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A HISTORY OF FLY FISHING FORTROla BY JOHN WALLER HI3 I S LA PECHB ES r MA FO1 11 - ': : .. GENERAL LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA er A HISTORY OF FLY FISHING FOR TROUT A HISTORY OF FLY FISHING FOR TROUT BY JOHN WALLER HILLS 'La Piche est ma folie Due DK CHOISEUL (1761) LONDON PHILIP ALLAN & CO. MDCCCCXXI {Ol Printed by WHITEHEAD BROTHERS, WOLVERHAMPTON CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE SPORTING LITERATURE IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND - 1 CHAPTER II. THE TREATISE OF FISHING WITH AN ANGLE - - - - 16 CHAPTER III. FROM THE TREATISE TO THE COMPLEAT ANGLER ... 36 CHAPTER IV. EARLY FLY FISHING IN FRANCE 49 CHAPTER V. CHARLES COTTON AND HIS CONTEM- PORARIES .... 56 CHAPTER VI. FROM COTTON TO STEWART 82 CHAPTER VII. STEWART AND THE UPSTREAM SCHOOL - 99 CONTENTS (Continued) . CHAPTEE VIII. THE DRY FLY 114 CHAPTER IX. THE EVOLUTION OF THE TROUT FLY 141 CHAPTEE X. THE EVOLUTION OF THE TROUT FLY 170 (Contd.) CHAPTEE XI. THE LITERATURE OF FLY FISHING - 191 BIBLIOGEAPHY 222 INDEX 231 CHAPTER I. SPORTING LITERATURE IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND. The sport is so royal that there is neither gentle nor villein, if it knew of it and loved it well, who would not be more honoured for that reason by all who understand it. Good Sir, if all knew it, would it be less honoured than it is now? Nay, rather it would be more honoured, fair gentle friend, know it well. La Chace dou Serf. About 1250. Translation by Sir Henry Dryden. HE history of fly fishing begins at the close of the fifteenth century. It is true that there is one isolated record long before this; for the curious can carry its story back to the second century of our era and read in a Roman author an account of fly fishing for a fish, apparently the trout, in a river in Macedonia.* But, while *De Animalium Natura, by Claudius Aelianus, Book 15,. Cap I. 2 FLY FISHING FOE TROUT. there is no reason to doubt the truth of this, the fact is interesting rather than important, and for this reason. It had no influence on subse- quent development : it stands by itself, and was unknown until a modern writer quoted it as a curiosity. And as such we can leave it. We will merely give it a glance as we go by, this river of Macedon, which no doubt existed and no doubt held trout, for we have the best reason for knowing that there were salmon in it The true history of fly fishing starts with the Treatise of Fishing with an Angle, attributed to Dame Juliana Berners and printed in 1496 by Wynkyn de Worde, and is continuous to the present day. But we cannot understand the book or realise its measure and importance without regard to the age in which it appeared, and to the sporting literature out of which it arose. England, rich though she is in books describing the pursuit of game, drew almost all that she knew from French origins. The sporting literature of Europe during the Middle Ages was almost exclusively French. If two easily remembered dates are taken, the signing of Magna Charta in 1215 and the battle of Agincourt exactly two centuries later, that period comprises everything that appeared upon sport before the earliest book on fishing was written. Now there were eight books of importance written during those two centuries. Of these five are entirely French, one other was SPORTING LITERATURE. 3 written in Latin for Charles II., the Bourbon King of Sicily, and only two have any connex- ion with England. Moreover, of these two, only one springs from English soil, and that was written not in English but Norman French, while the other, the Master of Game, is a translation of a French work. When therefore the first book on fly fishing was written, shortly after the end of the period, for its date is certainly not later than 1450 and possibly earlier, it came into the world against a back- ground which was entirely French. It arose out of, and is deeply moulded and conditioned by, French writings; it is their offspring, and could be that of none other. Neither its form nor still less its spirit can be understood unless something is known of the literature of sport during those two centuries : something of the books, and of the men who wrote them; who they were, the part they played in the world's affairs and above all their attitude towards sport. It is a fascinating enquiry, for it leads us books and men but among great great ; apart from its charm it is a necessary one. Without it the earliest English