Charlotte’s Web and other classic animal stories: Charlotte’s Web, The Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little

‘Salutations are greetings,’ said the voice. ‘When I say “salutations”, it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning. Actually, it’s a silly expression, and I am surprised that I used it at all. As for my whereabouts, that’s easy. Look up here in the corner of the doorway! Here I am. Look, I’m waving!’

At last Wilbur saw the creature that had spoken to him in such a kindly way. Stretched across the upper part of the doorway was a big spider’s web, and hanging from the top of the web, head down, was a large grey spider. She was about the size of a gumdrop. She had eight legs, and she was waving one of them at Wilbur in friendly greeting. ‘See me now?’ she asked.

‘Oh, yes indeed,’ said Wilbur. ‘Yes indeed! How are you? Good morning! Salutations! Very pleased to meet you. What is your name, please? May I have your name?’

‘My name,’ said the spider, ‘is Charlotte.’

‘Charlotte what?’ asked Wilbur, eagerly.

‘Charlotte A. Cavatica. But just call me Charlotte.’

‘I think you’re beautiful,’ said Wilbur.

‘Well, I am pretty,’ replied Charlotte. ‘There’s no denying that. Almost all spiders are rather nice-looking. I’m not as flashy as some, but I’ll do. I wish I could see you, Wilbur, as clearly as you can see me.’

‘Why can’t you?’ asked the pig. ‘I’m right here.’

‘Yes, but I’m near-sighted,’ replied Charlotte. ‘I’ve always been dreadfully near-sighted. It’s good in some ways, not so good in others. Watch me wrap up this fly.’

A fly that had been crawling along Wilbur’s trough had flown up and blundered into the lower part of Charlotte’s web and was tangled in the sticky threads. The fly was beating its wings furiously, trying to break loose and free itself.

‘First,’ said Charlotte, ‘I dive at him.’ She plunged head first towards the fly. As she dropped, a tiny silken thread unwound from her rear end.

‘Next, I wrap him up.’ She grabbed the fly, threw a few jets of silk round it, and rolled it over and over, wrapping it so that it couldn’t move. Wilbur watched in horror. He could hardly believe what he was seeing, and although he detested flies he was sorry for this one.

‘There!’ said Charlotte. ‘Now I knock him out, so he’ll be more comfortable.’ She bit the fly. ‘He can’t feel a thing now,’ she remarked. ‘He’ll make a perfect breakfast for me.’

‘You mean you eat flies?’ gasped Wilbur.

‘Certainly. Flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty cockroaches, gnats, midges, daddy-long-legs, centipedes, mosquitoes, crickets – anything that is careless enough to get caught in my web. I have to live, don’t I?’

‘Why, yes, of course,’ said Wilbur. ‘Do they taste good?’

‘Delicious. Of course, I don’t really eat them. I drink them – drink their blood. I love blood,’ said Charlotte, and her pleasant, thin voice grew even thinner and more pleasant.

‘Don’t say that!’ groaned Wilbur. ‘Please don’t say things like that!’

‘Why not? It’s true, and I have to say what is true. I am not entirely happy about my diet of flies and bugs, but it’s the way I’m made. A spider has to pick up a living somehow or other, and I happen to be a trapper. I just naturally build a web and trap flies and other insects. My mother was a trapper before me. Her mother was a trapper before her. All our family have been trappers. Way back for thousands and thousands of years we spiders have been laying for flies and bugs.’

‘It’s a miserable inheritance,’ said Wilbur, gloomily. He was sad because his new friend was so bloodthirsty.

‘Yes, it is,’ agreed Charlotte. ‘But I can’t help it. I don’t know how the first spider in the early days of the world happened to think up this fancy idea of spinning a web, but she did, and it was clever of her, too. And since then, all of us spiders have had to work the same trick. It’s not a bad pitch, on the whole.’

‘It’s cruel,’ replied Wilbur, who did not intend to be argued out of his position.

‘Well, you can’t talk,’ said Charlotte. ‘You have your meals brought to you in a pail. Nobody feeds me. I have to get my own living. I live by my wits. I have to be sharp and clever, lest I go hungry. I have to think things out, catch what I can, take what comes. And it just so happens, my friend, that what comes is flies and insects and bugs. And furthermore,’ said Charlotte, shaking one of her legs, ‘do you realize that if I didn’t catch bugs and eat them, bugs would increase and multiply and get so numerous that they’d destroy the earth, wipe out everything?’

‘Really?’ said Wilbur. ‘I wouldn’t want that to happen. Perhaps your web is a good thing after all.’

The goose had been listening to this conversation and chuckling to herself. ‘There are a lot of things Wilbur doesn’t know about life,’ she thought. ‘He’s really a very innocent little pig. He doesn’t even know what’s going to happen to him around Christmastime; he has no idea that Mr Zuckerman and Lurvy are plotting to kill him.’ And the goose raised herself a bit and poked her eggs a little further under her so that they would receive the full heat from her warm body and soft feathers.

