# An Angler at Large/Chapter 9

The colours which I ordered the other day have come. Now in my box I have—
This is better. I shall set to work with something like confidence now. This morning I will paint the valley from the top of the Beacon Down. But first I must make me a new palette.
Here we are, sir. This is the Beacon Down, and, I think you'll admit, a notable place for a ​signal fire. Surely the whole of Wiltshire can see us up here. Ay, and Hants and Dorset to boot—and you can see them if you will, the one south, the other west; and if you have any imagination to pierce that soft blue circle of haze of which we are the centre, you shall see Somerset and Gloucester and Oxford and all the other noble counties of England. Yes, here we are, with nothing between us and God's sky, and no sound in our ears but the calling of the larks and the song of this clean wind in the grasses.
And my exasperating chatter? Certainly.
So! Sit there—a cigarette?—and fill your eyes while I get my painting things out. For I am not at all daunted by this landscape—now that my new colours have come.
You perceive, sir, that this Beacon Down has got in the way of our river. Hence this large horseshoe bend that the Clere makes there below us. Now you can see the whole of the water that I fish. There's the mill, beside the church tower among the elms, where that small road has just crawled down through the chalk hills from Little Harmony to meet the valley highway. And there is Willows just below us. Do you mark the thatch of our cottage, there, between the ​copper beech that is the pride of Mrs. Slattery's heart and the Five Poplars. And you can see Slattery's lawn, the one by the river where the big forget-me-not beds are. And there, as I exist, is Mrs. Slattery with her scarlet parasol. And there's the island pool about a foot and a half below Mrs. Slattery. The fishes are rising greedily. Do I pretend to see them from this distance? Not at all. But am I not up here? What else, then, should they do but rise? Yet—what odds if they are rising? What odds if I am on Beacon Down and can't catch them. I can paint—that is, I can try to paint. Let them live! And I couldn't catch them if I were at the island pool. I know those fishes. I say, sir, let them live! Below, you will observe, at the Lower End the river turns again and is lost to sight. God speed it to the sea!
Yes, I will be talking.
I always talk when I am happy, and it makes me very happy to use my new colours. Let me tell you what I am painting, for I am already beginning to have my doubts about the picture as evidence of my employment of this morning.
From the mill upwards you see the Beaulieu water, the other half of the horseshoe; a mile ​or more of it, right up to the next mill at Great Ottley. There the beech wood behind the mill thrusts out jealously from the downs to remind us that the river is not the only thing worthy of our admiration. Yet, were we angling to-day and not painting, I would very gladly point out to you the many excellent features of that water. For I have never fished it, and my acquaintance with it is purely imaginary. Yet with what trouts and graylings have I furnished it as I have sat up here and wandered in fancy where it shines among its water-meadows—pulling them out. That great red and grey Jacobean house is Beaulieu (you know, I suppose, how to pronounce that so as to be understood hereabouts), and that is the park with its long green avenue of ancient limes. And there is the Italian garden, all statues and solemn trim hedges and fountains and terraces, and to the right the old square, red-walled fruit garden, and to the left the formal pattern of the rose garden. It looks like a little carpet from this high place.
You can see the tiny village of Beaulieu, there by the end of the avenue. Six or seven houses and a little inn, the "Three Moles" they call it. But for these and their big house and the mill at Great Ottley and the chimneys of Great Ottley House (the next mansion in a valley of mansions), ​there is not a habitation in sight. The valley is peopled with its trees—elms, Lombardy poplars, willows, aspens, limes, and ashes. And in between them the river and its full ditches glint perpetually. And if you will raise your eyes a little you may see the chalk country that lies behind these things, fold on fold of the green down-land, with the Seven Clumps at the Great Stones, the Seven Beech Clumps that mark the way for anyone who crosses the Plain from the south. And over all, in this fine north-westerly weather, the great clouds sail, throwing their shadows upon square miles of it.
That is what I am painting.
I have now used all my new colours except the Italian Pink. But there was nothing Italian in the landscape except the garden at Beaulieu, and that was not pink. Moreover, Italian Pink is not pink at all. It is a sort of yellowy brown. Perhaps there is some mistake. I must ask my instructor.
And still the result is not satisfactory.
Not even my wife's praise can make me wholly satisfied with my picture.
​We had rain last night, and the valley was all new-washed this morning, and the sun, shining bravely, made everything very brilliant.
My picture, too, is very brilliant. But in a different way.
Have I been too lavish with the Mars Yellow?