# An Angler at Large/Chapter 26

Chavender has been here again, drinking tea and killing my fishes. With him came Wickham.
My wife and I are lovers of good talk, and these two men are notable talkers. We had both promised ourselves much pleasure from their whimsicalities, and had consoled ourselves for the loss of their society, during the first day of their visit, by the anticipation of that which they would say to us, and to one another, when they should finally be driven within doors by the darkness. This first day, then, drew at length to a close, and after the waders of Wickham and Chavender had been removed, after Chavender's first cup of tea had been poured out—that is to say, about quarter-past ten at night—we were, the four of us, seated in the drawing-room, and I told the company about the angling which I had done that day. Now, I had not fished above two evening hours ​altogether, for I had wished my guests to have their will of the water, and my wife and I had spent the afternoon with the ass on the downs. Still, I had a tale to tell, though a tale of failure and disappointment, and I told it. This occupied our attention till shortly before eleven, when Wickham practically insisted on a hearing.
This had been Wickham's first experience of the Clere, and he had a great deal to say. During the day he had been over the whole water. So, beginning at the Lower End, he told us about several fishes which he had seen there. These were all well known to Chavender and to me, but it was not always that we could be perfectly satisfied as to the identity of any particular one about which Wickham was talking. For Wickham had not that perfect knowledge of the water which Chavender, after an acquaintance of three days, and I, after an intimacy of five and a half seasons, possess. Still, with a little care, we were always able to discover which of the trouts was the subject of Wickham's remarks, and to follow his proceedings with almost as much pleasure and knowledge as if we had actually assisted at them. Our talk ran something like this.
Wick: So he was put down for good. Then I went on, and just round the next corner I saw a sneaking rise in a quiet place, beside some rushes.
​I: I know the beast. On the far side he lies, just below a drain.
Chaven: No, that one's in the next meadow. Wickham means the one about sixty yards above the third plank.
I: There's no corner for a good hundred yards above the third plank.
Chaven: That depends on what you call a corner. There's a distinct bend——
Wick: This was a corner. Turns to the left.
I: To the right, you mean.
Chaven: Oh! that's the one you mean. That one's right up beyond the hedge. That's the one under the alder.
Wick: No. There wasn't any alder. The bank's quite clear.
I: Well, which side was he?
Wick: My side.
I: Your side? Nonsense!
Chaven: Of course. He's about a pound and a half.
I: You don't mean the one with the white mark?
Chaven: No, that's about twenty yards above Wickham's fish.
Wick: No. I saw him just before I got to the one I'm telling you about. About thirty yards below. But he saw me and bolted. Besides, ​this one round the corner was a good pound and three-quarters.
Chaven: Oh, I know. There's a twig sticks up just outside him, a black twig.
Wick: Well, blackish.
Chaven: There's a young copper beech opposite.
Wick: Yes, youngish.
I: Oh, that one.
Wick: Yes.
Chaven: Of course.
Wick: Well——
At this point my wife suddenly began to favour us with some very pungent observations. She said, among other things, that she had not asked Wickham and Chavender to Willows that they might entertain her with this kind of prating. She asked them plainly if they had left their wits behind them in London. She expressed astonishment that two such splendid intellects could concern themselves with folly of so colossal an order. She threatened to remove the teapot if Chavender so much as said "trout" again. For a week, she said, she had been living for that witty discourse upon really interesting topics of which she knew them to be capable. She called Heaven to witness, that of all tedious subjects angling was the most tiresome. Them and their copper beeches! Them and their measurements along the ​bank! Them and their planks and their fishes with white marks and their dirty little twigs!
I tried in vain to point out that the twig in question, being laved perpetually by the crystal water of the fairest stream on earth, could not be otherwise than spotless, but she would not hear a word in defence of Chavender and Wickham. She poured pitiless scorn upon their innocent fishing talk—the poor fellows. Nay, she parodied it, exhibiting a knowledge of its character and a keen appreciation of its possibilities in this direction with which I could never have credited her. It seems out of all reason that a woman who, up to a few short weeks ago, had never so much as seen a chalk-stream, should have gained such an insight into the manner in which dry-fly anglers communicate with one another.
