Fisheress

Fancy again, Lady fisheresses (I appeal to good old Tory young ladies who land big salmon every autumn in or about the Gordon-Richmond estates in Scotland), how much jollier it is to see the monarch of the stream on the grass than to ‘rink’ at Prince’s, or to be carried round Belgravian drawing-rooms, half dead and quite knocked up, in the mazy waltz. Not that Prince’s is a bad place by any means, nor ballrooms either. / Now, is not this a romantic opening? I am going to talk about cockney fishing twenty years ago.

With ribbons and rings and fluffy things / She strolls on the sand slopes brown, / As trig as a yacht and without a spot / On the folds of her creamy gown. / ’Tis scarce the dress of a fisheress, / Yet thus to be arrayed / Is parcel and part of the subtle art / Of this fair young fisher maid. / […] Clinton Scollard.

Peter. What! Jennings! That black fish, with the very red and blue gills? / Sarah. Why Peter! Peter Perch! Shame on you, Peter! How dare you give the pious Mr. Simon such scaly names! You see then, I’m watching all your queer fish talk. Bless me! After a bit I shall be taken for a fisheress!

The various pieces are gathered from more-or-less scientific treatises and begin, as did Peter Corodimas’ “In Trout Country” (Little, Brown, 1971), with Dame Juliana Berners, that amiable fisheress of the fifteenth century, and come right down to articles in contemporary periodicals.