15 December: Boreham on Izaak Walton

The Voice of the Streams
It would be a thousand pities to overlook the anniversary, today, of the death of Izaak Walton. He who would fill his lungs with the sweet and perfumed air of the English countryside should turn afresh to the pages of "The Compleat Angler." The title is largely a misnomer. The book is primarily intended to instruct the devotees of the rod concerning the habits and haunts of fish, and some of the best authorities declare that, judged on that basis, the volume has never been equalled. But it is much more than this. In his rambles among the wooded valleys and the open fields, Walton's Piscator always carries his tackle, and is dreaming fondly of bream and roach and perch and trout; but his eye is ever on the alert for all the life and beauty swarming around him. The drowsy hamlet nestling under the hill; the winding lane with its fragrant hedgerow and its overarching elms; the trout stream fringed with its tossing sea of daffodils; the old mill, green with moss and lichen; it is amid this enchanting framework that all his dainty cameos are etched.

On every page we seem to glimpse a nut-brown squirrel up in the beech tree, a pheasant out in the stubble, a hedgehog in the ditch beside the white gate, a stoat on the bank near the mill pond, an adder coiled up under the hawthorn, a herd of fallow deer down in the hollow and a pair of wise old owls on the finger-post where the lane joins the great main road. It is this element in the book, rather than its piscatorial lore, that has secured for it, its great renown. Who, for instance, can imagine Dr. Samuel Johnson seated under the alders waiting, more or less patiently, till it pleases the fish to bite? After five minutes of such nonsensical behaviour, the irascible old doctor would have smashed the rod across his knee, tossed the fragment into the river, and stalked off, in quest of congenial society, to the open fireplace of the village tavern. Yet Johnson thought Walton's book one of the choicest gems that the Seventeenth Century produced.

Wealth Of World Belongs To Each Of Us
Of the gentle Elia, much the same may be said. Lamb had all the patience that an angler needs. To him it would have been no hardship to have sat on the bank for a week, even though his line were never once disturbed. He revelled in excusable inactivity. But then, he could not bait a hook! To feel a worm squirming in his fingers, filled him with a horror that paralysed his frame and awoke him with a shudder at dead of night. But he loved "The Compleat Angler." "Pray read it," he wrote to Coleridge. "It breathes the very spirit of innocence; it would sweeten a man's temper at any time." And there is reason to believe that Coleridge became infected by, and communicated to others, his friend's enthusiasm.

Walton's pages fill you with an exhilarating sense of opulence. You feel that you are living in the best possible world and that it is all your own. He describes the ecstasy of his fisherman as, rod under arm and basket over shoulder, he stands on some green and graceful hillside, surveying the panorama of loveliness spread so wealthily before him. Feasting on this banquet of beauty he becomes conscious of a strange sense of proprietorship. In a strictly legal and technical sense, of course, it all belongs to the squire up at the big hall on the hill yonder; and its possession involves its owner in all kinds of obligations and anxieties. But the angler, who owns no inch of ground in the wide world, glories in it all and feels that, for his personal delectation, all the birds are singing and all the flowers blooming.

Triumphant Concentration On Work And Play
Nothing about Walton is as remarkable as his capacity for dividing life into watertight compartments. There is no evidence that he handled a fishing rod until his hair had begun to turn grey. A merchant in the city, he stuck to business until his fortune was in sight. Then he took to literature, writing books that, a century afterwards, Dr. Johnson pronounced as masterly. Finally, he adopted the hobby that has made him immortal. Those who cling to the superstition that, in retiring from business, a man virtually orders his coffin, should make the acquaintance of Izaak Walton. Giving up business at 50, he lived to be 91, and it was during the 41 years of his retirement that he achieved fame. Leaving London, he set out on those exquisite rambles in which, all unseen by him, so many thousands of his readers have shared his company. He spent more than 40 years exploring the charms of the English countryside. And when the streams were frozen, or the rain was lashing pitilessly at his windows, he smilingly applied himself to his precious manuscripts.

Walton is the most restful soul in English letters. He hated flurry and noise. In the year in which he closed his shop, John Hampden fell at Chalgrove Field. The Civil War was in full blast. But in his quiet folios there is no trace of it. Walton lived through some of the most turbulent years of British history. Born in the spacious days of great Elizabeth, he saw the rise of the Stuarts, the outbreak of the rebellion, the ascendancy of the Puritans and the execution of the King. He lived all through the days of the Commonwealth and witnessed the Restoration. Yet, though England was a cloud of dust, not a speck was permitted to settle upon his pages. He and his cronies "smoked their pipes and fried their trout, heedless of King's man and Puritan." As he put the finishing touches to his manuscript the streets of Worcester, not far away, were choked with slaughter, but he never for a moment caught the spirit of the storm. He never hurried; he thought nothing of devoting 10 years to the preparation of a manuscript for the Press. He was 60 when he presented the world with his classic, wistfully wondering whether it would ever run to a second edition! He was 85 when he sent his last book, a "Life of Dr Sanderson," to the printer. In his will, executed at the age of 91, he speaks with gratitude of his perfect health, his excellent memory, and his happy career. Those who know him will wish, in a sense, that he never dared to contemplate, that he may live for ever.

F W Boreham

Image: Izaak Walton