# An Angler at Large/Chapter 34

This morning, on my way to the water, I met James, son of Joe, aged eighteen, gardener, coachman, boot-cleaner, knife-polisher, chicken-master, duck-expert, bacon-raiser, dog-herd, glazier, locksmith, and joiner, to my friend Slattery. James, son of Joe, reminds me of a certain knife which I never owned. It was sold over my head out of its shop-window—so splendid was this knife that it seemed to possess its environment as certain men seem to possess the hotels and railway carriages in which they magnificently dine or superbly sit—it was sold, I say, over my head, by the mercenery brute—King was his name, a vile name—of whose stock it was the glory, to some person or persons (probably a syndicate) furnished with the impossible sum of money which was marked upon it. That knife was suitable for everything. The Pioneer was its name. It would open champagne bottles (I have often handled it), it would draw corks, it would clean, ay! and file finger-nails. It had, cunningly ​dissembled in the handle, a pair of small folding-scissors, admirably adapted to embroidery work. There was really nothing to which a Pioneer would wish to turn his hand for which, with this knife, he would find himself unequipped. With the large blade, for instance, the felling of timber would have been the merest child's play. There was a tree near my home which I often in those days measured with my eye while waiting for that amount of money, which alone would satisfy the exorbitant King, to come my way. It was a pine tree of which the best log cabins are made. But the knife went otherwhere, and in consequence the pine tree still stands.
In like manner with this knife (with his father indeed—for here surely is heredity at work) James, son of Joe, is suitable for everything and competent in every sphere. Of his age, he is the most remarkable person alive. He has, however, one defect. He knows nothing about fish. Nothing whatever. I will prove it.
This morning he informed me with delight—for he loves me, I think—that a great trout lie by wooden bridge. He measured preposterous lengths on his arm, and finally decided on the distance between his finger-tip and three inches below his shoulder-blade. James, his arms are long, and it was clear to me that in the matter of ​this trout, the truth was not in him. But after slaying a fish of half his measurements, I should have been delirious for a month. Therefore I obtained further and better particulars, not of the trout's size, but of its situation, and thus furnished, after bestowing a smile upon James, son of Joe, I approached the lair of this prodigy.
On peering over the bridge rail, as suggested by James, I perceived a chub of about three pounds weight lying in the water.
I thought that I had known every fish in this piece of the river, but I was mistaken. Hitherto our chevin has escaped my vigilance. But he is certainly the only one of his breed in the neighbourhood. Pike we have, a few, eels abound in certain places, crayfish are found on the drag-net in September, of minnows we have the finest head of any water in England, and there are dace and roach. But we have never previously got down to chevins.
It would of course be impossible for me to catch this creature. First of all I could not, for I am not sufficiently crafty. But this entirely apart, it would be a gross error even to angle for him. To throw a fly or flies to our chevin (I have no chub-flies) would be to do that thing which of all others he most ardently desires. For to be taken for a trout, that is the chevin's ambition.
​You sometimes see in Regent Street and other places where people congregate, the deck of the Clacton Belle let us say, or the Paddock at Ascot, you sometimes see in such places a man who causes you to start and look more closely at him. Then you perceive that it is not the present Emperor of Germany, nor William Shakespeare, nor some other person of features easy to be recognised. You see that it is one of those people born alike with an uncommon physiognomy and an incredible nature, who seek by emphasising their natural disadvantages to draw to themselves the eyes of the multitude. It is as unfortunate to be given a face which resembles William Shakespeare's as to have a port-wine mark. Each is a target for the stares of those who pass one in the street, and that kind of notice should be painful to a man. If by his extraordinary energy and moderate abilities he has won himself a place in the world's estimation which renders his features familiar to the public, he has perhaps a right to feel some satisfaction when people's eyes fill with interest at his approach. He has earned this doubtful delight. But if it is merely his physical attributes which cause them to gape and turn round and nearly get run over by the Chelsea omnibus, I say that he has no title whatever to congratulate himself. Let the stares be complimentary or pitying or merely derisive, it ​is all one. The fellow is an object of false curiosity and his position should be detestable to him. But is it? In the case of the man with a port-wine mark probably, in the case of the hunchback possibly, but in the case of the mock celebrity, not at all. He revels in it. The nudge that goes between the oncoming couple never escapes him. He is on the look out for it. His wife will tell you how often people have remarked Andrew's resemblance to Napoleon with almost as much pride as if she had been married to that scourge of humanity. He goes to all the fancy dress balls there are in the costume appropriate to his unfortunate condition, and the murmurs of surprise which follow his triumphant progress about the rooms are sweeter to his ears than the whispers of love.
