Andrew Lang - Lost Leaders
A >>
Andrew Lang >> Lost Leaders
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 LOST LEADERS
by
ANDREW LANG
LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1889
PREFACE.
These articles are reprinted, by the permission of the Editor, from the
_Daily News_. They were selected and arranged by Mr. Pett Ridge, who,
with the Publishers, will perhaps kindly take a share in the
responsibility of republishing them.
LOST LEADERS.
SCOTCH RIVERS.
September is the season of the second and lovelier youth of the river-
scenery of Scotland. Spring comes but slowly up that way; it is June
before the woods have quite clothed themselves. In April the angler or
the sketcher is chilled by the east wind, whirling showers of hail, and
even when the riverbanks are sweet with primroses, the bluff tops of the
border hills are often bleak with late snow. This state of things is
less unpropitious to angling than might be expected. A hardy race of
trout will sometimes rise freely to the artificial fly when the natural
fly is destroyed, and the angler is almost blinded with dusty snowflakes.
All through midsummer the Scotch rivers lose their chief attractions. The
bracken has not yet changed its green for the fairy gold, the hue of its
decay; the woods wear a uniform and sombre green; the waters are low and
shrunken, and angling is almost impossible. But with September the
pleasant season returns for people who love "to be quiet, and go
a-fishing," or a-sketching. The hills put on a wonderful harmony of
colours, the woods rival the October splendours of English forests. The
bends of the Tweed below Melrose and round Mertoun--a scene that, as
Scott says, the river seems loth to leave--may challenge comparison with
anything the Thames can show at Nuneham or Cliefden. The angler, too, is
as fortunate as the lover of the picturesque. The trout that have hidden
themselves all summer, or at best have cautiously nibbled at the worm-
bait, now rise freely to the fly. Wherever a yellow leaf drops from
birch tree or elm the great trout are splashing, and they are too eager
to distinguish very subtly between flies of nature's making and flies of
fur and feather. It is a time when every one who can manage it should be
by the water-side, and should take with him, if possible, the posthumous
work of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder on the "Rivers of Scotland."
This book, as the author of "Rab and his Friends" tells us in the
preface, is a re-publication of articles written in 1848, on the death-
bed of the author, a man of many accomplishments and of a most lovable
nature. He would lie and dictate or write in pencil these happy and
wistful memories of days passed by the banks of Tweed and Tyne. He did
not care to speak of the northern waters: of Tay, which the Roman
invaders compared to Tiber; of Laxford, the river of salmon; or of the
"thundering Spey." Nor has he anything to say of the west, and of
Galloway, the country out of which young Lochinvar came, with its soft
and broken hills, like the lower spurs of the Pyrenees, and its streams,
now rushing down defiles of rock, now stealing with slow foot through the
plains. He confines himself to the limits of the Scottish Arcadia; to
the hills near Edinburgh, where Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd loved and sang
in a rather affected way; and to the main stream and the tributaries of
the Tweed. He tells, with a humour like that of Charles Lamb in his
account of his youthful search for the mysterious fountain-head of the
New River, how he sought among the Pentland Hills for the source of the
brook that flowed past his own garden. The wandering stream led him
through many a scene renowned in Border history, up to the heights whence
Marmion surveyed the Scottish forces encamped on Borough Moor before the
fatal day of Flodden. These scenes are described with spirit and loving
interest; but it is by Tweedside that the tourist will find his most
pleasant guide in Lauder's book. Just as Cicero said of Athens, that in
every stone you tread on a history, so on Tweedside by every nook and
valley you find the place of a ballad, a story, or a legend. From
Tweed's source, near the grave of the Wizard Merlin, down to Berwick and
the sea, the Border "keeps" and towers are as frequent as castles on the
Rhine. Each has its tradition, its memory of lawless times, which have
become beautiful in the magic of poetry and the mist of the past. First
comes Neidpath Castle, with its vaulted "hanging chamber" in the roof,
and the rafter, with the iron ring to which prisoners were hanged, still
remaining to testify to the lawless power of Border lords. Neidpath has
a softer legend of the death of the lady of the house, when her lover
failed to recognize the features that had wasted with sorrow for his
absence. Lower down the river comes Clovenfords, with its memories of
Christopher North, and Peebles, where King James sings that there was
"dancing and derray" in his time; and still lower Ashiesteel, where Scott
was young and happy, and Abbotsford, where his fame and his misfortunes
found him out. It was on a bright afternoon in late September that he
died there, and the mourners by his bed heard through the silence the
murmuring of Tweed How many other associations there are by the tributary
rivers! what a breath of "pastoral melancholy"! There is Ettrick, where
the cautious lover in the old song of Ettrick banks found "a canny place
of meeting." Oakwood Tower, where Michael Scott, the wizard, wove his
spells, is a farm building--the haunted magician's room is a granary,
Earlstone, where Thomas the Rhymer dwelt, and whence the two white deer
recalled him to Elfland and to the arms of the fairy queen, is noted "for
its shawl manufactory." Only Yarrow still keeps its ancient quiet, and
the burn that was tinged by the blood of Douglas is unstained by more
commonplace dyes.
