Three Men in a Boat - Chapter 12

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter twelve of three men in a boat to say
nothing of the dog. This LibriVox recording is in the
public domain. Three Men in a boat, to say Nothing
of the Dog? By Jerome K. Jerome, Chapter twelve, Henry
the Eighth and Anne Boleyn. Disadvantages of living in same

(00:23):
house with pair of lovers. A trying time for the
English nation. A night search for the picturesque, homeless and houseless.
Harris prepares to die. An angel comes along, effect of
sudden joy on Harris. A little supper lunch, high price

(00:50):
for mustard, a fearful battle maidenhead sailing three fishers. We
are cursed. I was sitting on the bank conjuring up
this scene to myself when George remartha, when I was
quite rested, perhaps I would not mind helping to wash up,

(01:14):
and thus recalled from the days of the glorious past
to the prosaic present, with all its misery and sin.
I slid down into the boat and cleaned out the
frying pan with a stick of wood and a tuft
of grass, polishing it up finally with George's wet shirt.
We went over to Magna Carta Island and had to

(01:34):
look at the stone which stands in the cottage there,
and on which the Great Charter is said to have
been signed. Though as to whether it really was signed
there or, as some say, on the other bank at
Running Mead, I declined to commit myself. As far as
my own personal opinion goes. However, I am inclined to
give way to the popular island theory. Certainly, had I

(01:57):
been one of the barons at the time, should have
strongly urged upon my comrades the advisability of our getting
such a slippery customer as King John onto the island
where there was less chance of surprises and tricks. There
are ruins of an old priory in the grounds of
Anchorwick House, which is close to Picnic Point, and it

(02:18):
was round about the grounds of this old priory that
Henry the eighth is said to have waited for and
met Anne Boleyn. He also used to meet her at
her castle in Kent, and also somewhere near Saint Albans.
It must have been difficult for the people of England
in those days to have found a spot where these
thoughtless young folk were not spooning.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Have you ever been in.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
A house where there are a couple courting. It is
most trying. You think you will go and sit in
the drawing room, and you march off there. As you
open the door, you hear a noise as if somebody
had suddenly recollected something. And when you get in, Emily
is over by the window, full of interest, in the
opposite side of the road, and your friend John Edward

(03:03):
is at the other end of the room, with his
whole soul held him thrall by photographs of other people's relatives. Oh,
you say, pausing at the door. I didn't know anybody
was here. Oh didn't you, says Emily coldly, in a
tone which implies that she does not believe you. You

(03:23):
hang about for a bit, then you say it's very dark.
Why don't you like the gas? John Edward says, oh,
he hadn't noticed it, and Emily says that Papa does
not like the gas lit In the afternoon, you tell
them one or two items of news and give them
your views and opinions on the Irish question. But this
does not appear to interest them. All they remark on

(03:46):
any subject is oh is it?

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Did he? Yes? You don't say so.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
And after ten minutes of such style, of conversation. You
edge up to the door and slip out, and are
surprised to find that the door immediately closes behind you
and shuts itself without your having touched it. Half an
hour later, you think you will try a pipe in
the conservatory. The only chair in the place is occupied
by Emily and John Edward, if the language of clothes

(04:18):
can be relied upon, has evidently been sitting on the floor.
They do not speak, but they give you a look
that says all that can be said in a civilized community,
and you back out promptly and shut the door behind you.
You are afraid to poke your nose into any room
in the house now, so after walking up and down

(04:39):
the stairs for a while, you go and sit in
your own bedroom. This becomes uninteresting, however, after a time,
so you put on your hat and stroll out into
the garden. You walk down the path, and as you
pass the summer house, you glance in, and there are
those two young idiots huddled up into one corner. And

(05:00):
they see you, and are evidently under the idea that,
for some wicked purpose of your own, you are following
them about why don't they have a special room for
this sort of thing and make people keep to it.
You mutter, and you rush back to the hall and
get your umbrella and go out. It must have been

(05:21):
much like this when that foolish boy Henry the eighth
was courting his little Anne. People in Buckinghamshire would have
come upon them unexpectedly when they were mooning round windsor
in Rasebury and have exclaimed, oh, you here, And Henry
would have blushed and said yes, he'd just come over

