EARLY MEMORIES 33 



Sea investigations, I shall always remember 

 the place five and-twenty years ago. Always, 

 alas, I shall associate its quays with the merry 

 laughter of one who fished beside me, and who 

 later played for his school at Lord's, but 

 whom the gods loved too well to leave with us 

 below. 



It cannot be pretended that those early fishing 

 memories are very vivid, for my diaries date back 

 only as far as 1885, and the previous period has 

 left few landmarks. There was some primitive 

 pier-fishing at Bournemouth in the summer after 

 the Lowestoft visit, chiefly for sand-smelts and 

 flat-fish. Save when an affectionate relation could 

 be persuaded to finance a day's boat, which used 

 to mean half-a-crown an hour, an extortion miti- 

 gated more recently by the energy of the British 

 Sea Anglers' Committee and its agents round the 

 coast, those early memories are bound up with 

 piers and harbours, Bournemouth, Hastings, 

 Bognor, Littlehampton and Portsmouth among 

 the rest. The summer of 1882 was spent far from 

 the noisy shore, on gliding stretches of the winding 

 Mole, near Esher, where I succeeded in catching 

 a number of very small roach, and failed to account 



I for a single very large pike, of which I dreamed all 

 through my holidays. For the rest of the early 

 eighties, in fact for the next three summers, 

 Hastings Pier was the scene of much slaughter 

 4 -(2272) 



