An Angler at Large/Chapter 7
Chavender has been here fishing, and has caught more fishes than I believed it possible for one man to draw out of this river in the space of three days. Every afternoon he has been driven into the house, about tea-time, by the intolerable burden of trout with which his creel has been stuffed; then, having discharged his cargo, he has swallowed about ten cups of tea and departed, to be seen no more until dinner, when, the larder having been further enriched and a hasty meal having been swallowed, he has once more put forth to the work, and night has fallen upon him still slaughtering. This is the kind of guest that it is a real pleasure to have in the house. Until his return for the night to these premises our conversational labours with Chavender are limited to an affable good morning, and his, with us, to a request for the salt or more tea. But his waders once off, he will talk like a Christian and show no signs of restlessness till any hour of the morning that it may happen to be when we make him go to bed. Thus by day my wife and I are able to pursue our ordinary avocations just as if Chavender were not here, and by night we are compelled, by the laws of hospitality, to indulge our passion for frivolous talk to most improper lengths.
Chavender is distinguishable from other men by (1) his power of catching fishes, (2) his capacity for tea-drinking. Teapots turn pale at Chavender. He empties them. That is what he does with them. He is their master. We have a little small teapot which is really a coffee-pot. This was sent up to Chavender's bedroom on his first morning here. He must have used it with frightful rigour, for nothing has been able to persuade it to venture again into his chamber. Now only the largest and strongest of these vessels ever goes there. When a teapot is confronted with Chavender it shrivels up and becomes nothing at all. Let it be accustomed to hold tea for ten, twice. Chavender fixes it with his eye, and the poor thing is bolting out of the room crying for a fresh supply. Only one man has driven a pen big enough for Chavender and the teapots, and he definitely gave up writing centuries ago. I have therefore borrowed his giant quill—the good fellow made no bones about letting me have it—for that which follows. But one writer, one pen. I am not man enough for his, not though I take both arms to it. As witness:
Then he called for tea. And thenceforward for the space of one thousand and five hundred and sixty and three or four minutes, to be strictly accurate, there was such a pumping of pumps, kindling of fires, boiling of kettles, such a milking of cattle—Jerseys, shorthorns, Bedfordshires, black, brown, white, yellow, spotted with dun and splashed with red, fat, lean, with crumpled horn and with horn of symmetrical shape, and Chillinghams, not to mention buffaloes and yaks and female coiros (of which there are too few); such an opening of caddies and measuring of measures, such a filling of sugar-bowls, such an outgoing of the raw material, such a polishing and rubbing up of spoons and knives, such a submitting to the towel of cups and platters, such a disintegration of loaves, wheaten and oaten, such a spreading of butter, such a bringing of cakes—seed, currant, sultana, and the Simnel and the Genoa cakes and all other kinds of cakes and Dundee cake, such a spreading of tray cloths, such an unfolding of Japanese napkins, such a making and a baking of little brown scones and cookies and other hot breads, that the like was never seen before nor shall ever be seen again. Then he began to drink. Eternal swilling of fragrant liquor! Oh! the great cups he took off one after the other! How they evaporated in front of him! They came, and they were not. It was like the ocean assimilating rivers. What inversions of china! What journeys they made! More tea, good lady. Fill it out. Spare not of pouring, sweet hostess, for God made the tea-tree for this very purpose. As I suck tea, it is a great drink! I have killed fishes all day, but now I will absorb. To the kitchen with you, stout host. Though there be no bells in this house, yet will I tickle it off. Watch me to do it. 'Tis a thing worth learning. There! it is gone, the precious reviving stuff. And more is to come. What is the rain for but to appease my desire? It has percolated through much earth, but now it is in my interior. Host, to the back premises with you. There is a fresh brewing required. Cups! Cups! Bring me tea in a bath!
It is not only in the afternoon that Chavender exhibits these prodigies. Ten at night is his principal time for tea-drinking. And he sleeps like a child after it. A single cup will keep me waking till dawn; therefore I envy Chavender, and write in this way about him. I am allowed no tea at night. I am offered bananas by the dispenser of tea. Bananas! while Chavender gurgles with tea. Oh! I detest favouritism.
I wonder what the fellow's nerves are like. While he sits there drinking I could cheerfully see him opened up by the medical men who would tell me. "If this much stimulant," I ask myself, "only serves to bedew the eyelids of Chavender with the balmiest of sleep, what would happen were he deprived of it? It is clear that he would never wake up at all. And then his companionship would be lost to us. So I comfort myself for the partiality of the tea-dispenser.
I have said that Chavender always catches fish in this river. He employs honourable methods. He is, therefore, a good fisherman. This conclusion is open to objection, as thus. It is not certain that a man may not be a good fisherman and yet catch few fish. A good fisherman is one who fishes well. Results have nothing to do with it.
