THE DELIGHTS OF
FENDER-FISHING
I SHOULD like to have
met Izaak Walton. He is one of the few authors whom I
know I should like to have met. For he was a wise man, and he had
understanding. I should like to have gone angling with him, for I doubt not that
like myself he was more of an angler theoretically than practically. My
bookseller is a famous fisherman, as, indeed, booksellers generally are, since
the methods employed by fishermen to deceive and to catch their finny prey are
very similar to those employed by booksellers to attract and to entrap buyers.
As
for myself, I regard angling as one of the best of avocations, and although I
have pursued it but little, I concede that doubtless had I practised
it oftener I should have been a better man. How truly has Dame Juliana Bemers said that �at the least the angler hath his
wholesome walk and merry at his ease, and a sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead flowers that maketh
him hungry; he heareth the melodious harmony of fowls
; he seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, cotes, and
many other fowls with their broods, which meseemeth
better than all the noise of hounds, the blasts of horns, and the cry of fowls
that hunters, falconers, and fowlers can make. And if the angler take fish �
surely then is there no man merrier than he is in his spirit! "
My
bookseller cannot understand how it is that, being so enthusiastic a fisherman
theoretically, I should at the same time indulge so seldom in the practice of
fishing, as if, forsooth, a man should be expected to engage continually and
actively in every art and practice of which he may happen to approve. My young
friend Edward Ayer has a noble collection of books relating to the history of
American aboriginals and to the wars waged between those Indians and the
settlers in this country; my other young friend Luther Mills has gathered
together a multitude of books treating of the Napoleonic wars; yet neither Ayer
nor Mills hath ever slain a man or fought a battle, albeit both find
delectation in recitals of warlike prowess and personal valor. I love the night
and all the poetic influences of that quiet time, but I do not sit up all night
in order to hear the nightingale or to contemplate the astounding glories of
the heavens.
For
similar reasons, much as I appreciate I and marvel at the beauties of early
morning, I do not make a practice of early rising, and sensible as I am to the
charms of the babbling brook and of the crystal lake, l am not addicted to the
practice of wading about in either to the danger either to my own health or to
the health of the finny denizens in those places.
The
best anglers in the world are those who do not catch fish; the mere slaughter
of fish is simply brutal, and it was with a view to keeping her excellent
treatise out of the hands of the idle and the inappreciative that Dame Berners
incorporated that treatise in a compendious book whose cost was so large that
only �gentyll and noble men " could possess it.
What mind has he who loveth fishing merely for the killing it involves� what
mind has such a one to the beauty of the ever-changing panorama which nature
unfolds to the appreciative eye, or what communion has he with those sweet and
uplifting influences in which the meadows, the hillsides, the glades, the
dells, the forests, and the marshes abound?
Out
upon these vandals, I say � out upon the barbarians who would rob angling of
its poesy, and reduce it to the level of the butcher's
trade! It becomes a base and vicious avocation, does angling, when it ceases to
be what Sir Henry Wotton loved to call it � �an employment for his idle time,
which was then not idly spent; a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a
diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a
procurer of contentedness, and a begetter of habits of peace and patience in
those that professed and practised it!"
There
was another man I should like to have met�Sir Henry Wotton; for he was an ideal
angler. Christopher North, too (� an excellent angler
and now with God " l) �how I should love to have explored the Yarrow with
him, for he was a man of vast soul, vast learning, and vast wit. �Would you
believe it, my dear Shepherd," said he, �that my piscatory passions are
almost dead within me, and I like now to saunter along the banks and braes,
eying the younkers angling, or to lay me down on some sunny spot, and with my
face up to heaven, watch the slow-changing clouds! "There was the angling
genius with whom I would fain go angling! �Angling," says our revered St. Izaak, �angling is somewhat like poetry�men are to be born
so."
Doubtless
there are poets who are not anglers, but doubtless there never was an angler
who was not also a poet. Christopher North was a famous fisherman; he began his
career as such when he was a child of three years. With his thread line and
bent-pin hook the wee tot set out to make his first cast in �
a wee burnie " he had discovered near his
home. He caught his fish, too, and for the rest of the day he carried the
miserable little specimen about on a plate, exhibiting it triumphantly. With
that first experience began a life which I am fain to regard as one glorious
song in praise of the beauty and the beneficence of nature.
My
bookseller once took me angling with him in a Wisconsin lake which was the property
of a club of anglers to which my friend belonged. As we were to be absent
several days I carried along a box of books, for I esteem appropriate reading
to be a most important adjunct to an angling expedition. My bookseller had with
him enough machinery to stock a whaling expedition, and I could not help
wondering what my old Walton would think, could he drop down into our company
with his modest equipment of hooks, flies, and gentles.
