbath--which were, a duster, a scrubbing brush, and a broom--rather necessary things for a housemaid to handle, but which she would never voluntarily touch. Oh the Fiend! but she is gone--may I never see her more! She was a widow, and I know what her husband died of-- Dirt. Then the members, some of them have 'timpers' like the claimant's Mary Jane. Miss Dixon lives in the house. I have nick-named her the Pocket Cyclone. I used to be able to put up with her 'timper', but she has been attending Moody and Sankey's ministrations, and has 'found Christ', since which time she has been unbearable. I have not been to hear these new apostles. Miss Drew went to hear a preaching, and as she didn't stand up when desired, that is, when all who had 'found Christ' stood up, a man came round from the platform and preached to her, asking her if her sins were very heavy, and beseeching her to trust to the Blood, and to the Blood alone. I mean to go one day myself. Don't you think you might send them a present of The Fair Haven? Moody might quote it in the pulpit, and make its fortune; I think I will send my first edition copy, if you will give me another.

The Drawing Room Gazette has been in the market. Mrs. Briggs asked £800 for it, and declared it was cheap at the price. She had a nibble from some one who offered £50, but who withdrew from the bargain. I don't know of any news to tell you; I am getting quite stupid, my mind always upon shoulders of mutton and potatoes, and rice puddings and twopences and halfpennies, and hashed beef, and curry, and beer, and ginger beer, and all the thousand articles we nourish ourselves with. I go to the stores, (the civil service stores) for all groceries etc., and I am always studying the Price List--a bulky Pamphlet which I call my New Testament; the members have got so used to the expression that even the Religious ones are not shocked, and when I say 'I have lost my New Testament', they will get up to look about for it. Write to me soon, please, and a thousand thanks for the poem...

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I destroy a line from me, dated June 1st, Monday, saying I had returned to England on Saturday, and asking when I could see her.

I also destroy one from me dated August 2nd, just to say that I was going back to Canada, and asking when I could see her to say good-bye. S.B., August 24th, 1901]

Montreal, Friday, Sept. 3rd, 1875

Dear Miss Savage,

I am in full swing of litigation with Foley, and up to my eyes with all attendant worry and anxiety. I have sent the accountant who came out with Hoare home to confer with the board. I had a pleasant voyage out, travelling with some rather nice people; also with old

Lord Houghton from whom I won 26s. at whist on various nights. We had service on board on Sunday. I accompanied the chants and hymns on the piano, and old Lord Houghton warbled 'Rock of Ages' in a very edifying manner. Mrs. Eustace Smith who was also on board with her husband, the member for N. Shields (I think) assured me that Lord H. is the most 'horrid old reprobate--oh, horrid, horrid, I assure you', so I liked hearing him sing 'Rock of Ages'.

To-morrow I shall probably have Foley arrested for swearing false affidavits. They are again objecting to my evidence, as a supposed atheist and cross-questioning me minutely as to my religious opinions.

I very nearly horrified Laflamme our lawyer--the best in Montreal. He was talking to a client, who he afterwards told me was a model of filial piety, inasmuch as, though he had a wife and children, he had left a profitable business in order to look after his mother, who was mad. The neighbours were now complaining of him for harbouring a dangerous lunatic. 'Horrible wickedness', I exclaimed. 'Yes surely', said Laflamme, who thought I meant wickedness on the part of the neighbours for complaining, but I meant wickedness on the part of the man for sacrificing the interests of his wife and children to those of his mother. Seeing that Laflamme did not take--I turned it off and worshipped filial piety.

They are having a tremendous row here about one Guibord who has been unburied for four years. The Privy Council say he shall be buried in consecrated ground, and the Catholics here say that he shall not. They barricaded the cemetery yesterday, and stopped the burial, but they will have to bury the man in the end.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[In a book of newspaper cuttings made by me, I have a published account of my cross-examination as to my religious opinions, on the strength of which Foley tried to get my evidence set aside.

I forget when we had Foley arrested for swearing false affidavits, but I do not think it was till some few weeks later. This was a mistake for though it appeared to us and to Laflamme that Foley had perjured himself through thick and thin, it did not appear so to the magistrate, who after one whole day's examination during which I was cross-examined for hours (I am not sure that the examination did not last two days) dismissed the charge.

Later: I see from a later letter that we did not arrest Foley till about the middle of November. S.B., August 24th, 1901]

Friday, Oct. 8th, 1875

Dear Miss Savage,

I wrote you a few lines Sep. 3rd, and have had nothing from you since I left England. I am afraid that either you or your father are ill. I have not heard any thing good, or eaten any thing good, (I know you will say that my saying this is mere hypocrisy) nor even thought that I have said any thing good for months. Oh yes! I did say one thing the other day that rather pleased me--A man, a true Montrealler, told me he had a yearning to get away from civilization; I said we were all of us given to discontent, and seldom knew when we had got what we wanted. He did not see it, and I did not mean that he should, but I felt better for having said it...

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

Montreal, Friday, Nov. 19 th , 1875

Dear Miss Savage,

I am sure you are ill, or I should have heard from you. I am nearly done up with incessant law, and have been examined all the afternoon in the police court, where we are prosecuting Foley criminally for perjury. Believe me it is all I can do to write this scrawl--but I shall return to England on a flying visit almost immediately, and shall hope to see you and find you well.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Dec. 8th, 1875

Dear Miss Savage,

I came back last night--very well--but exceedingly anxious about the Company. We cannot sell our stuff, and ought to make no more till we have got rid of what we have made--if we can get rid of it. How is it that I have never heard from you? Pray let me do so at once.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

The Woman's Gazette, 42 Somerset Street, Portman Square, W., Dec. 15 th , 1875

Dear Mr. Butler,

...Did I tell you Wednesday? How stupid of me. I have so many things on my mind just now that I forget those which are the most important. My wits are beautiful to look at, but not much good for use. I send you a ticket and a programme. My dear little Gabrielle Vaillant [!S.B.] plays exquisitely--some night you must cpme and hear her. She shall play Beethoven's romance in F for you [! ! S.B.]. Is there anything else you would like?

I have got such a delicious cake, it was only given me half an hour ago. I wish you could have had some of it. How stupid of me to go out. The fact is Wednesday is a day of reception here, and by a very curious coincidence, I generally have an important engagement on that day. The older I grow the less I care for company, unless it is exactly the company I like. I don't care about the company being good, but I like it to my taste. Alas! I remember the time when if two or three (no matter who) were gathered together I liked to be there in the midst of them.

I get great fun out of this place; I delight in Miss Scott --I really like her, and her little oddities are most diverting. She is very jolly, and as I readily acknowledge her to be the greatest authority living upon every subject under the sun, we get on well together.

Miss Scott is at the head of the art embroidery in this establishment, and it was she who got me my berth. Good-bye--try to come to-morrow, and in time for the violin.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. My poor little fiddler is to have an accompanyist whom she does not like. Mr. Donaldson's daughter was to accompany her, and she accompanies beautifully; but they have changed, and handed her over to Tamplin, who is conceited because he plays the organ at Mr. Haweis's church. Don't you detest Haweis?

[Of course I did and I did not like Tamplin, whom I knew well at Cambridge. Among other freaks he wrote The Messiah Quadrilles, which I have vainly tried to see. They are sure to be clever--at least I sh'd think they would be. S.B., August 26th, 1901]

The Woman's Gazette, 42 Somerset Street, Portman Square, W., Dec. 17 th, 1875

Dear Mr. Butler,

I had a note from your admirer to-day, asking you to go to see her on Sunday. If you have an hour or two to spare, do go. I am fond of her, and she has found Christ. She is, however, an admirer of Mr. Voysey, whom I detest. Mr. Voysey is going to start a magazine, in which you might write articles if so disposed. He pays my friend and so does Mr. Scott, but whether well or ill I can't say. I think tolerably well. I shouldn't like you to write in Mr. Voysey's magazine, unless the doing so would help to keep you at home; then, I should not mind in the least.

I want to know how you got on to-day at Gillow's, and whether you are going to do some panels at once: there are two very pretty ones in a shop round the corner between this street and Oxford Street. My friend Mr. Laurence Lewis who was Cox's secretary has now set up for himself in Pall Mall. Miss Johnson is going with me to interview him on Monday. Have you any pictures to sell now? If so I shall tell him to call upon you. He really is a very nice fellow, though perhaps he has not yet received the Holy Ghost. I send you a time-table for Dulwich.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I called on Gillow's people, and found that the decorative panels they wanted were just of a kind that I did not see my way to do. Were I in want of money now, I understand quite well both what they want, and how to crib what I could not invent, but the fatal habit of 'studying'(!) in a school where all the business part is done for one had prevented me from ever developing the creative side of painting. If I had known that I could do what Gillow's wanted--and I believe that I could have done it after a few failures--I should have tried to do it, but they showed me things that were so much more knowing and more freely treated than anything I felt equal to doing, that told them I did not think I could do the sort of thing they wanted. I suspect also that my heart was by this tine set on Life and Habit, about which I had begun to ruminate while still at Montreal as I have said in Unconscious Memory . S.B., August 26th, 1901]

Dec. 18

Miss Wilson's address is 38 Chancellors Road, Dulwich. How stupid of me to forget to give it you!

Miss Wilson writes to say that she has put off V. so please allez-vous faire adorer chez elle demain; moi aussi je vous adorerai puisque c'est le Dimanche, et on doit adorer quelque chose, ou quelqu'un ce jour là. It is only one step from Benevolence to Adoration. I am become benevolent, why not adorative too?

The Women's Gazette, 42 Somerset Street, Portman Square, Dec. 18 th , 1875

Dear Mr. Butler,

I have had another letter from the lady who admires you. She wants you and me to go on Monday to meet Mr. Voysey, who it seems is also an admirer of yours. (The only nice thing I ever heard of him.) Perhaps all the admiration he can spare from himself he bestows on you, but that won't be much, so don't be elated. I can't go on Monday, I shall be much too busy, and to tell you the truth I should always like to be too busy to meet Mr. Voysey. However, this time it is quite true, that I shall be over head and ears in work, and I should always be delighted to meet a dozen Mr. Voyseys, if you were thrown in to make thirteen. So go and meet Mr. Voysey on Monday, or me to-morrow. If you choose Voysey I shall not be hurt, for I am sure you will suffer by your choice. While you are being bored by Voysey I shall be congratulating myself on being better off.

There is one thing , though, that I must tell you--and that is that if you become surrounded by a circle of adoring spinsters (of which I see symptoms) I shall drop your acquaintance. Have you not taught me that there is nothing so contemptible as a boree? And a boree I shall be when you are worshipped by your spins.

I don't believe I should have hated Voysey half so much, if he had not told us about the six pocket handkerchiefs, all embroidered with slings and stones in the corners. I asked if that was his crest, but it seems it was the title of a book he wrote. Woe betide you if you have pocket-handkerchiefs embroidered with Havens in the corners! Good-bye. I have just been sending a Gazette to your Father. We are sending to all the subscribers to a Benevolent Institution. He is one of the Benevolent--so he has his reward in this world in the shape of a Woman's Gazette.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I do not remember having gone to meet Voysey. I met Voysey once or twice at Henry Hoare's, and I may have gone to Dulwich and met him at Miss Wilson's but I have no recollection either of Miss Wilson, or of going to see Miss Wilson. Still I may have gone. As for my being surrounded with a circle of adoring spinsters--who, I wonder, was it that was doing her utmost so to surround me, and boring me almost beyond endurance in spite of all my admiration, respect, gratitude, and compunction at my own utter inability to requite her affection for me in the only way that would have satisfied her? If ever man gave woman her answer unequivocally and at the beginning, I gave mine to Miss Savage--but it was no use. She would not be checked and I had not either the heart to check her--or--well, never mind. I would if I could, but I could not. And to this day she daily haunts me in that I could not. S.B., August 26th, 1901]

15 Clifford's Inn, [ about Jan. 15 th, 1876]

Dear Miss Savage,

I will come and see you about 8 to-morrow evening (Thursday). I have still got a heavy cold but am painting and writing better. I have got a very dry, but exceedingly (to me) interesting subject, something like the machines in Erewhon--on which I am now working steadily--but what it will come to I do not know. At any rate it has the merit of not being aimed directly or indirectly at christianity, and not being satirical save incidentally. It is on the force of habit. I have never been so taken with a subject since I wrote The Fair Haven.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[Then I was not yet sure that my Life and Habit theory was more than ingenious paradox. But by Feb. 14th I had gripped my meaning and knew it to be sound. See my book Unconscious Memory , p. 30, and my letter to T. W. G. Butler of Feb. 18th 1876. S.B., August 27th, 1901]

[I forget what Mrs. Lowe's pamphlet was about, but I used to hear a great deal about Mrs. Lowe at this time: no doubt Miss S. gave me the pamphlet by hand. S.B., August 27th, 1901]

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Jan. 25 th, 1876

Dear Miss Savage,

I return Mrs. Lowe's pamphlet which I have read with much interest--it is one which makes one furious, but what can one expect from such wretches as Lord Shaftesbury. The case seems to me such a strong one that I should not be surprised if Mrs. Lowe succeeded in making them uncomfortable--only let her keep very temperate. I would have kept that out about bribes. It may be true, but I should hardly think it, and I am sure that most people would be prejudiced against the case by seeing the imputation--true or false. There should be proof adduced before such an imputation is made.

I saw an allusion to Erewhon in The Times this morning and was glad. Voysey preached last Sunday on the subject 'Did Jesus Christ die upon the Cross?' This sounded to me as if he had been reading The Fair Haven, but I was too lazy to go and hear.

I am all right again now. You were quite right about the face in my portrait being too long. I have had to take the nose up an eighth of an inch and shall take the mouth up to-morrow.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, Portland Place, W., Jan. 26th, 1876

My dear Mr. Butler,

There was no need to send Mrs. Lowe's pamphlet back to me, but I am glad you did so as you thereby gave me the opportunity of hearing how you are. I saw the allusion to Erewhon in The Times yesterday and meant to write to tell you of it but your letter baulked my good intention which has gone where my good intentions nearly always do go.

I dare say The Times after this will review your new book, which will be a fine thing for you materially, though I don't know that from a literary point of view it will be very gratifying to you. I am going to a dinner party on Wednesday, where I shall meet my enemy's brother. This will be great fun. I am glad you are so much better, and I hope you had a delicious pork-pie. I forgot to tell you that at Dumas's in Princes Street, Leicester Square, nearly opposite the violin shop, you will get all sorts of good things in the way of pork-pies, and such-like dainties. Their truffled cutlets are capital things.

Yours very truly,
E.M.A. Savage.

[I don't believe a word about any of those things that we see in the shop windows being good wholesome food. Miss Savage professed herself a gourmande . I believe no one was ever less so. S.B., Brit. Mus., Sep. 28th, 1901]

Saturday, Jan. 27th

PS. If the day is fine to-morrow, will you come and see me, and have a cup of tea at 4.30? Do not come if it rains up to noon. I say this not out of consideration for you, but because if the forenoon is not fine, my parents will not go out for the day--which they will do if it is fine as I sincerely hope it will be.

--This is a good 8th of an inch; I am sure your portrait was more than that too long in the nose.

The Woman's Gazette, [ About Feb. 9 th, 1876]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I shall be at home every evening this week, and I hope I shall see you very soon.

You must have enjoyed the concert very much last night. I saw you in the orchestra. I was far away in the dark place under the gallery, where I always like to be. Next Monday I shall have to go to the orchestra, for Miss Scott wants to go and I shall never dare confess to her that I am afraid. [She was afraid the organ would come down on her. S.B., August 27th] But wasn't it delightful. I am sure even you must have liked the Schumann quartet...

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. I suppose you know that Dr. Kenealy is going to preach the gospel (or a gospel) as soon as he can get a chapel. Every 600 or 700 years God is made incarnate in man, and at the present moment is incarnate in Kenealy. At least that is what I hear. My bête noire is a devoted admirer of Kenealy, and if you want any news of the Dear Doctor or his wife, or any of his twelve children, come to me for it. The claimant is a polished gentleman but God is not incarnate in him. I am sometimes made quite sick with the nonsense I hear.

A young woman who was secretary to the suffrage society at Bristol has just committed suicide. No wonder, if the Bristol committee are anything like the London one.

The Woman's Gazette, Feb. 28th, 1876

My dear Mr. Butler,

I was very glad you were out, for Mr. Lewis could not come. Your pictures are lovely, but I could only look at them for a second or two, as I was bound to be back at the office by 12 o'clock, and it was half-past 11, when I was at your rooms. I only went to you fearing that you might be staying at home.

I am sorry you could not come to-night. Do come and see me once more before I go hence. I am sure it will be for the last time. I feel as if I should never see you again. I shall be here every evening this week. What a shame not to put your poem in the Examiner last week: but they will do so this week of course...

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[The poem must have been my 'Psalm of Montreal'. S.B., August 27th, 1901]

The Woman's Gazette, [ About March 10th, 1876]

My dear Mr. Butler,

How unkind of you to come the very minute after I went out; I should not have minded half so much if you had not come at all--if you had come half an hour later even it would not have been so bad (why is it always more disagreeable just to miss a pleasure than to miss it by a great deal?). Will you come and see me this week? I shall ask my little fiddler to come and play to you. I did not ask her the last time you came because I had heard nothing of you or your affairs for so long, and if she had been here you would have listened, and I wanted you to talk. She will very likely come to-day to have something to eat before going to the concert--so I shall ask her to come. What a lovely concert that Monday! I saw you there, as I did the Monday before in the orchestra. Last Monday I was under the gallery, having nearly lost my life three times the Monday before in the orchestra. It would not have been so bad if I had quite lost it, but just to miss as I said just now is disagreeable.

I was reading a lecture of Helmholtz yesterday--it seems that we have in our ears little microscopic key boards, with keys and cords and dampers all complete--in fact it seems as if the Lord had tried to imitate Broadwood and Erard. The only difference is that the black keys are not black, so there is yet room for improvement; the same peculiarity is observable in many of the old harpsichords and spinets. It is quite comfortable to think that we are fitted up with things so familiar to us as the common domestic piano, but it is rather droll to think, that when we are playing upon the piano, the piano is playing upon us in exactly the same way. I should think that in time we might play upon ourselves without the clumsy mediums that we now employ--An orchestra now--what an expensive troublesome thing it is!

But I am forgetting that I am very busy to-day. So no more from

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. I almost forgot--I saw Mr. Alsager Hill the other day. He says he knows you. I want you to tell me all you know about him. There is a fox-like expression in his eyes that I don't quite like. If he ever says anything to you about me mind you put in a good word for me. You might even exaggerate my merits, you know. What I shd like you to say is that I am very determined, and stand up well for my rights, and am not to be put upon. I think there is a slight disposition to encroach upon me and I want them to think that they will not be able to do so. In fact they have encroached very much more than I like.

[I have destroyed one note from Miss Savage to me dated March 21st--entirely about Mlle Vaillant's engagements. Often as I spoke to Mlle Vaillant about Miss Savage I never could get a good word about her from Mlle, though I did my best to do so. I disliked Mlle V. from the first moment that I saw her, and my dislike and distrust always deepened.

I have also destroyed five short notes from me to Miss Savage, from one of which it appears that I was still on the board of the Canada Tanning Extract Co. as late as March 26th, but that the Co. was then in extremis . S.B., August 27th, 1901.]

22 Beaumont Street, [ About April 7th, 1876]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I am glad to know that the company is in extremis , perhaps indeed by this time it may be no more. Mind you let me know as soon as it is quite dead. It will be a great burden off your shoulders . . . I wish you did not know right from wrong.[1]

I am so sorry that our little concert did not come off. Mlle Vaillant is going to play to Joachim to-day, or rather has played to him. I am longing to know all about it.

I went to the Popular concert last night. I did not see you. The quintet took 45 minutes to play. I think they ought to allow ten minutes for refreshments in such a case, or at all events an interval for letting pins drop; the person next me sneezed twice, which was a blessing to those in our immediate neighbourhood, for they all looked round ostensibly to express severe disapprobation, but really to give themselves a little relief and change of ideas and position. I dare say they were longing to sneeze too.

Excuse my not having sent this before, but I am bothered with my accounts, and everything went out of my head yesterday, except my day book and ledger, which have, I think taken up their abode in my brain, and are very angular and uncomfortable. I shall lose nine and elevenpence: I can't get the entries in the Ledger to correspond with the Day book. I am 11d. wrong in the receipts too much, and 1s. 8d. in the expenditure too little. When I say I shall lose 9s. 11d., I suppose I must have appropriated those monies and so must refund.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[1]

'H.F. Jones in his Memoir [vol. 1, p. 236] made the following comment on this passage:

'Butler did not keep the original of the foregoing letter; he copied it, but only in part, and the dots represent passages which he himself cut out. I suppose that when Miss Savage wrote, "I wish you did not know right from wrong" in this letter she was referring to his scrupulousness in matters of business, as she says in her letter to him of October 15th, 1874 [ ante, p. 95]: "You told me what you had been doing--buying back other people's shares in the company". He did buy back the shares of those friends whom he had induced to speculate, or in some way he acted so that they did not lose money through following his advice; and it would be quite in her manner, while admiring him for doing this, to chaff him for being so quixotic. But when, in 1901, he was "editing his remains" and reviewing his past life he showed that he supposed Miss Savage to have used these words about his not knowing right from wrong in a different sense, as we shall see later.'

The last words refer to Butler's misunderstanding of Miss Savage's sentence, implicit in his second Sonnet on her, written many years later. Ed.

[From the following letter I see I must have proposed that Miss Savage and I should write a book, probably a novel, together--I had quite forgotten this. After saying how much she wished the Canada Tanning Extract Co. would finally smash she continued. S.B.]

April 19th, 1876

With regard to your proposal to me I decline it--not but that I like it very much, but please remember that I have a conscience--or rather, I should say (for my Conscience is a very manageable one) some regard for you. Do what you may with anything I can produce, and you will have something immeasurably inferior to what you can do all alone. And why should you gain the reputation of doing common work, when you can so easily do the best?

[I copy this out, for Miss Savage's sake, but as a matter of fact I felt very unsound and weak as a writer for many a long year still. It is only during the last six or seven years that I have felt strong. I think my Life of Dr. Butler taught me more than anything else did. S.B., September 6th, 1901]

I know you over-estimate my powers, and so long as your delusion is harmless I should certainly encourage it (indeed I am not sure that I don't share it) 'but when a lunatic becomes dangerous to himself or others he must be restrained'. Such a partnership could not do you anything but harm.

Besides our respective shares could never be calculated. You bring capital, credit, and do the work, and then we divide the profits? Not that I should object to having more than my share, for I am naturally greedy, and would plunder any one else with pleasure; but my first objection to the plan is conclusive, and so no more need be said, except that I thank you very much.

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, April 28th, 1876

Dear Miss Savage,

You will, I know be glad to learn that I have two things (I cannot call them pictures) in the Academy. The oil is tolerable but the water colour looks very bad. However, it will cause pain to my country friends that I shd have two things in the exhibition, and that is a comfort. I believe all the same that I am improving in painting, and am not dissatisfied on the whole. I am fairly started again with writing, and have the first two chapters of my next book Life and Habit completed. I am sorry you won't do what I propose, but am quite ready for my part if you change your mind. The share in the profits might be easily settled by sharing them equally, but if it proved that either party was being thus unfairly dealt with--we should neither of us quarrel about a readjustment. However, for the present I drop it.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., April 29th, 1876

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am glad your friends are pained to the extent of two pictures. I wish they were pained still more; but I have no doubt that if they are 'liable to anguish' (to use one of dear Miss Karsten's expressions) they will have to suffer a good deal in future. Of course your water colour does not look well. Water colours never do at the R.A. After going through acres of oil paintings, the water colours necessarily look weak and poor. You shd go straight to the water-colour room and then you would find your picture looking well enough.

I am very glad your book [ Life and Habit ] is fairly started. Has your righteous man appeared yet? [I take it I must have sent 'The Righteous Man' to the Examiner then (I think) edited by Lewis Sargent, and it must have been refused. It appeared in the Examiner, April 5th, 1879, then edited by Dr. Avigdor. On reading it again I think it very good. S.B., Nov., 1901] I spent my substance for two weeks running upon Examiners (a paper I can't abide) in the hope of seeing him, but was disappointed; let me know if he is to be had, or when he will be to be had.

I send you a letter I have just had from Miss Hubbard, which is flattering, but it seems to me that she would like me to go on doing part of the work of the paper (viz. little paras) for nothing. I have just earned 6s. by doing needlework, and am therefore justly proud. I only wish the demand were equal to the supply, but though there are 30 millions of people within these realms I more than suffice to supply them. Some day when I have very much improved in the art, I may perhaps embroider you a kettle-holder. What style of decorative art do you most admire? Early Ptolemaic is the rage just now I believe.

You don't say how you are, so I hope that your cold is gone, and I conclude you have carried out your intention and resigned your directorship.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Let me know before you go out of town because I shall come and see you.

May 10th, 1876

My dear Mr. Butler,

I have borrowed Tupper for you, but as I cannot bring it to you soon it will be left at the school for you. It is Miss Drew's. I have been to the R.A. and I have seen your pictures which do not deserve to be called names--'things' indeed! Why do you call them names? To be contradicted n'est ce pas? I have a very good mind not to contradict you. If the girl does not sell (I hope they are both sold), but if she does not sell you must call her 'Mignon' and send her to a Provincial exhibition.

Don't be angry with me, but she has a look of Mignon. I should not venture to say so before your face, but by the time I see you you will have forgotten the offence. On the whole the exhibition is uninteresting don't you think? I don't think I ever saw one I cared less for. But then I had had no dinner when I went, and as I have been taking tonics which dispose one more to hunger than to justice, I dare say I was ill natured. I thought it dreadfully wasteful of the Apostles to throw away their mutton chop bones with so much meat upon them. Being famishing myself I could appreciate the wickedness of that act of the Apostles. I suppose the moral that Mr. Armytage wishes to impress upon us is that we have much improved in manners since those days. I am sure we have much to be thankful for. If you and I had been early Xtians we might have flung away our mutton chops, so don't let us be puffed up and proud. By the bye I shall send you a book in which there is an article that asserts that Jesus Xt was a wit--that Christianity was founded on a joke, that he was always poking fun at his disciples, who took everything he said literally. I am writing at the Musée as dear Miss Karstens used to call it--and they are sending us out, so no more from yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

I do hope you have got quite well. I was reading Goldsmith's Animated Nature last Monday. My intelligence is about on a level with his science. In it he says 'Mistrust a man with a steady glavering smile'. Is not 'glavering' a capital word, and does it not express the thing? It must have been in not uncommon use in Goldsmith's time, or he would not have used it. What a pity it is lost. I have seen people with a glavering smile--haven't you? Moody and Sankey had it--at least I judge from their portraits.

May 13th, 1876

My dear Mr. Butler,

What a pity you are going away just now, here is a fine opening for your talents in a congenial line of business. I think I shall apply myself.

[This refers to the following advt. which was enclosed:

'King Messias. Wanted, one or two ladies or gentle-men, associated with printer for an Advent Broad sheet exclusively devoted to the Second Coming, and related subjects: prospectuses ready--Address Alfred Clarke, Printer, 140 St. John Street, London.' S.B.]