(05:42):
to see a man. And Anne would have said, oh,
I'm so glad to see you, isn't it funny? I've
just met mister Henry the eighth in the lane and
he's going the same way i am. Then those people
would have gone away and said to themselves, Oh, we
better get out of here while this billing and cooing
is on. We'll go down to Kent. And they would

(06:03):
go to Kent, and the first thing they would see
in Kent when they got there would be Henry and
Anne fooling round Heaver Castle. Oh drat this, they would
have said, here, let's go away. I can't stand any
more of it. Let's go to Saint Albans, nice quiet place.
Saint Albans and when they reached Saint Albans there would

(06:25):
be that wretched couple kissing under the abbey walls. Then
these folks would go and be pirates until the marriage
was over. From Picnic Point to Old Windsor Lock is
a delightful bit of the river. A shady road dotted
here and there with dainty little cottages, runs by the
bank up to the bells of Alsley. A picturesque inn,

(06:49):
as most upriver inns are, and a place where a
very good glass of ale may be drunk, so Harris says.
And on a matter of this kind you can take
Harris's word. Old Windsor is a famous spot in its way.
Edward the Confessor had a palace here, and here the
Great Earl Godwin was proved guilty by the justice of

(07:11):
that age of having encompassed the death of the King's brother.
Earl Godwin broke a piece of bread and held it
in his hand. If I am guilty, said the Earl,
may this bread choke me when I eat it. Then
he put the bread into his mouth and swallowed it,
and it choked him, and he died. After you pass

(07:33):
Old Windsor, the river is somewhat uninteresting and does not
become itself again until you were nearing Boveny. George and
I towed up past the home park which stretches along
the right bank from Albert to Victoria Bridge, And as
we were passing Datchet, George asked me if I remembered
our first trip up the river and when we landed

(07:54):
at Datchet at ten o'clock at night and wanted to
go to bed. I answered that I did remember it.
It will be some time before I forget it. It
was the Saturday before the August Bank Holiday. We were
tired and hungry. We same three, and when we got
to Datchet we took out the hamper, the two bags,

(08:14):
and the rugs and coats and such like things, and
started off to look for diggings. We passed a very
pretty little hotel with clematis and creeper over the porch,
but there was no honeysuckle about it, And for some
reason or other I had got my mind fixed on honeysuckle,
and I said, oh, don't let's go in there. Let's

(08:36):
go on a bit further and see if there isn't
one with honeysuckle over it. So we went on till
we came to another hotel that was a very nice
hotel too, and it had honeysuckle on it round at
the side. But Harris did not like the look of
a man who was leaning against the front door. He
said he didn't look a nice man at all, and

(08:57):
he wore ugly boots. So we went on further. We
went a goodish way without coming across any more hotels,
and then we met a man and asked him to
direct us to a few. He said, why you're coming
away from them, You must turn right around and go back,
and then you will come to the stag. We said, oh,

(09:19):
we had been there and didn't like it. No honeysuckle
over it. Well, then he said, there's the manor house
just opposite.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
Have you tried that?

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Harris said that we did not want to go there.
Didn't like the looks of a man who was stopping there.
Harris didn't like the color of his hair, didn't like
his boots either.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Well, I don't know what you'll.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Do, I'm sure, said our informant, because they're the only
two INDs in the place. No other ends, exclaimed Harris, none,
replied the man.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
What on earth are we to do?

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Cried Harris. Then George spoke up. He said, Harris and
I could get in a hotel built for us if
we liked, and have some people made to put in.
For his part, he was going back to the stag.
The greatest minds never released their ideals in any matter,
and Harris and I sighed over the hollowness of all

(10:16):
earthly desires, and followed George. We took our traps into
the stag and laid them down in the hall. The
landlord came up and said, good evening, gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
How good evening, said George. We want three beds. Please.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Very sorry, sir, said the landlord, but I'm afraid we
can't manage it. Oh well, never mind, said George.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Two will do.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Two of us can sleep in one bed, can't we,
he continued, turning to Harris and me. Harris said, oh yes,
he thought George and I could sleep in one bed
very easily. Very sorry, Sir, again, repeated the lord. But
we really haven't got a bed vacant in the whole house.
In fact, we are putting two and even three gentlemen

