A dear friend of mine asked if I could source a cane fly rod that he could use on the Upper Wye for the odd trout or grayling. As luck would have it, I managed to locate an 8' #5-6 Sharpes Scottie Featherweight from Farlows, perhaps a little short for the job but lovely nevertheless. It was however a bit bashed about! At some stage it had a plastic reel fitting attached and the whippings were coming undone.
When I collected the rod the owner told me it had been his father's and so I asked for some more detail (I think it is always wonderful to reflect on the past owner's of a nice cane rod and also the person whose wonderful craftsmanship created rod in the first place). I discovered that this gentleman's father was rather famous!
His name was Walter Goetz, a German born artist and illustrator (by absloute coincidence, as is my friend for whom the rod was to be a gift!). In fact, Goetz was the man who addressed Europe across the BBC airwaves on behalf of Neville Chamberlain after the Munich crisis in 1938! By all accounts, the PM needed a German speaker at short notice and a car was sent to get Goetz from his club and to take him to the BBC. If you search his name you'll see an obituary in the Independent that fills in all the details.
Now, my friend (who now has the rod), had a good friendship with Bernard Venables when he was alive and it seemed to me that BV and Goetz had a similar artistic background (and may have moved in similar circles) so I mentioned that when I finished the renovation and sent some pictures to Mr Goetz Junior and this was his reply:
"Wow, what a job you have done !!! Thank you for taking the time to take so many photographs and to send them on to me.
I cannot believe the string of co-incidences... My father worked for the Daily Express before and immediately after the war as a cartoonist. But during the war he worked exclusively for PID (Political Intelligence Department) which was in fact an offshoot of the MoI, and then in PWE (Political Warfare Executive) which was the precursor to MI5. He was head of the leaflet department, where he devised the contents and made the drawings for the propaganda leaflets that were dropped from British bombers over Germany. The work combined his experience as a linguist (the leaflets were written in German) with his abilities as a draftsman.
Like Bernard, he also worked extensively as a commercial artist before the war, designing numerous posters, most notably for London Transport (Christie's has a sale of LT posters in October, and you will find one of his posters in the sale). I never heard Dad mention the name Bernard Venables, but it sounds as if they would almost certainly have known each other given their confluence of skills, interests, and professional lives."
When I completed the rod I didn't attempt a 'concours' restoration but put a nice handle and stripper on it, sourced some replacement transfers and carefully patched up the Scottie dog. I had removed some trout scales from the general muck when I was cleaning it from original and even varnished in three of those small scales on the underside, just for fun.
Every time I held it, I thought about Goetz, his life, and where the rod had been and I thought about what contemplative thoughts he must have had, with that rod in hand, reflecting on those crazy times.
Last week, in its new owner's hands, it got hooked up again for the first time since I patched it up - the result was an eight pound Wye salmon! Unfortunately the hook pulled just as it came to the bank but it seems it must still have a little magic in it!
Here are some before and afters:
