# An Angler at Large/Chapter 20

My wife has discovered a little steed for us. He is called Jack, which is just as it should be, because his second name is Ass, and he is a sort of honorary member of the Bunting family—close neighbours of ours. Among beasts of draught this ass is surely one of the highly fortunate. He lives a life which has hitherto been lived only by the horses of sporting fiction. Roland, who carried a certain prosy-poetic, indomitable fellow from Ghent to Aix or from Aix to Ghent, may have been allowed in recognition of his services to spend thus the evening of his days. And in the last chapter of The Starting Gate we shall certainly find the dear old Druid cropping the lush grass of the Manor paddock or accepting sugar from the dainty hand of his mistress while the Squire stands by and recounts for the seventeen-hundredth time the story of the noble brute's last race, when, lame in the near hind, he won the Cup for his owner, ​together with a huge sum in bets, whereby he, the Squire, was able to marry and reform and save a great name from dishonour and the timber from the Jews. Never again has he, the Squire, run a horse. The stable was sold, but the Druid remained. Him the Squire would not let go. No, by Gad! He has earned an easy old age, the Druid has, and the Squire is seeing that he gets it. Yes, by Gad! A bulging grandchild is placed on the back of the old horse. He lumbers on three legs round the paddock and the book closes.
Yes, the horses of fiction live like Jack, but Jack is an ass of fact, and no ass, even of fiction, has ever before had so ideal an existence. A champion Pekingese could hardly fare better. The meadow in which he passes his days is full of long, sweet grasses; it is admirably shaded by elms. The sun shall not smite him by day unless it is his pleasure. The high road runs hard by. People walk there constantly, and they all pass the time of day with Jack. Most of them he ignores, but with a few, whom he favours because they bring gifts, he engages in brief conversation. The gifts displayed, accepted, and swallowed, he drifts away, which is his method of suggesting departure to his visitors. And let them go or stay, he gives them no more of his ​attention. Except for these short excursions to the fence he never stops eating. Now it is one thing to have unlimited food, it is another to have an unlimited appetite. I have heard the millionaire pitied because, having the means to gratify his taste for fine dishes to any extent, he is physically incapable of eating more than one dinner in the day. Therefore, it is argued, he is really no better off than a much poorer man. Jack is outside this kind of consideration altogether. Truly, he eats but one dinner a day. But it begins in early morning, and it only stops when he is led reluctantly stablewards at night. He is like the cigarette-smoker, whose pleasure consists enormously in the smoke itself, but infinitely more in the not being without it. So long as Jack is permitted to chew, so long he remains contented, easy-tempered, placid. But remove him from his victuals and he rapidly grows irritable.
Until we came into the Valley such was the ideal existence of this ass. Once a week, on market day, Mrs. Bunting harnessed him to his little cart and permitted him to trot into the town with her and back. It was a jaunt that he enjoyed. Every creature above the limpet feels now and then the need of a little gentle exercise. This causes a quicker movement of the blood, ​and the digestive system is benefited. To the grass-eater it is the tonic appetiser which his meals are to the cigarette-smoker. Even this, you see, was provided for the thrice and four times happy ass. The road to market is a pleasant road of an easy length, not hilly, passing among trees. Jack liked very well to jog his four miles there in his fifty minutes and to return in his forty-five. It set him up for the week, and it gave him that feeling of usefulness which, in however modified a form—Charity Matinées let us say, and most subscription dances—is necessary to perfect contentment.
But now—his hire is but a shilling—now he lives in a sort of Purgatory, not quite Hell. Any afternoon he may see Mrs. Bunting at the gate, and at the sight his heart dies within him. He knows what this portends. Whereas the really charming spectacle of Mrs. Bunting at the gate was wont to arouse within him the happy anticipation of gentle movement not over-prolonged, for which his week's repose had absolutely inclined him; whereas the hebdomadary frolic was but a pleasant break in a monotony, rendered by it doubly delicious; whereas his legs carried him joyously to meet Mrs. Bunting, and he wore his shafts as a man wears his holiday suit, now he lowers his ears, ignores Mrs. Bunting, and tears ​sullenly at his pasture, as that same man (supposing him to be a trout fisher), with thought of the office waiting for him on the morrow, casts his fly doggedly into the last flicker of sunset. The shadow of work is darker than all the shades of night and blacks out the day long before the sun has gone down. But if any pleasure may be extracted from casting he means to have it. So Jack. But the succulent herbs are bitter in his mouth, and his face looks like a coffin.
For my wife has said to me in the morning, "Suppose we take the donkey to-day and go up on the downs." Notice this mode of expression. If it reflected the true state of the case I swear Jack would be delighted—but it does not. We do not take the donkey. The donkey takes us, and between the two there is a world of difference. The downs in question rise to a considerable height above the river-level. They are reached by hot, treeless roads, gentle in gradient but intolerably long. No pleasant constitutional for Jack, this down-climbing, but work, work that makes him sweat—even to think of it. Nothing could be better for his general health. He ought to be grateful to us. But is he? He may be, but he doesn't look it when he stands by the garden gate, his ears anywhere, his tail tucked between his legs. At every bump, ​which tells of some further article added to his load, his depression becomes more obvious. For on these journeys we require—
Grandmama, our tea-basket.