True, I have seldom come in to a meal during all our time here without giving her some little account of my morning's sport. And whenever I have had a fish to show, I have generally described its situation, the state of the wind, the brightness or dullness of the weather, and perhaps drawn a diagram of the place showing the force and direction of the currents or the disposition of natural obstacles to success. And I am not surprised that she should be familiar with the names and appearances of many of the commoner artificial ​patterns. But I confess that she surprised me. Here is one more evidence of her quick apprehension. And I bear witness that she amused me. It was indescribably ludicrous to hear her travesty of Wickham's description of his first fish and how he grassed it. I am sure Chavender blessed himself that he had not yet launched forth. This, of course, put an end to all angling talk, and thereafter we discussed the Drama and other really vital things.
I am sorry that Chavender and Wickham talked shop, because though I, personally, was able to enjoy all that they might have said about fishing, my wife was not, and it is not proper that she should be teased with stuff which does not interest her. Fishermen sometimes forget that all the world is not agog to hear of their exploits. Yet fishermen are not the only offenders.
This power to bore with special conversation is a product of this specialised age. There was, there must have been, a time when, everybody knowing everything that was known, it was impossible for two or more to discuss any matter which was outside the knowledge of a third, fourth, or fifth as the case might be. The cave-parties of the first men can never have suffered from "shop." To-day, however, as it is impossible for anybody to be omniscient, as it becomes more and more ​necessary for everybody to specialise in their occupations, so special amusements become more and more the rule. No longer does a gentleman excel at hunting and hawking, archery, swordsmanship, the lute, the improvisation of verses, and a dozen other accomplishments. To-day he has time only for golf, or cricket, or lawn-tennis, or what not. Even in the field of sport competition is too keen to allow of excellence in more than one branch, save in the case of a few astonishing persons, whose renown is the best evidence of this condition of affairs.
Therefore it is very easy to-day for two people to talk with pernicious effect upon a third; and as conversation, if it is pleasant, tends to follow what some people, among them myself, call "the line of least resistance," this disaster is a common one.
I have often speculated as to which is the worst shop. For a long time I thought it was the golfer's variety, but my opinion was altered by a discussion based on the performances of league teams. Hunting shop is very generally hated, though I suspect this hatred to be the result of jealousy. Chess shop is dreary enough, but no worse to a person who does not understand that so-called game than, say, musical shop to one who knows nothing of classical music. And the shop ​of Knurr and Spell has no superiority to others which I have heard.
I fancy that all kinds prove equally exasperating to those who cannot join the talk, equally delightful to those who can.
But there is one kind of special conversation which, I submit, has a peculiarly atrocious flavour for the uninstructed, than which I can imagine no mere game shop that can more deplorably affect the enforced listener. For as no kind of talk is more absorbing to the majority of people than the discussion, the praise, the censure of their common acquaintances, so no kind can be more odious when the persons discussed are unknown to the victim of this shop. For to the ordinary annoyances of other people's special conversation is added the keen desire to join in, with which no other kind afflicts the listener. Nobody wants to enter a discussion of stamp collectors if he be not himself a philatelist. He is bored, and there is an end of it. But if these stamp collectors turn from their water-marks and their errors to the idiosyncrasies of some unknown James, then does the bored become the frantic, for he thinks, "Did I but know this James, with what point and venom could I criticise him! How humorously I could take him off! With what lively exaggerations could ​I embroider the anecdotes that I should relate of him!"
I will tell you a little story.
On one of the most unfortunate nights of my life I reached a certain hotel, believing that I was to entertain to dinner a man who had just descended there. From this festivity I anticipated a great deal of pleasure. The invitation was five years old. For five years I had been hungering for this dinner, at which my dear old Derry and I were going to celebrate his return from the East. He was in this hotel. He had sent me a telegram to say that he was my man for the evening. All the way to the hotel I had cogitated worthy menus.
As I entered the lounge I perceived Derry, and precipitated myself across the intervening space. After we had greeted each other, I found that he was introducing me to Mr. Thoms, just home from the Straits, one of the best, etcetera, etcetera. Mr. Thoms had all the appearance of being that moment landed in England after a protracted sojourn in Asia; that is to say, his clothes were obviously those in which six or seven years earlier, a slim boy, he had fared forth into the mysterious East. And the East had fattened him. To-morrow he would be at his tailor's, and the day after to-morrow he would be undistinguish​able from anybody else. At this moment, however, he had a very unusual kind of appearance.
