Complete works of samuel.., p.551
Complete Works of Samuel Butler, page 551
And now let me return to Ismail Gusbashi, the excellent Turkish official who, by the way, was with me during all my examination of the springs, and whose assurances of their twofold temperature I should have found it impossible to doubt, even though I had not caught one warmer cupful myself. His men, while we were at the springs, had spread a large Turkey carpet on the flower-bespangled grass under the trees, and there were three smaller rugs at three of the corners. On these Ismail and Yakoub and I took our places. The other two were cross-legged, but I reclining anyhow. The sun shimmered through the spring foliage. I saw two hoopoes and many beautiful birds whose names I knew not. Through the trees I could see the snow-fields of Ida far above me, but it was hopeless to think of reaching them. The soldiers and Ahmed cooked the trout and the eggs all together; then we had boiled eggs, bread and cheese and, of course, more lamb’s liver done on skewers like cats’ meat. I ate with my pocket-knife, the others using their fingers in true Homeric fashion.
When we had put from us “the desire of meat and drink,” Ismail began to talk to me. He said he had now for the first time in his life found himself in familiar conversation with Wisdom from the West (that was me), and that, as he greatly doubted whether such another opportunity would be ever vouchsafed to him, he should wish to consult me upon a matter which had greatly exercised him. He was now fifty years old and had never married. Sometimes he thought he had done a wise thing, and sometimes it seemed to him that he had been very foolish. Would I kindly tell him which it was and advise him as to the future? I said he was addressing one who was in much the same condition as himself, only that I was some ten years older. We had a saying in England that if a man marries he will regret it, and that if he does not marry he will regret it.
“Ah!” said Ismail, who was leaning towards me and trying to catch every word I spoke, though he could not understand a syllable till Yakoub interpreted my Italian into Turkish. “Ah!” he said, “that is a true word.”
In my younger days, I said (may Heaven forgive me!), I had been passionately in love with a most beautiful young lady, but — and here my voice faltered, and I looked very sad, waiting for Yakoub to interpret what I had said — but it had been the will of Allah that she should marry another gentleman, and this had broken my heart for many years. After a time, however, I concluded that these things were all settled for us by a higher Power.
“Ah! that is a true word.”
“And so, my dear sir, in your case I should reflect that if Allah” (and I raised my hand to Heaven) “had desired your being married, he would have signified his will to you in some way that you could hardly mistake. As he does not appear to have done so, I should recommend you to remain single until you receive some distinct intimation that you are to marry.”
“Ah! that is a true word.”
“Besides,” I continued, “suppose you marry a woman with whom you think you are in love and then find out, after you have been married to her for three months, that you do not like her. This would be a very painful situation.”
“Ah, yes, indeed! that is a true word.”
“And if you had children who were good and dutiful, it would be delightful; but suppose they turned out disobedient and ungrateful — and I have known many such cases — could anything be more distressing to a parent in his declining years?”
“Ah! that is a true word that you have spoken.”
“We have a great Imaum,” I continued, “in England; he is called the Archbishop of Canterbury and gives answers to people who are in any kind of doubt or difficulty. I knew one gentleman who asked his advice upon the very question that you have done me the honour of propounding to myself.”
“Ah! and what was his answer?”
“He told him,” said I, “that it was cheaper to buy the milk than to keep a cow.”
“Ah! ah! that is a most true word.”
Here I closed the conversation, and we began packing up to make a start. When we were about to mount, I said to him, hat in hand:
“Sir, it occurs to me with great sadness that, though you will, no doubt, often revisit this lovely spot, yet it is most certain that I shall never do so. Promise me that when you come here you will sometimes think of the stupid old Englishman who has had the pleasure of lunching with you to-day, and I promise that I will often think of you when I am at home again in London.”
He was much touched, and we started. After we had gone about a mile, I suddenly missed my knife. I knew I should want it badly many a time before we got to the Dardanelles, and I knew perfectly well where I should find it: so I stopped the cavalcade and said I must ride back for it. I did so, found it immediately and returned. Then I said to Ismail:
“Sir, I understand now why I was led to leave my knife behind me. I had said it was certain I should never see that enchanting spot again, but I spoke presumptuously, forgetting that if Allah” (and I raised my hand to Heaven) “willed it I should assuredly do so. I am corrected, and with great leniency.”
Ismail was much affected. The good fellow immediately took off his watch-chain (happily of brass and of no intrinsic value) and gave it me, assuring me that it was given him by a very dear friend, that he had worn it for many years, and valued it greatly — would I keep it as a memorial of himself? Fortunately I had with me a little silver match-box which Alfred had given me and which had my name engraved on it. I gave it to him, but had some difficulty in making him accept it. Then we rode on till we came to the saw-mills. I ordered two lambs for the ten soldiers who had accompanied us, having understood from Yakoub that this would be an acceptable present. And so I parted from this most kind and friendly gentleman with every warm expression of cordiality on both sides.
