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.