A. T. Bartholomew

“ At Rossura the sincerity is obvious, and the building is so perfect an adaptation of the means to the end that there is no suggestion of incompetence.
Rossura porch was thus an illustration of what he says in Alps and Sanctuaries in the chapter “Considerations on the Decline of Italian Art.” It was more than merely a piece of architecture. When Butler contemplated it he saw also the chapel with its altar and the people standing in the meadow during the plague ”

“ Butler wrote to Robert Bridges, 6 Feb. 1900, “I have, I verily believe, the smallest library of any man in London who is by way of being literary.” (Memoir, II., 320.)
Cf. no. 9 in Section I. Pictures, “Interior of Butler’s sitting-room,” where part of his library is shown. The rest of his books were in a cupboard between his sitting-room and his painting-room. They all passed under the residuary bequest in his will to his nephew, Henry Thomas Butler, who gave them to me. Some were taken by Streatfeild, his literary executor, and some few were lost in transitu; the remainder are here. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE SAMUEL BUTLER COLLECTION
AT SAINT JOHN’S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE A Catalogue and a Commentary
by
HENRY FESTING JONES
and
A. T. BARTHOLOMEW
cambridge
w. heffer & sons ltd.
1921
p. ivIt seems to me, the more I think of it, that the true life of anyone is not the one they live in themselves, and of which they are themselves conscious, but the life they live in the hearts of others. Our bodies and brains are but the tools with which we work to make our true life, which is not in the tool-box and tools we ignorantly mistake for ourselves, but in the work we do with them ”

“ Oil Painting: Prato.
Other views of Prato appear in Alps and Sanctuaries, ch. iii.
35. Oil Painting: Lago Tom, Piora, Val Leventina. 1877.
Ch. vi. in Alps and Sanctuaries is headed “Piora.” “Piora in fact is a fine breezy upland valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of cow about it.” Butler thought he knew what went on in Piora and, as he proceeds through the valley, he says: “Here I heard that there were people, and the people were not so much asleep as the simple peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by nine o’clock in the evening. ”

“ Oil Painting: Two heads done as a study at Heatherley’s.
I showed this to Gaetano Meo, and he remembered that the man was Calorossi, a model, whose brother went to Paris and became known as the proprietor of a studio there. The woman, he said, was Maria, another model. The background is Dieppe. I suppose that Butler did this study in the autumn of 1866, using nos. 10 and 11, the water-colours of Dieppe, or some other sketch made on the spot, for the background. The idea was to make portraits of two heads with a landscape background in the manner of Giovanni Bellini. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These holy water holders and Madonnas are some of the cheap religious knick-knacks which are sold at most Italian Sanctuaries. We often brought back a few and gave them away to Gogin, Alfred, Clark, and other friends.
Bag for pennies (7) .
Miss Savage’s kettle-holder (8) .
In Oct. 1884 (see the Memoir) , about four months before her death, Miss Savage sent Butler a present of a pair of socks which she had knitted herself, and she promised to make him some more. Butler gratefully accepted her gift, but
“As for doing me any more, I flatly forbid it. ”

“ Inscribed “Samuel Butler, from his affectionate Godmother and Aunt Anna Worsley, September 13th, 1836.” So that he was not christened till he was more than nine months old, and he used to say that this delay was a risky business, because during all those months the devil had the run of him. He imitated the inscription in this Bible for the inscription in the christening Bible which Ernest spurns from him when he is about to undertake the conversion of Miss Maitland in chapter lx. of The Way of All Flesh. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This sketch of Robert was done, I suspect, with the camera lucida, and if so its date must be about 1882-3. Robert Doncaster was the husband of Mrs. Corrie; that is to say Mrs. Corrie, who was Butler’s laundress in Clifford’s Inn, “lost” her husband. After a suitable interval it was assumed that he was dead and she married Robert Doncaster and was known as Mrs. Doncaster. Robert, who was a half-witted old man, used to hang about the place, do odd jobs, and make himself fairly useful. He died in 1886.
p. 1357. Water-colour: Pinner. 1883.
SAMUEL BUTLER
58. Oil Painting: Edward James Jones. ”

