A Discovery (A True Story)

Once a friend of mine showed me something that interested me very much. It was a spider’s nest. The spider had made it out of red clay. It had, at one end, a little door that opened. When the spider was inside, all he had to do was to push the door and it opened out. When he went out, he left the door open. If you looked carefully at the inside of the door, there was a tiny hole, so tiny that you could hardly see it. So when the spider went in he put his leg in the hole and pulled the door shut after him. Anybody who tried to open the door from the outside would have to tip the nest upside down.

For the inside of the nest the spider had spun a web which made it all soft and silky. The nest was small and round and just the color of the ground, so it was very hard to find. I think a spider who had a house like that would be very happy.

It has been suggested that E. B. White’s wife Katharine was the human inspiration for the character of Charlotte. So it is interesting to note not only the spider love poem he addressed to her, which Peter Neumeyer reprints in “Charlotte, Arachnida,” but Katharine’s own first publication, which appeared in the St. Nicholas League of St. Nicholas Magazine, Volume 29.10 (August 1902): 947–48. Was it she who taught E. B. White to admire spiders?