The Spider And The Fly

“The Spider and the Fly” by Thomas Hudson (1824)

This piece from Hudson’s 1824 collection, Comic Songs, bears a striking similarity to Howitt’s poem, including the identical first two lines. Hudson’s song has, like Howitt’s, a didactic tone and depicts a fly dangerously seduced by a spider. However, for Hudson, the spider is an anthropomorphic version of Pleasure, whose victims are male. Hudson’s victim is less sympathetic than Howitt’s and is blamed for being preyed on: “‘Tis vanity that ever makes repentance come too late, / And you who into cobwebs run, surely deserve your fate” (Lines 31-32). Howitt perhaps adapted this work, reversing the genders of the main characters to create a cautionary tale for a female audience.

As explained in the notes, Hudson’s poem was “highly popular throughout the 19th century, and was widely printed.” Its chorus was later borrowed by Lewis Carroll for the “Lobster-Quadrille” in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), along with Howitt’s version.

“The Lobster-Quadrille (The Mock Turtle’s Song)” by Lewis Carroll (1865)

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Carroll pokes fun at many of the rhymes that Victorian children were forced to memorize for their moral value, including Howitt’s poem. While Carroll’s poem is a parody, it is not strictly satirizing Howitt. Carroll intertwines elements of Howitt’s poem and Thomas Hudson’s 1824 song to create his own composition. In Carroll’s version—which begins, “‘Will you walk a little faster?’ said a whiting to a snail” (Line 1)—the whiting fish is urging the snail to join the quadrille. However, the lines are darkly comic instead of cautionary: Snail knows this dance will cause certain death as he will land in “France” (Line 15), famous for serving escargot. Carroll would also go on to create a later poem, appearing in Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There (1871), called “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” in which the title characters dupe “four young oysters” (Line 42) to go on an outing that ends in them being devoured. This illustrates how the subject matter of innocents being taken advantage of was a common theme in literature of the time.

“The True Story of Web Spinner” by Mary Howitt (1834)

This is another long poem, written in couplets, which anthropomorphizes a spider character. The Old Web Spinner lives “an evil life,” preying on others ranging from an ancient widow of a moth to a noble bluebottle fly. The old web spinner’s house is described in a similar way to that of the spider in “The Spider and the Fly”—“Up in his garret dark he lived” (Line 7). And like the spider of “The Spider and the Fly,” the old web spinner gets away with his terrible deeds—“dismal cries were often heard” (Line 9). Eventually, his house is burned down by local law enforcement, but not before he escapes. This poem also appeared in Sketches of Natural History.