Quoted by Adam Dodd, 'Popular Entomology and Anthropomorphism in the Nineteenth Century: L.M. Budgen's Episodes of Insect Life', in Thorsen et. al., Animals on Display (2013), pp. 153-175.
Description:

'In the middle of the nineteenth century, an especially rich example of the episodic description of insect behaviour, and its anthropomorphic effects, appeared in L. M. Budgen's Episodes of Insect Life. A three-volume work, with each volume describing four consecutive months of insect activity, it offers the reader an entrance to the insect world, and a whimsical journey throuh a year within it, that is as educational as it is fanciful.' (155)

Notes quotation on front cover of Episodes: '"He filled their listening ears with wondrous things"'. (158)

Also the title vingette for all three volumes: '"So issue forth the seasons."' (158)

"First we have WINTER in his merriest mood, represented by the Cricket, bedecked with Christmas holly, and alive with fun and jollity. By his right hand he holds the Brimstone Butterfly, emblem of SPRING, primrose of papilions in habits and in hue. Beneath the jocund Grasshopper linked to the above by a vernal wreath, figures the bright SUMMER  and in the glowing Peacock Butterfly, ric in her velvet train as the autumnal flowers she frequents, we welcome AUTUMN, bearing the ripe sheaf and presenting her merry associate with the fruit of the vine.' (158)

'In volume I, the title vingette sits opposite a frontispiece portraying "butterflies in general," described by the author as "various species" that, "just risen and bursting from their chrysalidan shrouds, mount towards the skies or repose upon everlasting flowers" (160)

 

'Captioned with a passage credited to Longfellow, the symbolic relavence of [butterfly] metamorphosis is acknowledged, along with the juvenile appeal of the subjects: "And with child-like credulous affection / We behold those tender wings expand / Emblems of our own great resurrection / Emblems of the bright and better land."... so prevalent was the symbolic relavence of insect metamorphosis for the Victorians that Budgen... writes that "to the symbolic meaning of this picture it is scarcely needful to point, for in the Book of Nature, so truly described to be a Book of Emblems, the history ofthe fugacious Butterfly, as typifying the flight of the immortal soul, stands foremost for clearness, for exactitude, for beauty, and for solemn import."' (160)

 

'the book's position between entomology and entertainment is articulated in the preface:

"The following Essays have been written, not with a view of teaching Entomology as a science, but of affording such a measure of acquaintance with the habits of the Insect world, as may serve to promote the ulterior and more useful design of cultivating the rudimentary seeds of systematic investigation. For this, with many, sufficient leisure, fitting residence, and other appliances may be wanting, but few can entirely lack opportunity for becoming more observant of Nature's wonders, more impressible to her influences and her teachings, or more alive to the superior intelligence visible in her works. On nothing, perhaps, are the signs of intelligence more obviously impressed than on the operation of Insects, which, as creatures pre-eminently under the rule of instinct, attest as pre-eminently that "The mind which guides them is divine.""' (163)

 

'For her [Budgen's] teleological, pantheistic position, a deeper significance of insect behaviour becomes apparent; what is required is a shift in consciousness that in turn alters one's perception of insect life:

"Thus contemplated, the constructive skill, selecting judgement, and seeming foresight of these tiny agents, as applied to the preservation of themselves or offspring, are exalted into themes of surprising interest; and, as in all created things there exists a purpose out of and above themselves, it is evident in these displays of instinct, that the same informing principle which serves in its operation to direct the animal actor, is intended by its exhibition to amuse and to instruct the rational spectator... It may perhaps become apparent that allegoric fable, poetic association, and moral analogy are no forced productions, but only the luxuriant growths (leaf, flower, and fruit) of that branch of the tree of knowledge which belongs to Insect history."' (164)

 

Budgen 'faced the problem, shared by many early popularizers of entomology in the nineteenth century, of widespread disregard for insects themselves, writing that "The first anxiety of a writer is, as all the world knows, to establish a kindly sympathy between himself and his readers; but how can this be speedily created betwixt one who, as an Entomologist, would seem to think of nothing but Insects, and 'the many' who haVe always regarded them as below a passing thought?"' (165)

 

'Writing in 1847, there was no conventional format of popular books about insects for her to adopt. "Letters - Sketches  - Conversations," she wrote, "these were familiar shapes into which our materials might be moulded; but they seemed, in one sense, too familiar; the public taste might be tired of these hacknied modes of dressing up the sister sciences." Budgen decided that "episodes might better serve our purpose, and impose fewer shackles on our roving fancy: Episodes, then, they shall be called - Episodes of Insect Life, providing every month a seasonable admixture of the Real and the Ideal".' (165)

