Part 16
It chanced that my friend had in his case a fine cast of drawn gut with a small floating fly, which a month or two before he had used on a southern stream; I myself had chosen an Alder of a pattern I had found efficient two or three years before on some of the little lochs above Glenmuich. Our gillie knew nothing of the mysteries of the dry fly, though he had heard tell of its wonders, and it was indeed mainly at his instigation that we were tempted to present this lure on the present occasion. We threw our lines almost simultaneously far out into the tranquil surface of the pool, but the luck was with my rival, for his fly had scarcely reached the water when there came a sudden flop and a splash, and it was evident by the mighty rush, that took out nearly the whole of the line from his reel, that the legend related to us by the keeper had a solid foundation in fact. It is astonishing what strength and persistence these larger lake trout display. A fish of equal weight in the Test or the Itchen would most assuredly have been brought to bank within half an hour or less, but on this occasion it was nearer three hours before our capture was complete. A part of our difficulty was due to the fact that the tackle was of the finest, so that it was impossible to put any strain upon the line; and even, at the last, when the struggle was practically at an end, there came the added difficulty that the long gloaming had fallen into darkness, and the application of the landing-net became a hazardous operation. Twice the line nearly parted when the fish was within less than a yard of the bank; but when it was safely netted it proved to be a splendid trout of something over 4-1/2 lb., in perfection of colour and condition. It was under a moonless sky and in pitch darkness that we picked our way amid the rough boulders down to the valley below, where we were met within a mile of home by the rest of our party, who had already set out with lanterns to come to our rescue.
There is not often occasion for the use of the dry fly in the Highlands, though I remember employing it with some success one evening at Kinloch-Rannoch, where the waters of the river run with tranquil flow from the lake. But it is a delightful branch of the fly-fisher’s craft, of unending fascination to those who have once gained a mastery over its secrets. For some years I was in happy possession of a little cottage on the upper reaches of the Lea, where the narrow stream, in places no more than a few yards across, gave no hint, save to the initiated, of the heavy fish which found a home and haunt under its banks. It was, indeed, only during the annual rise of the May-fly that this little river made anything like a full announcement of its thriving population. During the weeks before and after this recurrent season of debauch, there was little chance of a heavy basket, and for that reason it made a delightful home for any one occupied in writing, to whom at those seasons the banks of the stream offered no compelling temptation. Two or three hours in the evening after work was done sufficed to test the chances of sport, and I was amply satisfied if I returned to the cottage at nightfall with a brace or a brace and a half of handsome trout. But with the advent of the May-fly my desk, I confess, was deserted. From my windows, as I tried to write, I could hear and see the constant splashing in the stream which proclaimed that the fish were already on the feed. The cottage and the stretch of river that belonged to it are, alas! no longer mine, and I am told that there, as in so many other southern streams, the rise of the fly is no more what it was ten years ago. In those days, on a favourable morning, the meadows that bordered the water were all alight with myriads of these beautiful ephemorae, and the stream itself, as far as the eye could trace its course, literally alive with the boil and splash of the feeding fish. For every fly that touched the water there seemed to be an attendant and expectant trout. Larger fish, that kept to their deeper haunts at other seasons, now took up their stations in mid-stream, and the veriest tiro in these favouring circumstances could scarcely go home with an empty basket. But there are days of luck and days of disaster at all seasons: days even during the May-fly time when the most skilful fisherman has sometimes to confess a series of mishaps, while a companion not a hundred yards away is crowned with good fortune. When the weed is heavy--and for my part I have a liking for the presence of the weed, and deprecate the close shearing of the stream which is too often the modern habit--it is inevitable that some of the heavier fish should make their escape. The most fortunate morning that I can recall was a basket of twelve fish, weighing in all 28-1/2 lb.; and the largest trout that has ever fallen to my rod there, though by no means the largest known to the river, was within an ounce of 4 lb.