A parcel of provisions.
The Rookee chair.
Several books.
The shameless, leg-displaying umbrella, which we call the parasol.
Letter paper, in case my wife should wish to write letters.
Sermon paper, in case I should wish to write a book.
The implements of landscape-painting in water-colours.
Two cushions.
Two rugs.
A bottle filled with water.
A mackintosh, and
Each other.
Jack, on the contrary, has no conceivable use for any of these properties or persons, except, perhaps, the parcel of provisions. It is the thought of this which alone, I believe, keeps him from falling down on the road in despair (so sustaining are our provisions), for he knows that he will get his share. A miserable share—that is his opinion of it—and not in the least worth the ​incredible labour that he has to perform to get it, but—well, after all, marmalade between brown bread and butter does not come along every day. Yes, these excursions have their better side. So by the time we are finally disposed in the rear corners of the toy vehicle, he has very likely brisked up, and on the principle that the sooner the pill is swallowed the sooner the jam is got, he generally sets off at a brisk pace.
This he maintains for one hundred yards.
Then he comes to the gate of his paddock, and, throwing aside his virtues, makes one short but determined effort to take us to tea on the other side of our own party fence. I frustrate this—for I am an accomplished club ("club" as a synonym for the ass-driver is better because more true than "whip "), and I know his habits. All this involves a certain amount of pulling on one rein, which he regards as a signal to halt. This he does. I speak softly to him—we are in the middle of the village, and my blood has not yet begun to mount—urging him forward. So he walks at funeral pace past his dear gate, and having buried his hope yet once again, takes the next quarter-mile with a great deal of unnecessary action. Fixing one's eyes steadily upon him and ignoring all other things, one would suppose that one was racing over the road. Glance at the ​hedge, and one discovers that the cart is just not standing still. For in the ingenious art of sugaring Jack is second to none. I assure myself that the club is in the cart, but I do not so much as finger it, for it is a principle with me never to belabour this poor dumb brute until I am well away from the chance of observation. On the downs, however, it is different. There the eyes of my wife and my Maker alone see what I do to this ass, and I have no fear. The one is in the same cart as I. The Other is able to judge between me and this ass, and I have absolute confidence of acquittal. But the hasty misconception of the ignorant I fear. My name would look well in a brutality case. In human justice I place no trust, but in that of Divinity I do absolutely confide.
There is a spot somewhere on the ass which by repeated blows I have rendered less callous than other parts of him. Sometimes I find it, and the ass seems to start in his sleep. Thus we gain a yard.
We have gravely discussed the use upon the ass of devices whose fiendish ingenuity and cruelty make me blush for the brains which could imagine them. I cannot write them down.
A hair-pin—I snatched it out—has almost been employed. But the hand of Mercy snatched ​it back. "It is the only one that I have which will stay in five minutes," said Mercy.
And I walk up all the hills.
And I really love the ass. He has an adorable nose.
On hills I find that a certain form of address is perhaps less useless with the ass than any other stimulus. It is necessary to imagine oneself a member of the criminal classes, to assume a vile, raucous, but muffled utterance, and to take words upon one's lips which no gentleman could possibly use. It is not necessary to articulate these words distinctly, thank Heaven! But though they be dissembled under mouthings, the intention to utter them must be there, and the criminal mind must be assumed as far as possible. This machinery, set going, produces such intimidating sounds that I have seen my wife shrink from me involuntarily, though she knows my golden nature to its core; as for the ass, they have driven him once as much as fifty paces at over four miles an hour.
To pull on the bridle as one walks up hill by the ass's side is madness. He believes that you are trying to pull him up the hill. And he lets you.
So time ends, eternity has grown very old, and we reach the summit and our picnic ground.
​Here we tether the ass, and my wife busies herself with kettle and methylated spirit. While we have been approaching my eye has been concerned with the natural features of the position, and very likely I have already selected the tree, group of whins, haystack, or what not which is this afternoon to acquire immortality. Or my mood may be a large one, which nothing less than square leagues of the countryside can satisfy. In this case I stand awhile considering the great spaces that surround me. But soon my mind is made up. Where all is impossible, why waste time in seeking for the less among the more difficult? Have at it! The Ignorant nothing can intimidate. So, after a brief period passed in framing pictures between my two hands held sideways, I fix on a county or two and begin.
Great views make many people feel like worms and insects. As a corrective to this uncomfortable sensation let me recommend them to paint these vistas. Their delight in what they see will be in nowise diminished, nay, rather increased five hundred-fold, but their estimation of their own place in nature will rise. They will learn that it is not the part of a worm and an insect to capture and set down on paper any fractional percentage of this world's beauty. A worm's appreciation, for instance, of the view from Montreux up the ​Rhone valley must be so small as to be entirely negligible. An ant's capacity to draw anything which remotely recalls Loch Assynt is nil. Handy little things though ants have been shown by scientists to be, they have never been found painting landscapes; not by the highest-powered microscope. Men do this. Let these humble-minded people, therefore, thank Heaven that they are men, and if they fear to paint, let them revel in the power to paint and in the power to enjoy. But let us have no more talk of worms and insects. Though I paint the most horrible pictures from which the most kindly connoisseur turns fainting away, this distressing circumstance cannot rob me of my achievement. Perhaps it may be said that no one would wish to rob me of it. That it is worth nothing, nothing at all. This is sheer commercialism. I cannot get sixpence for all my pictures put together. Granted. But I have got from them what no amount of money could buy me. I have learned my superiority to the worms, a matter about which in my youth I had some very uncomfortable doubts. I know that I have faculties which raise me above worms, and I have exercised one of those faculties as honestly as I can. This is a great deal.
