Lines in Pleasant Places: Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler

by William Senior

In his early days at Houghton, Halford went to John Hammond's shop in Winchester just before the opening of the 1879 fishing season to buy flies, and there met, and was introduced by the rubicund John to, a tall, not to say gaunt, gentleman, who was the most famous of the Hampshire trout fishers, none other than Marryat himself. This was the beginning of a close, life-long friendship between the two men. Halford was at all times most grateful to any helper, and never failed freely to acknowledge assistance received. Whether he took advice proffered or not was another matter; he sometimes did it all the same, but he was always grateful. Words would fail to describe his appreciation of such co-workers as Marryat at the beginning, and Williamson at the end of the labours which are embodied in the series of books which preceded the Autobiography. They were co-workers in everything; hard workers, too. I have heard men lightly joke about these worthies going about the meadows with a bug-net and lifting individual ephemerals from the surface of the stream. Let those laugh that win. It meant collecting hundreds of tiny insects, selecting the fittest, preparing, preserving, and mounting them. It meant the endless autopsy of fish and the patient searching of their entrails. To stand by while Halford and Marryat with their scissors, forceps, and whatnot laid out the contents of a trout's stomach, and bent low in separating and identifying the items, putting what were worthy of it under a microscope, and proceeding all the while as if the round world offered no other pursuit half so worthy of concentrated attention, was most fascinating. Many a time was I a spectator—I fear sometimes an irreverent one—of this ritual, but always privileged and welcome; always, of course, sympathetic, and always in a way envious of the qualities of mind and extraordinary knowledge which made the whole work a labour of love to them.

It so fell out that two days after the meeting in John Hammond's shop the parties met at Houghton, and the first of many foregatherings took place that day in the well-remembered Sheep-bridge hut—Marryat, Francis, Carlisle ("South-West"), and Halford. Halford had rooms in the neighbourhood, and, in his own words, there this historical quartette would "hold triangular fishing colloquies," "South-West" having his home up the river at Stockport. Francis was the first of the trio to fall out, his last casts being on his beloved Sheep-bridge shallow. Halford's quarters were now at the mill at Houghton, and it was my privilege to take Francis Francis's vacant place there, as also in another place.

What ambrosial nights we had in the homely millhouse after untiring days with our rods! It was there that I insisted upon my host becoming a contributor to the Field, and he required considerable persuasion. Indeed, the suggestion roused him into one of his dogmatic disputations, and he held on tenaciously, till, taking up my bedroom candle, I said, "Well, I'm off to bed. You've got my opinion and my advice, and, if you don't write that article you are a so-and-so. Good night, old chap, sleep on it." Next morning I was taking my ante-breakfast pipe on a cartwheel in the shed outside, and listening to the diapason of the mill, when Halford came out. "All right, sonny," he said, "I'll try it, but candidly I ha'e ma doots." This was how the first "Detached Badger" article came to appear in the Field. Walsh, the famous "Stonehenge," was editor of the paper then, and he stuck for a while at the pseudonym which Halford chose. But he was the best fellow in the world, and very soon good-humouredly gave in and left it to me. Walsh, nevertheless, would always make merry over that signature, and used with a twinkle of his eye to ask me whether my friend the Badger was quite well.

And what a delightful fishing companion the Badger was! Perhaps for the first two years at Houghton the pleasure was just a little tempered with one insignificant drawback. I had not then been long a dry-fly practitioner, and was terribly ashamed for H. to watch me fishing. 'Tis thirty years back, yet I acutely remember my nervousness on that point. Having got his brace or so of fish, and finished his studies of water, rise of fly, weeds and weather, and neatly (and oh! so orderly and accurately!) made his entries in his little notebook, he loved to play gillie to his friend for hours together, criticise his style of fishing, and give advice; naturally, after a time, if you are nervous, you are certain of one thing only: that you are the king of asses, and had better imitate the immortal colonel who hurled his book of salmon flies into the pool shouting "Here, take the bally lot." The droll thing was that Halford never dreamed that his chum was put out by his good intentions, or that the victim's feeble smiles were but a mask for nerve-flutters.

