WITH VERDANT ALDERS CROWN’D

If you will step across to your bookshelf and take down that volume of Pope’s miscellaneous works, you will find the fable of Lodona, and the words which I borrow for a heading. The little man so wrote of the River Loddon, which he quite correctly described also as slow. The Loddon is scarcely a river of itself to inspire a poem, being without cataracts going down to Lodore, not being mountain born, nor overlooked by crag and summit; but it is in an especial degree the kind of stream which pastoral poets have from time immemorial loved to bring in as an indispensable adjunct. Almost any portion of the country watered by this river might have yielded the scenes of the immortal Elegy in a country churchyard, though you may remember that Gray does not in the poem make mention of a river, and only introduces the rill, and “the brook that babbles by” as the habitual resort of the youth whom melancholy marked for her own. But I have heard the curfew toll the knell of parting day while watching the float, have marked the beetle wheel his droning flight (half inclined to chase him to tempt the wayward chub), and have looked upon the lowing herds winding slowly o’er the lea as the signal for bringing the day’s delights to a close by winding up my fishing line.

“Sweet native stream,” Warton calls the Loddon, and that is just the association one familiar with its meads and wooded banks would bear with him in a cherished corner of memory. For the ordinary angler perhaps the river is a trifle too much with “alders crown’d.” On the contrary, to the person who can command the use of a boat, and drop down upon the lazy current with a long line ahead of him, those dense defences of the bank become conservators of sport. They are better than a keeper, for they are always there, and cannot by any bribe be seduced from their duty. And more than any other tree the alder is the familiar companion of the angler. Upon some rivers the willow would contest the position, perhaps, but Fate demands that it should run to pollard, and so get too high up in the world to be a close companion to man.

We always make friends with the somewhat prosaic and even sombre alder, and, in return, it always has something to show us. All through the autumn and winter it makes as goodly a display as it can with its long barren catkins; in the spring it is thick with the queer black little husks; and in the summer and autumn its defects of shape in the matter of branches are hidden by close, dark, glossy leaves, which sturdily hold on when others have been snatched and scattered. And does not an old poet ascribe to our alder the quality of protector to other growths?

The alder, whose fat shadow nourisheth
Each plant set neere to him long flourisheth.

But it is interesting to remember that a still older poet had his eye on the alder, and it is a pretty conceit in which Virgil fixes upon its wood as the origin of shipbuilding. The timber is so easily worked and so handy that it might well have been actually used by primitive man when the gods prodded him on to activity and invention by piling up obstacles and difficulties in his path. Virgil, therefore, had fair warrant for

Then first on seas the hollowed alder swam.

Spinning tackle and fly casts have I left upon alder bushes of a score of streams, but instead of bearing it any ill-will I hereby offer it humble and sincere homage, especially as in my early days of fly fishing I, in honest faith and unbroken conviction, used one of its juicy leaves for straightening the gut collar.

The Loddon, if not important as a navigable stream, or as busy as other rivers in the service of the miller, does a fair share of steady work. Rising in the North Hampshire downs near Basingstoke, the river runs through historical country. Cromwell’s troopers, for instance, during the siege of Basing would no doubt water their horses in the fords of the Loddon, and Clarendon, who wrote the history of that rebellion, lived at Swallowfield. Near this village, almost within our own times, lived Mary Russell Mitford, whose delightful book, Our Village, neglected for years and almost forgotten, has set sail again before the favouring breeze of the cheap edition. She wrote her sketches at Three Mile Cross, some two miles from Swallowfield, and I refer to them because in the little volume you have faithful scenic pictures of the Loddon country. I have also a personal story to tell, to wit: On returning from one of my visits to Loddon-side I secured through an old friend of Miss Mitford a note in her handwriting, and was not a little impressed and amused on discovering that the envelope in which it was inclosed had been previously used and turned no doubt by the lady herself. It was only by accident so neatly had the operation been performed that I saw inside the original address, “Miss Mitford, Three Mile Cross, Reading, Berks.” Soon after leaving Swallowfield, the Loddon, passing Arborfield Hurst and Twyford, yields up its life to the Thames by way of a modest delta.

