Lines in Pleasant Places | Page 2

but it was always fishing that kept
the longing eye turned towards the waterside. Somehow for a time the
water was all round me, but I had not the means of learning the art at
that time, nor of practising it. Somehow I was always being reminded
that the fishing rod was to obtain the mastery by and by, but I had to
wait a long while for the opportunity. At first I was in what may be
called a good fishing country, but I seemed to have no say in it. I had
no rod; no fisheries were open. Indeed, it was journalism that gripped
me, and in those early days I followed the mastership of it very closely,
for there was so much to learn, as I shall be able, I hope, to explain
when any reminiscences that I am able to write call for it. That longing
must meanwhile be kept open for some years to come.
Now, however, came the time when, as I have always considered, my
real life began. It was my fate to be appointed representative of the
Lymington Chronicle in 1858, when I was duly installed in its office in
that town, engaged to look after the local news, the advertisements, the
circulation; and especially it was my business to see that not a single
paragraph was ever missing from the budget which I duly sent to the
head office in Poole at the end of every week. But still there was no
fishing, save in the river, where bass came occasionally to my hook in
the tidal portions; and one of six pounds I remember as the best that
came to me on the hand line. There was some talk once of a visit that I
was to pay to a trout river at Brockenhurst; but practically nothing
came of it, nor did a casual chance which Lord Palmerston gave me at
Broadlands, which was too far from my beat and altogether above me
in its salmon runs. As for perch, which I had fished for as a boy, there
were none to be heard of in the district.

In due time I was transferred from Lymington to Southampton, where I
remember catching smelts, and nice little baskets of them, from the pier
at the bottom of High Street. Next I went to Manchester, where there
was less of such fishing as I required than before; and on a daily paper
like the Guardian, journalism soon proved to be real business to engage
my attention, and left me without the slight opportunities I found even
with the Lymington Chronicle or Hants Independent. In due time
fortune, as I thought, beamed upon me when I got an appointment on
the London Daily News, which was then in its prime. Here I began to
find what fishing meant, for very early, thanks to the kindness of Moy
Thomas and his friend Miles, the publisher, who was one of the
directors, I got a ticket for the famous New River reservoirs. I was here
introduced to many members of the fishing club--men of the place--and
became a member of the Stanley Anglers, where I won some prizes,
and of the somewhat famous and somewhat high-class True Waltonian
Society, which met at Stoke Newington. The general result of this was
that wherever there was fishing to be secured I got it, and was seldom
without opportunity of turning that longing eye of which I aforetime
spoke to the waterside. I made pretty rapid progress too, for I became a
well-known pike fisher at Stoke Newington, got large chub and much
perch, and generally took various degrees in the piscatorial art.
Best of all, by means of my membership of the True Waltonians, I had
the run of the Rickmansworth water. It was here that I learnt fly-fishing,
even to the extent of catching my first trout, and here that I went
through a course of practice at some large dace which then existed in
the Colne; and they very freely, to the extent of half a pound or so
weight, took the dry fly, which in later years they did not. As a very
active travelling member of the special correspondence staff of the
Daily News I went here and there on various errands, and was soon
known never to travel without my rod and creel. Then the introduction
to my old friend Gowing of the Gentleman's Magazine, as I have
already described, made me as eager to write as I was to fish; and, in a
word, this was how "Red Spinner" was manufactured.
Now I have explained how I became a practical angling writer, and the
half-dozen or so of books which I inflicted upon my brethren of the

Angle gradually came into existence. It