A magnificent original April 3, 1839 Royal Olympic Theatre double broadside featuring legendary Compleat Angler author Izaak Walton portrayed on the stage and singing “The Angler’s Song.” See illustrations for details. Dimensions fourteen and three quarters by twenty inches. Light wear otherwise fine. See Izaak Walton’s extraordinary biography below.
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From Wikipedia:
Izaak Walton
(baptised 21 September 1593 – 15 December 1683) was an English writer. Best known as the author of
The Compleat Angler
, he also wrote a number of short biographies including one of his friend
John Donne
. They have been collected under the title of
Walton’s Lives
.
Biography
Walton was born at
Stafford
in
c.
1593. The register of his
baptism
on 21 September 1593 gives his father’s name as
Jervis
, or Gervase. His father, who was an
innkeeper
as well as a landlord of a
tavern
, died before Izaak was three, being buried in February 1596/7
[a]
as
Jarvicus Walton
. His mother then married another innkeeper by the name of Bourne, who later ran the Swan in Stafford.
[1]
Izaak also had a brother named Ambrose, as indicated by an entry in the
parish register
recording the burial in March 1595/6 of an
Ambrosius filius Jervis Walton
.
His date of birth is traditionally given as 9 August 1593. However, this date is based on a misinterpretation of his will, which he began on 9 August 1683.
[2]
He is believed to have been educated in Stafford before moving to
London
in his teens. He is often described as an
ironmonger
, but he trained as a linen draper, a trade which came under the
Ironmongers’ Company
.
[3]
He had a small shop in the upper storey of
Thomas Gresham
‘s
Royal Burse or Exchange
in
Cornhill
. In 1614 he had a shop in
Fleet Street
, two doors west of
Chancery Lane
in the
parish
of
St Dunstan’s
.
[4]
He became verger and churchwarden of the church, and a friend of the vicar,
John Donne
.
[2]
He joined the Ironmongers’ Company in November 1618.
[2]
Walton’s first wife was Rachel Floud (married December 1626), a great-great-niece of
Archbishop Cranmer
. She died in 1640. He soon remarried, to Anne Ken (m. 1641?-1662), who appears as the pastoral
Kenna
of
The Angler’s Wish
; she was a stepsister of
Thomas Ken
, afterwards
bishop of Bath and Wells
.
[1]
After the
Royalist
defeat at
Marston Moor
in 1644, Walton retired from his trade. He went to live just north of his birthplace, at a spot between the towns of Stafford and
Stone
, where he had bought some land edged by a small river. His new land at
Shallowford
included a farm, and a parcel of land; however by 1650 he was living in
Clerkenwell
, London. Following the Restoration of the Monarchy it was revealed he had aided the Royalists, Izaak was a staunch Royalist supporter, and at great personal risk he managed to safeguard one of the Crown Jewels (referred to as the Little or Lesser George) following
Charles II
‘s defeat at the
battle of Worcester
. Walton was entrusted with returning it to London from where it was smuggled out of the country to Charles II who was then in exile.
[5]
The first edition of his book
The Compleat Angler
was published in 1653. His second wife died in 1662, and was buried in
Worcester Cathedral
, where there is a monument to her memory. One of his daughters married Dr Hawkins, a
prebendary
of
Winchester
.
[1]
The last forty years of his life were spent visiting eminent clergymen and others who enjoyed
fishing
, compiling the biographies of people he liked, and collecting information for the
Compleat Angler
. After 1662 he found a home at
Farnham Castle
with
George Morley
,
Bishop of Winchester
, to whom he dedicated his
Life of George Herbert
and his biography of
Richard Hooker
. He sometimes visited
Charles Cotton
in his fishing house on the
Dove
.
[1]
Walton died, aged 90, in his daughter’s house at Winchester on 15 December 1683 and was buried in
Winchester Cathedral
.
