Readers will remember the scene in The Way of All Flesh in which Theobald, driving away for his honeymoon, insists that Christina shall order their dinner at the first stop, and in which Christina protests with tears her nervousness, and Theobald replies, "It is a wife's duty to order her husband's dinner; you are my wife, and I shall expect you to order mine." A sensitive child, neglected or even ill-treated by its parents, might, if the relations of the parents between themselves had anything beautiful or kindly, see some possibilities of happiness in the institution of the family. But Samuel Butler was brought up in a world where no such possibilities seemed to exist. He came to believe, Mr. Festing Jones tells us, that, like Habakkuk, le père de famille est capable de tout. It has often been maintained that the greatest poets and artists do nothing throughout life but draw on those fresh and lovely impressions which they have gathered in childhood. When he was a child Butler acquired habits of suspicion against all those surrounding him who were not connected with him by freely-chosen bonds of friendship. Canon Butler bullied him on moral grounds; and he grew to suspect every claim made on him, every exhortation addressed to him, on moral grounds. Ernest Pontifex is described on one occasion as assuming the expression of a puppy which is being scolded for something it does not understand; and Butler did indeed develop some of the habits of an ill-treated dog. He shied and snarled at a lifted hand, which might have been lifted in kindness or in ignorance of his existence. Having, as he supposed, penetrated the fraud of the family, he felt a distrust of all human institutions. He suspected the world of being in a conspiracy to pretend that parents were naturally kind to their children, that Christ rose from the dead, and that Tennyson was a great poet. And, turning from all these discredited shows, he devoted himself in isolation to the care of his own idiosyncrasies and the companionship of a very few, very intimate friends.
Here, where he might in one case have suspected with justice, he was all blind trust. The story of Charles Paine Pauli is one of the most extraordinary that have been brought to light in human records in recent years. A correspondent who knew him and admired him wrote not long ago to the Times, not to controvert Mr. Festing Jones's account of the relations between him and Butler, but to protest, in an almost agonised manner, that there must be some explanation of it; and this is precisely what the reader, who did not know Pauli, feels when he comes upon these pages. But there seems to be no explanation.
In 1859 Butler rebelled against his father, and finally decided that he could not take Orders, basing his refusal on "doubts," which in after years seemed to him no less absurd than the doctrines against which they were directed. As a result of this, he emigrated to New Zealand, taking with him an allowance from Canon Butler and a promise of support in capital, in order that he might establish himself as a sheep-farmer. In this occupation he was, against all the probabilities, moderately successful and, largely owing to the rapidly-developing condition of the colony, managed to turn an original capital of £4400 into the sum of £8000. But finding the life uncongenial, he concluded that it would be wiser to invest his money in New Zealand, where the current rate of interest was 10 per cent., and go home and live on the proceeds. While he was making preparations to this end, a previous slight acquaintance with Pauli developed into an intimate friendship. Pauli was handsome, fascinating, well dressed, ineffably well mannered. He was, in fact, the Towneley of The Way of All Flesh, though Providence, not doing as well by him as by Towneley, had omitted to make him rich. He was actually poor and in ill-health, and anxious to go to England in order that he might recover. He then proposed to get called to the Bar and to return to New Zealand to practise. Butler, who believed himself to be worth about £800 a year, promptly lavished on this creature the generosity and tenderness which had found no outlet during his childhood. He offered to lend him £100 for his passage, and to allow him £200 a year for three years—that is, until his return to New Zealand as a barrister. They accordingly made the passage together; and Butler kept his promise, and more than kept it, extending the allowance, even through the time of his acutest financial difficulties, until Pauli's death in 1897. It was then discovered that at one time Pauli had been earning £900 a year, and that even at the last he earned between £500 and £700. He left a fortune of £9000; but Butler was not mentioned in the will and received his invitation to the funeral from the undertaker.