I hope your eye is better. I send you a shade for it, not because I think you will wear it, but because I haven't been in Somerset Street so long for nothing. I am become benevolent and shall feel that I have done much for you, and at all events if your eye gets worse, I shall have the gratification of saying 'it is all your own fault'. I shall not beg you to sit with your back to the engine, and not to put your head out of the window and get hot coals in your eyes, because I know if I do you naturally would do the very opposite of what I ask. I am sure I should, so I dare say you would.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Mind you write to me soon.

[Then followed a long ps. saying that she had just been reading about the supposed murder of young Bravo. She had stayed in the same house with him for ten days not very long ago. She writes:

'He was by way of studying for some examination, and had his books in a kind of garden room. But his studies were, he said, diversified with 'frequent communings with nature'--in other words by incessant raids upon the raspberry and gooseberry bushes. He was a light-hearted happy-tempered lad. Poor fellow--it made me feel quite sick. I am sure his wife poisoned him--don't you think so?']

May 15 th, 1876

Dear Miss Savage,

One line of thanks for your green shade, which I take with me but sincerely hope that I shall not require, as I know very well that you do on my behalf.

I return the Truth-seeker. It is not good for very much is it? I am extremely sorry for the shock you had in reading of the death of young Bravo. It looks very much as if his wife had done it.

I had a line last night from the R.A. saying that my Don Quixote was sold for £15 15s. I never liked the picture till now, but now I like it very much.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

I am all packed and shall go off without any hurry, and I hope without having forgotten anything.

Faido, Canton Ticino, June 4 th, 1876

Dear Miss Savage,

I take advantage of a wet day to write a few lines and report progress. I am on the mend physically, and believe that by taking a good spell now, I shall come round to be as well as any one ever was or ever will be, but I had hardly left before I seemed to give in entirely. I don't think I ever was so fairly done up before, but then have had the worst 3 years I ever had since the horrors of childhood and boyhood. I am sure that there is nothing seriously amiss with me, and all's well that ends well. How are you, who I fear have far more serious ground for complaining?

[I omit a silly sanguine page about the studies I was making and what I should do with them when I came back. It makes me sick to see what a fool I was--for it all came to nothing--save to Alps and Sanctuaries years afterwards. S.B., September 10th, Wassen]

I made a study of a church porch a day or two since. Going out to lunch at the back of the church in the shade, I came upon a peasant woman weeding corn, with whom I conversed. Presently, wishing to make myself agreeable, I showed her my study, which I thought rather good. She looked at me imploringly, threw out the palms of her hands as she knelt among the corn, and said 'Signore mio, son pratica far la contadina--ma per la geografi non son capace'.

I hear the company is to smash on the 28th. It does not matter to me when it smashes for smash it certainly will. I have had to pay for my experience, but I believe I have bought an article which will last me my life time.

[I omit another page all about nothing. S.B.]

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, June 6th, 1876

My dear Mr. Butler,

I elect to write at once [I had given her an alternative address, S.B.] and for this reason; it is a pity your pictures should be wasting their sweetness on Mrs. Corry, and what is still worse their potentialities of making you rich. Don't you think they would be better in Pall Mall, in Mr. Lewis's room?

The idea struck me directly you were gone; I think I am the stupidest woman! Mr. Lewis was very sorry he could not go to see your pictures--and that was my fault too, or rather the fault of the Gazette. If you like I will fetch them away with pleasure, but if you haven't sufficient confidence in me, anybody can take them to Mr. Lewis, 46A Pall Mall, only let me know that they are going to him first.

I had your letter last night, if it had been later I should have begun to feel uneasy about you: if it had come sooner it would have been a pleasant surprise; but it came exactly on the day I thought it would. When I didn't have it in the morning I was sure it would come in the evening, and so it did. My mother and many other persons of fine sensibilities that I know wd say that this was a presentiment, but it was only the result of scientific calculation of probabilities. By them, no doubt, the calculation would have been made unconsciously, but with me the reasoning process is painful and difficult, and so I am aware of it. You see therefore that intellectually I am a much less complete being than my mother, and that I am a striking illustration of your theory. Of course I inherit my incompleteness from my other parent.

I am very glad to hear that you are so much better, but you must not work too much. As a very lazy person myself, I of course think that other people cannot do too much; but I make an exception now and then. I dare say you always will do more than you ought. What an excellent thing laziness is! I consider it a high moral quality.

I am very much puffed up just now, having just this minute received a P.O. for 15s., for an article for which I only expected 10s. I have also a commission to write a book for £10!! It is to be called the Home Help to ornamental needlework .

[This was written by Miss Savage under the pseudonym of Masé; a copy is in the British Museum,' but I forget whether the title was as above or no. S.B., Wassen, September 11th.]

By the bye I have not yet made your kettle-holder, but when you come home will give you a copy of my book, and then you will be able to make kettle-holders for yourself, after one perusal. This is warranted. Please write to me very soon about your pictures, but do not trouble to write a letter, unless you are very well, and have less to do than I know you have. Do you know that writting machines will soon be used by everybody? But how stupid our letter will look all printed in capitals--thus:

YOURS TRULY,

E.M.A. Savage

Hotel Mendrisio, Mendrisio, Switzerland, Wednesday, June 14th, 1876

Dear Miss Savage,

Thank you for yours received on Sunday last. I congratulate you about the book, but still more do I congratulate the person who buys it. I shall have to look to my laurels. I don't know whether to wish that it may be long, so that I may have the more pleasure in reading--or short--so that you may be the less badly paid.

As for the pictures: I had already sent the only two saleable heads to Meo, who is to try and sell them for me, through a channel which seems promising; so I won't trouble Mr. Lewis--thank you none the less.

I have been spending the last week at the hotel on the Mte Generoso--unprofitably as regards health and study--bad weather, and a bad place for painting. I had gone into pension for a week and so was bound to stay, or rather was too stingy to go. During the bad weather (4 days) I got some writing done, but it is not good. Either I have been working too hard, or worrying because I cannot paint, or the food did not suit me, but I have got pretty much into the state in which I was when I left London.

I never felt how badly I paint more than now--and after all these years. I ought to have done what I am doing now five years ago; I was on the right track then, only I did not know it. Never mind. I will go back to it now.

From here, in a week or so's time--(remaining here down below at Mendrisio for a week)--I shall go on to Locarno--where please address to Poste Restante.

Please excuse more and believe me,

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[I did some water colours in 1871 which were just on the right track--but then on returning to England came autumn-- Erewhon-- and I drifted back to Heatherley's--so fatally facile. In 1876, at Fusio I did as I said I would and did some very decent water colours, two of which I still have. If I had found indoor subjects on my return, and stuck to water colour I believe I could have sold them and kept my head above water--but then came autumn-- Life and Habit-- and all that grew so disastrously for me out of Life and Habit, and I drifted back to the fatal self deception of going to Heatherley's. S.B. Wassen, September 11th, 1901]

[ About August 18th, 1876]

My dear Mr. Butler,

Will you give me great pleasure, and come and have a cup of tea with me to-morrow, any time after 4 o'clock?

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

I saw a letter from Dr. Gully the other day. His writing is very much like mine when I write in a hurry! His o 's however, are pointed, and mine are always round. I think my o 's look very moral and shall take care for the future to make them rounder than ever. He says that he has been very much 'aided and supported by spiritual agents' during the late trying time, which is almost as sickening as Mrs. Bravo's 'He was not a religious man'. Oh! the hypocrites! I wish I were a material agent for thumping them. Don't you think all these attacks in the newspapers upon a poor dead young man very mean and cowardly? Why don't they admit letters with hypotheses that account for murder, as well as suicide? I could send several. I am greatly amused with the women; they seem to think that Mrs. Bravo's desire to get back into society makes up for everything. I then say to them 'Suppose she had tried to get into your society as she did into the Harford's and Bravo's, how would you have liked it?' Then they declare that they would have liked it very much-- whereat I laugh, knowing that they lie. Mrs. Dobson told me the other day that she believed Mrs. Cox and Mrs. Bravo to be just as good women as myself and herself. So I said, 'of course I cannot answer for you Mrs. Dobson', but she did not see the point of my answer, which, indeed was not particularly sharp, but it 'aided and supported me' very much.

These good people won't see that even if Mrs. Bravo is innocent of murder, she is thoroughly unscrupulous, mean, spiteful, and greedy. They are so illogical too, and they are shocked at what they call my 'light' way of regarding Mrs. Bravo's indiscretions, which I reckon a small thing as compared with murder.

15 Clifford's Inn, [ Probably about end of August, 1876]

[I had been asked by the liquidators of the Canada Tanning Extract Co. to hold myself in readiness to go out to Canada again, on their behalf, if they decided to send any one--which was doubtful. After some weeks, hearing no more, and finding the uncertainty unsatisfactory, I enquired whether they were likely to want me, and found that they were not. S.B., September 12th, 1901]

Dear Miss Savage,

I am not going yet, if at all, but be sure I will not go without telling you. Yes, thank you, I am not amiss.

I am writing at my book Life and Habit regularly, but it is all rough, and notes, and will want rewriting and rearranging--but I am getting a good deal of material together.

The theory frightens me--it is so far reaching and subversive--it oppresses me, and I take panics that there cannot really be any solid truth in it; but I have been putting down everything that it seems to me can be urged against it, with as much force as if I were a hostile reviewer, and I really cannot see that I have a leg to stand upon when I pose as an objector. Still, do what I can, I am oppressed and frightened. I have had to read a sermon of Bishop Butler's again. And here again I am oppressed and frightened when I reflect on the fact that such a poor creature as he should have achieved so great and so lasting influence. However, as my cousin's laundress says, 'it will all come right in the wash'...

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[ Probably end of September or early October, 1876]

Dear Miss Savage,

It is so long since I heard from you that I am afraid you must be ill. I write now to say that I am going down to my father's for the inside of a week--leaving this morning. Please let me have a line to say what you are doing, addressed to

Care of Revd. T. Butler, Wilderhope House, Shrewsbury. They have gone to a house with a mocking name, but it is quite innocent. Wilderhope is a village near Shrewsbury. Several Shropshire villages end in 'hope'.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., Wednesday [ about Nov. 25th 1876]

My dear Mr. Butler,

Thank you for your letter which I was very glad to have; it seems certain now that you are not going away. [Some letter from me must be missing--no doubt I had written saying that the liquidators would not be sending me again to Canada. S.B.] I am very well, thank you. I have been on a little visit to Brighton which did me a great deal of good, though I was quite well before. If you should chance to go to Brighton mind you go to see the owls. They are delightful creatures very entertaining as well as handsome. There is a splendid great eagle owl will hoot at you if you first hoot at it. Another, a great beauty, will let you put your hand through the bars and stroke it and play with it.

I am glad to hear you have been so busy; when you come back I shall come and see you, n'est-ce pas? About a month ago I was three times in one week close to you, but I did not go up to see you, for if you had not been at home, I was so tired that I shd have borne a grudge against you to my dying day: the foregoing is a very badly constructed sentence, but I dare say I couldn't do it better if I tried.

By the bye, the School board election is on Saturday. Mrs. Westlake is going to be elected; she will hardly fail, she has canvassed so thoroughly. Her expenses, I am told, will be not far short of £2000. I think the money might be better spent, but if she does not succeed I shall say the money could not have been better spent. A friend of mine was on the committee for a short time, but she soon retired, and now says that the result of the election will be that women will soon be excluded from the board. I did not tell her that if she was known to be a friend of mine, it would account for any ill-treatment she may have met with.

I have been to a great many concerts lately--beautiful music all of them. Madame Norman Neruda on Saturday played three pieces that little Vaillant plays. The two first, which only required sweetness and feeling, she did not play a bit better than my little fiddle does; the third, which was only difficult she did play better.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Why are you in mourning?

[I destroy my answer which was dated Nov. 29th, and was merely to appoint a time for her to come and see me. I was in mourning for my aunt Anna--Mrs. Russell. I also destroy short notes from me of Dec. 12th and from Miss Savage of Dec. 28th. S.B.]

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Saturday evening [ probably Jan 5th, 1877]

Dear Miss Savage,

Why do you ask me to come without giving me the chance to write and say that I cannot come? Now I know you will expect me, and as I seldom come quite punctually you will wait and wait--a thing I hate doing myself unless people come in the end, and most particularly hate making you do. I am very sorry, but I am pledged to go to Waltham Abbey to-morrow, and shall not be back till nearly six.

If it is fine your people go out, and so do I--if it is wet they stay at home, and I cannot come to you--please then come and have a cup of tea with me, at 4, 4.30 or 5 whichever you like, either Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday say at 4.30, but 4, or 5 would do, and I shall have some good advice from you about my picture.

I am working hard and am also very well, and have been so for some time--but I only manage to do it by going right out of town all day Sunday--taking sandwiches with me, and getting a good walk and change of air.

Thank you for the extract which is as amusing as all you send me always are. It is delightful. I am going to the Century soirée presently. Would you ever like to go to any of them? They are not bad: I can ask you if you like--there is one in March.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[I destroy a note from Miss Savage of date January 7th merely saying that she would come next day. S.B.]

[I destroy letters from Miss Savage, of early January, from myself of January 15th, and from Miss Savage of January 18th, 1877. S.B., Wassen, September 12th, 1901]

[ Probably late January, 1877]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am very sorry you are ill, and still more so because I don't believe you are kind to yourself when you are ill. You should coddle and pamper yourself, and have gruel (by gruel I mean any thickened liquid stuff that is bland and soothing) at night, and send to that restaurant at the corner of Chancery Lane for mock turtle and timbales of chicken or anything nourishing, or any dainty you can think of. 'Tea and toast.' Nothing but tea and toast for a feverish attack? I wish you were as gourmand as I am; I wish you could have had some of the delicious white soup I made, or rather caused to be made for the club last week. I shall not tell you anything about it, I'm sure I should not make your mouth water if I did. I believe you could read Francatelli right through from beginning to end without being moved in the smallest degree. Thank you for writing to me, but as I said before I am sure you are not kind to yourself. Why do you paint in your dreams? Because you are vexed and angry with yourself for not being able to paint in the day time. What a nonsense, as dear Miss Karstens used to say. In the first place nobody can paint in the darkness we have been having, and in the second place it is time you had a week's idleness; in fact I think it is rather a lucky thing for you to be ill, if you would only take the matter in the right spirit, and look upon it not as an affliction, but as a privilege, to be forced to do nothing.

Let those who like it work and slave
For 'tis their nature to,
But the only boon that in life I crave
Is to have little or nothing to do.

I have been much annoyed and bothered at the club, and am sorry to say that on one occasion I lost my temper--I mean that I showed I lost it. I often do lose my temper, but can generally hide the fact, which as regards the general public is of course the same as not losing it at all. However I soon recovered myself, and since I said of my enemy that she combined the harmlessness of the serpent with the wisdom of the dove, I have been quite in charity with her and with all women.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, E.G., [ Feb. 11 th or 12th, 1877]

Dear Miss Savage,

No communication has passed between us since I found the mysterious scrap of paper in my box a fortnight ago. I could not have come, for I was engaged to some people of the name of X [I suppress the real name. Both husband and wife are long since dead, childless. S.B.] who are cottoning on to me, and whom I do not like. They are very rich, and want me to go down into the country with them, and when I would not they sent a man-servant with a beautiful narcissus, growing, and in full bloom, and are generally boring me--and I have to go to them to-night. I shall tell the man who let me in for them to take them away. There ought to be some form of social separation as simple and void of offence as introduction. If ever I go to Erewhon again (which I do not suppose I ever shall, for I could never fill another volume or even half a volume) I shall introduce such a form, as one of the things I forgot to mention.

I am very well--seldom better in health, but getting more and more anxious about the future. If Life and Habit fails as The Fair Haven did I do not know what will happen--and I have a great and ever present source of oppression of which I cannot tell you or any one else. [This must mean Pauli, who had treated me for many years very badly, and continued to do so till his death, December 29th, 1897. I knew I was being cruelly treated, but how cruelly I never knew till after his death--when I could not even forgive him--as I would have done. S.B.] Pray do not allude to this. I wish I had not written it.

To return to Life and Habit , it gets on but slowly. I have to rewrite so much, but it shall be published before Xmas. I think the first 100 pp. are pretty well done. I am also at work on my advertisement picture. I was three mornings studying in the street itself from 8 to 9, and shall do so again this week. I have also got on with the water colour at Thames Ditton.

Yes Larnormande does sell good eggs.

[The advertisement picture was called 'The last days of Carey Street', and was simply the hoarding covered with advertisements and the Tower of St. Clement Danes--before the Law courts were begun. It was rejected for the Academy--the figures were bad. I painted much of it out when I got it back--got it into a thorough mess, and in the end gave it to Gogin, who I trust may have destroyed it. The Thames Ditton water colour I gave to Mrs. Danvers, some ten years later. S.B., Wassen, September 12th, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, [ Feb. 13th, 1877]

My dear Mr. Butler,

...The reason why I sent you the mysterious note was that the morning really was fine, and I was afraid that you might come after all. I suppose you got my letter of the day before? Not that I should have minded your coming, for my mother does not dislike you so much as she does most of my friends; this, I believe, is because Miss Hadden used to like you and ask after you with interest. She, Miss Hadden, first heard you spoken of with solemn pity by Mr. McCormick [An old college friend of mine, now rector of St. James's, Piccadilly. S.B., September 13th, 1901], and of course took to you at once.

I am glad to hear that your book progresses. When may I see some more? and I am glad to hear that you are so well. My eyes are quite well now, but you ought to have asked about them.

Believe me, yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Here is a story told by Mr. Meiklejohn, one of the army examiners. He was putting a young man through a viva voce examination in Hamlet, and asked 'What was that custom which was more honoured in the breach than in the observance?' 'Matrimony' was the prompt reply.

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., [ About March 19th, 1877]

Dear Miss Savage,

When will you come and see my picture? It is still very unfinished, but is advancing pretty fast, and I think I shall be able to send it in. I shall have the frame on Friday, but come when you like.

I have made 'The Messiah' the central advertisement--between 'Nabob Pickles' and 'Three millions of money'--with 'The Messiah' much smaller than 'Mr. Sims Reeves, and Signor Foli'. It does not seem in the least pointed, and of course I copied the advt. from nature.

I have not written a line lately, and shall not till after the Academy. I have not been so well for a long time. I do not ask after your eyes, because when I saw you, you told me they were quite well: I hope they continue so. As soon as the Academy pictures are sent in I shall set aside three mornings a week for writing.

I said one thing I rather liked the other day. I said that Hoare was 'quite incapable of deception', meaning of course that let him try to deceive as much as he pleased, no one would believe him.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, March 20th, 1877

My dear Mr. Butler,

I should very much like to see your picture in its frame, but I am afraid I shall have to stay at home on Friday afternoon. However, I shall see it in all its glory at the Academy, I am sure. So I will come on Wednesday afternoon please.

I am glad to hear you are so well, but I hope you are telling the truth when you say so, for you are not like poor Mr. Hoare, you have the capability as well as the will to deceive-- yourself I mean--when you want to gain your ends at the expense of yourself. Poor Mr. Hoare, I am very sorry for him, but there is a lower depth still, which is to have neither the power nor the will to deceive. I speak as one addicted to lying.

I was at the bank on Friday. There was a tea party going on and countesses and viscountesses going upstairs in numbers. I wanted very much to go and see you that day, but the 'spirit in my feet' was not so ardent, as those spirits that direct the other portions of myself. In other words I was dead tired, so I contented myself with sending you my benediction, and crawled past to the omnibus.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[As regards this picture--which it plagues me even to think of--I ought to have known that it was no good--and I did know, but was too jaded even to admit it to myself. What with Pauli, whom I believed to be even more in difficulties than myself, and who let me share with him down to the dregs of the capital which I was now eating (nay, he had the lion's share--I have written this story elsewhere so say no more'). What with seeing ruin approaching, and finding both literature and painting to be broken reeds so far as selling was concerned;--what with the relations between myself and my father, and the really great anxiety that Life and Habit was to me, I was not myself--and though I could write I could not paint. Yet if I had been contented with simple water colour subjects, each drawing to take a fortnight's work, instead of fagging at an ambitious picture for months--I might have done fairly well--but after all I suppose the truth was that I felt literature to be a more tempting field, and one better worth trying to excel in than painting. Nor, in spite of the very great distress and difficulties of the years 1877-1886, do I think I was mistaken. I do not think that anything I could have done as a painter could have been as well worth doing as what I have done as a writer. So finis coronat opus. All's well that ends well. S.B., September 13th, 1901]

March 27th, 1877

My dear Mr. Butler,

I saw Mr. Lawrence Lewis on Saturday. I suppose he may call on you and see your pictures before they go to the Academy; he wants to see them, as he may be of use to you, for he has now a shop in Pall Mall; formerly he had only a large room there. I do not think he will buy of you, but I am pretty certain he would be glad to sell on commission; I am sure he will be delighted with your water-colour landscapes. Let me know when he may call upon you; the early morning would suit him best. He really knows a good deal about pictures and he is a person I like, so please let him come.

I have sold a picture! ! ! Mrs. Lowe bought it, principally, I imagine, as a polite way of repaying me for assistance I have given her at various times--but she has not got a bad bargain, for when one counts the price of the frame, and the value of the work I did for her, the picture will only have cost her about 4s. 6d. But the honour and glory of having sold a picture quite repay me. It was one of those that were in the aquarium. I have been thinking about your picture since I saw you; don't you think the figures are too much in a line? And I am still of the same mind about the blue which is always an obtrusive colour.

I had a little accident the other day, being upset in a cab as I was going out to dine. No harm done except to my best gown, which has suffered from my having put my arms round the neck of a damp policeman, who helped to pull me out. At first they tried to pull me out by the hair of my head, but I did not like that; so the dye of the policeman's coat has come off on one of the sleeves of my best gown; and all the frillings and grillings round my arms being made of tulle (a material, as you know, principally composed of starch) hung down in sticky lumps.

My little misfortune seemed to put everyone into good spirits, and as the accident happened at the very door of the house I was going to, the thing could not have been better managed if it had been planned beforehand.

Believe me, yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I destroy short notes from Miss Savage of about April 2nd, myself of April 3rd, and Miss Savage of April 9th. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, April 16th, 1877

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am sorry to tell you that the club is in a very bad way; there is not much hope of its going on after mid-summer. I am sorry for myself, but on the whole, I am not sure that I shall not be more glad than sorry, for the discomfiture of the selfish members will bring much consolation to my soul. It is really quite delightful to hear them going about and saying that the members ought to subscribe two guineas to keep up the club; they have invented a loan in which we are to take shares, but they offer no security, and when we ask how we shall be repaid, they say that it would be very mean of us to expect to receive our money back, and that there is no chance of its ever being repaid. Thereupon I say, 'then why not ask for donations?' but that I am told is 'undignified'.

These people two years ago, when I kept the accounts, and drew up a statement wherein I proved that there would be a deficit at the end of the year, and proposed a table fee of 1 d. for all meals and refreshments over 6d. or 9d. were furious, and preferred instead six months later, to raise the subscriptions to 2 guineas--thereby causing a great diminution in the number of members, and defeating the end in view. But I must not bore you to death, so good-bye.

I am sorry that you are not yet recovered, but hope that your visit to Shrewsbury will do you good. I am going presently to the Hall of Eleusis, to hear Mrs. Lowe agitate for lunacy law reform. She is a capital speaker, and a first rate demagogue, but I don't like the working man, particularly on a Sunday. However I must go for I have had a little row with Mrs. Lowe, on account of her alliance with Bradlaugh and Besant; I got angry, and spoke my mind freely; she bore it with great good temper, so that I feel bound to go to-night.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[This and the next letter crossed in the post. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, W, April 27th, 1877

My dear Mr. Butler,

There are three things I want to know. First, whether your picture will be hung (I say picture for I am sure the water colours are safe). 2d, that you are quite well now, and recovered from your fatigue; 3d, how your book gets on. If you will not come next Sunday afternoon and give me information upon all these points, you must write to me. I don't much expect you will come on Sunday, as the weather is so fine. So if you do come, it will not only be a great pleasure, but an unhoped for one.

My little book on needlework is out at last, I began to think that the publishers meant to become bankrupts in order to defraud me of my £10--they were so long in bringing it out. Nine months is too long a time to wait for £10 isn't it? However, the first edition is all sold off already, so I hope they are regretting that they did not publish it sooner.

I went yesterday to see Albert Grant's pictures. I was delighted with Goodall's 'Head of the House at prayer'. The Head of the House is looking so cross and bored at having to pray, while the rest of the family are looking so pleased at not having to do so, that I am sure Goodall meant to convey a moral lesson.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. I am very unhappy. I have lost my little friend Mr. Barton. Miss Collingridge has taken him from me. Is it not unkind of her? They met twice at my house about two years ago, and ever since Miss Collingridge has been saying how much she should like to meet him again. So last night I asked them to tea at the club, and they were so delighted with one another that when we came away he came with us, and when we arrived at the corner of my street she said, 'Shall we see Miss Savage to her own door?' The 'we' was too delicious, and tickled my fancy so much that I quite forgave her then, and to-day I am planning another meeting for them.

Do read Harriet Martineau's Life ; it is such fun.

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., April 27 th , 1877

Dear Miss Savage,

Your letter was forwarded to me down at Shrewsbury--hence my delay in answering it. I am better, but have been working very hard since my return, and the three days I had in Shrewsbury were poor in quality and not enough in quantity--however, I will attend to myself, and get all right again. All my pictures are rejected, so are all McCulloch's which last I am sure will be better than a great deal that will be hung. I am working at my book again regularly, and go to the Brit. Mus. Reading-room every Monday, Wed. and Friday from ten till one. I like it immensely, and wonder why I never went there before. I sit at letter B, (B for Butler) or if I cannot get there at letter C.

I hope I am painting better and that I have made a fresh start, but I have hoped this many times already and nothing seems to come of it.

My father was very snappish and Crusty all the time that I was at Shrewsbury. My younger sister, who alone lives with him, is no friend to me; she makes matters worse between my father and me. So do the Lloyds, who, as I have told you, live in Shrewsbury. All is done in a quiet way, but I can do nothing against the hostile influences that are brought to bear upon him, and must leave them alone to work me whatever harm they can, which they will surely do; for they are all, especially my sister, deeply religious. Shrewsbury is a very clerical town.

Miss Benecke has written again, two long sheets. [She had wanted to know what I meant by the machines in Erewhon, and who I meant when I said the music of the statues was by the greatest of all composers. S.B., September 15th, 1901] She has evidently not seen the preface, which is in all later editions, and this perhaps is as well for it is not good, and I wish I had not written it. I have burnt her letter or I would send it; there was no fun in it--at least none to my thick sight...

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, Portland Place, W"., May 5 th , 1877

My dear Mr. Butler,

I was very sorry to hear about your pictures, and it is a great shame of the R.A. They get stupider and stupider ever year...

[abusing the Academy. S.B.]

...nevertheless I hope you got into a passion and swore. I am glad you like the Museum, I always told you it was delightful; I shall begin to go there again next week because it is open till 6 o'clock. I never hardly go till the afternoon, so as you go away early I shall get you to leave your place for me only you must sit at letter G. I am miserable any where else--and facing the South-west.