The
lake whither we went was a large and beautiful expanse, girt by a landscape
which to my fancy was the embodiment of poetic delicacy and suggestion. I began
to inquire about the chub, dace, and trouts, but my
bookseller lost no time in telling me that the lake had been rid of all cheap
fry, and had been stocked with game fish, such as bass and pike.
I
did not at all relish this covert sneer at traditions which I have always
reverenced, and the better acquainted I became with my bookseller's modern art
of angling the less I liked it. I have little love for that kind of angling
which does not admit of a simultaneous enjoyment of the surrounding beauties of
nature. My bookseller enjoined silence upon me, but I did not heed the
injunction, for I must, indeed, have been a mere wooden effigy to hold my peace
amid that picturesque environment of hill, valley, wood, meadow, and arching
sky of clear blue.
It
was fortunate for me that I had my �Noctes Ambrosianae"
along, for when I had exhausted my praise of the surrounding glories of nature,
my bookseller would not converse with me; so I opened
my book and read to him that famous passage between Kit North and the Ettrick
Shepherd, wherein the shepherd discourses boastfully of his prowess as a
piscator of sawmon.
As
the sun approached midheaven and its heat became insupportable, I raised my
umbrella; to this sensible proceeding my bookseller objected�in fact, there was
hardly any reasonable suggestion I had to make for beguiling the time that my
book seller did not protest against it, and when finally
I produced my �Newcastle Fisher's Garlands" from my basket, and began to
troll those spirited lines beginning:
Away
wi' carking care and gloom
That
make life's pathway weedy O!
A
cheerful glass makes flowers to bloom
And
lightsome hours fly speedy OI
he
gathered in his rod and tackle and declared that it was no use trying to catch
fish while Bedlam ran riot.
As
for me, I had a delightful time of it; I caught no fish, to be sure: but what
of that? I could have caught fish had I so desired, but, as l have already
intimated to you and as l have always maintained and always shall, the mere
catching of fish is the least of the many enjoyments comprehended in the broad,
gracious art� of
angling.
Even
my bookseller was compelled to admit ultimately that l was a worthy disciple of
Walton, for when we had returned to the club house and had partaken of our
supper l regaled the company with many a cheery tale and merry song which I had
gathered from my books. Indeed, before l returned to the city I was elected an
honorary member of the club by acclamation� not for the number of fish I had
expiscated (for I did not catch one), but for that mastery of the science of
angling and the literature and the traditions and the religion and the
philosophy thereof which, by the grace of the companionship of books, I had
achieved.
It
is said that, with his feet over the fender, Macaulay could discourse learnedly
of French poetry, art, and philosophy. Yet he never visited Paris that he did not
experience the most exasperating difficulties in making himself understood by
the French customs officers.
In
like manner I am a fender-fisherman. With my shins toasting before a roaring
fire, and with judge Methuen at my side, I love to exploit the joys and the
glories of angling. The judge is � a brother of the
angle," as all will allow who have heard him tell Father Prout's story of the bishop and the turbots or heard him
sing ��
With
angle rod and lightsome heart,
Our
conscience clear, we gay depart
To
pebbly brooks and purling streams,
And
ne'er a care to vex our dreams.
And
how could the lot of the fender-fisherman be happier? No colds, quinsies or asthmas follow his incursions into the realms
of fancy where in cool streams and peaceful lakes a legion of chubs and trouts and sawmon await him; in
fancy he can hie away to the far-off Yarrow and once
more share the benefits of the companionship of Kit North, the Shepherd, and
that noble Edinburgh band; in fancy he can trudge the banks of the Blackwater
with the sage of Watergrasshill; in fancy he can hear
the music of the Tyne and feel the wind sweep cool and fresh o'er Coquetdale; in fancy, too, he knows the friendships which
only he can know�the friendships of the immortals whose spirits hover where
human love and sympathy attract them.
How
well I love ye, O my precious books -�my Prout, my
Wilson, my Phillips, my Berners, my Doubleday, my Roxby, my Chatto,
my Thompson, my Crawhalll For
ye are full of joyousness and cheer, and your songs uplift me and make me young
and strong again.
And
thou, homely little brown thing with worn leaves, yet more precious-to me than
all jewels of the earth�come, let me take thee from thy shelf and hold thee
lovingly in my hands and press thee tenderly to this aged and slow-pulsing
heart of mine! Dost thou remember how l found thee
half a century ago all tumbled in a lot of paltry trash? Did I not joyously
possess thee for a sixpence, and have I not cherished thee full sweetly all
these years? My Walton, soon must we part forever; when I am gone say unto him
who next shall have thee to his own that with his latest breath an old man
blessed theel
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Written
shortly before his death in 1895, is Eugene Field�s story of Fireside Fender
Fishing (reading books by the fireside) from �The Love Affairs of a
Bibliomaniac