Erewhon: 150th Anniversary Edition Page 4

  A far more complimentary, though equally idealized, view of gender comes from the politician Julius Vogel, who was deeply involved in promoting women’s education and suffrage as well as their participation as equal citizens of the future. The protagonist of Anno Domini 2000, or Woman’s Destiny is Hilda Fitzherbert, the undersecretary of home affairs. Although very young for the role, having achieved it at the age of twenty-three, she is nonetheless very far from the only politically able woman in the text. Both the prime minister of the United Kingdom and the president of the United States are women, and women hold perfect equality in all areas of education and vocation. Hilda herself is an accomplished scientist, and women’s abilities in areas such as diplomacy and law are lauded within the text. It is fair to say that Hilda is something of a Mary Sue, but she represents Vogel’s hopes for the place of women in a future New Zealand. In fact, for a brief period of time spanning 2005–2006, New Zealand’s head of state, governor general, prime minister, chief justice, and speaker of the house were all women; those of us who remembered Anno Domini 2000 smiled to ourselves. Given that New Zealand was also the first country in the world to give women the vote, in 1893, this may be another example of cultural context impacting utopian thought. Three texts are not enough to draw a conclusive sample, of course, but Butler stayed in New Zealand for less than five years, whereas the other two authors were presumably more permanent residents.59 It is certainly possible Butler simply missed the way that the wind was blowing. Vogel’s substantially more radical views were, in this instance, rather more predictive, and certainly a little closer to what I would call utopian. They were also, perhaps, a little more manipulative. Anno Domini 2000 could, after all, provide an idealistic, romantic, and imaginative illustration of Vogel’s political and social ambitions for this country. In this, he was a manipulative product of a manipulated landscape.

  Butler was no different.

  Conclusion

  Samuel Butler’s journey to the Antipodes was of a relatively short duration. Still, it was long enough to get a feel for the landscape, and long enough to imprint on it as a place of possibility. The landscape that he found, worked on, and wrote about was profoundly manipulated by human settlement and by colonialism. It was in the process of being transformed. It was a place of creation, and of re-creation, with elements of home transported—transplanted—into a new setting. Is it any wonder, then, that when he began to write his great utopian novel, he gave the character of Higgs his own experiences? Higgs journeys from a familiar world into an unfamiliar one, and then he does it again. The two journeys reinforce each other as the manipulated landscape of the real gives way to the manipulated culture of the unreal, and they each force him to decide where he really belongs.

  Neither Butler nor Higgs found the utopia they expected. Both of them, in the end, returned to the uncomplicatedly familiar, to landscapes and cultures to which they had already learned to conform. They both went back changed. Butler’s change included the beginnings of a utopian satire, one which itself manipulated readers into interrogating their own assumptions about evolution, technology, and health. You, too, who have picked up this book and are reading this introduction are about to be manipulated by him. Like Samuel Butler, you will bring your prejudices with you.

  Like Samuel Butler, you are not the only one.

  Erewhon is certainly the most famous of all the New Zealand utopias, and it shares with The Great Romance a particular facility for imagining how future scientific discoveries and inventions might impact society. Butler’s satirical response to the theory of evolution indicates a deep discomfort with the potential of evolutionary change, particularly on a species level. This potential is something that some readers may find alienating. I look at it with a scientist’s eye and don’t find it fearful. The thought of being part of an evolutionary journey that stretches from “another type of being” to “another type of being,” from pre-human to machine, is a little more wondrous for me than it is for the inhabitants of Erewhon, or even for Butler himself.

  His skewering of natural selection, as ruthlessly applied to sick individuals and their unsupportive communities, may be more sympathetic. Then again, we have learned—or many of us have—to value the existence and contributions of others, whether they are like us or not. In some ways, we have hopefully learned better than Butler. His depiction of Indigenous peoples and women especially is superficial at best. It is fair to say that their experiences held little interest for him and his satirical scalpel is directed towards other subjects. In this he is the least progressive of the New Zealand-based utopian writers discussed here; while Vogel and the Inhabitant were equally culpable in their refusal to address the experiences of Indigenous peoples and the often-destructive reality of colonialism, they did show interest in envisioning a different future for women (white women, that is). Limited as those attempts may be, that Butler opted not to do the same is a choice that can be traced back not only to a fear of difference but to a fear of not belonging. Higgs enters Erewhon as an outsider, and although he tries to assimilate, he is incapable of truly belonging. Unable, in the end, to conform enough to save himself from the threat of prosecution, accused of contaminating Erewhon with disease and technology, he has to go home, to return to the place where he does conform and where he is most fit to survive.

  And perhaps, in the end, that is the critical benefit that utopias, including Erewhon, really bring about: the ability to look differently, to look creatively as well as re-creatively, to choose to progress in different, sometimes uncomfortable ways, and to question whether or not that progress is worth the price.

  1 Joseph Jones, The Cradle of Erewhon: Samuel Butler in New Zealand (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1960), 7. Following a crisis of faith, Butler’s refusal to obey his reverend father’s wishes and become ordained himself made emigration a more appealing prospect.

