The story
Anyone who has paddled in deep water knows the feeling: you are not going anywhere fast, but as long as your head is above the surface, you are fine. That picture of just staying afloat is the root of the saying.
By the early 1700s, it was already a figure of speech about money and trouble. In 1712, the writer John Arbuthnot began a comic tale called The History of John Bull. Its hero is an honest, plain-dealing clothier who gets tangled in a long and costly lawsuit.
Complaining about a neighbor he has helped, John Bull says, “after I have almost drowned myself to keep his head above water, he would leave me sticking in the mud.” In the next breath he adds that he has “beggared myself” with the lawsuit. The water was trouble, and the trouble was money.
The book was a hit, and it did something its author may not have expected. It fixed the name and character of John Bull on the English people. He became England’s stout, ruddy everyman, much as Uncle Sam later came to stand for America.