In days of early spring or late summer, when there is no rise of fly to tempt the angler, the keeper and I used to find congenial occupation in ridding the stream of some of the heavy jack that were apt in those days to come from Luton Hoo. It was he who first initiated me in the art, of which he himself was a past master, of securing these marauding cannibals by the aid of a running wire. Like many a good keeper, he had been in his boyhood something of a poacher, and even in those later days, when his morality was beyond reproach, be retained certain stealthy and secret ways that dated from the lawless times of his youth. At any likely bend of the stream, where a deeper pool rendered probable the presence of a jack, and when I might perhaps be deploring the fact that we had left our wires at the cottage, he would suddenly to my surprise produce an ash sappling that lay hidden in the long grass, not three yards away, with the running noose already attached to its point. Nothing could exceed the quickness of his vision in detecting the neighbourhood of his prey, and nothing could equal the incomparable steadiness of his hand as he reached far out across the stream and deftly passed the wire over the head of the jack as it lay half asleep in the sun. And then, before I was aware that the operation was complete, with a sudden wrench that almost cut the fish in twain he would lift a jack of 4 lb. or 5 lb. high into the air, and fling it over his head on to the bank. It was perhaps the recollection of his earlier poaching days that made him so zealous and watchful during the spawning season, which offers to the poacher his favourite opportunity. At these times he would spend long hours of the night beside the stream, never seeming to grudge any demand that was made upon his rest, and it was while he was so employed that he made capture of a large otter, whose marauding expeditions he had long reason to suspect. Otters, I think, are not common on that part of the Lea; certainly this was the only specimen brought to my knowledge during my long tenancy of the cottage. But even a single otter can work ruinous havoc among the trout, as we had then reason to know, and it was therefore with pardonable pride that, when I came down to breakfast one morning, he laid his dead victim out to view on the little lawn in front of the door.
I sometimes think that those who haunt the country, without conscious sense of its many beauties, are apt to learn and love its beauties best. How often the memory of a day’s shooting is indissolubly linked with the pattern of a fading autumn sky, when we have stood at the edge of a stubble field wondering whether the growing twilight will suffice for the last drive. And if this is true of other forms of sport, it is everlastingly true of fishing. There is hardly a remembered day on a Scotch loch, or beside a southern stream, which has not stamped upon it some unfading image of landscape beauty. It was not for that we set forth in the morning, for then the changing lights in a dappled sky counted for no more than a promise of good sport; during those earlier hours there is no feeling but a feeling of impatience to be at work; and the splash of a rising trout, before the rod is joined and ready and the line run through its rings, is heard with a sense of half-resentment lest we should have missed the favourable moment of the day. But as the hours pass, the mind becomes more tranquilly attuned to its surroundings. The keenness of the pursuit is still there, but little by little the still spirit of the scene invades our thoughts, and as we tramp home at nightfall the landscape that was unregarded when we set forth upon our adventure now seems to wrap itself like a cloak around us with a spell that it is impossible to resist. A hundred such visions, born of an angler’s wanderings, come back to me across the space of many years. I can see the reeds etched against a sunset sky, as they spring out of a little loch in the hills above the inn at Tummel. And then, with a changing flash of memory, the broad waters of Rannoch are outspread, fringed by its purple hills. And then, again, in a homelier frame, I can see the willows that border the Lea, their yellow leaves turned to gold under the level rays of the evening sun; and I can hear the nightingale in the first notes of its song as I cross the plank bridge that leads me homeward to the cottage by the stream.
INDEX
Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 26-41
Barnard, Fred, 217, 218
Barry, James, 119