All these changes make the "Rivers of Scotland" rather melancholy
reading. Thirty years have not passed since Lauder died, and how much he
would miss if he could revisit his beloved water! Spearing salmon by
torchlight is a forbidden thing. The rocks are no longer lit up with the
red glow; they resound no longer with the shouts and splashing of the
yeomen. You might almost as readily find a hart on Harthope, or a wild
cat at Catslack, or a wolf at Wolf-Cleugh, as catch three stone-weight of
trout in Meggat-water. {6} The days of guileless fish and fabulous
draughts of trout are over. No sportsman need take three large baskets
to the Gala now, as Lauder did, and actually filled them with thirty-six
dozen of trout. The modern angler must not allow his expectations to be
raised too highly by these stories. Sport has become much more difficult
in these times of rapidly growing population. It is a pleasant sight to
see the weavers spending their afternoons beside the Tweed; it is such a
sight as could not be witnessed by the closely preserved rivers of
England. But the weavers have taught the trout caution, and the dyes and
various pollutions of trade have thinned their numbers. Mr. Ruskin sees
no hope in this state of things; he preaches, in the spirit of old
Hesiod, that there is no piety in a race which defiles the "holy waters."
But surely civilization, even if it spoil sport and degrade scenery, is
better than a state of things in which the laird would hang up his foes
to an iron ring in the roof. The hill of Cowden Knowes may be a less
eligible place for lovers' meetings than it was of old. But in those
times the lord of Cowden Knowes is said by tradition to have had a way of
putting his prisoners in barrels studded with iron nails, and rolling
them down a brae. This is the side of the good old times which should
not be overlooked. It may not be pleasant to find blue dye and wool yarn
in Teviot, but it is more endurable than to have to encounter the bandit
Barnskill, who hewed his bed of flint, Scott says, in Minto Crags. Still,
the reading of the "Rivers of Scotland" leaves rather a sad impression on
the reader, and makes him ask once more if there is no way of reconciling
the beauty of rude ages with the comforts and culture of civilization.
This is a question that really demands an answer, though it is often put
in a mistaken way. The teachings of Mr. Ruskin and of his followers
would bring us back to a time when printing was not, and an engineer
would have been burned for a wizard. {8} But there is a point at which
civilization and production must begin to respect the limits of the
beautiful, on which they so constantly encroach. Who is to settle the
limit, and escape the charge of being either a _dilettante_ and a
sentimentalist on the one hand, or a Philistine on the other?
SALMON-FISHING.
