A manual for life, not just fishing
“And now lets go to an honest Alehouse and sing Old Rose, and rejoice all of us together.”
Riffing on last week’s fishing-themed newsletter, the above quote comes from Izaak Walton’s 1653 magnum opus The Compleat Angler. This is the kind of writing that would make reading manuals significantly more enjoyable. It comes from the user guide to beat all user guides, full of poems, songs, recipes, milkmaids, and an approach to the natural world which still resonates intensely 400 years after it was written. Indeed, it’s nothing short of a manual for life.
Izaak Walton (1593 – 1683) published the first edition of The Compleat Angler, his handbook to fishing, in 1653 shortly after he’d essentially taken early retirement at 50 from his trade as a linen draper and ironmonger. But though it vies with Shakespeare and the Bible in terms of being the most reprinted book ever, it’s also up there with A Brief History of Time when it comes to how many people have actually read it. Which is a pity because while it’s obviously of considerable interest to fishermen, there’s so much more to it than trout.
The book takes the form of a conversation during a Three Men in a Boat kind of fishing trip from Tottenham to Ware in Hertfordshire one May. Piscator (the fisherman) extolls the virtues – both physical and mental – of angling to Venator, (a huntsman) and in later editions a falconer, Auceps. So alongside suggestions for how to corner your fish and cook your catch, Piscator (essentially Walton himself) points out that Jesus picked several fisherman to join his merry band of disciples. Why? Because “he found that the hearts of such men, by nature, were fitted for contemplation and quietnesse; men of mild, and sweet, and peaceable spirits, as indeed most Anglers are.” Some commentators have even speculated that for the rather ecumenical Walton, angler = Anglican.
But while there is a religious element to the story – St Paul’s axiom in his first epistle to the Thessalonians ‘Study to be quiet’ is quoted enthusiastically by Walton – The Compleat Angler is much more about how to live the good life, one that is reflective about one’s actions within a rustic setting, the kind of setting that involves a milkmaid inviting Pescator to down a draught of red cow's milk.
So when called upon to declare whether he believes Contemplation or Action to be the main source of happiness, Walton puts the case for a third way, one where “both these meet together, and do most properly belong to the most honest, ingenious, harmless Art of Angling”. A key quality in the search for this happiness is patience, something that Venator suggests is an indication of “simple men”.
“For my simplicity,” responds Piscator/Walton, “if by that you mean a harmlessness, or that simplicity which was usually found in the primitive Christians, who were (as most Anglers are) quiet men, and followers of peace; men that were so simply-wise, as not to sell their Consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation and a fear to die. If you mean such simple men as lived in those times when there were fewer Lawyers; when men might have had a Lordship safely conveyed to them in a piece of Parchment no bigger than your hand, I say, Sir, if you take us Anglers to be such simple men as I have spoke of, then my self and those of my Profession will be glad to be so understood.”
As novelist Thomas McGuane put it neatly in his introduction to a recent edition of the book, “The Compleat Angler is not about how to fish but about how to be”. Walton puts a premium not only on importance of companionship in leading a happy life but also on living it harmoniously with nature, which of course finds its natural confluence in angling and its nemesis in the chaotic Puritanism of the 1650s which Walton disliked.
Indeed, the essayist William Hazlitt described the book as “the best pastoral in the language” while Wordsworth dedicated sonnets to Walton, and Sir Walter Scott said he had “so true and eye for nature”. It certainly deserves to be as well read as Henry David Thoreau’s similar contemplation about how to live in nature, Walden. And perhaps it’s time is coming again since Walton’s themes of enivronmental sustainability and wildlife management are so passionately held today.
“Men are taken to be grave, because nature hath made them of a sour complexion,” Walton wrote, “money-getting men, men that spend all their time, first in getting, and next, in anxious care to keep it; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busy or discontented: for these poor rich-men, we Anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thoughts to think ourselves so happy.”