CHAPTER II 

 MANFORD AND SERTON'S COSY NEST 



IT would be interesting to know who invented the phrase 

 " Cockney Sportsman " ; we may fairly conclude, at 

 any rate, that The Pickwick Papers, backed persistently 

 by Punch, gave it a firm riveting. It applied perhaps 

 more to the man with the gun than the rod, though 

 the most telling illustration was the immortal Briggs 

 and his barking pike. The term of contempt has long 

 lost its sting, though it still holds lightly. The angler 

 of that ilk fifty years ago, as I can well remember, for 

 all his cockneyism, worked hard for his sport, and 

 enjoyed a fair amount of it. When, for example, I 

 used to fish at Rickmansworth in the middle 'sixties, 

 you would see anglers walking away with their rods and 

 creels from Watford station to various waters four or 

 five miles distant. There are more railways now, but 

 less available fishing, and the anglers have multiplied 

 a thousandfold, making a wonderful change of condi- 

 tions. 



There were plenty of little-known, out-of-the-way 

 places where common fishing could be had for the asking, 

 and excellent bags made by the competent. Manford 

 and Serton were two young men who, I suppose, would 

 have been in the category of Cockney Sportsmen, being 

 workers in City warehouses, members of neither club 

 nor society, free and independent lovers of all manner 



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