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E. M. Forster and Samuel Butler
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Although almost everyone is aware that Bernard Shaw is the chief disciple of Samuel Butler, the fact that Butler's work had an influence on several other English writers of the first part of this century is not generally recognized. Ernest A. Baker, in his History of the English Novel, does list Somerset Maugham, H. G. Wells, Dorothy Richardson, and ten other novelists as members of what he is tempted to call a Butler school. But the least obviously yet most profoundly Butlerian of all contemporary English storytellers is not included in Baker's list. E. M. Forster should assuredly be placed second only to Shaw in any such hypothetical group of disciples.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1946
References
1 His best-known acknowledgment of indebtedness occurs in the preface to Major Bar-Bara (1907), “First Aid to Critics,” John Bull's Other Island and Major Barbara (New York: Brentano's, 1918), p. 172. The relationship between Shaw and Butler is discussed by E. Piper, “George Bernard Shaw's Beziehungen zu Samuel Butler dem Jüngeren,” Anglia, l, (1926), 295-316.
2 The ten other novelists are J. D. Beresford, Oliver Onions, Frank Swinnerton, Gilbert Cannon, Sir Hugh Walpole, May Sinclair, “Rebecca West,” Clemence Dane, E. M. Delafield, Virginia Woolf. Vol. X, Yesterday (London: H. F. and G. Witherby, 1939), p. 247.
3 Rose Macaulay, The Writings of E. M. Forster (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938), p. 136.
4 “Books that Influenced Me,” The New Statesman and Nation, xxviii (1944), 43.
5 Rose Macaulay, op. cit., pp. 36, 78.
6 See, for one example, his discussion in Alps and Sanctuaries of the fact that Englishmen take life too seriously, Chapter v, pp. 47-53. All page references to Butler's books in this paper are to the Shrewbury Edition (London: Jonathan Cape, 1923-26).
7 Ibid., Chapter xii, pp. 120-121, and throughout the book.
8 Butler's Erewhon contains much satire of English hypocrisy. Other good Examples are his notes “Cant and Hypocrisy” and “The English Church Abroad,” The Note-Books, pp. 348-349. See also his discussion of English priggishness, Alps and Sanctuaries, p. 120.
9 See the concluding chapter of Alps and Sanctuaries.
10 See Alps and Sanctuaries, Chapter I, for Butler's feelings about England. Also on page 120 he writes: “The North Italians are more like Englishmen, both in body and mind, than any other people whom I know … . They have all our strong points, but they have more grace and elasticity of mind than we have.”
11 Where Angels Fear to Tread (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920), Chapter x, p. 271.
12 Ibid., Chapter vi.
13 Alps and Sanctuaries, Chapter xxiv, pp. 247-250.
14 This point is made by Lionel Trilling, E. M. Forster (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1934), p. 73.
15 Ibid., p. 79.
16 This point is developed in detail by Lionel Trilling, op. cit., p. 57, It has also been made in discussions of Butler's rise to fame.
17 P. 334. Many notes in The Note-Books, not published in book form until 1912, are devoted to criticism of the Mrs. Failing sort of narrowness.
18 See his discussion of the importance of illusion, Alps and Sanctuaries, pp. 27-28. Another good example is the conclusion to Life and Habit.
19 Alps and Sanctuaries, pp. 87-88; “It follows, therefore—but whether it follows or no, it is certainly true—that neither faith alone nor reason alone is a sufficient guide: a man's safety lies neither in faith nor in reason, but in temper—in the power of fusing faith and reason, even when they appear most mutually destructive.” See also the section called “First Principles” in The Note-Books, pp. 314-338.
20 The Longest Journey (London: Edward Arnold, 1937), p. 27.
21 Ibid., p. 29.
22 See the character of Towneley in The Way of All Flesh and the chapter on “Ydgrun and the Ydgrunites” in Erewhon.
23 The Longest Journey, p. 69.
24 Ibid., p. 210.
25 Ibid., p. 85.
26 Ibid., p. 84.
27 Ibid., p. 86.
28 Ibid., p. 196.
29 Ibid., p. 220.
30 Ibid., p. 139.
31 Ibid., p. 105.
32 Ibid., p. 128.
33 Ibid., p. 30.
34 Ibid., p. 43.
35 The Note-Books, pp. 392-393.
36 The Longest Journey, p. 160. Butler makes very similar observations in Erewhon, Chapter x, and in the section called “Elementary Morality” in The Note-Books, pp. 17-31.
