A Spell of Eels
BY HAMISII MACLAREN
"OBTAIN some very fine large eels." The words had 1--7 the authority of a command : a command rapped as it were, sharply from the pages of one of those die-hard old cookery books—of the kind that also tells you to "have a large boiled hen lobster with plenty of spawn and coral," or to "break into a basin twenty pea-hen's eggs "—and, .though I did not intend to obey it, it set me thinking about eels : about the fish themselves and about the curious fascination they have for so many People. They are hardly in fashion now, perhaps, gas- tronomically speaking. I don't suppose the Quick Lunch and Handy Snack Manual, or whatever the modern food- manufacturer's text-book may be called, even so much as mentions eels. And yet, in spite of their being as tough, both as a biological problem and when under- cooked, as Chicago bootleggers too, there is, there must be, some pertnanent, half-sinister charm about eels even as, for instance, about cats, It is not difficult to understand
that cat-charm. But eels, what exactly is their secret ? I have met numbers of people, from time to time, who seemed positively to be under an eel-spell.
One of these people was a schoolmaster, whose subject, nominally, when he took class, was geography. It was never quite clear to us, his class, whether eels properly came under this head. They might conceivably be said to do so, by reason, perhaps, of their Transatlantic journeys to the Sargasso Sea. But with this school- master eels did not merely come under the head of geography, they were geography. And they were as important, the man would tell us, almost tearing his hair with excitement, as important, boys, as crayfish ! Think of it—as crayfish, boys ! He might as well have said as prawns, or as fish and chips, for all the effect it had on the class. But there he was, an eel-enthusiast : the author, I believe, of a book or pamphlet entitled The Romance of the Eel, or Drama of the Eel. He was, anyhow, the first of his kind I had met, and he surprised me.
Then, years later, there was a medical student : although as applied to him the description is hardly fair. None of your hooting, hooligan sort, but a doctor already, as he used to insist, in everything but the M.D. after his name. " M.D., many deaths." It was his gloomy con- sobition each time the examiners failed in their duty of passing him, and he blamed them exclusively. But he was an eel-addict, not of the slippery cold fish, but of hot chopped eel-steaks in parsley sauce under browned crusts. He introduced me to eel-pies in a little eating house some- where off the 'Elephant and Castle.'
"I conic here every night," he said, " and nowadays eat practically nothing else. I have discovered, you see, that eels contain every necessary ingredient . . . . " &c. He went into technical details which I forget, ending by admitting that he had sent a paper on the subject to the General Medical Council. "But "—wearily beginning on his fifth or sixth pie—" so far they haven't even acknow- ledged it. And I suppose they wont, ever." And I sup- pose he was right.
Not long after this an editor, apparently reading my thoughts, asked me to write an article on eel-pies, which, he said, were, or ought to be, the topic of the moment. "Either that or celery," he said, " anyhow, something suitably November-ish." I chose eel-pies, only to find that my employer had been so fascinated by the idea that, absent-mindedly as he claimed, he had written the article himself. This set me down by several guineas, and, whether by accident or subconscious design, I have not touched an eel-pie since.
Still, I have gone on meeting these eel people. I was walking along the Dorset coast only this autumn, quite contentedly eating blackberries and admiring the swarms of chalk-blue butterflies sunning themselves on the grass edging a shallow inlet of tidal water, when without warning, an old man standing by a boat said to me ; "01 bay goon—" " What ? " I said.
" Eern," said the old man, "goon."
"Goon what ? " I said.
"Drat it, goon can," snapped the old man. He then told me that it would be a shilling an hour.
This turned out well enough for him, eels at that time fetching something like sevenpence a pound, as much as grey mullet, which is admitted to be a lordly fish, and— I say this quite without boasting as the sport was really rather repellent to me—I happened to be a rcadymade expert spearsman. I caught three eels for this old boy, transfixing them with professional precision a third of the Way from their tails as they slid darkly amongst green weeds, and, as was afterwards admitted, no such catch had been taken from this water for weeks. " We'll goo ecfn agen," I was warned, as the long black horrors were fixed on a hook, "best time's afore sun-up, best day's tomorrer—" "To-morrow," I said, "I am starting early, for Land's End " : and I did go to Land's End eventually—a dull piece of ground, fit for nothing but as a starting-point for John o' Groats—but not before there had been a general celebration at my expense in the inn at which the eel and mackerel fishers of this coast forgathered. It was claimed on all hands that a new record had been set up, and my eels had been drawn out in length by several feet, spatchcocked, collared, jellied and even stuffed as " memorandums " before the final glass had been drunk. And by that time I was out of pocket by another ten or fifteen shillings on account of these strangely sinister fish.
Now lastly comes this old cookery book. I bought it in a secondhand shop, merely as a reminder of the lost art of cookery : or, in its most vigorous uses, as an occasional guide for omelettes and rum-punches. It had seemed to breathe a pleasant scent—but now, well, it just smells of eels. They have insinuated themselves, very fine large ones, into almost every page of it.
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