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The Fair Haven by Samuel Butler
page 3 of 266 (01%)
anticipated that some at any rate of them would keenly resent it.
Writing to Miss Savage in March, 1873 (shortly before the publication
of the book), he said: "I should hope that attacks on The Fair Haven
will give me an opportunity of excusing myself, and if so I shall
endeavour that the excuse may be worse than the fault it is intended
to excuse." A few days later he referred to the difficulties that he
had encountered in getting the book accepted by a publisher: " ---
were frightened and even considered the scheme of the book
unjustifiable. --- urged me, as politely as he could, not to do it,
and evidently thinks I shall get myself into disgrace even among
freethinkers. It's all nonsense. I dare say I shall get into a row-
-at least I hope I shall." Evidently there is here no anticipation
of The Fair Haven being misunderstood. Misunderstood, however, it
was, not only by reviewers, some of whom greeted it solemnly as a
defence of orthodoxy, but by divines of high standing, such as the
late Canon Ainger, who sent it to a friend whom he wished to convert.
This was more than Butler could resist, and he hastened to issue a
second edition bearing his name and accompanied by a preface in which
the deceived elect were held up to ridicule.

Butler used to maintain that The Fair Haven did his reputation no
harm. Writing in 1901, he said:

"The Fair Haven got me into no social disgrace that I have ever been
able to discover. I might attack Christianity as much as I chose and
nobody cared one straw; but when I attacked Darwin it was a different
matter. For many years Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious
Memory made a shipwreck of my literary prospects. I am only now
beginning to emerge from the literary and social injury which those
two perfectly righteous books inflicted on me. I dare say they
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