Erewhon

This being notice of my first reading of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (reference 1), introduced by Wikipedia at reference 2. 

Erewhon, the book first noticed at reference 3 and bought for next to nothing – that is to say £2.65 including postage – from Awesome Books of reference 4, via Abebooks (now owned by Amazon). A perfectly decent Penguin paperback first published in 1970, so quite possibly quite old. Hard to see how it can be worth anyone’s while to punt books out at this sort of price.

Not to be confused with the Californian foodie operation at reference 5 below and snapped above.

We get a scholarly introduction, the 1872 title page, the very short original preface, the rather more substantial prefaces of 1872 and 1901, 29 chapters, an appendix and some notes; 270 pages in all. The first six chapters are a regular travel adventure story, the narrator’s story of getting over the mountains to Erewhon from his colonial sheep farm, the last two the perilous escape from Erewhon with his lady love and what happened next. The intervening 21 chapters being the account of life in and customs of Erewhon. I only realised rather late in the day that ‘Erewhon’ is a three syllable anagram of ‘nowhere’.

Erewhon being a place not so very different from nineteenth century England, but stretched a bit here and there to make Butler’s points. A sort of satirical essay in story form.

A book which, unlike Walden Two, does not offer a recipe for the good life, rather has spirited pops at various Victorian customs and beliefs. A lot of which are still relevant today, for example his amusing ideas for the proper management of memorial sculptures in public spaces. Perhaps he saw the London of his day being rather plagued with the stuff, rather as I see London now.

A few samples

Chapter 10. The curious ideas of the Erewhonians about crime and punishment. With being physically ill being a serious crime, sometimes resulting in imprisonment. While theft or fraud was a less serious matter, often treated by the family straightener, who would usually prescribe a course of physical punishment, rather in the way that with us the family doctor might prescribe a course of treatment.

Page 166. Some sensible remarks about the limitations of translations and of language generally.

Page 169. Magic potions for those of the unborn (extraterrestrial arrivals) who rather foolishly decide to be born here. I am reminded of the widespread use of magic potions in fiction and drama: Shakespeare, Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) and, more recently, Asterix. Learned papers about the use of potions as a narrative device? 

Page 185. What looks like a pop at the teaching of Latin, at Oxbridge and at lawyers more generally.

Page 189. A tongue-in-cheek derivation of the word ‘idiot’, a derivation for which OED gives no support: an old word, originally from the Latin and before that the Greek, which had two clusters of meanings. The first about being uneducated and the second about being stupid. This derivation being followed by various two-edged remarks about the value of progress.

Chapters 23 and 24. Various thoughts on consciousness, machines and the future. All quite sound considering that they were written 150 years ago.

Chapters 26 and 27. The brush of the long-suffering Erewhonians with respect for animal then vegetable life. Only that which is thoroughly spoiled may be eaten. An entertaining tale of how such nonsense can get enshrined in law and of the consequential goings on at the margins. Think prohibition.

The book closes with a scheme for capturing large numbers of Erewhonians and transporting them to the sugar fields of Queensland where they would labour while being converted into the truth faith of our Lord. Thus killing two birds with one stone.

Grundy

Mrs Grundy figures large in Erewhon, albeit in the anagram forms of Ydgrun, Ydgrunites and Ydgrunism. More or less the state religion.

According to Wikipedia: ‘Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person, a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what others might think is sometimes referred to as grundyism.

Mrs Grundy originated as an unseen character in Thomas Morton's 1798 five-act comedy 'Speed the Plough'. References to Mrs Grundy were eventually so well established in the public imagination that in Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon, the goddess Ydgrun, an anagram for Grundy, dictates social norms. As a figure of speech, ‘Mrs Grundy’ can be found throughout the English-speaking world…’.

She also pops up on page 189 of reference 7.

While there appears to be no connection to either the rhyme about Solomon Grundy or the Grundy family of the long running radio series ‘The Archer’, where the Grundys are a rather rough farming family. If they had lived in a town, Past Master Blair might have said they that came from a bog-standard estate.

Bard 

In the tale of travel and adventure with which the book opens, the narrator calls his luggage his swag, which he carefully rolls up in a blanket each morning, tying the two ends of the roll together, and wearing the resultant ring slung diagonally across one shoulder or the other. 

Until I read the opening chapters of this book, I had not known about swag being one’s portable possessions in general, the sort of thing an itinerant worker would carry about, either in a bag or, more likely, rolled up in a blanket. Rather the bag that an itinerant thief in rural Australia used to carry his pickings.

But Google’s Bard, noticed in these pages from time to time, seems to know all about it:

But did I cheat by giving him a clue about blankets? And wealthy Americans carrying the valuables in a blanket? Creative thinking here?

Probing suggests that Bard is more or less making it up – and while when poked he turns up some references, they are fairly wide of the mark. But I am reminded of the older custom of carrying similar stuff wrapped up into a bundle off the end of a stick.

OED gives more than two columns to the word, both as noun and verb, possibly of Scandinavian origin, with the present meaning coming quite late, possibly derived from the swaying senses of the word, so a swaying bag hung off the end of a pole over a shoulder. Most of the examples given are from the 19th century, with just a few going back to the 16th century. But blankets in Australia get a mention at the very end of the entry (bottom right in the snap above). We also have the swags of interior furnishers.

Flesh

Many years ago now, I owned and read a copy of Butler’s ‘The way of all flesh’, long since retired. Another assault on what Butler saw as Victorian hypocrisy, written in the years after Erewhon, but only published posthumously. As I recalled, an interesting enough read after a stodgy start, but I had forgotten most of the plot, as set out at reference 9. I did not remember much more than the son of an overbearing and pompous father who, after various vicissitudes, married a girl of lower class – perhaps a housemaid – and lived happily ever afterwards. I learn today that morganatic is not really the right word here, it being usually reserved for aristos who take a wrong turn. 

Conclusions

An entertaining and instructive read. I shall no doubt have another go, hopefully in the not too distant future.

References

Reference 1: Erewhon: or, Over the Range – Samuel Butler – 1872. 

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/walden-two.html. 

Reference 4: https://www.awesomebooks.com/. 

Reference 5: https://www.erewhonmarket.com/. ‘Erewhon is proud to be a Certified Organic Retailer and Certified B Corp. Since the late 1960s, Erewhon has been uncompromising in the commitment to provide foods and products that change the lives of our customers. We are more than your local grocery store; we are a community of people who are united in our love for pure products that protect the health of people and our planet’. Maybe the use of the name is a gesture towards other worldly, not to say saintly, aspirations.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Grundy. Including a walk-on part for Erewhon.

Reference 7: Author, author – David Lodge – 2004. A freebie from the Raynes Park platform library, on which I shall be reporting in due course.

Reference 8: The way of all flesh – Samuel Butler – 1902.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_All_Flesh. 

Additional information

B Lab certification is a third-party standard requiring companies to meet social sustainability and environmental performance standards, meet accountability standards. A form of certification which, according to Wikipedia, has attracted its own share of controversy.