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The Cruise of the Nona
How then should I approach this task which has been set me of writing down, in the years between fifty and sixty, some poor scraps of judgment and memory ? I think I will give it the name of a Cruise ; for it is in the hours when he is alone at the helm, steering his boat along the shores, that a man broods most upon the past, and most deeply considers the nature of things. I think I will also call it by the name of my boat, the “Nona” and give the whole book the title “ The Cruise of the ‘ Nona,’ for, in truth, the “ Nona ” has spent her years, which are much the same as mine (we are nearly of an age, the darling, but she a little younger, as is fitting), threading out of harbours, taking the mud, tr)'ing to make further harbours, failing to do so, getting in the way of more important vessels, giving way to them, taking the mud again, waiting to be floated off by the tide, anchoring in the fairway, getting cursed out of it, dragging anchor on shingle and slime, mistaking one light for another, rounding the wrong buoy, crashing into other people, and capsizing in dry harbours. It seemed to me as I considered the many adventures and misadventures of my boat, that here was a good setting for the chance thoughts of one human life ; since all that she has done and all that a man does, make up a string of happenings and thinkings, disconnected and without shape, meaningless, and yet full : which is Life.
347 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1925
2 people are currently reading
110 people want to read
About the author
Hilaire Belloc
732 books411 followersPeople considered Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc, French-born British writer, as a master of light English prose and also knew widely his droll verse, especially
The Bad Child's Book of Beasts
in 1896.
Sharp wit of Hilaire Belloc, an historian, poet, and orator, extended across literary output and strong political and religious convictions. Oxford educated this distinguished debater and scholar. Throughout his career, he prolifically across a range of genres and produced histories, essays, travelogues, poetry, and satirical works.
Cautionary Tales for Children collects best humorous yet dark morals, and historical works of Hilaire Belloc often reflected his staunch Catholicism and critique of Protestant interpretations. He led advocates of an economic theory that promotes and championed distribution of small-scale property ownership as a middle ground between capitalism and socialism alongside Gilbert Keith Chesterton, his close friend.
In politics, Hilaire Belloc served as a member of Parliament for the Liberal party, but the establishment disillusioned him. His polemical style and strong opinions made a controversial figure, who particularly viewed modernism, secularism, and financial capitalism as threats to traditional Christian society in his critiques.
Influence and vast literary legacy of Hilaire Belloc extends into historical circles. Erudition, humor, and a forceful rhetorical style characterized intellectual vigor and unique perspective, which people continue to study and to appreciate, on history, society, and human nature.
Sharp wit of Hilaire Belloc, an historian, poet, and orator, extended across literary output and strong political and religious convictions. Oxford educated this distinguished debater and scholar. Throughout his career, he prolifically across a range of genres and produced histories, essays, travelogues, poetry, and satirical works.
Cautionary Tales for Children collects best humorous yet dark morals, and historical works of Hilaire Belloc often reflected his staunch Catholicism and critique of Protestant interpretations. He led advocates of an economic theory that promotes and championed distribution of small-scale property ownership as a middle ground between capitalism and socialism alongside Gilbert Keith Chesterton, his close friend.
In politics, Hilaire Belloc served as a member of Parliament for the Liberal party, but the establishment disillusioned him. His polemical style and strong opinions made a controversial figure, who particularly viewed modernism, secularism, and financial capitalism as threats to traditional Christian society in his critiques.
Influence and vast literary legacy of Hilaire Belloc extends into historical circles. Erudition, humor, and a forceful rhetorical style characterized intellectual vigor and unique perspective, which people continue to study and to appreciate, on history, society, and human nature.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 27, 2023
Hilaire Belloc, proves that the the subject of sailing can, in some capacity, be linked to virtually any other subject in existence. The book consists of his description of his travels sailing around the coast of England in his boat, The Nona. Just as he cruises between each island and coastal village, he also cruises between various, disparate thoughts which strike him at different points of inspiration. His views on philosophy, writing, travel, politics, religion, sailing, and history arise as he sails the high seas. All these remarks are interspersed within the events transpiring during his maritime voyage whether in fair weather or foul. It’s a fascinating adventure where one can join Belloc not only in his travels on the sea, but through his mind.
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September 19, 2013A somewhat uneven book I thought. It is ostensibly about Belloc's memories of sailing his boat around the coast of England. I suppose all the semi-technical descriptions of sailing mishaps would be more intelligible if I had more experience of sailing. They don't at any rate seem to justify his conclusion:
The most interesting bits are his many incidental remarks--especially the ones on politics. (to be continued)
The sea is the consolation of this our day, as it has been the consolation of the centuries. It is the companion and the receiver of men. It has moods for them to fill the storehouse of the mind, perils for trial, or even for an ending, and calms for the good emblem of death. There, on the sea, is a man nearest to his own making, and in communion with that from which he came, and to which he shall return. For the wise men of very long ago have said, and it is true, that out of the salt water all things came. The sea is the matrix of creation, and we have the memory of it in our blood. But far more than this is there in the sea. It presents, upon the greatest scale we mortals can bear, those not mortal powers which brought us into being. It is not only the symbol or the mirror, but especially is it the messenger of the Divine. There, sailing the sea, we play every part of life : control, direction, effort, fate; and there can we test ourselves and know our state. All that which concerns the sea is profound and final. The sea provides visions, darknesses, revelations. The sea puts ever before us those twin faces of reality : greatness and certitude ; greatness stretched almost to the edge of infinity (greatness in extent, greatness in changes not to be numbered), and the certitude of a level remaining for ever and standing upon the deeps. The sea has taken me to itself whenever I sought it and has given me relief from men. It has rendered remote the cares and the wastes of the land; for of all creatures that move and breathe upon the earth we of mankind are the fullest of sorrow. But the sea shall comfort us, and perpetually show us new things and assure us. It is the common sacrament of this world. May it be to others what it has been to me.