 

'Budgen's decision to write episodically comes at the end of the year... when "of all the summer myriads, the bulk have long ago expired; the remnant, scared even by the shadow of advancing winter, betook themselves to hidden places; and now old Christmas has benumbed them with his icy jaw, and keeps them unconscious prisoners within the earth or waters"... The thought of how to go about this task leads to drowsiness, and Budgen falls asleep by the fire. She is awoken by the bells of the neighbouring parish church, heralding the new year, and then left the silence of her parlor once the peeling stops, "a silence which seemed deeper than usual, and more solemn, yet not to the spirit's ear unbroken... Mingled thoughts, "of retrospect rather than of prospect," rush through her mind, and overwhelm her idea for the book. Out of the overwhelming sience, however, comes the catalyst for her writing, and it is perhaps unsurprising that it takes the form of an insect, and specifically the insect's voice: "Of a sudden, however, it [the book] was again brought to the surface : a shrill sound broke upon the stillness; another chorus, within the house, succeeded to the hushed peal without. The Crickets, from the kitchen below, were uplifting their chirping strains to salute, in full concert, the new-come year. We were at no loss, now, for at least one cheerful subject wherewith to commence our Episodes. - Bless their merry voices for the opportune suggestion!"... Budgen then takes up, not the pen, but the cadle, and goes downstairs to find the crickets... Most of them scamper away, but she captures "a straggler in the very act of draining the milk-pot, and carried him off to our parlour fire-side for the cultivation of a more intimate acquaintance, and with a view to making him as well known to our readers, by sight, as he, or rather his merry fraternity are likely to be already by sound"... Budgen places the cricket nder a tumbler with a few crumbs of bread, and muses on the variety of foods enjoyed by its kind: "True, as we have said, thou art not particular, 'scummings of pots, sweepings, bread, yeast, flesh and fat of broth,' thy pickings most esteemed, seem not, some of them, the most inviting fare; yet do these dainties, each in its kind, serve to symbolize, not unaptly, the very sort of viands we would seek and set before our readers"... Budgen becomes engaged with the significance of not just the cricket, but its surroundings, and a transformation begins to take place:

"For "scummings of pots," suppose we say the "cream of our subject," the most light, and, withal, the richest of the agreeable matter already laid up by others, to be extracted by ourselves in the field of observation. For "sweepings" let us put "gleanings," - Gleanings of Entomology - and we have the very term adopted by a well-known writer for his amusing anecdotes in various branches of Natural History. Then "bread," with Cricket as with man, the very "staff of life," if poverty forbid him not to grasp it, what substance more properly symbolic of that which must form the ground-work of our book, - matters of solid fact, mixed Avith and lightened by the "yeast" of illustration, discursive and pictorial. As for the "flesh" and "fat," the strongest fare on which the Cricket delighteth to regale, may they not serve to typify that principle of mental nourishment, of all the most vital, afforded by the religious contemplation of all natural objects endowed with life."...

Budgen sees the Cricket as "our representative, as, thirsting after knowledge of our subject, we strive to extract from it, even when seemingly most arid, a something of refreshing moisture"... And finally, in the closing passages of the opening chapter's anthropomorphosis, Budgen observes that

"in all his doings, our Cricket is, confessedly, a pilferer, and taking, as we largely must, from stores collected by the labours and observations of others, we shall herein, also, resemble our prototype, except that we rob in open daylight and thankfully acknowledge what we appropriate. There are yet other points of resemblance, more personal, between ourselves and the house Cricket. As with him, a warm hearth in winter and a sunny bank in summer are the seats of our supreme felicity. Like him, also, we joy in the possession of a quiet retreat, and prefer to uplift our voice from behind a screen. We have now set forth quite as much of our design, and revealed as much of our personality as has become connected with our immediate subject, and from the scattered grains of intimation already dropt, some prying reader may even now have gleaned more about the Cricket's ways and whereabouts than we have thought it expedient to reveal.' (165-167)

 

'"Suffice it, now, that as in the Cricket we have introduced thee to our symbolic self, so in the May-Fly we would beg thee to recognize oui symbolic hobby"'. (169)

 

