A RISE AT THE FATHER OF ANGLING.
THE memory of Izaak Walton has hitherto floated down the stream of time without even a nibble at it; but, alas! where is the long line so pure and even that does not come sooner or later to have a weak length detected in it? The severest critic of Molière was an old woman; and now a censor of the same sex takes upon herself to tax the immortal work of our Piscator with holding out an evil temptation to the rising generation Instead of concurring in the general admiration of his fascinating pictures of fishing, she boldly asserts that the rod has been the spoiling of her child, and insists that in calling the Angler gentle and inoffensive, the Author was altogether wrong in his dubbing. To render her strictures more attractive she has thrown them into a poetical form; having probably learned by experience that a rhyme at the end of a line is a very taking bait to the generality of readers. Hark! how she rates the meek Palmer whom Winifred Jenkins would have called “an angle upon earth!”
To Mr. IZAAK WALTON, at Mr. MAJOR’S the Bookseller’s in Fleet Street.
Mr. Walton, it’s harsh to say it, but as a Parent I can’t help wishing
You’d been hung before you publish’d your book, to set all the young people a fishing!
There’s my Robert, the trouble I’ve had with him it surpasses a mortal’s bearing,
And all thro’ those devilish angling works—the Lord forgive me for swearing!
I thought he were took with the Morbus one day, I did with his nasty angle!
For “oh dear,” says he, and burst out in a cry, “oh my gut is all got of a tangle!”
It’s a shame to teach a young boy such words—whose blood wouldn’t chill in their veins
To hear him, as I overheard him one day, a-talking of blowing out brains?[16]
And didn’t I quarrel with Sally the cook, and a precious scolding I give her,
“How dare you,” says I, “for to stench the whole house by keeping that stinking liver?”
’Twas enough to breed a fever, it was! they smelt it next door at the Bagots’,—
But it wasn’t breeding no fever—not it! ’twas my son a-breeding of maggots!
I declare that I couldn’t touch meat for a week, for it all seemed tainting and going,
And after turning my stomach so, they turned to blueflies, all buzzing and blowing;
Boys are nasty enough, goodness knows, of themselves, without putting live things in their craniums;
Well, what next? but he pots a whole cargo of worms along with my choice geraniums.
“THE GREAT GLOBE ITSELF, YEA, ALL WHICH IT INHERIT, SHALL DISSOLVE!”
And another fine trick, tho’ it wasn’t found out, till the housemaid had given us warning,
He fished at the golden fish in the bowl, before we were up and down in the morning.
I’m sure it was lucky for Ellen, poor thing, that she’d got so attentive a lover.
As bring her fresh fish when the others deceas’d, which they did a dozen times over!
Then a whole new loaf was short! for I know, of course, when our bread goes faster,—
And I made a stir with the bill in my hand, and the man was sent off by his master;
But, oh dear, I thought I should sink thro’ the earth, with the weight of my own reproaches,
For my own pretty son had made away with the loaf, to make pastry to feed the roaches!
I vow I’ve suffered a martyrdom—with all sorts of frights and terrors surrounded!
For I never saw him go out of the doors but I thought he’d come home to me drownded.
And, sure enough, I set out one fine Monday to visit my married daughter,
And there he was standing at Sadler’s Wells, a-performing with real water.
It’s well he was off on the further side, for I’d have brain’d him else with my patten,
For I thought he was safe at school, the young wretch! a studying Greek and Latin,
And my ridicule basket he had got on his back, to carry his fishes and gentles;
With a belt I knew he’d made from the belt of his father’s regimentals—
Well, I poked his rods and lines in the fire, and his father gave him a birching,
But he’d gone too far to be easy cured of his love for chubbing and perching.
One night he never came home to tea, and altho’ it was dark and dripping,
His father set off to Wapping, poor man! for the boy had a turn for shipping;
As for me I set up, and I sobbed and I cried for all the world like a babby,
Till at twelve o’clock he rewards my fears with two gudging from Waltham Abbey!