I chose letter G when I first went to the Museum, because it was at an equal distance from Miss Karstens and Miss Andrews, and the furthest pole apart from Miss Pearson (Miss Pearson is going to nurse the wounded Russians. She went to nurse the wounded Servians, which was the reason why Servia so promptly made peace with Turkey) and my heart clings fondly to the place, but as I go late I often have to sit somewhere else, and sometimes can't find a place at all. So how glad I shall be and how grateful to you if you give me the reversion of your place. You can leave an old hat on the desk. No--an old hat won't do. I should accumulate old hats. Well, I shall think of something else.

You must let me come some day and see your picture now that it is finished. I am not well--in fact I am ill, and should go to the doctor, only he always jeers at me in an unfeeling way.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I should fear that the malignant cancer of which she died had already made itself apparent, for it was external not internal, but she never gave me so much as a hint that there was anything beyond general indisposition the matter with her. She never from the first had looked a healthy woman, but I set that down to the hip disease that had so lamed her. S.B., Wassen, September 14th, 1901]

Hotel dell'Angelo, Faido, Canton Ticino, Switzerland, Sunday, June 10th, 1877.

Dear Miss Savage,

A few lines to ask how you are, and to say I am a hundred times better than when I left England. [I do not believe I should ever lived through the next 9 1/2 years if I had not insisted on giving myself a two months' holiday abroad every summer, and as many smaller outings as I could get. I had to borrow money on every penny of security I could command, in order to do this, but I do not believe I could have done more wisely--of course I paid interest punctually to the day, and repaid the principal immediately on the death of my father. Thus I rubbed through a long and very depressing time which I do not believe I could have done without periods of long and complete change of environment. S.B., September 14th, 1901]

I wish my book got on too, but I do not touch it, but as half of it is done I think I can run the other half down while the first part is being printed. I shall have August, September and October, but I mean to have it out in November.

On wet days I paint in the monastery, not a very nice subject, but the nicest I could see on the spur of the moment. I see the last monks like the last wolves and bears in a country are a degenerate lot. These monks except the guardians are more stupid and ignorant than I should have supposed possible. The novice is a great creature; he attacks me bitterly about my religion, and I assure him that Protestantism is as dear to me as Catholicism is to him; when he learned that I took the sacrament without salt he wrung his hands, and said, 'oh poveretto, poveretto, quanto e' sbagliato!' The guardiano is better--he gives me kirschen wasser. At Prato in the church porch I have to undergo a heavy fire from the curato ; but one day a happy thought occurred to me and I said that the only form of religion which struck me as wholly monstrous was 'old Catholicism'. Since then we have been friends.

I expect to return early in August.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., August 14th, 1877

Dear Miss Savage,

I came back on Saturday evening--very well. I wrote once, but did not hear at all. I should have written again, but I assure you I was working very hard, and put off letter-writing as much as I could. I am well aware that I am a bad lot--but I know what my friends do not know, and what I cannot tell them--and am such as I am. When shall I see you?

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[I never had such a good chance of seeing my past self, not vaguely but with the documentary evidence of my own hand-writing, and I am shocked at the selfishness which pervades all my letters, and the marvellous unselfishness which pervades all Miss Savage's. How patient under suffering she was, I never knew till after her death; but what pains me most as I edit this correspondence--the only thing that I can do to express the remorse I feel as strongly now as I did when she died nearly twenty years ago--what pains me most is to see the way in which all through I was thinking of myself and my own doings, while taking no heed letter after letter of things she had told me about her own. I cannot think how she stood me so long and with such unshaken fidelity. Why, again, did she not scold me and tell me I was the selfish conceited brute which I certainly was, and probably am still? It would have done me a great deal of good--for I cannot think Miss Savage would have stuck to me as she did unless I was capable of being convinced of sin. However, in the following letter I was more crassly crudely selfish and clumsy than in any I have yet come to, and poor Miss Savage was hurt. I should suppress my own offence, but if I did, I should have to suppress her admirable at once rebuke and pardon. As penance I give as much of my letter as will explain Miss Savage's. S.B., September 14th, 1901.]

British Museum, Sept. 14th, 1877

[Strange coincidence: exactly 24 years ago.]

[After writing nonsense about my book and painting I said--to my shame:]

I fear I have frightened you from writing as frequently as you once did, by telling you as I did not long since that I kept your letters. You were once some years ago, decidedly hurt with me when I told you I had burned your letters. Your letters are far the best I ever read much less [should have been 'more'. S.B.] received, how I could ever have burnt one of them I cannot conceive, but alas! I did. Perhaps it is because I have lost them that I imagine that they were written with greater care than any that I have received since, but now that I have told you I keep them you hardly write at all. I will compromise. I will keep your letters, but put them together and address them to yourself, so that on my death they may be returned to you.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, Sept. 15th, 1877

With Care! This Side Up!

Dear Mr. Butler,

It must be confessed that I am a most unreasonable person. What! I leave off writing 'with care' when I hear that you don't keep my letters, and I don't write at all when you tell me that you do! Well, it only shows that I am a true Erewhonian, and have studied in the schools to good purpose. But you are mistaken when you talk about my being hurt when you told me you burned my letters. On the contrary I felt relieved, and I am sure you can have only a very hazy recollection of the matter, or you would not have recalled a very unpleasant moment of my existence.

[I did not understand at the time and have often since vainly wondered what this means. I remember nothing but telling her that I burned her letters. There must have been something that led up to this, which pained her in a manner that I did not perceive. I have no recollection beyond the mere fact of saying that I burned her letters. S.B., September 14th, 1901.]

And now, my dear Mr. Butler, let me give you a little good advice. If you wish to make yourself agreeable to the female sex, never hint to a woman that she writes or has written 'with care'. Nothing enrages her so much, and it is only the exceptional sweetness of my disposition that enables me, with some effort, I confess, to forgive this little blunder on your part.

As a matter of fact, I don't care what becomes of my letters. Keep them, or burn them as you please, only for goodness sake don't label them to be returned to me at your death. If you do, I shall never write to you without thinking of your death, and that I cannot bear to think of. Besides, you assume that I shall live the longest, which is flattering to my vital forces, but suppose I die first? What will become of my letters then? Pray let every contingency be prepared for and provided against while we are arranging the matter.

But I must go. I have to meet Mr. Barton at 5 o'clock to go to Greenwich with him. Lucky man! He has had a legacy of old china left him, and as he is in the matter of pottery and porcelain the most misinformed man I know, I am going to see it, and instruct him as to its value. I am longing dreadfully to read some more of your book. When may I have some?

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Sept. 20th, 1877

Dear Miss Savage,

I have been stupid and clumsy, and am very sorry for it. It is very good of you to have forgiven me so generously. I did not write sooner lest I should be stupid again. I mean more stupid than usual--in some attempt--quite vain--to show that I had not been stupid.

You ask after the book [ Life and Habit ] [and then a page about it. S.B.]...By the end of next week I shall have 120 pp. quite finished. I shall run it down at the rate of about 15 pp. a week allowing for rewriting and corrections, as I go every day to the Museum now till one. When I have 150 pp. done, i.e. about October 20th, I shall go to press.

I believe the book will succeed, and am now thoroughly absorbed in it. I suspect, now that I have found out the Museum, I shall never be long without a new book on hand, and shall get them off pretty rapidly.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[Here my art-student life (for I never was more) may be said to end. It fizzled out, but I still paint from time to time, chiefly in water colours. I have 5 on hand here now. Wassen, September 14th, 1901. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, Sept. 26th, 1877

My dear Mr. Butler,

[I omit a page of criticism on some of the MS. of Life and Habit-- always sensible. S.B.]

I am very busy with the club just now; we are coming back to Berners Street immediately--in fact we are back there, but the club will not be open till next Wednesday. Please give me a Fair Haven and an Erewhon for it. We mean to take in the Church Times, and the Jewish Chronicle, and therefore, having provided for the pious, they cannot complain if we provide for ourselves too. I hope you are quite well. You write as if you were. I went to the Promenade Concert last Wednesday to see the little candles blown out. As there was to be some Handel I looked about for you, but only succeeded in seeing Zerbini, who seemed as much delighted with the little candles as I was.

I have not been well. I don't sleep; I have a clock in my room that ticks very loud, and gets quite quite frantic when it strikes the hour. But I mean to be like the old lady who would eat lobster in Erewhon, and whom you ruthlessly cut out of the book; I mean to see which is the strongest, I, or my nerves. At present my nerves seem to be getting the best of it, and I very nearly stopped the creature last night, but I do not mean to give in yet.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, Oct. 6th [ Saturday ] 1877

My dear Mr. Butler,

Many thanks for your letter just received. It is very kind of you to write, [I cannot find this letter, but may do so later. S.B., Wassen, September 16th, 1901] and very very unkind of you not to let me have some more book. I went to the Museum the other day with the intention of carrying off some MS. by main force, to say nothing of persuasion, but like some other foolish persons renowned in story, I found the door locked and Messrs. Garnett, Bullen, Granville &c. all away at a congress. It is a very extraordinary fact that whenever I particularly want to go to the Museum it shuts up. So then I determined that I would seek you in your own stronghold, and wrote yesterday to announce a visit this afternoon. It was afterwards arranged however that I must stay here, to receive a furniture broker, so I did not send the letter.

You are quite right when you are sanguine about the book and quite wrong when you are despondent.

[No, my dear Miss Savage, the book failed, it has not even now quite paid its expenses; it was allowed to pass sub silentio. There was no attempt to meet it, but abundant attempts to adopt its conclusions without acknowledgement. When I say the book failed--I mean only commercially, and at that time commercial success was of the highest importance to me. In all other respects I consider it to have been a great success--and with all its many faults that I can now see--as well as those which as yet I do not see, I rejoice at having had it vouchsafed me to write it. S.B., September 16th.]

I have no doubt whatever about its success. Success is cumulative. Erewhon would make this successful even if it were not successful on its own account. I mean of course commercially successful. [So we all thought and hoped--and the fact that almost any one in my place would have thought and hoped the same must be my excuse for going on eating up the dregs of my capital, and continuing to write. It was plain that writing was my strongest card, and I had not yet realized either Mr. Darwin's character, or his irresistible hold on the public. I have since found out that if success is cumulative, failure is cumulative also, and for the last twenty years each one of my books has failed--of course I only mean commercially, for I admit no failure in any other respect--more completely than its predecessor. S.B., September 16th.] As to literary success I hope you don't think I believe you when you say you are despondent, because I don't. I am certain you think it will be successful in that sense, and I am certain you are quite right. If you don't think so, more shame for you.

[I don't think I ever said or wrote anything that implied doubt in my own mind as to the substantial merits of the book--but I may have said something in some lost letter that looked like this. S.B.]

Thanks for your inquiries after my nerves. They are quite well and victorious. The clock belonged to the club and has now come back to it. But the night before it left I had the sweetest nine hours of sleep that ever any mortal enjoyed. I must confess, though, that I swathed the creature in flannel, so that the row it made was somewhat subdued. Good-bye.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 C lifford's Inn, E.C., [ Friday, S.B. ] Nov. 30th, 1877

Dear Miss Savage,

One line of thanks for your excellent quotation [in some letter which has been destroyed--at least I presume so. S.B.], too good for the book but it does not matter. Life and Habit is all printed, and should have been out this week, it will, however, be out next week, but too late for reviews on Saturday. I think it is all right, or fairly so now. There is only one downright disrespectful bit about Darwin. He says Lamarck was led to his conclusions 'by the analogy of domestic productions'. I say 'it is rather hard to know what domestic productions may mean--they may mean anything from a baby to an apple dumpling'. Trübner wanted me to take out the bit about Goethe, but I would not. I am going down to my father's next week, but will take care that the first copy issued is preserved, and you shall have it immediately on my return. I am rather fagged, but my friends all tell me how well I am looking--so I am except being a little over done.

Have you seen La Marjolaine? If you can get a chance I think I should--at least I enjoyed it very much. Kate Santley is a very wonderful woman, and not half appreciated as she should be. I have been reading The New Republic. I need not like it, need I? I wish you would give me a short and easy formula to fling at those who want me to say it is so clever. It is not clever, is it?

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., Saturday [ doubtless Dec. 1st, 1877. S.B. ]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I write hoping that you are back in London, and are not going to Leith Hill or any other mountain top to-morrow, to ask you to come and see me and bring me my book, which I am longing for. I went to church last Sunday, and was told that if I would trust in the Lord, he would give me my heart's desire. Now is the convenient time for the fulfilment of his promise; I hope you will be a willing instrument and secure a satisfactory performance.

In case you don't come, however, I send you this advertisement cut out of to-day's Times. What comfortable words in an advertisement.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Do not forget that you are to give me a copy for the club.

[The advertisement was:

Required, an educated and companionable Day Nurse, amiable and attentive and a good needlewoman. One who would appreciate a comfortable home. Also a night nurse, middle-aged, kind, attentive. No Professing Xtian or trained nurse. (Address followed.) S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, Dec. 5 th, 1877

Dear Mr. Butler,

It is curious that the enclosed should appear on the very day that you hit out at Truth's champion. [ Life and Habit was published on my birthday, December 4th, 1877, but Miss Savage may well have thought that it did not appear till December 5th. The extract is from Punch, December 5th, and runs:--

THREE ILLUSTRATIONS OF A THEORY

Though dogmatists and dullards long opposed
His theory with venomous persistence
Darwin may now consider it has closed
The 'struggle for existence'.

To calm research, not fierce polemic raid,
Truth yields her secrets. After fair inspection,
The age 'twixt science and her foes has made
A 'Natural Selection'.

Thou canst not, Zealotry, as blind as hot
Truth's champion slay, however hard thou hittest,
Darwin outlives detraction. Is this not
'Survival of the fittest'?

September 17th, 1901. S.B.]

I have just come upon it in the Evening Standard, and send it straight to you. I should like to know what is meant by 'three illustrations of a theory'. I don't see that these verses illustrate anything. Verse 2 is particularly puzzling considered as an illustration. Three assertions and three allusions would be a better title.

I was unpunctual this morning because I was kept by an old lady at the club, who came to the place, and I could no more leave it than a spider can leave her web before the fly is well secured. I did secure my fly: she has sent her subscription since : she was so eager to join that I had not much trouble in coiling my web about her--but her eagerness was not quite complimentary. 'I like this place,' she said, 'it is so homely,' and then she looked at me, and said it was 'so homely', meaning, Alas! shabby, and I felt shabby: she was dressed in sables and rich velvet. (By the bye how sleek and new you looked this morning! such a beautiful new coat!) Then she looked at a very much worn spot in the carpet and said it was 'homely'. I think she is only going to join that she may tell us we are 'homely'.

Then she said, 'now I must tell you about myself. I am the first cousin of Sir Eardley Wilmot'. Here I assumed such a religious expression of face that a member of the club who was present had to rush out of the room, and I have not been able to convince her since that if I did look religious it was because I felt so. Next to a lord I revere a baronet--particularly one with large estates in Warwickshire, which it seems Sir E. W. has. I really get a good deal of fun out of the club, my time and trouble are not all for nothing. Some of the letters of recommendation are very amusing. One lady was described by her referee, as 'a lady of genius combined with unimpeachable respectability'. My curiosity to see this lady was, as you may imagine, great; but I have since seen her frequently, and have been unable to find anything remarkable about her except that she invariably drops her h s. Whether this is due to genius or the respectability I have not yet made out. Another referee says he hopes if he says that the lady is a dear sister of his it will be a sufficient guarantee. You will not be surprised to hear that this gentleman is an assistant master in a public school.

Thursday. I began this letter at 10 p.m. last night; it is now 2 p.m. and I have done nothing since but it. I hope you will consider that it is written with sufficient care for posterity. I may never again be able to give 14 hours to a composition, so good-bye.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Who is St. Lewis, mentioned on p. 292? [Of course, of Life and Habit. S.B.] Do you mean St. Louis? Take heed, or you will be talking soon of the Empress Eugenia, or John James Rousseau.

APPENDIX

If you keep this letter for posterity, please correct the Natural History, and please scratch out 'secured', and write 'enmeshed' or 'enwebbed'; either of these words will give an air of distinction to the phrase. Salts of lemon will take out the smudge of ink.

I have read the book from cover to cover. It is too too too delicious.

Tell me of the reviews, which of course I should like to read. I see The Times, Telegraph, Evening Standard, Athenæum, Whitehall, John Bull, Church Times, and National Reformer ; I only read The Times regularly, but see all these papers.

We have no Bible in the club. Do you know anyone who would give us one? We have the Koran, and selections from the Talmud, and a book of lives of the saints, but no Bible. I think of writing to a society, saying that our Reference Library is incomplete without one, and asking for one as a gift. Don't you think that such a letter would make a pleasing impression, on the committee of a Bible Society?

[ About Dec. 7th, 1877]

Dear Miss Savage,

I behaved very badly on Wednesday and was unreasonably cross. Please forgive me. I have now plenty of copies on hand, and you can have the other whenever you like.

I think you like it. I do at present. Gogin evidently likes it very much too--so I expect it is not much amiss. That blunder about St. Lewis is awful. And yet perhaps after all it is as well not to know how a Saint's name should be spelt. I hope you think my attack on Darwin both just and telling.

I will send you all reviews when I get any. I think I may venture to predict that The Times will take no more notice of the book than it did of Erewhon and Life and The Fair Haven.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[ The Times never reviewed or noticed one of my books till my Life of Dr. Butler. Since then it has always either slated or ignored. S.B., September 17th, 1901.]

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., [ Friday, S.B. ] Jan. 4th, 1878

My dear Mr. Butler,

You are a very unkind friend to give me a disappointment for my étrenne. You said in your last letter that I was not to expect to hear of you and the book, till Monday week. Accordingly last Monday I expected to hear and have been expecting ever since--and I want so much to hear--and it was very unkind of you not to tell me sooner that you were going away, so that I could not get my other copy, and as I had promised to lend it and have quite a foolish respect for my word, I was obliged to deprive myself of my own copy in the very honeymoon. Fortunately, however, for my own happiness I had got it from Mudie's for the club to read, and when I thought I was going to be distracted with tooth-ache, I stole it and took it home to comfort me in the night. I committed this crime several times, and it is all your fault that my high moral 'tone' (as Mr. Kingsley would say) is being lowered.

I have had a dreadful cold for the last fortnight--it was so bad that one day I thought I should be obliged to stop at home all day, and it is not much better now.

I send you the Examiner review 'at my leisure', as you told me--though I am afraid I have kept it long.

I wish you a happy new year, and I hope you will understand that I am much offended with you.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. There are a great many hard words in the book [ L. and Hab., S.B.], but I don't mind them, for I have a dictionary, which I bought two years ago, as I wished to read Daniel Deronda in the original.

[I destroy my reply dated January 5th, which merely stated that there had been no reviews, and that Bunting had promised to let me do an article on Lamarck for the Contemporary --which, by the way, never came off. S.B., Wassen, September 21st, 1901]

New Berners Club , 64 Berners Street, W ., Jan . 10 th [1878] [ Posted on , Jan . 12 th . S.B.]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I shall come for my book to-morrow at twenty-five minutes past four o'clock, or thereabouts, unless I hear from you to the contrary. I am angry with the reviewers, very, but they will have their reward! When they find the book read by the public, they will pretend to just discover it! Then they will write notices, and you will be able to dispense with being grateful, which will be comfortable for you. [All very pretty, my dear Miss Savage, but the public did not read the book, and the reviewers as a whole were very cold. S.B., September 21st, 1901]

Send a card here. Post it any time before 1 o'clock and I shall get it, but only in case I am not to come, and you needn't trouble about sending it at all, as I have important business near Clare Market, where there is a broker's shop so I shall be obliged to come into your neighbourhood, and it will not put me out if I find your door shut.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. This was written yesterday but Providence would not allow it to be posted, (why I don't know; God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform). My arrangements are the same. To-morrow is Saturday now--only I shall not come till nearly five o'clock, which I will do punctually. Also I am about to have a severe cold, owing to Providence sending me out to dinner last night and letting the cab horse fall down in a lonely spot in St. John's Wood, and I had to stand at a windy corner where four roads meet, waiting for another cab, not exactly equipped for such an adventure, so I will come to the door if I have a cold--but I cannot pass another Sunday without my book. You can hand it to me by Mrs. Corry; I suppose you will not mind if she catches my cold.

22 Beaumont Street, Jan. 14 th, 1878

My dear Mr. Butler,

I have been thinking that perhaps Diderot would serve your turn better than Voltaire. I once saw a play at the St. James's theatre which was almost circumstance for circumstance taken from Diderot. Nobody reads Diderot's stories, et pour cause, so authors crib from him without any fear of being found out. Not that you require to crib from anybody, and indeed I am ashamed of you for wanting to do so.

I believe Diderot wrote lots of such stories but my knowledge of him is limited to three little vols which I bought for 2 1/2 d. each once when I was in France. There is nothing in the other two vols that would be of the slightest use to you--or I would send them all. But I should like to know why you have given up the Pontifexes, you had done a great deal of it, and it was very interesting...

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

New Berners Club, Berners Street, Friday [ i.e. Jan. 25th, 1878. S.B. ]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I wrote to tell you what I dare say you know already, that there is a long article on Life and Habit in the Athenæum to-day. The reviewer does not take kindly to the book, and does not say a word about Darwin, but the number of columns given to it shows that it is considered to be important. The reviewer is evidently afraid of being taken in, and I should think he is also afraid of Mr. Darwin. I dare say that now there will be a great many more notices. I hope you are quite well. I am not and since I saw you, have been marked out for misfortune.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Mrs. Lowe's article does not appear in the Contemporary. They are treating her very badly. I hope you will look after yours. You should not have let them have it without keeping a copy. You should have asked me to copy it for you. I ought to have offered to do it. Is it too late now?

[The review in the Athenæum was written by a Mr. Jacobs. I have little doubt that MacColl told him to be cold concerning it, knowing that he should have the champions of Darwin down upon him if he welcomed it with any cordiality. I have clean forgotten all about the article for the Contemporary. I rather think I asked for it back. As for poor Miss Savage's misfortunes, I have no doubt there was much more than she speaks of in her next letter]

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Saturday morning [ i.e. Jan. 26 th, 1878, SB . ]

Dear Miss Savage,

What is the matter? I hope nothing serious--but I do not reckon you among the complainers, and am afraid there is something amiss with you. Nothing ever goes right for long together with any friend of mine. Other people lose their nearest relations, but neither I nor my friends ever do so.

I am not amiss myself. There is a review of Life and Habit in to-day's Saturday Review, very much the same kind of review as the Athenæum review. However both are calculated to make the book read, and to strengthen my position. I have heard nothing from the Contemporary, and, as you give them a bad name, will keep an eye upon them. I am to meet young Darwin [i.e. Frank Darwin S.B.] on the 5th at the rooms of a common friend [Chas. Crawley. S.B.] I am sure he means to try and come round me in some way.

Let me have a line to say what your misfortunes have been.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

PS. Was Diderot's name Jean Paul Courier? You sent me a book by Jean Paul Courier, but I can find no story in it. I don't believe it is by Diderot at all.

[I remember the meeting with Frank Darwin. He was evidently a good deal upset with me--but quite civil. Speaking of attacks on established reputations he said that George Eliot had said to him a few days before 'If this sort of thing is to be allowed who is safe?' but whether or no this was aimed at my attack on his father I could not determine. He wanted to know what the true reading of the song 'Some breeds do and some breeds don't' was--and did not look approvingly when I told him. S.B.]

Feb. 1 st, 1878

My dear Mr. Butler,

It was very stupid of me to send you Courier (though he is not bad reading) instead of Diderot. However, upon reflection perhaps I had better not send Diderot at all, his tales not being the kind of literature one should place in the hands of young persons. As for my misfortunes, dear Mr. Butler, I am afraid you will think I have been committing a fraud upon your sympathies. I do not think you could at all comprehend some of them. For instance I woke up one morning with a rash all over my throat and shoulders, and as I was going out to dinner that same evening, I had suddenly to make a change in my dress, which, besides being ugly, kept me at work all the morning. I don't expect a man to sympathize with me in such troubles as this. The rash no doubt arose from my having subsisted principally on buns during several weeks. It was provoking that my old doctor has retired, else it would quite have consoled me to be able to go to him with a malady which he could not declare to be unreal. It could be seen, so he could not have derided me as was his wont. I am quite well now.

Another misfortune was losing some money belonging to the club, while I had no immediate means of replacing it--so I was obliged to have recourse to my nearest relations, which was unpleasant, and so will be for many a year. It is not my fault, however, that I am careless about money. My ancestors have always had so little coin to take care of, that I have not inherited the power of taking care of it myself without much conscious effort, and I cannot always keep up the necessary watchfulness. I never have lost an umbrella; it is not so very long ago that my forefathers were running about in the woods, of course armed with sticks, so it comes quite natural to me to take care of my umbrella, which is so like a stick in form and use.

I have read the notice in the Saturday Review. It is better than the Athenæum, but still curiously reticent about Lamarck and Darwin. Be sure you let me know when there are more notices. I am at this present moment quite distraught, and should go into a lunatic asylum, only I am afraid Mrs. Lowe would so soon get me out again. We are going to have a concert for the benefit of the club, so you can imagine the state of mind I am in.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Feb. 7 th, 1878

Dear Miss Savage,

I was glad to find from your note that your misfortunes were not so serious as I was half afraid they were, but I have no doubt they were a good deal worse than you said.

I have still very little news of Life and Habit. Enclosed is from Truth, and is sufficiently flattering. Who are my followers? Do you know of any? Because I should like to see them and find out whether they have any money.

I am not writing a line now, but painting pretty hard--and am doing a little water-colour landscape, preliminary to an oil picture of the same subject, which I think will please you. It is at Hendon and I consider myself very plucky for having worked out of doors several hours both this week and last. [The oil picture never came off, nor was the water colour, which I still have, completed. S.B.]

There will be a little letter from me in the Athenæum on Friday, enclosing two extracts from earlier geniuses, who have said some of my things before me, and with whom I wish to be the first to make possible future reviewers acquainted--besides it was a stunt for advertising the books, so I sent them.

I hope you are better. I have been mad with anger three or four days lately--all about nothing, but have toned down again, and in other respects am very well.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., Thursday Feb. 14 th, 1878. SB.]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I am very sorry that I have mislaid the letter with the notice inside, but shall be sure to find it again. In the mean time, write and scold me for my carelessness and take the opportunity of telling me how you are for I am afraid that your cold is a really bad one this time.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. I know the fiend who put it into our hearts to give a concert. I shall waylay her, vivisect her, and pound her alive in a mortar; and then I hope Satan will have her soul and do with it according to the Christian faith.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Thursday [ i.e. March 7 th, 1878. S.B.]

My dear Mr. Butler,

You must not use such bad language when you write to me. [She must have destroyed this letter, for I did not find it among those returned to me. S.B.] What will posterity for whom I carefully preserve your letters think of a person who takes such liberties? Not but what Professor Clifford quite deserves that or any other epithet of a like intensity that you choose to bestow upon him.

I should like very much to know what you said to your sister about pessimism? I do not know what pessimism is, and indeed I don't believe that there is such a thing, for it is not in my dictionary which is quite a new one; but I should like to know what you said. I have the notice in Truth safely--it was put away with some cheques; I am a very careful person, so you need not be afraid to send me the notice in the Spectator , which you promised you would do and have not.

