Fishing Rod and Basket

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

21017

Title

Fishing Rod and Basket

Description

The fishing rod is displayed in three pieces, of differing widths. It is wooden with a brass handle joints. Next to the fishing rod is a wicker basket with a hinged lid.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1985

Type

Digital image

Location

Writers' Museum

Accession number

Basket LSH0082/91 Rod LSH0083/91

The fishing basket and fishing rod were used by Robert Louis Stevenson when he lived in Swanston Cottage in 1867. The basket was made for him around 1867 by Robert Young, who was the gardener at Swanston Cottage where the Stevensons lived until 1880. It is made of wicker with a hinged lid.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in a letter to J M Barrie in 1894:

'I had always been accustomed to pause and very laboriously kill every fish as I took it. But in the Queen's River (in 1871) I took so good a basket that I forgot these niceties; and when I sat down, in a hard rain shower, under a bank, to take my sandwiches and sherry, lo! and behold, there was a basketful of trouts still kicking in their agony.
I had a very unpleasant conversation with my conscience. All that afternoon I persevered in fishing, brought home my basket in triumph, and sometime that night, 'in the wee sma' hours ayont the twal', I finally forswore the art of fishing.'

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Related subjects

Agriculture and fisheries > Equipment > Baskets

Agriculture and fisheries > Equipment > Fishing rods

Places > Scotland > Edinburgh

Sport and leisure > Activities > Angling

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