And in his ordinary clothes, should he be an imitation of Nelson, or Lord Charles Beresford, he rolls seamanlike; if the Duke of Wellington is his model he makes every inch of him try to look martial, yea! though he cheapen bananas on a barrow. He shaves his beard, not because he is cleaner so, but because Mr. George Alexander has particular views about his hair. And surely there is no wilder folly than to do any particular thing solely because someone else has done it before you. What may be highly convenient if ​one is an actor-manager with a fine chin, may be suicidal for a gentleman in the City with a tendency to bronchitis. But though he nearly lose his life in the winter, with the spring and his first saunter down St. James's Street, he is amply repaid if one eye dilates, and he hastens with quickened pulse in the direction of his prototype's theatre, doing his best to look as if he were late for rehearsal.
Such is the chevin in a trout stream.
I say nothing about him in his own place. Where dace and roach excite the emulous pole-fisher, where barbel growt after macaroni-and-cheese at dawn, where perch pull gay floats down among the water lilies, there the chevin is all very well. Fair play to him he is no easy fish to catch, though why anyone should wish to catch him I cannot conceive. His play is contemptible, for his heart is dead within him from the strike, and he is only fit for pike to eat, though they do not think so.
But in trout water he is out of his class, and, like every other thing which gets really above its proper sphere, he is miserable unless he can impose himself on the world as one who is there of right. Should he do this he is happier than he could ever be among fishes of his own or slightly better kidney. In water where chevins abound and trout are rarities no one would mistake the logger-headed creature for anything but himself. ​So, in such waters, he never receives the compliment for which his snobbish soul craves. But where trout and grayling of three to four pounds are fairly common possibilities, your plump chevin, well dissimulated in a deep place, may easily pass for a sporting and desirable fish. Then, like the mock Alexander after that encounter in St. James's Street, he is well content, and if an angler should take him seriously and offer him a cocked dun he has to put a fearful force upon himself to refrain from rising to it. How he boasts to the daces afterwards.
It has now become my duty to expose this impostor. The other rods must know, and any visitor who comes to fish, that the vicinity of the wooden bridge is polluted. Purfling I am tempted to send after "a great trout that defies all my skill." His subsequently expressed pity for my ignorance would be of a delicate savour. But no. Purfling must be told like the rest. It would be injudicious to send Purfling after a chevin.
There is no saying what kind of a seizure would carry him off, and I do not desire Purfling's death. His pity I could bear but not his obituary notices. And, away from the river, I believe him to be a useful citizen. He addresses meetings (I am told), and it is well that meetings should be addressed. ​Otherwise they would wreck halls, and all destruction of property is to be deprecated. Therefore Purfling, by saving the halls from destruction, plays a useful part, and there are too few useful men. I too am a useful man. By abstaining from addressing meetings I too save halls from destruction. For all these reasons I will spare Purfling.
The chevin then is, and shall be further, unmasked. James Lavender shall be told and everybody else. I will spread it about. I will tell the men who touch their hats when we meet in the village of an evening. Instead of saying "A fine night" or "a wet evening" I will say "There is a chevin by the bridge. Tell it out." So the thing shall be known to all users of the bridge. I would, were I competent in lettering, inscribe a signboard thus—"It is only a chevin," and set it up on the bridge end. But I cannot letter nicely and I must depend on the mouth-to-mouth method. James, son of Joe, and others who go that way will in future look over-rail upon a chevin and will know what they see. And they will spit upon the chevin. If they do not I will pay them till they do. And the chevin will know himself unmasked and the envious blood of him will turn black with rage, and he will float belly up, and the shrimp will eat him. ​Or—for a chevin is tenacious of purpose—he will shrink from public observation and will only show himself to the little children who sometimes play there, hopeful of their ignorant admiration. But I shall tell the children too.
Thus after a time he will learn the futility of his conduct and go away down or up stream whence he came, where other chevins are. There he will excite the cupidity of chevin fishers, but he will do it on his own merits. I trust that the lesson will sink in and that for the future he will content himself with being known for a moderate chevin rather than being mistaken for an impressive trout.