FABRE, POET OF SCIENCE
by DR. G.-V. LEGROS.
"De fimo ad excelsa."
J.-H. Fabre.
WITH A PREFACE BY JEAN-HENRI FABRE.
TRANSLATED BY BERNARD MIALL.
PREFACE.
The good friend who has so successfully terminated the task which he felt a
vocation to undertake thought it would be of advantage to complete it by
presenting to the reader a picture both of my life as a whole and of the
work which it has been given me to accomplish.
The better to accomplish his undertaking, he abstracted from my
correspondence, as well as from the long conversations which we have so
often enjoyed together, a great number of those memories of varying
importance which serve as landmarks in life; above all in a life like mine,
not exempt from many cares, yet not very fruitful in incidents or great
vicissitudes, since it has been passed very largely, in especial during the
last thirty years, in the most absolute retirement and the completest
silence.
Moreover, it was not unimportant to warn the public against the errors,
exaggerations, and legends which have collected about my person, and thus
to set all things in their true light.
In undertaking this task my devoted disciple has to some extent been able
to replace those "Memoirs" which he suggested that I should write, and
which only my bad health has prevented me from undertaking; for I feel that
henceforth I am done with wide horizons and "far-reaching thoughts."
And yet on reading now the old letters which he has exhumed from a mass of
old yellow papers, and which he has presented and co-ordinated with so
pious a care, it seems to me that in the depths of my being I can still
feel rising in me all the fever of my early years, all the enthusiasm of
long ago, and that I should still be no less ardent a worker were not the
weakness of my eyes and the failure of my strength to-day an insurmountable
obstacle.
Thoroughly grasping the fact that one cannot write a biography without
entering into the sphere of those ideas which alone make a life
interesting, he has revived around me that world which I have so long
contemplated, and summarized in a striking epitome, and as a strict
interpreter, my methods (which are, as will be seen, within the reach of
all), my ideas, and the whole body of my works and discoveries; and despite
the obvious difficulty which such an attempt would appear to present, he
has succeeded most wonderfully in achieving the most lucid, complete, and
vital exposition of these matters that I could possibly have wished.
Jean-Henri Fabre.
Sérignan, Vaucluse,
November 12, 1911.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER 1. THE INTUITION OF NATURE.
CHAPTER 2. THE PRIMARY TEACHER.
CHAPTER 3. CORSICA.
CHAPTER 4. AT AVIGNON.
CHAPTER 5. A GREAT TEACHER.
CHAPTER 6. THE HERMITAGE.
CHAPTER 7. THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.
CHAPTER 8. THE MIRACLE OF INSTINCT.
CHAPTER 9. EVOLUTION OR "TRANSFORMISM."
CHAPTER 10. THE ANIMAL MIND.
CHAPTER 11. HARMONIES AND DISCORDS.
CHAPTER 12. THE TRANSLATION OF NATURE.
CHAPTER 13. THE EPIC OF ANIMAL LIFE.
CHAPTER 14. PARALLEL LIVES.
CHAPTER 15. THE EVENINGS AT SÉRIGNAN.
CHAPTER 16. TWILIGHT.
NOTES.
INDEX.
INTRODUCTION.
Here I offer to the public the life of Jean-Henri Fabre; at once an
admiring commentary upon his work and an act of pious homage, such as ought
to be offered, while he lives, to the great naturalist who is even to-day
so little known.
Hitherto it was not easy to speak of Henri Fabre with exactitude. An enemy
to all advertisement, he has so discreetly held himself withdrawn that one
might almost say that he has encouraged, by his silence, many doubtful or
unfounded rumours, which in course of time would become even more
incorrect.
For example, although quite recently his material situation was presented
in the gloomiest of lights, while it had really for some time ceased to be
precarious, it is none the less true that during his whole life he has had
to labour prodigiously in order to earn a little money to feed and rear his
family, to the great detriment of his scientific inquiries; and we cannot
but regret that he was not freed from all material cares at least twenty
years earlier than was the case.
But he was not one to speak of his troubles to the first comer; and it was
only after the sixth volume of the "Souvenirs entomologiques" had appeared
that his reserve was somewhat mitigated. Yet it was necessary that he
should speak of these troubles, that he should tell everything; and, thanks
to his conversation and his letters, I have been able to revive the past.
Among the greatest of my pleasures I count the notable honour of having
known him, and intimately. As an absorbed and attentive witness I was
present at the accomplishment of his last labours; I watched his last years
of work, so critical, so touching, so forsaken, before his ultimate
resurrection. What fruitful and suggestive lessons I learned in his
company, as we paced the winding paths of his Harmas; or while I sat beside
him, at his patriarchal table, interrogating that memory of his, so rich in
remembrances that even the remotest events of his life were as near to him
as those that had only then befallen him; so that the majority of the
judgments to be found in this book, of which not a line has been written
without his approval, may be regarded as the direct emanation of his mind.