Again, let these people, when they paint, paint on smallish Whatman boards. To produce a sort ​of illusion of so much of the Universe on so small a space is to taste omnipotence. While one part of the soul prostrates itself before valley and wood, rolling down-land and the miracle of the clouds, another part sings loudly and contentedly while the daubing goes on. The child that is in us all plays happily at being father. We are engaged on the sincerest form of—not flattery, but worship. A lick of Burnt Sienna and a whole autumn forest, twenty miles away, is there, under our hand. Four thousand leaves lie in a brushful of Terre Verte, the infinity of space in a thin wash of Cobalt. A pool of Yellow Ochre, a dab of Vandyke Brown, and we own a thatched cottage. With a streak of Dragon's-blood we take seisin of territories. We play at Creation, and it is the best game (in all its forms) yet invented. And the real Artist smiles on our play.
But this nonsense of painting makes me neglect the ass, and neglect he detests. Of what his opinion of us may be I have, of course, no certain idea, but I cannot think that it is high. One of us he sees fiddling with an apparatus or seated immovable with a little book in her hand or strolling the down with hair flying loose upon the breeze shouting words of no meaning; the other squats on the ground making dirty a piece of white paper. Thus—or somewhat thus—he must ​regard our recreations. And we give him no sort of attention. Poor beast! He cannot recognise the preparation of tea and the acquirement of a Spanish vocabulary, nor yet the production of lovely pictures, when these phenomena present themselves to his notice. To him they are as the weaving of sand-ropes. (And who shall say that he is wrong?) Boredom unspeakable descends upon him. He surely hates us. At one point only our proceedings acquire a certain interest in his sight. It is when my wife gives him food. I have referred to marmalade sandwiches. But this is not the tale of his luxuries. Plum-cake he knows, and sugar and macaroons and cucumber and radishes. Gingerbread, too, he accepts. But we enjoy his gingerbread more than he, for its stickiness wraps it round his bit, and for long his tongue explores for outlying portions. Since the discovery of this entertainment we carry gingerbread always. Besides brown bread, he also eats brown-paper and tissue-paper and string. And he would once have eaten Oxide of Chromium, but I rescued the tube. And there was a camp-stool which we could never find. But perhaps I insinuate an injustice. Let it stand. He has more on his conscience than a camp-stool. For at half-past five he begins to bray. It is the signal for departure, and we depart, not because we wish ​it, but because the ass wishes it. On our first excursion to the downs he behaved himself most seemly. "This," he thought, "is only once in a lifetime. I can stick it out, for hang it! they have given me lettuces." But the second time was too much for the small spark of gratitude and decency which then lurked in the black soul of this beast. It went out. "This," he thought, "is getting a bit too tough altogether. Confound them and their pâté de foie gras!" And he lifted up his voice in protest. The sacred peace of our hill-tops was shattered by outrageous sounds. The song of the ass is above nightingales in one respect. It absolutely ensures attention. A shocked world stopped to listen, laying aside its business of rolling, and we—we went home, lest the solar system be disorganised. I prayed to the ass; I appealed to his better nature. He had none. I appealed to his hide—the argumentum ad baculum. He only made more and horrider sounds. The study of Spanish was suspended. A vigorous impression of Scotch pines was lost to the world. What did the ass care? Nothing. He was going back to paddock.
Since that afternoon he has always given the signal for return. I am only surprised that he does not do it before we leave Willows. But let him try it. I would lather him braying through ​the Three Villages. Half-past five, then, is his hour for "taking" us home. I think that two causes co-operate here—(1) he has rested himself sufficiently; (2) he has removed the last layer of gingerbread from his bit. You suggest, acutely enough, more gingerbread. Our intelligence has risen so high. But a ton of gingerbread should not stop the ass's braying when he means to depart. He accepts the gingerbread, but he brays as he munches. So we return at a brisk pace, broken only at one spot, a public-house, up to which he always dashes at the gallop—and stops. For gingerbread is thirsty stuff. Behind him as we go, we sing, versifying alternately like troubadours, extolling his and our own merits, praising the institution of tea in the open, lampooning the Vicar, congratulating the Cloud Artist on the afternoon's arrangements.
At his paddock the ass makes one last determined bid for freedom, fails to bring it off, and ultimately, with a most righteous demeanour, trots the few remaining yards and draws up of his own accord at our gate. Mrs. Bunting appears labouring towards us, smiling to see the ass safely home. We unship our monstrous collection of necessaries. We all separate.
Five minutes later the ass has resumed his interrupted day's meal.