Sweet Thames Run Softly

The River Books

by Robert Gibbings

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 river's source at the edge of the Cotswold Hills to the bustle of London's docks, Sweet Thames Run Softly is a charming, often eccentric, account of an artist-naturalist adrift in English waters. First published as the Battle of Britain raged overhead, this gentle boating tale was an antidote to the anxieties of wartime and became an immediate best-seller. Our new edition includes the original engravings Robert Gibbings made of his journey. First published 1940 by J.M. Dent & Sons.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Nature

230 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Robert Gibbings was an Irish artist and author who was most noted for his work as a wood engraver and sculptor, and for his books on travel and natural history.

Reviews

[Cathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this quite by chance in the Shakespeare Hospice 2nd hand bookshop in Stratford on Avon, as I was settling in for a happy afternoon avoiding the rain and looking forward to a play in the evening. Hugh Thomson gave it an honourable mention in The Green Road Into The Trees: An Exploration of England, so it was in my mind, and there it was on a shelf of travel books.

In 1939, just before the start of the war, the author decided to make a slow trip down the Thames in a glass-bottomed boat. On the way, he observes wildlife, people, and rather a lot of pubs. I'm not sure there are so many pubs these days, but it is an inspiration to take the Thames Path and find out.

I'm not sure either that much of what he describes is still there. The war marks a watershed dividing old country life from modern agriculture, and already he mentions beech forest being cut down with a man able to take 20-30 trees in a day. At least children swimming at Chiswick (should they do such a thing in these days of health and safety) are unlikely to be covered in brown sludge. This past is probably another country, but I hope that A D Ince, of The Grange in Wollaston and David, for whom it was a birthday present in 1982, enjoyed it as much as I did. I feel compelled to add my own details, and note that this has been an exceptionally good use of scarce resources, as the title page assures me that this 1942 imprint complies with wartime Authorised Economy Standards.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was something very pleasing about reading this book, as Gibbings is slowly drifting down the Thames he shares with the reader what he sees and what memories these sights trigger, it is these random tangents that have the reader gently drifting through the pages of this wonderful book.

Gibbings has travelled the world and has now decided it is time to travel closer to home, he decides he wants to slowly travel down the Thames to find out what it has to offer and it seems visit every pub on the route. He is rather particular about what boat he needs for his journey, a man needs room for his books and art supplies and microscope doesn’t he? Unable to find a boat fit for purpose he builds his own with the help from some university friends. Once on his journey it soon becomes apparent just how wise he is, so much knowledge about nature, architecture, literature, science, history and the people of the world, every bit of information he shares is fascinating, I loved that he took his microscope with him just so he can see nature as up close as possible.

Gibbings has a wicked sense of humour and can be rather cheeky at times, any chance encounter with a young lady and he goes into super flirt mode…which probably wouldn’t go down well in this day and age but the ladies seem up for some harmless banter and it is these scenes that show’s you what fun Gibbings was.


Whilst on this journey Gibbings did a lot of sketches and (I think) these have been included throughout this book, they a small with a nice amount of detail, they are a great addition and really pull this book together whilst showcasing yet another of his talents. I have enjoyed this book, learnt loads and am left happy that I’ve been able to read about this epic pub crawl.

This is the second book I have read from the Little Toller travel & nature writing series, they really know how to make an exquisite book, gonna have to get another one ASAP to keep building my collection.

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2022...

[Bruce Hesselbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the start of a series of travel books by a fascinating artist and storyteller. The engravings are wonderful and they fit perfectly with the tales.
Readers today expect a book to start with a shocking scene and then be short, punchy and gripping the rest of the way through. This is not that kind of a book. It is an adventure, as if you were going on a home-made boat down the Thames in 1941 with an artist who tells you wonderful stories as you go.
The author has a great ear for dialogue and a knack for meeting interesting people. His series of travel books are original and unique, meant to be savored again and again.

[Neil O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roger Deakin often referred to the wonder of rivers and how being on them in a boat is like slipping into another world. This book - about a journey down the Thames between the wars - is like slipping into another time and another world. A time when people simply encountered people and nature was all around you in great richness and variety. The journey is far from straight as the writer Robert Gibbings meanders off on regular tangents directly or loosely based on things or people he encounters on the trip. There is a lot here to be discovered and enjoyed. As well as the writings there are the writers engraved illustrations throughout the book. (This book is extra special for me as it was a 50th birthday present and a hard copy where someone scribed ‘London, 1946’ inside the front cover - how delicious).

