"Anglers ARE Unlucky"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 75, 29 November 1940, Page 20

"Anglers ARE Unlucky"

In Which ‘‘Thid" Exercises His Right Of Reply And Argues Back At ‘‘Zebedee"’ Thereby Closing The Controversy On The Language Of Sportsmen

GIVE. ground to this rude fellow Zebedee in only one respect. I claimed for mountaineers a fortune in wordage which was hardly substantiated by my discourse on the words and music of sportsmen’s naming. I said mountaineers were the luckiest of all, and spent most of my space pointing out where they had been unlucky; as in such names as Hicks and Haeckel, both as hideous to my ear as Zebedee’s "Restigouche," or "Cotopaxi," for that matter. In logic, that was the only argument Zebedee had against me; that I said one thing and argued another. This opening he failed to see, and we reduce ourselves, as far as I can make out, to an exchange of impotent opinion. ' He has his, I have mine. I find the mountains fresh and clean, and believe that mountaineers are luckiest of all in inspiration this gives them, or. should give them, to decorate their craft with fresh, clean names. I believe angling is

a distortion of minds otherwise trained in gentle ways, and that anglers are unlucky in that no amount of badly metred poetry can disguise the essential fact that no fish ever meets an angler on equal terms, Where Every Prospect Pleases .,. It is a pleasant enough prospect to imagine Zebedee beside some quiet stream at eventide; but I would point out that this picture cannot be achieved unless it is accompanied by the corrollary; a picture of a trout that "hangs, a scimitar of light, miraculously in our sight "-soundly hooked to a long, thin, cruel whip of line. Let Zebedee think of me sitting on a warm rock in the rose-pink glow of a sunset over the high snows, dreaming perchance, of Tutoko, Moonraker, Stargazer; of Kamet, Nanda Devi, Makalu, and Chomolhari; and let him view this pretty picture without thought of the harm I can bring to any other creature, All the damage I can do is to myself, and then only when the poetry that is my motion in the. mountains falls out of rhyme and drops an accent. In general, arguing on ethics, and relating conscience, morality, and a sense of music all into the one debate, I

think anglers will have to content themselves with being unlucky. I shall not say they are fools, sadists, cowards, bullies, or abnormal; I shall say they are unlucky, and let it rest at that. When the fish are out of luck the fisherman conceives that his luck is in. He is wrong. The more fish he catches, purely for sport, the less luck he will have when nature drags his sated body back into the depth from whence it came. May the fish turn upon him then and eat him in small pieces. He shall deserve it. As for the particular points raised by Zebedee. His preoccupation with that doggerel language of his common trade diverts him sadly from the literature of mountaineering. ... I become Portion of that around me, and to me High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities tortures. And what more shall I say than this with Byron: that high mountains are a feeling, and no feeling ever yet went into words without losing its intensity, There is mountain literature, and mountain poetry. Not much, but enough if Zebedee likes playing with that sort of second-hand material. But what effect would quoting have on our debate? None. I need no thought from other men to bolster up my argument. Impartial Pleasure I say anglers delude themselves that their sport is pleasurable, when it is pleasurable only to the one party. And I say that mountaineering is preferable because it gives impartial pleasure to all concerned in it. If you offer me "poetry" about angling, I think not of the verse but of the evil that inspires it, It would not be poetry if the words were all miracles of inspired selection, the rhymes all new, and the metre perfect. The sentiment is not a true one. "Neither Verse Nor Poetry " In any case, Zebedee confounds himself by quoting verse that is not verse and poetry that is not poetry. Was there ever a worse last line than that one of Rupert Brooke’s (There shall be no more land, say fish)? As for Robert Bell: before he can even sound like a poet he must disguise his trout as a "scimitar of light." His true worth as a poet is discovered in Zebedee’s last selection, when the unlucky versifier is reduced to using such unpretty terms as "hook" and "basket," and "protest," rhyming them all, it seems, inaptly, with "the rest." Poor stuff. The only piece Zebedee

did not put forward "as an example of poesy" was the most poetic piece of the lot. "Chavender" is a word I like immensely; but not, let it be noted, for the sake of imagining a hook in its mouth-rather for the sake of imagining the chavender in mine, as grub, in @ pavender or pub. No, it will not do, my master of the trod. Produce as many literary excuses as you like (but please improve upog the last lot), and you will still fail t convince me that your verse has the sentiment to make it pretty. I can look at a mountain for a very long time. But I have never yet found inspiration in a hook, no matter by what name the dealer has dressed it up fog gullible clients.