I dare say you are not painting badly at all; it is one of your affectations to say so. Haven't I often found you out? What are you painting? When may I come and see it? I have lent Life and Habit to Miss Palmer, she enquired after you at the concert, and Mlle Vaillant to whom I had lent it to amuse her on her journey to France, had brought it with her to return to me. We three are dreadfully depressed in spirits just now--club affairs not looking cheerful.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[A man named Hunter whom I used to meet at the Century had asked me to dine with him at the Savile, where I met Professor Clifford, and a man named Warr, brother to my enemy of later years Prof. Warr of King's College, London. I forget all about the evening except that I did not like my host, nor Clifford nor Warr. S.B. October 1st, 1901]

PS. [to Miss S.'s letter] My dear old friend Mrs Gammell (who knew your aunts) is just dead. She was 81 years old; she was an extraordinarily sweet old lady.

15 Cljfford's Inn, E.C., March 15 th, 1878

Dear Miss Savage,

Herewith I do send the Spectator notice. I only told my sister that pessimism was 'all right', and when she seemed sceptical I said that it was not in any way improper. I agree with you in not knowing what it is, and I have no doubt also in not wanting to know more about it, if as I suppose it only means exaggerating the evil that is in the world, which is quite bad enough without exaggeration.

I sent the Standard notice to my father, and the one from Truth with a civil note, exceedingly carefully worded, so as to be in every way nice and proper--which I assure you took me a great deal of trouble. I send enclosed reply, which gives me the pleasure of feeling that I had done him no injustice in anticipating something very like what I got. For goodness sake don't lose it, but return it at once as it is a continual pleasure to me.

I am very sorry that it is Mrs. Gammell who is dead, and...well! well! these East winds are very biting--you see I am a little snappish.

I went to La belle Hélène last night, and enjoyed it extremely. Independently of much else it always soothes me to hear these old Greek heroes made fun of. [And to think that in my old age I should have become so infocolato with the Iliad and Odyssey, as to do what I have done for them. Still I should like to see La belle Hélène again. S.B., October 1st, 1901.]

This letter is expressly written to show posterity what an amiable temper I have. Come and see me in about a fortnight and I shall then, I hope, be fairly advanced for the Academy. I do not mean do not come earlier, but only that I shall have nothing to show till then.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[My father's reply above referred to ran:

Wilderhope House, Shrewsbury, March 8 th, 1878

Dear Sam,

I return the papers, which must no doubt be very gratifying to you. I have purposely refrained from reading any of your books except Canterbury, and could feel more sympathy in any artistic success you might attain than in this.

I expect May to-morrow and remain,

Your affectionate father,
T. Butler. S.B.]

Society of Lady Artists, Gt. Marlborough Street, Friday [ i.e. March 15 th, 1878]

Dear Mr. Butler,

The letter is perfect, and you are quite right to take the greatest care of it.

I am acting as secretary to this Society-- paid assistant secretary I mean. The real secretary is Hon. [?] If I behave well I may be engaged for the season, which will be a stroke of good luck. The former secretary--a man--obligingly died of bronchitis, a fortnight ago. Providence, you see, is good sometimes even to me.

Come and see me here. One of my duties is to make myself agreeable--so it will be my duty to make myself agreeable to you. I shall say that you are a millionaire and entreat you to buy Miss Collingridge's picture. That is the best way I know of making myself agreeable. I shall come and see you in a fortnight--or rather your picture.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street, E.C., [ end of March , 1878]

Dear Miss Savage,

Your back was hardly turned, before I remembered that I had never congratulated you on your appointment, for so I hope it may be styled. I behaved very badly, but I always do behave badly, especially to those who behave well to me. At what time does your gallery open? I will come as soon as it does, for the morning is the time when I can best come, i.e. before I begin my work. When once I have begun there is no stirring me. I send in my pictures to-morrow. They look awful.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

PS. What do you think of a novelette supposed to be written by Olivia Primrose--partly giving her version of the events recorded by Goldsmith and partly her ulterior history to be done anonymously, and kept a secret?

[My pictures were rejected. I have no recollection what they were, but am quite certain that all the life had departed out of my painting by this time. There is far more life and hope in what I do now than in what I did then, for then I had given my best attention to writing. Now when I go abroad I attend solely to my drawings and take the keenest interest in them notwithstanding my knowledge that they are a long way off what they should be.

I do not think I ever sent in to any exhibition again, but when I come to 1879 shall perhaps find that I did. S.B., Sunday, October 7th, 1901.]

22 Beaumont Street, Sunday [ May 5th, 1878, not posted till May 7 th. S.B.]

My dear Mr. Butler,

By this time I suppose you have returned from your country trip well and strong, I hope, and having enjoyed the change. I have not been well. Just before Easter I had an attack of influenza, a sickness which as you know includes many disorders, and some of them have not yet quite left me--however I shall be all right in a day or two. My exhibition is nearly over, for which I am sorry, as I find it very amusing, and besides the occupation suits me by giving my natural propensity for lying legitimate exercise. I greatly enjoy telling people who have just purchased a hideous fright of a picture that it is the 'gem of the exhibition', and seeing them go away with a smirk of delight on their countenances.

The people who buy the better pictures go away rather sadly and depressed. These are people with more knowledge, and therefore they are inclined to doubt and their doubts torment them. It is my duty to console and sustain these persons, and I hope I do my duty. At the same time I like to feel that it is in my power to make them much more miserable than they actually are.

I am longing to know how you are getting on with the Pontifexes. It wanted curtailing no doubt, but I hope you will not be too eager to cut it down. And don't hurry with it. How I wish you had never gone to Canada. The novel was progressing so well then, and you would have written two or three others by this time. And now you take up your novel again and say it isn't good--which is treating it unfairly. I am sure it is good. Your judgment has changed; possibly it has not improved. Have you done anything to that other novel you talked about, [Story of Olivia Primrose; see letter of April 1st, 1878. S.B.] or does the idea remain an idea only?

I want to know these particulars, and that is why I am writing to you, so answer my letter soon, please, and do not forget to tell me how you are.

Yours very truly,
B.M.A. Savage

PS. I saw from the R.A. catalogue yesterday that your pictures are not hung. This is vexatious, but a very small misfortune, and one you share with hundreds. It is in fact so small that it can hardly even give much pleasure to your friends. Tuesday.

Lady's Exhibition, May 11 th, 1878

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am distressed to hear of your dreaming and want of sleep; and though you say 'it won't do', I dare say you won't work less or take more recreation. You will be able to go out sketching more often and more comfortably now that we are going to have fine weather, and I hope you will flâner more than you will sketch and that will be good for you.

But don't be rude to R.A.'s. That exercise will not promote your slumbers, and may harm you materially. [I suspect I must have flown at H. S. Marks for using contemptuous language about Lord Beaconsfield, but Marks and I remained very good friends till he died. S.B., October 4th, 1901.] If you must be rude to some one choose a harmless friend.

I am still busy at the Lady Artists, and don't exactly know when the work will be over, but I am longing to know something about my old Pontifex friends and shall pay you a visit as soon as I am free.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn,Fleet Street, E.C. May 18 th , 1878

Dear Miss Savage,

The Pontifexes grow apace. I want to cover the whole ground, and will then rewrite carefully. I am now just beginning vol. II.

My 'Psalm of Montreal' is in to-day's Spectator, and reads well enough, but I think it is the most disreputable thing I ever saw in a respectable paper. I wonder at the Spectator's putting it in. I am better, and not feeling overworked, though I am at full swing.

The week after next I go home (which I shall enjoy in a curious sort of way) and shall finish the fortnight painting out of doors near Shrewsbury. I shall not touch the novel that fortnight but shall go in for it again on my return.

There is a long and good review of Life and Habit in the Melbourne Argus, March 2nd. I will send it later on. I hope you are better, but fear that you must find this thundery weather trying.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[I was told some time later that the Spectator got into very hot water with its readers for having published my 'Psalm of Montreal'. S.B., October 5th, 1901.]

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Wednesday [i.e. May 21 st, 1878]

My dear Mr. Butler,

Shall you be at home to-morrow afternoon? If you are, I will come and see you. I shall be in rags, but if I don't mind them why need you? I mention the fact, however, that you may keep respectable friends out of the way. How glad I was to see that sweet poem [The 'Psalm of Montreal'. S.B.] in the Spec. [It appeared May 18th. S.B.] It has improved since I first read it, and then I thought it delightful.

Many thanks for your letter. I was glad to hear that you were so well. I am well too but am awfully bad tempered just now, for we have a servant who robs me and my mother won't send her away. There was an alarm yesterday that she had stolen a coat of my father's, which I was very glad of, but it turned up again, and so as she only plunders me, she is to be allowed to continue her career of vice under our roof!!

Who is, or rather was, Mr. James Hinton? How glad Miss Caroline Haddon must be that he is dead! I am sure I am, and I know no more of him than I can gather from the Spec.

Good-bye,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street, E.C., Sunday evening [ probably end of May, 1878. S.B.]

Dear Miss Savage,

I am better; my new cold is nearly gone, and the old one caught last January is beginning to show through like old dirty snow when the new has been melted from the top of it--but I am really in all respects much better, and my breathing is nearly well.

I cannot part with any Darwin MS., it is going ahead fast, and will be done by the middle or end of January. It gets more and more telling and I shall get it quieter also. A friend accused me the other day of liking a row. I am afraid he is right, but I only like it when I am quite sure that I have the right end of the stick.

I am going down to Shrewsbury this week, and shall find out how my aunt is: my sister has not mentioned her for nearly three months. I asked point blank how she was, a fortnight ago, but my sister answered my letter without telling me. I was pleased to find that she used the word 'bright' four times in that letter, and 'pleasant' twice, one 'hopefully' and one 'happy little time', from all which I was assured that she was in a towering passion. She had written two letters without a single 'bright', and I was getting quite uneasy about her.

I have been on a long walk in the country and am rather tired, so I will add no more and am,

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., Sunday [ i.e. June 9 th, 1878]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I suppose that by this time you have returned to town, and I write to say that if you have any 'bad' news, I shall be delighted to weep with you. I am not always ready to weep with those that weep, much preferring generally to rejoice, but in particular cases I will weep, and if you are suffering or likely to suffer from family bereavement you may be sure of my sincerest sympathy.

I hope you are very well, and that you enjoyed your country expedition. As for me--I am very ill; my constitution is breaking up. The great festivals of the church are fatal to it. Last Xmas I had a bad cold: at Easter I had a terrific influenza, and now at Whitsuntide I have another bad cold.

In my youth I was ever liable to sudden sicknesses on Sundays and holy days, throughout the year, but in later life I have not been so afflicted, knowing, I suppose, better 'how to manage myself'. But it would really seem as if there were some avenging fate. Suppose the time should come when I shall wish to go to God's House, and he will not let me go! Did you see in the newspapers that Nobiling once read the bible for a whole fortnight? No wonder that he was wicked!

How are the Pontifexes? I have just been finishing a story in Blackwood, 'Mine is Thine'. It is amusing, but the hero and heroine are quite beyond the pale of sympathy. I am longing for the Pontifexes, and the long line of other novels that will succeed the Pontifexes. How good it was of me that I did not worry you about the novel! quite angelically unselfish seeing that novels are all the comfort of my life. I like to dislike the heroines.

Miss Collingridge has been writing a story. It is not so bad. I read it aloud last Sunday evening, and commented on it, so that she loves me much just now--indeed she came to-night to see me, although I was at her house only last Sunday.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, Wednesday [ i.e. June 26th, 1878]

Dear Mr. Butler,

It was well for you to be away from London on Sunday if thereby you escaped the darkness, the oppressiveness, and the continued thunder, hail and rain. I hope you enjoyed your excursion. It was good of you to send me the Pontifexes. I enjoyed the three chapters immensely. I like Theobald and Christina, Christina especially. She is especially delightful when she allows her imagination to soar, as for example in the Theatre scene--but if you cut out anything the paragraph that succeeds her famous flight of fancy might go. It rather weakens the effect. I want the preceding chapters dreadfully. Do be kind and send them.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Pawnbrokers are bound by law, to put objects pawned into an iron box, so Christian's [I had not yet changed the name to Ernest. S.B., Oct. 7th, 1901] would not be hanging in the window, unless it had been sold outright at first.

Your MS. will come by an early post to-morrow. I had an accident, and smudged the address on the only strong envelope I had. Then I put it into a flimsy one, but at the P.O. I was seized with fright at sending it so insecurely. Now it is stamp bound [I do not understand this. S.B.] but you will have it to-morrow.

22 Beaumont Street, W., July 3rd, 1878

Dear Mr. Butler,

I shall come and see you Saturday. I am glad you give me my choice of days, for that dear little fiddle is going to have a concert on Thursday. I send you a ticket, and hope you will go.

I am very glad you are going away, not, as you say, because there is any thing so very much amiss with you, but because it is usual and 'more natural' for you to go. You seem to be apologizing to yourself for wanting to go away. I think you ought to be pleased with yourself, and certainly to indulge yourself.

I want very much to ask you some questions about the Pontifexes, as you won't let me have the chapters I want. Indeed I was going to write to you last night.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Please send me the ticket back if you do not want it, or give it to some deserving person (a strong young man, by preference, who will make a great deal of noise). If you do not go I shall always think it was because you were offended at not having a stall.

15 Clifford's Inn, Fleet Street, E. C., Tuesday, July 2nd, 1878.

Dear Miss Savage,

Thank you for sending me back my MS. (i.e. Ernest Pontifex). No--I won't send you any more--it is so much less readable than I yet see my way to making it--and it is full of little contradictions--I having intended at one time to turn the thing in one way, and having then turned it in another--I have however just finished the second volume, and got my hero into his worst scrape, and now I am going to take a holiday. I find these short outings wear off too soon, and though there is nothing wrong with me I think there is much less likely to be anything if I give myself a six weeks' or two months' spell from writing and go to the nice places where I went last year and take some of my studies there and finish them--so, rather suddenly, I have made up my mind to go, and think of starting on Monday--shall I call and see you at the club on Thursday or Saturday afternoon? or if you are passing this way will you have a cup of tea with me here on either day? The particular phase of mischief which has made me determine to take a holiday is that I am incessantly wanting to take long breaths and cannot get it--and hence feel as if I never had breath enough inside my lungs and want more which I can't 'fetch' to use the popular expression, but having done no work either Sunday or yesterday I am three times better to-day but this has gone on now some time, and my outing to Shrewsbury and Church Stretton soon wore off, and I mean to set myself up, and not to work quite so hard when I come back. It is nothing but the book, of that I am positive. You see I wrote the greater part of Life and Habit since my last holiday, and put it through the press, and have written two vols. of E. Pontifex novel (some of it old, but it was all rewritten) besides painting--and have been worried incessantly about money and with my people and I don't think I need grumble at wanting a spell now--at any rate whether I ought or ought not I shall go--and chance it. My Aunt continues better--but I do not think she can last very long.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., Sept. 1 st , 1878

My dear Mr. Butler,

It was unkind of you not to have written to me again, when you know that I wanted to hear from you, being anxious about your health. You do not always stand upon the ceremony of receiving answers, in fact you never have done so [Yes but I had, and been scolded for it too, but not more than I deserved. S.B., Oct. 12th, 1901] so why this innovation on the part of a good conservative?

If I had known that you would be so formal, however, I would have written long ago, and now I write only a few lines to ask you to let me hear of you as soon as you can...

I had not a mouchoir worthy of Lord Beaconsfield--one sufficiently embroidered and belaced, or I would have gone to wave it at him when he came back from Berlin. When you come home you must lend me some of his novels, I have read nearly all of them, but so long ago that I quite forget them-- Coningsby, and Sybil, and Vivian Grey, that is to say. The others I have read more recently. On bank holiday I was delighted to see nine policemen in Mr. Gladstone's division of Harley Street: generally there is not one in half a square mile of that neighbourhood. It showed that he was expecting popular demonstrations, or frightened. I have no news, but I want to hear how you are, and how the Pontifexes are, but more especially how you are. So I will say goodbye now.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, Wednesday evening [ Sept. 26 th, 1878]

Dear Miss Savage,

I have had some Italian painters to show over London, to whom I have had to attend all day and every day, showing them over London, as they could not speak a word of English. They are gone, and I am not sorry, though they were very good people. I am better but I am still pumping for breath more than I like. [Writing Life and Habit, literally took my breath away--I kept wanting to take a long breath, and quite unable to do so. Every now and then great mental or nervous exertion has the same effect on me still, but it is very rare and transitory, whereas as soon as I had got well into Life and Habit, what an old Italian woman once described to me as a 'gran mancamento di spirito' was almost continuous and very both distressing and alarming. It was a full year after L. and H. was published before I righted myself. S.B., Sep. 16th, 1901.] Let me know when and where we can meet-- not Saturday or Sunday.

My sister amuses me with a tag which she repeats in every letter--'Aunt Lloyd is wonderful'. Never more, and never less. She knows that when my aunt dies, my father comes into possession of the Whitehall reversion, which is ultimately to be mine, under my grandfather's will; and she knows I cannot help casting a wistful eye on my aunt, for I think my father, who is very well off, may perhaps do something for me when he comes into it. If my sister would not mention my aunt, I should not care, but she ostentatiously flings her 'Aunt Lloyd is wonderful' at me letter after letter, knowing perfectly well that I shall note the iteration, and read it, as I do; i.e. 'if you think I am going to tell you anything about aunt Lloyd you are very much mistaken, so put that in your pipe and smoke it'.

In four letters running she has added the word 'pleasant' to 'bright' about things or people. So as she has added 'pleasant', I hope to see her vocabulary still further enriched if we live long enough. She is at present studying Smiles's Life of George Moore the philanthropist, and considers him 'the perfection of an energetic and unselfish character'. He was unselfish to the tune of £400,000 before he died. May I tell her so?

A prig [H. E. Malden. S.B.] who does not know me, told a friend of mine [H. F. Jones. S.B.] the other day, that he did not think it at all a good thing for him that he should see so much of me--he would get nothing but harm from me. I told my friend to tell him that I thought he might see as much of him as he liked, as I was quite sure he would get no harm from him whatever.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, W., Friday [ Oct. 5 th , 1878]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I was very sorry to hear that you are not quite well yet, and wish you had not a London November to get through. However, the weather is very lovely now, so I hope you will feel yourself let down to London life easily.

I will come and see you on Monday afternoon if I do not hear to the contrary. I wish I were coming to see you to-day, for I have the loveliest lot of leaves and berries of all colours--pink, scarlet, brown, white, black and purple, and I would bring you some. I think your sister is quite right about George Moore. He must have been unselfish to take subscriptions of a guinea or so from his clerks who had two, and three, hundred a year, when he might have performed most of his charitable actions without any subscriptions from others. Good man! He liked to let others share in the treasures laid up in heaven, and so he was able to lay up a good deal of treasure on earth.

I think 'bright', the most odious word in the English language. I took a hatred to it when I was in contact with Miss Hubbard's philanthropic set. I dare say your sisters belong to the 'guild'. If they don't you should suggest to them to join it. I am sure they would be quite at home in it. Good-bye, et a Lundi. I am very glad you are come back.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Nov. 5 th, 1878

Dear Miss Savage,

I am almost ashamed to write to you, it is so long since I have written or heard. Why have you not written to enquire after my health? I hope you are not ill yourself. I am much better, and but for one of my bad colds caught a few days ago, should call myself very well. No news of my aunt--my sister never mentions her name--but I have seen my elder sister, who was really very kind. She said she hoped I had not lost all my money, because if I had not enough to eat and drink, I ought to tell some one--she was sure papa would not wish that. I was a good deal tickled, thinking to myself that I was still very sufficiently fed, clad, and, amused, and also because my sister implied that my father would wish a good deal though he would not wish me to go without the common necessaries of life. But the poor woman meant to be kind, and she pressed a bottle of claret on me when I went away, which, however, with many thanks I declined--and I can see she sees through my other sister, though we said nothing, and actively dislikes my brother, which comforted me not a little. I gathered that my aunt is really very much shaken, and is not at all the same as she was before her illness--but her daughter-in-law, who lives near Shrewsbury is, I am afraid at the point of death, so if you see the death of a Mrs. Lloyd dying near Shrewsbury, you must not think it is my aunt.

I am painting, and sent in three things to the Dudley which I thought looked better than anything I had done. Also I am painting at Heatherley's in the evening, and I think am gaining. I am writing my Lamarck book [ Evolution Old and New ] and am very full of it--but it is hard work, as it must be done very delicately, or I shall do old Darwin more good than harm. I shall never be happy till I have done it. Then I will finish the Pontifexes. I shall have done the Darwin book early in February D.V. I am going down to Shrewsbury early in December--shall I meet you any where, or will you come and have a cup of tea with me--but I shall bore you, for I have a thoroughly stupid fit on me.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Dec. 15 th, 1878

Dear Miss Savage,

Yours was forwarded to me down at Shrewsbury [I have not found this letter. S.B., Oct. 14th, 1901]--with the enclosure--which made me sick. [I forget all about this. S.B.] I am sure that any tree or flower nursed by Miss Cobbe would be the very first to fade away, and that her gazelles would die long before they even came to know her well. The sight of the brass buttons on her pea-jacket would settle them out of hand.

My father was horribly rude at first; his manner was 'If you choose to insist on coming down here, I don't see how I can well stop you, but you must not expect me to behave as if I liked it'. He was a good deal more gracious before I left. I can always mollify him after I have been with him a day or two--to a certain extent--but it goes down again directly the moment my back is turned.

I cannot spare my MS. There is not a day, but I tinker it in one place or another--However, I am going Kenilworth for a couple of days on Tuesday morning and will send it by book post to-morrow evening. I am about two-thirds through with the book [ Evolution Old and New ] and shall have it done by the end of January. The greater part is translation from Lamarck and Buffon or transcription with a few running comments from the elder Darwin and others. So far as I can see Charles Darwin is being a good deal discredited, and if I do not bring my book out soon it may easily be too late to be effective. Someone in the Contemporary a year or so ago declared Lamarck to be preferable to Darwin, and quoted Mivart as calling Darwin's theory 'puerile'--which is too good a name for it.

I have had a sharp feverish attack since my return, and had to lie absolutely by for a couple of days, but it did me good, and I am now very well. I have not done a stroke of painting for some weeks, and can think of nothing till my book is done. The next thing will be to finish the Pontifex novel, which should be done by the end of April. And then I must think what I will do next.

I shall be at home Thursday or Saturday at 4.30 if you will come and have a cup of tea--but not Friday.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Friday [ some time in 1878]

Dear Miss Savage,

I am asked to dine at Mrs. Salter's on Monday, and they say they have asked Mivart, but do not know whether he will come. He is a bad lot I am sure, but I suppose I had better toady him too.

Do you know anything of a Miss Arabella Buckley who knows Miss Thomas? Mr. Garnett at the Museum introduced me to her the other day--I dare say she is very nice, but I should like to be told whether she is or not before I make up my mind one way or another. [She is a silly tattling log-rolling mischief-making woman and I dislike her very much. She is now Mrs. Fisher--a widow. I had an altercation with her in November 1880 of which an account will be found on pp. 79, 80 of Vol. I of my notes, which winds up thus:

'A few days after this, Miss Savage met her and Mr. Garnett flirting down Berners Street (quite innocently, but good square flirting). The postman was taking letters out of a pillar box, and as soon as the two had passed he put his thumb over his shoulder, and winked at Miss Savage--who told me this herself.' S.B.]

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

Jan. 3 rd , 1879

Dear Mr. Butler,

I am glad you were pleased with your étrennes. I am delighted with your idea for a story. I read an article about Mr. Day in a quarterly review some years ago, but I had no idea that Miss Seward's biography was so cheerful or I am sure I should have got it out to read at the Musée.

Can you enter into the mind of a man who would be painted with a flash of lightning playing round him? I suppose the lightning was to show how completely his nerves were under his own control. Can you imagine too, the intense priggishness of a man who wants to mould a wife? In your novel I think you should show how (probably) the woman he did marry moulded him. I dare say she turned him round her little finger. It was probably she who persuaded him to try his system on the horse [which killed him. S.B.] I am sure that is what I should have done in her place. I am glad to hear that you are quite well.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., Feb. 3 rd [1879]

My dear Mr. Butler,

Many thanks for your letter [not found by me among those returned to me. S.B.] which was well-timed, as I was beginning to want news of you, and to fear that you might be ill. Indeed I was on the point of writing to you, so now the delicate attention of spontaneous enquiry will have to stand over for another time.

Why did you write on mourning paper? [I fancy I must have found some old mourning paper, and used it having none other handy. S.B.] Of course I thought your aunt was dead. Do you indulge in black edges as a pleasant exercise of the fancy, or are you officially mourning for somebody?

Do not be too much cast down by the advt. in the Pall Mall. It is an immense time since I saw the death of a Mrs. Lloyd in any paper, so that if your aunt be saved as Harriet Butler she may be translated as Mrs. Lloyd. [So far as I remember I had seen the death of a Harriet Butler in the Pall Mall-- yes, it was on Jan. 24th, 1879--and said that as my aunt's maiden name was Harriet Butler it was not probable that she would be 'translated' for ever so long. My reason for desiring her 'translation' (she was nearly 80) was because I fondly hoped that on her death my father would do something for me out of the considerable addition to his income which would accrue to him on her death, and which I, on his death, should inherit under my grandfather's will. S.B.] This is one of the disadvantages of being a married woman. (See Beamish, Quetelet, or any probabilitarian.) I wonder the woman's rights people have not made this double liability to death one of their grievances. Besides fifty or sixty years ago the name Harriet was much more in fashion than it has ever been since--consequently a large crop of Harriets should drop in about this time.

I hope you are not working too hard. It seems to me that you will never rest. You know I always disbelieved in Trübner's, so I am glad that you have nothing more to do with them. [Trübner, finding that he should not be able to make Life and Habit (in which he had a half interest) pay, insulted me so grossly that I offered to pay for the whole myself, and take it away, at once. He jumped at this, and I after trying sundry publishers in vain left the frying pan of Trübner for the fire of David Bogue. Before long Trübner apologized, and when Bogue failed, begged me almost with tears in his eyes to come back to him--which I did--remaining with that firm till it became a Limited Liability Co., whereon I moved to Longmans. S.B.]

Do not forget that in your last letter you promised me some more MS. [This must have been of Evolution Old and New. S.B.] And you are going to rewrite what I have read, so it will be as good as two books to me by the time it is done. How glad I am that I am not one of the general public! I should not get half the pleasure out of your writings.

I shall come and see you soon, but when does not depend upon my will. The fact is I have a swelled face and I shall come and see you when it has subsided a little, but not before; for besides my appearance (which is the most important consideration) my speech is inarticulate, and the pain at times severe. It has been as big as Albert Hall; now it is no bigger than a house, when it has shrunk to the size of a cottage, then I will pay you a visit.

I have been greatly worried of late. Oh! for the soothing influence of religion! Why has my faith been destroyed? If I could only believe in the eternity of punishment! If I could only think that there was a place in hell prepared for landlords where they will sit upon a serpent's knee, how happy I should be!