[Erik Empson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A naturalist's slow journey down the Thames where he discusses the varied fauna and flora of the English countryside and gives entertaining accounts of the characters he meets on the way. Gibbings it seems wants to show our closeness to nature, though he paradoxically demonstrates our distance from it.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable ramble down the river. Part natural history, part travelogue, I enjoyed meeting the various characters throughout the journey. Just a quiet, amusing and interesting read. I think Gibbings fancied himself something of a playboy, but thankfully was not very successful. He's not bitter, though. I will read more books from this imprint.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gentle meandering journey accompanied by the author's musings on all sorts.

[Ann McReynolds · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exquisite little volume led my husband and me to rent a longboat one summer to follow the voyage described so eloquently here.

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Robert Gibbings' 'Sweet Thames Run Softly' recently. The title was very beautiful and I couldn't resist it.

Robert Gibbings decides one day to travel down the Thames by boat and observe his surroundings, enjoy the view, and look at how other denizens who are not humans are living their lives. He wants a flat bottomed boat which is not readily available and so he takes the help of a friend who builds him that boat. Then he takes the boat out to the river, and avoids humans, and lives a calm, serene life for a while. At the end of his journey, he puts down his experiences which results in this book.

Robert Gibbings was a very interesting person. He went to university to study medicine and ended up studying art. He become an engraver and founded the Society of Wood Engravers. He bought a publishing company and published beautiful books which he illustrated with his own exquisite engravings. He also travelled and explored nature and wrote books like this and became one of the first natural history presenters on the BBC.

'Sweet Thames Run Softly' is a beautiful book. The title is borrowed from this line from the Edmund Spenser poem 'Prothalamion' – "Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song." In the book, in his gentle soft prose, Robert Gibbings describes nature, the trees, the plants, the river, the grass, the insects, the birds, the animals, the frogs, the lizards and all kinds of fascinating beings whom he encounters during his trip down the Thames. In between he takes detours into classics and talks about what Greek and Roman writers thought about a particular topic. There were so many beautiful passages in the book that I couldn't stop highlighting. The book is illustrated by Robert Gibbings own engravings and they are exquisite. I've shared a few – please swipe to see and take pleasure in their beauty. The book has a beautiful introduction by Luke Jennings in which he describes the book as – "This is science filtered through an artist's eye, and the result is wonderfully strange." Yes, it is wonderfully strange, in a beautiful way 😊 Robert Gibbings undertook this journey down the river just before the Second World War. This book was published in 1940, in the first years of the war, when things were bleak for England and much of the world. The readers of that time loved the book, because they probably thought that the gentle life and beautiful scenes that the book described were probably over and never to be seen and experienced again.

The edition I read is published by Little Toller Books and they seem to know one or two things about how to make a beautiful book, because this edition is exquisite. I checked their catalogue and it is filled with wonderful books on nature writing – I found W.H.Hudson's 'A Shepherd's Life', H.E.Bates' 'Through the Woods', a few books by Oliver Rackham, and a biography of J.A.Baker, who wrote the famous, 'The Peregrine'. I want to read all the books in their catalogue.

I loved 'Sweet Thames Run Softly'. It is one of my favourite books of the year. I'm so happy I discovered it.

I'm sharing some of my favourite passages from the book below.

"During my travels on the river I did not bother much about the time of day. When it was light I woke up, and when it was dark I went to sleep, and when I was hungry I prepared myself some food. And thus I lived as peacefully as any old badger in his earth. I could, of course, have consulted the flowers - the dandelion which opens at five o'clock a.m. and closes at eight o'clock p.m., the white water lily which spreads its petals at seven in the morning and folds them together again at five in the evening, or the marigold whose short day lasts but from nine till three, but I soon learned to 'feel' the hour, and when occasionally, out of idle curiosity, I did inquire the time I rarely found that I was more than half an hour out in my surmise. Fog, of course, makes the calculation more difficult, but even mainline trains do not run to schedule in a fog."

"One of the saddest sights I ever saw in my orchard was at a place where a mown path divides two patches of longer grass. Across this track a field mouse was wont to lead her young, but, one morning, as she did so, a hawk swooped down. It lurched through the trees, fanning out its tail and wings for an instant as it dropped over one of the little ones, and, without interrupting its flight, seized it in its claws and carried it away. I watched to see if the mother would return, but she never appeared again. If I seem to sentimentalise over what must be inevitable it is only because I am so conscious of the wealth of beauty destroyed by every stroke of fate. A fly, exquisite, and in every detail formed beyond the imagination of man, is but a mouthful for a frog. A frog, whose system is so complicated that it can be considered as a prototype of our own construction, is swallowed whole by a duck. A duck is but one meal for a fox, or a human being."