And a pretty sore throat and fever he caught, that brought me a fortnight’s hard nussing,
Till I thought I should go to my grey-hair’d grave, worn out with the fretting and fussing;
But at last he was cur’d, and we did have hopes that the fishing was cured as well,
But no such luck! not a week went by before we’d have another such spell.
Tho’ he never had got a penny to spend, for such was our strict intentions,
Yet he was soon set up in tackle agin, for all boys have such quick inventions:
And I lost my Lady’s Own Pocket Book, in spite of all my hunting and poking,
Till I found it chuck full of tackles and hooks, and besides it had had a good soaking.
Then one Friday morning, I gets a summoning note from a sort of a law attorney,
For the boy had been trespassing people’s grounds while his father was gone a journey,
And I had to go and hush it all up by myself, in an office at Hatton Garden;
And to pay for the damage he’d done, to boot, and to beg some strange gentleman’s pardon.
And wasn’t he once fished out himself, and a man had to dive to find him,
And I saw him brought home with my motherly eyes and a mob of people behind him?
Yes, it took a full hour to rub him to life—whilst I was a-screaming and raving,
And a couple of guineas it cost us besides, to reward the humane man for his saving,
And didn’t Miss Crump leave us out of her will, all along of her taking dudgeon
At her favourite cat being chok’d, poor Puss, with a hook sow’d up in a gudgeon?
And old Brown complain’d that he pluck’d his live fowls, and not without show of reason,
For the cocks looked naked about necks and tails, and it wasn’t their moulting season;
And sure and surely, when we came to enquire, there was cause for their screeching and cackles,
For the mischief confess’d he had picked them a bit, for I think he called them the hackles.
A pretty tussle we had about that! but as if it warn’t picking enough,
When the winter comes on, to the muff-box I goes, just to shake out my sable muff—
“O mercy!” thinks I, “there’s the moth in the house!” for the fur was all gone in patches;
And then at Ellen’s chinchilly I look, and its state of destruction just matches—
But it wasn’t no moth, Mr. Walton, but flies—sham flies to go trolling and trouting,
For his father’s great coat was all safe and sound, and that first set me a-doubting.
A plague, say I, on all rods and lines, and on young or old watery danglers!
And after all that you’ll talk of such stuff as no harm in the world about anglers!
And when all is done, all our worry and fuss, why, we’ve never had nothing worth dishing;
So you see, Mister Walton, no good comes at last of your famous book about fishing.
As for Robert’s, I burnt it a twelvemonth ago; but it turned up too late to be lucky,
For he’d got it by heart, as I found to the cost of
Your servant,
JANE ELIZABETH STUCKEY.
THERE’S NEVER A WHALE WITHOUT A BLUBBER.
[16] Chewing and spitting out bullock’s brains into the water for ground-bait is called blowing of brains. Salter’s Angler’s Guide.
RIGHT AND WRONG.
A SKETCH AT SEA.
THE Rights of Man,—whether abstract or real, divine or vulgar, vested or contested, civil or uncivil, common or uncommon—have been so fully and so frequently discussed, that one would suppose there was nothing new to be felt or expressed on the subject. I was agreeably surprised, therefore, during a late passage from Ireland, to hear the rights of an individual asserted in so very novel a manner as to seem worthy of record. The injured party was an involuntary fellow-passenger; and the first glance at him as he leisurely ascended the cabin stairs, bespoke him an original. His face, figure, dress, gait, ad gestures, were all more or less eccentric; yet, without any apparent affectation of singularity. His manner was perfectly earnest and business-like, though quaint. On reaching the deck, his first movement was towards the gangway, but a moment sufficed to acquaint him with the state of the case. The letter-bags having been detained an hour beyond the usual time of departure, the steam had been put on at a gallop, and Her Majesty’s mail packet the Guebre had already accomplished some hundred fathoms of her course. This untoward event, however, seemed rather to surprise than annoy our Original, who quietly stepped up to the Captain, with the air of demanding what was merely a matter of course:
“Hollo, Skipper! Off she goes, eh? But you must turn about, my boy, and let me get out.”
