The Bat: A Lost Fable

When 23-year-old Howard Pyle began his career, he eked out a living by writing fables, drawing on his already vast knowledge of the genre. “I try to make them as witty as I can,” he explained, “and at the same time indoctrinate a small lesson with them. I strive to hold the lesson in view and throw in the wit as an accessory. Perhaps if I do the best I can in this way it may bear fruit at some time; but dear only knows!”

Fortunately, Mary Mapes Dodge, founder and editor of St. Nicholas, liked what Pyle submitted to her magazine. Encouraged, he composed more...and more. In a November 16, 1876 letter to his mother, he said:

Wrote yesterday another budget of fables as follows: 1st, A mouse having rendered a service to one of Jupiter’s Eagles, asks in return that he may be granted wings, so as to associate with the birds. It is granted and he becomes a bat. He soon finds, however, that though he has removed himself from the society of animals, the birds will not receive him among them because he still possesses ears and a tail. So the poor mortified creature only ventures out at night when others are sleeping.

A week later, he told his mother that “having...received a note from Mrs. Dodge accepting all my fables [except two], I went to work designing some illustrations.”

Mrs. Dodge especially requested me to design but one of them, but, so far from following her injunctions, I made a design of the discontented philosopher (as good a design as I have made lately) and two for the Bat, knowing my chance of having them accepted.

But before long Dodge got pickier about Pyle’s fables and his as-yet crude pen-and-ink drawings - and they paid less than he had hoped and expected:

I was far from satisfied at this as thee may well imagine, but I had to swallow it as best I could and digest the hard case in my own inner consciousness. They rather have me. There is no other childs’ magazine of any worth in the country and my writings are essentially for children.

Worse, as biographer Charles D. Abbott noted, “The truth of the matter was that St. Nicholas was overstocked, the editors had on hand enough of the fables to last them for many months, since it was not editorial policy to publish too many at once.”

In some cases, “many months” was, in fact, years: Pyle wrote “The Over-Wise Mouse,” for instance, in the fall of 1876, but it only appeared (with the title “Adventures of a Mouse”) in St. Nicholas for December 1885.

Indeed, for more than a century “The Over-Wise Mouse” was believed to have been the last-published of Pyle’s early fables. But, in scouring the pages of St. Nicholas, I found that another one appeared after it - though not for decades. “The Bat: A Fable” was finally featured in the May 1905 issue of St. Nicholas.It is credited only to “H.P.” and is accompanied by an unsigned illustration which must be one of the two illustrations Pyle had made for over 28 years earlier.

Why didn’t St. Nicholas herald it as a long-lost work by the famous author-illustrator? In 1905 Pyle was under a near-exclusive contract with Harper and Brothers, so St. Nicholas may not have been legally able to print “The Bat” (or at least the illustration) without getting permission from the rival publisher or from Pyle himself. I have a feeling neither party would have given the O.K. And I wonder if Pyle ever saw it - either in St. Nicholas or in the local Wilmington paper, The Morning News, which reprinted the text on April 27, 1905 - and, if he did, did he remember having done it?

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THE BAT: A FABLE

by Howard Pyle

A mouse, one time, rendered a service of some importance to one of the eagles of Jupiter. “Ask,” said the grateful bird, “anything that you desire, and in the name of my master, Jove, I promise to grant it to you.”

“Oh, sir,” said the mouse, eagerly, “I have long felt the mortification of living among such vulgar creatures as the beasts, and have ardently desired to associate with the more refined society of the birds. If you could but grant me wings, my happiness would be complete.”

“Consider well what you ask,” said the eagle, gravely. “Nature has placed you in a certain grade of society, and you need not hope that wings alone will make you a bird.”

“I have considered the matter thoroughly,” said the mouse, “and feel certain that if I had but wings I could at last associate with those I have so long envied and admired.”

“Very well,” said the eagle; “be it so!” and, instantly, wings springing from the mouse’s shoulders, the first bat was created.

His ambitious desires, however, were not realized; for the birds, perceiving that he still had ears and a tail and was, besides, covered with hair, would not associate with him, while, upon the other hand, his own pride had withdrawn him from his old companions.

“Alas!” said the poor, lonely animal, “why was I not contented with the humble sphere that nature intended me to fill? My very wings, that I hoped would be my pride, now prevent me from walking upon the ground, where I belong.”

So mortified and disappointed was he that thenceforth he ventured out into the world no longer by daylight, but only at night, when all other creatures had retired.

November 3, 1885

“The Children are sent to the Asylum.” I know how they feel. This lovely pen and ink (about 9 x 7.5") is typical post-Pepper-and-Salt-pre-Wonder-Clock Pyle. It made its one and only appearance in the November 3, 1885, issue of Harper's Young People, illustrating “The Book of Balbo” by Sherwood Ryse, the pseudonym of Alfred B. Starey, who was editor of the magazine at that time. After Starey died, Laurence Hutton (another Pyle friend) eulogized him in the pages of Harper’s Monthly (May 1894):

Harper’s Young People, although they did not know him, and perhaps never even heard his name, lost a good and faithful friend when Alfred B. Starey died last summer in New York. One who was long and intimately associated with him, in a professional as well as in a social way, can only say of him here, that he was as clean in morals as he was in intellect, that he won the respect and the confidence of all those with whom he was brought in contact, that no man of his years, or of his position, in his profession or out of it, was more sincerely liked or more deeply regretted, and that he never, in any society, said or did anything which his own sisters, or the Young People for whom he labored, might not have heard or seen.

The bound volume of the little magazine which he edited for seven years, and the first which has appeared since he passed away, is another and enduring stone in the monument which he helped to erect to himself. In Harper's Young People Mr. Starey put the very best of his life work. Although, of course, he did not die for it, he died in its service; and on every page, and in every line, it shows his critical instinct and his conscientious care.