Angling Reminiscences

ANGLING REMINISCENCES.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

OUR venerable fraternity is at length dissolved! ’Tis strange, yet true. What fault had nature to find with us, save that we had lived our time? There was no unhealthiness or defection in our members—no pinings or frailties. We were, in heart, purpose, and intent, compact as ever. Alas! how freakish is fortune, leading us into treasons after happiness, and upsetting them with her finger-touch! The Angling Club at C———h is dissolved! All its kind-humoured contentions and merry assemblings, the schemes concerted for its longevity, ay, and the friendships it was wont to form, are out of being! One might naturally expect a reason for this breaking-up of interests. If there were any, we never could discover it. It lay too deep in philosophy for our line and plummet.

—————"’Tis wiser oft

To leave the sources of our ills unprobed."

The Angling Club at C———h! we are entitled to talk of it. It was formed originally under the auspices of our own great-grandfather. The armchair, in which sate our president, was once his. After the old man’s death, it was conveyed to our hall, and stood on a sort of low throne at one end of the apartment, surrounded with various implements belonging to our craft—rods, panniers, fishing-spears, &c.

Pardon, reader, a long digression. We have a natural wish to say something of the ponderous arm-chair and its revered possessor. How rich in associations was that worm-eaten piece of furniture! Its quaint devices, carved in sable wood, proclaimed it the masterpiece of some mouldered artizan, three centuries ago; the cushion of crimson velvet, worn and faded; its lofty Gothic architecture, with gilded figures, Cupids and cherubim—all connected its history with the days of old.

Alas! the solemn heir-loom is no more! It fell by degrees from the hands of our club into those of a private individual, and at length settled itself for three long years in the back warehouse of a common pawnbroker. There we detected, but did not purchase it. No! it was already profaned by the desecrating gaze of the many—the auctioneer had placed his unhallowed hands upon the once-honoured relic. The heir-loom of our club is indeed no more. We made enquiries after its fate, and found that the crazy fabric had given way under the sirloin of a bloated magistrate. Fire, the devourer, has in all probability consumed the craft of its ponderous framework—the massive limbs, with their relief of gorgeous imagery.

But the old, thin-haired man, its occupant, have we forgotten him? Not so. Well we recollect the spare bending figure of our Saturn—the visage with its lustreless eyeballs, wrinkled cheek, and thin, sharp nose. Well we recollect the lofty, solemn forehead, which Time had reverenced. It was a feature of much dignity in our aged ancestor, and contrasted strongly with the other sunken and altered pertinents of his countenance. The freshness of youth, which had deserted them, remained with it. Care, whose witchcraft tells sadly upon the brows of some men, laurelled though these be, across his had laid not a finger. That forehead! We speculate upon it even to this day. It was a portion of the genius of the past. Under its shell had been organized the fabrics of a master intellect; fancy and reason had laboured at the forge below its cavern. But it was of the past! The argument was over—the effect had perished with its cause. It was of the past! The subtle thought—the splendid conception—the wit, eloquence, and poetry, were each of the past!

Our great-grandfather had been what is termed a remarkable man, but by an omission on the part of his contemporaries, and perhaps through his own indifference, the comments upon his history are exceedingly rare. He must, however, we feel inwardly satisfied, besides a worthy angler, have been a great man, although neither wealth nor titles formed part of his acquirements. The inference is drawn by us, we know not from what quarter; it may be, indeed, that the old arm-chair had some hand in eliciting it. This, notwithstanding, is certain, that great as our ancestor had been, he had met with very uncharitable treatment from the world; for, although reputedly a voluminous author, we had never the good fortune to stumble upon more than a single tract, De Fluminibus Scoticis, avowedly of his composition, and only once found we mention of his name in a very old newspaper, as the inventor of a wonderful salmon fly. The insignificance of these discoveries nettled us not a little, but we consoled ourselves by the recollection, that the worthiest frequently pass without reward, and that the humours of critics are oftimes lamentably touchy and capricious. Our great-grandfather was still in our eyes a prodigy, obscured by a cloud in its zenith, but revealed on its horizon, ere it set, to a few privileged, consecrated gazers.

