On Nothing & Kindred Subjects

by Hilaire Belloc

In that part of the Thames where the river begins to feel its life before it knows its name the counties play with it upon either side. It is not yet a boundary. The parishes upon the northern bank are sometimes as truly Wiltshire as those to the south. The men upon the farms that look at each other over the water are close neighbours; they use the same words and the way they build their houses is the same. Between them runs the beginning of the Thames.

From the surface of the water the whole prospect is sky, bounded by reeds; but sitting up in one's canoe one sees between the reeds distant hills to the southward, or, on the north, trees in groups, and now and then the roofs of a village; more often the lonely group of a steading with a church close by.

Floating down this stream quite silently, but rather swiftly upon a summer's day, I saw on the bank to my right a very pleasant man. He was perhaps a hundred yards or two hundred ahead of me when I first caught sight of him, and perceived that he was a clergyman of the Church of England. He was fishing.

He was dressed in black, even his hat was black (though it was of straw), but his collar was of such a kind as his ancestors had worn, turned down and surrounded by a soft white tie. His face was clear and ruddy, his eyes honest, his hair already grey, and he was gazing intently upon the float; for I will not conceal it that he was fishing in that ancient manner with a float shaped like a sea-buoy and stuck through with a quill. So fish the yeomen to this day in Northern France and in Holland. Upon such immutable customs does an ancient State repose, which, if they are disturbed, there is danger of its dissolution.

As I so looked at him and rapidly approached him I took care not to disturb the water with my paddle, but to let the boat glide far from his side, until in the pleasure of watching him, I got fast upon the further reeds. There she held and I, knowing that the effort of getting her off would seriously stir the water, lay still. Nor did I speak to him, though he pleased me so much, because a friend of mine in Lambourne had once told me that of all things in Nature what a fish most fears is the voice of a man.

He, however, first spoke to me in a sort of easy tone that could frighten no fish. He said "Hullo!"

I answered him in a very subdued voice, for I have no art where fishes are concerned, "Hullo!"

Then he asked me, after a good long time, whether his watch was right, and as he asked me he pulled out his, which was a large, thick, golden watch, and looked at it with anxiety and dread. He asked me this, I think, because I must have had the look of a tired man fresh from the towns, and with the London time upon him, and yet I had been for weeks in no town larger than Cricklade: moreover, I had no watch. Since, none the less, it is one's duty to uplift, sustain, and comfort all one's fellows I told him that his watch was but half a minute fast, and he put it back with a greater content than he had taken it out; and, indeed, anyone who blames me for what I did in so assuring him of the time should remember that I had other means than a watch for judging it. The sunlight was already full of old kindness, the midges were active, the shadow of the reeds on the river was of a particular colour, the haze of a particular warmth; no one who had passed many days and nights together sleeping out and living out under this rare summer could mistake the hour.

In a little while I asked him whether he had caught any fish. He said he had not actually caught any, but that he would have caught several but for accidents, which he explained to me in technical language. Then he asked me in his turn where I was going to that evening. I said I had no object before me, that I would sleep when I felt sleepy, and wake when I felt wakeful, and that I would so drift down Thames till I came to anything unpleasant, when it was my design to leave my canoe at once, to tie it up to a post, and to go off to another place, "for," I told him, "I am here to think about Peace, and to see if She can be found." When I said this his face became moody, and, as though such portentous thoughts required action to balance them, he strained his line, lifted his float smartly from the water (so that I saw the hook flying through the air with a quarter of a worm upon it), and brought it down far up the stream. Then he let it go slowly down again as the water carried it, and instead of watching it with his steady and experienced eyes he looked up at me and asked me if, as yet, I had come upon any clue to Peace, that I expected to find Her between Cricklade and Bablock Hythe. I answered that I did not exactly expect to find Her, that I had come out to think about Her, and to find out whether She could be found. I told him that often and often as I wandered over the earth I had clearly seen Her, as once in Auvergne by Pont-Gibaud, once in Terneuzen, several times in Hazlemere, Hampstead, Clapham, and other suburbs, and more often than I could tell in the Weald: "but seeing Her," said I, "is one thing and holding Her is another. I hardly propose to follow all Her ways, but I do propose to consider Her nature until I know so much as to be able to discover Her at last whenever I have need, for I am convinced by this time that nothing else is worth the effort of a man … and I think I shall achieve my object somewhere between here and Bablock Hythe."

He told me without interest that there was nothing attractive in the pursuit or in its realisation.