Front Matter

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 coordinated 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.

       SÉRIGNAN, VAUCLUSE,
          November  12, 1911.

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 corner; 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?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,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,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. Frederic 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 Nimes, 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. Vayssieres, 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.