The Samuel Butler Collection at Saint John's College, Cambridge / A Catalogue and a Commentary

by Henry Festing Jones; A. T. Bartholomew

Transcribed by from the 1921 W. Heffer & Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

THE SAMUEL BUTLER COLLECTION
AT SAINT JOHN’S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE

A Catalogue and a Commentary

by
HENRY FESTING JONES
and
A. T. BARTHOLOMEW

cambridge
w. heffer & sons ltd.
1921

It seems to me, the more I think of it, that the true life of anyone is not the one they live in themselves, and of which they are themselves conscious, but the life they live in the hearts of others. Our bodies and brains are but the tools with which we work to make our true life, which is not in the tool-box and tools we ignorantly mistake for ourselves, but in the work we do with them; and this work, if it be truly done, lives more in others than in ourselves.

S. Butler, 1895.

[This Edition is limited to 750 Copies]

Preface

The Butler Collection was not all given to St. John’s at once. I sent up some pictures and some books in 1917; and at intervals I have sent more, always keeping a list of what has gone. Now that I have no more to send seems the proper time for a Catalogue to be issued, and it is made from the lists which I kept, and which were in part printed in The Eagle, put in order by A. T. Bartholomew and annotated by myself. I am responsible for the notes and am the person intended when “I” and “me” occur. Bartholomew is responsible for the classification, for verifying, for checking, and for the bibliographical part.

In time the collection will no doubt increase as new editions or translations of Butler’s books appear and as further books are published referring to him. All such I intend to include in the collection; and I hope that other Butlerians will see fit to make additions to it.

I think that the notes give all necessary explanations; but I may perhaps say here that many of the pictures were made before Butler contemplated writing such a book as Alps and Sanctuaries. When he was preparing that book he went to the places therein described and made on the spot many black and white drawings for reproduction; but he found that this method would take too long, so he made others of the black and white drawings from oil and water-colour sketches which he had done previously, and this is why some of the pictures are dated many years before the book was published.

Among the books, under Alps and Sanctuaries (p. 18), is Streatfeild’s copy of that work; and under The Way of All Flesh (p. 21) is his copy of that book. Both these copies are said to have been “purchased.” I bought them from the dealer to whom Streatfeild sold them when his health broke down and he moved from his rooms. I have no doubt that he would have given them to me if I had asked for them, but he was not in a condition to be troubled about business.

St. John’s College has contributed £30 towards the expenses of printing and publishing this catalogue. I offer them my most cordial thanks for their generosity. I am also deeply indebted to them for finding space in which to house the collection. I shrank from the responsibility of keeping it myself. I remembered also that an individual dies; even a family may become extinct; but St. John’s College, we hope, will enjoy as near an approach to immortality as can be attained on this transient globe. I am sure that Butler would be pleased if he could know that during that period this collection will be preserved and will be accessible to all who wish to visit it.

H. F. J.

120, Maida Vale, W. 9,
December, 1920.

Contents

I. Pictures, Sketches and Drawings by or Relating to Samuel Butler . . . [1]

II. Books and Music written by Butler . . . [15]

III. Books, etc., about Butler . . . [24]

IV. Books, etc., Relating to Butler and his Subjects . . . [28]

V. Books, formerly the property of Samuel Butler . . . [32]

VI. Atlases and Maps, formerly the property of Samuel Butler . . . [39]

VII. Music, formerly the property of Samuel Butler . . . [41]

VIII. Miscellaneous Papers, formerly the property of or relating to Samuel Butler . . . [44]

IX. Prints and Photographs, formerly the property of or relating to Samuel Butler . . . [47]

X. Portraits, formerly the property of or relating to Samuel Butler . . . [49]

XI. Effects, formerly the personal property of Samuel Butler . . . [51]

Illustrations

SAMUEL BUTLER. ABOUT 1866 . . . Frontispiece

From a photograph taken by his sister, Mrs. Bridges, in the garden at Langar soon after his return from New Zealand.

