William Bliss and The London Mercury 1930

I recently received a mail from a contributor to a blog on fantasy fiction and the supernatural. They recently ran a piece on William Bliss and added it to their site because of the waterways connection and because Tom Rolt and Robert Aickman both wrote ghost stories. I can recommend their post.

It appears the Wormwoodiana bloggers first established a connection with William Bliss via an article published in the interwar literary journal, The London Mercury, on the English Waterways. Not being familiar with this article, I got hold of a copy of the magazine and discovered that the article was effectively the first chapter to Bliss's first canoeing book - The Heart of England by Waterway that was published three years later. Reading through the article bolstered my enthusiasm for Bliss's evocative writing.

The London Mercury was edited by non other than J.C. Squire who accompanied William Bliss on a canoe trip and reported it in Water Music. In the magazine was a wonderful woodcut that related to waterways. I couldn't resist including here. Note the great title!

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.

William Bliss Canoe Trail

Until very recently I wondered if I was one of only a handful of enthusiasts of the work of William Bliss, writer on canoeing and the inland waterways. If you have followed my blog for some time, you may recall that I posted a few articles around 2013 about the books of William Bliss and also his canoeing with Sir John Squire. I also recently mentioned Bliss to the canoeist and CRT writer in residence Jasper Winn but his response led me to believe that William Bliss is still an unsung hero of the waterways.

But blow me down (with a feather), I have just discovered by browsing that things have moved in the world of William Bliss and canoeing. A group of canoe enthusiasts has developed a long-distance (862 mile) canoe trail along the inland waterways of England and Wales in the name of William Bliss and have a web-site and Facebook page related to journeys along the trail.

I was really pleased to find the trail being advertised, and fascinated to discover that some canoeists had completed the marathon in 2017. It was also interesting to find a group had completed the route back in 1993 at the time of the bicentenary of British Canals and posted some old photographs of their journey.

However, it got really interesting when I read the web page relating to William Bliss on the official site. It contained, word-for-word, my text from a post on Bliss in 2013. The Bliss Trail site even used the image I posted of the dust-cover of my copy of "Canoeing".

Now I am pleased that the world of canoeing has become more interested in William Bliss and pleased my blog has been read. Although my blog is not copyright it would have been polite to have been given an acknowledgement or perhaps even a link.

Rapid Rivers by William Bliss 1935

After the success of his Heart of England by Waterway, William Bliss went from reporting about his trips along waterways to writing about the rapid rivers that are probably nowadays more associated with canoeing. This book is probably of less interest to canal enthusiasts but Bliss can't resist reporting about canals, in this case the Brecon Canal. He reports (twice) about trips along the River Usk and the Brecon Canal, the first when he was 29 in 1894 and then in 1935 when he was 70 years old.

My main interest in the book, and my main reason for buying it, was its provenance. The book was not cheap and it was certainly not in good condition being water damaged, but it was a presentation copy signed by the author.

Title Page

Inscription by the author

The inscription is not easy to interpret but I read it as "To Col. the Idler; & Mrs. Fred. Cripps with the authors good wishes William Bliss Jan: 1937"

When I got the book I started researching where Bliss lived in the thirties and his connections. As I reported in  my earlier post, Sir John Squire met Bliss in 1936 at his cottage in the Chilterns. Bliss gives his address as Lane End, Buckinghamshire. In fact he lived at Priestley's Farm which is near Finings Road, Bolters End. So who are the Colonel and Mrs Fred Cripps?

Assuming that the Colonel is Fred Cripps, I searched for information. Colonel the Hon. Frederick Cripps, DSO and Bar, was the second son of the 1st Lord Parmoor and an elder brother of Stafford Cripps, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer. A noted horseman, Frederick Cripps commanded the Royal Bucks Yeomanry in the cavalry charge against the Turks at El Mughar in Palestine in 1917. His wife Violet (née Nelson) had previously been married to the 2nd Duke of Westminster. Violet, daughter of Sir William Nelson and previously married to the second Duke of Westminster.They they were divorced in 1951. In the thirties the Cripps were neighbours of William Bliss living just over the hill at the Parmour estate. I suspect that the Idler was a nickname for Colonel Cripps, although given their equine connections it could refer to a horse.

