Pepys of Toad Hall
Created | Updated Dec 21, 2009
"There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing-about in boats.",
said Ratty in Kenneth Grahame's 1908 'Wind In The Willows'
(later, 1929, adapted by A.A.Milne for the stage as 'Toad of Toad Hall').
That famous line about there being "nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply
messing-about in boats" has been printed on posters and T-shirts and coffee mugs and has now perhaps
become a cliche even among those who have no first hand experience of self discovery in an open boat.
And it is that magic of self discovery, that epiphany of one's place, one's 'happy place' in the cosmos
which comes through more than 300 years earlier in the words:
"I know nothing that can give a better notion of infinity and eternity than being upon the sea in a little vessel
without anything in sight but yourself within the whole hemisphere." (1)
These are the words of the man who laid the foundations of the British Empire with his direction of the Royal Navy.
He began by polishing brass door knobs and rose to be Secretary of the Navy.
And he loved messing about in boats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6q-rZQgOuo
(1) Samuel Pepys, Oct 1683, in his Journal Toward Tangier
as quoted by Edwin Chappell in his 1935 transcription of
'The Tangier Papers of Samuel Pepys'.
<book><musicalnote>
~jwf~
said Ratty in Kenneth Grahame's 1908 'Wind In The Willows'
(later, 1929, adapted by A.A.Milne for the stage as 'Toad of Toad Hall').
That famous line about there being "nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply
messing-about in boats" has been printed on posters and T-shirts and coffee mugs and has now perhaps
become a cliche even among those who have no first hand experience of self discovery in an open boat.
And it is that magic of self discovery, that epiphany of one's place, one's 'happy place' in the cosmos
which comes through more than 300 years earlier in the words:
"I know nothing that can give a better notion of infinity and eternity than being upon the sea in a little vessel
without anything in sight but yourself within the whole hemisphere." (1)
These are the words of the man who laid the foundations of the British Empire with his direction of the Royal Navy.
He began by polishing brass door knobs and rose to be Secretary of the Navy.
And he loved messing about in boats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6q-rZQgOuo
(1) Samuel Pepys, Oct 1683, in his Journal Toward Tangier
as quoted by Edwin Chappell in his 1935 transcription of
'The Tangier Papers of Samuel Pepys'.
<book><musicalnote>
~jwf~
