Charles Dickens on fihermen along the canal

[FrankP]

I found this excerpt from Dickens quite by accident while searching for info on the Wilts and Berks.

Not much different today. The relevent part is here from page 103 to 107. http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA103&amp...utput=html_text

Makes an interesting read. The fishing quote

"On the left the Bristol Avon still kept us company, and on the right were the sloping woods of Bowood ; but, after passing Wootton Bassett, the presence of numerous anglers on the towing-path—oily, grimy men who looked аз if they might recently have b'een cleaning engines—warned us that we were emerging from the purely rural districts. These anglers, however, were urbane only in a limited sense. We got from them no kindly good-dayor jocular remark—as from the reed - cutters, and shepherds, and harvestmen we had hitherto met — but lowering looks and muttered objurgations on people who came with boats, and spoilt the fishing. They were all fishing with live bait ; and, as far as I could see, they large portion of the evil springs from put very much more weight of fish into the water than ever they took ont of it. There most have been at least a hundred wretched impaled dace and gudgeon for one pike to select from, supposing, that is, that a single pike were foolish enough to abide in the unsavoury neighbourhood of Swindon. Perhaps it was even baffled hope which made them so grumpy; but their mode of life might well have had something to do with it. Can men who live all day long in the grime, and fume, and whirr of a steam workshop, possibly put forth those gentilities of manner, none the less real for the hearty roughness of their mode of expression, which come naturally to the workers in the open fields ; or, at least, to those of them we came across) When I had travelled a little farther, and saw the town of New Swindon, the dwelling-place of these saturnine fishers, I fell into a more forgiving mood. Were I fated to live there, I am sure I should be as gloomy as the gloomiest of them, and very possibly might violently assault any boating excursionists who came to disturb my fishing."

Edited August 26, 2007 by FrankP

[SteveE]

I found this excerpt from Dickens quite by accident while searching for info on the Wilts and Berks.

Not much different today. The relevent part is here from page 103 to 107. http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA103&amp...utput=html_text

Makes an interesting read. The fishing quote

"

 

Great quote.

SteveE