This is an essay on Fabre--that lovable and charming old Frenchman who
wrote about insects. _I_ don't say he's lovable, mind you, but that's
how he is always described.
He was one of those fortunate men who are born with a gift of some sort.
His gift was for interpretation, but it worked well in only one field.
Every animal, vegetable and mineral finds an interpreter, sooner or
later; some man who so loves them that he understands them and their
story, and finds ways of telling it to the rest of mankind--if they'll
let him. Fabre was born with a peculiar understanding of insects.
Even as a baby he was fascinated by grasshoppers and beetles. As a
child he wished to study them far more than anything else. He should
have been encouraged to do this: allowed to, at any rate. Any child with
a gift, even for beetles, should be allowed to develop it. But this
small boy was born in a place where his gift was despised; he was torn
away from his insects and put through the mill.
Our great blundering old world is always searching for learning and
riches, and everlastingly crushing underfoot all new riches and
learning. It tried to make Fabre, a born lover of nature, desert her; it
forced him to teach mathematics for decades instead. The first thing the
world does to a genius is to make him lose all his youth.
Well, Fabre, after losing his youth, and his middle age too, and after
being duly kept back at every turn, all his life, by the want of a few
extra francs, finally won out at sixty. That is to say, he then got a
chance to study and write about insects, in a tiny country home, with an
income that was tinier still. "It is a little late, O my pretty
insects," he said; "I greatly fear the peach is offered to me only when
I'm beginning to have no teeth wherewith to eat it."
As it turned out, however, this wasn't true. He had not only plenty of
time, but in my opinion, too much. He lived to be over ninety and he
wrote and he wrote and he wrote: he wrote more about insects than any
one man or woman can read. I consider it lucky that he didn't begin
until sixty.
Insects, as every one knows, are the worst foes of man. Fabre not only
studied these implacable beings but loved them. There was something
unnatural about it; something disloyal to the whole human race. It is
probable that Fabre was not really human at all. He may have been found
in some human cradle, but he was a changeling. You can see he has insect
blood in him, if you look at his photograph. He is leathery, agile,
dried up. And his grandmother was waspish. He himself always felt
strangely close to wasps, and so did wasps to him. I dare say that in
addition to Fabre's "Life of the Wasp," there exists, if we could only
get at it, a wasp's Life of Fabre.
If the wasp wrote as Fabre does, he would describe Fabre's birth, death,
and matings, but tell us hardly anything else about Fabre's real life.
He would dwell chiefly on Fabre's small daily habits and his reactions
to the wasp's interference.
"Desirous of ascertaining what the old Fabre would do if stung," writes
the wasp, "I repeatedly stuck my sting in his leg--but without any
effect. I afterward discovered however I had been stinging his boots.
This was one of my difficulties, to tell boots and Fabre apart, each
having a tough wizened quality and a powdery taste.
"The old Fabre went into his wooden nest or house after this, and
presently sat down to eat one of his so-called meals. I couldn't see an
atom of dung on the table however, and though there were some fairly
edible flowers he never once sucked them. He had only an immense brown
root called a potato, and a 'chop' of some cow. Seizing a prong in his
claws, the old Fabre quickly harpooned this 'chop' and proceeded to rend
it, working his curious mandibles with sounds of delight, and making a
sort of low barking talk to his mate. Their marriage, to me, seemed
unnatural. Although I watched closely for a week this mate laid no eggs
for him: and instead of saving food for their larvae they ate it all up
themselves. How strange that these humans should differ so much from us
wasps!"
Another life of Fabre that we ought to have is one by his family. _They_
were not devoted to insects; they probably loathed them; and yet they
had to get up every morning and spend the whole day nursing bugs. I
picture them, yawning and snarling over the tedious experiments, and
listening desperately to Fabre's coleopterous chatter. The members of
every famous man's family ought to give us their side of it. I want more
about Tolstoy by Mrs. Tolstoy. And a Life of Milton by his daughters.
That picture of those unfortunate daughters, looking so sweet and
devoted, taking the blind poet's dictation, is--must be--deceptive. They
were probably wanting to go off upstairs, all the time, and try new ways
of doing their hair; or go out and talk their heads off with other
girls, or look in shop windows: anything but take down old Mr. Milton's
poetry all day. They didn't know their papa was a classic: they just
thought that he was the longest-winded papa in their street. I have no
warrant for saying this, I may add. Except that it's human nature....
Fabre has his good points. He is imaginative and dramatic, and yet has a
passion for truth. He is a philosopher, an artist. And above all he is
not sentimental. He is fond of his insects, but he never is foolishly
fond. And sometimes the good old soul is as callous as can be toward
caterpillars. He shows no more bowels towards caterpillars than do his
own wasps. Take, for instance, that experiment when he kept some on the
march for eight days, watching them interestedly as they died of
exhaustion. Or his delight at the way caterpillars are eaten by the
Eumenes wasp.
This wasp shuts its egg up in a large, prison-like cell, with a pile of
live caterpillars beside it, to serve as its food, first half-paralyzing
these victims so they will keep still. Alive but unable to move, the
caterpillars lie there till the grub hatches out. (Dead caterpillars
wouldn't do because this little grub loves fresh meat.)
The grub, hanging by a thread from the ceiling, now begins having
dinner. "Head downward it is digging into the limp belly of one of the
caterpillars," says Fabre. "The caterpillars grow restless," he adds.
(There's a fine brutal touch!) The grub thereupon, to Fabre's delight,
climbs back up its thread. It is only a baby; it's tender; and when
those wretched caterpillars get to thrashing around, they might hurt the
sweet infant. Not till "peace" is restored, Fabre adds, does Baby dare
to come down again. Hideous infantile epicure! It takes another good
juicy bite.
And if its dinner moans again, or wriggles, it again climbs back up.
Imagine some caterpillar reader shuddering at this horror--this lethal
chamber where prominent caterpillars are slowly eaten alive. Yet scenes
like this occur all through Fabre, and are described with great relish.
If he wrote of them in a dry professional way, it would sound
scientific, and I could read it in a cool, detached spirit with never a
flutter. But he does it so humanly that you get to be friends with these
creatures, and then he springs some grisly little scene on you that
gives you the creeps, and explains to you that the said little scene is
going on all the time; and it makes you feel as though there were
nothing but red fangs in the world.
Fabre at one time was offered the post of tutor to Napoleon III's son,
but he preferred to live in poverty in the country, where he could keep
up his studies. No money, no honors could tempt him away from his work.
Perhaps this was noble. But it seems to me he made a mistake. In fact,
this was the greatest and most fatal mistake of his life.
If he had gone to Napoleon, he might have moped awhile at first, and
felt guilty. But he would have gone right on loving insects and wanting
to study them. Hence he would have soon begun looking around the palace
for specimens. And this might have led to his discovering riches
indoors.
Suppose he had written about that bug that takes its name from our beds,
and helped us to understand its persistent devotion to man. According to
Ealand, the scientist, they are not wholly bad. They were once supposed
to be good for hysteria if taken internally. The Ancients gave seven to
adults and four to children, he says, "to cure lethargy." But the best
Ealand can do is to give us bits of information like this, whereas
Fabre, if he had lived in his bedroom, could have been their
interpreter.
That's his failure--his books are over-weighted with bugs of the
fields. I have plowed through long chapters without getting away for a
minute from beetles. In bugs of the field I take a due interest (which,
I may add, isn't much), but the need of humanity is to know about bugs
of the home.
[Illustration: They were said to cure lethargy]