Three Men in a Boat | Thornfield Hall

I recently read two delightful comic travel novels by Jerome K. Jerome, a popular 19^th-century writer, journalist, essayist, novelist, and playwright. Laughing at his books in an empty house had an eerie, manic sound. Worse, it was really chuckling, and I hate chuckling. That throaty chuckle reminds me of an actress who introduces late -night horror movies, often Basil Rathbone in Son of Frankenstein.

For those who prefer comedy, I recommend Three Men on a Boat (1889), a riotously funny book about a boat trip on the River Thames. Jerome sets out with two bachelor friends, Harris and George, none of the three expert boaters, and a dog, Montmorency, who loves fighting with other dogs. Alas, the three men did not practice their camping technique; their packing and unpacking is a disaster, with necessary items forgotten or lost; and they have no idea how to erect the special tent t which drapes over the boat; and when they attempt to sail, they become so entangled in the sails that they barely avert disaster.

I laughed even harder at Jerome’s later book, Three Men on the Bummel (1900). In this account of a hilarious bicycle journey, Jerome and Harris are keen on escaping the annual vacation with their wives and kids, and decide to take a long-distance bicycle trip, a bummel (which means a roaming or wandering) through Germany. As for George, still a bachelor, he is always ready for a fun trip. And I laughed at their bumbling, because I once took a harrowing three-state bike ride. My husband is an expert who made me practice camping beforehand, but he still had to lure me up hills in Pennsylvania (mountains, I prefer to call them) with a reward of a cookie or bubble gum.

Much of the humor in Three Men on the Bummel reflects Jerome’s sardonic attitude toward his friends’ preparations. George has a hilarious German phrase book which makes no sense, and resembles the university German conversation book in Intensive German I.

Jerome describes a typical weird phrasebook situation. In a railroad “compartment load of quarrelsome and ill-mannered lunatics: “Can you not get further away from me, Sir?” – “It is impossible, madam, my neighbor here is very stout. “ – ”Shall we not endeavor to arrange our legs?”

Illustration from Folio Society edition of *Three Men on the Bummel*

Then there are the fanatics who like to overhaul bikes. Jerome says there are “two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can ride it or you can overhaul it.” He watches with fascination as a friend destroys Jerome’s wheels and chain in the process of overhauling the bike.

Jerome writes,

On the whole I am not sure that that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the road troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He has to put up with certain disadvantages, of course; there is no joy without alloy. He himself always looks like a tinker, and his machine always suggests the idea that, having stolen it he has tried to disguise it…

I love Jerome’s witty philosophizing and satire, and the journey is comically realistic. Two splendid books, and at least one to add to your summer reading, depending on whether you are a boater or a bicyclist.

If you have not read Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, pack it in your backpack this summer. Peruse it in the Michigan Woods, or on a white water rafting vacation, or Yellowstone Park – wherever. But don’t read it while you are drinking aperitifs in a cafe, because your laughter will send the drink fizzing out of your nostrils. And don’t read it at your posh relatives’ elegant McMansion, because they will press all the posh new literary novels and biographies on you, and not understand your silly book.

Three Men in a Boat is an English classic, published in 1889, so it doesn’t come up in conversation much anymore . In this comic travel novel, Jerome K. Jerome, the author and narrator, decides to go boating with his two hypochondriac friends, for the sake of their health, and brings the dog. And, if I may say so, their adventures are often what used to be called “madcap.”

The guys ponder the question of camping vs. hotels.

Should we ‘camp out’ or sleep at inns?”

George and I were for camping out. It would be so wild and free, so patriarchal like.

The first night is dreadful. They hadn’t counted on heavy rain.

[The tent] is soaked and heavy, and it flops about, and tumbles down on you, and clings round your head and makes you mad. The rain is pouring steadily all the time. It is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather; in wet, the task becomes herculean. Instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool. Just as you get your side beautifully fixed, he gives it a hoist from his end and spoils it all.

“Here! What are you up to?” you call out.

“What are you up to?” he retorts. “Leggo, can’t you?”

“Don’t pull it; you’ve got it all wrong, you stupid ass!” you shout.

And on and on. Finally they get the tent up.

Rainwater is the chief article of diet at supper. The bread is two-thirds rainwater, the beefsteak pie is exceedingly rich in it, and the jam, and the butter, and the salt, and the coffee have all combined with it to make soup.

They do get the hang of boating and camping, eventually.

Left: Taken in a photo machine of spouse and me on the boardwalk, during a break from camping, (late 80s).

We go camping, and sometimes enjoy it. Some people are natural campers, some are not. Each day of primitive camping (pit toilets, no showers, perhaps a trickle of water from a single faucet, but fortunately at least we’re by a lake) refreshes and delights my husband; each day of primitive camping makes me listless, cranky, and eager to return to civilization.

He is an experienced camper, and so he spoils me. He makes oatmeal and coffee on the primus stove and lights the lantern at night. During a dreadful storm, I had to lie inside the tent with my limbs splayed to the four corners to keep it from blowing away while he secured it from the outside with some peg combination or other he designed on the spot.

Next time I go camping I’m taking Jerome K. Jerome and any comic novels or silly travel books you recommend. I do think I might need a dog, too.

Because believe it or not, I have the urge to go camping.