"The dinner," said Derry, "is on me. Thoms dines with us."
I did not want to dine with Thoms, but I could not say so; not, at least, while I was in the very act of shaking Thoms by the hand. I wished to dine with Derry on food carefully chosen by myself, and sit far into the night discoursing with Derry of our past lives, where they had touched, and of the people that we knew. The presence of Thoms must make all this impossible. It must impose a strictly impersonal tone upon our conversation. Well, I can enjoy impersonal talk as much as anyone. Thoms had an intelligent face. And the poor devil was alone, save for us, on this his first night in London, after an age of exile. Resolved to get Derry to myself at an early date, I accepted the situation.
We passed to a gilded, blatant place where they serve a table d'hôte dinner and have a band. Such was Derry's choice. As he named it to the cabman I thought of the peaceful, silent isolation-ward in which my club dines its guests, and I sighed.
In the cab Derry and Thoms continued the conversation which I had interrupted. They continued it further in the restaurant.
​It was about British people then resident in the East, or home on leave, or voyaging between England and ultimate Asia. It was about nothing else. The names of these people were in many eases the names of people that I knew, but I could never discover that Derry and Thoms were acquainted with any of these friends of mine.
There were, for instance, two men called Hay about whom they talked for nearly the whole of one course. When they began, I had a fleeting hope that one of them might be Hay the stockbroker, a man I would gladly have criticised adversely. But it was only Hay of Penang. And their other Hay was Hay of Perak, cousin of the first Hay, and quite unconnected with the Stock Exchange. It was either Corbould or "Bruggy" Cotton that Thoms had passed at Singapore or Suez on his way back from England to Johore or the Chagos Archipelago. In either case the dear old chap was looking as fit as a flea after his leave. Barnes had gone to Christmas Island. Anson had married money. There had been the devil to pay at Labuan, but probably Derry had heard about that. No, Derry had heard nothing. Here Thoms became aware of my presence, which he had forgotten, and his discretion caused him to speak about the appointment of old Billy K. to Selangore. No doubt at some ​future time Derry would be enlightened concerning the Labuan trouble. Thorns understood that Maitland and his wife were on their way home, but he feared that he would miss Saunders, who was due back at Sandakan in a month. T. A. was a daddy at last. Good old T. A. We drank the health of T. A. and of Mrs. T. A. and of their offspring, but I never had more particular information about them, and I cannot tell you the sex of the child, because Derry wanted to know where Giles was now, and Thoms thought that he was still in Daru. But I remember that somebody else had been shifted to quite another place, the name of which I forget. It was, however, close to another place where death had recently robbed Derry and Thoms of a dear old boy they had known. Poor old chap! I wonder if he had been worrying too much over the Labuan trouble.
Our dinner at last came to an end. I had known from the first that, Thoms being just off his steamboat, the Empire could by no means be avoided. Nor was it. In the stalls Derry and Thoms continued cheerfully to converse about unknown people, by their initials and nicknames. I do not think they had any understanding of that which was happening on the stage. They never looked that way; they never looked my way, either. Yet I was close beside them. They amazed me. ​They still amaze me. I can even now hardly believe that these things really took place.
Now, I still tried to love Derry. The memory of what he had been was not yet totally effaced. Besides, I had promised him a dinner five years ago, and as a man of honour I must carry out my engagement. Therefore, near the end of the performance, I asked him if he would dine with me at my club on the following evening, for I knew that he was to be but two nights in London on this occasion. He answered that he had already promised to dine that night with Thoms. There followed a constrained silence, which Thoms at length broke by saying that he hoped I would dine with him and Derry. To this I replied that I had an engagement for to-morrow night to dine with some old friends out of which I could not possibly escape. Then there was another constrained silence.
I have never seen either Derry or Thoms again.
That is why I am able so heartily to sympathise with my wife when she found the fishing talk of Wickham and Chavender insupportable. That is why I insisted upon their talking about the drama.