Rafael Sabatini and Salmon

Making an excursion into memories of childhood is a temptation in old age although the experience is often painful because of all that is lost, never to be had again. Yet on a rare occasion something may be chanced upon that has a happy extension into the present. Such was the case when looking – after the lapse of decades – into a book which somehow escaped the Reaper. It is a dictionary whose associations will be my subject another day. It has 16 colour plates and as I scanned them I came across one which in childhood had no interest for me, but now made an instant connection with Rafael Sabatini the angler devoted to salmon fishing. (The newspapers were as ready to report news of his fishing as they were ready to report a new book from him.)

from the Daily Mail, 1935

And here is that plate, in which the non-angler who reads Rafael’s fishing stories and articles can see images of what are otherwise only words to seek via the internet!

ADDENDUM

Neither a play, a screenplay, nor a simple synopsis of a proposed play is THE TRAVELLER, by Rafael Sabatini. It is curious piece of writing, without a discernible date (so far) and most fortunately printed by George Locke in his publication, Rafael Sabatini: a Researcher’s Companion. For the most part it is like a synopsis, with the author’s asides regarding certain points which a producer might question; but it also breaks out frequently into dialogue and directions, with one additional surprise – a passage of blank verse for Cagliostro! It is hard to take this work seriously, yet it represents in Rafael’s life something approaching an obsession. This is where a journal or letters or reported conversation with a close friend would be such a treasure....

In Locke’s collection of Sabatini’s work there is more than one document which has to do with a commission to write a scenario for a film on Christopher Columbus. He was not asked for a script, only a scenario, but being Rafael he could not resist shifting from narrative into dialogue every now and again. It is sad to think of all this material known to exist yet out of reach of any researcher. As for the scenario, although Sydney and Muriel Box rejected it, it served Rafael as the foundation for his novel, COLUMBUS, and – mysteriously – bits of dialogue and other material turn up in the deadly dull film made by the Boxes. Rafael loved mysteries, and enjoyed being mysterious. Does he enjoy reserving something of himself hidden from us who have so diligently sought him?