Thy second infancy, old man! was to us a solemn lesson from Nature’s volume—an instructive memento reared up in our presence, to check the exuberance of our early follies, and bedim the dazzling visions of our boyish enthusiasm. Tenant of the ancient chair! thou art before us, fixed thereto like a carved allegory;—thy shrunken limbs swathed in rinds of flannel to ward off the chilling frosts, with which, from the hand of Time, old age is assailed! Vain precaution! strengthless defence! thou shiverest even at thy fireside; the tale of thy heart is almost at a close; its passions are over; the pulse throbs slowly away. Thy mind wanders, old man! Conning over the archives of its eventful history, thou talkest like a dreamer. What connection have these disjointed thoughts with the business of today? They loiter far behind it, and are dark as prophecy. Yet, in reverence to the tones of the dying oracle, we listen, our own interpreter. Dote not they to thy children’s children, entering into their hearts like counsel from a gravestone?

Our ancestor was beyond, in age, his garrulous and whimsy days—his prate, the prate of fourscore, had ceased. He was a century old, and the very wishes of humanity were cancelled from his heart. All the obstinacy of a polemic temperament lay subdued within him—he had become like a willow in the hand of nature. Had we placed him in his coffin, he would scarcely have discovered it; but as yet, he looked more to advantage in the old massive arm-chair; it suited him like a part of his own wardrobe. The long, blue, silk dressing-gown, contrasted well with its crimson velvet, and the small pendant cap which confined his scanty locks was self and same with the latter material.

Our great-grandfather did not live on air. He required to be fed, and sometimes we marvelled at the appetite of the old man; he ate like a boy in his teens, and swallowed his wine-gruel with wonderful avidity. But it was a mechanical appetite after all—the palate was gone, and the functions of the stomach at a stand. Had you offered him gravel, he would have gaped for it, and exerted his gums upon pease-straw. The exercise of eating, however, sustained him; his jaw-bones kept him alive.

Very old men necessarily lose many of their faculties, and our ancestor was in a manner both deaf and blind. He heard and saw, however, by fits; and frequently would nod to an angling acquaintance, and such only, in an automaton fashion, without offering a single sign of further recognition. To some, it seemed strange how suddenly he could relapse into a state of the most absolute indifference, erecting himself slightly in his chair, and fixing his rigid eyeballs upon the opposite side of the apartment. Now, that we recollect, he breathed his last in this very position. We were sitting along with him, engaged in the perusal of an amusing book, and ever and anon casting our eyes towards the venerable chair which he occupied, little suspecting how silently within its confines death was at work, when a slight deviation from the perpendicular attitude, usual to the aged man, happened to attract, our attention, and we rose up with a view to arrange the various cushions by which he was commonly supported during his last infirmity. Alas! our ancestor was already no more! The patriarchal spirit had departed out of him;—we were busying ourselves with a stiff, uncomplying corse.

Is there any virtue in the blenched lock of an old man’s hair? We preserve it sacred in our bureau; it is mingled with a young girl’s tresses, the offering of one who is also at rest for ever! No, not for ever! The grave will unentomb its saints, and the infant lead forth the ancient. Our great-grandfather slept for some years in the family vault below St L———’s church; his ashes were at length disturbed by certain repairs of the building taking place. We have never discovered to what spot they happened to be removed, being abroad at the time of their resurrection; and who, alas! exists, ourselves excepted, to attach any interest to those violated remains?

But enough: Our ancestor was the founder of our club, aye, and a good angler to boot, of the old horse-hair school. We have some of his flies in our possession. They are so mis-shapen by moths that we can form no opinion of their pristine virtues. The wires are ponderous and clumsy, but in the main exquisitely tempered.

Of the exact year when the original fraternity at C———h was first instituted, there is no authentic record; neither have we discovered any documents leading us to suppose, that a narration of its proceedings was entrusted to the management of a secretary, until very lately before its dissolution. Our grandfather, who, along with our older ancestor, was a keen and competent angler, introduced us into the club, when only ten years of age; the chief requisition being, that the entrant should have slain a salmon on Tweedside. This feat we actually did accomplish at that early period of our boyhood, although (we make the confession without a blush) after the fish had been fixed and exhausted by the tackle of our grandsire, who good-naturedly conceded to us the triumph of hauling it ashore.