“ The Washing Place. 1871.
“Butler made three oil sketches at Varallo all the same size, about 16x20. One is the washing place outside the town.” (Diary of a Journey, p. 16) . The other two were both done in the Piazza on the Sacro Monte. One was given to the Municipio of Varallo-Sesia ”

“ T. Butler, Rector of Langar. London, 1870. Also an edition inscribed, “Samuel Butler, October 20th, 1850”; and an edition of Dr. Butler’s “Atlas of Antient Geography.”
Environs of London, North side (eastern half missing) .
Environs of London, South side—Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Maidstone.
There is something wrong; one piece is much dirtier than the other; the two do not belong to one another. The dirty one is inscribed, almost illegibly, thus: “S. Butler, 15, Clifford’s Inn, Fleet Street, London, E.G. Please return to the above address. The finder, if poor, will be rewarded; if rich, thanked.” ”

“ All these things could be written about in Alps and Sanctuaries, but they could not be brought into the illustrations apart from the text; and anyone who looks at Butler’s sketches of Rossura may be disappointed. If he does not bear these things in mind he will not understand what Butler meant by saying that he knew of few things more touching in their way than the porch of Rossura church. He will be like a man listening to programme-music and knowing nothing of the programme.
40. Pencil sketch inscribed: “Handel when a boy. ”

“ Sadler made these two drawings about 1890 from photographs taken by Butler in 1888.
SAMUEL BUTLER
64. Water-colour: copy of a landscape behind a small Madonna and Child by Bartolomeo Veneto, signed and dated 1505.
I forget the precise date, but I think it was about 1898, when Butler was searching in real landscape for the original of the castle which appears in the background of one of the Giovanni Bellini pictures of the Madonna and Child in the National Gallery, the one p. 14with the bird on the tree and the man ploughing. It may now be attributed to some other Venetian painter. ”

“ The cabinet she refers to was one of the two Japanese cabinets, the next items, which he had bought at Neighbour’s grocery and tea-shop in Oxford Street, and which she had seen in his rooms. He used to keep stamps in them. ”

“ He did it to show the situation of Trapani and the Islands with Marettimo “all highest up in the sea.” In the Odyssey Ithaca is “all highest up in the sea,” and Butler supposed that the authoress in so describing it was thinking of Marettimo.
69. Wash drawing: Trapani and the Islands from Mount Eryx about 1898.
He wished to make a more complete version of no. 68, but this was as far as he could get; there was not enough time and there were too many interruptions.
p. 1570. Pencil sketch inscribed, “Calatafimi, Sund. May 13th, 1900. 2 hours. Eleven a.m. is the best light.” ”

“ It is shown with the portrait and the two windows in another illustration in ch. iv.
The first illustration in ch. iv. of Alps and Sanctuaries shows how the chapel with the altar in it (no. 38) is placed in relation to the porch. This is the chapel he was thinking of when he wrote:
“The church has been a good deal restored during the last few years, and an interesting old chapel—with an altar in it—at which Mass was said during a time of plague, while the people stood some way off in a meadow, has just been entirely renovated ”

“ These red lines, specially noticeable in Butler’s ordnance maps of the neighbourhood within thirty miles round London, denote his country walks, and are referred to in his Introduction to Alps and Sanctuaries.
Butler, Samuel, D.D. An Atlas of Modern Geography for the use of Young Persons and Junior Classes in Schools. Selected from Dr. Butler’s “Modern Atlas,” by the Author’s son, the Rev. ”

“ Sacro Monte di Varallo. Origine e Svolgimento. By Pietro Galloni. Varallo, 1914.
With two letters from Galloni and one from R. A. Streatfeild to H. F. Jones.
p. 33Grosvenor, The Hon. Mrs. Richard Cecil. Physical Exercises for Women and Girls. By the Hon. Mrs. Richard Cecil Grosvenor. Additional exercises, loose, accompanying. 1903.
She was formerly Mrs. Alfred Bovill, daughter of Charles Clarke, the author of The Beauclercs, Father and Son (see above) . She is mentioned in Butler’s Life of Dr. Butler and in the Memoir of Butler. ”

