Ship of Fools (Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome)

Member Name: frannyfortune

Product:	Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome
Date:	19/08/01 (2090 review reads)
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Take three wasters who love their food, and a drop to drink, much more than any kind of effort; who are hypochondriacs, mischief-makers, and inveterate liars (er, sorry, story-tellers). Make sure that they like to show off, philosophise, bicker, and pontificate, while being largely incompetent. Put them in a small boat with an angelic-looking but evil-minded dog, give them frying pans, tents, kettles full of butter, lemons, but absolutely no cheese (that's very important, and I'll explain later), and send them off down the Thames for a week.

Sound like fun so far? I think I'd rather walk over hot coals than actually be stuck in the boat with them, but reading about their 'holiday' is one of my favourite activities. I love this book and it never, ever fails to make me laugh. There are passages in it that I've read so many times that I must know them off by heart, but just the thought of them makes me want to curl up and giggle. It's mostly observational and situational comedy, I suppose, about why kettles never boil when you're watching, and how silly and pompous people can be, and how generally unfair life is, which is nothing terribly original. But there are also great dollops of surreal humour ladled all over the pages, and the narrator has a wonderful sly innocence which works perfectly. It's not wham-bam punchline stuff, but cumulatively funny, which I think I prefer. I'll try to give an example. In this passage, George, Harris, and the narrator, J, are having a picnic by the river.

"We had just commenced the third course – the bread and jam – when a gentleman in shirt sleeves and a short pipe came along, and wanted to know if we knew that we were trespassing. We said we hadn't given the matter sufficient consideration as yet to enable us to arrive at a definite conclusion on that point, but that, if he assured us on his word as a gentleman that we *were* trespassing, we would, witho
ut further hesitation, believe it.

He gave us the required assurance, and we thanked him, but he still hung about, and seemed to be dissatisfied, so we asked him if there was anything further that we could do for him; and Harris, who is of a chummy disposition, offered him a bit of bread and jam.

I fancy he must have belonged to some society sworn to abstain from bread and jam; for he declined it quite gruffly, as if he were vexed at being tempted with it, and he added that it was his duty to turn us off."

They start to feel rather cross, after this, about people who put up 'Keep Out' signs, and so on, and J starts to fantasise about what he would like to do to them.

"I mentioned these feelings of mine to Harris, and he said he had them far worse than that. He said he not only felt he wanted to kill the man who caused the board to be put up, but that he should like to slaughter the whole of his family and all his friends and relations, and then burn down his house. This seemed to me to be going a bit far, and I said so to Harris; but he answered : 'Not a bit of it. Serve 'em all jolly well right, and I’d go and sing comic songs on the ruins.' "

This leads to an account of how appalling Harris is at singing comic songs, and what an inhumane punishment it would be, and then to an anecdote about the time they heard a famous tragic German singer, under the misapprehension that he was trying to be amusing...and so on and so on. I'm sorry to quote and paraphrase so much, but one or two lines from the book don't really illustrate why it is so funny. On its own, no one paragraph makes for a big belly laugh, but the bizarre situations and the knowing humour build up relentlessly, until you do, honestly, laugh helplessly. A bit like watching Eddie Izzard, maybe? Parts of it are almost Pythonesque – there's a scene where they stop off for Harris to go and see a tomb he's
heard about ("Mrs. Thomas's tomb. 'Who is Mrs. Thomas?' I asked. 'How should I know?' replied Harris. 'She's a lady that's got a funny tomb, and I want to see it.' "), and J, whos not interested in that sort of thing, ends up fleeing the churchyard with a doddery old churchwarden in pursuit, calling hoarsely after him : "Oh, come and see the skulls; come back and see the skulls!"

You've probably noticed by now, that not much of the action takes place on the boat itself. The book reads like the longest shaggy dog story in the world, in a way, and meanders about through the characters' recollections and reflections. My all-time favourite part is the story that leads them all to agree to having absolutely "no cheese" on the boat. It goes on for five pages, so much as I'd love to quote it in full, I'll restrain myself; basically a friend of J's once bought some cheeses in Liverpool, and entrusted them to J to take safely back to London. J departs on a truly epic trip, with the cheeses as company, and once read, it is never forgotten. The cheeses are described variously as "ripe and mellow", or as having "a scent that could knock a man over at two hundred yards", and the train journey becomes rather interesting. On bringing them safely to the friend's house, his wife "smelt round for an instant. Then she said :

'What is it? Tell me the worst.'

I said : 'It's cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool, and asked me to bring them up with me.'

And I added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing to do with me; and she said that she was sure of that, but that she would speak to Tom about it when he came back."

Tom's wife mutinies pretty quickly, and takes the children to stay in a hotel, until the cheese is eaten. The infamous cheeses are left in care of their charwoman, "who, wh
en taken close to the cheese and told to sniff hard, said she could detect a faint odour of melons. It was argued from this that little injury could result to the woman from the atmosphere."

It gets even more surreal after that, but I'll leave you to discover it for yourself. I won't mention at all (oops) the story about the tin of pineapple, which is my other favourite bit. It's even better read aloud; in fact the whole book is perfect for reading aloud, and much much funnier when shared this way.

The most surprising thing, for me, is the fact that this book was written over a hundred years ago. The language seems fairly modern, or at least, you don’t notice the parts where it isn't, after a few pages, and the characters and incidents are all too familiar. I suppose any book that accurately satirises human nature, will always seem fresh and relevant. People will always be lazy, bossy, vain, pretentious, and sentimental. The situations don't seem to have changed too much either : "We got to Waterloo at eleven, and asked where the eleven-five started from. Of course nobody knew; nobody at Waterloo ever does know where a train is going to start from, or where a train when it does start is going to, or anything about it."

People still tell urban legends and swear blind that they are true; people still leaf through medical encyclopaedias and realise, to their horror, that they suffer from every ailment described. "I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being 'a general disinclination to work of any kind'. What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it...They did not know, however, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness."

People still long for mustard when they can't get any, and still find it impossible to get away fr
om lovers while trying not to intrude on them, and still boast that they can make the best scrambled eggs in the world, only to produce a centimetre of burnt sludge, after half an hour of frantic activity. And I bet they always will. The loveliest thing about the book is that it makes you feel it's ok to be human, and useless, and make a fool of yourself – that this has been going on for centuries, and is unlikely to change; but that we're not entirely hopeless, as a species, because we have the capacity to laugh at ourselves. After I've finished laughing, it makes me feel all warm inside, because Jerome K. Jerome, or 'J', obviously loves people to bits, no matter how much fun he pokes at them.

One last quote, and yes, I am biased because it's about muffins.

"It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon, it says, 'Work!' After beefsteak and porter, it says 'Sleep!' After a cup of tea (two spoonfuls for each cup, and don't let it stand for more than three minutes), it says to the brain, 'Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with your clear eye, into Nature and into life...'

After hot muffins, it says, 'Be dull and soulless, like a beast of the field – a brainless animal with listless eye, unlit by any ray of fancy, or of hope, or fear, or love, or life.' And after brandy, taken in sufficient quantity, it says, 'Now, come, fool, grin and tumble, that your fellow-men may laugh – drivel in folly, and splutter in senseless sounds, and show what a helpless ninny is the poor man whose wit and will are drowned, like kittens, side by side, in half an inch of alcohol.' "

Sounds about right to me :-)

(You can read this book, for free, on th
e internet, at

http://www.classicbookshelf.com/library/readin groom/?code=208&book=three+men+i n+a+boat

or at the Internet Public Library:

http://www.ipl.org/reading/books

but it's only a pound, for a paper copy, too, from Penguin Classics.)

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