An Angler at Large/Chapter 2
I am going to fish.
It is true that there is an enormous deal to be done in the house. The unpacking of the American trunk is in itself a day's work. And there is the drawing-room furniture to rearrange.
Wherever we go—and you must know that we are always going somewhere—this ceremony begins our sojourn, because, as my wife would tell you, I have my particular views upon the placing of tables and chairs and the Oriental fabrics which brighten up the dingiest room. I like to see what is called 'the feminine touch' in my habitation. What is good enough for careless bachelors is not good enough, believe her, for me. I can never do anything until I have got the harp out of the harp-case and the harp-case into the back premises out of sight—ugly thing! And if there is no sofa, I will carry a bed down from an upper room and cover it with djidjims and cushions and feign a divan, rather than allow my drawing-room to lack this essentially feminine touch. And when my wife is on it, then and not till then do I feel that the place begins to be habitable. Ask her if this is not so.
And I will work far into the night, long after she has grown exhausted, carrying out her excellent suggestions, lugging great wardrobes across and across the floor till they are in exactly the situation to make right the new adjustment of the large tables and the piano, if there is one.
And I welcome every suggestion she makes (from the couch that used to be a bed), because I know her to have a sound instinct for placing furniture. It is extraordinary how sound it is. We always agree—in the end. How lucky it is that we should be married! Supposing she had wedded a man who detested this kind of hard labour. An unfastidious man. A man such as I used to be before I knew her.
Just now, however, I am going to fish.
The harp I will unpack and the harp-case I will help the gardener to carry away. And I will swab up the leakage of the Spanish Jug, and then I will fish.
For you are to know, sir, that I have not fished in chalk water these three years. It is absolutely necessary for me to angle.
And you are also to know, sir—(No, my wife, no. No tea. Well, a cup—while I get on my waders and put the rod together). You are also, sir, to know that it is six years since I said goodbye to this same river Clere, my companion of five summers. How then shall I shift furniture or empty trunks, when he is all agog to greet me?
Come, let us be off. Will you go with me? The lady of the house is busy, and I am happy and prepared to prattle.
I say, sir, that we grow into friendship with a long-fished river as with a good comrade. The odd days, never repeated, that we have had on other waters are comparable to those single, rare, glorious encounters with the choice spirits, which Circumstance forbids us to improve. At the dinner-table, in a railway train, yea, by the water's edge we meet. Heart goes out to heart; each recognises in the other something of himself. It is a moment pregnant with the excitement of discovery, with all the possibilities that congeniality offers. One thinks, "If I were not going to Australia to-morrow!"; the other, "Would this man awaited me in Archangel! I could love him like a brother." Yet, though we never meet again, we remember, not perhaps the name, not perhaps the features, but something which is independent of these accidents. Friendship is largely a matter of opportunity. That one memory is all the friendship opportunity allows us. So with these rivers of a single day.
But when one has fished a water season after season for five years, then is its friendship a great and living thing. Of that little burn in Mull where one made such hay of the sea-trout one cherishes but a dim picture of dark pools, miniature brown-white cataracts, slate-blue hills, a leaden sky, the calling of the moor-fowl, and a heavy basket. But each feature of the long-fished stream is with one at all times—each curve and vista, each willow and withy-bed, the unguessable hatch-hole, the frank, revealing shallow, and the swelling downs and the distant clumps. These things are a possession that nothing can destroy so long as memory serves. Though paralysis should strike one into a living death, while memory were faithful one should yet wander in one's mind (by no means deliriously) through certain green water-meadows, eye busy with a certain stream where stout fish should always be rising. Other friends, older perhaps, dearer even than the river, should stand by the bedside, grieving at one's insensibility to their presence. Blind, deaf, dumb, feeling nothing, how should one cry to them for comfort? And what comfort could they give? But the river would come at one's unspoken call, and its consolation would never fail.