[1]
[6]
Extract of Walton’s Will
“Isaac Walton, by will, dated 9 August 1698, gave to the town or corporation of Stafford, in which he was born, a farm, situate at Halfhead (adjoining to Shallowford), in the parish of
Chebsey
, for the good and benefit of some of the said town, to bind out, yearly, two boys, the sons of honest and poor parents, to be apprentices to some tradesmen or handicraftmen, to the intent that the said boys might the better afterwards get their own living: And he also gave £5. yearly, out of the said rent, to some maid servant that should have attained the age of 21 years, or to some honest poor man’s daughter, to be paid to her on her marriage; and this being done, his will was, that what rent should remain of the said farm and land, should be disposed of as follows; first, he gave 20s, yearly, to be spent by the mayor of Stafford, and that what money or rent should remain undisposed of, should be employed to buy coals for some poor people that should have most need thereof in the said town.”
Walton’s cottage at Shallowford
Main article:
Izaak Walton’s Cottage
Photogravure
of Walton’s Shallowford house, 1888
Walton left his property as described above at
Shallowford
in
Staffordshire
for the benefit of the poor of his native town. He had purchased Halfhead Farm there in May 1655. In doing this he was part of a more general retreat of Royalist gentlemen into the English countryside, in the aftermath of the
English Civil War
, a move summed up by his friend Charles Cotton’s well-known poem “The Retirement” (first published in the 5th edition of Walton’s
Compleat Angler
). The cost of Shallowford was £350, and the property included a farmhouse, a cottage, courtyard, garden and nine fields along which a river ran. Part of its attraction may have been that the River Meece, which he mentions in one of his poems, formed part of the boundary. The farm was let to tenants, and Walton kept the excellent fishing.
[1]
The cottage is now a Walton Museum. The ground floor of the museum is set-out in period, with information boards covering Walton’s life, his writings and the story of the Izaak Walton Cottage. Upstairs a collection of fishing related items is displayed, the earliest dating from the mid-eighteenth century, while a room is dedicated to his
Lives
and
The Compleat Angler
. The Izaak Walton Cottage and gardens are open to the public on Sunday afternoons during the summer.
[7]
The Compleat Angler
Main article:
The Compleat Angler
Izaak Walton and his scholar
woodcut by
Louis Rhead
Viator’s bridge near
Milldale (Peak District)
is named for its reference in
The Compleat Angler
The Compleat Angler
[8]
was first published in 1653, but Walton continued to add to it for a quarter of a century. It is a celebration of the art and spirit of fishing in prose and verse; 6 verses were quoted from
John Dennys
‘s 1613 work
The Secrets of Angling
. It was dedicated to John Offley, his most honoured friend. There was a second edition in 1655, a third in 1661 (identical with that of 1664), a fourth in 1668 and a fifth in 1676. In this last edition the thirteen chapters of the original had grown to twenty-one, and a second part was added by his friend and brother angler
Charles Cotton
, who took up Venator where Walton had left him and completed his instruction in
fly fishing
and the making of
flies
.
[1]
Walton did not profess to be an expert with a fishing fly; the fly fishing in his first edition was contributed by
Thomas Barker
, a retired cook and
humorist
, who published a
treatise
of his own,
The Art of Angling
in 1651;
[9]
but in the use of the live
worm
, the
grasshopper
and the
frog
“Piscator” himself could speak as a master. The famous passage about the frog, often misquoted as being about the worm—”use him as though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he may live the longer”—appears in the original edition. The additions made as the work grew did not affect the technical part alone; quotations, new turns of phrase, songs, poems and anecdotes were introduced as if the author, who wrote it as a recreation, had kept it constantly in his mind and talked it over point by point with his many friends. There were originally only two interlocutors in the opening scene, “Piscator” and “Viator”; but in the second edition, as if in answer to an objection that “Piscator” had it too much in his own way in praise of angling, he introduced the
falconer
, “Auceps,” changed “Viator” into “Venator” and made the new companions each dilate on the joys of his favourite sport.
[1]
The best-known old edition of the
Angler
is J. Major’s (2nd ed., 1824). The book was edited by
Andrew Lang
in 1896, followed by many other editions.
