Part 9 (1/2)

Need it be said that Halford's ante-chamber to paradise was his fisheries? He was not himself a hard fisher, being content with two or three hours in the forenoon (ten to one, as a rule) and the evening rise. It might be wondered how the time could be pa.s.sed in that case.

There need not be wonderment. He was not under the necessity, like so many of us, of crowding a maximum of fis.h.i.+ng into a minimum of time.

His fis.h.i.+ng visits signified taking quarters and fis.h.i.+ng the season through, a succession of friends sharing the pleasure. The host would be looking patiently after his water, collecting insects, carrying out experiments, making notes, concerning himself with banks and weeds--filling the days to the full with useful occupation, which, of course, gave a zest to his actual fis.h.i.+ng when he took it. Within a fortnight of his death he was to take up his quarters at Dunbridge for the season; all arrangements were made, and c.o.xon, the faithful keeper, was ready to point out what had been done during the winter. And c.o.xon was one of the mourners at the Sat.u.r.day's funeral in the Jewish Cemetery at Willesden.

It will be of interest and useful here to announce that Mr. Ernest Halford, after long consideration of what his father's wish would be, decided to maintain the fishery in all respects as it had been maintained since the beginning of the tenancy. Mr. Halford was immensely popular in the Mottisfont district, and I may mention that they had given a great ovation to his son and grandson on occasions when they attended or presided at the annual dinners to the tenants and workpeople on the fishery. That grandson, Halford always believed, would by and by develop the family fis.h.i.+ng traditions. The young gentleman was meanwhile at Clifton College, and had already killed his brace of rainbow trout, which his father had preserved for the collection in the gallery at Pembridge Place; and these, at my last visit to him at home, F. M. H. showed me, beaming with pride. His pride also took the form of setting the head of the firm of Hardy Brothers to the making of a special rod to fit the young Cliftonian's hand.

To the advantage of ample means should be added in happy sequence that Halford had, on the whole, robust health to enjoy his fis.h.i.+ng. His regular habits of living, and common sense in food and matters of hygiene kept him in excellent condition. Early rising and early bed-going were his rule at home and abroad. Truly, he was in these matters captain of both soul and body. Then his good fortune shone in his happy home life. After the death of Mrs. Halford a few years ago, it was feared the effect upon her husband would be abiding cause for anxiety. As time went on, however, a new era dawned; the son had married a lady who was, from the first, ”puppetty's” best chum; bonnie grandchildren arrived to make much of ”puppetty,” a charming house was taken for the united home, and there was suns.h.i.+ne again. It was sweet to see the contented grandfather in the midst of it and witness the devotion of the young people to him.

Amongst anglers in the English-speaking world Halford has been long known as the apostle--nay, the Gamaliel of what is called ”The Dry Fly School.” It is said that he reduced dry-fly fis.h.i.+ng to a science. By some he is ranked as the arch-type of the dry-fly purist, by which word, I suppose, is meant the pus.h.i.+ng of a theory to an extreme.

Certainly of late years devotion to the fly-rod admitted of no allurements in other directions, and henceforth Halford will be generally known, as he has been known since he took rank as master, as a first authority on the one branch of our sport. Yet he reached that position through the love and practice of every kind of fis.h.i.+ng--in short, through his enthusiasm as an ”all-round angler,” as it is the custom to formularise the general pract.i.tioner of our sport. Even as a boy-angler, however, he showed his inherent tendency to inquire, and understand, and improve; he worked out the mysteries of the Nottingham style on the Thames, and the betterment of sea fis.h.i.+ng tackle with the same ingenuity, perseverance, and success as in after years attended his studies of chalk stream insects, their artificial imitations, and the perfecting of the tackle demanded by the highest cla.s.s of fly-fis.h.i.+ng. Let it not, however, be forgotten that he was never out of sympathy with any cla.s.s of angler or angling. If he appeared indifferent to forms of angling loved by others, it was simply that he placed his own first. In angling, it was trout and grayling fis.h.i.+ng that mattered most. He adopted it as his choice, and clung to it.

People were just getting accustomed to the word ”dry-fly” when Halford began his career as a scientific exponent of the art to which he devoted so many years of work and study. This was in the late sixties, and he took trout fever on the pellucid Wandle, at that time a beautiful stream with good store of singularly handsome trout, and a regular company of gentlemen fly-fishers. The dry-fly men were, however, few, for the eyed-hook was not in fas.h.i.+on, and the custom, not only on the Wandle, but on other chalk streams, was to use the finest gut attachments to flies that were dressed for floating.

It was so like Halford to listen with all his ears to the advice of the few who urged the advantage of the dry fly. Anything in the shape of an improvement upon something that existed was like red rag to a bull to him, and he went for the new idea with all his heart. He also went for the line which was the standard of perfection to our forefathers, and I must confess that the love of the familiar silk and hair line, with which we of the old guard learned how to cast a fly, abides with me to this day, and with it I, for one, can a.s.sociate the hair cast, and a certain ancient pony up in Yorks.h.i.+re who was famous for his never-failing tail supply of the best white strands, which were considered indispensable by the fishers of all Wharfedale. Halford, however, objected to the line, which certainly was given to waterlogging and sagging at inconvenient times, and eagerly he took up the dressing of modern lines. He had a hand in all the developments of the process, and only declared himself satisfied when the Hawksley line was perfected, leaving others to this day who are aiming at still more betterment.

