CHAPTER XXIX 1891 THE PROBLEM OF THE ODYSSEY Butler to Miss Butler. Aet. 55 14 Feb. 1891-Alfred and I were in the dark-room, making 1891 slides. I was afraid of exposing the same plate twice and said: "Now, Alfred, we must be careful. I am afraid I shall get confused." Alfred replied: "Yes, Sir, you will, but I am here”—all said quite unconsciously. Yesterday he said: "Let me look, Sir; yes, perhaps I shall see that you have your hair cut to-morrow." 99 This afternoon I am to call on the Tillbrooks, so this morning he examined my hair and said reproachfully: "Oh no, Sir, you can't go; it's all ragged, it won't do at all. You can go to Mr. Skinner's in the Turnstile as you go to the Museum, if you like; or, if you haven't done it then, I'll have a cup of coffee for you at half-past two and then you can go down to Mr. Hunt's-that's how I'll settle it. Don't forget." And then he looks perfectly satisfied. Of course I went to Mr. Skinner's straight away, for I knew if I didn't I must go to Mr. Hunt's and I might as well get it over. Mr. J. D. Enys to Butler. MESOPOTAMIA [NEW ZEALAND], DEAR BUTLER-I have ridden up here from Mount Peel just to see the old place again. Your old hut is still standing, nearly as you left it, but the bedrooms thrown into one. It is used as kitchen and married couple's quarters. Your old kitchen was burnt down some years since. A new house has been built a little nearer your old kitchen than the old hut, and about 104 MESOPOTAMIA XXIX 1891 50 feet more out towards the Rangitata. Trees close the whole Aet. 55 place in on both sides and back, in front some fine Insignis 1 stand near the edge and you look under them as the branches are cut near the ground. It must be about 27 years since I was last here, just as Brabazon was putting down the floor of the then new shed which had not been used. McMillan, the present owner, shears over 20,000 sheep and has 2,000 acres of freehold. He grows turnips and oats and cuts oaten hay enough for his horses. I rode today up to the old bush which has been all burnt except the Forest Creek end by an accidental fire, most unfortunately. The crops are grown across Jason's gully and this year have been good. Sheep looking well also. Many thanks for the autograph you have so kindly remembered to save for me of C. J. Blomfield. I will call for it and a talk over old times in the autumn if I live to come home all right. I am visiting old friends before leaving and find it hard to part. [After saying that he had sold out and was coming home, he continues:] If you came out again you would see many changes-trees growing round all the houses on the plains, gravel-pits planted all over the place, and water-races running into nearly all the fields from Christchurch to Timaru, indeed without them, this last three dry years, stock would have died or had to be sent away. Have been a round trip of 16 days to the Chatham Islands to see my old friend Chudleigh who has long been settled there. I had as a companion the new bishop of Christchurch-such a pleasant man, full of fun, etc. of all kinds. Have written from your old home as I often think of you here. Yours sincerely, JOHN D. ENYS. We had by this time made some progress with our oratorio Ulysses. Butler knew he had failed as a painter and thought he knew why. "If," as he wrote on his picture, Family Prayers," "If I had gone on doing things out of my own head, instead of making studies, I should have been all right." He might fail also in music, but it should not be for the same reason. Writing exercises for Rockstro in medieval counterpoint might lead to his becoming an expert writer of exercises, which would have 1 Professor G. S. Sale told me that the Pinus Insignis was introduced into the colony from America after Butler's time, and Mr. J. D. Enys told me that those at Mesopotamia were planted by Mr. Campbell. He was Bishop of London and Butler saved the autograph from among Dr. Butler's papers. XXIX THE ODYSSEAN MYSTERY 105 the been useful if he had wanted to teach others to give 1891 lessons in counterpoint, but he wanted to compose music Act. 55 for himself and this could only be done by composing. "Do not learn to do, but learn in doing." The doing of the music was, however, interfered with by the Life of Dr. Butler, which occupied him very closely. I had therefore undertaken to make a start by selecting episodes from poem and arranging the order of the songs and choruses. For this purpose, seeing that I out-Shakespeare Shakespeare in the smallness of my Greek, I used The Adventures of Ulysses by Charles Lamb, a work of whose existence we should have known nothing if Butler had not stumbled upon Ainger's book about Lamb at Wilderhope (ante, p. 38). We were to collaborate in writing the words; it ended however in Butler's writing nearly all the words himself, as he had done for Narcissus. As to the music, we each chose such parts of the words as we preferred and composed our music separately, so that we were able to initial each number. Butler accepted my proposals for the general scheme of the whole but, when he had time, he looked again at the Odyssey in the original, just to make sure that Lamb had not misled