"I am more and more surprised at man's presumption in allocating to his own body the prize for beauty. Regarded dispassionately, this ungainly frame of ours must be far down in the aesthetic scale. Why, even our zenith of feminine beauty, the Venus de Milo, is the better for having no arms. And the artist was compelled to drape her legs so that the torso might have a semblance of architectural design. We are, of course, interested in our own construction, and more particularly in that of the opposite sex, but only because our strongest instinct colours every aspect of our existence. If, however, we can for a moment forget that urge and compare ourselves with other forms of life which we see about us we may get a true perspective on the subject. When, for instance, we compare our naked skins with the feathers of the chaffinch or the yellowhammer, ours must seem a poor covering. When we think of the graceful movements of any of the cat tribe, of the speed of even a rabbit or a hare, or of the muscles of the horse or ox, we must realise how inferior we are in agility and strength. Only in brain power are we superior. And to what miserable ends has that superiority been directed!"

"..my friend's chief obection to my remarks was that without a garden one couldn't have cut flowers. As he rightly observed, few wild flowers survive for long after they are picked. To this I replied that cut flowers at any time are a barbarism, and that if any one really appreciates a growing flower he cannot get any but the crudest form of satisfaction from seeing a bunch of drooping heads in a vase. No flowers, however carefully or even lovingly they may be arranged, can look as well when cut as they do when growing. If we have a garden there is less need than ever to decapitate the plants in order to enjoy them. The memory of a bed of lupins in full sunlight is far better than the sight of a dozen of them sagging from a glass jug in the glare of an electric lamp. Tulips, which started this discussion, are some of the worst sufferers. God knows, in spite of what I have said, they are my favourite garden flower, but it gives me little pleasure to see them drooping over the edge of a piece of oriental pottery planted on a grand piano, or hanging from a vase on a photo-laden mantelshelf."

Have you read 'Sweet Thames Run Softly'? What do you think about it?

[emmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unusual choice for me. Stumbled upon it in a community bookshop in Clifton, and was immediately taken by the beautiful engravings, and the fact that it’s all based around my homelands in the Thames Valley!
So charming, with lots of comedic musings; it has aged wonderfully. The idea that Gibbings wrote this in order to document the valley before it was destroyed by bombs in the Second World War is strikingly painful - and yet, as I wander through the Goring Gap and Mapledurham lock, I am thrilled that he did feel the urge to capture it before the land was altered, not by bombs but by electric railways and housing developments.
I love imagining Gibbings in his little wooden punt, as my Dad takes his carbon fibre K2 down to the river. Two men, a century apart, enjoying this stretch of the Thames and its wildlife.

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvellous wallow in nostalgia for a time before I was even born. This is wonderfully wry and has a fine sense of humour, too.

[Ginni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I asked for a second-hand copy of this for Christmas last year. I was sure I’d read this author before, but not this book I think. This is a slow, descriptive, delightful journey by means of a flat-bottomed rowing boat, in which the author could sleep and store belongings, down the river Thames from source to mouth. As the journey takes place over the years 1939-1940, Gibbings finds some of his plans altered by the advent of WW2. However, he does not allow the war to impinge much on his story. As well as being a world traveller and writer, Gibbings is also an artist, and his black and white wood engravings are a quiet joy.
I was struck by several aspects of this account. Firstly, the descriptions of wildlife, particularly the flora of the banks and water-meadows - this is truly a vanished England, and I wonder how many people living now have even heard of the plants and creatures seen on the journey. Secondly, many of the people he meets are still the rural population who earned their living from land and water; perhaps few then, and certainly fewer now. There is a mole catcher who bemoans the death of his trade; who even knows now that such a person existed? The countryside Gibbings describes has altered radically; I read an article about the health of the Thames today, where I learnt that the Thames was pronounced biologically dead by the 1950s. Even at the start of the 1940s, the author states that ‘from Kew Green ...the houses are charming, but the river is filthy.’ The health of the river has improved again now, but there are still novel threats of pollution to counter.
On a personal note, the book I think I have read in the past must be ‘Lovely is the Lee’, as Gibbings hails from Cork city originally, and my sister and her family settled near there in the early 1960s, and will have had his book in their library. Strangely, the author is working at Reading University as he writes ‘Sweet Thames run softly’, and his craft is built in the woodwork department there. I attended Reading in the early 1970s, so that is another link.

[Anthony Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up secondhand because I liked the title, the paper and the print and the hardback cloth cover, and the bookseller’s encouraging pencilled flyleaf comment, ‘beautiful illustrations’.

And they are. I knew nothing about Gribbings before the good old interweb told me he was a wood engraver and that he ran a small press, The Golden Cockerel Press, that produced fine editions. He was also based for a while at Reading University teaching typography, book production and illustration, and travelled a great deal to the exasperation of his wives.

