Sweet Thames Run Softly (New Portway Reprints)

by Robert Gibbings

Book Overview

In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, Robert Gibbings launched his home-made punt on the River Thames and began a slow journey downstream, armed with a sketchpad and a microscope. From the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0862205018
• ISBN13: 9780862205010
• Release Date: January 1942
• Publisher: Dent
• Length: 189 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A perfect book for those who delight in good writing

A good book, in content and manufacture, is a rare find in the modern world which emphasizes efficient cost-effectiveness rather than a pride in workmanship, durability and quality of content. Gibbings is an articulate observer; he writes of Halfpenny Bridge at Lechlade which gets its name from the toll that was once collected cross the bridge. Dredging was being done above and below the bridge, and he paused to go through some of the heaps of gravel. One find was hooked-nose shells, which he was informed were "devil's toe-nails." He took some to a Professor of Geology at Reading University, who told him they were fossils of an oyster which lived in the Thames valley some 200 million years ago. It reminded him of an Aran Islands man who described a a fossil in a rock as being, "there when God was born." Nearby he found a neolithic hammer-stone; this chance find brought to mind an incident in school when he was so impressed with a minister's Sunday sermon that instead of his usual penny Sunday offering, he dropped four pennies onto the collection plate. It was every cent he had, and afterward he wondered if he had been too generous. The next day, watching a school cricket match, he found three pennies neatly stacked in the grass. Since no one claimed them, he kept them for himself and "took the incident to be a direct message from heaven that, whether the Chinese starved or the Africans lacked loin-cloths, I was not expected to contribute more than my usual penny per week to their welfare." Such is the delight of Gibbings' writing, an aimless relaxing stroll through fields of memories that are mostly irrelevant but always amusing, heart-warming and with subtle meaning. In 1939, juist as World War II broke out and this book was written, literary ideas were always the start of a new course of thought rather than a bold leap to any conclusion. The war was largely between forces trying to suppress new and sometimes dissident ideas and those who opposed the imposition of any ideology. Perhaps this book is only for the elderly, those who remember the joy of finding an old penny -- the size of a modern quarter -- and agonizing at a nearby store counter about whether two-for-a-penny or three-for-a-penny candy is the wisest choice. Odd? What modern author could write a page or two about the emotions of a modern child who finds a penny? The trouble with the old is they think too often only of the past; their minds stopped when they were in their twenties, or teens, or pre-school years. Tweets are irrelevant, perhaps in their infancy. To them Tweets are irrelevant, perhaps because they never knew the precise compact form of eloquent haiku. Maybe someday the 140-character limit of Tweets will become a literary form similar to that of the haiku. It's the story of life. Gibbings understood links between 200-million year old oyster shells and his world; most people can't understand the connection between beer and a belch