Henry Festing Jones

Henry Festing Jones (30 January 1851 – 23 October 1928) was an English solicitor and writer, known as the friend and posthumous biographer of Samuel Butler.

Life

He was the son of Thomas Jones Q.C., and entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1870. Graduating B.A. in 1873, he was articled to a solicitor. He qualified in the profession in 1876.

Jones met Samuel Butler through Edward Hall, a college friend; they became close in 1876. From 1887, he was Butler's paid companion and musical collaborator. Two of the musical works they worked on together were the cantatas Narcissus (private rehearsal 1886, published 1888), and Ulysses, both for solo voices, chorus and orchestra, in imitation of Handel. Butler had settled in 1864 in Clifford's Inn, London, where he lived for the rest of his life, dying in 1902; Jones lived in Barnard's Inn and Staple Inn during Butler's lifetime.

After Butler's death, Jones moved within London to Maida Vale, where his sister kept house for him. He advised Butler's executors (Reginald Worsley, and R. A. Streatfeild, his literary executor). He organised annual "Erewhon Dinners" in Butler's memory, from 1908 to 1914, at the suggestion of Marcus Hartog. P. N. Furbank has criticised the editorial stance Jones took, and the effort to make Butler "respectable".

Work on Samuel Butler's legacy

In 1910 Jones met Francis Darwin, in an attempt to close the feud between Butler and Charles Darwin that had arisen around 1880; the result was a pamphlet, Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler: A Step toward Reconciliation (1911).