‘Sweet Thames Run Softly’ records a trip down the Thames in 1939 in a homemade flat-bottomed boat. He observes the wildlife – especially the plants - and records his responses in words and immaculate, small black and white illustrations; he encounters unusual riverside folk in unexpected places with historical interest, and he digresses cheerfully on all sorts of matters. There’s also an unexpected passage in which he confesses to being a very limited artist, being devoted entirely to the art of engraving, and specialising only in wood engraving. A rather impressive, modest apologia, I felt.

The book was published in 1940 and my 1945 edition was the 9th impression. Why so popular? I guess during the war, a book with a title as redolent of England and the pastoral idyll so strongly embedded in the English consciousness by the notion of softness and gentleness and the quietly-moving Old Father Thames, is bound to appeal to soldiers in Malaya or North Africa, or those on the Home Front wanting to be reminded of what they were fighting for. I’m fond of a rather awkwardly written poem by Edward Thomas, titled ‘This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong’. It concludes thus:

“The ages made her [England] that made us from dust:
She is all we know and live by, and we trust
She is good and must endure, loving her so:
And as we love ourselves, we hate her foe.”

This book seems to me to support that sentiment. It was a bedside joy to read.

[Sophy H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gibbings is quite amusing. His books tend to have a "loose" title, which often ends up as a mere backdrop to the writing itself.

This book is about a journey down the Thames............. or is it?! Gibbings merely uses this journey to explore so many other things, musings on life, love, people, animals, past misdemeanours of character, human habit. The Thames gets a wee mention every now and again as if he suddenly remembers his obligation to include something of the subject matter!

His style is always the quintessential Irish man, easy-going and conversational, breezy yet deep at the same time.

I love how his concern for animals comes to the fore in this title. He laments on spiders (which he disses then later retracts and apologises for speaking negatively of our eight-legged friends), birds, fish. He worries how fishing can unnecessarily harm fish and regrets how he shot game birds as a lad when he knew no better.

He seems a genuinely nice bloke who wants to have a bit of a chat about life.

I like his postscript at the end of the book, where he even apologises for not spending enough time detailing the Thames. And then he ends with this one nugget of a sentence......

"Even in these days when hell bursts open our world, like boiling lava from a volcano, let us remember that for every insult offered to humanity there are a hundred deeds of heroism".

Well said Gibbings, and so pertinent to our world right now.

[Philip L · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Gibbings was a world traveler, sculptor, wood engraver, and writer who lived in the late 19th and early 20th century. Among the books that he wrote was a series of books on rivers in Britain and Ireland that he loved. This book, Sweet Thames Run Softly is the first in that series. He published it in 1941. He was writing it as WWII was breaking out. He builds a small wooden boat, The Willow, and commences down the Themes, from its headwaters (which is really nothing more then a ditch) till its end in the North Sea. It's really just a leisurely row down the river, no schedule to keep, meeting whoever might cross his path. In doing so he tells all kinds of stories about little villages he passes, pubs, inns, history and legends. Also commenting on the beauty of the natural world and nature that he is passing through. He also did all the illustrations for the books, which are beautiful. Reading it is kind of like going on a stroll with an old relative. The writing is very conversational and fluid. I really enjoyed this book.
Several years ago my father gave me the whole series (3 books) in hardcover, because he knew that I enjoyed reading travel memoirs/essays. I never got around to reading them until now. Wish he was still here so I could tell him how much I've enjoyed these books. Thanks Dad!

[Bex · Rating 5 out of 5]

The bohemian and unorthodox Gibbings flits about from subject to subject during his idiosyncratic voyage down the Thames in a flight of whimsy that I found delightful, and also very poignant seeing as he begins his peaceful journey on the eve of World War II.

Some of the observations he makes about the world make me laugh with pleasant surprise - so close were they to my own views. He thinks that each season is best when it comes around; believes that living flowers in the fields have far more beauty than any cut stems in a vase could, and that seems to see a sort of sensual magic in everything natural around him - every girl he sees on the river bank is a nymph, and every morsel of Thames mud contains multitudes of microscopic organisms that intrigue and enchant the viewer.

I really enjoyed this book. I found it beautiful and refreshing (and I really want to find out more about the intriguing Gibbings, having read it!).

'Each day, each hour that we are alive is the richest. For what is yesterday but a memory, and what is tomorrow - which may never come?'

[edward clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Endearing

[Moria · Rating 2 out of 5]

i'm not mad i read it. there were a few interesting parts. i wouldn't recommend it for 99% of the people i know though.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charming is a good word for this book. Light and sometimes funny. Definitely not a page-turner; it would be a good book to read while swinging in a hammock.

[Jo Mortimer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful book.