How Halford acc.u.mulated his experience, building up a fabric so to speak, brick by brick, is told in the _Autobiography_ and the other books written by him; and I may, in pa.s.sing, suggest that in reading Halford in these volumes you must always read very carefully between the lines. You never know when you will find a pearl. The apparently prosaic statement often contains a valuable lesson, and what seems to be a sentence merely recording the capture of a trout of given inches and ounces will be found to have been written with the object of sustaining an argument or enforcing a truth.

The story in the _Autobiography_ of the fis.h.i.+ng on the Wandle in those early years is an instance in point. It is quite a short narrative dest.i.tute of embroidery, and seemingly a casual introduction to what shall come after, but it is in reality a revelation of the practical methods that governed him from first to last, and which I venture to sum up in one word ”thorough.” There is a paragraph telling how he overcame a difficulty in circ.u.mventing a certain trout that lay about the mouth of a culvert, and habitually flouted the Wandle rods.

Halford made it a problem and solved it at the opening of his second Wandle season. He studied the position, obtained the necessary permission to put white paint on a patch of branches, have them cut down during the winter, and next season went down with his plan of campaign in his head. Of course, it succeeded. On the face of it you here have just an ordinary incident with nothing much in it. But it emphasises the value of the horizontal cast and something of its secret, while the kernel of the nut is the fact that it ill.u.s.trates the efficiency of using the wrist and not the length of the arm in casting.

You will again and again find Halford's wisdom as if carelessly thrown down upon a bald place. Some of the critics in the daily press were fond of saying of his books, ”Yes, yes: this is all very good no doubt, but it does look as if page after page is simply a monotonous recital of catching trout that are very much alike by processes that have a strong family likeness.” A careless surveyor of the page perhaps would think in this way, and never for the life of him perceive the point sought to be made by the writer of the book.

Halford was an angler from his youth upwards, and himself tells us that by his family he was considered ”fis.h.i.+ng mad,” which, as so many of my readers may remember, is the orthodox manner in which the young enthusiast is cla.s.sified by the unbelievers of his family. He fished often and in various places as a youth, but it was not till he became a member of the Houghton Club water on the Test that he plunged into his life-work for anglers. The date may be given as 1877, and the fire was kindled by being on the river one April day, and witnessing one of those marvellous rises of grannom that might once be relied upon every season on the Test. Many of us who still linger have seen this phenomenon, only equalled by the hatch of Mayfly in the Kennet Valley twenty years ago. Just as clouds of Mayfly would greet you on the railway platforms between Reading and Hungerford, flying into the open windows, clinging to the lamp-posts and seats, so at Houghton and Stockbridge the shucks of the grannom would drift into eddies and collect almost as solid as a weed-bed. Such things are not to be seen now, and have not been seen for years.

From the swaddling clothes of the risen grannom, cast thus upon the surface of the water by the insect made perfect, Halford turned to the artificial imitations then in use. They were of importance in those days, for the grannom was an inst.i.tution much regarded, and the grannom season was held in high esteem. Anglers packed their kit and hurried away when the grannom was signalled up. There were as many patterns of the artificial grannom as there are to-day of the March brown, and it was because Halford found them of varying forms and colourings, and not a really good imitation of the natural fly amongst them all, that he resolved to learn how to dress a fly for himself. His stores of patience were heavily taxed in the preliminary stages, and the victory came only after a long battle with difficulties. The standard volumes he produced on the subject of dressing, and the kindred subject of the entomological side of it, are conclusive evidence of what came of it all. ”Halford as a fly-dresser,” however, is a topic too big to handle in a chapter which merely aims at rambling recollections of him by the waterside, and indeed it can only be dealt with by a master in the art of fly-dressing.

In his early days at Houghton, Halford went to John Hammond's shop in Winchester just before the opening of the 1879 fis.h.i.+ng 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 Hamps.h.i.+re trout fishers, none other than Marryat himself. This was the beginning of a close, life-long friends.h.i.+p between the two men.

Halford was at all times most grateful to any helper, and never failed freely to acknowledge a.s.sistance 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 pract.i.tioner, and was terribly ashamed for H. to watch me fis.h.i.+ng.

'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 fis.h.i.+ng, and give advice; naturally, after a time, if you are nervous, you are certain of one thing only: that you are the king of a.s.ses, 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 b.u.t.tercups 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 un.o.bservant, 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 suns.h.i.+ne of our friends.h.i.+p, and it was one of my making.

After Houghton there was a farmhouse at Headbourne Worthy, and a season's fis.h.i.+ng 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 diminis.h.i.+ng results, even with the Mayfly, sedge, and Welshman's b.u.t.ton, 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 coa.r.s.e 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.