I send you a tract and remain,

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., April 19 th, 1879

My dear Mr. Butler,

Ever since I had your last letter I have been doing nothing but study for a suitable excuse for not sending an answer to your last but one, but my faculties are so dulled, and my imagination so obstructed that I have not been able to hit upon a tolerable one yet. However, I am coming to see you next week to fetch my book (which I have not yet seen advertised), and perhaps by then I may have concocted a fable worthy of the occasion--if not I shall be reduced to telling the truth. I write now in great haste to ask you to let me know when I shall come. I want the book DIRECTLY, but I can't come Monday I think.

I have had a horrible cold and a great deal to do. I am glad to hear that you are better.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., April 22 nd , [1879]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am very much disappointed that the book [ Evolution Old and New. S.B.] is not yet out, so will come next week, please, instead of this week. I suppose the tiresome printers make the delay, which is vexatious, as the season is slipping away. Let me know when I shall come. I hope you are quite well. I am much better.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. I shall come next week whether the book be ready or not.

I hope you marked Mrs. Westlake's discomfiture the other day. I am sorry it was not complete, still a snubbing of that woman, complete or not, is grateful to one's feelings. The other Lady members of the board hate her with a hatred to which mine is mild in comparison. The S.L.A. exhibition is not a good one this year. I am nearly driven mad by five moons in various stages of eclipse on my right hand, some drawings by Miss Coleman of girls with features wandering in all directions on my left. In front a huge vulgar thing of Mrs. Jopling's, which as the days go on exasperates me more and more. It is even worse than the moons, which after all are not so very bad. They only look like pills of different sorts floating in the air, and I am becoming indifferent to them, but Mrs. Jopling's is aggressive.

[I destroy a letter of mine dated May 1st saying that I had on that day received a copy of Evolution Old and New, and that the Reviewers would receive copies on the following day. I extract as follows:

My sister writes,

'Aunt Lloyd is pretty well, not so well as before her last little attack, but still about, and apparently as usual. My father has had erysipelas but is now much as usual again.' S.B.]

May 22nd, 1879

[I had sent her two reviews of Evolution Old and New --one in the Academy signed by Grant Allen. The other in the Examiner unsigned, but also (so D'Avigdor, the then editor, told me) by Grant Allen. Both reviews appeared on the same day, May 17th--and they led off the reviews. S.B.]

My dear Mr. Butler,

The articles are simply silly. Mr. Grant Allen must be a very young man, I should think almost a child. So you must not be too cruel to him. [D'Avigdor urged me to reply, but I would not. S.B.] At a certain time of life the temptation to be smart is irresistible, and when you can't treat a subject seriously, smartness is the only alternative. Why do they have such people to write in papers which are reputed to be serious?

I was not at the gallery yesterday, so I am glad you did not come up. The private view of the exhibition begins to-day.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. There are to be three days' view. Up to the present moment the view has been very strictly private, being limited to myself, the artist's wife, Mr. Hauron [?] the importer of Cammarano's big pictures, and the commissionaire as spectators; however it is not yet ten o'clock so we hope there will be a rush in the afternoon, so if you want to see me I shall be on view, and I am afraid for the most part on private view, any time between 10 o'clock and 6 for the next month. I return the two notices but will keep Nature for another day or two if I may.

[The review in Nature was the one by A. R. Wallace on Life and Habit which appeared on one of the last days of March 1879--about 16 months after L. and H. had been published. I had evidently also sent her my letters to the Examiner about this date beginning with 'a clergyman's doubts'. S.B.]

I like none of your letters so well as 'Ethics' which ought to have been an article not a letter. It is perfectly lovely. I suppose you are 'Cantab' too? I hope you have been well paid for them. 'Ethics' is worth any money, but I am afraid being only among the correspondence it may have been passed over by many readers.

I have had three days of holiday which I rather regret, as it enabled me to rush about to police stations and second hand book shops in search of books stolen from the club, and it would have been such a comfort to have been quiet.

I must now put up this letter. Excuse these scraps of paper. We have no more in the place being as yet un-provided with the necessaries of life.

22 Beaumont Street, Portland Place, W., May 22 nd , 1879

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am afraid my letter of this morning was incoherent, but I was so angry that I could wait neither for paper nor pens nor leisure. I was obliged to write immediately and rush out to the post as fast as I could. I hope you will not fail to let me see or tell me where I may see any more reviews of Evolution. I dare say those that are worthy of the book will be longer in the doing; that flippant creature Allen Grant [ sic ] was soon ready with his notice: I suppose he is what they call a ready writer.

I hope you will come in and see me soon. I like some of my new pictures very much, but I have not been round the exhibition yet. I have had nothing to do with any of the preliminary work which is so fatiguing. My principal duty in the Ladies' Exhibitions, which was to smile and smile and be a villain, devolves on the artist's wife; however I dare say I shall be able to exercise my faculty for lying. I was not indeed called upon to show how supremely gifted I am in that respect during the last Exhibition for nobody wanted to buy either the moons or Mrs. Jopling's picture--in fact I observed that most people as soon as they set eyes on the latter immediately walked away from it. They looked more curiously into the moons, but I believe that half the people never arrived at making out what they were. They set them down as attempts at Whistlerism. Pray come soon. I want an opinion that I can rely on concerning one of two pictures. The painter is a perfectly unknown genius, and it would be dreadful if I became much attached to anything which I ought to look down upon.

I had very hard work during all the last fortnight of the exhibition [i.e. of the Ladies' exhibition. S.B.] and don't know how I should have got through it but for the consolation and refreshment of the book. It cured my relaxed throat, and my ulcerated sore throat, and alleviated the pains in my bones, and assisted me in my arithmetic, and sweetened my temper, and did as much for me as if it had been the relic of a saint.

Good-bye, dear Mr. Butler.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

A Mr. and Miss Lloyd whom I know slightly came to the gallery to-day. They looked so extraordinarily well and flourishing that I am sure there must be a corresponding depression in the health of the other Lloyds, or that there very soon will be.

22 Beaumont Street, June 12 th 1879

My dear Mr. Butler,

I was sorry I could not get to Miss Johnson's in time to see you, especially as you are going away so soon. Are you inclined to speculate in a public house? I send you a prospectus of the sale of one; perhaps filial piety may induce you to purchase, for I presume the Dr. Butler's Head is your grandfather's head. [The Dr. Butler's Head is a well-known public house in the city--but I have no idea what Dr. Butler it was whose head is thus immortalized. S.B., Oct. 31st, 1901.] The prospectus was sent to me at the club. I do not know why the hon. Secy. of a Ladies' Club should be supposed to be anxious to buy public houses, but I believe there isn't a public house sold in London without my being invited to buy it, but I will wait for the Samuel Butler's Head before I speculate in such a property. I really think you should go to Mason's Avenue as a pious pilgrimage: it would please your father, and you could refresh yourself at the bar and pick up anecdotes about your grandfather.

You will be sure to write to me while you are away. I am not anxious about you as you are so well; all the same I should like to hear from you. And you must write to me again if I don't answer your letter, because I am so apt to forget addresses.

I have been enquiring about the Ladies' Guild from Miss Collingridge--There seem to be a good many formalities to go through. I think the whole thing detestable, and should wait till I was nearly starving before I applied--but other people don't always think as I do. I don't think these sort of institutions should be much encouraged: the real use of them is to enable the 'Benevolent' to do with a flourish of trumpets what should be done as a simple matter of business by people of business. I have always found that the 'Benevolent' always expect work done for themselves to be done for nothing or next to nothing, and I think the tendency of these societies is to make prices go down.

I hope you will not forget to tell me if there are any more reviews. You did forget to tell me the date of 'The Righteous Man'. [It (for I think it very good) appeared in the Examiner. S.B., Ap. 5th, 1879.] If I do not have that poem soon I shall not be able to sleep at nights for the want of it.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Do come and say good-bye before you go. Mrs. Warren is more and more amusing. She said the other day with a little sentimental sigh, 'How pictures of the places one has seen "drors" your thoughts back to them.' So I said 'Yes, that is why they are called "drorings".' I delight in hearing her read the newspapers. She was reading the account of some art sale or other, 'the prices raging' from £200 to thousands. The word 'raging' so exactly expressing the thing.

22 Beaumont Street, Portland Place, W., August 5 th 1879

Thank you, dear Mr. Butler, very much for your little notelet received this morning. You are the best of correspondents: I was beginning to feel anxious and to want to hear from you, and a letter comes.

I don't think that the Athenæum review [of Evolution Old and New, July 26th] will be bad for you. It is a long one, and this shows that the Athenæum thinks the book important. Again, it shows how public opinion is veering round to your view of Darwin--to be only the right man in the right place at the right time! Poor Darwin, it certainly is a great come down for him. And the reviewer will make people want to read Erewhon : so, though the writer has not considered Evolution very deeply, and certainly is unjust to its literary merits, I think he will have done you more good than harm.

I saw the book on Mudie's counter--a sure sign that it is being asked for--and that particular volume had been round the Book Society of Kinver (wherever Kinver may be) and had been well thumbed by the Kinverites--and it is something to have been well thumbed. I found that it had been to Kinver by the ticket inside.

I enjoyed your gods very much. [This refers to some articles on 'God the unknown', and 'God the known'--that I published in the Examiner, May 24th, and succeeding numbers, 1879, and which I hope some day to rewrite and amplify. S.B., Nov. 1st. 1901.]

I left off buying the Examiner when your name no longer appeared in the table of contents, if you have been writing anything in it since you must let me know.

I read 'Ethics' [a letter by me in the Examiner of Mar. 8th--from which I drew one or two passages for Alps and Sanctuaries. S.B.] to an admiring audience one night. Some members of the club had been to hear Miss Helen Taylor preach on 'Truth', and they continued the discussion afterwards; so I read 'Ethics' one evening with very great success.

Apropos of Miss Helen Taylor, not one of the women on the school board will speak to Mrs. Westlake. One of the gentlemen remonstrated with Miss H. T. and said that such a state of things was damaging to the interests of woman's cause, and that Mrs. Westlake complained very much. Said Miss Taylor with a wintry smile, 'I wonder that Mrs. Westlake should herself be the person to publish the fact that the other ladies won't speak to her'.

One day Mrs. Fenwick Miller was absently twisting a bit of blotting paper round her pen, and then threw it off with a jerk on to the floor. Says Mrs. Westlake tartly, 'That's how the board room furniture gets spoiled. I saw you throw ink upon the carpet'. I can fancy how the men on the board who are not advocates for woman's cause must have giggled at this. Mrs. Westlake wants to be the only woman on the board, and at a meeting the other day she tried to dissuade ladies from becoming candidates on account of the expense: she said it cost her £500. It cost her a great deal more than this, but she was not going to confess to a larger sum. There is a portrait of her at the Royal Academy which is frightful--so at least it appeared to me to be. I hope it is frightful really.

Kittee is come back to the club for a month. Dear little soul! But she is not well, and can't eat even sardines, of which she is generally passionately fond. However it is Bank Holiday, and no cat's meat shops or fried fish shops are open, so it is rather providential that she should have no appetite, for I had completely forgotten all about Bank Holiday and I can't send this letter to you till to-morrow, having no stamps. Are not Bank Holidays stupid things?

Do you remember that I told you I had met a young man who was connected with the Examiner, and that I thought he might develop into a very nice person in about ten years or so? I have seen him again, and have changed my mind: I think it will take twenty or twenty-five years. I must say good-bye. Write soon.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Sept. 24 th [1879]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I hope you are at home again. You said you should be back on the 20th, and if I don't hear from you soon I shall place the matter in the hands of the Lord, according to Carey's plan, and then you will see if you don't have to come home whether you will or no. I enclose Carey's letter [1] in case you may not have seen it and can assure you that I have PROVED the efficacy of his method. Only last Friday, being in despair about ways and means for carrying on the club, I cried out in my anguish that there was nothing to be done but to place the matter in the hands of the Lord. He gave Carey grace to show a clean pair of heels to the foe; He might help us to escape from our creditors. When the committee (which had met at the house of one of the members) was over, we started on our way back to the club, and as I went along Tottenham Court Road and Goodge Street, I took care to remind the Lord that I expected him to dry the tears from my eyes, and on our arrival at the club we found that our faith had saved us, and that there was a letter for me containing £5, which sum, though not quite so large as we should have liked, will nevertheless be our salvation, and perhaps the Lord will send us some more. I should have said 'peradventure', but one can't get up the technical expressions all at once.

Since Friday, therefore, we have become altered beings--and that is thanks to Carey without whose sublime example I should never have thought of having recourse to the Lord. If I can only persuade you to do so likewise the Prince Imperial will not have died in vain.

Thank you for your last letter. [Not found by me. S.B.] It seems that Grant Allen has a little circle of admirers. How is it that one never hears of these geniuses? I saw a man on Sunday who said he (Grant Allen) was 'grand'; but he also admires Theophrastus Such, which I could not read [I should think not! S.B.], nor could anybody in the club though we kept the book four weeks, and every one made a show of beginning to read it. The only bit in the least readable is a crib from Erewhon-- a most barefaced crib.

I have been reading Mary Wolstonecraft's letters to Imlay--What an odious woman she was--it is quite horrible that she should have been so good looking--but I dare say the portraits are flattered. Fancy a woman close on forty always speaking of herself as a 'girl'! I hope you are really quite well now. Why did you not write to me again? I suppose you saw that Buffon has been patronized and made much of at the British Association--that is thanks to you of course. So you see that you have done some good after all--for I suppose that Mr. Mivart would not have taken Buffon under his fostering care, if you had not written Evolution-- and you have afforded George Elliott [ sic-- Miss S. doubtless put the I in, out of fun, feigning ignorance. S.B.] opportunity for helping herself. And yet I dare say you want more than this--did I not always tell you that you were most unreasonable.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[1] Captain Carey had been arrested in connexion with the death of the Prince Imperial in Zululand on June 1st, 1879. The letter, printed first in The Christian, August 28th, 1879, and later in The Times, is as follows [ Ed. ]

Southsea, August 25 th

My dear Sir,--May I ask you to kindly insert a request for praise on my behalf in the next number of your journal? Since the first moment of my arrest I took the whole matter to my heavenly Father. I left it in His hands, reminding Him constantly of His promise to help. He has borne my burden for me. He has sustained me, my wife, and family, in our distress; and He has finally wiped away tears from our eyes. There were certain circumstances at first that it seemed, owing to the bewildered statements of the survivors, difficult to explain; but though my faith wavered His promises endured, and He, in his good time, brought me to the haven where I would be. I feel that it would be wrong to keep from my fellow-believers such a wonderful example of God's goodness and power in influencing the hearts of men; and, though I hate publicity, I feel compelled to add my testimony to the power of prayer.

Believe me, dear Sir, yours very faithfully,

BRENTON CAREY
Captain, 98th Regiment

22 Beaumont Street, W., Wednesday [ Nov. 5 th, 1879]

My dear Mr. Butler,

Since yesterday week I have been in bed with a sprained foot, and as I have had a great deal of writing to do for the Lady Artists, and some for the club, I have neglected you, for which please forgive me. I hope you will write to me soon. You are quite right not to answer your father hastily, and I am sure you will say and do exactly what is right, only I am afraid you will be harassed and worried and made ill.

I was on the point of writing to you to ask you to come and see me on Sunday. My parents were out, and I went down stairs for the afternoon, but Miss Scott and Miss Collingridge both announced a visit; I know you don't care much for either of them, and I like your visits all to myself, so I did not write. As it happened they neither of them came. Miss Scott gave me a grand soirée last night. I was much disappointed at not being able to go--not because I anticipated much pleasure, but because my best gown is on the verge of becoming old-fashioned, and as I don't know when I shall get another I like to seize every occasion for it to appear.

You, being only a man, cannot of course, sympathize with me in this matter, but I can sincerely say that I am sorry for the limitation of your emotions.

My foot is not badly sprained, but quite sufficiently. I fell in my own familiar Goodge Street, and was not hurt by the fall, but by the picking of me up, which was suddenly accomplished by three young men of extraordinary strength and energy. They meant well, but I wish they had been taught that point de zèle is the best rule of conduct on all occasions, especially for persons of great physical force.

As soon as I can I shall come and see you; I dare say I shall soon be able to get so far. In the meantime you must write to me, please, or I shall be very uncomfortable.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., [ Monday Nov. 10th, 1879]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I return the precious documents, which rather bewilder me. Your sisters implore you to let your father help you, reproach you for not having allowed such help before and yet speak of the matter as 'this trouble' and 'a sorrow that has come upon him in his old age'. I can't make them out--perhaps my head too is not so strong as it used to be.

[I wish I had not destroyed my sisters' letters. As for their imploring me to let my father help me, I wanted no imploring. If he did not do what How admitted to be 'an act of justice' as soon as he found it inconvenient to himself not to do it, I had no scruple about letting him maintain me; nor would I bate a penny of the £300 which I should have allowed myself if I had been able to raise money on my reversion. If he chose to indulge his obstinacy and ill humour, let him pay; the moment he yielded, I got off his back, and he never had to pay another 6d. on my account. S.B., Nov. 5th, 1879.]

Your father reminds me of Jehovah in the desert. I hope you are as 'son-like' to him as you can be. I am sure he is very 'father-like' to you! I shall remember him in my maledictions. He is quite right about the magazines. Why don't you write twaddle? Why don't you be commonplace? I am not sure that I should not like you a great deal better myself if you were. If I were your near relation I am sure I should not like you at all. I can only just put up with your superiority as it is. I hope that by this time your worry is all over and that your father has become reasonable again.

I am much better, and went to the club on Friday and Saturday, Mrs. Lowe taking me in a carriage; to-day I am so much recovered that I intend to go thither in an omnibus, and expect to be able to walk about as usual in another week or ten days. I have been dipping into the Books of Moses, being sometimes at loss for something to read while shut up in my own apartment. You know that I have never read the Bible much, consequently there is generally something of a novelty that I hit upon. As you do know your Bible well, perhaps you can tell me what became of Aaron? The account given of his end in Numbers xx is extremely ambiguous and unsatisfactory. Evidently he did not come by his death fairly, but whether he was privately murdered for the furtherance of some private ends, or publicly murdered in a state sacrifice I can't make out. I myself rather incline to the former opinion, but I should like to know what the experts say about it. A very nice exciting little tale might be written on the subject in the style of police stories in All the Year Round, called 'The Mystery of Mount Hor, or what became of old Aaron?' Don't forget to write to me soon.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Do you remember a dreadful man at Heatherley's--Mr. Norra? I met him about a fortnight ago at the Sunday Social Union Soiree, to which Miss Collingridge took me. The society seems to have been founded for the purpose of enabling the irreligious to spend their Sundays sadly, and I am sure if that was the intention, it has achieved its purpose. However that is not what I was going to say. There used to come to the club at one time a dreadful young woman named Mitchell. Well, it seems that she and Mr. Norra are married. Is it not delightful to hear of such well assorted marriages? If I had made the match myself it could not have been better; I hope you will be pleased to hear of it.

64 Berners Street, W., Dec. 24 th [1879]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I am at this moment much afflicted; cold, cough, neuralgia, and at least seventeen other distinct and separate ailments have established their point de repaire in my poor frame. [She never hints at the cancer of which I am sure that by this time she must have been well aware. S.B., Nov. 6th, 1901.] I suppose they have come to keep Xmas in me, and I am sure they are enjoying themselves. I am pretty well, considering, but as I can neither see nor hear nor speak, I shall not come to see you as I intended to do on one of these three days, but will wait till after Xmas day when I will write again.

I shall thus have a pleasure to sustain me and look forward to, during that trying ceremony called 'keeping Xmas', which this year will be more than ever trying because the 'usual circle' has been thinned by death, and besides making desperate efforts to be cheerful, we shall also have to make efforts not to be too cheerful.

I sincerely sympathize with you in your being without anything to worry you. What a blank it must be. However I dare say something will happen to prevent the monotony that threatens you from lasting too long. I shall take to nagging you about the novel or about a novel, which you really ought to write. Seriously, though, I am very sorry you are not well, and wish you would do nothing at all for a few months. I dare say 'God' is very fascinating [this refers to my then idea of making my articles on 'God' in the Examiner, the basis of a book. S.B., Nov. 6th, 1901] but if he tires you, you must drop him. Nevertheless I am longing to know more of what you are doing.

Believe me, yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

I am amused by your father. He thought it would be an act of folly if you raised money on your reversion. It seems to me that that is precisely what you are doing by this arrangement of his. [He had intimated that he should deduct any monies I now had from him, from what he should leave me. S.B.] You should send him a Xmas card one--of Miss Collingridge's, with a text--but perhaps he might like it, so better leave it alone.

My cat has taken to mulled port and rum punch. Poor old dear! he is all the better for it. Dr. Richardson says that the lower animals always refuse alcoholic drinks and gives that as a reason why humans should do so too--A very pretty reason is it not?

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Jan. 8 th, [1880]

My dear Mr. Butler,

...We are anxious to get more members [for the ladies' club] for we want money awfully. I shall take to highway robbery, for it seems no use to lay the matter before the Lord. He led me on four months ago, and made me think that he seriously meant to dry the tears from my eyes, but I suppose he thought he had caught me by the paltry advance of £5. Please write to me soon about this.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, Feb. 2 nd, 1880

Many thanks, dear Mr. Butler, for the letter--[i.e. my letter to the Athenæum about Darwin, which appeared January 31st, 1880. S.B.] I am vexed I did not see it first, but on Friday evening I fell a victim to Mrs. Lowe's rapacity for whist players, and did not get a chance of seeing the Athenæum at the club. It must have been my prophetic soul that made me wish to shirk Mrs. Lowe that night. I said I had to go to Mudie's, and went out with the books strapped up, but I did not go far, and wandered round and round the block of buildings between Wells Street and Berners Street, until somebody coming out of the club told me she was gone--but I had no sooner settled down to read after my tea and toast, than she reappeared like Fate, and I felt that there was no resistance to be made. You may resist the Devil, and (so I have been told), he will flee from you, but that cannot be said of Mrs. Lowe when she wants a fourth for whist.

I like your little 'battailons canticle' [I suppose she means my letter to the Athenæum. She has referred me to an appendix which is so many scraps of paper off that I give it here; it runs:

'I don't know what a "battailons canticle" is, but I was much struck with the phrase in a serious book that I was reading the other day, and so made up my mind to use it on the first opportunity.'

I do not see why 'battailons' should not be 'battai l lons', 'let us fight', but am sure that this is a howler on my part. As Miss Savage has twice written 'battailons' this must be right, for she spoke French admirably. What it all means I know no more than she did. S.B., November 8th, 1901.]

[I resume...]

I like your 'battailons canticle'. It is so feline! What a sweet little scratch is your allusion to 'happy simplicity'. Poor Mr. Darwin! but I dare say he thinks he does not feel it. He is like the rival of Mimer the Smith, who while Mimer was slicing him into two halves declared he felt nothing, but when he got up and shook himself, he fell into two halves. I don't think Mr. Darwin will be so imprudent as to shake himself: he will sit still on his block, and declare that he feels nothing. He will find plenty of people too who will declare that he is in no wise divided.

What do you mean by saying there is not much amiss with you? I am sure you must be ill. You are very provoking! for the last month I have never seen a particularly sleek and comfortable creature, without saying 'that is how Mr. Butler will look, when he has enjoyed his allowance for another week or two', and then you say there is not much amiss with you.

I begin work next Monday, but as your life is precious to me, do not expose it by coming to the gallery before the exhibition opens, which will not be till the second week in March. If you were to appear earlier Miss Atkinson would slay you in her wrath, or if you did get away bodily safe, you would nevertheless be so shattered morally that you would never hold up your head again. Therefore I shall come and see you one day this week--Friday or Saturday, if you will be so good as to say that you are particularly anxious to see me on one of those days.

My mother is ill--has been seriously ill, but is better now. My poor father has had rather a bad time, but he is quite angelic, so patient and so unselfish. I wish I took after my father. I am quite well, but a little knocked up with the small share of nursing that has fallen to me.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., Thursday [ Feb. 5 th, 1880]

Dear Mr. Butler,

...A friend of mine was at a friend's the other day, where there was an old Scotch General. The conversation was about popular preachers, and curates, and much disapprobation was expressed concerning the way in which ladies toadied them, but the old General said, 'Well, if you come to that the Saviour always was a ladies' man', which shocked the polite society assembled.

No time for more, good-bye.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[ Postmark, March 17th, 1880]

Dear Mr. Butler,

It seems rather dangerous to be 'bright'; with the examples of the little boy at Florence, and your aunt before us we must try and avoid that condition.

[I know nothing about the little boy at Florence. Evidently May had written some letter in which there was a story about such a personage. Also she had evidently been saying that my father was much pleased with a life of Motley, the historian. S.B., November 9th, 1901.]

I am glad to see, though, that your father is said to be 'bright'. Poor old Motley! I hope his ghost is pleased with the commendation of such a superior person. By the bye, we have been reading Motley's life at the club; it is not particularly interesting. One of his peculiarities was that he got up early, at 6 o'clock, and made breakfast for himself, without disturbing any one else, which was very nice of him. [I am glad to see this, for it is what I have done for many a long year. I get up at 6.30; light the fire, put the kettle on and go to bed again till 7--7.15. I then get up--dress--cook breakfast while in the later stages of dressing, and have all the breakfast things cleared away by 8.30. No one comes near me till 9.30. S.B.]

Mrs. Lowe, who will live in one room, but who is the most perfectly helpless person living, and therefore very uncomfortable, was rather put out by every body reading the passage in which this habit of Motley's was mentioned. 'You are the third person,' she said to me quite crossly, 'who has read me that passage.' Of course, poor dear, the idea that struck every body was that if she would take to such innocent diversions as making cups of coffee for herself, she would be all the better physically and morally, and much more endurable by other people.

I hope you hastened to assure your sister that daffodils are abundant in the London streets. Miss Johnson had a lot the other day. I said 'You don't let us forget that we are in the month of "roaring daffodils"'; so she said 'I wonder why Tennyson called them "roaring" and every body else wondered too, but nobody could suggest a reason why, and seemed quite satisfied that the epithet was eminently Tennyson--as in fact it is.

[I hope that many a long year before these letters, or selections from them, can ever be published it will be necessary to tell the reader that what Tennyson really wrote, as Miss S. very well knew, was

'Here in this roaring moon of daffodil,
And crocus.'

See the introduction to Vol. I of the Nineteenth Century . S.B., November 9th, 1901.]

I hope you will not forget your promise to let me have some novel. How are the Gods getting on? Do not forget to come and see me soon.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Did you see an article in the Contemporary, asserting, perhaps I should say suggesting, the theory that that the earth was brought into its present condition, in about six weeks or so, and thus enabling us to get rid of evolution? The plan is beautifully simple. A few drops of cold water and a few rays of potential heat being all that is required in the way of material to begin with.

New Berners Club, Tuesday [ Probably March 23 rd , 1880]

Dear Mr. Butler,

Read the subjoined poem of Wordsworth's, and let me know what you understand its meaning to be. Of course I have my opinion, which I think of communicating to the Wordsworth Society. You can belong to that society for the small sum of 2s. 6d. per annum. I think of joining because it is cheap.

I hope you have enjoyed your holiday. I forgot to tell you to beware of the adders on Dartmoor--they swarm there--like violets by the mossy stones, half hidden from the eye--and pounce out upon unwary travellers.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!