I sent him his photograph which I had taken, and I sent his soldiers their groups also — one for each man — and in due course I received the following letter of thanks. Alas! I have never written in answer. I knew not how to do it. I knew, however, that I could not keep up a correspondence, even though I wrote once. But few unanswered letters more often rise up and smite me. How the Post Office people ever read “Bueter, Ciforzin St.” into “Butler, Clifford’s Inn” I cannot tell. What splendid emendators of a corrupt text they ought to make! But I could almost wish that they had failed, for it has pained me not a little that I have not replied.
Mr. Samuel Bueter,
No. 15 Ciforzin St. London, England.
Dardanelles,
August 4/95.
Mr. Samuel. England.
My dear Friend,
Many thanks for the phothograph you have send me. It was very kind of you to think of me to send me this token of your remembrance. I certainly, appreciate it, and shall think of you whenever I look at it. Ah My Dear Brother, it is impossible for me to forget you. under favorable circumstance I confess I must prefer you. I have a grate desire to have the beautifull chance to meet you. Ah then with the tears of gladness to be the result of the great love of our friendness A my Sir what pen can describe the meeting that shall be come with your second visit if it please God.
It is my pray to Our Lord God to protect you and to keep you glad and happy for ever.
Though we are far from each other yet we can speak with letters.
Thank God to have your love of friendness with me and mine with your noble person.
Hopeing to hear from you,
Yours truly,
Ismayel, from
Byramich hizar memuerue iuse bashi.
CHAPTER XVIII. Material for Erewhon Revisited
Apologise for the names in Erewhon. I was an unpractised writer and had no idea the names could matter so much.
Give a map showing the geography of Erewhon in so far as the entrance into the country goes, and explain somewhere, if possible, about Butler’s stones.
Up as far as the top of the pass, where the statues are, keeps to the actual geography of the upper Rangitata district except that I have doubled the gorge. There was no gorge up above my place [Mesopotamia] and I wanted one, so I took the gorge some 10 or a dozen miles lower down and repeated it and then came upon my own country again, but made it bare of grass and useless instead of (as it actually was) excellent country. Baker and I went up the last saddle we tried and thought it was a pass to the West Coast, but found it looked down on to the headwaters of the Rakaia: however we saw a true pass opposite, just as I have described in Erewhon, only that there were no clouds and we never went straight down as I said I did, but took two days going round by Lake Heron. And there is no lake at the top of the true pass. This is the pass over which, in consequence of our report, Whitcombe was sent and got drowned on the other side. We went up to the top of the pass but found it too rough to go down without more help than we had. I rather think I have told this in A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, but am so much ashamed of that book that I dare not look to see. I don’t mean to say that the later books are much better; still they are better.
They show a lot of stones on the Hokitika pass, so Mr. Slade told me, which they call mine and say I intended them in Erewhon [for the statues]. I never saw them and knew nothing about them.
Refer to the agony and settled melancholy with which unborn children in the womb regard birth as the extinction of their being, and how some declare that there is a world beyond the womb and others deny this. “We must all one day be born,” “Birth is certain” and so on, just as we say of death. Birth involves with it an original sin. It must be sin, for the wages of sin is death (what else, I should like to know, is the wages of virtue?) and assuredly the wages of birth is death.
They consider “wilful procreation,” as they call it, much as we do murder and will not allow it to be a moral ailment at all. Sometimes a jury will recommend to mercy and sometimes they bring in a verdict of “justifiable baby-getting,” but they treat these cases as a rule with great severity.
Every baby has a month of heaven and a month of hell before birth, so that it may make its choice with its eyes open.
The hour of birth should be prayed for in the litany as well as that of death, and so it would be if we could remember the agony of horror which, no doubt, we felt at birth — surpassing, no doubt, the utmost agony of apprehension that can be felt on death.
Let automata increase in variety and ingenuity till at last they present so many of the phenomena of life that the religious world declares they were designed and created by God as an independent species. The scientific world, on the other hand, denies that there is any design in connection with them, and holds that if any slight variation happened to arise by which a fortuitous combination of atoms occurred which was more suitable for advertising purposes (the automata were chiefly used for advertising) it was seized upon and preserved by natural selection.
They have schools where they teach the arts of forgetting and of not seeing. Young ladies are taught the art of proposing. Lists of successful matches are advertised with the prospectuses of all the girls’ schools.
They have professors of all the languages of the principal beasts and birds. I stayed with the Professor of Feline Languages who had invented a kind of Ollendorffian system for teaching the Art of Polite Conversation among cats.
