THE memory of Izaak Walton has hitherto floated down the stream of time without even a nibble at it; but, alas! where is the long line so pure and even that does not come sooner or later to have a weak length detected in it? The severest critic of Molière was an old woman; and now a censor of the same sex takes upon herself to tax the immortal work of our Piscator with holding out an evil temptation to the rising generation Instead of concurring in the general admiration of his fascinating pictures of fishing, she boldly asserts that the rod has been the spoiling of her child, and insists that in calling the Angler gentle and inoffensive, the Author was altogether wrong in his dubbing. To render her strictures more attractive she has thrown them into a poetical form; having probably learned by experience that a rhyme at the end of a line is a very taking bait to the generality of readers. Hark! how she rates the meek Palmer whom Winifred Jenkins would have called “an angle upon earth!”
To Mr. IZAAK WALTON, at Mr. MAJOR’S the Bookseller’s in Fleet Street.
Mr. Walton, it’s harsh to say it, but as a Parent I can’t help wishing
You’d been hung before you publish’d your book, to set all the young people a fishing!
There’s my Robert, the trouble I’ve had with him it surpasses a mortal’s bearing,
And all thro’ those devilish angling works—the Lord forgive me for swearing!
I thought he were took with the Morbus one day, I did with his nasty angle!
For “oh dear,” says he, and burst out in a cry, “oh my gut is all got of a tangle!”
It’s a shame to teach a young boy such words—whose blood wouldn’t chill in their veins
To hear him, as I overheard him one day, a-talking of blowing out brains?[16]
And didn’t I quarrel with Sally the cook, and a precious scolding I give her,
“How dare you,” says I, “for to stench the whole house by keeping that stinking liver?”
’Twas enough to breed a fever, it was! they smelt it next door at the Bagots’,—
But it wasn’t breeding no fever—not it! ’twas my son a-breeding of maggots!
I declare that I couldn’t touch meat for a week, for it all seemed tainting and going,
And after turning my stomach so, they turned to blueflies, all buzzing and blowing;
Boys are nasty enough, goodness knows, of themselves, without putting live things in their craniums;
Well, what next? but he pots a whole cargo of worms along with my choice geraniums.
And another fine trick, tho’ it wasn’t found out, till the housemaid had given us warning,
He fished at the golden fish in the bowl, before we were up and down in the morning.
I’m sure it was lucky for Ellen, poor thing, that she’d got so attentive a lover.
As bring her fresh fish when the others deceas’d, which they did a dozen times over!
Then a whole new loaf was short! for I know, of course, when our bread goes faster,—
And I made a stir with the bill in my hand, and the man was sent off by his master;
But, oh dear, I thought I should sink thro’ the earth, with the weight of my own reproaches,
For my own pretty son had made away with the loaf, to make pastry to feed the roaches!
I vow I’ve suffered a martyrdom—with all sorts of frights and terrors surrounded!
For I never saw him go out of the doors but I thought he’d come home to me drownded.
And, sure enough, I set out one fine Monday to visit my married daughter,
And there he was standing at Sadler’s Wells, a-performing with real water.
It’s well he was off on the further side, for I’d have brain’d him else with my patten,
For I thought he was safe at school, the young wretch! a studying Greek and Latin,
And my ridicule basket he had got on his back, to carry his fishes and gentles;
With a belt I knew he’d made from the belt of his father’s regimentals—
Well, I poked his rods and lines in the fire, and his father gave him a birching,
But he’d gone too far to be easy cured of his love for chubbing and perching.
One night he never came home to tea, and altho’ it was dark and dripping,
His father set off to Wapping, poor man! for the boy had a turn for shipping;
As for me I set up, and I sobbed and I cried for all the world like a babby,
Till at twelve o’clock he rewards my fears with two gudging from Waltham Abbey!
And a pretty sore throat and fever he caught, that brought me a fortnight’s hard nussing,
Till I thought I should go to my grey-hair’d grave, worn out with the fretting and fussing;
But at last he was cur’d, and we did have hopes that the fishing was cured as well,
But no such luck! not a week went by before we’d have another such spell.
Tho’ he never had got a penny to spend, for such was our strict intentions,
Yet he was soon set up in tackle agin, for all boys have such quick inventions:
And I lost my Lady’s Own Pocket Book, in spite of all my hunting and poking,
Till I found it chuck full of tackles and hooks, and besides it had had a good soaking.
Then one Friday morning, I gets a summoning note from a sort of a law attorney,
For the boy had been trespassing people’s grounds while his father was gone a journey,
And I had to go and hush it all up by myself, in an office at Hatton Garden;
And to pay for the damage he’d done, to boot, and to beg some strange gentleman’s pardon.
And wasn’t he once fished out himself, and a man had to dive to find him,
And I saw him brought home with my motherly eyes and a mob of people behind him?
Yes, it took a full hour to rub him to life—whilst I was a-screaming and raving,
And a couple of guineas it cost us besides, to reward the humane man for his saving,
And didn’t Miss Crump leave us out of her will, all along of her taking dudgeon
At her favourite cat being chok’d, poor Puss, with a hook sow’d up in a gudgeon?
And old Brown complain’d that he pluck’d his live fowls, and not without show of reason,
For the cocks looked naked about necks and tails, and it wasn’t their moulting season;
And sure and surely, when we came to enquire, there was cause for their screeching and cackles,
For the mischief confess’d he had picked them a bit, for I think he called them the hackles.
A pretty tussle we had about that! but as if it warn’t picking enough,
When the winter comes on, to the muff-box I goes, just to shake out my sable muff—
“O mercy!” thinks I, “there’s the moth in the house!” for the fur was all gone in patches;
And then at Ellen’s chinchilly I look, and its state of destruction just matches—
But it wasn’t no moth, Mr. Walton, but flies—sham flies to go trolling and trouting,
For his father’s great coat was all safe and sound, and that first set me a-doubting.
A plague, say I, on all rods and lines, and on young or old watery danglers!
And after all that you’ll talk of such stuff as no harm in the world about anglers!
And when all is done, all our worry and fuss, why, we’ve never had nothing worth dishing;
So you see, Mister Walton, no good comes at last of your famous book about fishing.
As for Robert’s, I burnt it a twelvemonth ago; but it turned up too late to be lucky,
For he’d got it by heart, as I found to the cost of
Your servant,
JANE ELIZABETH STUCKEY.
[16] Chewing and spitting out bullock’s brains into the water for ground-bait is called blowing of brains. Salter’s Angler’s Guide.