The Primary Teacher

Furnished with his superior diploma, he left the normal school at the age of nineteen, and commenced as a primary teacher in the College of Carpentras.

The salary of the school teacher, in the year 1842, did not exceed £28 a year, and this ungrateful calling barely fed him, save on "chickpeas and a little wine." But we must beware lest, in view of the increasing and excessive dearness of living in France, the beggarly salaries of the poor schoolmasters of a former day, so little worthy of their labours and their social utility, appear even more disproportionately small than they actually were. What is more to the point, the teachers had no pension to hope for. They could only count on a perpetuity, of labour, and when sickness or infirmity arrived, when old age surprised them, after fifty or sixty years of a narrow and precarious existence, it was not merely poverty that awaited them; for many there was nothing but the blackest destitution. A little later, when they began to entertain a vague hope of deliverance, the retiring pension which was held up to their gaze, in the distant future, was at first no more than forty francs, and they had to await the advent of Duruy, the great minister and liberator, before primary instruction was in some degree raised from this ignominious level of abasement.

It was a melancholy place, this college, "where life had something cloistral about it: each master occupied two cells, for, in consideration of a modest payment, the majority were lodged in the establishment, and ate in common at the principal's table."

It was a laborious life, full of distasteful and repugnant duties. We can readily imagine, with the aid of the striking picture which Fabre has drawn for us, what life was in these surroundings, and what the teaching was: "Between four high walls I see the court, a sort of bear-pit where the scholars quarrelled for the space beneath the boughs of a plane-tree; all around opened the class-rooms, oozing with damp and melancholy, like so many wild beasts' cages, deficient in light and air . . . for seats, a plank fixed to the wall . . . in the middle a chair, the rushes of the seat departed, a blackboard, and a stick of chalk." ¹

Let the teachers of our spacious and well-lighted schools of to-day ponder on these not so distant years, and measure the progress accomplished. Evoking the memory of their humble colleague of Carpentras, may they, feel the true greatness of his example: a noble and a glorious example, of which they may well be proud.

And what pupils! "Dirty, unmannerly: fifty young scoundrels, children or big lads, with whom," no doubt, "he used to squabble," but whom, after all, he contrived to manage, and by whom he was listened to and respected: for he knew precisely what to say to them, and how, while talking lightly, to teach them the most serious things. For the joy of teaching, and of continually learning by teaching others, made everything endurable. Not only did he teach them to read, write, and cipher, which then included almost the entire programme of primary education; he endeavoured also to place his own knowledge at their service, as he himself acquired it.

It was not only his love of the work that sustained him; it was the desire to escape from the rut, to accomplish yet another stage; to emerge, in short, from so unsatisfactory a position. Now nothing but physical and mathematical science would allow him to entertain the hope of "making an opening" in the world of secondary schoolmasters. He accordingly began to study physics, quite alone, "with an impossible laboratory, experimenting after his own fashion"; and it was by teaching them to his pupils that he learned first of all chemistry, inexpensively performing little elementary experiments before them, "with pipe-bowls for crucibles and aniseed flasks for retorts," and finally algebra, of which he knew not a word before he gave his first lesson.²

How he studied, what was the secret of his method, he told his brother a few years later, when the latter, marking time behind him, was pursuing the same career. A very disappointing career, no doubt, and far from lucrative, but "one of the noblest; one of those best fitted for a noble spirit, and a lover of the good." ³

Listen to the lesson which he gives his brother:

"To-day is Thursday; nothing calls you out of doors; you choose a thoroughly quiet retreat, where the light is not too strong. There you are, elbows on table, your thumbs to your ears, and a book in front of you. The intelligence awakes; the will holds the reins of it; the outer world disappears, the ear no longer hears, the eye no longer sees, the body no longer exists; the mind schools itself, recollects itself; it is finding knowledge, and its insight increases. Then the hours pass quickly, quickly; time has no measure. Now it is evening. What a day, great God! But hosts of truths are grouped in the memory; the difficulties which checked you yesterday have fused in the fire of reflection; volumes have been devoured, and you are content with your day. . . .

"When something embarrasses you do not abuse the help of your colleagues; with assistance the difficulty is only evaded; with patience and reflection it is overthrown.  Moreover, one knows thoroughly only what one learns oneself; and I advise you earnestly, as far as possible, to have recourse to no aid other than reflection, above all for the sciences. A book of science is an enigma to be deciphered; if some one gives you the key of the enigma nothing appears more simple and more natural than the explanation, but if a second enigma presents itself you will be as unskilful as you were with the first. . . .

"It is probable that you will get the chance of a few lessons; do not by preference accept the easier and more lucrative, but rather the more difficult, even when the subject is one of which as yet you know nothing. The self-esteem which will not allow one's true character to be seen is a powerful aid to the will. Do not forget the method of Jules Janin, running from house to house in Paris for a few wretched lessons in Latin: 'Unable to get anything out of my stupid pupils, with the besotted son of the marquis I was simultaneously pupil and professor: I explained the ancient authors to myself, and so, in a few months, I went through an excellent course of rhetoric. . . .