They have an art-class in which the first thing insisted on is that the pupils should know the price of all the leading modern pictures that have been sold during the last twenty years at Christie’s, and the fluctuations in their values. Give an examination paper on this subject. The artist being a picture-dealer, the first thing he must do is to know how to sell his pictures, and therefore how to adapt them to the market. What is the use of being able to paint a picture unless one can sell it when one has painted it?
Add that the secret of the success of modern French art lies in its recognition of values.
Let there be monks who have taken vows of modest competency (about £1000 a year, derived from consols), who spurn popularity as medieval monks spurned money — and with about as much sincerity. Their great object is to try and find out what they like and then get it. They do not live in one building, and there are no vows of celibacy, but, in practice, when any member marries he drifts away from the society. They have no profession of faith or articles of association, but, as they who hunted for the Holy Grail, so do these hunt in all things, whether of art or science, for that which commends itself to them as comfortable and worthy to be accepted. Their liberty of thought and speech and their reasonable enjoyment of the good things of this life are what they alone live for.
Let the Erewhonians have Westminster Abbeys of the first, second and third class, and in one of these let them raise monuments to dead theories which were once celebrated.
Let them study those arts whereby the opinions of a minority may be made to seem those of a majority.
Introduce an Erewhonian sermon to the effect that if people are wicked they may perhaps have to go to heaven when they die.
Let them have a Regius Professor of Studied Ambiguity.
Let the Professor of Worldly Wisdom pluck a man for want of sufficient vagueness in his saving-clauses paper.
Another poor fellow may be floored for having written an article on a scientific subject without having made free enough use of the words “patiently” and “carefully,” and for having shown too obvious signs of thinking for himself.
Let them attach disgrace to any who do not rapidly become obscure after death.
Let them have a Professor of Mischief. They found that people always did harm when they meant well and that all the professorships founded with an avowedly laudable object failed, so they aim at mischief in the hope that they may miss the mark here as when they aimed at what they thought advantageous.
The Professor of Worldly Wisdom plucked a man for buying an egg that had a date stamped upon it. And another for being too often and too seriously in the right. And another for telling people what they did not want to know. He plucked several for insufficient mistrust in printed matter. It appeared that the Professor had written an article teeming with plausible blunders, and had had it inserted in a leading weekly. He then set his paper so that the men were sure to tumble into these blunders themselves; then he plucked them. This occasioned a good deal of comment at the time.
One man who entered for the Chancellor’s medal declined to answer any of the questions set. He said he saw they were intended more to show off the ingenuity of the examiner than either to assist or test the judgment of the examined. He observed, moreover, that the view taken of his answers would in great measure depend upon what the examiner had had for dinner and, since it was not in his power to control this, he was not going to waste time where the result was, at best, so much a matter of chance. Briefly, his view of life was that the longer you lived and the less you thought or talked about it the better. He should go pretty straight in the main himself because it saved trouble on the whole, and he should be guided mainly by a sense of humour in deciding when to deviate from the path of technical honesty, and he would take care that his errors, if any, should be rather on the side of excess than of asceticism
This man won the Chancellor’s medal.
They have a review class in which the pupils are taught not to mind what is written in newspapers. As a natural result they grow up more keenly sensitive than ever.
Round the margin of the newspapers sentences are printed cautioning the readers against believing the criticisms they see, inasmuch as personal motives will underlie the greater number.
They defend the universities and academic bodies on the ground that, but for them, good work would be so universal that the world would become clogged with masterpieces to an extent that would reduce it to an absurdity. Good sense would rule over all, and merely smart or clever people would be unable to earn a living.
They assume that truth is best got at by the falling out of thieves. “Well then, there must be thieves, or how can they fall out? Our business is to produce the raw material from which truth may be elicited.”
“And you succeed, sir,” I replied, “in a way that is beyond all praise, and it seems as though there would be no limit to the supply of truth that ought to be available. But, considering the number of your thieves, they show less alacrity in flying at each other’s throats than might have been expected.”
They live their lives backwards, beginning, as old men and women, with little more knowledge of the past than we have of the future, and foreseeing the future about as clearly as we see the past, winding up by entering into the womb as though being buried. But delicacy forbids me to pursue this subject further: the upshot is that it comes to much the same thing, provided one is used to it.
Paying debts is a luxury which we cannot all of us afford.
“It is not every one, my dear, who can reach such a counsel of perfection as murder.”
There was no more space for the chronicles and, what was worse, there was no more space in which anything could happen at all, the whole land had become one vast cancerous growth of chronicles, chronicles, chronicles, nothing but chronicles.
The catalogue of the Browne medals alone will in time come to occupy several hundreds of pages in the University Calendar.
There was a professor who was looked upon as such a valuable man because he had done more than any other living person to suppress any kind of originality.
“It is not our business,” he used to say, “to help students to think for themselves — surely this is the very last thing that one who wishes them well would do by them. Our business to make them think as we do, or at any rate as we consider expedient to say we do.”