“HE’S A-GOING TO TAKE A TOWER.”
“Let you get out!” echoed the Skipper, and again repeating it, with what the musicians call a staccato—“Let—you—get—out!”
“Exactly so. I’m going ashore.”
“I’m rather afraid you are not, Sir,” said the Skipper, looking decidedly serious, “unless you allude to the other side!”
AN AQUATIC TRIP.
“The other side!” exclaimed the Oddity, involuntarily turning towards England. “Poo! poo! nonsense, man,—I only came to look at your accommodations. I’m not going across with you—I’m not, upon my word!”
“I must beg your pardon, Sir;” said the Captain, quite solemnly. “But it is my firm opinion that you are ‘going across.’”
“Poo, poo! all gammon.—I till you I am going back to Dublin.”
“Upon my soul, then,” said the Skipper, rather briskly, “you must swim back like a grampus, or borrow a pair of wings from the gulls.”
The man at the helm grinned his broadest at what he thought a good joke of his officer’s—while the Original turned sharply round, parodied a hyena’s laugh at the fellow, and then returned to the charge.
“Come, come, Skipper—it’s quite as far out as I care for—if you want to treat me to a sail!”
“Treat you to a sail!” roared the indignant officer. “Zounds! Sir, I’m in earnest—as much in earnest as ever I was in my life.”
“So much the better,” answered the Original. “I’m not joking myself, and I have no right to be joked upon.”
“Joke or no joke,” said the Captain—“all I know is this. The mail bags are on board—and it’s more than my post is worth to put back.”
“Eh? What? How?” exclaimed the Oddity, with a sort of nervous dance. “You astonish me! Do—you—really—mean to say—I’m obligated to go—whether I’ve a right or not?”
“I do indeed, Sir—I’m sorry for it, but it can’t be helped. My orders are positive. The moment the mail is on board I must cast off.”
“Indeed!—well—but you know—why, that’s your duty, not mine. I have no right to be cast off! I’ve no right to be here at all. I’ve no right to be anywhere—except in Merrion Square!”
The Captain was bothered. He shrugged up his shoulders, then gave a low whistle, then plunged his hands in his pockets—then gave a loud order to somebody, to do something, somewhere or other; and then began to walk short turns on the deck. His Captive, in the meantime, made hasty strides towards the stern, as if intending to leap overboard; but he suddenly stopped short, and took bewildered look at the receding coast. The original wrong was visibly increasing in length, breadth, and depth, every minute; and he again confronted the Captain.
DEEP DISTRESS PRODUCED BY MACHINERY.
“Well, Skipper—you’ve thought better of it—I’ve no right in the world, have I?—You will turn her round?”
“Totally impossible, Sir—quite out of my power.”
“Very well, very well, very well indeed!” the Original’s temper was getting up as well as the sea. “But mind, Sir—I protest. I protest against you, Sir—and against the ship—and the ocean, Sir—and everything! I’m getting further and further out—but, remember, I’ve no right! You will take the consequences. I have no right to be kidnapped—ask the Crown lawyers, if you think fit!”
After this denouncement, the Speaker began to pace up and down like the Captain, but at the opposite side of the deck. He was on the boil, however, as well as the engine,—and every time that he passed near the man whom he considered as his Sir Hudson Lowe, he gave vent to the inward feeling in a jerk of the head, accompanied by a short pig-like grunt. Now and then it broke out in words, but always the same four monosyllables, “This—is—too—bad”—with a most emphatic fall of the foot to each. At last it occurred to a stout pompous-looking personage to interpose as a mediator. He began by dilating on the immense commercial importance of a punctual delivery of letters—thence he insisted on the heavy responsibility of the Captain; with a promise of an early return packet from Holyhead—and he was entering into a congratulation of the fineness of the weather, when the Original thought it was time to cut him short.
