A DEVASTATED ARCADIA
Thirteen years ago it was my happiness to spend two or three days at an
angler's paradise, a veritable Arcadia then, in one of the districts
the earliest to be ploughed red by the hoofs of a lawless and brutal
invader in the recent war. In the course of a short month this
fruitful land of peace and plenty, ready for the ingathering of a
bounteous harvest, was devastated by the unspeakable savagery of a
soldiery whose name will henceforth be a byword amongst all civilised
peoples. It must surely be so, for the records of murders, robberies,
and outrages unspeakable suffered without warning, without provocation
by a prosperous and inoffensive people, will be a textbook of
inhumanity and wrong for generations to come.
The passing of wounded Belgian soldiers in English streets sadly
reminded us of what had happened in their unhappy country; of cities,
towns, and villages looted and left in ashes; and of the devil let
loose in Arcady. Only to think of it! In the summer of 1914 you
might, as it were to-night, dine in London, travel luxuriously by the
Harwich express, cross the North Sea, survey promising scenes of
industry and agriculture from the railway carriage, glance at Brussels
and Namur on the way, see the Mayflies dancing over a lovely trout
stream, have driven over miles of sweet woodland road, gone out in the
boat and caught your first fish, and slept in the absolute repose of a
charming rural retreat. Just in such a fashion did my old friend Sir
W. Treloar and I in a bygone June gain the Chalet du Lac, on the skirts
of the Belgian Ardennes, to enjoy the hospitality of our English host,
Mr. F. Walton, of lincustrian fame. All this was suddenly cut off from
the outer world and overrun by barbarian hordes, who feared not God,
neither regarded the rights of man. The Arcady had become a stricken
land of desolation. It is close on twenty years since we visited that
beautiful spot, but the memory of it abides. Here are impressions set
down at the time:
"Soon after leaving Namur the train passes through beautiful forest
scenery. You are nearing the Ardennes, and for miles you follow the
course of a typical trout stream, ever rushing and gliding from cool
woods to greet you. There were on that seventh day of June Mayflies in
the air, but the glaring sun and clear water revealed no sign of a
rising trout in any of the pools that came under observation.
Something after five o'clock of the afternoon on this particular
week-end outing the railway was done with, and right pleasant was the
change to an open carriage and the shaded five miles woodland drive to
the Chalet du Lac, built by my host on a lake of some fifty acres. The
supports of the veranda were, in fact, piles driven into the bed of the
lake, and the house was not only charmingly situated, but, having been
designed by its owner, a practical man of great artistic taste, was
charming in itself. The eye in every direction rested upon and roamed
over splendid masses of forest trees; they flourished down to the
water's edge and fell away and around in receding tiers, becoming grand
dark masses of pine on the distant horizon of mountain range. So
absolutely out of the world was this tranquil spot that I saw a deer
come out of the thicket and drink of the lake while I was playing a
fish."
With my memory of that holiday quickened by the news from Belgium, I
called upon Mr. Walton in Berkeley Square to learn what had happened to
his delightful fishing quarters. He was in his eighty-first year then,
but hale and hearty, and on the look-out for some trout water that
should replace what he feared was now a ruined home. He had had no
word from Les Epioux since the war, but we knew that the enemy had been
all around. The chalet is but a quarter of a mile off the main route
from Sedan to Libramont, which is the junction station for Brussels.
It being an altogether undefended district, the enemy would be at ease
there, and perhaps have taken toll of the deer and fish which might be
secured by some of the sneak methods of warfare at which they were
adepts. The pictures and books of the chalet would be portable loot to
anyone who valued them more than clocks and cooking utensils, but the
books would certainly reveal a hated Englishman as the owner, and on
the whole we really could not expect to find the chalet above ground,
unless some admiring enemy had earmarked it as his private property, on
the chance of Belgium becoming a German province.
All that Mr. Walton had gathered from the war news was that there had
been a cavalry engagement at or near Florenville, five miles distant.