(11:07):
in one bed as it is. This staggered us for
a bit, but Harris, who was an old traveler rose
to the occasion and laughingly, cheeringly said.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Oh, well, we can't help it. We must rough it.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
You must give us a shakedown in the billiard room.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Very sorry, sir.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Three gentlemen sleeping on the billiard table already, and two
in the coffee room, can't possibly take you in tonight.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
We picked up our.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Things and went over to the manor house. It was
a pretty little place. I said, I thought I should
like it better than the other house. And Harris said, oh, yes,
it would be all right, And we needn't look at
the man with the red hair. Besides, the poor fellow
couldn't help having red hair. Harris spoke quite kindly and
sensibly about it. The people at the manor house did

(11:58):
not wait to hear us. The landlady met us on
the doorstep with the greeting that we were the fourteenth
party she had turned away within the last hour and
a half. As for our meek suggestions of stables, billiard
room or coal cellars, she laughed them all to scorn.
All these nooks had been snatched up long ago. Did

(12:20):
she know of any place in the whole village where
we could get shelter?

Speaker 2 (12:23):
For the night.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well, if we didn't mind roughing it. She did not
recommend it mine. But there was a little beer shop
half a mile down the Elton road. We waited to
hear no more. We caught up the hamper and the bags,
and the coats and rugs and parcels, and ran. The
distance seemed more like a mile than half a mile,
but we reached the place at last and rushed panting

(12:47):
into the bar. The people at the beer shop were rude.
They merely laughed at us. There were only three beds
in the whole house, and they had seven single gentlemen
and two married couples sleep there already. A kind hearted bargeman, however,
who happened to be in the top room, thought we
might try the grocer's next door to the stag, and

(13:09):
we went back. The grocer's was full. An old woman
we met in the shop then kindly took us along
with her for a quarter of a mile to a
lady friend of hers, who occasionally let rooms to gentlemen.
This old woman walked very slowly, and we were twenty
minutes getting to her lady friends. She enlivened the journey

(13:29):
by describing to us as we trailed along the various
pains she had in her back. Her lady's friend's rooms
were lit. From there. We were recommended to number twenty seven.
Number twenty seven was full, and sent us to number
thirty two, and thirty two was full. Then we went
back into the high road, and Harris sat down on

(13:50):
the hamper and said he would go no further. He
said it seemed a quiet spot and he would like
to die there. He requested George and me to kiss
his mother for him, and to tell all his relations
that he forgave them and died happy. At that moment,
an angel came by in the disguise of a small boy,
and I cannot think of any more effect of disguise

(14:12):
than angel could have assumed, with a can of beer
in one hand and in the other something at the
end of a string, which he let down onto every
flat stone he came across, and then pulled up again,
this producing a peculiarly unattractive sound suggestive of suffering. We
asked this heavenly messenger, as we discovered him afterwards, to

(14:34):
be if he knew of any lonely house whose occupants
were few and feeble old ladies or paralyzed gentlemen preferred,
who could be easily frightened into giving up their beds
for the night to three desperate men. Or if not this,
could he recommend us to an empty pig sty, or
a disused lime kiln, or anything.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Of that sort.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
He did not know of any such place, at least
not one handy, But he said that if we liked
to come with him, his mother had a room to
spare and could put us up for the night. We
fell upon his neck there in the moonlight and blessed him,
and it would have made a very beautiful picture if
the boy himself had not been so overpowered by our

(15:17):
emotion as to be unable to sustain himself under it,
and sunk to the ground, letting us all down on.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
Top of him. Harris was so overcome.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
With joy that he fainted and had to seize the
boy's beer cannon half empty it before he could recover consciousness,
And then he started off at a run and left
George and me to bring on the luggage. It was
a little four roomed cottage where the boy lived, and
his mother, good soul, gave us hot bacon for supper,

