Hubert Butler

Irish essayist (1900–1991)

Hubert Marshal Butler (23 October 1900 – 5 January 1991) was an Irish essayist who wrote on a wide range of topics, from local history and archaeology to the political and religious affairs of eastern Europe before and during World War II. He also travelled to Nazi Austria on his own initiative and at his own expense and helped save Jews from being sent to concentration camps.

Butler was born on 23 October 1900 to George Butler and Harriet Clarke, at the family home of Maiden Hall outside the village of Bennettsbridge in County Kilkenny. Butler graduated in 1922 from St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics. After being recruited by Sir Horace Plunkett to work for the Irish County Libraries from graduation until 1926, Butler later travelled extensively in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro before working with the Quakers in Vienna expediting the escape of Jews after the Anschluss. Butler's father, George Butler, was teaching practical agriculture to Gerald Gallagher on the farm at Maiden Hall when Gallagher applied for a position in the British colonial service, where he became the first officer in charge of the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, the last colonial expansion of the British Empire. Upon the death of George Butler in 1941, Hubert Butler inherited Maiden Hall and returned to live with his family in the house on the banks of the River Nore until his death in 1991. His wife, Susan Margaret – usually referred to as Peggy – was sister of the theatre director Tyrone Guthrie and the moving force behind foundation of the Kilkenny Art Gallery Society. Tyrone Guthrie was instrumental in establishing internationally renowned Stratford Theatre in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Today, the Butler homestead remains in the family, with part of it operating as an ongoing business under the tutelage of his granddaughter, Suzanna Crampton, as Zwartbles Ireland. Suzanna continues the tradition of her grandfather Hubert, and her godmother Pamela Travers, by practicing ecological farming and writing books and giving public talks. She maintains an active Twitter account, ZwartblesIE, documenting the farm and her activities.

Butler sought to encourage understanding of Irish social and political history through study of the land, the people and the primary source materials. He was a co reviver of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society and through it promoted Catholic Protestant reconciliation. Always stylish and subtle, his writing used local events as parables for the politics and pressures that accompanied the emergence of the Irish state. His book Ten Thousand Saints was a virtuoso performance, concluding with a theory that the apparently absurd legends of Irish prehistory and theology could provide evidence of the migration of Iron age tribes around Europe. He illustrated the point by reference to local history and scholarship. Having argued that the saints of Ireland were disguised personifications of the tribes and political factions of Iron age Ireland, he went on to suggest that the Old Testament could be the same for Jewish prehistory.

In 1938 Butler was disgusted at the antisemitic comments in Ireland particularly those of Oliver J. Flanagan who in a statement to the Dáil said "They (the Jews) crucified our Saviour 1,900 years ago and they have been crucifying us every day of the week". In response to comments like this Butler wrote that "I was as Irish as Oliver Flanagan and I was determined that Jewish refugees should come to Ireland" He then traveled to Austria and the first people he saved were Erwin Strunz, his wife and two children, who he helped travel from Austria to Ireland. He continued saving lives and working with both the Irish Quakers and American Quakers secured exit visas for dozen of Jews to escape from Vienna to Ireland and helped them to settle in the Americas. Butler was a keen market gardener as well as a writer and his circle of friends included the Mary Poppins creator Pamela Travers, the journalist Claud Cockburn, and the poet Padraic Colum. He believed strongly in the importance of the family and, as well as playing an active role in keeping his own extended family in touch, he was the founder of the Butler Society. He is buried five miles from the family home at St. Peter's Church, Ennisnag, Kilkenny. The Kilkenny Art Gallery Society's Butler Gallery was named in honour of Hubert and Peggy.

Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard. Intro. Tyrone Guthrie. London: H. F. W. Dane & Sons Ltd; Boston. : Baker's Plays (1934)
Leonid Leonov, The Thief. London: Martin Warburg (1931) New York: Vintage (1960)

Doctoral thesis by Robert B. Tobin, Oxford D. Phil., 2004: The minority voice: Hubert Butler, southern Protestantism and intellectual dissent, 1930 72.