Returning to the book's content, it is of course well written and full of detail about journeys taken over William Bliss' life. Unlike Heart of England there are numerous illustrations, mostly photographs. Many are action photos showing rapids being shot so I suspect they were taken close to the time the book was published. Unlike Heart of England by Waterway it has a proper conclusion - an epilogue that covers the dangers and fears associated with rapidly flowing rivers.

I don't think many canal enthusiasts will rush to find a copy of this book, they are also difficult to obtain, but to me this water damaged author's signed copy provides me with a direction connection to a great waterways author and pioneer who is often overlooked. As you will probably realise, it has become one of my treasured books.

 

Heart of England by Waterway by William Bliss

In total William Bliss wrote four books, three on canoeing and one “Pilgrimage of Grace” an autobiography of his early life. This book, his first, wasn’t published until 1933 when Bliss was already 68. It appears that Bliss took up the pen following his retirement from the law.

The subtitle to the book is A Canoeing Chronicle by River and Canal, but you should not be under any illusions this book is mostly about canals. Bliss just loved canoeing along canals because of their vistas and landscapes. There is a most wonderful passage in the introduction that has already been partly quoted by Mick of Old Waterways Books. It describes a journey along a section of the south Oxford Canal. I will quote it at length because to me it says it all about the joys of boating.    

“I remember-I shall remember always-one such place upon the Oxford Canal somewhere between Oxford and Banbury-somewhere about Heyford, I think it must have been, or Steeple Aston. It was an early Easter -March or early April-and I had come up from Oxford in a canoe to find the Spring. It had been cold when I started, a north-west wind and even a few flakes of snow, but when I had come about sixteen miles and it was, I suppose, a little after midday or towards one o'clock, the wind fell and the sun came out suddenly warm and caressing, and great blue patches opened in the clouds. I was paddling quietly round just such a bend as I have described, the rounded grassy slopes leaned down and closed me in on my right, but on my left the meadows fell away and all was open country, with the young Cherwell showing here and there among its willows three fields away in the valley bottom. I had breakfasted very early in Oxford and thought of lunch, and as I let my canoe come to rest against the sheltering bank a heavenly scent of Spring came to me on the sun warmed wind, and I looked up at the bank to see, just above my right shoulder, a colony of white violets. I had found Spring and would celebrate the discovery.”

Bliss then takes lunch with “a Nuits St. George, not greatest of burgundies, but quite good enough for outdoors..” and then goes to finish with “but the point I wish to make is that I had seen and experienced something which I have seen and experienced only from a canal; no  river could have given it to me”.

Presumably Radcot Bridge, Upper Thames

As you can tell the style of  writing is “of its time” but his enthusiasm and the quality of the prose make it a book that is a joy to read. The book even has light moments - I have already quoted the section relating to the Red Lion at Cropredy.  

 

Bliss also describes one of the last passages through Sapperton Tunnel on the Thames and Severn Canal.

The book has nine chapters and three are related to the River Severn. Given the title refers to England a fair amount of time is actually spent describing journeys in Wales with sections related to Welshpool and Vyrnwy.  

 

You could get the impression that this is book is all about canoeing but Bliss and his companions travelled along the Severn in 1899 using a randan – a rowing boat with one person sculling (two oars) and the other two rowing (single oar). This meant they had more draught than a canoe, and occasionally went aground, but they found the boat very useful when they had a difficult moment negotiating a bend in the Ironbridge Gorge.

 

If the book has a flaw it is that ends abruptly without any conclusions or resume. It simply finishes with “The distance from Ludlow to Worcester by river, I judge to be about 50 miles”. After such a wonderful introduction I would have expected something better.

 

This book must have had some modest success at time because Bliss went on to write three more books, including a handbook on canoeing published by Methuen, but his books became “forgotten” during the post war era even by canoeists. In terms of its impact on the waterways this book cannot rank with the likes of the books by Tom Rolt, but it in terms of enthusiasm for the landscape of canals this book cannot be beaten. Copies of this book do become available on the web but in my experience they are not cheap.

Water-Music by Sir John Squire (dedicated to William Bliss)

Although written by Sir John Squire this book was essentially my introduction to William Bliss. It is an account of the canoeing trip by Bliss and Squire along canals and rivers in the summer of 1938. I purchased the book as Solo & Duet a reprint published in 1943 which also contained The Honeysuckle and the Bee. I suppose wartime printing restrictions might have had a role in these two books being reprinted as one.  The fly leaf of Water-Music gives a clue as to its nature because Squire notes, in his dedication to his companion, “This narrative as vagrant as our meandering streams” . And meander it does!

Sir John Squire in 1935

(National Portrait Gallery)

The narrative starts quite straightforwardly with Squire discussing the books Bliss has written on canoeing but Squire admitting that he hadn’t been canoeing apart from the odd short journey down a backwater. Bliss, obviously not a man to let the grass grow under his feet, immediately suggested a week’s canoeing up the River Cherwell, Oxford Canal, portage to the Avon at Warwick, and then back down the Thames.

They left on May 20^th 1938, or so it says in a letter to Bliss that Squire reprints. This date will have some significance in a later post. They hired their canoe from Salter’s at Oxford.   It is worthwhile noting that at this stage neither was young. I calculate that Squire was 54 and Bliss 73. Bliss had just had published four books, his Heart of England by Waterway 1933, Canoeing 1934, Rapid Rivers 1935, and his autobiography Pilgrimage of Grace 1937. Squire, a member of the Bloomsbury set, had been editor of the London Mercury magazine and was reviewing for the London Illustrated News. Some of the episodes in the book originally appeared in Punch. He was a literary figure with a reputation for drinking, being credited with the classic one-liner “I am not so think as you drunk I am”.

Their journey began with Squire visiting Bliss at his home at Lane End, Buckinghamshire in the Chilterns near High Wycombe.  They promptly set off in a car but not before Bliss had purchased a jug of cider from the Peacock Inn, which is still in business. They managed to take the jug in the boat throughout their adventures without breaking it or drinking it! Their journey is full of interruptions and leisurely, but given their ages I suppose that is only natural. Bliss, being a devout Roman Catholic, breaks off to attend mass, and both have contacts who must be visited along the way. This creates a lot of natural diversions in the text but Squire makes it even more rambling by his literary diversions. You could be forgiven for thinking that this is reminiscent of Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, the uproarious story of the cheese comes to mind, but it is not. The diversions are amusing but literary and this makes it difficult to follow at sometimes. 

I will relate, as an example, one diversion which will give you the flavour of the book. Bliss and Squire are staying at the Crown Hotel Bicester, which unusually had a cinema attached. It is Sunday so Bliss goes to morning mass and they have a late start from Aynho. They are ferried to the Oxford Canal by a car belonging to a friend. They eventually get moving about 4 o’clock and only get as far as Banbury where the locks are shut. They dump the canoe for the night and have dinner. It is then that Bliss announces that he is off to see a friend. Left on his own, Squire rings up a friend who picks him up. Squires’ friends are playing cards at a nearby house. This leads Squire to recall card games in Switzerland and on a ship in the Baltic. He then recalls his visit to Monte Carlo in 1923. Several pages of discussion about gambling later, he recalls that at the roulette tables he sat next to a woman with a heavy accent who introduced herself as Zazel the “‘uman cannon-ball”.  It turns out she had been a very famous celebrity in Victorian England who, as a young girl had thrilled the crowds nightly at the Royal Aquarium which stood opposite Westminster Abbey. According to Squire she had her portrait painted by George Fredric Watts OM.

After this diversion, you might expect Squire to return to the job in hand, describing the journey. Instead he has a discussion with a demon about the meandering nature of his text and he then goes on to discuss the raising of goats, Czech and Irish names, and his passion for poetry.

The book continues in this vein with boating incidents, friends who provide entertainment and accommodation, and many changes of plan. They manage to get back to Oxford in one piece and with the boat intact. Although the journey was not long the reader is taken on a extended journey to far most reaches of John Squires mind!

It is a book for the literary enthusiast who enjoys the English countryside and is nostalgic about the period between the wars, or perhaps for a William Bliss enthusiast - like me.

William Bliss: canoeing author and waterways pioneer

I reported back in 2011 on the book Camping by Water by Noel Carrington & Patricia Cavendish published in 1950. It was my first venture into reviewing early books concerned with canoeing rather than motor boating. In that post I noted that my book collection had already been extended to more unconventional waterways literature because I had also obtained a copy of Solo & Duet by SirJohn Squire which contains a description of the author’s 1938 canoe journey with William Bliss along sections of the Oxford Canal, Grand Union and River Avon. I also reported that I had yet to review this literary work because I didn’t find it easy to summarise, the book being more about the author’s views on a whole variety of subjects rather than about their waterways journey.

What I didn’t realise at the time was where the Squire book was eventually to lead me, and what a rich vein of old waterways literature lay in front of me. It took me some time to discover it, and also sometime to appreciate it fully, but I now feel that I should start posting about some more early canoeing books. These books all come from the pen of William Bliss who wrote about canoeing and who loved the waterways, particularly the canals, with passion. His 1934 book Canoeing has a preface by no less a person than that great inland waterways champion A.P. Herbert which begins with the words “Canoe! Canal!! Magical words”.

I had always promised myself that one day I would investigate the mysterious “Bliss” that Squire often refers to in his book, but I failed to do much about it until around a year ago. Squire describes him as being a famous author of books about canoeing, and gives some details of his life, but I was unaware of how strong was Bliss’s commitment to inland waterways in general and canals in particular.

William Bliss isn’t exactly a name that comes to mind when discussing the leisure use of waterways in the early twentieth century. I had wrongly assumed given the popularity of canoeing that Bliss would perhaps be a household name in that world, but that turns out to be wrong. Even in canoeing circles he appears at most to be an “unsung hero” and is often unknown.  A recent posting on a discussion forum dedicated to books on early canoeing said " William Bliss seems to be a forgotten figure in British Canoeing. It seems that he may have been one of the true pioneers" 

However, he isn’t entirely forgotten in waterways’ circles because the Old Waterways Books blog site reviewed Bliss's book Heart of England by Waterway some time ago and Mick, who runs the site, owns a signed copy of the book.

Frontispiece of Heart of England by Waterway by William Bliss (1933)

Presumably of the Author reading his notes while resting in a lock

So, what did I do about researching William Bliss? My first step was to obtain a copy of Heart of England by Waterway. I am now a proud (perhaps very proud?) owner of a good condition first edition (1933). It is without any inscription or dust jacket. I read it cover to cover and found it one of the most evocative waterways books I have ever read. It is just fascinating and the language is wonderful. I suggest that readers find the excellent post on Old Waterways Books where it is reviewed and some of the best passages in the book are quoted. Readers may also recall that I included an amusing anecdote from the book in my post about the Red Lion at Cropredy.

I then moved on and purchased a first edition of another Bliss book - Rapid Waters (1935) which, as the name suggests, is about canoeing on rivers rather than navigations. Although perhaps less interesting to a canal enthusiast, I couldn’t help buying this copy because it was signed by the author and it has an intriguing dedication. This copy has suffered water damage, although I thought that this was apt given the subject matter – did it fall overboard from a canoe?!

Finally, I purchased a first edition (1934) of Canoeing: The Art and Practice of Canoeing on English Rivers, Navigations and Canals, with a Description and Tables of Distances of the Canoeable Waterways of England and Wales. (What a great subtitle!)

These three books by Bliss, and the book by Squire about his travels with Bliss, have made me a confirmed William Bliss enthusiast. By using references from these books, searching some web-based sources, and visiting the area where Bliss lived, I have managed to piece together something of his life. I have also made an uncanny connection between Bliss and the navigation notes that Mick of Old Waterways books found inside his copy of Heart of England by Waterway.

What I intend to do is to post reviews of all four books along with a further post about what I have discovered about the life and waterways journeys of William Bliss. This post is effectively a preface to this series.