(15:47):
and we ate it all five pounds and a jam
tart afterwards, and two pots of tea, and then we
went to bed. There were two beds in the room.
One was a two foot six in truckle bed, and
George and I slept in that and kept in by
tying ourselves together with a sheet. And the other was
the little boy's bed, and Harris had that all to himself,

(16:11):
and we found him in the morning with two feet
of bare legs sticking out at the bottom, and George
and I used it to hang the towels on while
we bathed. We were not so uppish about what sort
of hotel we would have next time. We went to
Datchet to return to our present trip. Nothing exciting happened,
and we tugged steadily on to a little below Monkey Island,

(16:33):
where we drew up and lunched. We tackled the cold
beef for lunch, and then we found that we had
forgotten to bring any mustard. I don't think I ever
in my life before or since, felt I wanted mustard
as badly as I felt I wanted it then. I
don't care for mustard as a rule, and it is
very seldom that I take it at all, but I

(16:54):
would have given worlds for it.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
Then. I don't know how.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
Many worlds there may be in the universe, but anyone
who had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that
precise moment could have had them all.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
I grow reckless.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Like that when I want a thing and can't get it.
Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard too.
It would have been a good thing for anybody who
had come up to that spot with a can of mustard.
Then he would have been set up in worlds for
the rest of his life. But there, I dare say

(17:29):
both Harris and I would have tried to back out
of the bargain after we had got the mustard. One
makes these extravagant offers in moments of excitement, but of
course when one comes to think of it, one sees
how absurdly out of proportion they are with the value
of the required article. I heard a man going up
a mountain in Switzerland once say he would give worlds

(17:51):
for a glass of beer, And when he came to
a little shanty where they kept it, he kicked up
a most fearful row because they charged him five francs
for a bottle of bass. He said it was a
scandalous imposition, and he wrote to the Times about it.
He cast a gloom.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Over the boat.

Speaker 1 (18:11):
There being no mustard, we ate our beef in silence.
Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting. We thought of the happy
days of childhood and sighed. We brightened up a bit, however,
over the apple tart. And when George drew out a
tin of pineapple from the bottom of the hamper and
rolled it into the middle of the boat, we felt

(18:32):
that life was worth living. After all, we are very
fond of pineapple, all three of us. We looked at
the picture on the tin, We thought of the juice.
We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready.
Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with.
We turned out everything in the hamper, We turned out

(18:53):
the bags, We pulled up the boards at the bottom
of the boat. We took everything out on the bank
and shook it. There was no tin opener to be found.
Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket
knife and broke the knife and cut himself badly. And
George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew
up and nearly put his eye out while they were

(19:15):
dressing their wounds. I tried to make a hole in
the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and
the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat
and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and
the tin rolled over, uninjured and broke a tea cup.
Then we all got mad. We took that tin out
on the bank, and Harris went up into a field

(19:36):
and got a big sharp stone. And I went back
into the boat and brought out the mast, and George
held the tin, and Harris held the sharp end of
the stone against the top of it. And I took
the mast and poised it high up in the air,
and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.
It was George's straw hat that saved his.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Life that day. He keeps that hat now. What is
lef it?

Speaker 1 (20:00):
And of a winter's evening, when the pipes are lit
and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they
have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round,
and the stirring tale is told anew with fresh exaggerations.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Every time. Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
After that, I took the tin off myself and hammered
at it with the mast till I was worn out
and sick at heart.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Whereupon Harris took it in hand.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
We beat it out flat, we beat it back square,
We battered it into every form known to geometry, but
we could not make a hole in it. Then George
went at it and knocked it into a shape so strange,
so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he
got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all

(20:52):
three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.
There was one great tent across the top that had
the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious,
so that Harris rushed at the thing and caught it
up and flung it far into the middle of the river,
And as it sank, we hurled our curses at it.
And we got into the boat and rowed away from

(21:14):
the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead. Maidenhead
itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It is the
haunt of the river Swell and his overdressed female companion.
It is the town of showy hotels, patronized chiefly by
dudes and ballet girls. It is the witch's kitchen from

(21:35):
which go forth those demons of the river. Steam launches
the London Journal. Duke always has his little place at Maidenhead,
and the heroine of the three volume novel always dines
there when she goes out on the spree with someone
else's husband. We went through Maidenhead quickly, and then eased