“ This article was not reproduced in Essays on Life, Art and Science (afterwards The Humour of Homer) because of the trouble of reproducing the illustrations, but it is among the Universal Review articles bound together and included in this catalogue (p. 19) .
A print of the great statue of S. Carlo Borromeo, near Arona, called “S. Carlone.”
A collection of photographs of Italian pictures, unmounted.
p. 51Three large cards with photographs of the fresco by Gaudenzio Ferrari which is in S. Maria delle Grazie at Varallo-Sesia. It is in twenty-one compartments. ”

“ One is “St. John Baptist’s head in a charger,” the other “The baptism in the Jordan.” Butler particularly liked the scratchings of names and dates on the former. The other three photographs are of pictures. The foregoing six cards (three, two and one) used to hang framed in Butler’s chambers.
A woman in a black dress from Lima. Used by Butler to make female heads for sale, but he was not successful.
The Weekly Press, N.Z., 21st Mar. 1917. Page 26 contains views of Butler’s homestead at Mesopotamia.
Two views of Butler’s homestead, Mesopotamia, New Zealand, extracted from the Press. ”

“ Water-colour: Siena. 1900.
73. Water-colour: Pisa, inside the top of the Leaning Tower. 1900.
74. Water-colour: Wassen. 1901.
75. Water-colour: Wassen. 1901.
76. Water-colour: Trapani, S. Liberale and Lo Scoglio di Mal Consiglio. 1901.
See The Authoress of the Odyssey. The Scoglio is the ship of Ulysses which Neptune turned into a rock as she was on her way home to Scheria.
77. Rough sketch by Butler of the islands Marettimo, Levanzo, and Favignana.
Two views showing how Marettimo is hidden by Levanzo when you are below and comes out over Levanzo when you are up Mount Eryx. ”

“ A translation into Homeric verse of a passage from Martin Chuzzlewit: attempted in consequence of a challenge. From The Eagle.
No date. Prospectus of The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler.
1887 (27 June) . Words of the Choruses from “Narcissus,” for performance at Mrs. Thomas Layton’s.
1890 (15 Dec.) . Programme of Shrewsbury School Concert, at which some of Butler’s music was performed.
* * * * *
1892. The Humour of Homer. Butler’s own copy.
1892-4. Butler’s own copies of his Odyssey pamphlets (see above) , with MS. notes. 2 sets.
* * * * *
p. ”

“ Fighting Man in Fiction, The. Woodville, N.Z. (1917?)
A New Zealand pamphlet with letter from and photo of E. C. Chudleigh, who sent it to me and who knew Butler in New Zealand.
Francatelli, C. E. The Cook’s Guide. By Charles Elmé Francatelli. London, 1865.
“I believe you could read Francatelli right through from beginning to end without being moved in the smallest degree.” Miss Savage to Butler (1877) . Memoir I. 246.
Galloni, Pietro. Sacro Monte di Varallo. Atti di Fondazione. By Pietro Galloni. Varallo, 1909. ”

“ See the Note-Books, p. 286.
p. 59WORKS BY SAMUEL BUTLER.
London: A. C. Fifield, 13, Clifford’s Inn, E.C. 4.
A First Year in Canterbury Settlement. New Edition, with other early essays. 7s. net.
Erewhon. 14th Impression of Tenth Edition. 6s. net.
The Fair Haven. New Edition. 7s. net.
Life and Habit. Third Edition, with Addenda. 7s. net.
Evolution Old and New. Third Edition, with Addenda. 7s. net.
Unconscious Memory. Third Edition, with Introduction by Marcus Hartog. 8s. 6d. net.
Alps and Sanctuaries. New and enlarged Edition. Illustrated. 7s. 6d. net. ”