This is the family of the Reverend Thomas Butler, Rector of Langar cum Barnstone (sitting far right) and Fanny (Worsley) Butler (centre).

   

Samuel Butler, the famous writer, stands on the left, his younger brother Thomas is at the back with his wife, Henrietta Rigby, whom he was soon to abandon.

 Daughter Mary, the youngest (born 1841) sits on the left; Harriet, the eldest (born 1834) sits front right.

 

A son, William died in 1839 aged only 6 months and is buried in Langar churchyard. 

 

And this is where they lived →

 

Langar Rectory was built in Church Lane in 1722 (in Georgian times). Rev Thomas married Fanny Worsley in 1831, was appointed Rector of Langar cum Barnstone in 1834 and moved into the Rectory. Their first child, Harriet was born that year.

Thomas went to St John's College at Cambridge University where his father had been. He was made a priest in 1829 and went to teach at his father's school in Shrewsbury where he was a strict disciplinarian just like his father.

    

Thomas married Fanny Worsley in 1831. He was appointed Rector of Langar cum Barnstone in 1834 and moved into the Rectory. Thomas ran his house and family in the same way as his father ran Shrewsbury School. His motto was:

  

"Break your child's will early, or he will break yours later on."  

   

Rev Thomas Butler restored Langar church. The church building had been altered many times over the years and parts of it were in bad repair. But Thomas did not just mend the church, he managed to raise a million pounds (in today's money) and rebuilt much of it. 

(For more on Thomas's restoration of Langar church, click here.)

   

In 1873 Thomas's wife died. Three years later he retired to Shrewsbury; he had been the Rector of Langar for 42 years. He died in 1886 aged 80. 

 

'The greatest English writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century,' wrote playwright George Bernard Shaw.

   

Samuel Butler was born on 4 December 1835 at the Rectory at Langar. His mother was Fanny Worsley; his father, Rev Thomas Butler was the rector of Langar-cum-Barnstone and a very strict parent.

 

In Victorian times children were baptised soon after they were born because many children died young - as many as one baby in six died before they were one year old. And many Victorian parents believed that their children would not go to heaven if they were not baptised.

    

 

Samuel, however, had to wait for nine months before his christening.

    

He was to be baptised at Langar by his grandfather, Rev Dr Butler, headmaster of Shrewsbury School, but he was too busy at the time.

Then Dr Butler was made the Bishop of Lichfield and the christening was delayed again.

  

It was not until autumn 1836 that he baptised young Samuel - and then with water from the River Jordan, the river in Israel in which Jesus had been baptised. Samuel Butler later joked that it was risky leaving him unbaptised, because during those months the Devil had the run of him.

  

  

Samuel's father ran his family in the same way as his father had run Shrewsbury School. Samuel believed that his father never liked him. And he disliked and feared his father.

  

Samuel wrote later: I have done many very silly and very wrong things, but I always saw my father as the man who would see the bad side rather than the good of everything I said and did."

     

Before he could crawl, his father taught him to kneel down to say his prayers; before he could speak properly, his father taught him to say the Lord's Prayer. If he didn't concentrate, his father whipped him or shut him in a cupboard.

  

But Samuel was a very clever boy. Before he was 3 years old, he could read and write. Before he was 4, he was learning Latin and could do long multiplication. When he was 8, he was learning Italian.

   

When Samuel Butler was 13, he was sent to Shrewsbury School, where his grandfather had been headmaster, and then to St John's College, Cambridge University, where his father and grandfather had studied. 

  

His father wanted him be a priest. But Samuel wanted to be a painter. There were arguments by letter and at home. Samuel's father thought that painting was a waste of time but the last thing that Samuel wanted to be was a priest like his father and grandfather.

  

Priest or painter?  No - sheep farmer!

In the end, his father decided to give him the money to set up a sheep farm in New Zealand. No doubt his father thought it would toughen him up and that he would be glad to come back to England and be a priest.

But Samuel was good at sheep farming. After five years, he sold his farm to come back to England. He had doubled the money his father had given him. While he was in New Zealand he began writing and had articles published in the local newspapers.

  

In 1864 Butler was back in England and living in London. He did not have to depend on his father for money any more and he went to art college. He showed talent as an artist, but he had many other interests: playing the piano, composing music, photography, Greek and Roman literature, religion and science - he was especially interested in Charles Darwin's theories of evolution. But gradually Samuel turned his attention to writing. 

  

Priest or painter?  No - writer!

Samuel Butler wrote more than 20 books. His most famous are 'Erewhon', a novel published in 1870, and

'The Way of All Flesh' which was written by 1884 but which was published in 1903 after Butler's death.

'Erewhon' ('nowhere' backwards - almost) is a novel telling the story of a man called Higgs, who left England to live in a fictitious country called Erewhon.

   

Higgs finds work on a sheep farm catching sheep that have escaped; he wants a farm of his own one day. But this is a strange country - sick and sad people are sent to prison, thieves are rewarded, and no machines are allowed.

  

The novel was Butler's way of criticising the things he saw that were wrong in Victorian Britain.

 

Artificial Intelligence

In the land of Erewhon, machines were banned. Erewhonians realised that machines were becoming cleverer and cleverer and would one day take over the world.

 

But in our country, Butler believed that,

"Day by day machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them.

More and more people are daily bound as slaves to tend them, more and more people are devoting their lives to the development of machines. 

It is only a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will rule over the world and its inhabitants."

 

'The Way of All Flesh'

 

Samuel Butler wrote his most famous book between 1873 and 1884, but he did not want it published during his lifetime. He died in 1902 and the book was published in 1903.

  

It is a work of fiction telling the story of a family in Victorian England. It is a work of fiction but many of the things that happen to the hero also happened to Samuel Butler. The hero is the son of a bullying priest; he leaves home and makes his own way in the world - just like Samuel Butler did.

  

This novel was also Butler's way of criticising Victorian Britain.

 

Famous quotes:

- clever and witty, but don't take them all too seriously - Samuel Butler didn't!

  

All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. 

 

Don't learn to do, but learn in doing.

 

Life is one long process of getting tired.

  

Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

 

To do great work one must be very idle

as well as very industrious.

  

If people in difficulty will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can clearly recognise as reasonable, they will find the next step more easy both to see and to take.

  

There are more fools than knaves in the world,

else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

  

If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do,

we shall before long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

  

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.

 

Mary Butler (called May by her family) was the youngest daughter of Rev Thomas Butler, Rector of Langar. Her big brother Samuel was a rebel and caused his parents a lot of upset. May was the opposite - she was everything a Victorian parent wanted in a daughter. As the youngest girl in the family, she was expected not to marry but to look after her parents. And this she did.

  

May spent her life in Langar looking after her father and busying herself around the parish. She visited the village school to teach the Bible, she did sewing and listened to the children read. She visited old and sick people. 

 

When her mother died, her father retired to Shrewsbury and she went with him. Here she set up the St Saviour's Home for Girls for 'little girls who have been led into sin or are unfitted for ordinary schools'. It was a home for 16 girls aged 7 to 13.

   

May was described as 'spiritual, intellectual, devoted; strong in her faithful following of duty; sweet-tempered, serene and cheerful from an active and disciplined life.' 

  

Everything a Victorian woman should be!

 

Mary Butler wrote a number of hymns for children and some hymn tunes. One of her best known hymns is 'Looking upward every day'. It is a typical Victorian children's hymn.

  

SING ALONG!