_Beauty Stone_, the, 251
Bell, Professor: Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, 167
Bernhardt, Sarah, 233, 237, 238
Black, William, 264
Blake, William, 120
Bleheris: story of the Holy Grail, 148
Boaden, James: Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, 167
Bohemia Past and Present, 1-11
Bough, Sam, 131
Bret Harte, 215
Brough, Robert Barnabas, 119
Brown, Ford Madox, 126
Brown, Oliver Madox, 52
Browning, Robert, 12
Burne-Jones, Edward, 56-88; friendship with Alma-Tadema, 31; appreciation of Rossetti, 49, 56, 86; paintings referred to, 60; friendship with William Morris, 86; paintings at Roman Exhibition, 127; Du Maurier’s opinion of, 217
Caldecott, Randolph, 216
Clayden, P. W., 164
Clint, George, 109
Collins, Henn, 255
Constable, John, 130
Coquelin, B. C., 233, 234, 240
Cotman, John Sell, 131
Cox, David, 131
Craven, Hawes, 207
Crestien de Troyes--story of the Holy Grail, 148
Crome, John, 131
Crompton, Charles, 253
De Hoogh, 33
Desclée, Mme., 237
Dickens, Charles, 215
Du Maurier, George, 216
Duse, Eleanora, 238
Dyce, William, 125
English School of Painting at the Roman Exhibition, 101-133
Etty, William, 120
Faulkner, Charles, 86
_Faust_, Irving’s preparations for, 206
Fletcher, Charles, 232
Fletcher, Mr., 164
Frith, William Powell, 107
Froude, James Anthony, 264
Furse, 119
Fuseli, Johann Caspar, 119
Gainsborough, Thomas, 113, 114, 115, 129
Geddes, Andrew, 118
George Eliot, 142
Gilbert, Sir William, 247-250
Gregory, E. J., 109
Haydon, B. R., 119
Herschel, Sir F., 255
Hogarth, William, 104-106
Holker, Sir John, 255-257
Holl, Frank, 119
Hook, 131
Hoppner, John, 113, 118
Humour, A Sense of, 213-226
Hunt, Holman, 44, 124; pre-Raphaelite movement, 43, 50, 121
Irving, Sir Henry, 199-212, 233, 235, 240
Junior of the Circuit, the, 253-263
Keene, Charles, 216
Kemble, Mrs., 163
Kennedy, Mr. Justice, 253, 255
_King Arthur_, Mr. Carr’s version of, for Henry Irving, 210; music for, written by Sir Arthur Sullivan, 247
Kingsley, Charles, 264
Lang, Andrew, 264
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 118
Lawson, Cecil, 131
Leech, John, 216, 217
Leighton, Sir Frederick, 19, 35, 128, 234; paintings at Roman Exhibition, 129
Lewis, John Frederick, 109
Leyland, Fred, referred to, 52
Lorraine, Claude, 131
_Macbeth_, 162-198; Irving’s reading of, 205
Maclise, Daniel, 108
M‘Connell, W. R., 262
Malory, Sir Thomas, 147
Mason, 131
May, Phil, 217
Meredith, George, 134-146
Mersey, Lord, 255
Millais, Sir John Everett, 13-25, 65; pre-Raphaelite movement, 43, 50, 121; paintings referred to, 23, 44, 123; Rossetti’s praise of, 51; portrait painting, 119; paintings at Roman Exhibition, 123; Du Maurier’s praise of, 217
Montgomery, Walter, 231
Morris, William, 86
Nutt, Alfred: story of the Holy Grail, 150, 160
Opie, John, 119
Orchardson, Sir William, 106
“Parsifal”: origin of legend, etc., 147-161
Pettie, John, 110
Phelps, Edmund (jun.), 231
Phelps, Samuel, 230
Pope, Sam, 255
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood--aims and achievements of, etc., 5, 42, 50, 55, 120, 125
Rae, Mr., 45
Raeburn, Sir Henry, 113, 118
Ramsay, Allan, 118
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 110, 114, 116
Ristori, Mme., 234
Roman Exhibition, English school of painting at, 101-133
Romney, George, 113, 117
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 42-55; paintings referred to, 46, 122; praise of Millais, 51; encouragement and appreciation of Burne-Jones, 56, 57; pre-Raphaelite movement, 43, 50, 55, 121; paintings at Roman Exhibition, 122; Du Maurier’s opinion of, 217
Ruskin, John, 125
Russell of Killowen, Lord, 255, 256, 258
Salvini, Tomaso, 234
Sandys, Frederick, 119, 126
Selby, Lord (Mr. Gully), 255
Sex in Tragedy--_Macbeth_, 162-198, 205
Shield, Hugh, 262
Siddons, Mrs.: personation of Lady Macbeth, 166-170, 205
Sitting at a Play, 227-241
Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 242-252
Terriss, William, 202
Terry, Ellen, 201, 210, 239
Terry, Kate, 232
Tissot, Amédée Angelot, referred to, 31
Toole, J. L., 220-226
_Tristram and Iseult_, 147
Trout-fishing, 264-277
Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 131-132; paintings at Roman Exhibition, 131
Walker, Frederick, 131
Watts, G. F., 119, 128
Wauchier: story of the Holy Grail, 148
Weston, Miss Jessie: story of the Holy Grail, 150, 156
Whistler, James McNeill, 89-100
Wilkie, Sir David, 106
Wills, W. G., 206, 210
Wilson, Richard, 130, 131
Wolfram von Eschenbach: story of the Holy Grail, 149
Zoffany, Johann, 109
THE END
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