“My good Sir—you’ll excuse me. The case is nobody’s but my own. You are a regular passenger. You have a right to be in this packet—you have a right to go to Holyhead—or to Liverpool—or to Gibraltar,—or to the world’s end—if—you—like. But I choose to be in Dublin. What right have I to be here then? Not—one—atom! I’ve no right to be in this vessel—and the Captain there knows it. I’ve no right (stamping) to be on this deck! I have no more right to be tossing at sea (waving his arms up and down) than the Pigeon House!”
“It is a very unpleasant situation, I allow, Sir,” said the Captain to the stout Passenger. “But, as I have told the gentleman, my hands are tied. I can do nothing—though nobody is more sorry for his inconvenience.”
“Inconvenience be hanged!” exclaimed the Oddity, in a passion at last. “It is NO inconvenience, Sir! Not—the—smallest. But that makes no difference as to my being here. It’s that—and that alone,—I dispute all right to!”
SEA RIDDLE. “DO YOU GIVE IT UP?”
“Well, but my dear, good Sir,” expostulated the pompous man; “admitting the justice of your premises, the hardship is confessedly without remedy.”
“To be sure it is,” said the Captain, “every inch of it. All I can say is, that the gentleman’s passage shall be no expense to him!”
“Thankee—of course not,” said the Original with a sneer. “I’ve no right to put my hand in my pocket! Not that I mind expense. But it’s my right I stand up for, and I defy you both to prove that I have any right—or any shadow of a right—to be in your company! I’ll tell you what, Skipper”—but before he could finish the sentence, he turned suddenly pale, made a most grotesque wry face, and rushed forward to the bow of the vessel. The Captain exchanged a significant smile with the stout gentleman; but before they had quite spoken their minds of the absent character, he came scrambling back to the binnacle, upon which he rested with both hands, while he thrust his working visage within a foot of the skipper’s face.
“CHARMING SPOTS ABOUT THIS PART OF THE RIVER.”
“There, Skipper!—now, Mr. What d’ye call—What do you both say to that? What right have I to be sick—as sick as a dog? I’ve no right to be squeamish! I’m not a passenger. I’ve no right to go tumbling over ropes and pails and what not to the ship’s head!”
“But my good Sir,”—began the pompous man.
“Don’t Sir me, Sir! You took your own passage. You have a right to be sick—You’ve a right to go to the side every five minutes—you’ve a right to DIE of it! But it’s the reverse with me—I have no right of the sort!”
“WHAT RIGHT HAVE YOU IN MY STEEL TRAP?”
“O certainly not, Sir,” said the pomposity, offended in his turn. “You are indubitably the best judge of your own privileges. I only beg to be allowed to remark, that where I felt I had so little right, I should hesitate to intrude myself.” So saying, he bowed very formally, and commenced his retreat to the cabin, while the Skipper pretended to examine the compass very minutely. In fact our Original had met with a chokepear. The fat man’s answer was too much for him, being framed on a principle clean contrary to his own peculiar system of logic. The more he tried to unravel its meaning, the more it got entangled. He didn’t like it, without knowing why; and he quite disagreed with it, though ignorant of its purport. He looked up at the funnel—and at the flag—and at the deck,—and down the companion stairs,—and then he wound up all by a long shake of his head, as mysterious as Lord Burleigh’s, at the astonished man at the wheel. His mind seemed made up. He buttoned his coat up to the very chin, as if to secure himself to himself, and never opened his lips again till the vessel touched the quay at Holyhead. The Captain then attempted a final apology—but it was interrupted in the middle.
“Enough said, Sir—quite enough. If you’ve only done your duty, you’ve no right to beg pardon—and I’ve no right to ask it. All I mean to say is, here am I in Holyhead instead of Dublin. I don’t care what that fat fellow says—who don’t understand his own rights. I stick to all I said before. I have no right to be up in the Moon, have I? Of course not—and I’ve no more right to stand on this present quay, than I have to be up in the Moon!”