Essays of a Catholic, Hills and the Sea, and The First and Last...

 

"Hilaire Belloc, one of the greatest masters of the essay form in English, and one whose writing has the capacity to teach a prosaic age what words can achieve. Known for his vigorous, stately, yet subtle prose, Belloc wrote histories, biographies, religious and cultural apologetics, poetry, economic studies, and other words across a long and prolific career. Yet it is in his essays that he achieves his greatest work. There, Belloc's art reaches that perfection in which the indivisible unite of thought, style, and the man, is forged." -- from the Foreword by David M. Whalen

With a brand new foreword written by David M. Whalen, Associate Vice President for Curriculum and Professor of English, Hillsdale College, The Cenacle Press is pleased to present this republication of 3 volumes of essays from the renowned author, Hilaire Belloc.

Essays of a Catholic, Hills and the Sea, and The First and Last, develop different themes so dear to Belloc's heart. Essays of a Catholic explores the nature & political life of modern man from a Catholic perspective. Hills and the Sea consists of musings and inquiries into the nature and means of travel and exploration. Finally, The First and Last contains deep essays on the nature of reality, of history, and ends of man. All essays contain his depth of insight and witty humor that carry you through page by page.

Cenacle Press' volumes are printed as a cloth back with sewn binding, and silk screen and gold foil stamping finish on the cover. It is a volume that all true book lovers will want to have in their library! Each volume is available for purchase as either a single volume or a complete set.

Chesterton and Belloc - a Fastidious Friendship....

The Department of Catholic Studies, the G. K. Chesterton Institute for Faith and Culture and the Celtic Theatre Company proudly present G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc—A Fastidious Friendship.

The Path to Rome republished...

 

This edition is entirely re-typeset, includes Belloc's 77 original illustrations, and a new foreword by Belloc biographer Joseph Pearce. 

I vowed a vow there to go to Rome on Pilgrimage
and see all Europe which the Christian Faith has saved;
and I said, “I will walk all the way and take advantage
of no wheeled thing...and be present at High Mass in
St. Peter’s on the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.

This story of adventurous pilgrimage rambles through the fields of France, the mountains of Switzerland, and the plains of Italy. Belloc’s own favorite among his books, The Path to Rome recounts a pilgrimage on foot from the author’s birthplace in France to the Eternal City. Along the way he must find shelter, food, and directions. Stopping every few pages for a swig of local wine, his thoughts wander as much as his feet, covering topics as wide ranging as:

Devices for Ending Books
On Justice in Armies
Thoughts on French Folk-Lore
The Value of Bakers
The Tradition of Mankind and Ordinary Living

He also ponders the nature of the soul, declares his theory of blessings, and, when caught in loneliness or despair, cheers himself with stories such as that of the Great Barrel, the story of the Old Sailor, the story of the Devil and the Learned Man, and the story of Mr. Hard (to name a few).

In a travelogue devoid of chapters, Belloc carries his reader along at a breakneck pace, stopping only to rest and argue with his imaginary reader, the “Lector.” In these altercations with the Lector, Belloc finds he must defend himself, criticize himself, and make fun of himself for the sake of his sanity and the health of the world. Long a classic and Belloc’s best-known work, this is a newly typeset edition, complete with all of Belloc’s original illustrations.

The Cruise of the Nona - new edition...

 

The latest edition can be purchased here:

In The Cruise of the ‘Nona,’ Hilaire Belloc sets off “to sail the English seas again, and to pursue from thought to thought and from memory to memory such things as have occupied one human soul.” On one level a breezy record of an adventurous journey; underneath the surface, a wise and insightful study of modern life, particularly in its transition from the Victorian to the early modern period. Belloc’s prose glitters and crashes like ocean breakers.

Belloc sees sailing as an analogy to life: full of “great visions” and “intolerable tediums,” “alive with discovery, emotion, adventure, peril, and repose.” For Belloc, the sea “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.”

Belloc leads his reader over the changing seas, treating of many questions, including:

• How did the Vikings land in what are today impassable harbors?
• When and why did the British Parliament become so corrupt?
• What is the difference between prose and rhetoric?
• Can you trust learned scholars?
• Are sea monsters real?
• Will Alice in Wonderland remain a popular book?
• Why are oceans so different from one another?
• Is human “equality” a Catholic doctrine?

Mulling over half a century of memories and experiences, the seaman-philosopher shares a hundred and one reflections, flights of fancy, and tongue-in-cheek observations on England and Europe, Catholicism, atheism, sailing techniques, and common-sense. From his memories of the outbreak of the first World War to denunciations of rationalism, this cruise can transport the reader from his armchair to the lashing spray and biting wit of this monumental figure of English literature.