The club, at the time of our admission, consisted of a circle of greybeards, several of them octogenarians, and none under sixty years of age. Its numbers, as far as we recollect, were about seven or eight, all jovial fellows, full of humour, and of the right cast. These were principally country lairds, having no fixed profession, but independent with regard to circumstances.

The most prominent of them, next to my grandfather, who, as senior member, held the situation of president, was one Sir Amalek All-gab, a large, portly, broad-shouldered man, with a very simple and good-natured countenance, which, to our boyish eyes, appeared monstrously out of character with his person. Sir Amalek was the last of the line of All-gabs, a family of good repute and creditable antiquity. We are not informed who was the first baronet of that name, or upon what occasion the title was conferred. The entailed estate, however, dependent upon it, was by no means large; and were not Sir Amalek a bachelor, and in some respects a thrifty one to boot, the world, that is, all who knew him, might have reckoned his circumstances to be distressingly narrow. As it was, there was no reason to form any opinions about the matter; the baronet being a firm adherent to celibacy, and parsimoniously renouncing a whole catalogue of small comforts, under the titles of equipage, liveries, fox-hounds, horses, and champagne.

That Sir Amalek was a doughty angler, no member of the C———h club, save ourselves, ever disputed. He was accustomed to talk them all into a sort of belief of his prowess; and the strong impression which his narrations made upon our boyish mind, immediately after our admission into the club, determined us to watch out an early opportunity of beholding some of those wonderful feats we had heard vaunted of by the worthy baronet. Right fortunate we were in pitching upon one among the very seldom occasions, when Sir Amalek thought proper to set up his standard of war against the finny tribes; right fortunate we were in beholding his huge brawny person, armed with an eight yard measure, denominated his fishing-rod, which (although even to wield it was quite impracticable for a man of mere ordinary strength) was, to use the baronet’s own expression, as a child’s whip in his hands; right fortunate, of a truth, we were in beholding him, with a determined air, stride down to the water-edge, draw forth his tackle, and fixing a huge salmon fly at the end of his line, hitch it over the surface of a deep, transparent pool, where, by a certain movement of the angler’s wrists, it performed for the space of half a minute a kind of rotatory dance, and was drawn back again to be relieved by a similar insect of more reduced dimensions, whose pas-seul being unable likewise to attract the notice either of trout or salmon, a third such monster was brought forth and introduced upon the self-same stage. All these expedients, however, failing, the baronet betook himself to par-catching, and actually managed to draw in two or three unfortunate wretches, whose butchery seemed to afford mighty satisfaction to their captor, and ended for that day the exploits of the renowned Sir Amalek All-gab. Of course, while spectators of this ludicrous scene, we adopted the precaution of remaining concealed. The presence of a dog overlooking his operations, would have no doubt occasioned a precipitate retreat on the part of this modest angler.

We have made mention of Sir Amalek foremost, not as a specimen of the science and accomplishments under display by the old and long defunct faternity at C———h, but chiefly because he was in some degree looked up to by the club itself as its leading member. He had the talk of three ordinary tongues; and that, combined with his humour, which was infinite, gave him unlimited sway over those with whom he chanced to associate. Even our grandsire, who was wont to exhibit a tolerable proportion of stiff pride, couched a little under the affability of Sir Amalek, and was known more than once to be driven from a favourite position by the torrents of wit and persuasion let loose by the baronet.

Our recollections, however, of these times and matters are very bare, owing to which circumstance, we are compelled to be brief in our delineations of the other members belonging to the old fraternity. The president, our grandsire, bore a striking resemblance, both in feature and character, to his ancestor. As an angler, he excelled not only the rest of the club, but every Borderer and Briton that ever came into competition with him. ’Tis vulgarly rumoured, in the district where he resided, that the fish in a neighbouring stream held holiday on the day of his burial, and testified their exultation by leaping all at once out of the water while his coffin was in the act of being lowered. He died very shortly after his father, aged eighty-one, in consequence of a severe internal contusion, received while out at a black-fishing.

Of the other ancients composing this venerable fraternity, we remember only the