Are there anywhere in England larger chub than those of the Loddon? It is not to be supposed that the alders extend their fattening influence to the fish as well as to the plants; but its existence in bush form, and in the serried ranks to which I have above referred, undoubtedly favours the long life of this shy fish. He lies under its overhanging boughs out of the way of even the most daring long corker, and from the leaves during the hot summer days drop unceasing relays of luscious insect food. The Loddon chub are nevertheless extremely voracious at odd times. Pike fishermen often get them with both live and dead bait, and I myself in the unregenerate days of trolling took a big one with gorge bait. An honest-minded chub may anywhere be expected to be led astray by a prettily-vestured minnow, and there is no disgrace attaching to its character if it allows itself to be seduced by a well-spun gudgeon; but to tackle a 4-oz. dead roach, and be ignominiously finished off by a coarse gorge hook, is not exactly what one looks for. Yet this frequently occurred on the Loddon.

I rather suspect I had an experience in this direction. A kind friend had invited me to spend a day on the Loddon, not very far from that same Swallowfield of which I have been sentimentalising. We drove in the fresh autumn morning along the charming country road, inhaling the balm of the pines and watching the graceful squirrels at their after-breakfast antics in the oaks. And we congratulated ourselves upon the prospect. There was a little rime on the grass, for I had left town by gaslight, but all other conditions were as favourable as if they had been made to order. There were plenty of bait and a boat at our disposal.

My kind friend pointed with a warm smile to a snug hamper in the carriage. The world under these circumstances looked fair. We noticed the yellow mottlings of autumnal decay on the chestnut trees and elms, the ruddier shade of the beeches; we discussed the failure of the blackberry crop, and pretended to knowledge about turnips. Thus, interchanging thoughts, we arrived at the Loddon, to find a deep, dirty brown colour. The world then was not so fair. It was a miserable disappointment, in short, and we had to make the best of it. We found a few jack by trolling in the eddies close to the bank, but the day was to all intents and purposes a blank.

In the afternoon my friend pulled me upstream that I might find quiet corners and the very off-chance of a jack. At one part there was a break in my friends, the alders, and a scoop in the bank where the water was deep. Discreetly and naturally I dropped the dead bait, and on the instant it was grabbed and worried. My first impression was that it was a perch. I have known a big perch seize a large bait and shake it in that dog-like fashion, and that impression was confirmed when, instead of the strong run of a straightforward jack, the seizure was followed by jerky movements and very little running out of line. It was no more than I expected that the bait should be by and by impudently deserted. Its head I found to have been savagely bitten half through. From the size of the semi-circular gash the chub or perch, whatever it might happen to be, was no youngster.

Upon reflection, and upon re-examination of the wound, my friend, who was an experienced Loddon angler, agreed with me that the fish was a chub. The leather mouth proper of the cheven, chavender, skelly, or chub, scientifically known as Leuciscus cephalus, is, as the angler knows, or should know, without teeth, but if you will have the goodness to push your finger down the throat of a freshly-caught three- or four-pounder, you will be more than likely to discover that nature has furnished this innocent-looking member of the carp family with two rows of very decent lacerators. The best result nevertheless of that day’s fishing was the receipt in a letter two days later of a specimen of the showy yellow leopard’s bane from my friend. We had pointed out to each other solitary wildflowers left alone to tell of a summer that was past, and he had found this somewhat sparingly-located bloom two months overdue for its grave.

So many years have passed since I fished Loddon and St. Patrick’s stream that I will not be tempted to lead anyone astray by pretending to prescribe, advise, or dogmatise. It was not first-rate in the days of my personal knowledge, but it yielded then as now tolerable coarse fishing, pike and perch being the standing dish; and there are deep, slow-going lengths, natural haunts of heavy roach. A brother angler who knows the river thoroughly had a curious theory about the Loddon perch. With minnow or worm, he truly said, for I can corroborate him, “any quantity” of perch of 1/2 lb. or 3/4 lb. might be caught; but there was also another set of fish of 1 1/2 lb. and upwards not, of course, of a distinct breed, but still distinct from the smaller grade just mentioned. These rarely took a minnow, but a gudgeon on the paternoster, and on the upper hook thereof, frequently proved fatal to a two-pounder. One July, within my own remembrance, a splendid fellow of 3 l oz. was taken with a lob-worm from one of the Loddon milltails.

