; he treated wh as a single
letter, as one would treat th. Among other traces of Erewhon now
existing in real life are Butler's Stones on the Hokitika Pass, so called
because of a legend that they were in his mind when he described the
statues.

The book was translated into Dutch in 1873 and into German in 1897.

Butler wrote to Charles Darwin to explain what he meant by the "Book of
the Machines": "I am sincerely sorry that some of the critics should have
thought I was laughing at your theory, a thing which I never meant to do
and should be shocked at having done." Soon after this Butler was
invited to Down and paid two visits to Mr. Darwin there; he thus became
acquainted with all the family and for some years was on intimate terms
with Mr. (now Sir) Francis Darwin.

It is easy to see by the light of subsequent events that we should
probably have had something not unlike _Erewhon_ sooner or later, even
without the Russian lady and Sir F. N. Broome, to whose promptings, owing
to a certain diffidence which never left him, he was perhaps inclined to
attribute too much importance. But he would not have agreed with this
view at the time; he looked upon himself as a painter and upon _Erewhon_
as an interruption. It had come, like one of those creatures from the
Land of the Unborn, pestering him and refusing to leave him at peace
until he consented to give it bodily shape. It was only a little one,
and he saw no likelihood of its having any successors. So he satisfied
its demands and then, supposing that he had written himself out, looked
forward to a future in which nothing should interfere with the painting.
Nevertheless, when another of the unborn came teasing him he yielded to
its importunities and allowed himself to become the author of _The Fair
Haven_, which is his pamphlet on the Resurrection, enlarged and preceded
by a realistic memoir of the pseudonymous author, John Pickard Owen. In
the library of St. John's College, Cambridge, are two copies of the
pamphlet with pages cut out; he used these pages in forming the MS. of
_The Fair Haven_. To have published this book as by the author of
_Erewhon_ would have been to give away the irony and satire. And he had
another reason for not disclosing his name; he remembered that as soon as
curiosity about the authorship of _Erewhon_ was satisfied, the weekly
sales fell from fifty down to only two or three. But, as he always
talked openly of whatever was in his mind