As far as possible I have allowed him to speak himself. Has he not sketched
the finest pages of his "biography of a solitary student" in those racy
chapters of his "Souvenirs": those in which he has developed his genesis as
a naturalist and the history of the evolution of his ideas?
(Introduction/1.) In all cases I have only introduced such indications as
were essential to complete the sequence of events. It would have been idle
to re-tell in the same terms what every one may read elsewhere, or to
repeat in different and less happy terms what Fabre himself has told so
well.
I have therefore applied myself more especially to filling the gaps which
he has left, by listening to his conversation, by appealing to his
memories, by questioning his contemporaries, by recording the impressions
of his sometime pupils. I have endeavoured to assemble all these data, in
order to authenticate them, and have also gleaned many facts among his
manuscripts (Introduction/2.), and have had recourse to all that portion of
his correspondence which fortunately fell into my hands.
This correspondence, to be truthful, does not appear at any time to have
been very assiduous. Fabre, as we shall see in the story of his life
(Introduction/3.), disliked writing letters, both in his studious youth and
during the later period of isolation and silence.
On the other hand, although he wrote but little, he never wrote with
difficulty or as a mere matter of duty. Among all the letters which I have
succeeded in collecting there are scarcely any that are not of interest
from one point of view or another. No frivolous narratives, no futile
acquaintances, no commonplace intimacies; everything in his life is
serious, and everything makes for a goal.
But we must set apart, as surpassing all others in interest, the letters
which Fabre addressed to his brother during the years spent as schoolmaster
at Carpentras or Ajaccio; for these are more especially instructive in
respect of the almost unknown years of his youth; these most of all reveal
his personality and are one of the finest illustrations that could be given
of his life, a true poem of energy and disinterested labour.
I have to thank M. Frédéric Fabre, who, in his fraternal piety, has
generously placed all his family records at my disposal, and also his two
sons, my dear friends Antonin Fabre, councillor at the Court of Nîmes, and
Henri Fabre, of Avignon, for these precious documents; and I take this
opportunity of expressing my profound gratitude.
Let me at the same time thank all those who have associated themselves with
my efforts by supplying me with letters in their possession and furnishing
me with personal information; and in particular Mme Henry Devillario, M.
Achard, and M. J. Belleudy, ex-prefect of Vaucluse; not forgetting M. Louis
Charrasse, teacher at Beaumont-d'Orange, and M. Vayssières, professor of
the Faculty of Sciences at Marseilles, all of whom I have to thank for
personal and intimate information.
I must also express my gratitude to M. Henri Bergson, Professor Bouvier,
and the learned M. Paul Marchal for the advice and the valuable suggestions
which they offered me during the preparation of this book.
I shall feel fully repaid for my pains if this "Life" of one of the
greatest of the world's naturalists, by enabling men to know him better,
also leads them to love him the more.
FABRE, POET OF SCIENCE.
CHAPTER 1. THE INTUITION OF NATURE.
Each thing created, says Emerson, has its painter or its poet. Like the
enchanted princess of the fairy-tales, it awaits its predestined liberator.
Every part of nature has its mystery and its beauty, its logic and its
explanation; and the epigraph given me by Fabre himself, which appears on
the title-page of this volume, is in no way deceptive. The tiny insects
buried in the soil or creeping over leaf or blade have for him been
sufficient to evoke the most important, the most fascinating problems, and
have revealed a whole world of miracle and poetry.
He saw the light at Saint-Léons, a little commune of the canton of Vezins
in the Haut Rouergue, on the 22nd December, 1823, some seven years earlier
than Mistral, his most famous neighbour, the greater lustre of whose
celebrity was to eclipse his own.
Here he essayed his earliest steps; here he stammered his first syllables.
His early childhood, however, was passed almost wholly at Malaval, a tiny
hamlet in the parish of Lavaysse, whose belfry was visible at quite a short
distance; but to reach it one had to travel nearly twenty-five rough,
mountainous miles, through a whole green countryside; green, but bare, and
lacking in charm. (1/1.)
All his paternal forebears came from Malaval, and thence one day his
father, Antoine Fabre, came to dwell at Saint-Léons, as a consequence of
his marriage with the daughter of the huissier, Victoire Salgues, and in
order to prepare himself, as working apprentice, in the tricks and quibbles
of the law. (1/2.)
In the roads of Malaval, bordered with brambles, in the glades of bracken,
and amid the meadows of broom, he received his first impressions of nature.