  2 South Island “high country” refers to land above approximately 700 metres, and consists of a number of different vegetation zones. One of these is pastoral land in the rain shadow of the Southern Alps, characterised by tussocks and other grasses; this land is primarily used for grazing, typically of sheep. (Simon Swaffield and Ken Hughey, “The South Island High Country of New Zealand,” Mountain Research and Development 24, no. 4 (2001): 320–326.)

  3 Peter Raby, Samuel Butler: A Biography (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), 87.

  4 Both “Darwin on the Origin of Species” and “Darwin Among the Machines” can be read in Butler’s A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, with Other Early Essays, edited by R. A. Streatfeild (London: A.C. Fifield, 1914). Alternately, they can be found online at the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection, run by Victoria University of Wellington: https://​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/.

  5 Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 184.

  6 Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 182.

  7 Reproduced in Henry Festing Jones' Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon: A Memoir (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1920), 133.

  8 Jones, The Cradle of Erewhon, 104.

  9 Dominic Alessio, “Promoting Paradise: Utopianism and National Identity in New Zealand, 1870–1930,” New Zealand Journal of History 42, no. 1 (2008): 22–41.

  10 Lyman Tower Sargent, “Utopianism and the Creation of New Zealand National Identity,” Utopian Studies 12, no. 1 (2001): 1–18.

  11 The Inhabitant, The Great Romance (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008).

  12 The Alexander Turnbull Library is part of the National Library in Wellington, and the Hocken Library is attached to the University of Otago in Dunedin.

  13 Julius Vogel, Anno Domini 2000, or Woman’s Destiny (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1889).

  14 Joan Stevens. The New Zealand Novel 1860–1965 (Wellington: A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1966), 27.

  15 Vogel, Anno Domini 2000, 32.

  16 Butler, Erewhon, 97.

  17 Butler, Erewhon, 40.

  18 Reprinted in A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, with Other Early Essays, op. cit. All references relate to this collected 1914 edition.

  19 Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 119.

  20 Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 147.

  21 Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 159. This chapter is the article “Darwin on the Origin of Species,” which is mentioned above as one of Butler’s publications in the Christchurch Press.

  22 Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 125. Given my own emotional attachment to New Zealand flora and fauna, I have tried and failed not to hold this clearly ill-conceived opinion against him.

  23 Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 134.

  24 See David B. McWethy et al., “Rapid Deforestation of South Island, New Zealand, by Early Polynesian Fires,” The Holocene 19, no. 6 (2009): 883–897.

  25 Butler, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, 134.

  26 Butler, Erewhon, 75.

  27 Butler, Erewhon, 75.

  28 Butler, Erewhon, 74–75.

  29 Jones argues that “Kahabuka” may or may not be pseudo-Māori, and gives a possible translation as “cabbagehead,” which does not come across as flattering. He goes on to comment that “Chowbok” can be taken as “one more example of the inveterate Anglo-Saxon indifference to the pronunciation of proper names” (Cradle of Erewhon, 138).

  30 Butler, Erewhon, 100.

  31 Butler, Erewhon, 100.

  32 Butler, Erewhon, 100.

  33 Quoted in Mason Durie, Ngā Kāhui Pou: Launching Māori Futures (Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2003), 19–20.
r />   34 Durie, Ngā Kāhui Pou, 20.

  35 Butler, 116. Note that Butler uses the plural form “Maoris,” when there is no “s” in Te Reo Māori (the Māori language). “Māori” can be both singular and plural.

  36 Butler, 127.

  37 Vogel, Anno Domini 2000, 198–199.

  38 Dominic Alessio, introduction to The Great Romance, xxxvii.

  39 The Inhabitant, The Great Romance, 27.

  40 Butler, Erewhon, 123.

  41 Butler, Erewhon, 123.

  42 Butler, Erewhon, 128.

  43 Butler, Erewhon, 112.

  44 Butler, Erewhon, 123.

  45 Jens LohfertJørgensen, “Bacillophobia: Man and Microbes in Dracula, The War of the Worlds, and The Nigger of the Narcissus,” Critical Survey 27, no. 2 (2015): 36.

  46 Butler, Erewhon, 142.

  47 Butler, Erewhon, 142.

  48 Butler, Erewhon, 189.

  49 Butler, Erewhon, 184.

  50 Butler, Erewhon, 124.

  51 Butler, Erewhon, 250–51.

  52 Butler, Erewhon, 87.

  53 Butler, Erewhon, 83.

  54 Butler, Erewhon, 84.

  55 Butler, Erewhon, 101.

  56 Butler, Erewhon, 101.

  57 Peter Mudford, introduction to Erewhon, by Samuel Butler (London: Penguin Books, 1985), 9.

  58 The Inhabitant, The Great Romance, 26.

  59 This is definitely the case for Vogel, but while the Inhabitant was known to live in New Zealand, the lack of certain identity makes this impossible to confirm.

