The Butterfly Lion

“I often wondered later why I went with her so readily. I think it was because she expected me to, willed me to somehow.”

The author uses the literary element of foreshadowing to suggest to readers that something unexplainable will follow when Michael follows the old woman into her home. The phrase “willed me to somehow” implies magic or supernatural compulsion. At the conclusion of the novel, readers learn that Millie died many years ago, shrouding the story in the supernatural.

“‘I was just thinking,’ she said. ‘You’ll be the first young man I’ve had inside this house since Bertie.’”

Michael meets Millie after he has run away from boarding school. This mirrors the first meeting between Millie and Bertie: Bertie once ran away from the very same boarding school, and encountered Millie in the same place. There are many parallels between Bertie and Michael, who are both lonely children who feel misunderstood at the school, despite being separated by decades. Both find the garden and Millie, who advises each to return to school and bear its burdens. Both go on to live rich, wonderful lives.

“It may be difficult to remember sometimes, but there’s always sun behind the clouds, and the clouds do go in the end. Honestly.”

The Butterfly Lion is a work of didacticism; a literary piece that offers a lesson as well as entertainment. The moral of the story is imparted through Millie, who encourages Bertie and Michael—and in turn, readers—to endure what must be endured with the knowledge that hard times will pass. Bertie is raised during WWI, while Morpurgo comes of age after WWII. Both suffer through harsh childhoods and find happiness in adulthood, thanks to Millie’s advice.

“Suddenly I wasn’t hungry any more. All I wanted now was to hear her story.”

Millie’s embedded narrative has a mesmerizing, transfixing quality: The distraught Michael becomes absorbed in the story that eventually sets him on a new path, transforming him fundamentally from a boy intent on escape to a boy with a mission to preserve the legacy of The White Prince. Meeting Millie is a defining moment in the boy’s life.

“There was a waterhole downhill from the farmhouse, and some distance away. That waterhole, when there was water in it, became Bertie’s whole world. He would spend hours in the dusty compound, his hands gripping the fence, looking out at the wonders of the veldt, at the giraffes drinking, spread-legged at the waterhole at the browsing impala, tales twitching, alert; at the warthogs snorting and snuffing under the shade of the trees; at the baboons, the zebras, the wildebeests, and the elephants bathing in the mud.”

The Butterfly Lion describes South Africa’s bush veldt as beautiful, though also harsh and unforgiving. This wild savannah filled with creatures fascinates lonely Bertie and eventually leads to his discovery of the white lion cub that will change his life forever. Morpurgo bases the landscape around the fictional farm on the real Kruger National Park.

“That was when the shot rang out. The hyenas bolted into the long grass and were gone. When Bertie turned round he saw his mother in her nightgown, rifle in hand, running towards him down the hill. He had never seen her run before. Between them they gathered up the mud-matted cub and brought him home.”

Bertie’s mother, a British woman stuck in a farmhouse compound in South Africa without companionship, has malaria and suffers from loneliness, isolation, and homesickness. However, for a brief span, she becomes bold, assertive, and protective, suddenly regaining strength as she takes on the qualities of the lioness her husband has killed. Bertie’s mother chases into the dangerous savannah, armed with a rifle, and saves both her son and the small lion cub. In this uncharacteristic act of bravery, Bertie’s mother embodies the maternal instinct that has been suppressed.

“So the white lion cub came to live amongst them in the farmhouse. He slept at the end of Bertie’s bed. Wherever Bertie went, the lion cub went too—even to the bathroom, where he would watch Bertie have his bath and lick his legs dry afterwards. They were never apart.”

The lonely and isolated Bertie at last has a friend in the white lion. His life has been transformed by the cub. Instead of simply looking out at the natural world from the outside, Bertie has become a small part of it through the cub. The white lion represents enduring loyalty and steadfast connection.

“He told him he had met a man whilst he was in Johannesburg, a Frenchman, a circus owner from France. He was over in Africa looking for lions and elephants to buy for his circus.”