"Above all you must not be discouraged; time is nothing provided the will is always alert, always active, and never distracted; 'strength will come as you travel.'

"Try only for a few days this method of working, in which the whole energy, concentrated on one point, explodes like a mine and shatters obstacles; try for a few, days. the force of patience, strength, and perseverance; and you will see that nothing is impossible!" ⁴

These serious reflections show very, clearly that his mind was already, as mature, as earnest, and as concentrated as it was ever to be.

Not only did he join example to precept; he looked about him and began to observe nature in her own house. The doings of the mason bee, which he encountered for the first time, aroused his interest to such a pitch that, being no longer able to constrain his curiosity, he bought —at the cost of what privations!—Blanchard's Natural History of the Articulata,  then a classic work, which he was to re-read a hundred times, and which he still retains, giving it the first place in his modest library, in memory of his early joys and emotions.

The rocks also arrested and captivated his attention: and already the first volumes were corpulent of what was eventually to become his gigantic herbiary. His brother, about to leave for Vezins on vacation, was told of the specimens which he wanted to complete his collection; for although he had never set foot there since his first departure, he recalled, with remarkable precision, all the plants that grew in his native countryside; their haunts, their singularities, and the characteristics by which one could not fail to recognize them: as well as all the places which they chose by preference, where he used to wander as an urchin; the Parnassia palustris,  "which springs up in the damp meadows, below the beech-wood to the west of the village; which bears a superb white flower at the top of a slightly twisted stem, having an oval leaf about its middle"; the purple digitalis, "whose long spindles of great red flowers, speckled with white inside, and shaped like the fingers of a glove," border a certain road; all the ferns that grow on the wastes, "amid which it is often no easy task to recollect one's whereabouts," and on the arid hills all the heathers, pink, white, and bluish, with different foliage, "of which the innumerable species do not, however, very greatly differ." Nothing is to be neglected; "every plant, whatever it may be, great or little, rare or common, were it only a frond of moss, may have its interest." ⁵

Never weary of work, he accumulated all these treasures in his little museum, in order to study them the better; he collected all the coins exhumed from this ancient soil, formerly Roman, "records of humanity more eloquent than books," and which revealed to him the only, method of learning and actually re-living history: for he saw in knowledge not merely a means of gaining his bread, but "something nobler; the means of raising the spirit in the contemplation of the truth, of isolating it at will from the miseries of reality, so to find, in these intellectual regions, the only hours of happiness that we may be permitted to taste." ⁶

Fabre was so steeped in this passion for knowledge that he wished to evoke it in his brother, now teacher at L'apalud, on the Rhône, not far from Orange. It seemed to him that he would delight in his wealth still better could he share it with another.⁷ He stimulated him, pricked him on, and sought to encourage the remarkable aptitude for mathematics with which he believed him endowed. He employed his whole strength in breathing into the other's mind "that taste for the true and the beautiful" which possessed his own nature; he wished to share with him those stores of learning "which he had for some years so painfully amassed"; he would profit by the vacation to place them at his disposal; they would work together "and the light would come." Above all his brother must not allow his intelligence to slumber, must beware of "extinguishing that divine light without which one can, it is true, attend to one's business, but which alone can make a man honourable and respected."

Let him, on the contrary, cultivate his mind incessantly, "the only patrimony, on which either of us can count"; the reward would be his moral well-being, and, he hoped, his physical welfare also.

Once more he reinforced his advice by that excellent counsel which was always his own lodestar:

"Science, Frédéric, knowledge is everything. . . . You are too good a thinker not to say with me that no one can better employ his time than by acquiring fresh knowledge. . . . Work, then, when you have the opportunity . . . an opportunity that very few may, possess, and for which you ought to be only too thankful. But I will stop, for I feel my enthusiasm is going to my head, and my reasons are so good already that I have no need of still more triumphant reasons to convince you." ⁸

He had only one passion: shooting; more especially the shooting of larks. This sport delighted him, "with the mirror darting its intermittent beams under the rays of the morning sun amid the general scintillation of the dewdrops and crystals of hoarfrost hanging on every blade of grass." ⁹

His sight was admirably sure, and he rarely missed his aim. His passion for shooting was always sustained by the same motive: the desire to acquire fresh knowledge; to examine unknown creatures close at hand; to discover what they ate and how they lived.

Later, when he again took up his gun, it was still because of his love of life: it was to enable him to enumerate, inventory, and interrogate his new compatriots, his feathered fellow-citizens of Sérignan; to inform himself of their diet, to reveal the contents of their crops and gizzards.

At one time he suddenly ceased to employ this distraction; he seems to have sacrificed it easily, under the stress of present necessities and cruel anxieties as to his uncertain future. "When we do not know where we shall be to-morrow nothing can distract us." ¹⁰

His responsibilities were increasing. He had lately married. On the 3oth October, 1844, he was wedded to a young girl of Carpentras, Marie Villard, and already a child was born. His parents, always unlucky, met nowhere with any. success. By dint of many wanderings they, had finally become stranded at Pierrelatte, the chief town of the canton of La Drome, sheltered by the great rock which has given the place its name; and there again, of course, they kept a cafe, situated on the Place d'Armes.