A singular and enlightening circumstance in the intercourse between Butler and Pauli unhappily prevents Mr. Festing Jones from making this astonishing but veracious narrative entirely lifelike. The charming young man did not reciprocate the feelings of his pathetic and somewhat uncouth adorer. "I had felt from the very beginning," says Butler, "that my intimacy with Pauli was only superficial, and I also perceived more and more that I bored him." Pauli confessed that he had never been more miserable in his life than once when he spent a holiday with Butler at Dieppe. Consequently it soon came about that the essential part of the relations between them was the punctual payment of the allowance. Latterly, they only met three times a week, when Pauli lunched in Butler's chambers. He discontinued informing Butler of his changes of address, so that at the end Butler did not know where he was living, and Mr. Festing Jones met him "only on business, for he would have nothing to do with any of Butler's friends in any other way." Butler learnt of his death from an announcement in the Times.
Truly a mysterious creature! And his friend is very comprehensible in supposing that there must be some explanation. Possibly Mr. Festing Jones, if he had met him otherwise than purely on business, might have given us some impression of his personality which would have let in light on this dark business. As it is, we must content ourselves with wonder at the extraordinary situations which human nature is capable of creating. But this unhappy friendship is worth examining, apart from its intrinsic curiosity, because it presents in extremity an essential and determining part of Butler's life. His devotion and loyalty to his friends were perhaps the most beautiful things in his character and do much to redeem his somewhat unlovely attitude of snarling and suspicion towards all strangers.
Life might be thought to have treated him savagely in following up his parents with the hardly less cruel Pauli. He disguised the shock of his discovery on Pauli's death by remarking that he would now save not only £200 a year, but also the cost of those three lunches a week in Clifford's Inn. Yet a nature that opened itself so trustingly, so defencelessly, must have suffered on finding its bounty abused. But in his other friends, in Miss Savage, in his clerk, Alfred Emery Cathie, and in Mr. Festing Jones he had ample compensations. He was a man who at first sight was not readily liked. He was awkward and nervous in the company of strangers, and it is likely that he did not disguise so well as he supposed his grave misgivings that they were either pretentious scoundrels or conceited hypocrites. He was always badly and carelessly dressed; and though his portraits, when one is used to them and can associate them with the best one knows of his mind, become attractive, there can be no denial that his appearance was on the most lenient showing decidedly grotesque, that of a difficult, taciturn, maliciously observant gnome, roughly carved in a hard wood. It took some time and some degree of intuition to penetrate behind this mask. Those who did so were rewarded and rewarded him. Miss Savage, who used to meet him first at Heatherley's art-classes, was not attracted by him for a considerable time. When at last she was, it was by a flash of remarkable intuition. In commenting on one of his books, she writes:
I like 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 anyone else.
It is not certain whether Miss Savage became a Butlerian or whether Butler acquired something of what we consider his characteristic attitude of mind from her. If it was not so, then her spirit leapt at once to answer his as soon as she had perceived the possibility of common interests between them, for her first letters to him are written in his own vein. She entered immediately into his concerns, read all his books in manuscript, criticised them, gave them more praise than they received from anyone else, and abused his enemies with a gusto equal to his. The only trouble between them in their long connection was his gnawing fear that she wanted to marry him. And he did not want to marry anyone, let alone her who was
Plain and lame and fat and short,
Forty and overkind.
But if all these disabilities had been removed, he would still have been disinclined to marry her. He did not believe in marriage, had a hatred of the family; and he slunk away snarling from the danger like a terror-stricken wild animal at the sight of a trap, only to reproach himself in after years for unkindness to his friend. But his relations with women were not, and he did not intend that they should be, of the sort that lead to marriage. He had mistresses, whom he visited. Mr. J. B. Yeats, in a recent paper of reminiscences, has repeated his avowals on this point in a manner which conveys well enough Butler's view that his lapses were caused by a necessity of the flesh. Mr. Festing Jones reinforces this impression. One of his mistresses, referred to as "Madame," was, after a long connection, allowed to visit his chambers in Clifford's Inn. No other gained this privilege; and Butler extended it to her as he might have done to an old and well-tried servant. Butler did not love these women, he frequented them. He was insensible to the notion that there might be anything beautiful in the relations between the sexes, as he was insensible to the notion that there might be anything of value written in verse. Theobald and Christina pretended to like poetry: Theobald and Christina pretended to love one another and him. It was all of a piece with their pretence that Christianity was a religion of kindliness and enlightenment.