The Samuel Butler Collection at Saint John's College, Cambridge Part 1

The Samuel Butler Collection.

by Henry Festing Jones, et al.

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 cla.s.sification, 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 pounds towards the expenses of printing and publis.h.i.+ng this catalogue. I offer them my most cordial thanks for their generosity. I am also deeply indebted to them for finding s.p.a.ce 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.

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 Sh.e.l.ley Memorial there; many were distributed among his friends, Alfred Cathie taking fifteen and I taking all that were left over. Alfred lives in Ca.n.a.l 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. x.x.xix., 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.

SAMUEL BUTLER

1. Black and white outline sketch: Civita Vecchia, 1854.

Butler went abroad with his family, his second visit to Italy, for the winter of 1853-4. They travelled through Switzerland to Rome and Naples, starting in August 1853, and Butler thus missed the half-year at school.

I am sorry that I have not found any more finished drawing made by him on this occasion.

DOUGLAS YEOMAN BLAKISTON

2. Pencil drawing: Samuel Butler, 1854.

Reproduced in the _Memoir_, ch. iii. On the back of this drawing is the beginning of a water-colour sketch. It was in a book with others mentioned in the _Memoir_ as having been given to Shrewsbury School (I.

44). I have no doubt that the sketch on the back is by Butler, and represents part of the Rectory house at Langar.

The Rev. D. Y. Blakiston was born in 1832. He studied art at the Royal Academy Schools especially under W. Dobson, R.A. From about 1850 to 1865 he painted in London and at St. Leonard's, and exhibited at the Royal Academy. About 1865 he entered at Downing College, took Orders in 1869, and was presented to the living of East Grinstead in 1871, which he held till his retirement soon after 1908. He died in 1914. Throughout his life he made a practise of sketching his friends. I suppose he must have met and sketched Butler on some occasion when Butler was in London staying with his cousins the Worsleys. The artist's son, the Rev. H. E.

D. Blakiston, when President of Trinity College, Oxford, gave me a cutting from _The East Grinstead Observer_ containing a full obituary of him. It is among the papers at St. John's College, and is referred to in the Postscript to the Preface to my _Memoir_ of Butler.

HENRY FESTING JONES

3. My first attempt at a drawing in pencil and ink of Butler's Homestead, Mesopotamia, New Zealand.

I did it in 1910 or thereabouts from a faded photograph taken about 1863 and lent to Butler by J. D. Enys. _Also_ Emery Walker's reproduction of my first attempt which was not used in the _Memoir_.

4. My second attempt, which was reproduced in the _Memoir_.

SAMUEL BUTLER

5. Water-colour: A view in Cambridge.

Probably done when Butler was an undergraduate, and given to St. John's some years ago. I found it in the book wherein I found Blakiston's drawing (no. 2).

6. Oil Painting: Family Prayers.

On the ceiling he wrote "I did this in 1864, and if I had gone on doing things out of my own head instead of making studies I should have been all right." (_Memoir_, I. 115.) Reproduced in the _Memoir_, ch. xxiv., and referred to, ch. viii.

7. Oil Painting: His own head.

"He painted at home as well as at Heatherley's, and by way of a cheap model hung up a looking-gla.s.s near the window of his painting room and made many studies of his own head. He gave some of them away and destroyed and painted over others, but after his death we found a number in his rooms--some of the earlier ones very curious" (_Memoir_, ch.

viii.). This is one of the earlier ones. It is inscribed, "S.B., Feb.

18, 1865." We found also a still more curious one which was given to Gogin, who was interested in it as being the work of an untaught student.

See also no. 36.

JOHN LEECH