A book about an Edwardian master angler whose memories of game and coarse fishing on rivers in Ireland and England staved off insanity while he was a prisoner-of-war under torture in solitary confinement is published this week.
Sgt Frank W “Nobby” Clarke of the 1st Battalion Norfolk Regiment always believed that the characteristic qualities of the angler – patience, a lateral mind, determination, self belief and perseverance – were what kept him alive in captivity.
The book is not just about fishing. Not Quite the Gentleman (Original Writing, Dublin) is also the story of a passionate wartime romance involving Clarke and two beautiful women thrown together by the unexpected twists of fortune that only war and human turmoil on a massive scale can bring.
Clarke was an ardent diarist and the book contains a collection of reminiscences of expeditions on Irish and English rivers such as the Liffy, the Munster Blackwater, the Bandon, Kennet, Bure, Anton, Alne, Wensum and many others – including a foray on several unnamed African rivers in the highlands of what was later to become Kenya.
Lake fishing is not overlooked and diary entries include a pike fishing expedition to Gunton Park in Norfolk, bream fishing on Horsey Mere, trolling for feral trout in Lough Carib, Galway, and fishing for giant char in a remote Irish lough in the Cummeragh Mountains, County Waterford.
During the War, behind enemy lines while on the run, Frank W Clarke fished for carp in a lake in Flanders – with a battle raging at Ypres only a few miles away – and later for trout in a small lake at Sennelager Prisoner-of-War Camp in Germany.
Frank W Clarke came from Norfolk but grew up in Dublin, the city of James Joyce, where he played rugby against Eamon De Valera and entertained the first black American heavyweight Jack Johnson during his 1908 visit to Dublin – when he introduced the boxer to salmon fishing on the Liffy.
Not Quite the Gentleman is a novel but many of the characters existed. Frank W Clarke who lived in Amiens Street, Dublin, is the grandfather of the Stratford-upon-Avon author Dale le Vack, a journalist and broadcaster and keen angler himself – with a stretch of fishing on the River Yarty in Devon.
He says: “Only 40 years ago you could still go into any bar and find First World War veterans playing darts and dominoes. They all had stories to tell which at the time seemed unexceptional – but in a later era form a fading portrait of a generation that has now gone. Stories such as this one deserve to be told.
“My grandfather was an ardent diarist but lost the accounts of his early life, including his war service and captivity as a prisoner-of-war, when the family house on the Norfolk Broads was flooded in the 1930s. I was persuaded by a member of the family to recreate the years 1883 to 1919 and to write it as a novel.
“It involved a lot of research not only into Edwardian fishing techniques but also into pre-WWI life in Dublin and Norfolk. It took me nearly three years to write this book and during that time I got to know about a man who otherwise would have remained just a shadow in my memory.
“It has been a fulfilling journey and I hope readers derive as much pleasure from reading Not Quite the Gentleman as I did in writing it. When I’m fishing today – and not catching anything – I always wish Nobby was there to mentor me.”
Not Quite the Gentleman (Original Writing, Dublin) ISBN: 978-1-907179-28-0. The book is available by order from good bookshops or the publisher’s electronic bookshop or levack58@hotmail.com or The Duke of Wellington Inn, Waterloo Street, Norwich.