Salmon-fishing for this season is over, and, in spite of the fresh and
open weather, most anglers will feel that the time has come to close the
fly-book, to wind up the reel, and to consign the rod to its winter
quarters. Salmon-fishing ceases to be very enjoyable when the _snaw
broo_, or melted snow from the hilltops, begins to mix with the brown
waters of Tweed or Tay; when the fallen leaves hamper the hook; and when
the fish are becoming sluggish, black, and the reverse of comely. Now
the season of retrospect commences, the time of the pleasures of memory,
and the delights of talking shop dear to anglers Most sporting talk is
dull to every one but the votaries of the particular amusement. Few
things can be drearier to the outsider than the conversation of
cricketers, unless it be the recondite lore which whist-players bring
forth from the depths of their extraordinary memories. But angling talk
has a variety, recounts an amount of incident and adventure, and wakens a
feeling of free air in a way with which the records of no other sport,
except perhaps deer-stalking, can compete. The salmon is, beyond all
rivalry, the strongest and most beautiful, and most cautious and artful,
of fresh-water fishes. To capture him is not a task for slack muscles or
an uncertain eye. There is even a slight amount of personal risk in the
sport. The fisher must often wade till the water reaches above the waist
in cold and rushing streams, where his feet are apt to slip on the smooth
stones or trip on the rough rocks beneath him. When the salmon takes the
fly, there is no time for picking steps. The line rushes out so swiftly
as to cut the fingers if it touches them, and then is the moment when the
angler must follow the fish at the top of his speed. To stand still, or
to go cautiously in pursuit, is to allow the salmon to run out with an
enormous length of line; the line is submerged--technically speaking,
_drowned_--in the water, the strain of the supple rod is removed from the
fish, who finds the hook loose in his mouth, and rubs it off against the
bottom of the river. Thus speed of foot, in water or over rocks, is a
necessary quality in the angler; at least in the northern angler. By the
banks of the Usk a contemplative man who likes to take things easily may
find pretty sure footing on grassy slopes, or on a gravelly bottom. But
it is a different thing to hook a large salmon where the Tweed foams
under the bridge of Yair down to the narrows and linns below. If the
angler hesitates there, he is lost. Does he stand still and give the
fish line? The astute creature cuts it against the sharp rocks below the
bridge, and the rod, relieved of the weight, leaps straight in the
fisher's hand, and in his heart there is a sense of emptiness and sudden
desolation. Does he try to follow, the chances are that his feet slip;
after one or two wild struggles he is on his back in the water, and
nearly strangled with his fishing-basket. In either case the fish goes
on his way rejoicing, and, after the manner of his kind, leaps out of the
water once or twice--a maddening sight.
Adventures like this are among the bitter memories of the angler. The
fish that break away are monstrous animals; imagination increases their
bulk, and fond desire paints them clean-run and bright as silver. There
are other chances of the angler's life scarcely less sad than this. When
a hook breaks just as the salmon was losing strength, was ceasing to
struggle, and beginning to sway with the mere force of the stream, and to
show his shining sides--when a hook breaks at such a moment, it is very
hard to bear. The oath of Ernulphus seems all too weak to express the
feelings of the sportsman and his wrath against the wretched
tackle-maker. Again, when the fish is actually conquered; when he is
being towed gently into some little harbour among the tall slim water-
grasses, or into a pebbly cove, or up to a green bank; when the
bitterness of struggle is past, and he seems resigned and almost happy;
when at this crisis the clumsy gilly with the gaff scratches him, rouses
him to a last exertion, and entangles the line, so that the salmon breaks
free--that is an experience to which language cannot do justice. The
ancient painter drew his veil over the face of Agamemnon present at his
daughter's sacrifice. Silence and sympathy are all one can offer to the
angler who has toiled all day, and in this wise caught nothing. There is
yet another very bitter sorrow. It is a hard thing for a man to leave
town and hurry to a river in the west, a river that perhaps he has known
since he fished for minnows with a bent pin in happy childhood. The west
is not a dry land; effeminate tourists complain that the rain it raineth
every day. But the heavy soft rain is the very life of an angler. It
keeps the stream of that clear brown hue, between porter and amber, which
he loves; and it encourages the salmon to keep rushing from the estuary
and the sea right up to the mountain loch, where they rest. But suppose
there is a dry summer--and such things have been even in Argyleshire. The
heart of the tourist is glad within him, but as the river shrinks and
shrinks, a silver thread among slimy green mosses in the streams, a sheet
of clear water in the pools, the angler repines. Day after sultry day
goes by, and there is no hope. There is a cloud on the distant hill; it
is only the smoke from some moor that has caught fire. The river grows
so transparent that it is easy to watch the lazy fish sulking at the
bottom. Then comes a terrible temptation. Men, men calling themselves
sportsmen, have been known to fish in the innocent dewy morning, with
worm, with black lob worm. Worse remains behind. Persons of ungoverned
passions, maddened by the sight of the fish, are believed to have poached
with rake-hooks, a cruel apparatus made of three hooks fastened back to
back and loaded with lead. These are thrown over the fish, and then
struck into him with a jerk. But the mind willingly turns away from the
contemplation of such actions.
It is pleasanter to think of not unsuccessful days by lowland or highland
streams, when the sun was veiled, the sky pearly grey, the water, as the
people say, in grand order. There is the artistic excitement of choosing
the hook, gaudy for a heavy water, neat and modest for a clearer stream.