(21:55):
up and took leisurely that grand reach beyond bolters and
cook them locks, cleave it in. Woods still wore their
dainty dress of spring, and rose up from the water's
edge in one long harmony of blended shades of fairy green.
In its unbroken loveliness, this is perhaps the sweetest stretch of.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
All the river.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
And lingeringly we slowly drew our little boat away from
its deep peace. We pulled up in the backwater just
below cook them and had tea. And when we were
through the lock it was evening a stiffish breeze had
sprung up in our favor. For a wonder, For as
a rule, on the river, the wind is always dead

(22:38):
against you. Whatever way you go, it is against you.
In the morning, when you start for a day's trip,
and you pull a long distance, thinking how easy it
will be to come back with the sail. Then after
tea the wind veers round, and you have to pull
hard in its teeth all the way home. When you
forget to take the sail at all, then the wind

(22:58):
is consistently in your favor both ways. But there this
world is only a probation, and man was born to trouble.
As the sparks fly upward this evening, however, they had
evidently made a mistake, and had put the wind round
at our back instead of in our face. We kept
very quiet about it, and got the sail up quickly

(23:20):
before they found it out. And then we spread ourselves
about the boat in thoughtful attitudes. And the sail bellied
out and strained and grumbled at the mast, and the
boat flew.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
I steered.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
There is no more thrilling sensation I know of than sailing.
It comes as near to flying as man has got
to yet, except in dreams. The wings of the rushing
wind seemed to be bearing you onward. You know not
where you are. No longer the slow, plodding, puny thing
of clay creeping tortuously upon the ground. You are a

(23:56):
part of nature. Your heart is throbbing against hers, her
glorious arms around you, raising you up against her heart.
Your spirit is at one with hers. Your limbs grow light.
The voices of the air are singing to you. The
earth seemed far away and little, and the clouds so
close above your head are brothers, and you stretch your

(24:19):
arms to them. We had the river to ourselves, except
that far in the distance we could see a fishing
punt moored in mid stream, on which three fishermen sat.
And we skimmed over the water and passed the wooded banks,
and no one spoke. I was steering. As we drew nearer,
we could see that the three men fishing seem old

(24:40):
and solemn looking men. They sat on three chairs in
the punt and watched intently their lines. And the red
sun set through a mystic light upon the waters, and
tinged with fire the towering woods, and made a golden
glory of the piled up clouds. It was an hour
of deep enchantment of it, ecstatic hope and longing. The

(25:02):
little sail stood out against the purple sky. The gloaming
lay around us, wrapping the world in rainbow shadows. And
behind us crept the night. We seemed like knights of
some old legend, sailing across some mystic lake into the
unknown realm of twilight, unto the great land of the sunset.

(25:23):
We did not go into the realm of twilight. We
went slap into that punt where those three old men
were fishing. We did not know what had happened at first,
because the sail shut out the view. But from the
nature of the language that rose up upon the evening air,
we gathered that we had come into the neighborhood of
human beings, and that they were vexed and discontented. Harris

(25:47):
let the sail down, and then we saw what had happened.
We had knocked those three old gentlemen off their chairs
into a general heap at the bottom of the boat,
and they were now slowly and painfully sorting themselves out
of each other and picking fish off themselves. And as
they worked they cursed us, not with a common cursory curse,

(26:08):
but with long, carefully thought out, comprehensive curses that embraced
the whole of our career and went away into the
distant future, and included all our relations and covered everything
connected with us good substantial curses. Harris told them they
ought to be grateful for a little excitement sitting there
fishing all day. And he also said that he was

(26:30):
shocked and grieved to hear men their age give way
to temper. So but it did not do any good.
George said he would steer after that. He said, a
mind like mine ought not to be expected to give
itself away in steering boats. Better let a mere commonplace
human beings see after that boat before we jolly well
all got drowned. And he took the lines and brought

(26:53):
us up to Marlow. And at Marlow we left the
boat by the bridge and went and put up for
the night at the Crown

Speaker 2 (27:02):
End of Chapter twelve.