FACSIMILE OF POST-CARD FROM S. BUTLER TO H. F. JONES, FLORENCE, SEPT. 3, 1892 . . . face p. 23

Butler was staying in Florence on his way home from his first visit to Sicily. The old Greek painting referred to is reproduced as the frontispiece to The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897). Mlle. V. is Mlle. Vaillant, as to whom see the Memoir. The “nose” belonged to the editor of a Swiss paper whom I had met at Fusio.

SAMUEL BUTLER WHEN AN UNDERGRADUATE AT CAMBRIDGE. ABOUT 1858 . . . face p. 52

This is taken from a photographic group of Butler and three friends. The friends are omitted, as I have failed to identify them.

I. PICTURES, SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS
BY OR RELATING TO SAMUEL BUTLER

By his will Butler bequeathed his pictures, sketches, and studies to his executors to be destroyed or otherwise disposed of as they might think best, the proceeds (if any) to fall into residue. They were not sold: some were given to Shrewsbury School; some to the British Museum; one, an unfinished sketch of the back of the house in which Keats died on the Piazza di Spagna, Rome, to the Keats and Shelley Memorial there; many were distributed among his friends, Alfred Cathie taking fifteen and I taking all that were left over. Alfred lives in Canal Road, Mile End, and, this being on the route of the German air-raids, he was anxious to put his pictures in a place of safety. Accordingly it was arranged between us in 1917 that I should buy them from him. When he heard that I was giving them to St. John’s, he desired that I should not buy all, because he wished to give two of them himself to the College. Accordingly, I bought only thirteen, and the remaining two, viz. no. 28, Leatherhead Church, and no. 59, Chiavenna, 1887, were given to St. John’s College by Alfred.

There are but few sketches or pictures by Butler between 1888 and 1896. This is because his sketching was interrupted by his having to take up photography for the preparation of Ex Voto. Almost before this book was published (1888) he had plunged into The Life and Letters of Dr. Butler, and in 1892 he added to his absorbing occupations the problem of the Odyssey. Thus he had little leisure or energy for the labour of painting; and this labour was always great. He could not leave his outline until he had got it right, and there was a perpetual chase after the changing shadows. And when he had got the outline it was so constantly disappearing under the colour that he took to making “a careful outline on a separate sheet of paper”; this was to be kept, after he had traced the drawing on to the paper which was to receive the colour, and to be referred to continually while he proceeded. When he met

with the camera lucida, which he bought in Paris, and which is among the objects given to St. John’s, he thought his difficulties were solved and wrote to Miss Savage, 9 October, 1882: “I have got a new toy, a camera lucida, which does all the drawing for me, and am so pleased with it that I am wanting to use it continually.” To which in 1901 he added this note: “What a lot of time I wasted over that camera lucida, to be sure!” It did all the drawing for him, but it distorted the perspective so that the outlines of the many sketches which he produced with its help were a disappointment.

The camera lucida having failed, his hopes were next fixed upon photography, which, by rapidly and correctly recording anything he felt a desire to sketch, was to give him something from which he could afterwards construct a picture. So he took an immense number of snap-shots, of which many are at St. John’s, but he never did anything with them. Nos. 62 and 63, which were done by Sadler from Butler’s photographs, show how he would have proceeded if he had not had too many other things to do.

It was not until 1896, when The Life of Dr. Butler appeared, that he was able to return seriously to sketching, and by that time he was over sixty and too old to be burdened with the paraphernalia necessary for oils; he therefore confined himself to water-colours.

Some of the pictures in this list were included in the list in The Eagle, vol. xxxix., no. 175, March 1918, and the remainder in the succeeding number, June 1918. In making the present catalogue I have corrected such errors and misprints as I noticed in The Eagle, and I have re-arranged and renumbered the items so as to make them run in chronological order. I have also amplified some of the notes. I have placed the sketches and drawings in order of date because to examine them in that order helps the spectator to realise the progress made by Butler in his artistic studies.