Much of the Loddon is private fishing, as it has always been, but there are still portions accessible to the public. The Loddon is closely associated with the good work done in the whole of that district for preservation in the interests of the angler, and at one time the Reading and Henley Associations jointly rented the length from the Great Western Railway to the Thames (including the St. Patrick stream) with the object of preservation as a breeding ground for Thames fish. A change in riparian ownership put an end to this arrangement, but anglers generally should never forget the time, labour, and enthusiasm devoted to Thames, Loddon, and Kennet preservation by a band of workers, amongst whom I must include as one of the invaluables the friend once or twice referred to in the foregoing notes Mr. A. C. Butler, of the Reading Mercury. In his own district his is a household name, and in many a metropolitan club “Old Butler of Reading” has been familiar for many years as one of those quiet helpers of the cause who work for the sheer love of it.

Once upon a time when there was no talk of changes, and no great demand for them, the fishing of the Thames district was the bulk of “Angling” in the columns of the Field and Bell’s Life, which then almost alone made a serious subject of fishing, and amongst the men who wrote were Greville F., Brougham, and Butler, who was for years and years the Field correspondent long after the others had passed away. As a man barely in his sixties one ought not to dub him a veteran, but for all that he is one of the old guard of angling correspondents and provincial journalists. In a letter from him a week or two since he regrets that rheumatism and journalistic duties have interfered with his outings, but still cheerily mentions “a measly half gross of gudgeon” at Mapledurham, and the year before last he adds “with water dead stale, we had about the same number of gudgeon, and quite sixty roach from 1/2 lb. to 1 1/4 lb.” And yet they tell us that the Thames is played out!

Three days since I saw a colleague who was going to the City to see a 1/4-lb. roach which had been taken out of the Thames in a bucket at London Bridge the day before. It should be stated that Mr. Butler was with “John Bickerdyke,” now in South Africa, and A. E. Hobbs, the hon. secretary, founders of the Henley Association, and co-workers in other directions with his friends, James Henry Clark, Bowdler Sharpe, Thurlow of Wycombe, and many another. He founded the Reading and District Angling Association in 1877, and practically ran it during its successful career; it ended three years ago, but its work remains in the head of fish in the district and a thorough loyalty amongst the working men’s clubs which he helped to start and establish. Mr. Butler, too, was the prime mover in stocking the Thames in the Reading district with two- and three-year old trout, buying and bringing the fish from High Wycombe. I know and appreciate his voluntary work for anglers and am glad of an opportunity of recording it.

Might one trespass so far on the readers patience as to return to the inspiration of the beginning of this sketch for a conclusion? The remark of which I would deliver myself is that the artificiality of which the poet Pope is accused in his natural scenery generally applies to his references to sport. He is more sympathetic with his anglers than with his fowlers, but neither appears to kindle the fire as in the lines in which he traces the name of the Loddon to Lodona, the fabled nymph of Diana. Pans chase of the hapless nymph through Windsor Forest calling in vain for aid upon Father Thames is full of spirit, and he aptly justifies the name of Loddon

She said, and melting as in tears she lay,
In a soft silver stream dissolv’d away,
The silver stream her virgin coldness keeps,
For ever murmurs, and for ever weeps;
Still bears the name the hapless virgin bore
And bathes the forest where she rang’d before.

It is in “Windsor Forest” that many lines are found by which Pope is perhaps alone remembered by many sportsmen. The references to the well-breathed beagles and the circling hare are happy, and very characteristic of the poet’s telling style in the couplet in brackets.

Beasts, urged by us, their fellow beasts pursue,
And learn of man each other to undo.

Equally characteristic of his defects are the shooting touches in which the “unwearyd fowler” is introduced, with the “leaden death” of the “clam’rous lapwings,” and the “mounting larks.” The glimpse of lonely woodcocks haunting the watery glade is sufficiently apt, but let the shooting man stand at attention when grandiloquently informed.

He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye;
Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky.

Ten lines further in the poem stands the picture which endears Pope to anglers for all time, and which need only be indicated, as in the hymn books, with the first line:

The patient fisher takes his silent stand.