Three Men in a Boat

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Three Men in a Boat
image:3 Men in a Boat Cover.jpg
Author Jerome K. Jerome
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Comedy novel
Publisher J. W. Arrowsmith
Publication date 1889
Media type Print (Hardback
ISBN ISBN 0-7653-4161-1
Followed by Three Men on the Bummel
Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.

The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over, to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages now seem like an unnecessary distraction to the essentially comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers. The jokes seem fresh and witty even today.

The three men were based on the narrator (Jerome himself) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who went on to become a senior manager in Barclays Bank) and Harris (in reality Carl Hentschel, the founder of a well-known London printing business). The dog, Montmorency, was entirely fictional, but as Jerome had remarked, "had much of me in it." The holiday was a typical boating holiday of the time, carried out in a Thames Camping Skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, to be replaced by the 1880's craze for boating as a leisure activity.

There was a less successful sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, entitled Three Men on the Bummel.

A similar book was published seven years before Jerome's work, entitled Three in Norway (by two of them) by J. A. Lees and W. J. Clutterbuck. It tells the story of three men on an expedition into the wild Jotunheimen in Norway. The similarities between the two books are striking.


Contents

[edit] Plot summary

The story begins by introducing the main characters - George, Harris, 'J' (Jerome, the narrator) and Montmorency, the dog. The men are spending an evening in J's room, smoking and idly discussing various illnesses they fancy they are suffering from. They conclude they are suffering from 'overwork' and are badly in need of a holiday. The options of a stay in the country and a sea-trip are considered, then rejected (J. describes the bad experiences had by his brother-in-law and another unnamed friend on sea-trips). The three eventually decide upon a boating trip up the Thames, from Kingston to Oxford, during which they'll camp-out, notwithstanding more anecdotes from J. regarding previous mishaps with tents and camping stoves.

The next Saturday, they embark. George must go into work that morning ("George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two") so J. and Harris make their way to Kingston by train. Unable to find the correct train at Waterloo Station, they resort to bribing a train driver to take his train to Kingston where they collect their hired boat and start upon their journey. They meet George later in the day, up-river at Weybridge.

The remainder of the story relates their leisurely journey up the river and the incidents that occur. The book's original purpose as a guidebook is apparent as the narrator describes the many landmarks and villages they pass by such as Hampton Court Palace, Monkey Island, Magna Carta Island and Marlow, and he muses upon the historical associations of these places. However, he frequently digresses into funny anecdotes that range in subject from the unreliability of barometers for weather forecasting to Harris' hopeless ineptness at singing Gilbert and Sullivan comic songs (that contrasts with his belief that he has a talent for it). The narrator's most frequent topics are river pastimes such as fishing and boating and the difficulties they may present to the inexperienced and unwary.

The book includes several classic comic set-pieces, such as the plaster of Paris trout in chapter seventeen and the "Irish stew" in chapter fourteen - made by mixing together most of the leftover items in the party's food hamper.

“ I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say. ”


[edit] Reception and History

One might have imagined that the British Empire was in danger... The Standard spoke of me as a menace to English letters; and The Morning Post as an example of the sad results to be expected from the over-education of the lower orders... I think I may claim to have been, for the first twenty years of my career, the best abused author in England

—Jerome K Jerome, "My Life and Times"

When published, the book's reception by critics varied between luke-warm and hostile. The use of everyday slang was condemned as "vulgar" and the book was derided as being written to appeal to 'Arrys and 'Arriets - a then-common sneering terms for working-class Londoners who dropped their H's when speaking. Punch dubbed Jerome " 'Arry K. 'Arry" [1]. Modern commentators have praised the humour, but criticized the unevenness of the book as the humorous sections are interspersed with more serious passages, written in a sentimental, sometimes purple, style.

Yet the book sold in huge numbers. 'I pay Jerome so much in royalties,' the publisher told a friend,'I cannot imagine what becomes of all the copies of that book I issue. I often think the public must eat them' [2]. The first edition was published in August 1889 and remained in print until March 1909 when the second edition was issued. During that time, 202,000 copies were sold [3]. Jerome states in the author's introduction to the 1909 second edition, he'd been told another million copies had been sold in America by pirate printers [4]. The book was translated into many languages. The Russian edition was particularly successful and became a standard school textbook. Jerome later complained in a letter to the The Times of Russian books not written by him, published under his name in order to benefit from his success [5]. Since its publication, Three Men in a Boat has never been out of print.

The original Thames river trip is easy to re-create, thanks to its detailed description, and this is sometimes done by fans of the book. Much of the route remains remarkably unchanged. For example, all of the pubs and inns named in the book are still open.[6]

The trip was notably re-created in 1993 by poet Kim Taplin and companions, resulting in the travelogue Three Women in a Boat [7] and in 2005 by comedians Griff Rhys Jones, Dara Ó Briain, and Rory McGrath, and a very nervous dog called Loli, for the BBC.

The story was turned into three English language films. In 1920; in 1933 with William Austin, Edmund Breon, and Billy Milton; and in 1956 with David Tomlinson as J., Jimmy Edwards as Harris and Laurence Harvey as George. A German film - Drei Mann in einem Boot - was made in 1961. The BBC produced a version for television in 1975, adapted by Tom Stoppard, with Tim Curry as J., Michael Palin as Harris, and Stephen Moore as George. An episode of the Victorian detective show Cribb, is based around the book.

[edit] Other meanings

Among US troops in Iraq, "Three Men in a Boat" is slang for "stop", because of the shape of the Arabic word قف‎ for "stop!": see List of U.S. Army acronyms and expressions#Field slang.


[edit] References and Notes

  1. ^ Jerome, Jerome (1926). My Life and Times. Hodder & Stoughton. 
  2. ^ Jerome, Jerome (1982). "Afterward", Three Men in a Boat, Annotated and Introduced by Cristopher Matthew and Benny Green. Michael Joesph. ISBN 0907516084. 
  3. ^ Jerome, Jerome (1909). "Publisher's Introduction", Three Men in a Boat, 2nd Edition, Bristol: J W Arrowsmith. 
  4. ^ Jerome, Jerome (1909). "Author's Introduction", Three Men in a Boat, 2nd Edition, Bristol: J W Arrowsmith. 
  5. ^ Jerome, Jerome (July 8 1902), “Littery Piracy in Russia”, The Times (no. 36814): 4 
  6. ^ The Royal Stag and the Manor House at Datchet; The Crown at Marlow; The George and Dragon at Wargrave; The Bull at Sonning; The Swan at Pangbourne; The Bull at Streatley; and The Barley Mow at Clifton Hampden.
  7. ^ Taplin, Kim (1993). Three Women in a Boat. Impact Books. ISBN 1874687137. 

[edit] See also

  • To Say Nothing of the Dog, a time-travel novel by Connie Willis. The characters of Three Men in a Boat make a brief appearance. The title refers to the full title of the original book; "Three Men in a Boat - To Say Nothing of the Dog".
  • Locks on the River Thames - by "joining" the river at Teddington Lock, and following the succession boxes upstream, it is possible to follow the journey over each reach.

[edit] External links