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    Samuel Butler: a sketch
    Samuel Butler: a sketch
    Samuel Butler: a sketch
    Ebook66 pages58 minutes

    Samuel Butler: a sketch

    By Henry Festing Jones

    ()

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Samuel Butler: a sketch

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      Book preview

      Samuel Butler - Henry Festing Jones

      Samuel Butler: A Sketch, by Henry Festing Jones

      The Project Gutenberg eBook, Samuel Butler: A Sketch, by Henry Festing

      Jones

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: Samuel Butler: A Sketch

      Author: Henry Festing Jones

      Release Date: May 1, 2007 [eBook #2993]

      Language: English

      Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

      ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAMUEL BUTLER: A SKETCH***

      Transcribed from the 1921 Jonathan Cape edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

      SAMUEL BUTLER:

      A Sketch, by Henry Festing Jones

      Author of Samuel Butler: A Memoir

      Jonathan Cape

      Eleven Gower Street London

      First published in "The Humour of Homer & Other Essays" by Samuel Butler 1913.  Reissued by Jonathan Cape 1921

      Samuel Butler: A Sketch

      Samuel Butler was born on the 4th December, 1835, at the Rectory, Langar, near Bingham, in Nottinghamshire.  His father was the Rev. Thomas Butler, then Rector of Langar, afterwards one of the canons of Lincoln Cathedral, and his mother was Fanny Worsley, daughter of John Philip Worsley of Arno’s Vale, Bristol, sugar-refiner.  His grandfather was Dr. Samuel Butler, the famous headmaster of Shrewsbury School, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield.  The Butlers are not related either to the author of Hudibras, or to the author of the Analogy, or to the present Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

      Butler’s father, after being at school at Shrewsbury under Dr. Butler, went up to St. John’s College, Cambridge; he took his degree in 1829, being seventh classic and twentieth senior optime; he was ordained and returned to Shrewsbury, where he was for some time assistant master at the school under Dr. Butler.  He married in 1832 and left Shrewsbury for Langar.  He was a learned botanist, and made a collection of dried plants which he gave to the Town Museum of Shrewsbury.

      Butler’s childhood and early life were spent at Langar among the surroundings of an English country rectory, and his education was begun by his father.  In 1843, when he was only eight years old, the first great event in his life occurred; the family, consisting of his father and mother, his two sisters, his brother and himself, went to Italy.  The South-Eastern Railway stopped at Ashford, whence they travelled to Dover in their own carriage; the carnage was put on board the steamboat, they crossed the Channel, and proceeded to Cologne, up the Rhine to Basle and on through Switzerland into Italy, through Parma, where Napoleon’s widow was still reigning, Modena, Bologna, Florence, and so to Rome.  They had to drive where there was no railway, and there was then none in all Italy except between Naples and Castellamare.  They seemed to pass a fresh custom-house every day, but, by tipping the searchers, generally got through without inconvenience.  The bread was sour and the Italian butter rank and cheesy—often uneatable.  Beggars ran after the carriage all day long, and when they got nothing jeered at the travellers and called them heretics.  They spent half the winter in Rome, and the children were taken up to the top of St. Peter’s as a treat to celebrate their father’s birthday.  In the Sistine Chapel they saw the cardinals kiss the toe of Pope Gregory XVI., and in the Corso, in broad daylight, they saw a monk come rolling down a staircase like a sack of potatoes, bundled into the street by a man and his wife.  The second half of the winter was spent in Naples.  This early introduction to the land which he always thought of and often referred to as his second country made an ineffaceable impression upon him.

      In January, 1846, he went to school at Allesley, near Coventry, under the Rev. E. Gibson.  He seldom referred to his life there, though sometimes he would say something that showed he had not forgotten all about it.  For instance, in 1900, Mr. Sydney C. Cockerell, now the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, showed him a medieval missal, laboriously illuminated.  He found that it fatigued him to look at it, and said that such books ought never to be made.  Cockerell replied that such books relieved the tedium of divine service, on which Butler made a note ending thus:

      Give me rather a robin or a peripatetic cat like the one whose loss the parishioners of St. Clement Danes are still deploring.  When I was at school at Allesley the boy who knelt opposite me at morning prayers, with his face not more than a yard away from mine, used to blow pretty little bubbles with his saliva which he would send sailing off the tip of his tongue like miniature soap bubbles; they very soon broke, but they had a career of a foot or

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