[To the foregoing letter I replied that I concluded Miss Savage meant to imply that Wordsworth had murdered Lucy in order to escape a prosecution for breach of promise of marriage--She wrote back as follows. S.B.]

New Berners Club, April 2 nd [1880]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I don't think you see all that I do in the poem, and I am afraid that the suggestion of a 'Dark Secret' in the poet's life is not so very obvious after all. I was hoping you would propose to devote yourself for a few months to reading the Excursion, his letters etc. with a view to following up the clue, and I am disappointed, though to say the truth the idea of a crime had not flashed upon me when I wrote to you. How well the works of great men repay attention and study! But you, who know your Bible so well, how was it that you did not detect the plagiarism in the last verse? Just refer to the account of the disappearance of Aaron--(I haven't a Bible at hand--we want one sadly in the club) but I am sure that the words are identical. [I cannot see what Miss S. meant. S.B.] Cassell's Magazine have offered a prize for setting the poem to music, and I fell to thinking how it could be treated musically, and so came by degrees to a right comprehension of it.

I am sorry that your publisher is vexing you. I am also sorry you are vexed about the elections. So am I. Wasn't Gladstone delightful, wanting to pair with a Conservative? It was said that he was coming home post haste from Scotland, to vote in Marylebone, but I don't know whether he did or not, for I have not yet seen the papers.

I went last night to the Lyceum. I delight in Norman Forbes. I saw him first in The Iron Chest, and he played the part of a prying young man. I asked a friend to whom I had given a lovely little cat (whose only fault is her inquisitive disposition) of whom Norman Forbes reminded her, and she at once answered Kitty--since which time he always reminds us of Kitty. He did last night when he played Lorenzo.

Talking of cats, you have not yet seen the gem of our exhibition. Come and see it soon.

E.M.A. Savage

The Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Tuesday [ probably June 22nd, 1880]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I shall come to Clifford's Inn to see you, and you shall fix the day, which may be any day after to-morrow. I admire your coolness in trying to pass off the idea of the Italian Book as your own--Why I suggested it to you years ago. It may be a poor thing, but it is not your own. I should have written to you much sooner, but I have had hard work, writing poetry, and inspiration comes quickly, but the finishing and polishing take long--however, here are the verses, they are for a preface, to your Italian Book--I present them to you.

When Jones was tired of trampling on his mother
(Occupation so congenial to a son)
'Devolve', I said, 'that duty on another
Or her lot will be a much too easy one; Easy one.'
I too am tired, of goading Darwin into madness.
So we two innocents abroad will gaily go,
Bribed to intensify the public sadness
By the writing of a volume for a hundred pounds or so.

However, seriously, the scheme is a delightful one. We shall have a delightful book, and you will have a nice little sum of money--[Bogue had promised me £100 if I would write such a book as Alps and Sanctuaries. Of course when the book was written he declined to take it, and I had to publish it at my own expense--with the usual result. I am still £110 to the bad with the book, and have only sold 314 copies in all these years. S.B., November 11th, 1901]--which your father could not possibly dream of asking for, he could not be so mean. [Miss S. did not know him. S.B.]

I have been leading a very dissipated life lately, but it is the season, and society has its duties--I mean that it is a duty to profit by the chances of amendment that fall in one's way--but there are such a lot of people round me, all talking, that the little poem has exhausted my mental powers, and I had better leave off at once. Good-bye.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[Jones reminds me that Miss Savage's poem above, given is an allusion to the song in the Pirates of Penzance; 'When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling--isn't burgling.' S.B.]

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Wednesday [ probably July 28th, 1880]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I posted the sheets [i.e. of Unconscious Memory. S.B.] yesterday so I hope by this time they have safely come to hand. Do you know I half suspect you had some more, and have kept some of them back--if so I would have you reflect upon the dreadful fate of Ananias and Sapphira, which may be yours if you deceive...I am thinking of learning Hebrew, for two reasons, one being that it is cheap-- only a shilling a lesson--and the other that it is extraordinarily full of curses. I send you a portion of one of Balzac's prefaces which may please you, inasmuch as it seems to show that evolution was popularly accepted in 1842, as Balzac probably picked up all he knew of the matter from conversation. If he had known anything about it at first hand, would he not have mentioned Lamarck? I don't know what he means by the law of 'soi pour soi', but I dare say you will if it is worth knowing about.

I was dreadfully sorry that there was not any more of the book--it is so tantalizing to have to wait. I would give my birthright or anybody else's to have some more of it directly. I wish Darwin were my dearest friend; I should then find more pleasure in his misfortunes however, my enjoyment is keen enough, and one can't have every-thing. Besides, if he were my friend I should have had to bear with his prosperity for a long time. Do not forget to write to me soon.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Don't you think that when you say that if you had read Professor Hering's lecture you would have pitched your book in a different key 'and most probably have spoilt it' that that reflection might be left to the reader?

[The extract from Balzac is the avant-propos to La comédie humaine. Oeuvres completes de Balzac, Paris, 1869. Tom. 1, p. 2. It was first published as an avantpropos to the 1842 edition. It runs 'L'animal végète comme la plante; on trouve, dis-je les rudiments de la belle loi du soi pour soi sur laquelle repose l'unité de la composition. Il n'y a qu'un animal le créateur que d'un seul et même patron pour tous les êtres organisés. L'animal est un principe, qui prend sa forme extérieure, ou pour parler plus exactement, les différences de sa forme dans les milieux, ou il est appelé à se developper'. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., August 11 th [1880]

I am distressed to hear of your illness, dear Mr. Butler, and am the more anxious about you, as besides the symptoms I am used to your having, you seem to have an attack of spleen, which I am not used to your having. Where is Mr. Jones? Why doesn't he look after you? Isn't he with you? or is he kept away by the odious publisher's breaking his word? He (the publisher) is very provoking, but £100 for letter-press and illustrations is absurdly little when you come to think of it--especially when the writer is of established reputation. I should think it likely that if you offered the book to another publisher you could get better terms.

However, I shall be heartily glad if you don't do it this year--one book at a time is surely enough even for you. I wish you could be made to see that you are more important than any book.

...I was not elated by any false hopes about Mr. Gladstone. Of course they made the most of his illness. How could the session ever have come to an end, if he were well enough to attend to his parliamentary duties? It was the greatest stroke of luck his being ill, and they made the most of it. As for Tom Taylor I haven't any feeling about him one way or another, but if you rejoice at his being dead, I will rejoice too.

The public event that has been most exciting me is the trial of Miss Pleasance Ingle. Ever since Miss Lonsdale's article about Guy's Hospital in the Nineteenth Century we have been having hot discussions at the club. They are hotter now, of course. Miss Lonsdale wrote the legend of Sister Dora, which the devout read and take for gospel--and indeed it is not unlike some other gospels. I shocked some pious souls once, who told me with reverent awe that Sister Dora had once carried a dead navvy downstairs, by saying that she had evidently missed her vocation; she ought to have been a servant maid in Euston Square. Of course I don't believe she carried a dead navvy downstairs. Do you? Neither did my pious friends for they said 'strength was given her'--thereby implying a miracle, which they could accept, but which I am sure they could not believe.

I hope you will write to me very soon, for I am not at all happy about you. You need not trouble to write a long letter, as I only want to know how you are, and you need not apologize for your letters being uninteresting (they never are uninteresting but that's no matter) you and I are too old friends to stand on the ceremony of being amusing.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, August 26 th [1880]

My dear Mr. Butler,

Many thanks for your letter which I was very glad to have. No, it was not your wishing so many people dead that made me think you had the spleen-- that shows a quite natural and healthy state of mind. In fact the more people we wish dead the healthier in mind and body we are likely to be. A little while ago I was so unenergetic that I was quite incapable of wishing anybody dead--not even the landlord of the club; and when I met him on the stairs one day I was too utterly strength-less to do anything but smile benignly upon him. So I was obliged to have recourse to tonics and a few doses of steel have wonderfully restored me--indeed I am now hating just as well as ever.

No. I think it was your wishing yourself back in Clifford's Inn that made me uneasy about you. You must have been in low spirits to want to be in London when your holiday was only half over--A merciful providence has interposed on your behalf and saved you from the long letter I was going to write you. Now, I have barely time to catch the post--which I must catch as I am afraid if I don't write to-day, you may not get my letter before the 30th, and I want you to know that I should like to hear from you again tolerably soon,

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., Wednesday [ probably Sept. 15 th, 1880]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I will come on Friday. I did not know that Mr. Jones was an artist too. I am not well, but I dare say I shall be all right in a day or two. I think I have been taking too much iron, or I have a 'dumb' cold. What is a 'dumb' ague like? I think very possibly I may be suffering from that. I think it must be a 'dumb' malady of some kind, because there are no symptoms to lay hold of.

I am very glad you are at home again; when you are away I haven't a soul to speak to--I mean with perfect unreserve. I am glad you are so well; if you have not quite got rid of the spleen you must go and see The World at Drury Lane. I went last week; it is a wonderful play. The hero is a delightful man; who could help being charmed with a young man, who, for the sake of making the voyage with the girl he loves, starts from the Cape of Good Hope at a moment's notice, without any other baggage than a bouquet of artificial flowers?

But he is a man of astonishing resources, for in the second scene he appears dressed in a beautiful suit of flannels, which he could not have borrowed as the passengers and crew are all undersized, meagre, little men, whereas the hero is a fine fellow, standing about 5 ft. 11 in. and measuring at least 45 in. round the waist. Later on he escapes from a lunatic asylum, knocking down a dozen or so of keepers, as if they were rag dolls. The asylum is indeed admirably planned for escaping from--the principal entrance being about two feet from the river's brink, and there is a punt kept quite handy into which the hero springs.

This scene is greatly applauded, and well it may be, for I never before saw a punt going at the rate of 20 miles per hour, and it is a sight I am glad to have seen. In the last scene but one the hero shows himself to be of exceeding subtlety, for he goes to the three arch-villains who are carousing together and makes them confess, having taken the precaution to bring two shorthand writers with him. They are hidden behind the door, and the audience see them taking notes of all the villains say.

The third scene is rather an uncomfortable one. Four men on a raft in mid ocean--one of them dies of starvation and sticks out his arms and legs, in a really ghastly manner. The survivors fall to fighting, and every minute we expect the portly hero to go plump upon the dead man, who will of course jump up with a yell, and spoil the tragedy of the scene, for the raft is only ten feet square, if that. However they keep clear of the corpse in the most skilful manner; and it is like dancing on eggs. Do go and see this play; there are ever so many more scenes all equally good.

I suppose you have not been seeing The Times, so I send you the narrative of Mr. Gladstone's excursion. I can't make up my mind whether it is written by Mr. Gladstone himself or by Mrs. Gladstone's maid. Tell me what you think. I am looking forward to your book [ Unconscious Memory. S.B.] very much. It is the only thing that will do me any good. I shall come on Friday between four and five o'clock.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., Tuesday [ probably Sept. 21 st, 1880]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I send back the revises of [ Unconscious Memory. S.B.] with many thanks for a very great treat. I had read a portion before, you know, but my pleasure was not diminished by being repeated. Poor Darwin! I would pity him if I dared, but you won't let me I suppose--and indeed I don't very much want to pity him. He deserves all he gets, you have made that very clear; there is no escape for him; he can only hold his tongue. It is delightful to think of the greatest of living Englishmen struggling with the word 'but', and being overcome by it. He will be more angry with your attack on his grammar than on his honesty. Page 75 will not annoy him like page 53. Page 75 is rather strong is it not? I dare say you will call me squeamish, but I don't think I am. I am only afraid that people may say your pistol misses fire, if you take to knocking down your opponents with the butt end of it, and I am afraid the passage is just one which hostile reviewers will pick out and parade, and hundreds of people who read reviews will not feel drawn towards reading the book. And then it is strange how when one opens a book it always opens just at an exceptional passage; one's eye is always caught by such a paragraph; I don't know why, but it is so with me, and then people will be apt not to read much more. I confess I should be glad if it were not in the book; I think that when one takes to calling names, one should carry the same style all through, so that one passage cannot be singled out. I think a single passage like this one calculated to spoil the fineness of your irony in other parts of the book. You, who are so capable of an exquisite refinement of cruelty, why will you be violent?

[I believe I originally had written that science has become a 'cesspool of intrigue'. I changed this into 'a hotbed of intrigue', and on looking at the MS. I see I had introduced the words 'The scientific sycophants'--I made no other alteration than to change them into 'those'. I thought Miss Savage was panic-stricken as regards the reviewers, and knowing that, do what I might, they would go for me all the same, I kept to my MS., except in the trifling respects above-mentioned which I may not have repeated with perfect accuracy, though it is only half an hour or so since I looked up the MS., but I looked it up in Clifford's Inn, and I am writing at the Museum--and I know that what I have said is substantially correct. S.B., November 16th, 1901.]

All the rest is perfect absolutely, I have never read anything so good, but I hope as you and I mean to live long, that I shall read a great deal more as good before we die. The prospect of so much happiness in the future is inexpressibly comforting. When Darwin is quite demolished, you will have to look about for another victim. I dare say there is another humbug somewhere quite as bad.

Apropos of humbugs I find I did not give you Mr. Gladstone's speech to the sailors. Do read it. Of course he cannot go aboard ship without a 'peculiar feeling'--few people can--but only Mr. Gladstone says it is on account of the 'effective distribution of labour'. How on earth does he think a ship is generally managed? I suppose he takes his ideas from his own government, and efficiency of any kind strikes him.

I like his compliment to the boys (he seems surprised that boys should be on board ship). What is said in Holy Writ about ants? You know Holy Writ. I know what Mark Twain says about ants, but I suppose poor Mr. Gladstone never so much as heard of Mark Twain. And what does he mean by the 'Secret of life'? And what a sudden illuminating of mind to discover that it would be 'bad taste' to keep the poor men listening any longer to his maunderings!

By the bye what a funny hermit-like pillar box there is in the enclosure behind your house. I should feel as if I were intruding on its seclusion if I made so bold as to post a letter in it.

My business in Fleet Street has been to see an editor. The club had to complain of an article in one of his publications, which insinuated that our club has ceased to exist. He is also editor of the Dispatch, and I regret much that I did not ask why he spells 'Despatch' with an i--for now, I suppose, I shall never know.

The article emanated from a party of ladies, of whom Mrs. Heatherley is one; they are trying to establish another club called the 'Somerville', and think that we are an obstacle in their path. They wish to get rid of us, and so they put it about that we have ceased to exist. I am thinking of calling ourselves the 'Iphigenias' as we are to be sacrificed in order to enable them to make their start. Heigho! I wish we could do something to raise the wind. If by simply killing Mrs. Westlake, for instance, we could get a balance on the right side at the end of the year, how nice it would be!

We have a general meeting next Monday, and I have had committees yesterday and to-day. I am full of worries, and very busy and in an evil temper. This time my hair is really turning grey, I saw a big white hair this morning, as thick as three; it offended me and I plucked it out, more in anger than in sorrow. I am much better, however; going forth to fight the Somervilles has done me good. I destroyed them a good deal at the editor's to-day. The obnoxious article was by Eliza Orme; she is a friend of Mrs. Heatherley's. She is a conveyancer, and has offices in Chancery Lane. I am happy to say that she is horribly ugly.

If Mr. Darwin takes no notice of this book, you will be able to say that 'the peace of Darwin passeth all understanding'. Mind, I think your indignation just, and finely expressed, and the conclusion of the passage I have referred to is grand, and I dare say I am only squeamish with regard to that passage; but then I am just on the level with thousands of people, and I think I reflect their feelings.

[She forgot to sign this letter. S.B.]

[My MS. ran:--'of the manner, too, in which Mr. Darwin had been abetted by scientific sycophants who were doing their best to imitate his worst features; of the cesspool of intrigue which science has now become, etc. etc.'

I altered this to,

'of the manner, too, in which Mr. Darwin had been abetted by those who should have been the first to detect the fallacy which had misled him; of the hotbed of intrigue which science has now become'.

I see no other change. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., Oct. 2 nd , 1880.

Dear Mr. Butler,

You once told me that your father was passionately fond of black puddings. So I write to say that you can get them of an unapproachable, ineffable, excellence at Benoist's marchand de comestibles in Wigmore Street. They are small, it is true, being no bigger than a sausage, but they are only 3d. each, and half a dozen of them when you go home would not be a bad investment.

They would probably be the death of your father, but he would make a will in your favour before he died. A person who is passionately fond of black puddings ought not to live, so you need have no compunction.

Your alterations were very good--at the time I thought they were all that was wanted, but I have since begun to feel that 'hotbed of intrigue' is strong too. Could not that expression be ingeniously modified as the preceding one?

As you are fond of curiosities of literature I enclose a 'brief but imperfect' letter just received.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[Enclosure either not sent or destroyed through inadvertence. S.B., November 16th, 1901.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., Oct. 17 th , 1880

Dear Mr. Butler,

Having had a tract given me last Sunday on the ten commandments, I have been meditating on them myself and want to know if it has ever struck you that the 5th really contains a threat instead of a promise. 'That your days may be long in the land', must have been very significant in the days when the Israelites were in the habit of thinning off their families by offering their children up as sacrifices, and would no doubt be very easily understood by the children. And the parents in those days would think no more harm than they do now. Of course Moses uses the 'gloved manner', which you so highly admire.

By the bye, I have just got the Bishop of Carlisle's article, but have not yet read it. Will to-morrow suit you? If so do not write merely to say it will. I will come if I do not hear from you. I will tell you how I saw Mr. Garnett flirting with Miss Buckley in the street, when I come; also about the man in the bus who said 'You can't pay the devil without hot pitch'.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

New Berners Club, Nov. 2 nd [1880]

Dear Mr. Butler,

You are indeed a wicked anachronism, when even a poor feeble monthly is roused and turns upon you. Sixteen and a half pp. in Temple Bar are written to introduce the famous passage from a work by the 'latest of Dr. Darwin's admirers' in which your 'weakness of thought' etc. is denounced:

'A weakness of thought and mental anachronism which no one can envy.'

Some people's weakness of thought and mental anachronism can, no doubt, be envied, but, unfortunate man! no one can envy yours. Mr. Darwin's, I suppose, are sublime.

Were you angry with me for keeping the book so long? I was dreadfully afraid you would be, and can only hope that if you were cross, you would spend your wrath upon somebody else (Miss Buckley for instance) and not on me; so I did not go to the British Museum last week as I wanted to do for fear of you.

I am going there this week, I want to learn some games of patience--I suppose I mustn't take a pack of cards with me, the authorities might think I wanted to entice the readers into gambling transactions. Mrs. Lowe is one of our creditors, and I appease her with puzzles and patiences. I am like the woman in Browning's poem, who was pursued by wolves, and who escaped by tossing out a child to them every now and then. I have tossed out all the patience I know to Mrs. Lowe, and now must go to the Museum and get more. The 15 puzzle was as good as two children. Farewell you bad anachronism.

E.M.A. Savage

[The earlier part of this letter refers to an article on Erasmus Darwin in Temple Bar for November, 1880, which winds up with Dr. Krause's attack on me in the last sentence of the article translated by Mr. Dallas for Mr. Darwin.

That the passage above referred was aimed at me was tacitly admitted by Frank Darwin in the 1887 edition of Erasmus Darwin, by Chas. Darwin; in a note on p. iv we read 'Mr. Darwin accidently omitted to mention that Dr. Krause revised and made certain additions to his Essay before it was translated. Among these additions is an allusion to Mr. Butler's book Evolution Old and New'.

F. Darwin's name does not appear on the title page but there is no doubt that the note is his. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., Saturday Nov. 6 th, 1880

Dear Mr. Butler,

I will fetch my book. Please tell me when I shall come for it. I am sure you will get the better of Mr. Darwin in time--he is the worst impostor we have had since the claimant. I am going to have a dreadful cold in my head and a dreadful whitlow on my thumb. I have to attend a Drawing-Room meeting at Miss Collingridge's this afternoon. It is to discuss the best means of establishing the club on a larger basis. Miss Collingridge has been reproaching me for not having asked you. She told me to ask you a week ago; she said you would like very much to pay her a visit--as I dare say you would--so I told her I thought you would much prefer going to see her not on an occasion when you would not be able to enjoy her society. I shall have to make a speech; Alas! I shall sneeze all through the proceedings; fortunately I shall sneeze through other people's speeches as well and spoil them as well as my own.

E.M.A. Savage

The Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Tuesday [ Nov. 9 th, 1880]

Dear Mr. Butler,

When am I to have my book? If I don't have it soon I shall come down upon you like a wolf on the fold, and that would be a pity, for when you are taken unawares, you rush into your coat with such unreasoning violence, that some day I know you will dislocate your collar bone, and I am sure I should be utterly useless in such an emergency--besides you can't reduce a dislocation without a Jack towel, and possibly you do not even know what a Jack towel is--much less possess one.

Our meeting was a good one, by which you will understand that we got money by it. I will tell you about Miss Collingridge some day, because I am longing to tell somebody, and as you don't like her, I shan't hurt your feelings, and I know you will be as secret as the grave. [She never told me; or if she did I have not even the faintest recollection of what she said. S.B.] She spoke very prettily--she was like Mirah in Daniel Deronda; she crossed her little hands and would have crossed her little feet, I dare say, if she hadn't been standing.

E.M.A. Savage

PS. The man who cheats at patience shows a weakness of thought and a moral obliquity that no one can envy. [I suppose I had told her that when my nightly game of patience goes amiss after I have got three rows well set out, I sometimes help a lame dog over a style by a little cheating rather than waste the game. S.B.]

The Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Sunday [ Nov. 14 th, 1880]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I can't resist writing to tell you that you are a spiritualist, and preach the doctrine of reincarnation!! Mrs. Lowe says so, and she knows. She has been reading Unconscious Memory, and possibly also has received suggestions from unincarnate spirits (spirits on the spree) on the subject.

I have no objection to personal identity with an amoeba, but I object to being a sort of second-hand person. Besides, the spirits contract such bad habits when they are out of a situation that I should like to repudiate all connection with those vagabonds. However, if you preach incarnation I will accept it.

E.M.A. Savage

PS. It has suddenly struck me that I did not even thank you for the book. Gratitude is a vice, and therefore I am incapable of it, but I am always ready to say 'thank you' when I think about it. So--thank you very much.

New Berners Club, Wednesday [ Nov. 24th, 1880]

[I must have sent Miss Savage the Bishop of Carlisle's letter,' and also some letters of my sister's, which I no doubt must have destroyed, for I do not find them. S.B., November 19th, 1901.]

Dear Mr. Butler,

By all means make friends of the Mammon of Righteousness, and if you 'Exploitez' that dear Bishop, I know you will do it kindly. I enclose his letter with many thanks to you for having let me see it. Your sister's letters are lovely, but I don't send them now.

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Dec. 4 th, 1880

Dear Mr. Butler,

Thank you for sending me the notice which I return. I hope I have not inconvenienced you by keeping it so long. [This was the review in the St. James's Gazette December 2nd. S.B.] I should have liked to have put it into the fire, but restrained my wrath. I am very glad the book is selling so well. [If it ever sold well it can only have done so for a very short time for I only sold 272 copies altogether. S.B., November 19th, 1901.] A good sale will be better than good notices, and if it is talked about the notices will come later. I asked for it at Mudie's the last time I was there, but the youth did not seem to know anything about it. This was a fortnight ago. I shall ask again the next time I go.

I saw that Darwin had been receiving a deputation from the Yorkshire naturalists--How stupid they must be in Yorkshire! And did you read a leader in The Times about him and his last book? I dare say he cribbed everything in it. Odious creature!

By the bye apropos of o.c's I saw Mr. Gladstone last week. He came out of Lord Selborne's house in Portland Place. He was looking fearfully cross and very yellow. He seemed very undecided as to where he should cross the street, and he stared at me in a helpless sort of way, as if he expected me to offer him some advice on the matter, but as there was no possibility of putting him in the way of being run over, I refrained from giving an opinion. The crossings about Portland Place are so stupidly safe.

I have read Endymion all through, but not straight through, for there are so many people wanting to read it at the club that I have just taken any volume that was not in use. I like it immensely, there are so many sweet little bits in it. One of our members is delighted with the spirit of true religion that pervades it! So am I.

Mrs. Lowe's trial is over. The defendant made an apology, and the case did not proceed. She was much disappointed. I think she would have liked it to last a week at least. However she did go into the witness box, which prevented the affair's being a total fiasco. She gives evidence uncommonly well, and so she would like to be always giving it, which is quite natural. It is so with me. I do nothing well so I like to do nothing. Write to me soon if there is any more news about the book, or about yourself.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

106 Adelaide Road, Primrose Hill, Jan. 8 th [1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

Thanky for the coals of fire, which, however, I only received yesterday--as I am not at home just now, but making one of a festive party at my friend Mr. Bertram's. I enclose the notice in the Daily News-- many thanks for sending it. I began one or two letters to you, but the wretched scrap of paper always kept hiding itself away. After having found it three times, I lost it again, and gave it up for lost, but could not see about getting a paper to replace it. When it found, however, that I had made up my mind what to do, it quietly came back again.

Why didn't you tell me about the review in the Athenæum? I very nearly didn't see it, and no great harm if I hadn't, for it was great nonsense, wasn't it? When are you going to study pigeons? Wouldn't poultry do as well? You could set up that poultry farm you talked of, and the cocks and hens after having been submitted to your scientific observation could be sent to market. I heard you tremendously abused on Xmas day, but as the man who did this in my hearing once called a field elm an ulmus campestris I don't think you need mind what he said. Did you see a report of Huxley's lecture on the horse? He was careful to say that Darwin was by no means the originator of the theory of evolution, and thereby evidently showed that you have not written quite in vain. I shall come and see you next week, but will write again.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

The little etching [i.e. for Alps and Sanctuaries. S.B.] is sweet. That wretched notice is lost again, but I know where to find it, I think.

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Jan. 28th [1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

[Quite unimportant. S.B.]

PS. I have been much occupied in match-making and match-marring lately, and am sorry to say that I find it easier to make than to mar. Did you see the account of the marriage of Mr. Leopold Rothschild last week? I was particularly delighted with the bridegroom's speech, which was very short, but he managed to convey a great deal in a few words. He concluded by saying 'I have enjoyed until now a happy life: I am sure, Sir' (to the Prince of Wales) 'you will excuse my saying anything more'.

The man who abused you on Xmas day is not a bad sort of man but his bump of Veneration is too large, and when he speaks of 'intellectual giants' he is like Policeman X and Prince Albert, he mentions them 'with hor'. He was nearly the death of me once, by quoting in a devout and reverential way, an utter commonplace put into very fine words out of Theophrastus Such. This very commonplace had made us much giggle at the club, and when I heard him repeat it with such solemn emphasis I nearly choked myself in repressing another giggle; for I was eating plums and had one in my mouth at the moment. So of course he can't abide you because you attack Mr. Darwin, but a day will come, I dare say, when he will mention you too with 'hor'. He is a little set up just now because he was defendant in a libel case a month or two ago, and got great credit for himself and his little paper. At the same time he had rather distinguished himself by digging up fossils in Essex, and there appeared on the same day in the Telegraph two articles, one about elephant-hunting in Essex, and the other about the libel case--the writers evidently having no idea that the Mr. Walkers mentioned in the two articles were one and the same person.