The winter months and all other times when trout fishing is impossible are in a sense seasons of paralysis. One may be rather more independent of one's river friend than one would be in the unfortunate circumstances which I have just imagined; but, though others claim one's attention, excluding him from one's communication, he bears no malice. He never sulks, thinking himself slighted. If a common friend happens to engage one's attention, and the presence of the river is suggested, he will come cheerfully to make a third, stay as long as the others wish, promoting pleasant talk with all his might, and, at a hint, will fade unostentatiously away. He knows nothing of jealousy, nothing of priorities; he is humble, faithful, always cheerful, always fresh, always the most excellent of company. And one never dreams of despising him for his lack of spirit, which one would surely do—such is man—were he a human being. He is like a dog, without its sycophancy; like a pipe, without its perversity; like the supreme book, without itsHe is like the supreme book. Yet the supreme book demands physical effort. Eyes tire even of the supreme book. And the supreme book, too, is shut into outer darkness by paralysis. To an angler the river beloved is really like nothing else.
And when he is by—when, that is, we are by by him—what good times we have! How we vary the sport! His population, I have said, is always rising. Each of those dimples is made by a fish that one has risen, played, and landed. And—this is the peculiar advantage of the situation—always those fishes are ready to be risen, played, and landed again. No day, not even memory's, is long enough to grass the fishes of five seasons. So one picks and one chooses, taking one here, one there, passing others by, reserving them for other occasions. They will not desert their places.
Does our pleasure demand a rise of Mayfly? What fishing we can cram into a couple of hours! Thirty trout, and the balance dips to 70 lb. And we might have done still better, but this is enough for good sportsmen such as we and the river are. Or do we feel that a clear October day would be well spent among the grayling? It is at our service. The woods are bravely decked out in honour of the occasion. The sun is warm; the air is cold. The fish rise foolishly, and our take is colossal. Especially in the long deeps of the Still Reach do the great head-and-tailers break the surface. How they tug and bore! What lengths of the bank we cover and cover as we follow those mighty fishes down the water to net them at last where the deep thins to the broad, gravelly shallow! Or is our fancy for some particular fish, that yellow monster that we got on the half-volley at our very feet as he came sulkily down to us, scared by the fish that we had pricked, the mighty trout that was looking into our eye as we flung the badger hackle at him, the golden giant that we hoped only to hasten, the colossus that we could hardly get into the net—the greatest trout? Do we care to live again through the marvellous moment of his rising? It is just as we please. Or there is the big fellow in the shallow, jungly backwater, that ran straight into a little patch of weed (a willow just above, an ash just below), and the rod being stoutly held up, splashed his way to the top, and so lay on his side, his head out of water, and taught us a new wrinkle for managing a weeded fish by holding him thus until he expires of asphyxiation. What though the wrinkle has never been used again? What though the odds against the possibility of its employment are 20,000 to 1? Let us warm ourselves in the glow of our own self-esteem, that we were able to realise the masterliness of inactivity, and so, ultimately, wade in and net a 2½ pounder, after one rush of six yards and three minutes of holding on. What though, conscience-stricken, we turned him in again? We had him. Let us have him again. Let us turn him in once more, and good luck go with him, slowly, under the willow roots.
Or would we have a few fat brace with the sedge? The feast is spread. We have only to name our dish. Our good friend will see that we are provided. He can meet our every taste. For an epicurean meal of choice morsels, for a great lusty gourmandising, he has the ingredients ready to hand, and his kindly presence will add savour to every mouthful.
Seasons come, perhaps, when we cannot actually meet. Our occasions take us elsewhere. But we are not utterly separated from the river. At any moment we have only to shut our eyes to be on his banks, catching fish. And then our circumstances smile. We are reunited. And as we cross the lowest meadow to where, deep and calm under the protecting copse, our friend awaits us by the boundary fence (there is surely a great trout under the thorn bush), we catch a kindly wink from him far up where he turns westward, and our heart beats its answer to his welcome.
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And there he is.
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I am going to fish. Now,—at once,—I am going to fish.