Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 64
A Nature Book Reader
LUKE JENNINGS
Luke Jennings is the author of Blood Knots
The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton
Izaak Walton published The
Compleat Angler in 1653, and
with instinctive marketing
skill, launched it at Mayfly
time. A month earlier Oliver
Cromwell, dressed entirely
in black, had marched into
the House of Commons
and dissolved the Long
Parliament, and Walton’s
book is an encoded hymn to
happier, more carefree days.
In a clear reference to the grim
regime of the Puritans he
speaks of the children of Israel,
who have “banished all mirth
and musick from their pensive
hearts”, and hung up their
“mute harps upon the willowtrees growing by the rivers
of Babylon”.
We think we know The
Compleat Angler: the chapters
on “chavender” or chub,
on tench (“the physician of
fishes”) and pike. But there
are other, weirder treasures.
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Carefully identifying his
W
sources, Walton
refers us to
a people who “once a year
turn wolves, partly in shape,
and partly in conditions”.
And in an early chapter, he
quotes the 16th century French
poet Du Bartas on the sexual
morality of sea-fish. Some are
virtuous (“for chaste love” he
observes, “the mullet hath no
peer”), but others don’t score
so highly. Not only does the
Sargus or Sea-bream “change
wives every day”, but “As if
the honey of sea-love delight /
Could not suffice his ranging
appetite / Goes courting shegoats on the grassy shore /
Horning their husbands that
had horns before.” Is there
a more bizarre image in the
whole of nature writing than
this? A spiny-backed bream
leaping from the sea and
slaking its lust on a hapless
nanny-goat?