What an odious man Major R---- is, don't you think? After you went [I forget the man and the occasion on which I met him. S.B., November 24th, 1901] he came and scolded his wife about a cup and saucer that was too near the edge of the table. She looked quite nervous and frightened poor thing. Miss. Johnson admires him immensely; well! you can't account for tastes, but I could never admire a man with such a beautiful figure, and such extraordinarily small high heels--for all the world like a shop-girl's.

I often thought of you during the bad weather and envied you! How has your father borne this bitter weather? I do not know why I should have inflicted this long letter upon you, when I began by congratulating you on escaping a much shorter one.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

The little bear in the pantomime at Covent Garden is adorable.

Saturday, 29th

Please do send me the reviews: I should like to know what the wretches say.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Tuesday [ Feb. 1st, 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

Considering that you are utterly beneath contempt, it seems odd that it should take five columns and a half to crush you. [See Nature, January 27th, 1881. First article by Romanes. S.B., December 5th, 1901] How magnanimous they are too! In spite of the proud declaration that Mr. Darwin would take no notice of you, they yet condescend to reply to your accusations--and what a sweet letter is Dr. Krause's [in the same number of Nature. S.B.] especially in the last paragraph; they are great in last paragraphs. That little touch about the homoeopathists [in Romanes' article. S.B.] was in a last paragraph. The appearance of the letter at all after the review comes like a great surprise on the reader--quite theatrical, one may say--and it is a delicious piece of irony. Thanks for sending the review.

E.M.A. Savage.

You know I don't always write to Mr. Jones.

[I suppose I must have told her that Jones always enjoyed her letters. S.B., December 5th, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, W., [ Postmark Feb. 12 th , 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

You are treating me ILL. I want to know about your letter to Nature. I ordered Nature for last week, but the deceitful woman has not sent it. I am busy at the Lady Artists, and have worries of every sort and size. I have had to evolve the rent out of my inner consciousness, and the club attendant has been taken ill. I should like to know about your letter before I die, which I shall do in a few days unless the conditions of life become more agreeable. However I shall stay in bed all day to-morrow. My only comfort is going to bed. I often think of Cowper (who was a true poet); he evidently found comfort in his bed. He makes Alexander Selkirk say

'The sea bird is gone to her nest
The beast is laid down in his lair
Even here is a season of rest,
And I to my cabin repair.
There is mercy in every place' etc. etc.

I quoted these sweet lines to Mr. Garnett the other day, but he didn't seem to think they were poetry.

E.M.A. Savage

Be sure you let me know about your letter.

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Feb. 13 th, 1881

Dear Miss Savage,

I have behaved badly but have been much occupied since I wrote. I have had to go down to Shrewsbury, and am now on comparatively good terms with my father! Fancy! I don't suppose it will last, but while it lasts it is more convenient.

My sister--recognizing defeat, thro' a chapter of accidents and not through any doing either of mine or hers--very kindly went to bed before I came, and stayed there till I went, so I hardly saw her. It seems that my brother (for whom she professes the most ardent affection though no one can know better than she what an impossible person he is) had unexpectedly offered himself on a visit though he had not been to my father's house for some years.

I, not for a moment supposing that under all the circumstances he would have offered himself, rather concluded that my father must have sent for him, but it seems that his coming was entirely his own doing.

Well--he went to Shrewsbury, and through his having gone there, matters came out concerning him that made it imperative on my father to take what steps he could to protect my brother's wife and children: among these steps was the, as I think, very unwise one, of applying for a conseil de famille to render my brother's actions nugatory without the approval of the rest family.

My father had to write to me; I therefore went for one night to hear more, and see whether I could be of any use--thus pro tem. I am in fairly good odour again but as I have already said there is no knowing how long it will last.

I saw the land in which I am interested, and it is being built all up to on the farther side from the town. It is valuable land and my father cannot take this from me. Altogether my ultimate prospects are not so bad but I should like a little more now and a little less later on, for I never can be sure of living to the 'later on' should be much more likely to do so if I had the more' now.

I have had a very bad cold, and had to travel with it, but it is going now.

I got them to put in my letter to Nature. I send you the correspondence that you may admire the skill with which I manoeuvred--on second thoughts I only send the conclusion. I shall not reply to the two letters in this week's Nature, preferring to let the matter stand as it does. I suspect it will not be long before the Darwins feel discontented with the present position, and I shall have an attack in some paper which I cannot reply to. [Here I was wrong: none of the Darwin family on Mr. Darwin's behalf--much less Mr. Darwin himself--showed the smallest signs of considering the position to be one which Mr. D. should not rest contented. See, moreover what Frank Darwin said about this matter--In his Life and Letters of his father he said:--

'The publication of the Life of Erasmus Darwin led to an attack by Mr. Samuel Butler which amounted to a charge of falsehood against my father. After consulting his friends he came to the determination to leave the charge unanswered, as being unworthy of his notice. Those who wish to know more of the matter may gather the facts of the case from Ernst Krause's Charles Darwin, and they will find Mr. Butler's statement of his grievance in the Athenæum, January 31st, 1880 and in the St. James's Gazette, December 8th, 1880. The affair gave my father much pain, but the warm sympathy of those whose opinion he respected soon helped him to let it pass into a well merited contempt.' S.B.]

Perhaps it will be as well for me if I cannot reply, for these letters and articles take it out of me very much, and I do not want to do more work than I can help at present.

Is the exhibition open? If so may I not call and see you one morning this week?

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

I ought not to have told you one word about my brother.

Gallery, 48 Gt. Marlborough Street, Feb. 15 th , [1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

It is a shame when Romanes makes such a mis-statement as he does as to the footnote [in his letter to Nature, February 10th, 1881] that he should not be set right. I enclose the letter with many thanks. Romanes is atrocious--his friends ought to apply for a conseil de famille for him.

On March 14th and any day and every day after, I shall be delighted to see you at the gallery; till that day, however, you will be wise not to approach the place. The sacred mysteries of hanging, cataloguing, rejecting and accepting, are not to be intruded upon, and perhaps you might not live to enjoy that eligible building land at Shrewsbury if you encountered Miss Atkinson in her wrath. I am not in a sweet temper either, by any means, for the club house-keeper is away ill, and I don't get comfortable dinners--sometimes none at all.

Your letter to Nature was PERFECT. It would have been a sin not to have inserted it. However they are a sinful lot. I feel for your sister, I know how furious I should have been if I had been in her place.--I think you are getting a great deal too much the best of it, and you will be puffed up. I mean to come and see you some day, but will give you a long notice. In great haste,

E.M.A. Savage

[I have destroyed one or two short letters received during the spring, but there was none of any importance till July 29th. S.B., December 5th, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, Thursday, July 28 th , 1881

Dear Mr. Butler,

This comes hoping to find you alive as it leaves me at present; I want to know if you are well, and why you have forgotten to write to me so long.

[This was the year in which I was engrossed with my brother's affairs, with my quarrel with my father and the raising money on my reversion--also with the buying of properties--most of which I still hold; and I have destroyed as many 1881 letters as would average two whole years of my usual correspondence. S.B., November 24th, 1901]

And will you tell me, please, about the book and whether there is any more of it to be seen. Please also to say that you are very sorry that you have not written to me, and make some very sufficient excuse for not having done so. It need not be a true excuse, but it must be a sufficient one.

I am rather better. I have been ill both in body and soul, but more especially in soul. [I fear that she was indeed this but for far graver reasons than those which she proceeds to give. S.B.] I have been disquieted, troubled and cast down; I have had nothing but worries since I saw you--worries of such diverse and opposite kinds that they present themselves to my mind not as single worries, but in a mass, a sort of plum-pudding-stone of worries, and there is nothing so bad for the soul as for it to be flattened day and night by the weight of a conglomerate of worries. [Indeed what with Pauli, and my father, and growing hopelessness about my books I had had my own share too. S.B.] However, there are a few that are distinctly disagreeable in my recollection--for instance the frizzling off of my eyelashes and eyebrows as I was extinguishing a Japanese umbrella, the ornament of our firestove. Then one fine morning all the articles of electroplate belonging to the club were stolen and we were left without so much as a fork to eat our dinners with, so we had to use our fingers, and to stir our tea with the feather end of our quill pens just like our forefathers in the middle ages. However these were minor troubles compared with having to go to the police station, and receiving the visit of two detectives and promising to prosecute if they found the thief; I now believe it was Lefroy who stole our spoons. [Lefroy was, I imagine, being searched for by the police on a charge of murder, for which he was eventually hanged. S.B.] He also took Lamb's Essays and Carlyle's French Revolution, so you see, as Mrs. Henry Kingsley used to say, 'even in the face of this misfortune there is a bright side'.

The occasion of my being in Chancery Lane on Sunday was a luncheon at Mr. Mozley's. Mr. Mozley is a man whom I adore, but I never flattered myself that he in the least reciprocated my feelings. However on Sunday he helped me to three-quarters of a pound of ham. Don't you think I may conclude that he is favourably disposed towards me?

I must really conclude for you will never wish to hear from me again if I write such long letters. Do let me hear from you soon.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street. Portland Place, Tuesday [ Aug. 2nd, 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I sent back your MS. [i.e. part of Alps and Sanctuaries. S.B.] this afternoon and hope it will reach you safely. It reads delightfully, and I don't think it can be improved in any way, except by print and pictures. I see you are not

'Weanèd from the scorner's ways'

and am afraid the book is not exactly adapted for a school prize, which is a pity as books adapted for school prizes make the fortunes of those who write them. I know of a case in point; a friend of Mrs. Gelston's wrote a book on Palestine, Palmyra etc., and it was profusely illustrated with bad woodcuts. Nobody, not even the author ever read the book through, but the reviewers were all delighted with it, it was so excellently adapted for a school prize. Of course it was, for if nobody could read it it must be harmless, and so about twice a year the book has quite a tidy sale. Now if I were a true friend to you, I should advise you to turn your Italian book into just such another as Mrs. Gelston's friend's--but I dare say you couldn't if you tried--so my conscience may be clear.

[No schoolmaster, after Erewhon and The Fair Haven to say nothing of my other books, would have dared to give any book of mine as a prize. Why even to this day the headmaster of Shrewsbury, Moss, has never given a copy of my Life of Dr. Butler as a prize to any of his pupils I believe solely because The Fair Haven is advertised at the end among my works. Besides the reviewers had got their knife well into me, and my quarrel with Darwin was as yet unforgiven and unforgiveable. But let this pass. S.B.]

You never told me you had given up your allowance. The last I heard was that your father was going to reduce your income on a gradually diminishing scale; but why did you give it up? I have no doubt you were quite right in doing so, but I am afraid you gratified your father, and I don't like him to be gratified at your expense. Besides I am afraid you will be worried with your speculations--as for rents, the only rents you will know anything about are the ground rents--payment of which will be exacted with the utmost regularity. The sort of man to make money out of houses (except he be a great proprietor like the Duke of Portland or the Duke of Westminster) is such a one as our landlord, who is a second hand furniture dealer in a back street. He comes looking at our furniture in such a way that we know he is calculating how much it will fetch, when we are sold up. If he sees anything chipped or scratched, he looks quite displeased and he is always dreadfully disappointed when his rent is paid. The hope of better luck next time alone consoles him. If you were such a man as that I should be quite pleased to hear that you had been investing in houses.

[She was quite right, but my father had so goaded me that I was ready to do anything; and after all what I did saved me from ever having to ask my father for another 6d., and thus saved me also from another quarrel that would have probably ended in his disinheriting me: for though he hated me before I threw up the allowance, he hated me still worse for not again falling under his tender mercies. Moreover the houses, almost all of which I still hold, have of late years much increased in value; I have bit by bit freeholded much the greater part of them, and take it all round, by continued attention, have not done badly with them. As for arrears of rent I have none worth speaking of, and I never sell a tenant up. If he or she cannot pay I give them every chance, but simply give them notice if I see they ought not to be allowed to stay. If I get £20 of bad debts out of a gross income of over £2000 it is as much as I do. True, the houses take up a good deal of time and attention, but they take one away from work in a way that is often good for me. S.B.]

But I must not write any more. I began with a half sheet on purpose to write only a very little note. You must be so busy that it is wicked of me to write long letters believing that you will read them.

Please don't forget not to call Benjamin West 'Sir'. The minute reviewers would be sure to make a crime out of the mistake, and pretend that it arose from your not knowing better. Not that it would matter if it did to sensible people, but the critics are not always such. I like the 'primrose with a yellow brim', and the dissertation on lying; and the bloater illustration is delightful, and the scenery descriptions, just what they ought to be not elaborate but complete--a delightful contrast to the interminable 'word pictures', that have been the fashion lately. I am sure the book will be a great success.

I liked the cherry-eating scene too because it reminded me of your eating cherries when first I knew you. One day when I was going to the gallery, a very hot day, I remember, I met you on the shady side of Berners Street, eating cherries out of a basket. Like your Italian friends you were perfectly silent with content, and you handed the basket to me as I was passing, without saying a word. I pulled out a handful, and went on my way rejoicing without saying a word either. I had not before perceived you to be different from any body else. I was like Peter Bell and the primrose with the yellow brim. As I went away to France a day or two after that, and did not see you again for months, the recollection of you as you were eating cherries in Berners Street abode with me, and pleased me greatly, and now it pleases me greatly to have that incident brought to my recollection again.

I shall hear from you some day soon-- n'est-ce-pas?

E.M.A. Savage

[I hope no one will imagine that I could have written the foregoing passage without emotion far deeper and far more varied than so trivial an incident on the face of it appears to warrant. How I wish I could say this to Miss Savage herself. S.B., November 26th, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, W., Monday [ August 8th, 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

Shall I come to see you next Wednesday? I am curious to know where your houses are, as I mean to remove the club to one of them. I am sick of paying rent four times a year, and shall join a land league, unless I find a landlord easy to defraud. I don't believe your cousin is any more to be feared than you are. Let me know if I am not to come on Wednesday about 4.30.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[With regard to the cherry-eating incident I should have added that Miss Savage and I had known each other at Heatherley's for some few years before she took to liking me. She never used to miss an opportunity of snubbing me. I remember soon after Erewhon came out she said to me, 'and to think that I should have known you all these years and never found it out!' S.B., November 27th, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, Saturday [ probably August 13 th , 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

You gave me the enclosed sweet little sketch many years ago. If it would be of any use to you now I don't mind lending it to you, if you will take very great care of it, and return it to me, and not give it to another as you did that beautiful picture you said you burned. [I forget all about it, but if I said I had burned it, I probably burned it. S.B.]

I was so glad I went to see you on Wednesday. Coming home I saw a bonnet in a shop window and bought it--price 1s. 0 1/2d. This is the 'consolation' mentioned in my fortune, but I will not be overjoyed at it, for no doubt it will 'turn to evil', inasmuch as I expect a good hard rain will dissolve it into the Ewigkeit. All the same I am pleased to have such a bargain, and it is all thanks to you; no doubt you exist that I might have that bonnet.

I used your misquotation the other night as if it were my own--[It was Jones who hit upon it, and I at once seized it for Alps and Sanctuaries. S.B. November 26th, 1901.] A clergyman was declaring that there could be no true faith without previous doubt. So I said 'there is more doubt in honest faith, etc.': he very gravely corrected me; I said I liked my version best, whereon he pondered and then agreed with me; so we settled it that faith to be firm must be built on a substructure of doubt. ('Substructure' is my word; don't you think it is much better than 'foundation'?) I think I must lend him The Fair Haven. Do not forget you promised to let me have some more of the Italian book.

E.M.A. Savage

I enclose some scraps of conversation at the club--Mrs. A., widow of an Irish clergyman, is entertaining the wife of an Irish clergyman, who is in London for a spree to buy mourning etc. She asks after Mrs. S. The visitor replies, 'She is dead. When she was in London she contracted typhus fever, and the remnants and relics of it so hung about her that she died within 3 months. But she was so truly pious that one could only be glad when she died.'

I had occasion to buy mourning a few weeks ago, so I said, 'Blessed are they that mourn, for crape bonnets are the cheapest'.

Mrs. A. hears from her friend of the good fortune of some bad people (dissenters probably) and exclaims 'Dear, dear, to think now of their having such good luck'. Her friend says 'Well, well, it rains alike on the just as well as the unjust'. I smarting with a sense of wrong say from the other end of the room, 'it rains more on the just, for the unjust take the umbrellas'. I hope you will laugh at my little joke. They didn't.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Friday [ Sept. 2nd, 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I am distressed to hear that you are not well; I am afraid you miss your usual holiday abroad. I hope that as soon as the book is out you will take a trip to some warm climate and refresh yourself; in the meantime please don't work harder than you are absolutely obliged to do.

I will come and see you on Wednesday and hope I shall find you better. I have not been well myself, but am much better now, owing to the iron which I have been taking; this has given me so much strength of body and mind that I have coerced the club landlord into white-washing the ceiling of the club room. I can believe that your tenants have paid their rents, poor wretches, but when you expect me to believe that they have paid ' without a murmur ' you ask too much of my credulity. Of course they murmur.

I am sorry I am to see no more of the MS. but the pleasure of reading the book will be all the greater. I am intending to go seriously to the Museum, for the purpose of improving my mind. I have neglected it too long. When I have been before, it has been from interested motives for the sake of lucre. Now I shall go there from perfectly disinterested motives. Fortunately my mind being a small one the cultivation of it will not be very hard nor expensive work, just as in small farms and spade industry, very little capital is required.

My course of study is settled, but if you or any body else has any advice to give me I will hear what you have to say. My present intention is to go very late to the Museum, and read the books my predecessor has left on the desk. Formerly I got a great deal of very curious and interesting reading in that way, though from having real work to do, I was never able to make the most of my advantages.

E.M.A. Savage

Sunday evening, Sept. 4 th, 1881

Dear Miss Savage,

Please excuse me for not writing sooner, and for sending no more MS. The printers are clamouring for it faster than I can do it. They have already sent me all you have seen--in type, and what with the illustrations I have as much on hand as my brains can manage--but it is all going on quite nicely, and I get some plums in almost daily. I liked your plum about the umbrellas. I must try and get it in somewhere.

The illustrations are going on capitally, and we are going to get Gogin to do a full plate etching for the frontispiece. I always like hearing from you so pray don't stop writing but don't be too hard upon me (not that you are!) if I write little in answer.

Is Miss Johnson in town? Do arrange a meeting for me at her place some afternoon and yet I don't know how I can manage it as I draw in the afternoons, and have promised all the drawings to leave my hands in a month and have still 25 to do.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

New Berners Club, Monday [ probably Oct. 17 th, 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I am glad to hear that you are alive. I am afraid you are not well, and I shall be glad when you are able to take a good rest. I am longing to see the book [ Alps and Sanctuaries. S.B.] which will soon be ready for the public, I suppose. I have been looking out for little pars announcing it, but have not seen any. I was sorry, however, to see that Mr. Darwin has come in for £100,000. It is too bad! [I do not think it was more than £76,000; he came in for it on the death of his brother Erasmus. S.B.]

I have been ill, really ill. I was seized with a maddening attack of neuralgia a fortnight ago, and was at home seven days, the greater part of the time in bed. However, now it is over I am not sorry for what I went through, as I know exactly what I should like Mr. Gladstone to have. Sweet are the uses of adversity! I quite understood Bird o' freedom Sawn when he had the shaking fever saying 'It wasn't so bad as it would have been if he'd t'other leg and arm on.' I couldn't help wishing I was minus a few limbs. However, I am quite well now, or should be, if it were not for a sudden and inexplicable loss of appetite during the last two or three days. I will come and see you on Thursday, when I shall be quite well.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

I enclose the American Attorney General's telegram which shows a thankfulness for mercies not often displayed. I have been keeping it for you this month.

[The telegram ran:-

'It is impossible for us to conceal from ourselves that the President is rapidly growing worse. Two chills occurring within fourteen days warn us to be prepared for any affliction with which God, in His mercy, may afflict us.'

President Garfield died September 19th. This telegram was probably sent a very short time before his death. Miss Savage had kept it a month--hence I date her letter approximately as above. S.B., November 29th, 1901]

[I have destroyed one short note of October 28th or November 4th. S.B.]

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Saturday [ Nov. 19 th, 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I am very much afraid you will knock yourself up with your attendance on Mr. Jones. [He had scarlet fever, and unfortunately I had broken a rib in getting over a stile. In spite of this I had to sit up with him several nights, and a broken rib hurts every time one breathes. I suppose it is to this that Miss Savage is alluding. S.B.] Please write to me very soon to tell me how you are, as I shall be very anxious about you. Poor Mr. Jones I am very sorry for him too, but please do take care of yourself, and if you sit up at night, be sure you rest by day. I dare say you won't though, broken rib or no. I have just seen a fine advt. [of Alps and Sanctuaries. S.B.] in the Athenæum-- which pleased me. I am glad your enemies are being punished. What has Mark Wilks done to you? I never heard of him before. Edith Simcox I know is one of your foes--she is detestable. Mrs. Fenwick Miller's first letter is not so good as her second, but infinitely more spiteful, and I am afraid Edith Simcox had rather the best of it in her reply. The feud has existed for five years at least, and so much the better for the little boys. The ardour of the 'Minority in the cause of humanity' is certainly increased by their animosity to Mrs. Westlake and Co., if it is not entirely caused by it.

I shall lose the post if I write any more--so good-bye. Write to me VERY SOON.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Friday [ Nov. 25th, 1881]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I will come to-morrow for my book. I never catch anything myself except mumps, and that (or those?) I never fail to catch if they are to be had: there is a something in my being that is perpetually seeking after mumps--the most unromantic malady that one can be afflicted with: you never get any compassion for having mumps: people only laugh when you tell them you have been very ill with mumps. However, next time I shall say that I have an inflammatory affection of the parotid gland. That is what they said of President Garfield, and that is what he died of so I am sure it is quite dignified enough.

I am going to get the Book at Mudie's for the club to-day. I asked for it last time I went, and expressed great displeasure at its not being forthcoming.

Did you read the review of Sir Charles Lyell's Life in The Times? Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin are quite ostentatiously paraded, thanks to you, no doubt.

Do not mind, if I am not to come to-morrow, about letting me know. I have to go to Long Acre, so it will not be much out of my way to go on to Clifford's Inn. I leave home early, so I could not get a letter if you sent one.

In haste,

E.M.A. Savage

I have been ill ever since I saw you. I expect to be condoled with. I am sorry for your gout [it wasn't much. S.B.] Why don't you get rid of it?

22 Beaumont Street, W., Saturday [ Dec. 17th, 1881]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I want to hear very much about 'the little Italian book'. Has it been reviewed, and if so in what papers? I only see The Times (in which paper, however, I have been pleased to see the advertisements tolerably frequently).

I am therefore anxious to hear how the book is progressing, though of course I don't suppose much has been done in the way of reviews in this short time. My mother has been ill, so I have been a close prisoner for more than a fortnight. She very much enjoys the pomp and circumstance of being ill, and takes a great deal of waiting upon, so that I have had scarcely a moment to myself. I hope Mr. Jones is well by this time, and that you are well.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

The book has been a great comfort to me.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Monday, Dec. 19 th, 1881

My dear Mr. Butler,

The great secret of getting well is NOT TO EXERT YOURSELF. The next time you break a rib, remember this, and don't indulge in any of your 'accustomed actions and pursuits', but just find out your easiest position and remain in that position till cured. There is a beautiful poem of Trench's (I think) on the subject of exertion. 'I will lie still' is the burden of the verses, which though meant to have only a spiritual significance might be usefully applied to material life. I will try and find the poem, and will send a copy to Mr. Jones, who certainly seems to require some good advice. If he can only sit up for two hours it is a sign that he oughtn't to sit up at all. When he can sit up for half a day, then he may be allowed to sit up for two hours. I am very sorry to hear he mends so slowly--you mustn't, however, be impatient. Nature abhors an impatient. When Miss Scott had her bad carriage accident, she refused to exert herself. The doctor used to come and say in an enticing way 'Don't you think we might get on the sofa to-day?'--and she roughly refused. Then the nurse--'I really think you might make a little effort to-day,' and the nurse was so effectually snubbed that she never ventured to mention the subject again. The consequence was that Miss Scott was perfectly well in three months while the lady who was with her in the carriage and who was not so much hurt as she was is not recovered yet, and probably never will be quite well again. But she exerted herself. Do persuade Mr. Jones to be patient. I wish he had some of the panada I made for my mother, but as he can't have that here is the recipe, as given me by the doctor.

'Stew some beef (beef steak) gently till quite tender, pound it in a mortar, soak bread in milk, and when it has sucked up as much milk as it can absorb, mix it with the pounded beef, which should be moistened with the gravy and jelly, produced by the stewing; season it with pepper and salt, and make a little at a time hot'. It looks more engaging if you arrange fingers of toast round it on the plate. There should be scarcely any water used for the stewing.

This is extremely nourishing and very easy to digest, better than beef tea. It is not particularly nice, but you are to make the patient believe that it is.

Mrs. Style will send me Truth, no doubt, so I shall have the pleasure of seeing the notice [of Alps and Sanctuaries. S.B.]. The dailies are so well off just now with frightful accidents and murders that one can't expect a notice in any of them. I cannot come to see you this week, as I can't leave my mother till my father comes home, and so don't get out till six o'clock at the very earliest. But I hope to see you soon, also your cabinets [Neighbour's shop in Holborn, now defunct, used to sell little Japanese cabinets at 4s. 6d. and I had bought two, to put odds and ends in. S.B., December 2nd, 1901]. Perhaps by the time I come you will have got some peacock's feathers, and a lily. I should think a cracked rib would be favourable to aesthetic attitudes. I have a very bad cold, but am otherwise very well.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

This mild weather must be favourable to your father, is it not?

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Friday [ i.e. Dec. 30, 1881, on which day the 'Athenæum' review of 'Alps and Sanctuaries' appeared. S.B. ]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I am furious and I dare say I needn't tell you what has made my angry passions rise. If you have seen the Athenæum you will know why I am in a rage. What a mean, odious, and detestable creature that reviewer must be! And to think that there are people who believe in the Athenæum as if it were gospel. I have seen the notice in Truth which is satisfactory--but who is Stevenson? [R.L.S., of course. S.B.] I never heard of him. As he is better than you I am longing to read him. But alas! I am even prevented from going to Mudie's, so I must put off Stevenson for the present, for nobody at the club seems to care for him.

Mrs. Lowe is charmed with Alps and Sanctuaries. She got it from Mudie's as soon as it was out, and is going to read it again, and to make extracts from the bits she likes.

She is also going to buy it as soon as Mudie has surplus copies for sale. She thinks it will be a good investment and a nice book to leave to her children, so you see she is quite sane on that point.

I hope Mr. Jones is better. Let me know if there are any more notices that are worth reading. I shall be able to get out next week, and then I mean to pay you a visit, but will write.

