An Image of William Bliss

The great writer on canoeing and waterways William Bliss was reluctant to have his image published. In the frontispiece of his book Heart of England by Waterways, published in 1933, he is shown head down in a canoe presumably reading some notes. However, I have recently managed to access a likeness.

Frontispiece of Heart of England by Waterway, 1933 

Having discovered recently that there is more interest in Bliss than I thought, I decided to revisit my earlier research on his life but use my recent subscription to the British Newspaper Archive to see what it turned up. In the archive I managed to find out more about his professional life in the law, and I even found an announcement for a lecture he gave promoting his book Heart of England by Waterways, but best of all I was able to find an article in the Daily Mirror about the canoeing events at the 1948 London Olympics and the attendance of William Bliss.

The canoeing events for the first post-war Olympics were held at Henley-on-Thames and the August 1948 article in the Mirror was written by their celebrated columnist William Connor  or "Cassandra". In his article Connor used 84 year-old Bliss as representing the antithesis of the modern canoeing  racing. The title of the piece is "A canoe is for canoodling says Old William". Bliss (Old William of the title) was of course more of a paddler than a racer and Connor has him complaining that the racing they were both watching was "madness". He is quoted stating that "water can be drunk - by those who have a taste for that sort of thing. It can be swum in, fished in, and rowed, sailed and paddled upon - especially paddled upon. But this is madness". In common with such lighthearted articles of the time the article is illustrated with cartoons of some of the characters involved in the narrative but the main cartoon is of Bliss.

William Bliss cartoon, Daily Mirror, August 12, 1948

 
Bliss also appears to be a dapper dresser with a button hole- every inch the retired London solicitor? The hat in the cartoon also looks similar that worn in the photograph above. The article reveals that Bliss had watched Henley Royal Regatta of sixty-four consecutive years, which given his alleged distaste for racing canoeing appears slightly mysterious but then Bliss appeared to think canoes were reserved for other matters - "to go where others become stranded, shoot rapids and explore lovely backwaters" - the article quotes, and as the title of the article suggests, Bliss thought they were "to make love in."

Bliss died just over a year after the Mirror article was published following a car accident near his house in Buckinghamshire.