Charlotte’s Web

E.B. White

A few years ago I read this book with Millie – and now I was reading it with Alice. We were alternating chapters.

Around Page 58 there’s a passage about the Queensborough Bridge that sent me into a reverie. Templeton the rat is grouching as usual, and Charlotte, in her prime, is giving Wilbur one of her benevolent lectures – overheard by the ever-present Fern:

“Templeton untied his string and took it back to his home. Charlotte returned to her weaving.

‘You needn’t feel too badly, Wilbur,’ she said. Not many creatures can spin webs. Even men aren’t as good at it as spiders, although they think they’re pretty good, and they’ll try anything. Did you ever hear of the Queensborough Bridge?’

Wilbur shook his head. ‘Is it a web?’

‘Sort of,’ replied Charlotte. ‘But do you know how long it took men to build it? Eight whole years. My goodness, I would have starved to death waiting that long. I can make a web in a single evening.’

‘What do people catch in the Queensborough Bridge – bugs?’ asked Wilbur.

‘No,’ said Charlotte. ‘They don’t catch anything. They just keep trotting back and forth across the bridge thinking there is something better on the other side…’”

Now it happens that I once spent a summer living right by the Queensborough Bridge. It was 1985. Ruth Katz and I found an apartment in the New York Times – and Ruth’s ballet friend, William, helped us get it. I arrived from Toronto at the end of April and rendezvoused with David Rubin. Then we cleaned up the place, stocked the fridge, found ourselves jobs at Greenpeace, and generally had the time of our lives – until Ruth arrived from Toronto with her maelstrom.

The apartment was small, grubby and cozy – like I say with this great location beside the bridge – in a crumbling block owned by a man named Dorsey Walters. At the top was a roof from where all possible modes of human transport might be observed: boats on the East River, cable cars heading to the island, airplanes, helicopters, cars (of course) – and our fellow citizens like ants on the sidewalk.

David and I made lots of friends in a short time – some in the apartment block, others at Greenpeace: Billy Comfort, Bryan Bence, Scott Pinet, Laurel Owen, Paul Stewart, Lori and the one I actually stayed in touch with (until I couldn’t): Jim Barber.

What struck me reading Charlotte’s Web was E.B. White’s interest in the life of spiders. He takes quite a lot of trouble to get us past our natural prejudices – and then to convey the miracles of spider art. It reminded me of something I read in Richard Dawkins:  Whatever the question (How to catch prey? How to protect eggs? How to build a long-distance parachute?) spiders have the same answer: Throw out some silk! E.B. White is full of admiration.

A wonderful piece then appeared in the Saturday Guardian – in the section called “Experience” that Millie reads so avidly.  This guy wrote about adopting a baby pig, thinking it was a dwarf breed, only to see it grow into a giant. But the sweet thing was that he (and his partner) fell in love with the animal – her sheer intelligence, her loving, sociable nature – and in the process woke up to the horror of eating meat. They became vegetarians, started a blog for the pig, and got such a warm response that they opened a farm animal sanctuary. E.B. White (who wrote Charlotte’s Web back in 1952) would have loved it!

Our reading of the book spanned Alice’s eighth birthday, including my purchase for her – after much hesitation – of some stick insects. E.B. White seems to have experienced nature as everything that invested his farm in Maine. The book is full of the changing seasons and the provisional relations between men and farm animals. For us, living in the endless city, the remove is several degrees greater. Stick insects in a tank! One yearns to offer more. One sees the yearning of children to know the natural world.

Life beside the Queensborough Bridge was full of laughter. Being with David was up-lifting. The love affair with Ruth seemed so important. The friends we made were so radical, the work so significant. The city opened its arms to us – never did I feel more at home. Before long, though, the seasons changed – and I didn’t have the presence of mind to spin out that fabulous summer. I might have done. Soon, sooner than a spider’s lifetime is over, I was back in Manchester in the land of Novembers.