'"Dear Entomology! We have called thee our hobby, we have likened thee to a hack; but thou art more. Thou art a powerful Genie, a light-winged Fairy, not merely bearing us through earth, and sky, and water, but peopling every scene in every element with new and living forms, before invisible"'. (169)

 

'"Using our hobby as a hunter, we may pursue our game for two different purposes; that of scrutinizing living instincts, or arranging and looking at dead objects... As for him whose delight in natural objects, of what kind soever, consists solely in their amassment, or is circumscribed within the walls of his cabinet, he is no naturalist at all, a mere kindred spirit of the Bibliomaniac, and little better than the miser whose iron heart is in his iron chest. Neither are specimens necessary to the study of Insects, though, like the Hortus Siccus [dried, preserved garden] of the botanist, they are of great assistance, especially at its commencement."' (169-170)

 

'"to take the life of even a Butterfly is confessedly, and ought to be, [[a]] matter of pain, and is, so far, a set-off against the pleasures of the Aurelian. Nor is it a sett=off which use diminishes, for the more we notice the beauty of Insects and the more we learn of their movements, the greater becomes our reluctance to mar the former or arrest the latter by an unwilling hastening of the hand of death. It is only our moral right to do so on sufficient occasion for which we would contend... On no principle can it be allowable to toy with torture. To take life quickly, and with far less suffering to the individual than what in the common course of nature it will be forever liable to undergo, all must admit to be a different matter." (170)

 

'"the sensual pleasures of a Butterfly versus the mental pleasure of a Man, such as can scarcely fail to be excited by a close examination of nature's miniature masterpieces of painting and mechanism."' (170)

 

'"There was a great grief in one of the monarchies of the earth: the queen regnant of a numerous people had just been summoned to her ancestors.. Yesterday she was a brilliant spark of life, from which light and activity extended to the very circumference of her kingdom; to-day, she is but a dull lump of mortality, casting its shade, and imparting its torpor far and wide around. The cheerful hum of labour is hushed every quarter, and in its stead arises the mournful wail of lamentation. The royal corpse is cold, yet faithful attendants and devoted body-guards still watch around it, as if reluctant to believe their "occupation gone." Some of these loving creatures will even starve upon their grief, and fall dead themselves around the body of their defunct mistress."' (172)

 

'The theme of royalty pervades the succeeding prose: we are told that "the kingdom of Apia (that of which we now write) was always a monarchy of marvels and of strange customs, and those which regarded the succession to the crown were some of the strangest among them."...

Like fairyland, the monarchy of Apia is not entirely benevolent. As one older female bee explains to two male workers, frustrated with the simple replication of a monarch with the qualities of the last: "We, with our boasted elixir of certain and invariable properties, stuff and stimulate body and mind into an invariable shape, converting what would have been a useful, active member of society into an enourmous, bloated, idle, cruel tyrant. They, by means of a wondrous art called mesmerism, acting on mind according as they please, contrive to expand the virtues and repress the visious properties of their infant subject (be it of roual or of humble birth), till they turn out of their moral laboratories paragons of princes and princesses, such as were never known since the world began."' (172-173)

 

'In the next section... Budgen attempts a more pleasing explanation of the bees' society:

"If any form of government be faultless, it must be one acting immediately under divine guidance, and of this class are the instinctive institutions of social animals, which are therefore perfect in their kind. Under an idea of such perfection (erroneously applied) the people of the hive have been held up to us people of the earth, not only as arguments for monarchy, but as models of monarchical government. That men might, nevertheless, just as well attempt to build their cities after the pattern of a honey-comb, as to mould their institutions after those of the honey-comb's inhabitants, os evidence, we should think, in our little romance."...

Budgern is ultimately critical of the habit of holding up bees as models of political economy and government... : "Have those by whom Bee economy has been held up for human imitation, ever thought about the awful consequences whoch would be involved in even a partial copy of the above severely wholesome policy?"' (173)

 

'"We may look again into the hive, but those who wish to dive deeply into the ways and wonders, the proceedings and policies of its busy inmates, must consult the works of Bee historians. Delightful pages some of them have written, reading much like human history, only more agreeable because udefiled by moral blots. They tell us, it is true, that Bees go to war like human communities; that strong Bees rob the weak, like human villains; that angry Bees fight single combats, like human duelists; that Bees, well-fed and vigorous, will kill the old and helpless of their labourers. These are points of character, rough and sharp enough it must be owned; but they need not prick us in the reading, when we remember that Bees are but the passive elements of an unerring instinct."' (173-174)