Charlotte stood quietly over the fly, preparing to eat it. Wilbur lay down and closed his eyes. He was tired from his wakeful night and from the excitement of meeting someone for the first time. A breeze brought him the smell of clover – the sweet-smelling world beyond his fence. ‘Well,’ he thought, ‘I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty – everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?’

Wilbur was merely suffering the doubts and fears that often go with finding a new friend. In good time he was to discover that he was mistaken about Charlotte. Underneath her rather bold and cruel exterior, she had a kind heart, and she was to prove loyal and true to the very end.

6. Summer Days (#ulink_329a6254-987c-5c09-b896-8f410f9d4071)

THE EARLY summer days on a farm are the happiest and fairest days of the year. Lilacs bloom and make the air sweet, and then fade. Apple blossoms come with the lilacs, and the bees visit round among the apple trees. The days grow warm and soft. School ends, and children have time to play and to fish for trout in the brook. Avery often brought a trout home in his pocket, warm and stiff and ready to be fried for supper.

Now that school was over, Fern visited the barn almost every day, to sit quietly on her stool. The animals treated her as an equal. The sheep lay calmly at her feet.

Around the first of July, the work horses were hitched to the mowing machine, and Mr Zuckerman climbed into the seat and drove into the field. All morning you could hear the rattle of the machine as it went round and round, while the tall grass fell down behind the cutter bar in long green swathes. Next day, if there was no thunder shower, all hands would help rake and pitch and load, and the hay would be carried to the barn in the high hay wagon, with Fern and Avery riding at the top of the load. Then the hay would be hoisted, sweet and warm, into the big loft, until the whole barn seemed like a wonderful bed of timothy and clover. It was fine to jump in, and perfect to hide in. And sometimes Avery would find a little grass snake in the hay, and would add it to the other things in his pocket.

Early summer days are a jubilee time for birds. In the fields, around the house, in the barn, in the woods, in the swamp – everywhere love and songs and nests and eggs. From the edge of the woods, the white-throated sparrow (which must come all the way from Boston) calls, ‘Oh, Peabody, Peabody, Peabody!’ On an apple bough, the phoebe teeters and wags its tail and says, ‘Phoebe, phoe-bee!’ The song sparrow, who knows how brief and lovely life is, says, ‘Sweet, sweet, sweet interlude; sweet, sweet, sweet interlude.’ If you enter the barn, the swallows swoop down from their nests and scold. ‘Cheeky, cheeky!’ they say.

In early summer there are plenty of things for a child to eat and drink and suck and chew. Dandelion stems are full of milk, clover heads are loaded with nectar, the Frigidaire is full of ice-cold drinks. Everywhere you look is life; even the little ball of spit on the weed stalk, if you poke it apart, has a green worm inside it. And on the underside of the leaf of the potato vine are the bright orange eggs of the potato bug.

It was on a day in early summer that the goose eggs hatched. This was an important event in the barn cellar. Fern was there, sitting on her stool, when it happened.

Except for the goose herself, Charlotte was the first to know that the goslings had at last arrived. The goose knew a day in advance that they were coming – she could hear their weak voices calling from inside the egg. She knew that they were in a desperately cramped position inside the shell and were most anxious to break through and get out. So she sat quite still, and talked less than usual.

When the first gosling poked its grey-green head through the goose’s feathers and looked around, Charlotte spied it and made the announcement.

‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘that every one of us here will be gratified to learn that after four weeks of unremitting effort and patience on the part of our friend the goose, she now has something to show for it. The goslings have arrived. May I offer my sincere congratulations!’

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ said the goose, nodding and bowing shamelessly.

‘Thank you,’ said the gander.

‘Congratulations!’ shouted Wilbur. ‘How many goslings are there? I can only see one.’

‘There are seven,’ said the goose.

‘Fine!’ said Charlotte. ‘Seven is a lucky number.’

‘Luck had nothing to do with this,’ said the goose. ‘It was good management and hard work.’

At this point, Templeton showed his nose from his hiding-place under Wilbur’s trough. He glanced at Fern, then crept cautiously towards the goose, keeping close to the wall. Everyone watched him, for he was not well liked, not trusted.

‘Look,’ he began in his sharp voice, ‘you say you have seven goslings. There were eight eggs. What happened to the other egg? Why didn’t it hatch?’

‘It’s a dud, I guess,’ said the goose.

‘What are you going to do with it?’ continued Templeton, his little round beady eyes fixed on the goose.

‘You can have it,’ replied the goose. ‘Roll it away and add it to that nasty collection of yours.’ (Templeton had a habit of picking up unusual objects round the farm and storing them in his home. He saved everything.)

‘Certainly-ertainly-ertainly,’ said the gander. ‘You may have the egg. But I’ll tell you one thing, Templeton, if I ever catch you poking-oking-oking your ugly nose around our goslings, I’ll give you the worst pounding a rat ever took.’ And the gander opened his strong wings and beat the air with them to show his power. He was strong and brave, but the truth is, both the goose and the gander were worried about Templeton. And with good reason. The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything. He would kill a gosling if he could get away with it – the goose knew that. Everybody knew it.