The most interesting bits are his many incidental remarks--especially the ones on politics. (to be continued)
August 8, 2015
What can I say? Everything Belloc touched turns to magic for me. (And for those who feel similarly, I would like to shamelessly plug my archive of blog posts devoted to this genius: http://corjesusacraissimum.org/tag/hi... )
This book is the closest Belloc ever came to autobiography. Whilst ostensibly, he is recording a sea journey made around the coast of Britain, the occasion gives rise to many memories from his past.
In addition to these reminiscences, the book also filled with his penetrating analysis of Europe and the world in the 1920s.
Some have found the sailing sections a little slow, with their technical language of the art of boating. I feel a bit the same.
But the rest more than makes up for it! If only he had written more autobiography like the fragments given here ...
This book is the closest Belloc ever came to autobiography. Whilst ostensibly, he is recording a sea journey made around the coast of Britain, the occasion gives rise to many memories from his past.
In addition to these reminiscences, the book also filled with his penetrating analysis of Europe and the world in the 1920s.
Some have found the sailing sections a little slow, with their technical language of the art of boating. I feel a bit the same.
But the rest more than makes up for it! If only he had written more autobiography like the fragments given here ...
October 11, 2025
There are, in this book, some exquisite, finely strung, thrillingly evocative descriptions of sailing, and of the sea round the southern coasts of England and Wales with all its manifold quirks and dangers. If these lyrical passages and the beautifully if tendentiously illumined episodes from history that often accompany them were all there were to this book, it might have received five stars from me. Or perhaps only four; but at least I should have read it to the end, and loved it.
Unfortunately, these intervals of beauty are overshadowed by ugly, mean-spirited harangues against people the author didn’t like. These are not occasional irruptions; they comprise about two-thirds of the book. Atheists, Protestants, scientists, evolutionists, capitalists; British Parliamentarians alive or dead; Parliament itself; the urban working classes, the products of vocational education, day-trippers and suburbanites; liberals, democrats, pacifists and modernists in art and philosophy: all alike receive the lash of his tongue. One can, of course, enjoy this kind of thing in moderation even when one does not agree with it, especially if it’s amusingly done; but Belloc’s imprecations never cease and are not in the least funny. Neither are his accusations ever justified or explained in any way: his anathemas are nothing but the burning of straw men.
One struggles to comprehend his ire. In fact, I was driven to Google to find out more about him, his outlook and politics, just so that I might understand what he was getting at. I wish I hadn’t... except that, in the process, I learnt of the quarrel between him and H.G. Wells, and found myself reading Mr Belloc Objects... with great sympathy. I tried Belloc’s riposte to Wells, too, but it was more of the same poison I’d already sipped at in ...the Nona. I gave up, appalled, and found solace instead in a 1936 review of another of Belloc’s travel books, The Holy Land, by Leonard Woolf; I was gratified to find Woolf complaining about exactly the same things I had found grating about Hilaire Bloody Belloc.
Though the man wrote extraordinarily well and at times beautifully, his broadcast animadversions utterly ruined my pleasure in his literary effects. I received the impression of a wounded, angry and thoroughly unpleasant man, a worse reactionary even than C.S. Lewis (and with a similarly absurd fetish for the mediaeval).
Lately I’ve taken to reading writers whose views differ from my own in the hope of learning why they think the way they do, and perhaps finding some common intellectual ground with them. The Confessions of St Augustine has been by far my most successful experiment on those lines. I am not at all antipathetic towards Catholicism (or any other religion either), but often when I read Catholic writers in English I am left somewhat uncomprehending and more than slightly revolted at a vision of life seen through what seems to me a queasily distorting moral lens. I catch a scent of something rotten, an aroma of decayed soul. I’ve found it in Chesterton, whom I attempted as a teenager, was disgusted by and never returned to; in Gene Wolfe, whose Book of the New Sun has long been one of my favourite novels; in Evelyn Waugh (though he, at least was a very funny man) and even, though to a far lesser degree, in Graham Greene. Lewis was the same too, though he was an Anglo-Catholic rather than a Roman one. What explains it? I wish I knew.
But no-one beats Belloc. Only an adamantine reactionary could possibly find pleasure in his attacks, and despite the quality of his writing he leaves a very bad personal impression. He is, to put it concisely, an arse.
