The truth is that the art of fishing can only be acquired on the banks of a stream, and is rarely acquired at all unless it has been practised in boyhood. And even so it lies not within the reach of all, even of those who ardently desire to succeed. I remember a comrade in one of my earlier fishing excursions in Scotland who laboured zealously but fruitlessly to obtain even the most modest degree of proficiency, and as he stood up in the boat, his line hopelessly entangled for the hundredth time, the gillie who was rowing us, moved by a spirit of prophecy that broke down all social reserve, suddenly turned to him and addressing him by his Christian name: “Frank, Frank,” said he, “you’re a good fellow, but you’ll never be a fisherman!” And in truth he never was.
And yet, once a measure of mastery is won, fishing remains for those who love it an abiding passion. Time leaves undisturbed the keen excitement of the first adventure, and with each return of spring the longing to be out beside a stream sets the pulses newly beating. One day when we were trudging through a field of turnips in Fifeshire, the late Sir William Harcourt, as though pierced by sudden conviction, turned to me with the remark, “Carr, what a bore sport is!” And of some forms of sport that, I think, may sometimes be truly said. But your true fisherman is never bored. He counts no day blank till it is ended, for the last hours, as he well knows, may restore his broken fortunes and set a goodly brace or two in the empty basket.
And there is no sport, I think, that sorts so well with the occupations of a writer. Shooting and stalking need the surrender of the entire day, and are too exhausting to leave any appetite for intellectual labour. But with fishing it is not so. The angler who has the good fortune to dwell beside a stream can divide his energies between work and sport without neglect of either, and in my own case I have found them go happily hand in hand. Much of my play of King Arthur was written by the shores of Rannoch, which I had first known and loved as a boy, and there is a little cottage in Hertfordshire, unhappily no longer mine, that enshrines many happy memories wherein work and sport are linked in close association.
Walking tours have gone out of fashion nowadays; the bicycle and motor-car have engendered another taste, and have partly ruined the quiet ways that were once the exclusive property of the pedestrian. But they were a favourite pastime in the sixties and seventies, and, apart from the longer sojourn we used to make in the Lake District or in Scotland, there was scarcely an Easter or a Whitsuntide holiday which did not find me among the hills of Westmoreland and Cumberland. There, with a friend of my early years and still a friend to-day, we explored every hill and dale of the Lake District.
On one of those spring excursions I remember we had made rather a long day of it, starting from Patterdale in the morning, lunching at Grasmere, and then making our way by Easedale Tarn to the summit of High White Stones. It was our intention to descend from that point and to reach the hotel in Dungeon Ghyll in time for dinner. But on High White Stones an eerie and impenetrable white mist descended upon us and we missed our way. For several hours we wandered in the mist until we lost all count of where we were, but at last, by some strange good fortune, we found ourselves on the top of Langdale Pikes, a spot which I knew well from many an earlier excursion.
We both knew that below us lay Stickle Tarn, and that from Stickle Tarn ran the brook which would finally lead us to our now much-desired inn. And so in the drenching rain we cautiously descended the hillside till we got to the shores of the Tarn. Then, by some unexpected error, instead of turning on our right, which in a few moments would have led us to the issue of the brook, we took the other direction and were forced to make the whole circuit of the Tarn, reaching at last, almost exhausted, the rushing torrent that descends to the valley. In such fear were we of losing our way again that we determined not to desert the bed of the stream, and, crawling catlike from boulder to boulder, we found the village at last, and saw, with a delight that may be easily imagined, the far-off glimmer in the windows of the Dungeon Ghyll Hotel.
It was half-past ten before we arrived at the door, wet through, and with our slight stock of change contained in our knapsacks sodden with rain. But the landlord kindly lent us some strange garments of his own, and I do not think two men ever enjoyed a meal more than we two as we fell upon that staple dish of the Lake District, “ham and eggs.”
CHAPTER III
ESSAYS IN JOURNALISM
Even before I left the City I had already made some tentative excursions into the realm of journalism. My first experiment, I remember, had something of a grotesque conclusion.
An early friend of mine, Arthur O’Neil, the younger half-brother of Henry O’Neil, the painter of Eastward Ho, had somehow persuaded a modest capitalist to venture a small sum of money in the establishment of a weekly journal called the Dramatic and Musical Review. We were both keenly interested in the drama, and I had assisted at O’Neil’s first venture in the shape of a pantomime at the old Sadler’s Wells Theatre.