There is the feverish moment of adjusting rod and line, while you mark a
fish "rising to himself." You begin to cast well above him, and come
gradually down, till the fly lights on the place where he is lying. Then
there is a slow pull, a break in the water, a sudden strain at the line,
which flies through the rings of the rod. It is not well to give too
much line; best to follow his course, as he makes off as if for Berwick
and the sea. Once or twice he leaps clean into the air, a flying bar of
silver. Then he sulks at the bottom, a mere dead weight, attempting
devices only to be conjectured. A common plan now is to tighten the
line, and tap the butt end of the rod. This humane expedient produces
effects not unlike neuralgia, it may be supposed, for the fish is off in
a new fury. But rush after rush grows tamer, till he is drawn within
reach of the gaff, and so on to the grassy bed, where a tap on the head
ends his sorrows, and the colours on his shining side undulate in
delicate and beautiful radiance. It may be dreadfully cruel, as cruel as
nature and human life; but those who eat salmon or butcher's meat cannot
justly protest, for they, desiring the end, have willed the means. As
the angler walks home, and watches the purple Eildon grow grey in the
twilight, or sees the hills of Mull delicately outlined between the faint
gold of sky and sea, it is not probable that his conscience reproaches
him very fiercely. He has spent a day among the most shy and hidden
beauties of nature, surprising her here and there in places where, unless
he had gone a-fishing, he might never have penetrated. He has set his
skill against the strength and skill of the monarch of rivers, and has
mastered him among the haunts of fairies and beneath the ruined towers of
feudalism. These are some of the delights that to-day end for a season.
{16}
WINTER SPORTS.
People to whom cold means misery, who hate to be braced, and shudder at
the word "seasonable," can have little difficulty in accounting for the
origin of the sports of winter. They need only adapt to the
circumstances that old Lydian tradition which says that games of chance
were invented during a great famine. Men permitted themselves to eat
only every second day, and tried to forget their hunger in playing at
draughts and dice. That is clearly the invention of a southern people,
which never had occasion to wish it could become oblivious of the
weather, as too many of us would like to be in England. Such shivering
and indolent folks may be inclined to say that skating and curling and
wildfowl-shooting, and the other diversions which seduce the able-bodied
from the warm precincts of the cheerful fire, were only contrived to
enable us to forget the state of the thermometer. Whether or not that
was the purpose of the first northerner who fixed sheep-bones beneath his
feet, to course more smoothly over the frozen sound, there can be no
doubt that winter sports answer their presumed purpose. They keep up
that glow which only exercise in the open air can give, and promote the
health which shows itself in the complexion. It is the young lady who
interprets literally the Scotch invitation "come into the fire," and who
spoils the backs of library novels by holding them too near the
comfortable hearth, she it is who suffers from the ignoble and unbecoming
liberties that winter takes with the human countenance. Happier and
wiser is she who studies the always living and popular Dutch roll rather
than the Grecian bend, and who blooms with continual health and good
temper. Our changeful climate affords so few opportunities of learning
to skate, that it is really extraordinary to find so much skill, and to
see feats so difficult and graceful. In Canada, where frost is a
certainty, and where the covered "rinks" make skating an indoor sport, it
is not odd that great perfection should be attained. But as fast as
Canadians bring over a new figure or a new trick it is picked up, and
critics may dispute as to whether the bold and dashing style of the
English school of skaters is not preferable to the careful and smooth,
but somewhat pretty and niggling manner of the colonists. Our skating
stands to the Canadian fashion somewhat as French does to English
etching. We have the dash and the _chic_ with skates which Frenchmen
show with the etching-needle, and the Canadian, on the other hand, is apt
to decline into the mere prettiness which is the fault of English
etchers.
Skating has been, within the last few years, a very progressive art.