In haste,

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I don't think Freshfield's review of Alps and Sanctuaries was a bad one. S.B., December 9th, 1901]

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Jan. 28 th, 1882 [ Saturday ]

Dear Miss Savage,

It is a long time since I heard anything of you; I hope the nursing your mother has not made you ill. I have been out of town with Jones, who at last got well enough to go, and is now pretty well all right again. I came back on Monday last. There were sneering reviews of Alps and Sanctuaries in the St. James's Gazette and the Academy, both just like the Athenæum one; these are all I know of: in the mean time the book does not sell, and must, I am afraid, be set down as no less a failure than its predecessors--or rather worse financially, as it has cost so much more to get up. I don't exactly see what it is that will bring about a reaction in my favour, but I feel pretty sure that it will come some day. The review in the Academy is by Douglas Freshfield; he is a poor creature, and considering that he is rich, and has written a book about Italian valleys himself, I think he might have held his tongue: I dare say I shall find a little something for him some day. My houses are doing very well.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[Freshfield found fault with me for not having been struck with the extreme beauty of the view in the Val Maggia shortly before arriving at Bignasco. I met him a year or more ago at the Fuller Maitlands' and laughingly pointed out to him that the posta left Locarno about five, and that it was pitch dark some time before we reached Bignasco. S.B.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., [ Probably Jan. 30 th, 1882]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I was very glad to hear from you. I was intending to write to you myself yesterday to say that I would come and see you one day this week, as the Lady Artists' work begins next Monday, and for a month after that day I shall be completely occupied. I am very glad to hear that Mr. Jones is so much better. You do not say anything about yourself, so I hope you are quite well. The stupidity and injustice of the reviewers are shameful. Suppose we report that you have come into a £100,000, and see if that will have any effect upon them. Wretched toadies that they are!

My mother has been quite well for the last three weeks, but as she is obliged to keep in one room, I have been a prisoner too. I have not had a merry Xmas, and I dare say my new year will not make up for it. Let me know what day at the end of next week I may come and see you.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

What an admirable training women get at Girton! so solid! They are made to mind their book so thoroughly! so that Miss Muller, M.L.S.B. was enabled to say that no such passage as the following was to be found in Butler's Analogy :--'Hebrew roots are often found to flourish best in barren ground'. 'Oh! no,' she said 'that is not in Butler. We went through the Analogy very carefully at Girton.' You can imagine the feelings of my friend Miss Scott, who had made the quotation, and of the gentleman who said 'Miss Scott should not hurl Butler at us in this unfeeling way.'

M.L.S.B. stands for Member of the London School Board.

15 Cifford's Inn, E.G., Tuesday evening, Jan. 31 st , 1882

Dear Miss Savage,

Please come on Saturday, for I gather from the early part of your letter that the 'next' week is a slip for 'this'.

I have had a good notice--short--but very friendly--in Cassell's Magazine of Art , and I hear that Colonel Butler (Mr. Miss Thompson) is reviewing me for the Roman Catholic Register. I think we know what we shall get from him, something in the sneering patronising line. The Tablet is also I believe, going to review me; Bogue says his traveller cannot get on with it at all, nor with any of my books. I suspect I am about at my lowest ebb now. The Darwin literary and scientific clique have done their utmost; they have no more cards to play, all that they can say or do is now done, and I think a gradual reaction may be hoped for with some confidence.

I am sure you have had awful times with your mother. Melchisedec, who as Jones says was a born orphan, was the only really happy man--he was you may remember without father without mother and without descents. I am very fairly well, but Jones's illness took it out of me a good deal.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

15 Clifford's Inn, E.G., [ Probably Feb. 7 th , 1882]

Dear Miss Savage,

How did you get home last Saturday? I did not know what a fog it was or I should have come with you. I hope nothing serious happened--if so I shall say it was a judgment upon you sent because you were trying to curry favour with God by praising his days when no one knew better than he that he ought to be ashamed of them.

You remember you stuck out to me that it was a very fine day when I told you it was nothing of the kind. I don't want to be flattered, but on the other hand I can brook no contradiction. But seriously I shall be very glad to hear that you got home without mishap. Something went up against a good piece of the granite coping of Waterloo Bridge and knocked it clean over into the river. I saw the gap next morning, so the fog must have been pretty thick there.

I don't think you were very well on Saturday, and I don't think I asked after you quite enough. I hope you are better.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

22 Beaumont Street, Wednesday [ Feb. 8 th, 1882]

Dear Mr. Butler,

Thanks for your kind enquiries. You will be glad to hear that I did no damage to anybody or anything, on my way home last Saturday. It was not I as you seem to imply, who knocked that great piece out of Waterloo Bridge. In fact there was no fog at all anywhere that I went to on that day, so that whatever I did by way of propitiation, it was successful.

But you never need be uneasy about me in a fog having been accustomed for many generations to the 'hellish and dismal cloud of sea-coal perpetually imminent over our heads', I am quite at home in it, and should not have allowed you to put yourself in peril on my account, for I am as distrustful of other people's power of getting through a fog, as I am comfortably confident in my own.

I was very well on Saturday, thank you, but I had not had a good night's rest, and so felt rather seedy. I sat up very late and when I went to bed was so cold that I could not go to sleep for hours, and I find now that I cannot do without my night's rest. As the scripture says, the things that are done in the green tree, cannot be done in the dry--which reminds me that it is now 1 a.m. So good night.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

PS. Is not Biggar a dear? They politely suppressed part of his utterances in The Times, but I read all in the Telegraph. I would send him a little note of congratulation, but I believe he cannot read writing. Have you read The Fixed Period ? There are some pretty bits in the first chapters. I think it is by Trollope.

I enclose stamps with many thanks--No wonder you were anxious about me! I also enclose a cutting from the Lady's Pictorial , which refers to a school board meeting some little time ago. [I seem to have lost this. December 10th, 1901. S.B.] I meant to have told you that I lately heard two of Mendelssohn's quintets one after the other, and it is quite true what you say about his staying a long time over things. I felt I was staying a long time too.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Thursday [ Feb. 9 th or 16 th , 1882]

Dear Mr. Butler,

In spite of my habitual disinclination to pay my debts, I enclose 12 stamps, and I have a decided feeling that I am making you a present of a shilling. As a matter of fact I intended enclosing them in my last letter, but to my surprise they turned up last night.

At first I thought I had come into a fortune unexpectedly, and the pang was great when the conviction grew that they were yours. However, for once I will be honest.

In haste,

E.M.A. Savage

[I destroy a letter from Miss Savage dated March 1st--merely returning reviews and saying that she was very busy with the lady artists' catalogue. S.B., December 10th, 1901]

15 Clfford's Inn, E.C., Friday evening, Feb. 24 th, 1882

Dear Miss Savage,

I send some Reviews, 3 good ones, and a notice of me generally in the Saturday which I think shows that I am beginning to be taken more at my own estimate of myself. I know Richard Jefferies is an ass, I don't know anything about Mr. Shorthouse (John Inglesant) except that Mudie has 1000 copies of his book in circulation. I don't think you need be afraid of my becoming more unbearable than I am.

I am busy indexing all my books; stupid, tedious and unprofitable work, but I want the indices, and so am doing them very very fully, for my own use. [I very soon dropped this, but I often want something of the kind, to tell me where, or if, I have said this or that. December 10th, 1901]

My Roman Catholic friends [the Rosminians in Ely Place] and I, are flirting hard. I remember you once advised me to make friends of the Mammon of Righteousness, so you see I am doing it, but how they can have made that mistake about the crossing beats me. [I forget all about this.] The review in the Register is by Colonel Butler, I think I told you.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

48 Gt. Marlborough Street, W., Thursday [ March 23 rd, 1882]

[Post card]

No trace of the umbrella here. I am sorry for you, but I dare say you will get it back. My umbrellas always come back persistently. I have never been able to lose one, and when one, by reason of its infirmities, has become unbearable, I have to cast it loose upon society at dead of night, or pitch it into the river. There is one of my umbrellas floating to this day in the Bay of Biscay. I set it floating down the Vilaine in the year '67. It was seen only the year before last.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Easter Monday [ April 10 th , 1882]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I write a line to tell you that three of the illustrations in your prospectus look lovely in a frame. I hesitated long between Fucine and the Porch for the centre picture, and after I had decided for the Porch I was much tormented by doubt, but now I am quite happy for nothing could be more sweet. You see I have been making an Easter offering to myself, and I am sure I could have devised nothing that could gratify me more. I hope you are very well as this leaves me at present, so no more from

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, W., Tuesday [ April 18 th, 1882]

Dear Mr. Butler,

Thank you for sending me the appendix [i.e. to Evolution Old and New. S.B.] which I enclose. I ought to have returned it before, but I stupidly left it at home yesterday morning, and I could not go out to post it last night, nor catch a friendly policeman as I sometimes do.

I like both chapters. I rather think the first is unnecessary from a dramatic point of view, but as it pleases you--and me [I must look and see what it was, I have no recollection of it. S.B., December 11th, 1901] and hurts your reviewers, I am glad it is to be published. As for the second--talk of olive branches, why it is a whole grove of trees. The Rock and the Literary World will be sure to denounce you as a Jesuit. In fact many people will think you are trying to entrap the unwary into friendliness with Rome as it is, by dazzling them with visions of Rome as it will be in a future too remote to hamper your prophecies.

My only objection to this chapter is that you might have expanded your ideas into a book. Most religions accommodate themselves to circumstances do they not? Xtianity seems to have accommodated itself by making piratical cruises into other religions.

I send you a little present, the leaves tear out, so that when you leave your note book at the 'Food of Health' [I don't remember ever going to the 'Food of Health'--I do not know the place. S.B.] or elsewhere as you sometimes have done, you will not lose so much, and then you can put the torn leaves into one of the little drawers in your cabinet, which is just made for such documents. I had two little books for you, and meant to give them to you when you came to see me, but on Friday they slipped my memory, and now I have only one for you. But you shall have another one day.

Yours truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Club, 64 Berners Street, W., [ Postmark May 16 th, 1882]

[Post card]

Will you forgive me for not sending the MS. to-day. It is locked up at the club and my keys are at home. If I cannot go to the club to-morrow in good time I will bring the MS. round to you about 5 o'clock. [The MS. must have been that of Ernest Pontifex which I must have returned to after adding the appendix to Evolution Old and New. S.B.] Thank you very much for sending the last part. The bit about the smoking and St. Paul and the cup of tea is lovely, and there are many other bits in it equally delightful. I give in to the aunt, almost, and if I read it over a third time I should accept her altogether. The last part is rather risqué, is it not?

E.M.A.S.

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Wednesday [ July, probably 5 th, or 12 th ]

My dear Mr. Butler,

I very nearly went to see you a day or two since, when I was close by your house, but as I was very tired and should have been horribly cross if I had found you out, I thought it better not to run the risk of hating you for ever, as I most certainly should, if you had not been at home. (Clara wants to send a message to you I suppose, she is rampaging over the table and has left her mark just above. What she wants to say I know not. Clara is the cat.) How are you? how is the novel? Are you writing anything fresh? I have not been well, and have no other news, so no more at present.

E.M.A. Savage

PS. I went to Guildhall to hear Helen Taylor's trial. It was very amusing. Mrs. Sur...[name illegible. S.B.] is a wonderful old figure of fun, in a rather 'stunning' hat with a big wreath. I was vexed that I arrived too late to hear her evidence, which was no doubt very funny; ' si son ramage se rapporte à son plumage ' it must have been worth paying for one's place to hear. [I spent two hours in the Newspaper room hoping to be able to date this letter by finding out when 'Miss Helen Taylor's trial' came off. Having searched The Times for June and July in vain I became impatient and gave it up. S.B., Dec. 14th, 1901.]

We have a book at the club, Men, Women and Lovers by Edith Simcox. The Athenæum was ungallant enough to hint that she could know nothing of the lovers by experience. I should also say that she knows nothing of men and women except as bores.

I cannot write any more, Clara is so troublesome--and indeed I have nothing more to say. Does your cat worry your life out when you are writing?

N.B. This letter requires an answer.

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., [ Oct. 9 th , 1882]

Dear Miss Savage

I am back and have been so for a week, very much better for my trip. I was nearly drowned out at Verona during the inundations, but have had no other mishaps. When will you come and see me? I am not going to write for some time: I have got a painting fit on. I have got a new toy called a Camera lucida, which does all the drawing for me, and I am so pleased with it that I am wanting to use it continually.

I hope you are pretty well. Come any afternoon except Friday or Monday next.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

[I ought to have been ashamed to send her such an offhand note, after never writing to her all the time I was abroad. I am ashamed of it enough now.

As for the Camera lucida--what a lot of time I wasted over it, to be sure! S.B., December 14th, 1901.]

New Berners Club, 64 Berners Street, W., Wednesday [ Oct. 11 th, 1982]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I will come and see you on Thursday, and I hope you will be prepared with elaborate excuses for never having written to me while you were away. I may not believe them, still they should be made.

Has a Camera Lucida anything to do with 'Lucidity' and 'Lucidity, Lucidity,
we seek you with avidity'?

If it has you need not mention it to me again.

I am staying at my uncle's for a few days, but leave this day--(you see I abstain from Lucidity in my statements).

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

I hope your dear cat is well. Tybalt, Prince of Cats, daily gives fresh proofs of intelligence that are truly amazing.

I have been full of misery. 'Twere very much better not to be, and when I was nearly poisoned the other day, nothing but dread of the vulgar-sounding verdict which the low-minded jury would not have failed to give, 'Died from eating mussels', prevented my succumbing. I know many persons whom I should like to feed on mussels, but, Alas! mussels are like the Lord, 'they have mercy on whom they will have mercy'--and what is the rest of the text?

22 Beaumont Street, W., Tuesday [ Dec. 5 th, 1882]

Dear Mr. Butler,

Do write and tell me how your lecture went off. [I suppose this was some lecture by me delivered at the Working Men's College in Gt. Ormond Street.' S.B.] I was not there to hear it, but that was my misfortune not my fault. I was on my way, and had got as far as half way down the club stairs, when Providence placed a chestnut under my feet, which cut short my career by causing me to take a somersault down the stairs. The consequences of this performance were not serious, but they were unpleasant in the extreme, and it was an hour before it would have been wise for me to venture into the streets, and I had a splitting headache. So Providence got the better of me that time. That the occurrence was miraculous there is no manner of doubt--else why did not the chestnut squash as a natural chestnut would have done? I afterwards ate it, and it did me no harm, so I suppose its mission being ended it resumed its natural condition.

Please send me full details concerning the lecture, and I should like to read it so very much if you will be so very good as to send me the MS. Tell me, too, how you are for you have neglected me horribly for weeks past. What are you doing now? The novel? or something new?

Rebecca Coleman is dead, after weeks of horrible suffering. Did you know her? She died impenitent, and the pious friends who tried to make her admire the loving kindness of the Lord in afflicting her so dreadfully lost their time. One of them, an old friend, and very well off, went to see her one day, and tapping her leather bag, said with a sort of spiritual sprightliness that the pious sometimes affect, 'Ah! I have something good for you in here,' so poor Miss Coleman thought she had brought her a brace of grouse, or at least a tin of cream--but it was only a brace of halfpenny tracts! Was she not a fiend?

How is your father? The weather has been very mild for the time of year.

Good-bye--Do please write to me very soon. I was dreadfully disappointed at not going to the lecture.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

Tybalt, Prince of Cats, is very happy in his new abode. He has made excellent friends with a fox terrier, and the two have fine games of play. Poor Tybbie hurt one of his legs some time ago; he fretted and moped for a day or two, but he soon plucked up his spirits, and goes about quite actively on three legs, having apparently come to the conclusion that a fourth leg is quite an unnecessary appendage. How is your beauty? [i.e. my cat. S.B.]

Whom did you vote for for the School Board? Mrs. Westlake made frantic efforts, but was only third on the poll. Her friends were very zealous, and wrote to everybody they knew to go and vote for Mrs. Westlake, 'no matter at what inconvenience to themselves'! Miss Collingridge and many other non-voters got a letter to the above effect but she wisely abstained from recording a vote she did not possess. Several members of the club were paid canvassers for Miss Muller and some of their adventures were amusing.

[The only excuse I can make for myself for neglecting Miss Savage so long, is that she very well knew she had only got to whip me up with a scrap of any kind, when she thought I had been too long without writing, and also that if I answered her letters at once I should be written to again immediately; and these years from 1881 till the death of my father, were the most harassing and arduous of my whole life. I cannot unfold the tale here, but I was in a very bad way as regards Pauli, my houses, the failure of my books, and my relations with my people. I often wonder how I got through it all as well as I did. Moreover, I had not the faintest idea that Miss Savage was stricken with mortal disease, as by this time she certainly must have been. S.B., December 14th, 1901]

[Shortly after I had lectured at the Working Men's College, Dean Bradley who was to have delivered a lecture on the Book of Job, disappointed the Committee at the last moment, and I was asked to take his place with anything I could think of. Miss Savage went and wrote as follows. S.B., December 16th, 1901.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., Sunday [ Dec. 10 th , 1882]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I enclose the article I spoke of, but find to my great disgust that it is not Mr. Romanes who is rebuked, but only Mr. Grant Allen--a minor fiend--but hateful in his way. I remember the stupid review he wrote.

I enjoyed the lecture very much, and I liked your chairman greatly. He is so thankful for small mercies! [I forget who he was, but I remember he told the men that they were to be very shy of accepting what I said. S.B.] 'Let us remember the little gap' was delightful, though I don't think he knew exactly where the little gap which is so very comforting occurs. And I liked the way in which he so kindly dismissed the audience, and told them exactly what they were to think about the lecture. I suppose the habitués of the place are used to this kind of fatherly direction. I am glad I am not an habituée. Your audience enjoyed the lecture, however; I was so seated that I could see a great many faces without appearing to see them, and they all looked appreciative. They certainly enjoyed your jokes, and that is the best sign that a lecturer has placed himself en rapport with the audience. How glad they must have been that they escaped Bradley and the Book of Job. I hope you liked lecturing, because then you will do it again, and I am convinced that you would soon be one of the most popular lecturers if you chose. When you lecture again be sure and let me know.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[Do not destroy the article but keep it till I see you or you write to me. Do not trouble to write on purpose to send it.]

22 Beaumont Street, W., [ Probably Dec. 14 th , 1882]

Dear Mr. Butler,

I shall have much pleasure in accepting your kind invitation for Saturday, as I shall then have an opportunity of speaking my mind more freely than I can on paper. So you wanted to cheat me? You would not have reminded me of the lecture, though you knew I would not have missed it if I could have helped it. How can you be so wicked? I shall begin to range myself on your sisters' side. I am sure you have been a trial to them if you treat me so badly, who have never done you any harm. However, no more NOW. On Saturday I will speak my mind.

E.M.A. Savage

[Soon after Miss Savage's death I asked Miss Johnson whether she had any letters of Miss Savage's which she would not mind my seeing--she said she had none but the following undated, but written from Beaumont Street about 1882. The letter ran:--]

'My dearest dear,

The enclosed should have been sent to you long ago, but it got itself hidden, and I forgot it till this day. I should say that I did not get it immediately, for it went to Berners St. first. Many thanks for returning the books. I have no recollection of ever having lent you Morris's lecture. I heard him the other day; he talked great nonsense, and quite declined to answer any questions as to how the revolution is to be brought about--although he says it has begun.

I see Mrs. Greatback sometimes, she came to tea at the Somerville Club last night, and I lent her a little book to read which I was on the point of sending to you, but she has promised to send it on to you. Perhaps you have read it, but if you have not, you will be much obliged to me for sending it. I have lent it to many persons, and I know exactly where they have got to when I hear them blowing their nose. It is a child's book, but so pretty--too pretty for a child. When done with kindly send to the enclosed address.

I suppose you had the circular of the Lady Artists in due course. I had nothing to do with the sending, so don't know. Do not forget that I have two frames of yours. Good-bye. I hope soon to hear a better account of you. With best love, my dearest dear,

Yours affectionately,

E.M.A. Savage

Maggie Sumner has one sweet little picture here, 'A Still Evening'. I am sure it will be sold.

[I do not think that Miss Savage was very fond of Miss Johnson during the later years of her life; they had been close friends as girls and young women. Miss Johnson told me that she and Miss Savage had had a violent quarrel about 1875, and though it was patched up I doubt whether the ruined love was ever effectually built anew. Miss Savage once said to me 'You know when I stroke Miss Johnson she thinks I am stroking her-- but it isn't that; it is her sealskin jacket that I am so fond of stroking--it is so soft.'

The book referred to in the above was Jackanapes by Mrs. Orr Ewing--I think her name is. Miss Savage made me read it, and wanted me to be touched by it, but I would not. I disliked it extremely. Miss Savage knew nothing about men, and Mrs. Ewing, who drew the conventional lady's hero, was able to take her in. She was like every one else: generally she would see through a book in a moment, but every now and then she was caught napping.

As for Miss Johnson, she was a dear good silly little chirrupy lady artist with a spinal complaint that gave her at times excruciating pain, and in the end killed her, a year or two, or it might be rather more, after Miss Savage's death. She was very poor, very cheerful, very avid of flattery concerning her painting--which was hopelessly third-rate. I used to have to go and see her pictures, and would say as many pretty things about them as I could, but I never would say the thing she wanted me to say--I mean that her this year's pictures were much better than her last. However, I must have gone very near to this, for whenever I went away she always used to say, 'I am so glad you think I am improved'. S.B.]

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., Jan. 23 rd , 1883, [ My elder sister's birthday. S.B.]

Dear Miss Savage,

Please come and see me on Thursday afternoon, and I will tell you all my news then--but I have nothing to tell. I am busy with nothing new but am close to the end of the novel now.

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

PS. I see Gladstone says he owes all the fine qualities of his mind to the study of Dante.

I believe I owe whatever I have to the fact that no earthly power has induced, or ever could induce me to read him. I have not yet begun to even feel the want of Dante.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Jan. 26 th , 1883

Dear Mr. Butler,

I forgot two things yesterday (such is the charm of your society!) One was to ask you to ask Mr. Garnett if he could recommend one of our members, Miss Stephens, to do copying. I know there is a good deal given at the Museum (I did some myself there once, a Spanish MS.) Miss Stephens copies beautifully, she does a good deal for a lady novelist, an invalid who can only write in pencil, and she gives her very great satisfaction, but she wants a good deal more to do as she has to help a brother, whose story I will tell you some day--it is peculiar. If you would not mind speaking to Mr. Garnett I shall be grateful.

Also you kindly offered to give old Mrs. Phillips a shilling or two; she is very hard up just now, and if you sent her a few stamps to this address, you would do a good deed: Mrs. Phillips, Castle Street East, Oxford St., W.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

[I hope to goodness I was liberal with the stamps, but I have no recollection either of Mrs. Phillips--probably I never knew her--or sending the stamps. Of course poor Miss Savage knew nothing of the £200 a year drag on me that Pauli then was, nor how steadily I was drifting with my eyes open to the utter ruin from which nothing saved me but the death of my father (at 80) some three or four months before the catastrophe wd have arisen. She was herself generous and soft-hearted to a fault, and not knowing how seriously embarrassed I was, sometimes got me to give small help to one protégée or another. S.B., December 31st, 1901]

22 Beaumont Street, Thursday [ March 23 rd , 1883]

Dear Mr. Butler,

The Ladies' exhibition is now open, and I hope you will come and see me. I must warn you that you do so at the peril of your life, as the cold is so intense. But if you do die after paying me a visit, you will have the consolation of knowing that I highly appreciated the attention. I suppose your father could not be induced to come? There is one spot just under the ventilator (which is providentially stuck fast) where if he could be placed for one single moment it would be enough.

You have been neglecting me shamefully--considering that I have not written to you or thanked you in any way, you ought to have supposed that I was ill or dead, and enquired accordingly. I think you have been exceedingly unkind. However, I will not reproach you, but will let byegones be byegones.

My friend Mr. Bertram is going to be married next week. I agree with the proverb which says that a man who marries again does not deserve to have lost his first wife--in the case of my friend, however, there are certainly extenuating circumstances. His good cook left him, his house-keeper is going to get married, and he felt himself unequal to the management of flippant parlourmaids and rapacious cooks, so he would have had to give up housekeeping, or get married, that, at least, is what he says himself. I consider myself aggrieved as his was the only house I liked staying at--there being no missis it was very comfortable and one was made much of. The intended bride is a cousin of his late wife, and is somewhat advanced in life, being in fact nearer sixty than fifty, and I presume is very well to do, as all the brothers-in-law and cousins are furious, which they would not be if they did not think that property was being diverted from them. I hope you are very well. I am afraid this weather has put a stop to your country excursions. What have you been doing? Do come and see me very soon. You will not be going away for Easter this year I suppose, as the weather is so bad. However, I wish you a merry Good Friday and a happy Easter.

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

22 Beaumont Street, May 8 th, 1883

Dear Mr. Butler,

Thank you so much for the paper, which almost consoled me for having missed you in such a vexatious manner. [The paper I take it was an article in a French paper--perhaps the one by Darmestetter, which I had forgotten when I wrote the note in my letter to my sister of March 29th, '83. S.B.] The only day that I have been late--it was too provoking! I return the paper immediately, as it is so flimsy that it will soon be worn out if you do not back it with some bank post paper. I shall get one for myself to keep. Are you not pleased with it? Do you know the writer? The French people might have found you out before, but better late than never.

[If they found me out they did not like me; I have never had another French review. S.B.]

I have been having Alps and Sanctuaries on my table at the gallery, by way of letting it be seen. I hope you do not object. I found people liked looking at the Magazine of Art, and thought they might look at your book. Do come and see me soon again, but not after Saturday week, as the gallery closes for good on that day.

I am very unhappy but will tell you why when we meet. It is a pity we could not have your father to visit the gallery last week--there was the additional danger of the roof falling in. Now it is propped up. In great haste,

Yours very truly,

E.M.A. Savage

A lady the other day at the gallery was telling me about her cat; he is a most intelligent creature, and she recounted various instances of his sagacity--winding up with 'and when I begin to play the piano he always goes out of the room'.

[I destroyed an unimportant letter of about June 9th, or 16th, from Miss Savage to me. S.B.]

15 Clifford's Inn, E.C., July 11 th , 1883

Dear Miss Savage,

It is so long since I saw you or heard of you that I write to ask how you are. I have no news, my head remains wrong, but it is not serious and will go as soon as I can give it complete idleness, which I shall soon be able to do, but until my novel is finished I shall not stir. I am rewriting the greater part of the third volume, having done the first and second. Mr. Garnett has read the two first volumes, and I don't think he much likes them; he evidently found the first move too slowly, the second he liked better. I shall finish it and put it all by, and then if the first volume strikes me as too slow after I have not seen it for some time I must do the best I can to improve it, but I won't go on to anything else till I have done this.

My people are better, and my youngest sister is going to get well. If she gets well I shall be really very glad; my conscience smites me concerning her. My father is all right again for the present, but I do not think he will ever be what he was.

I don't know yet whether I shall be able to go abroad. I am rather afraid I shall not, but I shall know on the 20th instant. I will if I can.

I am afraid you are not well or rather very ill yourself. I growl and complain about nothing. You have ten times as much to growl about, but don't complain as I do. How is the club? Where and when shall I see you before long?

Yours very truly,

S. Butler

PS. Instead of making Miss Pontifex say that Ernest's father and mother would make him put a pinch of salt on the tails of all the cardinal virtues I have said 'of the seven deadly virtues'.

22 Beaumont Street, W., Saturday<