Traditionally, British colonists sent their children back to England to be educated rather than allowing them to mix with the children of colonial subjects. The idea was that only in England would these future scions of empire learn the proper attitude toward those Britain had subjugated. Thus, Bertie and his mother know that Bertie will have to go away to school. However, both are shocked when Bertie’s father announces that the white lion will be sent away too. Readers are meant to be shocked by the transition too: Instead of roaming the compound, the lion will be in a circus—a caged exhibit rather than a free animal.

“At night as they lay in the dark together side by side, Bertie made him a last promise. ‘I will find you,’ he whispered. ‘Always remember that I will find you. I promise I will.’”

Bertie’s love for his lion is so strong that he wholeheartedly believes that they will be reunited. This harkens to Millie’s delivery of the story’s moral: Hard times always pass, and hope returns. Bertie understands that he will have to endure more loneliness, but that eventually he will find his lion again. The passage of time, although fleeting, is nothing in the face of love.

“‘You must remember,’ she said, putting a bony hand on mine, ‘That true stories do not always end just as we would wish them to. Would you like to hear the truth of what happened, or shall I make something up for you just to keep you happy?’”

Millie asks young Michael if he wants the truth or fiction in regard to the tale of Bertie and his white lion. The decision is a moral one: The real story is salutary and will teach Michael some kind of lesson, while a fictional account is more childish—something with less substance that will be “just” pleasant platitudes. Millie’s clear preference for Michael to choose the truthful narrative reinforces the novel’s didactic message that hard times will eventually pass and one must keep hope alive.

“Bertie and I lived for our Sundays. In those next two years we became first, good companions, and then best of friends. We never told each other we were, because we didn’t need to.”

Loneliness and isolation dominate the childhoods of Bertie and Millie, who content themselves with a friendship that is experienced only once a week, for a few brief hours. However, even this is enough to testify to The Enduring and Transformative Power of Friendship. Eventually their patience and fortitude result in the development of a deep and lasting bond, and a permanent end to the loneliness and isolation of their childhoods.

“We wrote letters that talked to each other just as we had done all those years on Wood Hill.”

Millie and Bertie’s steadfast commitment to one another continues throughout their lives. The novel portrays only one other relationship that has this same level of dedication and loyalty—the one between Bertie and the lion.

“Then the storm of war broke. Like many storms, it rumbled only distantly at first, and we all hoped it would somehow pass us by. But it was not to be like that.”

While the novel depicts The Great War without sentimentality, describing at an age-appropriate level the bloodshed, loss of life, and waste, here, Millie uses a nature metaphor to show that the war was as powerful and unavoidable as a “storm”—and just as uncontrollable. Here again, the narrative offers a split between reality and wish fulfillment—Millie “hoped it would somehow pass us by,” a version of the story in which she and Bertie stay safe from the conflict, but their lives turn out “not to be like that.”

“The lion on the hillside was blue no more. It was white now, and the dog was bounding across the hillside, chasing away a cloud of blue butterflies that rose all around him.”

The Butterfly Lion appears to Michael first as a moving blue lion; here, the boy understands that he’s seeing a white image of a lion covered in blue butterflies. This monument to the once-living lion is the novel’s most moving version of the different ways there are of Immortalizing the Dead because this memorial is created by the people who loved the lion most and because the butterflies give a semblance of life to the creature’s memory.

“They said I could take him out in his wheelchair every Sunday so long as I didn’t tire him, so long as he was back by supper. As Bertie said, it was just like our Sundays had been when we were little.”

As Bertie is healing from his injuries and Millie works as a wartime nurse, they resume their childhood tradition of spending time together on Sundays. The repetition of this ritual is wistful—the couple’s relationship has changed from friendship to romance, and they have now endured the horrors of war. Their reunion is bittersweet, reminding them of their early adventures together, but also of the fact that Bertie is a young man whose health will forever be impacted by his war wound—he is in a wheelchair and gets tired easily.

“‘I am Bertie Andrews. Many years ago you came to my farm in Africa, and you bought a white lion cub. Do you still have him?’ As if in answer the white blanket at the end of the bed became a lion, rose from the bed, sprang down and was padding towards us, a terrible rumble in his throat.”