I reply that results have everything to do with it. A man who fishes well without catching fish is a contradiction in terms. Mechanical skill in the casting of flies may be acquired on a water that is quite empty of fishes. Similarly, a man may learn by heart all the practical hints of all the anglers who have ever written until there is nothing he cannot tell you about barbel-bait and the respective merits of gorge and snap-tackle for pike and the habits of eels. But the winner of casting tournaments is not, from that fact alone, a good angler. He is a long caster. And the student is very seldom a good angler. He gains distinction in a totally different field. He is in the same plane of existence with the Astronomer, the Classic, and Mr. Datas. I do not say that the Fly-casting Champion or the diligent reader of angling books cannot be also a good angler, but if he is, it is not by reason of his medals or his library.
An angler—let us confine ourselves to chalk-stream fishing—a chalk-stream angler may be a good caster of flies, may have a good knowledge of water insects and of the fishes' ways, and yet not be a good chalk-stream angler. He may be a good strategist as well, and a good man to boot, but unless he catches fish (honourably always understood) he is not a good angler. Again, I do not insist on his always catching fish. There are days when the Sainted Peter himself should return with an empty creel. But any man who can go forth day after day to this teeming stream and not have trout or graylings to show, though he cast like Marry at and know like Francis, I say that he is a bad fisherman. Something is wrong. Such a man will come in at night with nothing but a tale of woe. There was no fly; there was too much sun; the water was two degrees too cold; the wind was wrong; the weeds were the very devil. Such fish as he rose he covered perfectly at the first cast, but they all came short, or the light was awkward and he didn't see his fly as it fell. Perhaps he got his hook in, but it was in too lightly; or the fish, a very strong one, went to weed in spite of all he could do to prevent it. He winds up with an explanation of the lack of fly or a dissertation upon weed-cutting. But he takes no fishes. Such—saving only the Marryat-like casting and the Francis-like knowledge—am I.
Chavender, arriving a moment later, pours out a brace of trout weighing four and half pounds. He can afford to keep silent as to his failures, of which there have been many no doubt, so he offers no excuses. He never offers excuses, holding rightly that if there is any blame to be bestowed it belongs to the angler more than anywhere else. Excuses only make incompetence more evident. To say that a fish went to weed is, in other words, to say that the angler was unable to stop him. And as it would be ridiculous to criticise the fish for seeking to escape, if criticism is necessary at all, it must be directed upon the fisherman. A complete reticence about these disasters is the seemly conduct.
I have accompanied Chavender while he has been fishing, and from observations made I have come to the conclusion that the best angler is not the man who combines the finest casting with the greatest knowledge, the rarest patience with the deadliest guile, the most unyielding resolution with the brightest enthusiasm, but simply he who makes the fewest mistakes.
Chavender catches fish to which I have cast easily (at the fifth trial when they were no longer there), for whose capture my knowledge should have been adequate, which have not unduly tried my patience, nor made great demands on my craftiness, nor my resolution. As for enthusiasm, mine has burned high just before I have failed to catch these fishes. A chalk-stream trout is often to be found the day after one has put him down, in the same place, rising to the same kind of fly, under the same kind of conditions. Such trout I have indicated to Chavender, and he has grassed them. Why? Because he has made no mistake. He has waited for a cloud, he has waited for a lull, he has taken note of the weed-beds, he has taken note of the probabilities of drag, he has made a rough guess at the number of duns which that fish lets go by; in short, he has made his dispositions, reducing the chances of failure to the minimum. Then, deliberately, he has cast and, everything being in his favour and the fly lighting correctly, the fish has risen, and has been hooked. Chavender has a mental chart of the river bed and his surroundings on the bank, and this enables him with the least possible amount of trouble to bring the fish to the landing stage. (I speak as if it were a steamboat, but no matter.) The net is put into the water at the right moment, never too soon; the fish is grassed, considered, bludgeoned, or returned. All this quite without flurry. If the creature escapes, Chavender does not explain. He turns a little white and goes on to another, master, as far as is possible in angling, of himself and of his destiny.
It could never happen to Chavender to fall thrice into the same ditch while endeavouring to get a tight line on a trout. Chavender would know the ditch was there, and would run down stream between it and the river rather than backwards into the ditch, as I did yesterday week. Yes, Chavender makes fewer mistakes than any other angler I know, and that is why he is the best.
You may argue, if you please, that if this contention is pushed as far as it will go, the best angler is the man who never fishes, and so makes fewer mistakes even than Chavender. But I say tush to you. Can anyone be more mistaken than the man who never fishes? And I say bah to you.
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Another virtue in Chavender. He encourages the painter that I feel is in me. He has said: "You have clearly reached a stage where you are fit to take lessons." This seems complimentary. There are then painters, worse than I, who are absolutely unfit to receive instruction. I am comforted. I do not grudge Chavender his tea tonight.
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I have sent six pictures to a professional painter who, Chavender assures me, will return, within a few posts, criticisms which I shall value, instruction which will enable me to exhibit next summer at Burlington House, and praise, which I must have.