37 The Longest Journey, p. 52: “So, in time to come when the gates of heaven had shut, some faint radiance, some echo of wisdom might remain with him outside.”
38 Ibid., p. 74.
39 “The Barristers at Ypres” and “The Bishop of Chichester at Faido,” The Note-Books, pp. 257 and 273, are examples of this.
40 A Room with a View (London: Edward Arnold, 1908), p. 11.
41 Ibid., p. 16.
42 Ibid., p. 34. Butler's best-known expression of his views on the life after death is his sonnet “Not on Sad Stygian Shore,” The Note-Books, p. 427, but the idea is found throughout his books.
43 A Room with a View, p. 34.
44 The Way of All Flesh, Chapters lxxix and lxxxiv.
45 A Room with a View, p. 70.
46 Ibid., p. 242.
47 Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (London: Macmillan, 1920), i, 61.
48 The Fair Haven, pp. 15-17.
49 A Room with a View, p. 240.
50 Alps and Sanctuaries, p. 1. See also “Handel and Beethoven,” The Note-Books, p. 107.
51 A Room with a View, p. 244. A passage which shows that Butler was no atheist occurs in Erewhon at the end of Chapter xvi: “I have since met with many very godly people who have had a great knowledge of divinity, but no sense of the divine: and again, I have seen a radiance upon the face of those who were worshipping the divine either in art or nature—in picture or statue—in field or cloud or sea—in man, woman, or child—which I have never seen kindled by any talking about the nature and attributes of God. Mention but the word divinity, and our sense of the divine is clouded.”
52 A Room with a View, p. 247.
53 In Essays on Life, Art and Science (London, 1904), in the Shrewsbury Edition Vol. xix, p. 93: “Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”
54 “Handel and Music,” The Note-Books, pp. 170-132.
55 D. H. Lawrence said that their interest in money made the characters of Howard's End not worth writing about.
56 The Note-Books, pp. 29-30, p. 26.
57 Forster could have seen The Note-Books while writing Howard's End, for they were appearing in The New Quarterly Review from November 1907 to May 1910. The notes quoted above appeared in 1907.
58 Howard's End (London: Edward Arnold, 1924), pp. 57-58.
59 Ibid., pp. 100-101. See The Note-Böoks, p. 17: “If there are two worlds at all (and that there are I have no doubt) it stands to reason that we ought to make the best of both of them, and more particularly of the one with which we are most immediately concerned.”
60 Howard's End, p. 100.
61 Ibid., pp. 123-124.
62 Ibid., p. 124.
63 Ibid., p. 170.
64 Ibid., p. 158.
65 Ibid., p. 192.
66 Ibid., p. 340.
67 Ibid., p. 72.
68 Ibid., p. 19.
69 Ibid., pp. 192-193.
70 An Indian student visiting the United States assures me that A Passage to India gives one of the clearest pictures ever drawn by a westerner of the Indian way of life.
71 A Passage to India (New York: Modern Library, 1924), p. 52.
72 Ibid., p. 61.
73 Ibid., p. 72. For Butler's view of lying see Alps and Sanctuaries, pp. 51-52: “The good man who tells no lies wittingly to himself and is never unkindly, may lie and lie and lie whenever he chooses to other people and he will not be false to any man.”
74 A Passage to India, p. 119. Butler says the same thing in The Note-Books, p. 373, “Myself and my Books:” “Bodily offspring I do not leave, but mental offspring I do. Well, my books do not have to be sent to school and college and then insist on going into the Church or take to drinking or marry their mother's maid.”
75 Ibid., p. 121.
76 Ibid., p. 191.
77 Ibid., p. 191.
78 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927).
79 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936).
80 The Way of All Flesh, Chapter lxxxv.
81 Abinger Harvest, p. 62.
82 xxviii (1944), 43.
83 London Mercury, xxxviii (1938), 397-404.