The Beginning of Fable & Fen

The year is 1868. The place: the American Midwest.

The Civil War ended only three years ago, and the nation is still reeling from its effects. At the same time, science and technology are making incredible leaps forward. Humanity seems poised to finally understand the wonders of the universe, if only we can see how all the pieces fit together.

"Can you imagine what we might yet learn?"

From the journals of Honoria Fen, 1868

Enter Emmanuel Fable and Honoria Fen. Based on census data, it is very unlikely that these are their real surnames and possibly even the given names are false. More probably, they are pseudonyms chosen for their work on their collection of curiosities, as both show an extensive interest in codes, language, and, perhaps most importantly, secrecy.

On the surface, there is nothing especially unusual about the interests of these two amateur academics. Fen, whose specialty was natural history, would have found herself in excellent company. Wardian cases (what today we would call terrariums) of botanical specimens both rare and domestic were common sights in parlors and drawing rooms. Crafts made with shells, pressed flowers, ferns, and pine cones were popular past-times among Victorians on both sides of the pond. But Honoria Fen's interest in the natural world went beyond its aesthetic beauty. She was fascinated by the idea of taxonomy (the classification of different organisms), but rather than focusing on orders of complexity or the relationship of creatures to one another, Fen was especially intrigued by the way these labels and identifiers impacted how these organisms were viewed by society. For this reason, the Victorian language of flowers (floriography) was one of her areas of specialty and she maintained a large herbarium of pressed botanical specimens.

"It is five years today since Aubrey was lost in Virginia."

From the journals of Emmanuel Fable, 1868

Emmanuel Fable, by contrast, was drawn to the Spiritualist movement. His personal diaries and journals, though not nearly as extensive or meticulous as Honoria Fen's, mention several family members lost in the Civil War as well as to common causes of death of the era (a sister lost in childbirth, two or three siblings dead of childhood illness, and a young woman who may have been a fiancee, though the records are unclear). Brushes with death were far more common in this time period, of course, but the loss of a loved one is never an easy thing to bear. It seems likely that these losses were what first sparked Fable's interest in Spiritualism and the occult. In particular, he was intrigued by the way modern technology, coupled with ancient knowledge, might provide a glimpse through the veil in ways previous generations would have thought impossible. After all, the telegraph had enabled rapid communication over great distances only thirty years before. Who was to say that a new type of telegraph, or a similar invention, might not enable communication with the dead?

Despite their differing areas of interest, it seems that Fable & Fen found a great deal in common.

The Creation of the Collection

It is unclear exactly how Emmanuel Fable and Honoria Fen first met, but they begin to appear in one another's journals around 1870. In 1872, Fen makes her first reference to "our great Collection," which rapidly becomes the primary focus of her writing from that point on.

Curiosity collections were not uncommon in the 19th century. In fact, scientific and cultural artifacts were often the subject of lectures, presentations, and even drawing-room conversation. They were a great source of entertainment at the time, and in an era when it was unlikely one could simply visit a large museum collection, why not create one's own?

FLOWERING DOGWOOD, Cornus florida

For enduring love

"There is too great a similarity. It must be connected!"

From the journals of Honoria Fen, 1872

What set the Fable and Fen Collection apart was their focus on finding a larger organizing theme or pattern in what others regarded as mere entertainments. It seems they believed that this could unlock a greater level of insight or access to hidden knowledge, as if each curiosity was a cog in an extensive piece of clockwork and if they could only be collected and assembled correctly, something greater than the sum of its parts could be brought into being. Fable's writing made frequent references to the hand of God at work, and though he occasionally worried that their explorations and experiments would go too far, he was also fascinated by the idea of understanding what he called the Mind of God.

Fen, too, was intrigued by the potential such understanding might provide. She believed that the complexities and similarities across the natural world and even through human cultures and social structures pointed to a larger underlying principle that ordered all of creation. She was determined to understand as much of it as possible.

"They wouldn't understand what we are doing."

From the journals of Emmanuel Fable, 1875

Their collection grew for years, with both Fable and Fen traveling abroad to find additional specimens, objects, and texts, and to consult with experts in various fields. Little is known about their lives beyond their collection, however, as their records rarely mention anything of a more personal nature and civic records of the time were largely destroyed or misplaced.

What is clear, however, is that something changed around 1899. The normally meticulous records kept by Fen became much more sparse and almost incoherent in places. Fable seems to have given up on record keeping all together; his journals ramble through philosophical musings on life, death, and creation without making any reference to current events or even his beloved collections. Then in August of 1899, he abruptly began detailing something he called the Exemplum Mundi. This translates to something like the "example" or "model" of the world, but it is not exactly clear to what he is referring. In some passages, it sounds like a sort of unified theory of everything, while in others, it is a physical item or artifact that Fable hopes to find, or perhaps build.

Then, following a gap of several weeks, Fable wrote one last entry in his journals on December 27th, 1899:

"It is done. Honoria has gone and I am to follow. God willing, we shall find our way."

There are no further entries from either Fable or Fen, nor are there any public records that indicate what may have happened to them in those final days of the nineteenth century. Their collections and the documentation surrounding them were eventually broken up and sold or donated to various academic institutions and museum collections. Based on the dates in their journals and records, a large portion of those documents have been recovered, as well as several of their curiosities, but a great many other items remain unaccounted for. It is the work of the curators at the Fable & Fen company to try to recover these items and piece together answers to the mysteries of Fable and Fen--not only their disappearance, but the lives and work that came before.

Want to join in the search for answers?