BUTLER, SAMUEL (1835-1902) was the son of the Rev. Thomas Butler and grandson of Samuel Butler (1774-1839), Bishop of Lichfield. Born at Langar, Nottinghamshire, he was educated at Allesley, near Coventry, and at Shrewsbury school. At St John's College, Cambridge, he took a high place in the classical tripos in 1858. He was deeply influenced at an early age by Italy and music, and studied art with some success, painting passably in water colours. He was intended for the church, but his opinions made this profession distasteful to him, and after stormy scenes with his father he persuaded him to make available sufficient capital to enable the son to settle as a sheep farmer in New Zealand.

Sailing in the Roman Emperor (Sep 1859) Butler landed in Lyttelton in Jan 1860. With a companion he took long rides through the province in search of land, and eventually selected a small property up the Rangitata river which he called Mesopotamia. There he settled in Jun with a man and two cadets, their nearest neighbour being 25 miles distant. The station was of 8,000 acres and Butler soon had 3,000 sheep. His cadet, John Brabazon, had a fourth share. Though quite inexperienced, Butler showed great determination and judgment and succeeded in a few years in achieving his ambition by doubling his capital of £4,000, and thus being able to return to England. His letters home, after being severely edited by his father, were published in 1863 under the title A First Year in Canterbury Settlement. They showed that he had a fund of common-sense. By the end of 1863, aided by the reflected prosperity of the Otago goldfields, Butler sold the property to William Parkerson. While at Mesopotamia he had written for The Press some articles which he afterwards used in Erewhon, or Over the Range (1872). In these, as in many subsequent works, he satirises the Darwinian theory and conventional religion. Amongst Butler's acquaintances in New Zealand were G. S. Sale, William Rolleston, W. S. Moorhouse, Joshua Strange Williams, John Baker and von Haast. During his occupancy of Mesopotamia, but while he was temporarily absent, Dr Andrew Sinclair (q.v.) met his death in fording the Rangitata river, and was buried on the flat below the homestead. On returning to England Butler established himself at Clifford's Inn in London and devoted his attention mainly to music and painting. Between 1868 and 1876 he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy. But the publication of his book Life and Habit in 1877 convinced him that letters were his forte, and thereafter he wrote regularly. He was extremely versatile, indulging with equal thoroughness and success in classical exercises such as the translation into colloquial English of the Iliad and the Odyssey and in biological controversy. His dispute with Darwin over evolution, in the course of which he published three books, rather embittered Darwin and did not entirely satisfy Butler. With Festing Jones, afterwards his biographer, Butler composed a secular oratorio Narcissus (1888) and he had done his part of another (Ulysses) before his death. Butler died on 18 Jun 1902, and his best known novel The Way of All Flesh was published posthumously in 1903.

Festing Jones (pp); Encycl. Brit.; D.N.B.; Acland; Baker; Cant. O.N.; Wigram; Natural History of Canterbury; The Press, 25 May 1911.

Reference: Volume 1, page 80

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