Izaak Walton

Izaak Walton (?1593-1683). Portrait by Jacob Huysmans  (?1630–1696?), circa 1672. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Izaak Walton
Born	Izaak Walton circa 1593 Stafford, England
Died	15 December 1683 (NS: 25 December 1683) Winchester, England
Notable works	The Compleat Angler (1653)
Spouse	Rachel Floud (1626=1640), Anne Ken (1641?–1662)

Izaak Walton (9 August 1593 - December 15, 1683) was an occasional English poet and a non-fiction writer, best known as the author of The Compleat Angler. He also wrote a number of short biographies, including a memoir of his friend John Donne.

Life

Youth and education

Walton was born at Stafford, Staffordshire, on 9 August 1593 and baptised on 21 September of that year. His father was Jervis Walton (died 1597) of Stafford, who is presumed to have been the 2nd son of George Walton, sometime ‘bailie of Yoxhall,’ a neighbouring village. Nothing more is known of his parentage.

After a few years' schooling, probably at Stafford, Izaak was apprenticed in London to Thomas Grinsell, connected, if not identical, with the Thomas Grinsell of Paddington (died 1645), a member of the Ironmongers' Company, who married Walton's sister Anne (cf. Nicholl, The Ironmongers' Company, 1866, pp. 548, 553).

Career

Walton settled in London as an ironmonger, and initially had a small shop, 712 ft. by 5 ft., in the upper storey of Gresham's Royal Burse or Exchange in Cornhill. In 1614 he had a shop in Fleet Street, 2 doors west of Chancery Lane. Here, in the parish of St Dunstan's, he gained the friendship of John Donne, then vicar of that church. Donne may have introduced him to Dr. Hales of Eton, Sir Henry Wotton, Dr. Henry King, and other eminent persons, especially divines, with whom he was intimate in early life. Walton speaks of Michael DraytonDrayton as his honest old friend, and from a letter that he wrote to Aubrey in answer to a request for information in 1680 it appears that he was for a time very well acquainted with Ben Jonson (Aubrey, Brief Lives, 1898, ii. 15).

His 1st wife, married in December 1626, was Rachel Floud, a great-great-niece of Archbishop Cranmer. She died in 1640. He married again soon after, his 2nd wife being Anne Ken — the pastoral "Kenna" of The Angler's Wish — step-sister of Thomas Ken, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells.

After the Royalist defeat at Marston Moor, Walton retired from business. He had bought some land near his birthplace, Stafford, and he went to live there; but, according to Wood, spent most of his time "in the families of the eminent clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved"; and in 1650 he was again living in Clerkenwell.

In 1653 came out the 1st edition of his famous book, The Compleat Angler. It was dedicated to John Offley, Walton's most honoured friend. Walton continued to add to the book's completeness in his leisurely way for a quarter of a century. There was a 2nd edition in 1655, a 3rd in 1661 (identical with that of 1664), a 4th in 1668, and a 5th in 1676. In this last edition the 13 chapters of the original had grown to 21.

His 2nd wife died in 1662, and was buried in Worcester cathedral church, where there is a monument to her memory. A daughter of his married Dr. Hawkins, a prebendary of Winchester.

The last 40 years of his long life seem to have been spent in ideal leisure and occupation, the old man travelling here and there, visiting his "eminent clergymen" and other brethren of the angle, compiling the biographies of congenial spirits, and collecting here a little and there a little for the enlargement of his famous treatise. 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 also that of Richard Hooker; and from time to time he visited Charles Cotton, in his fishing house on the Dove.

Walton died in his daughter's house at Winchester on 15 December 1683, and was buried in the cathedral. It is characteristic of his kindly nature that he left his property at Shalford for the benefit of the poor of his native town.

Writing

The Compleat Angler

Walton hooked a much bigger fish than he angled for when he offered his quaint treatise, The Compleat Angler, to the public. There is hardly a name in English literature, even of the highest rank, whose immortality is more secure, or whose personality is the subject of a more devoted cult. Not only is he the sacer vates of a considerable sect in the religion of recreation, but multitudes who have never put a worm on a hook—even on a fly-hook—have been caught and securely held by his picture of the delights of the gentle craft and his easy leisurely transcript of his own simple, peaceable, lovable and amusing character.

A 2nd part was added by his loving 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. Walton did not profess to be an expert with the fly — the fly-fishing in his 1st edition was contributed by Thomas Barker, a retired cook and humorist, who produced a treatise of his own in 1659 — 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 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 were not merely to the technical part; happy quotations, new turns of phrase, songs, poems and anecdotes were introduced as if the leisurely author, who wrote it as a recreation, had kept it constantly in his mind and talked it over point by point with his numerous brethren. There were originally only 2 interlocutors in the opening scene, " Piscator " and "Viator"; but in the 2nd 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 favorite sport.

The best-known old edition of the Angler is J. Major's (2nd ed., 1824). The book was edited by Andrew Lang in 1896, and various modern editions have appeared.