At Malaval too lived his grandmother, the good old woman who could lull him
to sleep at night with beautiful stories and simple legends, while she
wound her distaff or spun her bobbin.
But what were all these imaginary marvels, what were the ogres who smelt
fresh meat, or "the fairies who turned pumpkins into coaches and lizards
into footmen" beside all the marvels of reality, which already he was
beginning to perceive?
For above all things he was born a poet: a poet by instinct and by
vocation. From his earliest childhood, "the brain hardly released from the
swaddling-bands of unconsciousness," the things of the outer world left a
profound and living impression. As far back as he can remember, while still
quite a child, "a little monkey of six, still dressed in a little baize
frock," or just "wearing his first braces," he sees himself "in ecstasy
before the splendours of the wing-cases of a gardener-beetle, or the wings
of a butterfly." At nightfall, among the bushes, he learned to recognize
the chirp of the grasshopper. To put it in his own words, "he made for the
flowers and insects as the Pieris makes for the cabbage and the Vanessa
makes for the nettle." The riches of the rocks; the life which swarms in
the depth of the waters; the world of plants and animals, that "prodigious
poem; all nature filled him with curiosity and wonder." "A voice charmed
him; untranslatable; sweeter than language and vague as a dream." (1/3.)
These peculiarities are all the more astonishing in that they seem to be
absolutely spontaneous and in nowise hereditary. What his parents were he
himself has told us: small farmers, cultivating a little unprofitable land;
poor "husbandmen, sowers of rye, cowherds"; and in the wretched
surroundings of his childhood, when the only light, of an evening, came
from a splinter of pine, steeped in resin, which was held by a strip of
slate stuck into the wall; when his folk shut themselves in the byre, in
times of severe cold, to save a little firewood and while away the
evenings; when close at hand, through the bitter wind, they heard the
howling of the wolves: here, it would seem, was nothing propitious to the
birth of such tastes, if he had not borne them naturally within him.
But is it not the very essence of genius, as it is the peculiarity of
instinct, to spring from the depths of the invisible?
Yet who shall say what stores of thought unspoken, what unknown treasures
of observation never to be communicated, what patient reflections
unuttered, may be housed in those toil-worn brains, in which, perhaps,
slowly and obscurely, accumulate the germs of faculties and talents by
which some more favoured descendant may one day benefit? How many poets
have died unpublished or unperceived, in whom only the power of expression
was lacking!
When he was seven years old his parents recalled him to Saint-Léons, in
order to send him to the school kept by his godfather, Pierre Ricard, the
village schoolmaster, "at once barber, bellringer, and singer in the
choir." Rembrandt, Teniers, nor Van Ostade never painted anything more
picturesque than the room which served at the same time as kitchen,
refectory, and bedroom, with "halfpenny prints papering the walls" and "a
huge chimney, for which each had to bring his log of a morning in order to
enjoy the right to a place at the fireside."
He was never to forget these beloved places, blessed scenes of his
childhood, amid which he grew up like a little savage, and through all his
material sufferings, all his hours of bitterness, and even in the
resignation of age, their idyllic memory sufficed to make his life
fragrant. He would always see the humble paternal garden, the brook where
he used to surprise the crayfish, the ash-tree in which he found his first
goldfinch's nest, and "the flat stone on which he heard, for the first
time, the mellow ringing of the bellringer frog." (1/4.) Later, when
writing to his brother, he was to recall the good days of still careless
life, when "he would sprawl, the sun on his belly, on the mosses of the
wood of Vezins, eating his black bread and cream" or "ring the bells of
Saint-Léons" and "pull the tails of the bulls of Lavaysse." (1/5.)
For Henri had a brother, Frédéric, barely two years younger than he;
equally meditative by nature, and of a serious, upright mind; but his
tastes inclined rather to matters of administration and the understanding
of business, so that where Frédéric was bored, Henri was more than content,
thirstily drinking in science and poetry "among the blue campanulas of the
hills, the pink heather of the mountains, the golden buttercups of the
meadows, and the odorous bracken of the woods." (1/6.) Apart from this the
two brothers "were one"; they understood one another in a marvellous
fashion, and always loved one another. Henri never failed to watch over
Frédéric with a wholly fatherly solicitude; he was prodigal of advice,
helpful with his experience, doing his best to smooth away all
difficulties, encouraging him to walk in his footsteps and make his way
through the world behind him. He was his confidant, giving an ear to all
that befell him of good or ill; to his fears, his disappointments, his
hopes, and all his thoughts; and he took the keenest interest in his
studies and researches. On the other hand, he had no more sure and devoted
friend; none more proud of his first success, and in later days no more
enthusiastic admirer, and none more eager for his fame. (1/7.)