There was just the chance that the invaders had to be hustled off on
the quick march before discovering those lakes, for about that phase of
the operations the tide of battle was setting hotly to the west, and,
as we know, according to the enemy's time-table, there was to be in a
week or so a grand victorious entry into Paris, previous to a glorious
descent upon English shores. There was a chance, therefore, that the
Chalet du Lac remained serenely whole by the lakeside. I tried to
cheer Mr. Walton by these surmises, but he shook his head, remarking,
"I am afraid I shall never see my dear little chalet again, or, if so,
everything dreadfully mutilated." So we turned the conversation, and I
beguiled him into telling me once more the history of his connection
with the Epioux lakes. Being a good, all-round sportsman, having been
raised on a Yorkshire country estate, where there was abundant work for
both rod and gun, he made, of course, the _Field_ his weekly study, and
found the advertisement columns as interesting to read as any other.
There, when settled in the world of London, he saw the fishing
advertised as an eligible resort, where you might get your angling for
a few shillings per day. He went over, and found that the lakes were
occupied by two English pisciculturists, and that the water was in a
measure stocked. Mr. Walton was so pleased with his fishing,
especially in the upper lake, that he at once took a fancy to the
place, and arranged for due warning should the tenancy become vacant,
as seemed to be likely before long. In about eighteen months the
result was that the lease was secured.
Materials were sent from England by Mr. Walton, and the chalet built as
described above. There was one German name at any rate mentioned by
him with affectionate regard, namely, the late Herr Jaffé, who was
called in to assist in stocking. This was thoroughly done. Rainbow
trout were in the fashion then, and 300 pounds worth of them were
promptly introduced. They took most kindly to the water, and as they
were 6,000 strong to begin with, the fishing soon became good indeed.
That it was so when the alderman and I visited the chalet, quotation
from the article already tapped for present use may testify:
"The sport was so good that the details would become monotonous. I say
nothing about the baskets made by the two friends who also fished, save
that my host and myself were, at the end, close within touch of one
another's totals. We went afloat after breakfast and fished till
luncheon; went out again when the sun was declining, fishing from about
seven till nine. As I have stated, my first evening (which was
particularly interesting, because there I was at the other end of
Belgium catching fish at the hour corresponding with that of the
previous day when I was taking my seat in the Great Eastern express for
Harwich at Liverpool Street) accounted for twelve trout; the next day's
bag was forty-eight (twenty-six in the forenoon and twenty-two in the
evening); the following day's was fifty (twenty-two in the forenoon,
twenty-eight in the evening); and on the last day, which was rough as
to wind till the afternoon, my record was fourteen in the forenoon and
thirty-one in the evening quiet.
"My host had a good deal of correspondence to attend to, and I was
often out alone, but his gillie reported that he had placed in the
great floating well moored off the veranda 273 fish, the produce of our
two rods during the period specified. These figures must not be
accepted as evidence of greedy fishing or anything of that kind, nor
are they written down in boastfulness. They are given simply because
they record the story of the stocking, and because the sport, which, on
the face of it, looks not unlike slaughter, was part of the necessary
work of keeping down the head of fish in the lake. 'Kill as many as
you can; there are far too many,' was the sort of order one need never
hesitate to obey. The majority of these rainbow trout were apparently
in the condition best described as well-mended. The biggest fish I
took was a golden-brown fario of 1 1/4 lb., probably an old inhabitant;
and there were pounders amongst the few fontinalis taken.
"The point to which I trust to have brought the reader is that here was
a lake which in the matter of sport may be regarded as an angler's
paradise, and I may add that the success I enjoyed is the common
experience. The young ladies often caught their two dozen trout in a
two or three hours' paddle on a lovely sheet of water set in glorious
surroundings of forest in which the wild boar lurks and the deer hides.
Nobody was sent empty away. Just as a change from the chalk streams or
other rivers at home, a day or two of such boat fishing is a real
restful treat. Every loch fisher knows what I mean, and we need not
talk about skill. In my boat during this visit I had one day the
company of the worthy city knight who had caught his first trout on the
day of my arrival. His worship genially allowed me to lecture him as
to the simple rules for casting a fly, and when he would swish a
three-quarter pound fish aloft in the air as if it were an ounce perch,
to use language for which he would have fined me at the Mansion House.
After losing two rainbows in this wild work he got well into the
practice of casting and playing, and so, quite in workmanlike style, he
caught seven good fish, besides breakages."
In later years there was a considerable change in the character of the
fishing. The rainbows from Herr Jaffé had been installed something
over two years when they and we foregathered in this pleasant manner,
and the fish caught would average as near 3/4 lb. as one could guess.