[1]
Walton’s
Lives
Walton also made significant contributions to seventeenth-century life-writing throughout his career. His leisurely labours as a biographer seem to have grown out of his devotion to angling. It was probably as an angler that he made the acquaintance of Sir
Henry Wotton
, but it is clear that Walton had more than a love of fishing and a humorous temper to recommend him to the friendship of the accomplished ambassador. At any rate, Wotton, who had intended to write the life of
John Donne
, and had already corresponded with Walton on the subject, left the task to him. Walton had already contributed an
elegy
to the 1633 edition of Donne’s poems, and he completed and published the life, much to the satisfaction of the most learned critics, in 1640. Sir Henry Wotton dying in 1639, Walton undertook his life also; it was finished in 1642 and published in 1651 as a preface to the volume
Reliquiae Wottonianae
. His life of
Hooker
was published in 1665, and his biography of
George Herbert
in 1670, the latter coinciding with a collected edition of Walton’s biographical writings,
The Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert
(1670, 1675). His life of Bishop
Robert Sanderson
appeared in 1678. All these subjects were endeared to the biographer by a certain gentleness of disposition and cheerful piety; three of them at least—Donne, Wotton and Herbert—were anglers. Walton studied these men’s lives in detail, and provides many insights into their character.
[10]
Other literary works
Sir John Skeffington
John Chalkhill
Waltoniana
– an 1878 collection of Walton’s poems and prose fragments
Walton in literature
Walton has appeared in a number of works of literature, both non-fiction and fiction.
Non-fiction
Charles Lamb
, in his
letter
to
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
, recommends the
Compleat Angler
: “It breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of the heart. There are many choice old verses interspersed in it; it would sweeten a man’s temper at any time to read it; it would Christianise every discordant angry passion; pray make yourself acquainted with it.”
[11]
Gilbert Ryle
uses him in his 1949 book
The Concept of Mind
as an example of “‘knowing how’ before ‘knowing that'”; in his collected essays he writes that “We certainly can, in respect of many practices, like fishing, cooking and reasoning, extract principles from their applications by people who know how to fish, cook and reason. Hence Isaak Walton, Mrs Beeton and Aristotle. But when we try to express these principles we find that they cannot easily be put in the indicative mood. They fall automatically into the imperative mood.”
[12]
Zane Grey
mentions him in a fishing passage in his 1903 book
Betty Zane
on page 84. “Alfred Clark said ‘I never knew one (girl) who cared for fishing.'” “Betty Zane answered ‘Now you behold one. I love dear old Izaak Walton. Of course you (Clark) have read his book?'”
[13]
Fiction
Charles Dickens
makes reference to him in chapter 14 of book 2 of
A Tale of Two Cities
. “The honoured parent steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.”
[14]
Other commemorations
Advertising mogul and land developer
Barron Collier
founded the Izaak Walton Fly Fishing Club in 1908 at his
Useppa Island
resort near
Fort Myers, Florida
. The
Izaak Walton League
is an American association formed in 1922 in
Chicago, Illinois
, to preserve fishing streams. Walton has been inducted into the American
National Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame
.
[15]
There is a forest preserve in Homewood, Illinois, called the Izaak Walton Forest Preserve. The Izaak Walton Hotel, in the Staffordshire village of Ilam overlooks the river Dove, at the entrance to Dovedale. There are also two pubs in England named The Izaak Walton: one in the village of
East Meon
, Hampshire,
[16]
the other in
Cresswell
,
Staffordshire
.
[17]
In the county town of
Stafford
, there is now a statue of him placed in the town park, by the bank of the river. This route through the park was originally known as ‘Izaak Walton Walk’, there is also a street in the north part of Stafford named for him.
There is a creek named after him in
Owatonna, Minnesota
.
[
citation needed
]
There is also a pub in
Norwich
named ‘The Compleat Angler’. The Compleat Angler Hotel in
Bimini
,
Bahamas
, was destroyed by fire in 2006; the hotel bar was frequented by
Ernest Hemingway
. The Allen-Edmonds shoe company of
Port Washington, Wisconsin
, produces a “Walton” style in tribute. In the Silver Divide region of the
Sierra Nevada
mountain range of California, a major peak is named after Izaak Walton. The Izaak Walton State Recreation Site in
Sterling, Alaska
, is located at the confluence of the Moose River and the
Kenai River
,
[18]
and his name is lent to the historic
Izaak Walton Inn
in Montana. There is an Izaak Walton Inn in Embu, Kenya,
[19]
overlooking a small stream that feeds into the Rupingazi River.
In the movie School Ties 1992 the history teacher refers to Izaak Walton as a personal favorite after mentioning the date of his birth to see if any students knew it.