The whole family was now assembled in the same district, a few miles only one from another: but Henri was really its head. Having heard that a quarrel had arisen between his brother and his mother, he wrote to Frédéric in reprimand; gently scolding him and begging him to set matters right, "even if all the wrongs were not on his side."

"My father, in one of his letters, complains that in spite of your nearness you have not yet been to see them. I know very well there is some reason for sulking; but what matter? Give it up: forget everything; do your best to put an end to all these petty and ugly estrangements. You will do so, won't you? I count on it, for the happiness of all." ¹¹

He was their arbitrator, their adviser, their oracle, their bond of union.

With all this, he was ready to attempt the two examinations which were to decide his future. Very shortly, at Montpellier, he passed almost successively, at an interval of only a few months the examinations for both his baccalauréats;  and then the two licentiate examinations in mathematics and physical science.

While he was ardently studying for these examinations, sorrow for the first time knocked at his door. His first-born fell suddenly ill, and in a few days died. On this occasion all his ardent spirituality asserted itself, though in stricken accents, in the letter which he wrote to his brother to announce his loss:

"After a few days of a marked improvement, which made me think he was saved, two large teeth were cut . . . and in three days a dreadful fever took him, not from us, who will follow him, but from this miserable world. Ah, poor child, I shall always see you as you were during those last moments, turning those wide, wandering eyes toward heaven, seeking the way to your new country. With,a heart full of tears,. I shall often let my thoughts go straying after you; but alas! with the eyes of the body I shall never see you again. I shall see you no more: yet only a few days ago I was making the finest plans for you. I used to work for you only; in my studies I thought only of you. Grow up, I used to say, and I will pour into your mind all the knowledge which has cost me so dear, which I am hoarding little by little . . . But reflection leads me to higher thoughts. I choke back the tears in my heart, and I congratulate him that Heaven has mercifully spared him this life of trials. . . . My poor child . . . you will never, like your father, have to struggle against poverty and misfortune; you will never know the bitterness of life, and the difficulties of creating a position at a time when there are so many paths that lead to failure . . . I weep for you because we have lost you, but I rejoice because you are happy. . . . You are happy, and this is not the mad hope of a father broken by sorrow; no, your last glance told me so, too eloquently for me to doubt it. Oh, how beautiful you were in your mortal pallor; the last sigh on your lips, your gaze upon heaven, and your soul ready to fly, into the bosom of God Your last day was the most beautiful!" ¹²

Although study was his refuge, although he was thereby able to live through these evil days without too greatly feeling their weight, his position was hateful, and he lived a wretched life "from one day to another, like a beggar."

In those troublous times, when education was of no account, it often happened that his teacher's salary was several months in arrears, and the city of Carpentras, "not being in funds," paid it only by instalments, and even so kept him a long time waiting. "One has to besiege the paymaster's door merely to obtain a trifle on account. I am ashamed of the whole business, and I would gladly abandon my claim if I knew where to raise any, money." ¹³

The genius of Balzac has recorded some unforgettable types of those poor and notable lives, at once so humble and so lofty. He has described the village cure and the country doctor. But how we should have loved to encounter in his gallery, among so many living portraits, a picture of the university life of fifty years ago; and above all a picture of the small schoolmaster of other days, living a life so narrow, so slavish, so painful, and yet so full of worth, so imbued with the sense of duty, and withal so resigned; a portrait for which Fabre might have served as model and prototype, and for which he himself has drawn an unforgettable sketch.

He awaited impatiently the news of his removal, very modestly limiting his ambitions to the hope of entering some lycée as professor of the sciences. His rector was not unnaturally astonished that a young man of such unusual worth, already twice a licentiate, should be so little appreciated by those in high places and allowed to stagnate so long in an inferior post, and one unworthy of him.

In the end, however, after much patient waiting, he became indignant; as always, he could see nothing ahead. The chair of mathematics at Tournon escaped him. Another position, at Avignon, also "slipped through his fingers"; why or how he never knew. He "began to see clearly what life is, and how difficult it is to make one's mark amid all this army of schemers, beggars and imbeciles who besiege every vacant post."

But his heart was "none the less hot with indignation"; he had had enough of "Carpentras, that accursed little hole"; and when the vacations came round once more he "plainly considered the question" and declared "that he would never again set foot inside a communal school." ¹⁴

He wrote to the rector: "If instead of crushing me into the narrow round of a primary school they would give me some employment of the kind for which my studies and ideas fit me, they would know then what is hatching in my head and what untirable activity there is in me." ¹⁵

He resigned himself nevertheless; he cursed and swore and stormed at his fate; but he had once more to put up with it "for want of a better." All the same "the injustice was too unheard-of, and no one had ever seen or would ever see the like: to give him two licentiate's diplomas, and to make him conjugate verbs for a pack of brats It was too much!" ¹⁶