fishing book cannot be understood. But that book has set its seal deep on subsequent books, and the impress remains clear and sharp to the present day. When you read a good modern fishing book such as Lord Grey's Fly Fishing you, all unknowingly it may be, are reading something which can trace a direct descent from the earliest sporting litera- 4 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. ture in Europe. And so, for that reason too, these old books have a very modern application. And that is not all. As the year revolves your thoughts will turn to other pursuits, and you may possibly take down from your shelves the great Peter Beckford's Thoughts on Hunting, or perhaps Peter Hawker's Instructions to Young Sportsmen : though I admit that it is more probable that what you read will be the newest of the new books on either sport. But whichever be the case, you are reading some- thing which is rooted in the past and which would not take the form it does were it not that old writers centuries ago had written books now well nigh forgotten. So, in order tha you may never forget that all sport is one, whatever be its manifestation, and that in particular the fishing book which you may buy to-morrow has an old and reputable ancestry, it is worth spending a little time even in a period so remote as the Middle Ages. So let us look at two or three of these early books. The earliest book on the chase, in France or England, and an instructive and delightful book it is, La Chace dou Serf, dates from the middle of the thirteenth century. Appearing at a time when French prose had not long emerged, it is, as might be expected, written in verse. It may possibly have influenced a later work, for these early writers copied freely from each other, and to understand them it is often necessary to go back to their predecessors. SPORTING LITERATURE. 5 The work in question is Le Art de Venerie, par mestre Guyllame Twici, Venour le Roy d'Engletere. William Twici, who wrote in Norman French about 1327, was huntsman to Edward II., and we can still read in the Close Rolls and Exchequer Accounts that he received a wage of 9d. a day, with 3^d. a day for 'Littel Will' and ^d. for the keep of each greyhound and staghound. His book is one of instruction both in practice and in a knowledge of hunting terms, written for an age which esteemed this not the least part of a polite education. The proper way to hunt the hart, the buck, the boar, the hare and the fox, what names to apply to them at different ages, what notes to sound on the horn in order to signify different incidents in the chase of each, these and other matters of diverse and curious learning are to be read in Le Art de Venerie. It is easily accessible in Miss Alice Dryden's invaluable A rt of Hunting, issued a few years ago. It was for long a standard work, was early translated into English, and formed the basis of the treatise on Hunting in the Book of St. Allans, of which more later. The next book also hails from France : the Livre de la Chasse was written some time between 1387, when the author tells us he began it, and 1391, when he died of apoplexy brought on by a bear hunt on a hot August day. Its author was Gaston III., Comte de Foix and Vicomte de Beam, who, as well as his book, is 6 FLY FISHING FOE TROUT. generally known as Gaston Phoebus. He was lord of two principalities on the slopes of the Pyrenees. He came of a famous house, which gave to the world both that other Gaston de Foix, the young, the gallant, and the unfortu- nate, who commanded the French at Ravenna when only three and twenty, and was killed at the moment of victory : and also Catherine de Foix, the noble wife of the feeble Jean d' Albret, and the ancestress of Henri IV. Gaston Phoebus is an amazing figure even for the end of the Middle Ages, a time when a ruler's character, good or bad, could develop exactly as it pleased. His life was devoted to fighting, hunting, and the administration of what he was pleased to call justice, bloodthirsty and specta- cular. He murdered his only son, yet Froissart, who visited him at his castle of Orthez, picks him out as the model prince. Accompanied by two nobles and forty lances, he crossed Europe from the Pyrenees to Konigsberg, with two objects : to fight the heathen inhabitants of East Prussia, and to hunt reindeer in Sweden. And, be it noted, after fighting the Prussians, he had to to down a Bolshevist for help put rising ; thus does history anticipate itself.

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