There was a time when mere speed, and the grace of speed, satisfied most
amateurs. The ideal spot for skating in those days must have been the
lakes where Wordsworth used to listen to the echoes replying from the
cold and moonlit hills, or such a frozen river as that on which the
American skater was pursued by wolves. No doubt such scenes have still
their rare charm, and few expeditions are more attractive than a
moonlight exploration of a winding river. But it is seldom that our
frosts make such tours practicable, whereas almost every winter it is
possible to skate with safety, at least on shallow ponds, or on places
like the ice-bound floods at Oxford. Thus figure-skating, which needs
but a surface of a few yards to each performer, has come into fashion,
and it is hard to imagine any exercise more elegant, or one that requires
more nerve. The novice is theoretically aware that if he throws his body
into certain unfamiliar postures, which are explained to him, the laws of
gravitation and of the higher curves will cause him to complete a certain
figure. But how much courage and faith it requires to yield to these
laws and let the frame swing round subject to the immutable rules of
matter! The temptation to stop half-way is almost irresistible, and then
there occurs a complicated fall, which makes the petrified spectator ask
where may be the skater's body--"which are legs, and which are arms?" Of
all sports, skating has the best claim to adopt Danton's motto, _Toujours
de l'audace_--the audacity meant being that of giving one's self up to
the laws of motion, and not the vulgar quality which carries its owner on
to dangerous ice. Something may now be learned of figure-skating on dry
land, and the adventure may be renewed of the mythical children who went
sliding all on a summer day. In this respect, skating has a great
advantage over its rival, the "roaring game" of curling. It would be
poor fun to curl on asphalte, with stones fixed on wheels, though the
amusement is possible, and we recommend the idea, which is not copyright,
to enthusiastic curlers; and curlers are almost always enthusiastic. It
is pleasant to think how the hills must be ringing with their shouts,
round many a lonely tarn, where the men of one parish meet those of the
next in friendly conflict north of the Tweed. The exhilarating yell of
"soop her up," whereby the curler who wields a broom is abjured to sweep
away the snow in front of the advancing stone, will many a time be heard
this winter. There is something peculiarly healthy about this sport--in
the ring with which the heavy stones clash against each other; in the
voices of the burly plaided men, shepherd, and farmer, and laird; in the
rough banquet of beef and greens and the copious toddy which close the
day's exertions.
Frost brings with it an enforced close-season for most of furred and
feathered kind. The fox is safe enough, and, if sportsmen are right,
must be rather wearying for open weather, and for the return of his
favourite exercise with hounds. But even when the snow hangs out her
white flag of truce and goodwill between man and beast, the British
sportsman is still the British sportsman, and is not averse to going out
and killing something. To such a one, wild-fowl shooting is a
possibility, though, as good Colonel Hawker says, some people complain
forsooth that it interferes with ease and comfort. We should rather
incline to think it does. A black frost with no moon is not precisely
the kind of weather that a degenerate sportsman would choose for lying in
the frozen mud behind a bush, or pushing a small punt set on large skates
across the ice to get at birds. Few attitudes can be more cramping than
that of the gunner who skulks on one knee behind his canoe, pushing it
with one hand, and dragging himself along by the aid of the other. Then,
it is disagreeable to have to use a gun so heavy that the stock is fitted
with a horsehair pillow, or even with a small bolster. The whistle of
widgeon and the shrill-sounding pinions of wild geese may be attractive
noises, and no doubt all shooting is exciting; and a form of shooting
which stakes all on one shot must offer some thrilling moments of
expectation. The quarry has to be measured by number, not by size, and
fifty widgeon at one discharge, or a brace of wild swans may almost serve
to set against a stag of ten. {23} The lover of nature has glimpses in
wild-fowl shooting such as she gives no other man--the glittering expanse
of waters, the birds "all in a charm," all uttering their cry together,
the musical moan of the tide, and the "long glories of the winter moon."
But success is too difficult, equipment too costly, and rheumatism too
certain for wild-fowl shooting to be reckoned among popular winter
sports.
HUMAN LEVITATION.
Why is it that living fish add nothing to the "weight of the bucket of
water in which they swim?" Charles II. is said to have asked the Royal
Society. A still more extraordinary question has been propounded in the
grave pages of the _Quarterly Journal of Science_, edited by Mr. Crookes,
a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the discoverer of the useful metal
thallium. The problem set in this learned review does not, like that of
the Merry Monarch, beg the question of facts. "What is the scientific
inference from the various accounts, modern and traditional, of human
levitation?" is the difficulty before the world at this present moment.
Now, there may be people who never heard of levitation, nor even of
"thaums," a term that frequently occurs in the article we refer to. A
slight acquaintance with the dead languages, whose shadows reappear in
this queer fashion, enables the inquirer to decide that "levitation"
means the power of becoming lighter than the surrounding atmosphere, and
setting at nought the laws of gravitation.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10