me. He had not forgotten all his classics and found the original poem so delightful that he could not put it down. Fascinated, however, as I at once was by its amazing interest and beauty, I had an ever-present sense of a something that was eluding me and of a riddle which I could not read. The more I reflected upon the words, so luminous and so transparent, the more I felt a darkness behind them that I must pierce before I could see the heart of the writer-and this was what I wanted; for art is only interesting in so far as it reveals an artist. (The Authoress of the Odyssey, p. 6.) To assist in clearing up the mystery, he set about translating the poem into prose "with the same benevolent leaning (say) towards Tottenham Court Road that Messrs. Butcher and Lang have shown towards Wardour Street." When he came to the Phaeacian episode he felt sure that the writer was drawing from life. The idea that he might be reading the words of a blind bard living in the servants' hall quieted him for 106 MISS SAVAGE AS NAUSICAA XXIX 1891 some time. "It was not till I got to Circe that it flashed Aet. 55 upon me that I was reading the work not of an old man but of a young woman.' In July he started for his summer holiday, travelling via Basel as usual and staying a few days at Seelisberg on the Lake of Lucerne, then over the S. Gottardo to Como and up to Chiavenna, where I joined him. I wrote to him, 9th August 1891, telling him when to expect me and he made this note on my letter: It was during the few days that I was at Chiavenna (at the Hotel Grotta Crimée) that I hit upon the feminine authorship of the Odyssey. I did not find out its having been written at Trapani till January 1892. In The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912) is an adaptation of the famous saying of Lord Shaftesbury about religion: "All sensible men are of the same opinion about women, and no sensible man ever says what that opinion is.' These words might be spoken equally sincerely by one who thought well and by one who thought ill of women; they state that the speaker had an opinion, but do not disclose which way it inclined. Butler must have had a high opinion of women or he could not have believed that the Odyssey was written by one of them; nevertheless, according to the dictum, had he been a sensible man he would have taken care not to publish his opinion. Certainly the publishing of it did not meet with general acceptance. I have no doubt that in forming it he was influenced by his friendship with Miss Savage. Somewhere he speaks of the Odyssey as having been written by a prehistoric Jane Austen. What Jane Austen could do Miss Savage could have done; but Miss Savage seems to have been without the desire to leave any record of herself; at any rate she left none beyond what can be found in her correspondence. She may be said to have posted her claim to a literary reputation in Butler's letterbox. We went from Chiavenna to Bormio and walked to Bolladore. On the way we stopped at— XXIX DEMODOCUS EDOLO 107 Our guide, whenever he wanted to ask a question of a 1891 girl or girls, called them "bionda" or "bionde," " Aet. 55 my fair or my fair ones," and this he did repeatedly. He had been up all night mowing by moonlight, beginning at eleven; then at nine A.M. he had started off with us, carrying our heavy loads, and it was nearly six in the evening before we got to Edolo. He had shoes but no stockings. We gave him twice as much as he had bargained for and he seemed to like us. When he had landed us at Edolo there came on a dreadful thunderstorm, but he started to go back. Since then I have heard no more, but shall probably get a line from him when I send him his photograph. It was a drizzly, chilly autumn evening at Edolo, and, as we sat smoking after supper among the village guests in the large room of the inn, dimly lighted by a few hanging oil lamps, there came in two young men of whom something appeared to be expected. Presently one of them stood up and recited the canto of Dante that tells about the death of Ugolino, and the other young man took round the hat to collect pennies. Then they went away out into the cold wet night, but they forgot the hat and had to come back for it. Butler, thinking of the feast given by Alcinous in the eighth book of the Odyssey, and seeing in this professional reciter a survival of the ancient bards, said to me : "I wonder whether Demodocus ever forgot his hat." We went over the Passo d'Aprica to Sondrio and so by Colico, Varese, Laveno, and Arona to Varallo-Sesia, where Mademoiselle Vaillant and her friend Miss Scott joined us. Signor Constantino Durio, one of the wealthy inhabitants of Varallo, had given a new facciata for the church on the Sacro Monte, and there was a festa to celebrate the laying of the first stone or the dedication of the completed work-I forget which it was. All sorts of people came for the ceremony, including the Archbishop of Vercelli, the Bishop of Novara, and the astronomer Padre Denza. Butler took all their photographs and had the further pleasure of showing Mademoiselle Vaillant and Miss Scott round the chapels. We also took the ladies for an excursion up to Civiasco, |