One hot day I was over-tired and nakedly accomplished everything that was wrong; the backward cast caught buttercups and daisies, the forward throw fouled the sedges, the underhand cut landed line and cast in a heap on the water, the fish was put down, the whole shallow scared. Halford stood behind amiably commenting upon the bungling operations, and then I uprose from a painful knee and delivered myself of remarks. Well; yes, I let myself go, and let him "have it." The amazement of Halford; his contrition; the colour that spread over his countenance (you will remember how prettily he could blush with that complexion of his, delicate as a woman in his last days); these sufficiently told me that he had not the ghost of an idea of the perturbation that had been seething in me. It took him the rest of the week to cease regretting that he had been so unobservant, and never again during the remaining eight-and-twenty years that we fished together at different times and in divers places did he once depart from his resolve "never to do so no more." During our long and happy acquaintance that was the only cloud flitting over the sunshine of our friendship, and it was one of my making.

After Houghton there was a farmhouse at Headbourne Worthy, and a season's fishing in the Itchen, and later Halford fished a good deal below Winchester, where Cooke, Daniels, and Williamson had private waters. But after Houghton the most notable preserve to be mentioned was the Ramsbury water on the Kennet. The inspiration of "Making a Fishery" came from that, for the four friends who leased the water—Basil Field, Orchardson, R.A., N. Lloyd, and Halford—earnestly addressed themselves to the reformation of a fishery that had become depreciated. They spent much money, and carried out operations with a lavish hand for four seasons. The story has been fully narrated by Halford, and the conclusion (p. 217, Autobiography) is in these words:—"We had perhaps been extravagant in our expenditure, and also over-sanguine as to the probable result. The river when we took possession swarmed with pike and dace, and had a few trout in the lower part, and in the upper was fairly stocked. When we gave it up the pike had been practically exterminated, and every yard of the river was fully stocked with trout of strains far superior to the indigenous slimy, yellow Salmo fario of the Kennet."

The plain fact was that at the end of four years four of the best of our dry-fly fishers gave up a water of which they had become very fond because the trout did not rise at the little floating fly that appeared, and the sport had decreased to a marked degree. A fishery that gave poor and diminishing results, even with the Mayfly, sedge, and Welshman's button, was not suitable for dry-fly experts, and the Ramsbury experiment was abandoned. The moral has yet to be drawn, and I have not yet seen anyone grapple at close quarters with the question of cause and effect with the Ramsbury experiment as a test. "Making a Fishery" sets down in detail what was done; the Autobiography tells what came of it. Being one of those who has not faltered in the belief that the clearing out of coarse fish, the introduction of new strains of trout, and the artificial feeding of fish may be overdone, I used to discuss the matter with Halford, but he did not agree with me.

Having known the Ramsbury water before the reformation was undertaken, I can testify that I seldom at any time saw a good rise of duns upon it, and that a basket of trout more or less was, notwithstanding, a reasonable certainty there under ordinarily favourable circumstances, spite of pike and dace. I have with the wet fly, on days when no floating fly was coming down, caught my two or three brace of trout with some such pattern as Red Spinner, Governor, Alder, or Coachman for the evening; indeed, if I remember correctly, it was on a six-brace day with the "Red Spinner" on this water that, enamoured of that artificial, I annexed its name for a series of articles contributed in 1874 to the Gentleman's Magazine, and have held by it ever since. Foli, the opera-singer, once caught three half-pounders at a cast, and the keeper netted them all, on this fishery.

One evening we met at Ramsbury, after an afternoon without sign of fly or rising trout. Halford and Basil Field were there, and we stood and bewailed the absence of duns and lack of sport. We loitered there with our rods spiked, and smoked sadly. I then, and not for the first time, repeated the tale of my former experiences, and at last begged Halford not to be shocked, not to think me an unforgivable brute, but would he give me free permission to try the wet fly in the old way, and without prejudice. He at first laughingly protested, but saying he would ne'er consent, consented. I was to do my best or worst. The difficulty was to find a fly that could be fished wet, and in the end a Red Spinner on a No. 1 hook was forthcoming. I thereupon followed the old plan, except that there was one instead of two flies, and caught a brace of three-quarter pounders before we had moved fifty yards down the meadow. They were the only trout taken that day.