Introduction
The publication of a new and revised edition of “Alps and Sanctuaries” at a much reduced price and in a handier and more portable form than the original will, I hope, draw general attention to a book which has been undeservedly neglected. “Alps and Sanctuaries” has hitherto been the Cinderella of the Butler family. While her sisters, both elder and younger, have been steadily winning their way to high places at the feast, she has sat unrecognised and unhonoured in the ashes. For this, of course, the high price of the book, which was originally issued at a guinea, was largely responsible, as well as its unmanageable size and cumbrousness. But Time has revenges in his wallet for books as well as for men, and I cannot but believe that a new life is in store for one of the wisest, wittiest and tenderest of Butler’s books.
“Alps and Sanctuaries” originally appeared at a time (1881) when the circle of Butler’s readers had shrunk to very narrow dimensions. “Erewhon” (1872) had astonished and delighted the literary world, but “The Fair Haven” (1873) had alienated the sympathies of the orthodox, and “Life and Habit” (1877) and its successors “Evolution, Old and New” (1879) and “Unconscious Memory” (1880) had made him powerful and relentless enemies in the field of science. In 1881 Butler was, as he often termed himself, a literary pariah, and “Alps and Sanctuaries” was received for the most part with contemptuous silence or undisguised hostility. Now that Butler is a recognised classic, his twentieth-century readers may care to be reminded of the reception that was accorded to this—one of the most genial and least polemical of his works. Very few papers reviewed it at all, and in only four or five cases was it honoured with a notice more than a few lines long.
Strange as it may seem, Butler’s best friends were the Roman Catholics. The Weekly Register praised “Alps and Sanctuaries” almost unreservedly, and The Tablet became positively lyrical over it. The fact is that about this time Butler was dallying with visions of a rapprochement between the Church of Rome and the “advanced wing of the Broad Church party,” to which he always declared that he belonged. In the second edition of “Evolution, Old and New,” which was published in 1882, there is a remarkable chapter, entitled “Rome and Pantheism,” in which Butler holds out an olive branch to the Vatican, and suggests that if Rome would make certain concessions with regard to the miraculous element of Christianity she might win the adherence of liberal-minded men, who are equally disgusted by the pretensions of scientists and the dissensions of Protestants.
“Alps and Sanctuaries” contains nothing like a definite eirenicon, but it is pervaded by a genuine if somewhat vague sympathy for Roman institutions, which, emphasised as it is by some outspoken criticism of Protestantism, will serve to explain the welcome that it received in Roman Catholic circles. Nevertheless, one may venture to doubt whether Butler felt altogether at ease in the society of his new friends, and it was probably with rather mixed feelings that he read The Tablet’s description of “Alps and Sanctuaries” as “a book that Wordsworth would have gloated over with delight.” On the other hand, the compliment paid to his little discourse on the “wondrous efficacy of crosses and crossing,” which the pious Tablet read in a devotional rather than a biological sense and characterised as “so very suggestive and moral that it might form part of a sermon,” must have pleased him almost as much as The Rock’s naïf acceptance of “The Fair Haven” as a defence of Protestant orthodoxy.
“Alps and Sanctuaries” is essentially a holiday book, and no one ever enjoyed a holiday more keenly than Butler. “When a man is in his office,” he used to say, “he should be exact and precise, but his holiday is his garden, and too much precision here is a mistake.” He acted up to his words, and in “Alps and Sanctuaries” we see him in his most unbuttoned mood, giving the rein to his high spirits and letting his fantastic humour carry him whither it would. Butler always spent his holidays in Italy, a country which he had known and loved from his earliest childhood, and for which the passing years only increased his affection. Few Englishmen have ever studied her people, her landscape and her art with deeper sympathy and understanding, and she never received a sincerer tribute than the book which Butler dedicated to his “second country” as “a thank-offering for the happiness she has afforded me.”
Butler used to declare that he wrote his books so that he might have something to read in his old age, knowing what he liked much better than any one else could do. But though he cared little for contemporary popularity, no man valued intelligent appreciation more highly. He recorded in his “Note-books” with evident delight the remark made by a lady after reading “Alps and Sanctuaries”: “You seem to hear him speaking,” adding, “I don’t think I ever heard a criticism of my books which pleased me better.” The story of another unsolicited testimonial I must give in his own words:
“One day in the autumn of 1886 I walked up to Piora from Airolo, returning the same day. At Piora I met a very nice quiet man whose name I presently discovered, and who, I have since learned, is a well-known and most liberal employer of labour somewhere in the north of England. He told me that he had been induced to visit Piora by a book which had made a great impression upon him. He could not recollect its title, but it had made a great impression upon him; nor yet could he recollect the author’s name, but the book had made a great impression upon him; he could not remember even what else there was in the book; the only thing he knew was that it had made a great impression upon him.
“This is a good example of what is called a residuary impression. Whether or no I told him that the book which had made such a great impression upon him was called ‘Alps and Sanctuaries,’ and that it had been written by the person he was addressing, I cannot tell. It would have been very like me to have blurted it all out and given him to understand how fortunate he had been in meeting me. This would be so fatally like me that the chances are ten to one that I did it; but I have, thank Heaven, no recollection of sin in this respect, and have rather a strong impression that, for once in my life, I smiled to myself and said nothing.”
Butler always remembered with satisfaction that “Alps and Sanctuaries” gained him the friendship of Dr. Mandell Creighton. In her biography of her husband, Mrs. Creighton mentions that the Bishop had been reading “Alps and Sanctuaries,” which charmed him so much that he determined to visit some of the places described therein. On his return to England, Dr. Creighton wrote to Butler, telling him how much “Alps and Sanctuaries” had added to the pleasure of his trip, and begged him to come to Peterborough and pay him a visit. The story is told in Butler’s “Note-books,” but I cannot resist the temptation to repeat it: