The Cruise of the Nona

The Story of a Cruise from Holyhead to
the Wash, with Reflections and Judgments
on Life and Letters, Men and Manners

HILAIRE BELLOC

Boston and New York

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

_=The Riverside Press Cambridge=_

1925

_=The Riverside Press=_

CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

TO THE MEMORY OF
PHILIP KERSHAW MY
BRAVE AND CONSTANT
COMPANION UPON THE
SEA: BUT NOW HE
WILL SAIL NO MORE

DEDICATION

TO MAURICE BARING

MY DEAR MAURICE,—

I have dedicated to you two books: one was a book ‘On Nothing.’ This
I dedicated to you because, being on nothing, it dealt with what is
better than the fullness of life.

Another book I dedicated to you was the ‘Green Overcoat,’ and this
I dedicated to you because you had written a play called the ‘Green
Elephant,’ and we thereby held communion in green things.

I now dedicate to you this book, because you also have written a
book upon Things That Come to Mind, and this book may well turn into
something of the same sort. Yours was called ‘The Puppet Show of
Memory,’ and dealt with the things and people you had seen and known.
What mine will be called I do not yet know, for I hold that a child
should be born before it is christened.

I have been led into this opinion by the action of an acquaintance,
who much disputed with his wife what name the child should bear, it
being not yet born. To this choice they attached great issues; for they
rightly thought that a name determines a lifetime much more than does
a horoscope, and for this reason they consulted no astrologer. First
they explored the grander sounds, names of dominion and power. They
considered Esmeralda, Ruhala, Semiramis, Darumdibaba, and Rimbomba,
as also Haulteclaire, following the noise of pomps and wars. Wearying
of this, the glamour of strangeness seized them, and they attempted
Pelagia, Sonia, Mehitabel, Oona, Célimène, Mamua and Berengarde,
Machuska, Gounor, and Zaire; but these seemed, upon a second reading,
affected: as indeed they were. So they fell into childishness, and
wallowed in gardening, reciting Pansy, Daisy, Rose, Violet, Pimpernel,
and even Forget-me-Not, which led them into the Furor Hebraicus, and
such terms as Miriam, Lilith, Deborah, Eve, Mizraim, Sheba, and the
rest—very unsuitable; from which they reacted to mere abstractions,
such as Mercy, Peace, Charity, Grace, and what not. But these seeming
insipid, they fell maundering after a donnish fashion and dared
consider Æthelburga, Fristhwith, Ealswitha, and other abominations,
till an angel compelled them to desist and they were driven to the
solid path of the queens, and advanced Maud, Adelaide, Matilda,
Elizabeth, Guinevere, Anne, and jibbed at Jezebel. Next they ran wild
and careered through Tosca, Faustine, Theodora, Athalie, Antigone,
Medea, Pasiphaë, and many others. Finally, they perched, she upon the
name Astarte, but he upon the, to my mind, lovelier word, Cytherea.
They both mean the same thing, only one was a well-modelled Greek, and
the other a horrible Hittite. It was the woman who wanted Astarte, and
the man who wanted Cytherea; so the child was to be called Astarte, and
she was not even allowed to have the second name of Cytherea.

All that was on Thursday, the 2d June. On the 13th, being a Monday, in
the early afternoon, the child was born, and was a boy.

There was no more discussion upon its name, because its uncle, a rich
man, was called James. So the boy was James, and there was an end of it.

I have been led on, as you see, but the essence of this book is that
it shall be a sailing through the seas of the years, that is, a flight
through the airs of time, or, again, a leading on and a passage through
the vales of life: now culling this sour fruit, now that poisonous
herb, and now again this stinging plant, which I had thought to be
innocuous.

For whether I should write, Maurice, a book of reminiscences or of
wandering, or of extravagances or of opinions, or of conclusions, or of
experiences, I could not make up my mind after a cogitation of three
weeks and four days, which occupied the whole of my remaining faculties
between the town of Blois, upon the Loire, and the town of Châlons,
upon the Marne, my journey from the one to the other being taken this
very year circuitously, in the company of a Bear, by way of Bayonne,
where the bayonet, Rosalie, was first made; Saint John at the foot of
the Pass, where they boil crayfish in white wine; Roncesvalles, where
Roland died, and I nearly did; Burguete, where they charge too much
and where the kitchen smoke goes out through the middle of the roof;
Pamplona, the only permanent thing Pompey ever did; Saragossa, which
never changes; Reus, where they spin cotton; Tarragona, which is biding
its time; Barcelona, which got there first; Puycerda, and, after that,
the Gorges of the Tet.

I was by this time a long way from Blois, but I had come to no
conclusion on the name of my book, and my mind was still like one of
those conferences to which the parliamentarians of various countries
travel at our expense from time to time, and are there delivered of
heavy speeches without meaning, which make one think of a corpulent
elderly man groaning across a ploughed clay field after a week’s rain
in the dark of the moon. At Nîmes I had not decided what to call the
book, nor down in a valley of the Cévennes, nor at Lyons, nor in the
Jura, nor in the Vosges, nor in Strasbourg; until at last I came to
Châlons, as I have said. And, sitting down there to a meal in the hotel
very finely called ‘The House of the High Mother of God,’ I still
remained undecided. And I am so, to this day.