“Everything Belloc touched turns to magic for me. This book, however, is the closest the great man ever came to autobiography.” —Roger Buck

“Belloc thought that the cruising of a boat is akin to the adventure of a human soul… undertaken with purpose yet subject to innumerable diversions; aided by unforeseen blessings and opportunities yet troubled by terrible anxieties. Abroad on the sea provides the full model and symbol of human life, and thus the suitable setting for the chance thoughts of one human being.” —Karl Schmude

“The yacht seems to stop at intervals to make meditations on all sorts of subjects—capitalism, the Great War, Catholicism, and the rest—the various points of the author’s many-sided philosophy. Then it gives, as it were a twist of the tiller and returns to its jibs and booms.” —A. E. Clery

Classic children’s poems have been given a trigger warning by a publisher because they may be “harmful” to modern readers, The Telegraph can reveal...

Classic children’s poems have been given a trigger warning by a publisher because they may be “harmful” to modern readers, The Telegraph can reveal.

Prolific author Hilaire Belloc's popular comic verse, including 1907’s Cautionary Tales For Children, has been republished by Pan Macmillan with a new cautionary note.

A trigger warning printed in the collection of humorous children’s poems warns that the rhymes may be “hurtful or indeed harmful” to modern-day readers.

The disclaimer alerts readers to potentially troubling “phrases and terminology” in the collection which includes animal-themed verse and parody poems such as Jim: Who ran away from his Nurse, and was eaten by a Lion.

The warning about harmful language “prevalent at the time” when historic works were written follows a new trend in publishing which has seen cautionary notes printed in reissued works by Ian Fleming, Agatha Christie and Roald Dahl.

Illustrations from the Hilaire Belloc children's poem The Llama CREDIT: BASIL T BLACKWOOD


Printed in the opening pages of the Belloc collection put out by Pan Macmillan, the publisher warns that the text has not been edited and is therefore “true to the original in every way and is reflective of the language and period in which it was originally written”.

It adds: “Readers should be aware that there may be hurtful or indeed harmful phrases and terminology that were prevalent at the time this book was written and in the context of the historical setting of this book.”

The publisher adds in the lengthy disclaimer that “Macmillan believes changing the text to reflect today’s world would undermine the authenticity of the original, so has decided to leave the text in its entirety”.

However, the publishing house states that retaining the original language of the author does not constitute an endorsement of the “characterisation, content or language” in Belloc’s poems.

Illustrations from the poem The Crocodile CREDIT: BASIL T BLACKWOOD


Belloc was born in 1870 to a French father but raised in Sussex. He later served as Liberal MP in Salford.

A friend of G K Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, he was an Anglo-French and Catholic outsider, whose work spanned travel writing, histories, religious essays, political tracts, and poetry.

He is also known for illustrated collections of comic poems, including Cautionary Tales For Children, spanning rhymes about characters suffering absurd consequences for mild infractions.

Other volumes include The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts and More Beasts (For Worse Children), which are filled with amusing poems about animals.

These three collections have been combined into one volume by Pan Macmillan and covered by the trigger warning about “harmful” language.

Cautionary Tales includes a zoo keeper being called “fat”, while the 1896 collection Book of Beasts makes reference to “the Kurd” and “little Turk”, and More Beasts makes a rhyme of “the woeful superstitions of the East”.
‘Generalised anxiety’

Chris Hare, the vice chairman of the Hilaire Belloc society and author of the work Hilaire Belloc: Politics of Living, has criticised the use of warnings.

He told The Telegraph: “It’s what we see today, a huge sense of caution and a generalised anxiety about saying the wrong thing.

“We live in an age where people are permanently anxious about causing offence.

“Since the Second World War, we have lived in quite a coddled society. It’s no longer the school of hard knocks, but the school of comfy living.

“Belloc himself saw this coming, a time when old ideas of morality have faded and nobody has any idea what might be right or wrong, so they worry about what might cause offence.

“I think he wouldn’t be surprised by this, although he would likely be saddened if it was because of his children’s poetry.”

Pan Macmillan has been approached for comment.

Craig Simpson - Daily Telegraph 6 April 2024 • 2:24pm

A Sussex Belloc - an anthology of poetry and prose...

 

The works of Hilaire Belloc are out of copyright – and local author David Arscott has seized the moment to produce an illustrated anthology of the master’s copious writings in celebration of his beloved South Country. Here you’ll find all of his Sussex verse, extracts from his history of the county, essays on the land and its people and extracts from his best loved book, The Four Men.
To buy A Sussex Belloc at £8.50 post-free, send a cheque to David Arscott at 1 Friars Walk,

Lewes BN7 2LE or email him at sussexbooks@aol.com to arrange a bank transfer.

David’s companion volume, A Sussex Kipling, is also available at the same price.

'Hilaire Belloc: The Politics of Living' book review...

 

Hilaire Belloc: The Politics of Living, Chris Hare, Blacker Limited, 2023, pp. 164, £15.

.
‘When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”’ When Hilaire Belloc penned his own epitaph he still had three decades of life ahead of him with little reason to worry seriously about posterity. Reading those words now in the seventieth anniversary year of his passing, they still amuse but seem far from prophetic. Of the more than 150 books he wrote, almost none are in print by mainstream publishers. Other than a dedicated following among Catholic traditionalists, he is read mostly for his Cautionary Tales for Children and some anthologised verse. As for the sins that have sullied Belloc’s reputation, the least pardonable is his anti-Semitism.

Belloc has found admirable biographers in the likes of A. N. Wilson and Joseph Pearce and Chris Hare does not attempt in this persuasively reasoned study a further retelling of his life. Instead, he approaches his subject thematically. Through a series of discreet but related essays we are presented with critical reflections on Belloc’s private thoughts and public writings on a range of matters. Thus we have Belloc on religion, on politics, on war and peace, on mortality and, inescapably, on Jews. There is also an insightful interpretation of Belloc’s picaresque novel The Four Men.

A powerful motif across the chapters is Belloc the eternal outsider. Born in France but raised in Britain, he was at home and a stranger in both countries. As a young volunteer in the French military his fellow soldiers referred to him as ‘the Englishman’. Fiercely proud of his adopted home in the English south coast county of Sussex his Franco-Catholicism set him apart from its rustic folk. There was an element of self-sabotage about his situation. He privately supped at the tables of a social elite he publicly affected to despise. For all his desire for belonging, his restlessness took him on long travels far from his neglected family.

In a sharply perceptive chapter, Hare shows how Belloc was not even entirely at one with the Catholic Church of which he was such a staunch apologist. His was a religion less of intellectual doctrine than felt sentiment, especially in the ritual of the sacrament. For all his faith in Catholicism as the foundation of Western civilisation, Belloc had an abiding fascination with paganism. It was more than passing sentiment that caused him while sailing off the south coast of England to rhapsodise about ‘The Holy Moon’.

That veneration of the natural world pervades the most revered of Belloc’s novels, The Four Men. The tale of a quartet of travellers who make their way on foot across Sussex, is, as Hare observes, a celebration of a landscape threatened by change. In reconnecting with their home county, the wanderers are imbued with a sense of belonging planted deep in its chalky soil. Hare includes a quotation from Belloc that again alludes to a spiritual belief system unbound by orthodox Catholicism: ‘if a man is part of and is rooted in one steadfast piece of earth, which has nourished him and given him his being, and if he can on his side lend it glory and do it service, it will be a friend to him for ever, and he has outflanked Death in a way.’

Did Belloc’s mourning of a landscape and way of life being lost to time make him a reactionary or a radically forward thinker? Hare deftly teases out the contradictions of his subject, showing how he can be read in different ways. Take his lamentation for a South Downs ceding to tourism, urbanisation and commercial farming. ‘Which of us could have thought, when we wandered, years ago, in the full peace of summer Weald, or through the sublime void of the high Downs, that the things upon which we had been nourished since first we could take joy in the world would be thus rapidly destroyed in our own time, dying even before we ourselves die?’ That utterance could have come as easily from a contemporary environmentalist as an Edwardian curmudgeon. Yet there is no sense in its fatalism that Belloc anticipated the conservationist agenda of our own era in a way true of fellow authors such as W. H. Hudson whose wandering across the South Downs also led him to warn of a disappearing countryside.

As for his own passing, Hare suggests Belloc retained a sense of humour and stoicism as he neared death. Some of the testimonies included in the book possibly imply otherwise. Such is true of a statement made by early biographer J. B. Morton who witnessed in person the way that Belloc ‘when trapped into exposing his deeper feelings, regained his balance, as it were, before you had noticed what happened.’ Belief in an eternal life did not entirely reconcile Belloc to the grief that came from the early death of his wife Elodie and the sacrifice of a son to each of the World Wars.

If, as Hare argues, Belloc can still at times sound modern, then he was in other respects on the wrong side of history. His regressive attitude towards women’s rights, not discussed in the pages of the book, is a case in point. So too most obviously is his anti-Semitism. Hare is admirably dispassionate in his assessment, setting out the cases for both the prosecution and defence and allowing the reader to reach their own decision. The book does not hold back in detailing Belloc’s infatuation with Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Belloc gushed over Il Duce’s ‘excellent experiment’ in governance, proclaiming it a successful defence of a European civilisation otherwise crumbling into decline and ruin. Instrumental in that collapse were, in Belloc’s mind, the ‘international financiers’ of no national affiliation who conspired to cause scandals and wars for their own commercial profit. Hare could also have mentioned Belloc’s insistence on the guilt of Jewish artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus decades after the French government had overturned his notorious conviction for treason. On the side of the defence is the fact that Belloc was an early and outspoken critic of Adolf Hitler’s regime in Germany. Here Hare wisely reminds us of A. N. Wilson’s observation that there was a wilful blindness towards the affinities between Nazi political doctrine and his own prejudices.

Hilaire Belloc: The Politics of Living is an astute and highly readable study that illuminates its subject in all his complexities. What it may lack in original research it more than compensates for in the suppleness and depth of its analysis.



Clive Webb is Professor of Modern American History at the University of Sussex. His book Vietdamned: How the World’s Greatest Minds Put America on Trial, will be published by Profile Books.




This review has been taken from The London Magazine.