by Arnold Bennett
This is cruising as literature! Arnold Bennett, who lived from 1867–1931, was an English novelist and dramatist. One of the great 20th-century English novelists, Bennett is famous for his realistic novels about the “Five Towns,” an imaginary manufacturing district in northern England. Influenced by the naturalism of Zola, he depicted in great detail the grim, sometimes sordid, lives of shopkeepers and potters. His attitude toward his characters was one of affectionate sympathy, and he always managed to make their mundane lives interesting. In this book, he undertakes five cruises on the Velsa , a 55 ft. LOA Dutch yacht with a paid crew. He visits, in turn, Holland, The Baltic, Copenhagen, The French and Flemish Coats and East Anglian estuaries. His wit and charm are absolutely unstoppable, and those of our readers who enjoyed Stevenson's An Inland Voyage will find much in common with this book. There are also echoes of The Riddle of the Sands, since his cruise, (although no actual date is given) must have taken place in the years 1812-1813 because he makes mention of the threatening attitudes he encountered among representatives of the rising German Empire. A delight from beginning to end and illustrated with 50 superb watercolours and sketches by E.A. Rickards in black and white and colour and a colour frontispiece by Bennett himself. First published in 1814. Another volume of art criticism while cruising is A Summer Voyage on the River Saone by Hamerton.
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