Bertie keeps his promise to find his white lion, confronting the circus owner who bought him. Just as the lion once slept at the foot of Bertie’s bed, the lion emerges from the foot of Merlot’s bed to embrace his companion and friend. Neither has forgotten the other. The description offers an early echo of the way the butterflies will make the hillside chalk lion look alive: Here, the lion is so near death that at first it appears to be a “white blanket.” Only when it hears Bertie’s voice does the blanket “become a lion”—figuratively coming alive and once again regaining its animal qualities, such as the “terrible rumble” reminding the humans of its predatory origins.

“A lion, the symbol of Britain, shot! Not at all good for morale, Bertie argued. And the colonel listened.”

The lion has been the unofficial symbol of Britain since the 12th-century reign of Richard the Lionheart; from that point on, lions have frequently appeared on coats of arms, shields, and in other forms of heraldry. During WWI, the lion appeared on military recruitment posters in Great Britain. Bertie uses this history to save his actual lion, disguising it as a symbol of Britain to convince his superiors to allow him to transport it to England instead of killing it.

“We never had children of our own—just The White Prince—and I can tell you, he was enough of a family for anyone.”

The lion becomes a child surrogate for the second time. As a cub, the lion temporarily buoyed the mental health of Bertie’s mother, whose inability to have children after Bertie caused grief, and who jumped into the protection and care of the cub as a kind of second child. Here, as Millie and Bertie do not have children—the novel does not explain why, but at the time this most likely would not have been a voluntary choice—but they do begin to think of The White Prince as a kind of offspring, calling him “family.”

“It took twenty years to do it. Every spare hour we had, we were up there scraping away with spades and trowels; and we had buckets and wheelbarrows to carry away the turf and the earth. It was hard, back-breaking work, but it was a labour of love. We did it, Bertie and I, we did it together—paws, claws, tail, mane, until he was whole and perfect in every detail.”

Part of the reason the chalk lion is the novel’s most meaningful way of Immortalizing the Dead is the effort and labor that was required to construct the legacy of The White Lion into their hillside. The monument to courage and endurance is itself a work of endurance—20 years of “back-breaking” toil but also a “labour of love.”

“Then The White Prince becomes a butterfly lion, and breathes again like a living creature. So now you know how Bertie’s white lion became The White Prince, and how The White Prince became our butterfly lion.”

When the Adonis Blue butterflies land on the white clay in the hillside that is cut in the shape of the lion, they fill the shape and give the appearance of a blue lion. The movement of the wings gives the lion monument the appearance of life. The butterflies represent the brevity and beauty of life. The lion represents bravery in enduring what must be endured. Combined, these symbols represent the value of companionship and hope.

“‘And Bertie, like his lion, lived on to a good age. He’s buried out there under the hill beside The White Prince.’ She looked back at the hill for a moment. ‘And that’s where I belong, too,’ she said.”

Millie concludes the story with the prophetic line that she belongs in the hillside with Bertie and the lion. Later, Michael learns that Millie died more than a decade ago, giving this statement a twist in meaning. She has left the grave long enough to deliver their story of bravery, endurance, and hope to a young boy who reminds Millie of a younger version of Bertie. Now it will be his job to carry on the memory.

“Poor dear, just herself and her dog in that great big place. She died only a few months later. Broken heart, they said. You can, you know. You can die of a broken heart.”

Just as young Bertie’s mother dies of a broken heart after he and The White Prince left Africa, so too does Millie die of a broken heart after her husband Bertie’s death. Both passages use the same phrase—“you can, you know”—to explain these heartache-causing deaths. The idea that loss can be so overwhelming, especially when it has no productive outlet, plays into the novel’s portrayal of Grief as a Terminal Ailment.

“Keep him white for us, there’s a dear. We don’t want him forgotten, you see. And think of us sometimes, won’t you?”

Millie wants Michael to remember the lion, Bertie, and herself—just as the chalk lion memorializes The White Prince, so now does Michael become a living memorial to the story Millie has told. This request alerts Morpurgo’s trajectory. He returns to boarding school with the intention of enduring hard times with hope, as Millie advised. Additionally, he shares the tale of The White Prince in this book, inviting readers to also participate in Immortalizing the Dead.