These being my conclusions, I would be a plain fool to read any more of him; and I hereby formally abandon and cast away The Cruise of the Nona.
Unfortunately, these intervals of beauty are overshadowed by ugly, mean-spirited harangues against people the author didn’t like. These are not occasional irruptions; they comprise about two-thirds of the book. Atheists, Protestants, scientists, evolutionists, capitalists; British Parliamentarians alive or dead; Parliament itself; the urban working classes, the products of vocational education, day-trippers and suburbanites; liberals, democrats, pacifists and modernists in art and philosophy: all alike receive the lash of his tongue. One can, of course, enjoy this kind of thing in moderation even when one does not agree with it, especially if it’s amusingly done; but Belloc’s imprecations never cease and are not in the least funny. Neither are his accusations ever justified or explained in any way: his anathemas are nothing but the burning of straw men.
One struggles to comprehend his ire. In fact, I was driven to Google to find out more about him, his outlook and politics, just so that I might understand what he was getting at. I wish I hadn’t... except that, in the process, I learnt of the quarrel between him and H.G. Wells, and found myself reading Mr Belloc Objects... with great sympathy. I tried Belloc’s riposte to Wells, too, but it was more of the same poison I’d already sipped at in ...the Nona. I gave up, appalled, and found solace instead in a 1936 review of another of Belloc’s travel books, The Holy Land, by Leonard Woolf; I was gratified to find Woolf complaining about exactly the same things I had found grating about Hilaire Bloody Belloc.
Though the man wrote extraordinarily well and at times beautifully, his broadcast animadversions utterly ruined my pleasure in his literary effects. I received the impression of a wounded, angry and thoroughly unpleasant man, a worse reactionary even than C.S. Lewis (and with a similarly absurd fetish for the mediaeval).
Lately I’ve taken to reading writers whose views differ from my own in the hope of learning why they think the way they do, and perhaps finding some common intellectual ground with them. The Confessions of St Augustine has been by far my most successful experiment on those lines. I am not at all antipathetic towards Catholicism (or any other religion either), but often when I read Catholic writers in English I am left somewhat uncomprehending and more than slightly revolted at a vision of life seen through what seems to me a queasily distorting moral lens. I catch a scent of something rotten, an aroma of decayed soul. I’ve found it in Chesterton, whom I attempted as a teenager, was disgusted by and never returned to; in Gene Wolfe, whose Book of the New Sun has long been one of my favourite novels; in Evelyn Waugh (though he, at least was a very funny man) and even, though to a far lesser degree, in Graham Greene. Lewis was the same too, though he was an Anglo-Catholic rather than a Roman one. What explains it? I wish I knew.
But no-one beats Belloc. Only an adamantine reactionary could possibly find pleasure in his attacks, and despite the quality of his writing he leaves a very bad personal impression. He is, to put it concisely, an arse.
These being my conclusions, I would be a plain fool to read any more of him; and I hereby formally abandon and cast away The Cruise of the Nona.
June 7, 2023
This is an amazing book. I admired Belloc's writing many years ago but had not previously read this. Even in this 1983 edition it is rare and it took me a while to find a copy.
This would (to my mind) make a wonderful A-level text. It is a challenging read - Belloc's prose is to a modern reader somewhat tricky and there are a few places where, doubtless, there would be a politically-correct warning about outdated attitudes etc.
On the face of it the book is what the title suggests - an account of a voyage made by the writer from Anglesey round the western coast of Britain towards Dover but, although he does indeed give a detailed account of the perils of the sea, the idiosyncrasies of the Nona, the harbours visited and so on, in between these he wanders off into many other topics - politics, religion, philosophy and so on.
The book was first published in 1925 - nearly a century ago - but so much of what he says is familiar - the corruption of politics, rail strikes, the decline of religion, war in eastern Europe - an amazing sense of deja vu...
This would (to my mind) make a wonderful A-level text. It is a challenging read - Belloc's prose is to a modern reader somewhat tricky and there are a few places where, doubtless, there would be a politically-correct warning about outdated attitudes etc.
On the face of it the book is what the title suggests - an account of a voyage made by the writer from Anglesey round the western coast of Britain towards Dover but, although he does indeed give a detailed account of the perils of the sea, the idiosyncrasies of the Nona, the harbours visited and so on, in between these he wanders off into many other topics - politics, religion, philosophy and so on.
The book was first published in 1925 - nearly a century ago - but so much of what he says is familiar - the corruption of politics, rail strikes, the decline of religion, war in eastern Europe - an amazing sense of deja vu...
February 5, 2024
Having loved this as a 17 year old, I spent a year trying to track it down in second hand bookshops. Let's just say that both Belloc and I have changed. Me particularly. An old man's ramblings.
Want to read
November 16, 2009Recommended by James Schall in Another Sort of Learning, Chapter 12, as one of Ten Books by Hilaire Belloc Well Worth Reading.
May 25, 2021
A man, well cured, gifting us wonderful images and thoughts.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews