like to be buried at Langar and to have on his tombstone the subject of
the last of Handel's _Six Great Fugues_. He called this "The Old Man
Fugue," and said it was like an epitaph composed for himself by one who
was very old and tired and sorry for things; and he made young Ernest
Pontifex in _The Way of All Flesh_ offer it to Edward Overton as an
epitaph for his Aunt Alethea. Butler, however, left off wanting any
tombstone long before he died. In accordance with his wish his body was
cremated, and a week later Alfred and I returned to Woking and buried his
ashes under the shrubs in the garden of the crematorium, with nothing to
mark the spot.
Footnotes:
{1} I am indebted to one of Butler's contemporaries at Cambridge, the
Rev. Dr. T. G. Bonney, F.R.S., and also to Mr. John F. Harris, both of
St. John's College, for help in finding and dating Butler's youthful
contributions to the _Eagle_.
{2} This gentleman, on the death of his father in 1866, became the Rev.
Sir Philip Perring, Bart.
{3} The late Sir Julius von Haast, K.C.M.G., appointed Provincial
Geologist in 1860, was ennobled by the Austrian Government and knighted
by the British. He died in 1887.