  Chapter I

  Wastelands

  If the reader will excuse me, I will say nothing of my antecedents, nor of the circumstances which led me to leave my native country; the narrative would be tedious to him and painful to myself. Suffice it, that when I left home it was with the intention of going to some new colony, and either finding, or even perhaps purchasing, waste crown land suitable for cattle or sheep farming, by which means I thought that I could better my fortunes more rapidly than in England.

  It will be seen that I did not succeed in my design, and that however much I may have met with that was new and strange, I have been unable to reap any pecuniary advantage.

  It is true, I imagine myself to have made a discovery which, if I can be the first to profit by it, will bring me a recompense beyond all money computation, and secure me a position such as has not been attained by more than some fifteen or sixteen persons, since the creation of the universe. But to this end I must possess myself of a considerable sum of money: neither do I know how to get it, except by interesting the public in my story, and inducing the charitable to come forward and assist me. With this hope I now publish my adventures; but I do so with great reluctance, for I fear that my story will be doubted unless I tell the whole of it; and yet I dare not do so, lest others with more means than mine should get the start of me. I prefer the risk of being doubted to that of being anticipated, and have therefore concealed my destination on leaving England, as also the point from which I began my more serious and difficult journey.

  My chief consolation lies in the fact that truth bears its own impress, and that my story will carry conviction by reason of the internal evidences for its accuracy. No one who is himself honest will doubt my being so.

  I reached my destination in one of the last months of 1868, but I dare not mention the season, lest the reader should gather in which hemisphere I was. The colony was one which had not been opened up even to the most adventurous settlers for more than eight or nine years, having been previously uninhabited, save by a few tribes of savages who frequented the seaboard. The part known to Europeans consisted of a coastline about eight hundred miles in length (affording three or four good harbors), and a tract of country extending inland for a space varying from two to three hundred miles, until it a reached the offshoots of an exceedingly lofty range of mountains, which could be seen from far out upon the plains, and were covered with perpetual snow. The coast was perfectly well known both north and south of the tract to which I have alluded, but in neither direction was there a single harbor for five hundred miles, and the mountains, which descended almost into the sea, were covered with thick timber, so that none would think of settling.

  With this bay of land, however, the case was different. The harbors were sufficient; the country was timbered, but not too heavily; it was admirably suited for agriculture; it also contained millions on millions of acres of the most beautifully grassed country in the world, and of the best suited for all manner of sheep and cattle. The climate was temperate, and very healthy; there were no wild animals, nor were the natives dangerous, being few in number and of an intelligent tractable disposition.

  It may be readily understood that when once Europeans set foot upon this territory they were not slow to take advantage of its capabilities. Sheep and cattle were introduced, and bred with extreme rapidity; men took up their 50,000 or 100,000 acres of country, going inland one behind the other, till in a few years there was not an acre between the sea and the front ranges which was not taken up, and stations either for sheep or cattle were spotted about at intervals of some twenty or thirty miles over the whole country. The front ranges stopped the tide of squatters for some little time; it was thought that there was too much snow upon them for too many months in the year,—that the sheep would get lost, the ground being too difficult for shepherding,—that the expense of getting wool down to the ship’s side would eat up the farmer’s profits,—and that the grass was too rough and sour for sheep to thrive upon; but one after another determined to try the experiment, and it was wonderful how successfully it turned out. Men pushed farther and farther into the mountains, and found a very considerable tract inside the front range, between it and another which was loftier still, though even this was not the highest, the great snowy one which could be seen from out upon the plains. This second range, however, seemed to mark the extreme limits of pastoral country; and it was here, at a small and newly founded station, that I was received as a cadet, and soon regularly employed. I was then just twenty-two years old.

  I was delighted with the country and the manner of life. It was my daily business to go up to the top of a certain high mountain, and down one of its spurs on to the flat, in order to make sure that no sheep had crossed their boundaries. I was to see the sheep, not necessarily close at hand, nor to get them in a single mob, but to see enough of them here and there to feel easy that nothing had gone wrong; this was no difficult matter, for there were not above eight hundred of them; and, being all breeding ewes, they were pretty quiet.

  There were a good many sheep which I knew, as two or three black ewes, and a black lamb or two, and several others which had some distinguishing mark whereby I could tell them. I would try and see all these, and if they were all there, and the mob looked large enough, I might rest assured that all was well. It is surprising how soon the eye becomes accustomed to missing twenty sheep out of two or three hundred. I had a telescope and a dog, and would take bread and meat and tobacco with me. Starting with early dawn, it would be night before I could complete my round; for the mountain over which I had to go was very high. In winter it was covered with snow, and the sheep needed no watching from above. If I were to see sheep dung or tracks going down on to the other side of the mountain (where there was a valley with a stream—a mere cul de sac), I was to follow them, and look out for sheep; but I never saw any, the sheep always descending on to their own side, partly from habit, and partly because there was abundance of good sweet feed, which had been burnt in the early spring, just before I came, and was now deliciously green and rich, while that on the other side had never been burnt, and was rank and coarse.