# An Angler at Large/Chapter 33

It is very often difficult to recognise the original in a product of cultivation. A prize pug is about as like a primitive dog as it is like a brontosaurus. Similarly a chalk-stream angler differs incredibly from the barbarian who with a paddle digs mud fish out of South African slime. Yet had man never imagined the eating of fishes, and set about procuring them in some such direct and practical fashion, the Itchen would not rent to-day at £2000 a mile. Or is it to-morrow?
During his journey from the shores of remote antiquity the angler has changed more than his costume and his tackle. He has developed a new point of view, which differentiates him from his old self far more completely than the split-cane and gossamer gut which he wags so dexterously back and forth over his chosen waters. He no longer fishes to eat; rather it may be said he eats to fish. Angling has become a sport, an art, a theory, a rule of life, and its original purpose is wholly obscured. Such carcases as its success​ful exponent may carry away from the stream he bestows upon the deserving poor or distributes as graceful compliments by post among his last winter's hostesses. It is fashionable to despise the flesh of trouts. "After," your more pernicious kind of angler will say, "I have weighed my fish, or grassed him, or fairly hooked him, or risen him"—his choice among these moments depending on the stage of refinement to which he has advanced—"I have no further interest in him. As for eating him, Heaven forbid! Give me a cod steak and oyster sauce."
Like so much of what is said nowadays, this kind of talk is extremely artificial. It is born of long purses and full stomachs. Civilisation is made up of such things. We have to get to grips with nature to discover their essential falsity. All this clothing of sportsmanship, entomology, phrenology, contemplativeness, gentleness, and even humour, in which we have learned to dress up fishing cannot serve to conceal from the penetrating eye the original simple, sincere attempt of the carnivorous animal to fill his belly.
My wife appeared with a white face, one hand flung forth despairingly, a telegram clutched in it. "Those men," she said, meaning Chavender and Wickham, whom again we expected, "will be here at half-past six—not half-past nine, as they ​wrote." I said, "Capital! Three hours to the good." "You don't understand," she said. "They were to come on the dining-train, and you never saw such a chicken as has been sent—a misery." It was my turn to grow pale. "We must buy more chickens," I said; "several more." "There are no more," said my wife tragically; "the village is empty of chickens." I perceived that my choice lay between a ten-mile bicycle ride and a little angling. It was not a hard one to make. "I will catch a trout," I said easily, as I rose from my chair and began to pull on my waders. "Let us have tea at once." "Do you think," she said, "that you had better wait for tea? It is frightfully important." Her evident anxiety that I should have every possible minute for my fishing annoyed me. I said, "I will go without tea. Though I lack, I will feed your guests." This I said to show my wife that she valued the comfort of our guests above mine, which was false, and that I proposed to supplement her shortcomings, which was base. I plucked my rod from the lawn and strode forth to catch our dinner.
It was half-past four o'clock. About five I anticipated the hatch of red quill customary on this water in this month at that hour. Meanwhile I went up the backwater, there haply to dape ​a trout. Daping is an absorbing business. Half-past five o'clock (to my annoyance) struck on the church clock, and I had daped nothing. I was not altogether surprised, hardly disappointed (for the rewards of daping are not frequent), in no wise cast down. I rejoined the river and waited for the red quills.
After I had been thus occupied for twenty or thirty minutes our purist Purfling came down stream towards me through the meadow, and, in reply to my question if any fly was showing up the water, informed me that the hatch of red quills was over. It had begun, he said, about half-past four. As it was ended, and as he had caught his (the assumption underlying the pronoun was intolerable) brace, he was going home. He dwelt at some distance from the river.
"I wonder," he said, "if you would do me a favour? I am a little late and take my road here. There is an old lady at the village—Mrs. Pescod, at the little shop. Hers is the only house at which, this season, I have not left a fish." I exclaimed at his generosity, no less than at his good fortune and skill (the paltry braggart!). "Nay," said he (he always says "Nay"), "there is no merit in giving away what one does not like. I think trout poor stuff. Give me a cod steak and oysters. As for my success I do not com​plain. But if you will leave these fish with Mrs. Pescod from me I shall be very grateful. It will save me ten minutes." I agreed to distribute his favours for him. I did not see why Mrs. Pescod should go without trout because I resented his monstrous request. You will recollect, perhaps, that I had missed the rise by which he had profited. No decent man in his position could have suggested to a man in mine the cartage of his successes. But I hope I do not need to labour this point.
Purfling went away, leaving in my creel two noble trout of about 2 lb. each. The fellow can surely fish.
Mrs. Pescod's supper was provided, but the dinner of my wife, two hungry fellows, and myself (and I had had no tea) still consisted of a meagre chicken. It behoved me to bestir myself.
I bestirred myself accordingly—as far as the run below the mill pool, which I reached by half-past six. At this time, I knew, Chavender and Wickham must be already in the house, or at any rate approaching it with frightful velocity. On my way I had risen and failed to catch one young grayling. The surface of the run below the mill pool remained unbroken during the five anxious minutes which I spent in scanning ​it. The mill pool has only once in my experience of it been wholly devoid of rises. This was the occasion. By this time my hunger was enormous. I thought of that chicken. I thought of the four miserable portions into which I could divide it. I thought of its wretched little legs vanishing in three bites of those strong, ravenous jaws that I had bidden all the way from London to its consumption. I thought of our poor housekeeper reduced to buttered eggs. I thought of a great wheaten loaf there was in the larder. And of myself, I thought of myself. I would be host, I would be carver. Whoever was going to be fed it could not be I—unless I caught a trout within the next half-hour.
It was now that the fancy dress of angling suddenly fell away from it, and I knew it for the stark, grim, elemental business it is. I began to think of the fat fishes which inhabit the mill pool in quite unfamiliar terms. They were no longer the ministers of my pleasure. They were no longer there to afford me the opportunity of exhibiting my sportsmanship, my skill in overcoming drag, my capacity to cheat a cross wind, my ability to cock a fly, my cunning in persuading them among the weed beds. They presented themselves to my imagination as pounds of meat, sizzling morsels of pink flesh, builders up of the ​system, necessities of life, pang-stayers. The shackles of civilisation became green withes to bind the Samson of animalism. Under the compelling influence of the law, Nature abhors a vacuum, I knotted on a huge alder and combed the pool—wet.
Somewhere in one of my boxes was a Silver Doctor.
On a water where pike occasionally appear a wagtail spinner is a legitimate item in the dry-fly angler's outfit.
In the miller's garden was a manure heap. It was full of brandlings. I began to strip the dressing from a hook.
But the clock struck seven, to save me from crime. In half an hour dinner would be served.
"If," I said violently, as I threw hook and brandling from me, "anybody thinks that I am going to dine off a pope's nose with 4 lb. of trout in my basket, he is mistaken—profoundly mistaken." I went home. In spite of my conviction that nature, ultimate judge, was with me, I wore a hang-dog air as I slunk past Mrs. Pescod's ​cottage. She and her three little orphan grandchildren called out "Good evening" to me and waved their hands. I hurried from the presence of this widow and these fatherless. So does civilisation take the pith out of the natural man.
And you would never believe the trouble that Chavender and Wickham and I met with next day in getting two brace of trout for Mrs. Pescod-one from Purfling and one from us. The good woman nearly fell down dead from sheer joy. And my wife (being deceived) was pleased with me. And we were all filled. And Purfling is under an obligation to me. And confession is good for the soul.
And, while I am confessing, let me say that Chavender caught three and Wickham one of those four fishes.