Many Waters
By Many Waters. By A. R. B. Haldane. (Nelson. los. 6d.)
THE present writer was once fortunate enough to enjoy the thrilling privilege—for a fisherman—of taking over, for a few days on the Avon, the rod of the late Viscount Grey. But the master himself, alas! was at Fallodon, and after all it was the lichen that he had chiefly immortalised. Mr. Haldane was thrice blessed in that, while he was a boy at Winchester during the last war, he was given the run of Sir Edward Grey's water near Itchen Abbas and received the occasional companionship and guidance of that greatest of nature-loving fishermen. One of the most delightful pictures in this very timely book is that of his first dry-fly experiences on that sacred stretch of the lichen; and the lessons that he learned there have stood him in good stead on his own Scottish waters. For Mr. Haldane's home is in Scotland. It was apparently in the little streams of the Ochils that he was baptised into the fly-fishing art ; and it is perhaps the pages that he has devoted to Scotland which will fill war- bound southern fishermen with most nostalgia.
None of them, at any rate, who has ever wakened in some Highland train to the first magic sight of granite and heather, wrinkled with peat-coloured burns, will be able to read his book unmoved. Ben Vorlich, Sgurr Dearg, Ben Cruachan, Schie- hallion, the names march like music, evoking a score of lochs and pools, witched by the light that never was. And yet it remains true, as Mr.- Haldane has recognised—a truth that he has suc- ceeded in distilling and imparting—that these unvisited friends are still there guardians of a peace immune to war. That is perhaps the chief reason why his book can so heartily be recom- mended, not only to every fisherman who has experienced—or dreamed of experiencing—taking a salmon on a nine-foot trout rod but to the dry-fly purist, with his own particular sanctuary in some English chalk stream. Somewhere between the technical books of Sheringham and Dunne and the classics of Walton and Grey there should be a place for it on every fisherman's shelf ; and since all its royalties are destined for the British Red Cross, it can surely, even in these days, be bought without qualms.
H. H. BASHFORD.
Previous page