As time went on it was evident that they did not flourish in the style
usual to Salmo irideus. Mr. Walton was puzzled, and, in truth, so was
Herr Jaffé. Amongst the stock planted in the principal lake there must
have been an odd fontinalis or two, and by and by these brilliant fish
were taken, of 1-lb. and 1 1/2-lb. size, freely rising at a fly. In a
word, the fontinalis seemed in a brief space to take possession and the
rainbows to decrease correspondingly. The first specimen Mr. Walton
caught he put back as a rarity, but in a year or so they were not by
any means strangers to be coddled. On the contrary they bred well, as
indeed did the rainbows. The latter, however, after five or six years
gradually deteriorated, while the fontinalis flourished and held their
own for a while. Latterly they, too, had gone the way of all
fontinalis, had become scarcer and scarcer, and it was a rare thing to
catch one where they formerly abounded.
The story of Mr. Walton's tenancy of sixteen years is thus an
interesting chapter in fish culture. That must be my excuse for
apparently labouring this matter of stocking, more especially as there
is still a curious development to unfold. It should be stated that the
lake with which we are now concerned had, previous to the introduction
of rainbows, been emptied and restocked, leaving probably a few of the
original brown trout behind. Mr. Walton thought that there were some
Loch Levens, and that these in recent years asserted themselves, and,
as he put it, "came to their own." But he went on to add that a few
years ago he had put some minnows into the lake by the chalet, and that
they had multiplied like the Hebrews of old till they literally
swarmed. As a natural consequence the trout had become bad risers, and
the growing scarcity of natural flies suggested that the minnows, by
preying upon larvae, have had a share in this decline. The trout
meanwhile had grown big and fat, as they naturally would do, fellows of
3 lb. and upwards being not uncommon. Mr. Walton fished with nothing
but the fly, and had specimens of 3 lb. to 5 lb. so taken traced on
cardboard and adorning the chalet walls, if haply they escaped the
marauders.
At his last visit, which was in the June of the fateful 1914, he killed
ten trout, which weighed exactly 10 lb., in two hours, but this was not
a common experience. His best chance of creeling one of the
three-pounder type was with a long line, longer patience, and a dry
fly. The sport with small lake flies, which was the usual method, was
amongst singularly beautiful brown trout of 1 lb. average. All,
therefore, was not yet lost, and the fishing, even in the lake which
had to the extent I have explained suffered a certain deterioration,
would be what many of us might, without sin, covet. When the angling
was in its prime 1,500 trout was the bag expected and generally
realised in a season, and, caught on small lake flies, such a number
assuredly signifies much satisfaction. The minnows, frogs,
miscellaneous Crustacea, and other foodstuffs in the lake then began to
institute a standing veto against such a degree of pleasure. But the
fishing of the upper lake, where we found our most joyous sport and
surroundings in 1901, seemed to be as good as ever, save that the trout
had fallen to a half-pound average.
One must conclude as one began by wondering what happened at Epioux.
The château, in the distance, might, after all, have filled the eye of
the enemy so effectually that the pretty little chalet was overlooked.
They tell you in the district that Prince Napoleon fled there for
safety after he had shot Victor Noir, and that some of the cannon for
Waterloo were cast in its immediate neighbourhood.
This chapter would have ended with the previous paragraph but for a
scrap of characteristic news in the _Daily Chronicle_. Many of the
reports of brutalities and wanton outrage in war time should be
received with distrust, but Mr. Naylor, who telegraphed this story from
Paris was an old journalistic comrade whom many a special-correspondent
expedition enables me to know as thoroughly reliable. He wrote:
"At Montdidier there is a great organisation which has for its object
the breeding of the best kinds of fish with which to stock French
rivers and lakes. As soon as the Germans came to Montdidier they
proceeded to blow up the banks of the fish-breeding ponds with
dynamite, and cover the streams with petroleum in order to kill all the
fish in them. They succeeded in destroying millions of immature trout
and other fish, and ruining completely a remunerative and useful
industry. The same spirit which drives such barbarians to blow up a
fish-breeding pond impels them to drop bombs on open towns, which do no
harm whatever to those who are fighting against them, but only kill
inoffensive women and children."
There are many good German anglers; the world of angling and fish
culture owes much to their scientists. But I think there must have
been a "wrong 'un" at Montdidier. That pouring of petroleum of malice
aforethought into the water must have been the "culture" of one who
knew precisely what he was doing. And the moral is this: The cause
that transforms a disciple of Izaak Walton into a fiend must assuredly
be accursed.