New-York tribune., 1920-01-10
By Rebecca Drucker

These tWc VoiU1uSS oA IHefuoiTS COtI-
n;led by Henry Testing Jones give q
wide approach to the personality of
Samuel Butler. BY gathering up every
scrap of evidence associated with
Butler, Jones has made a path OF ur
derstandng to an engrossing character.
He has done great service 10 that pos
terity 20 which Butler looms large r
and larger with each succeeding gen.
eration by giving so intelligent and
fascinating an account OF him.
Out OF this heterogeneous mass
Of letters and incidents there is ulti-
mately revealed s. man oodurate in
truth as we'll as in error-a personality
integral and self-sustsining. good,
hard, durable figure whose character,
like his work, was made to outIast his
life
It is difficult to realize in these days
Of easy sgnosticism how cataclysmic
was Buffers early mild skepticism. It
vas q very mild skepticism. indeed. In
1858, when he was twenty-five, he was
seriously and painfully shocked to find
that there was little apparent difference
Of conduct between boys who had been
baptized and boys who had not When
he began to doubt the direct inspira-
ton Of the gospels his fall from grace
vas abysmal. And when, lacking faith
ne refused to be ordained there was
established q rift between himself and
his family that lasted to the end.
Indeed, between himself and his
father there was a great natural an
tagonisn, the sntagonisIn of two men
temperamentaIly at odds. 1t was a
friction all the More calling to the
younger man because most of his life
ne was at the mercy of his father IN
the matter Of his income. He was
robbed Of the consolation of knowing
that by few strokes of the pen he
could at any moment arrange that
on his death l should not have shoes
and stockings" Butler says of him in
q note. "Not that he wanted NE to
60 without shoes and stockings
what he wanted was that the power
whether or no I was to have shoes
or stockings should be vested in him
self and not me-" He put all his Bit
ter experiences Of a narrow, puritan
lcal family life into his novel "The
Way of All Flesh" Theobald. Christina
and Charlotte are his father, mother
and sister remorselessly done from the
life But having set them down ne
novel to be published in the lifetime
Of his family
Failing to carry on the family tradi-
ton In the Church, there was open to
Butler the refuge Of all young English
men under q cloud 1.-The colonies. He
chose New Zealand and sheep raising,
ard there apparently The work of Oar
win reached him and his Intellectual
emancipation proceeded apidly. There
IS vivid description of Butler at this
time in the note of a fellow sheep
herder, who writes: "1 shall never for
get the small dark man with the pene-
trating eyes who took up run at the
back of beyond, carried piano up
there on bullock dray. and passed
his solitary evenings playing Bach's
1~eo1cs anu VINO, Wnen ne emerged
from his solitude and came down to
Christchurch, was the most fascinating
OF companions"
After four and half years of New
zealand Butler returned to England
end took up the study of art at
Heatheriy's. He did not then regard
writing as the medium in which he
might best express himself, though
some of his letters and papers
about New Zealand had already been
gathered up into a volume. This was
The only one of his works that his
family ever approved and the one
which he cordially loathed The
irreverence of the satire of "Erewhon"
shocked his family deeply, though they
hever deigned TO read il.
"Erewkon" was published anony-
mously, and it was to this point that
Butler sardonically attributed it's kind
" reception. "The reviewers did not
know but what the book might have
peen written by some one whom It
up, and whom It might turn out very
veil to have praised" If this was SO,
sne reviewers did not forgive him for
having taken them in, for no book that
Butler ever wrote was therea fter kind
ly received It Is worth noting that
an Of Buffers books were published at
his own expense. At sixty three the
very exact records he kept Of the ex-
penses Of publication and income de-
rived from his books showed him to be
fhs loscr by them of 1000
From mild skepsicism TO an in