He was twelve years old when his father, "the first of all his line, was
tempted by the town," and led all his family to Rodez, there to keep a
café. The future naturalist entered the school of this town, where he
served Mass on Sunday, in the chapel, in order to pay his fees. There again
he was interested in the animal creation above all. When he began to
construe Virgil the only thing that charmed him, and which he remembered,
was the landscape in which the persons of the poem move, in which are so
many "exquisite details concerning the cicada, the goat, and the laburnum."
Thus four years went by: but then his parents were constrained to seek
their fortune elsewhere, and transported their household to Toulouse, where
again the father kept a café. The young Henri was admitted gratuitously to
the seminary of the Esquille, where he managed to complete his fifth year.
Unfortunately his progress was soon interrupted by a new exodus on the part
of his family, which emigrated this time to Montpellier, where he was
haunted for a time by dreams of medicine, to which he seemed notably
adapted. Finally, a run of bad luck persisting, he had to bid farewell to
his studies and gain his bread as best he could. We see him set out along
the wide white roads: lost, almost a wanderer, seeking his living by the
sweat of his brow; one day selling lemons at the fair of Beaucaire, under
the arcades of the market or before the barracks of the Pré; another day
enlisting in a gang of labourers who were working on the line from
Beaucaire to Nîmes, which was then in process of construction. He knew
gloomy days, lonely and despairing. What was he doing? of what was he
dreaming? The love of nature and the passion for learning sustained him in
spite of all, and often served him as nourishment; as on the day when he
dined on a few grapes, plucked furtively at the edge of a field, after
exchanging the poor remnant of his last halfpence for a little volume of
Reboul's poems; soothing his hunger by reciting the verses of the gentle
baker-poet. Often some creature kept him company; some insect never seen
before was often his greatest pleasure; such as the pine-chafer, which he
encountered then for the first time; that superb beetle, whose black or
chestnut coat is sprinkled with specks of white velvet; which squeaks when
captured, emitting a slight complaining sound, like the vibration of a pane
of glass rubbed with the tip of a moistened finger. (1/8.)
Already this young mind, romantic and classic at once, full of the ideal,
and so positive that it seemed to seek support in an intense grasp of
things and beings--two gifts well-nigh incompatible, and often mutually
destructive--already it knew, not only the love of study and a passion for
the truth, but the sovereign delight of feeling everything and
understanding everything.
It was under these conditions--that is, amid the rudest privations--that he
ventured to enter a competitive examination for a bursary at the École
Normale Primaire of Avignon; and his will-power realized this first miracle
of his career--he straightway obtained the highest place.
In those days, when education had barely reached the lower classes, the
instruction given in the primary normal school was still of the most
summary. Spelling, arithmetic, and geometry practically exhausted its
resources. As for natural history, a poor despised science, almost unknown,
no one dreamed of it, and no one learned or taught it; the syllabus ignored
it, because it led to nothing. For Fabre only, notwithstanding, it was his
fixed idea, his constant preoccupation, and "while the dictation class was
busy around him, he would examine, in the secrecy of his desk, the sting of
a wasp or the fruit of the oleander," and intoxicate himself with poetry.
(1/9.) His pedagogic studies suffered thereby, and the first part of his
stay at the normal school was by no means extremely brilliant. In the
middle of his second year he was declared idle, and even marked as an
insufficient pupil and of mediocre intelligence. Stung to the quick, he
begged as a favour that he should be given the opportunity of following the
third year's course in the six months that remained, and he made such an
effort that at the end of the year he victoriously won his superior
certificate. (1/10.)
A year in advance of the regulation studies, his curiosity might now
exercise itself freely in every direction, and little by little it became
universal. A chance chemistry lesson finally awakened in him the appetite
for knowledge, the passion for all the sciences, of which he thirsted to
know at least the elements. Between whiles he returned to his Latin,
translating Horace and re-reading Virgil. One day his director put an
"Imitation" into his hands, with double columns in Greek and Latin. The
latter, which he knew fairly well, assisted him to decipher the Greek. He
hastened to commit to memory the vocables, and idioms and phrases of all
kinds (1/11.), and in this curious fashion he learned the language. This
was his only method of learning languages. It is the process which he
recommended to his brother, who was commencing Latin:
"Take Virgil, a dictionary, and a grammar, and translate from Latin into
French for ever and for ever; to make a good version you need only common
sense and very little grammatical knowledge or other pedantic accessories.
"Imagine an old inscription half-effaced: correctness of judgment partly
supplies the missing words, and the sense appears as if the whole were
legible. Latin, for you, is the old inscription; the root of the word alone
is legible: the veil of an unknown language hides the value of the
termination: you have only the half of the words; but you have common sense
too, and you will make use of it." (1/12.)