Biographies

Although The Compleat Angler was not Walton's earliest literary work, his leisurely labors 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; 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 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. His life of Hooker was published in 1662, that of George Herbert in 1670, and that of Bishop Sanderson in 1678. All these subjects were endeared to the biographer by a certain gentleness of disposition and cheerful piety; 3 of them at least — Donne, Wotton, and Herbert — were anglers. Their lives were evidently written with loving pains, in the same leisurely fashion as his Angler, and like it are of value less as exact knowledge than as harmonious and complete pictures of character.

Miscellaneous

Walton contributed an Elegy to the 1633 edition of Donne's Poems. In 1638 he prefixed a copy of verses to Lewis Roberts's Merchants Mappe of Commerce.

To Francis Quarles's ‘Shepheards Oracles,’ in 1646, he contributed a prose "Address to the Reader."

Among the poetical tributes to the memory of William Cartwright prefixed to the 1651 collection of his plays and poems are some verses by Walton. Sir John Skeffington's Heroe of Lorenzo (1652) contains a preface by Walton, who in the same year prefixed a copy of complimentary verses to Edward Sparke's Scintillula Altaris.

In 1660 Walton wrote a charming eclogue, "Daman and Dorus," by way of preface to Alexander Bromee's ‘Songs and other Poems,’ and in 1661 he contributed some complimentary verses to the 4th edition of Christopher Harvey's ‘Synagogue.

All these pieces, together with a few other fragments, such as the epitaph to his 2nd wife in Worcester Cathedral and his letters to Aubrey and others, are collected in Richard Herne Shepherd's Waltoniana (Pickering, 1878).

Recognition

• The famous portrait of Walton by Jacob Huysmans is in the National Gallery. It has been repeatedly engraved — by Scott in 1811, by Robinson in 1844, by Charles Rolls, Sherlock, Philip Audinet, and many others.
• In the county town of Stafford, there is a statue of Walton 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.
• A marble bust of Walton by Belt was erected in 1878 by public subscription in the church of St. Mary's, Stafford, where he was baptised.
• A statue by Miss Mary Grant, subscribed by ‘The Fishermen of England,’ was placed in the great screen of Winchester Cathedral in 1888.
• A memorial to Walton was erected in St. Dunstan's in the West.
• In the Silver Divide region of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California, a major peak is named after Walton.
• The Izaak Walton State Recreation Site in Sterling, Alaska is located at the confluence of the Moose River and the Kenai River.
• There is a forest preserve in Homewood, Illinois, called the Izaak Walton Forest Preserve.
• There is a creek named after him in Owatonna, Minnesota.(Citation needed)
• 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.
• There are 2 pubs in England named The Izaak Walton: in the village of East Meon, Hampshire, and in Cresswell, Staffordshire. 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.
• His name is lent to the historic Izaak Walton Inn in Montana.
• There is an Izaak Walton Inn in Embu, Kenya, overlooking a small stream that feeds into the Rupingazi River.
• The Allen-Edmonds shoe company of Port Washington, Wisconsin produces a "Walton" style in tribute.

Izaak Walton's Cottage, Shallowford, Staffordshire. Photo by Martin Evans, 2011. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Izaak Walton's Cottage

Walton's cottage at Shallowford is now a 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 cottage. Upstairs a collection of fishing related items is displayed, the earliest dating from the mid-18th century, while a room is dedicated to his Lives and The Compleat Angler. Izaak Walton's Cottage and gardens are open to the public on Sunday afternoons during the summer.

In popular culture

• Charles Lamb, in a 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."
• 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."
• 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?'"
• Gilbert Ryle uses Walton 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."

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899) "Walton, Izaak" Dictionary of National Biography 59 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 273-277 
•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Walton, Izaak". Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 300-301. 
• Bottrall, Margaret (1955). Izaak Walton. Longmans, Green. https://archive.org/details/izaakwalton0000bott. 
• Bussby, Frederick (1966). Izaak Walton. Friends of Winchester Cathedral. 
• Chadwick, Owen (1984). The Fisherman and his God: Izaak Walton. Canine Press. 
• Martin, Stapleton (1903). Izaak Walton and his Friends. Chapman and Hall. https://archive.org/details/izaakwaltonandh00martgoog. 
• Pool, J. Lawrence; Pool, Angeline J. (1976). Izaak Walton: the compleat angler and his turbulent times. Stinehour Press. 
• Stanwood, P. G. (1998). Izaak Walton. Prentice Hall. 

External links

Audio / video

• Izaak Walton at LibriVox
• Izaak Walton at YouTube

Books

• Works by Izaak Walton at Project Gutenberg
• Izaak Walton at Amazon.com

About

• Izaak Walton in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Walton, Izaak at Encyclopedia.com
• Who Was Isaac Walton?, Izaak Walton League of America
• BBC Local Heroes, Stoke & Staffordshire: Izaak Walton
• Izaak Walton's Cottage, Stafford Borough Council
• Official Izaak Walton League of America Website

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Walton, Izaak
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.. Original article is at Walton, Izaak