Three Men in a Boat - Chapter 13

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter thirteen 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 thirteen, Marlow
Bisham Abbey. The medium monks Montmorency thinks he will murder

(00:26):
an old tomcat, but eventually decides that he will let
it live. Shameful conduct of a fox terrier at the
Civil Service stores. Our departure from marlow an imposing procession,
the steam launch useful receipts for annoying and hindering it.

(00:47):
We decline to drink the river. A peaceful dog, strange
disappearance of Harris and a pie. Marlowe is one of
the pleasantest river centers I know of. It is a bustling,
lively little town. Not very picturesque on the whole, it

(01:07):
is true, but there are many quaint nooks and corners
to be found in it. Nevertheless, standing arches in the
shattered bridge of time over which our fancy travels back
to the days when Marlow manor owned Saxon Alger for
its lord ere conquering William seized it to give to
Queen Matilda ere it passed to the Earls of Warwick,

(01:29):
or to worldly wise Lord Paget, the councilor of four
successive sovereigns. There is lovely country round about it too,
if after boating you are fond of a walk, while
the river itself is at its best. Here down to Cookham,
past the quarry woods in the meadows is a lovely reach.
Dear old quarry Woods, with your narrow climbing paths and

(01:53):
little winding glades. How scented to this hour you seem
with memories of sunny summer days. How haunted are your
shadowy vistas, with the ghosts of laughing faces. How from
your whispering leaves there softly fall the voices of long ago.
From Marlow up to Sonning is even fairer yet. Grand

(02:16):
Old Bisham Abbey, whose stone walls have rung to the
shouts of the Knight's templars, and which at one time
was the home of Anne of Cleaves, and that another
of Queen Elizabeth, is passed on the right bank, just
half a mile above Marlow Bridge. Bisham Abbey is rich
in melodramatic properties. It contains a tapestry bedchamber and a

(02:38):
secret room, hid high up in the thick walls. The
ghost of the Lady Holy who beat her little boy
to death, still walks there at night, trying to wash
its ghostly hands clean in a ghostly basin. Warwick, the
Kingmaker rests there careless now about such trivial things as

(02:58):
earthly kings and earthly kingdoms. And Salisbury, who did good
service at Portier's. Just before you come to the abbey,
and right on the river's bank is Bisham Church. And
perhaps if any tombs are worth inspecting, they are the
tombs and monuments in Bishop Church. It was while floating
in his boat under the Bisham Beeches, that Shelley, who

(03:20):
was then living at Marlowe. You can see his house
now in West Street, composed The Revolt of Islam by
Hurley wear a little higher up. I have often thought
that I could stay a month without having sufficient time
to drink in all the beauty of the scene. The
village of Hurley, five minutes walk from the Loch, is

(03:41):
as old a little spot as there is on the river,
dating as it does to quote the ancient phraseology of
those dim days from the times of King Siebert and
King Offa. Just past the weir. Going up is danes Field,
where the invading Danes once encamped during their march to Gloucestershire.
And a little further still, nestling by a sweet corner

(04:03):
of the stream, is what is left of Mendenham Abbey.
The famous Mendenem Monks, or hell Fire Club, as they
were commonly called, and of whom the notorious Wilkes was
a member, were a fraternity whose motto was do as
you please, and that invitation still stands over the ruined
doorway of the abbey. Many years before this Bogus Abbey,

(04:26):
with its congregation of irreverend chesters, was founded, there stood
upon this same spot a monastery of her sterner kind,
whose monks were of a somewhat different type to the
revelers that were to follow them five hundred years afterwards.
The Cistercian monks whose abbey stood there in the thirteenth
century wore no clothes but rough tunics and cowls, and

(04:49):
ate no flesh, nor fish nor eggs. They lay upon straw,
and they rose at midnight to mass. They spent the
day in labor, reading and prayer, and over all their
lives there fell a silence as of death, for no
one spoke a grim fraternity passing grim lives in that
sweet spot that God had made so bright strange, that

(05:12):
nature's voices all around them, the soft singing of the waters,
the whisperings of the river grass, the music of the
rushing wind, should not have taught them a truer meaning
of life than this. They listened there through the long
days in silence, waiting for a voice from heaven, and
all day long, and through the solemn night it spoke
to them in myriad tones, and they heard it. Not

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From Mendenham to sweet Hambledon Locke, the river is full
of peaceful beauty, but after it passes Greenland's the rather
uninteresting looking river residence of my newsagent, a quiet, unassuming
old gentleman who may often be met with about these
regions during the summer months, sculling himself along in easy,

(05:57):
vigorous style, or chatting genially to some old lockkeeper as
he passes through. Until well the other side of Henley
it is somewhat bare and dull. We got up tolerably
early on the Monday morning at Marlowe and went for
a bathe before breakfast, and coming back Montmorency made an
awful ass of himself. The only subject on which Montmorency

(06:21):
and I have any serious difference of opinion is cats.
I like cats, Montmorency does not. When I meet a cat,
I say, poor pussy, and stop down and tickle the
side of its head. And the cat sticks up its
tail in a rigid cast iron manner, arches its back
and wipes his nose up against my trousers, and all

(06:41):
is gentleness and peace. When Montmorency meets a cat, the
whole street knows about it, and there is enough bad
language wasted in ten seconds to last an ordinary, respectable
man all his life with care. I do not blame
the dog, contenting myself as a rule, with merely clouding
his head or throwing stones at him, because I take

(07:04):
it that it is his nature. Fox terriers are born
with about four times as much original syn in them
as other dogs are, and it will take years and
years of patient effort on the part of us Christians
to bring about any appreciable reformation in the rowdiness of
the fox terrier nature. I remember being in the lobby

(07:25):
of the Haymarket stores one day, and all around me
were dogs waiting for the return of their owners, who
were shopping inside. There was a mastiff and one or
two colleagues, and a Saint Bernard, a few retrievers and Newfoundlands,
a boarhound, a French poodle with plenty of hair round
its head but mangy about the middle, a bulldog, a

(07:47):
few loather arcade sort of animals about the size of rats,
and a couple of Yorkshire tikes. There they sat, patient,
good and thoughtful. A solemn peacefulness seemed to reign in
that lot. An air of calmness and resignation of gentle
sadness pervaded the room. Then a sweet young lady entered,

(08:08):
leading a meek looking little fox terrier and left him
chained up there between the bull dog and the poodle.
He sat and looked about him for a minute. Then
he cast up his eyes to the ceiling and seemed,
judging from his expression, to be thinking of his mother.
Then he yawned. Then he looked round at the other dogs,
all silent, grave and dignified. He looked at the bull

(08:32):
dog sleeping dreamlessly on his right. He looked at the poodle,
erect and haughty on his left. Then, without a word,
of warning, without the shadow of a provocation, he bit
that poodle's near fore leg, and a yelp of agony
rang through the quiet shades of that lobby. The result
of his first experiment seemed highly satisfactory to him, and

(08:56):
he determined to go on and make things lively all round.
He sprang over the poodle and vigorously attacked a collie,
and the collie woke up and immediately commenced a fierce
and noisy contest with the poodle. Then Foxy came back
to his own place and caught the bulldog by the
ear and tried to throw them away, and the bulldog,

(09:17):
a curiously impartial animal, went for everything he could reach,
including the hall porter, which gave that dear little terrier
the opportunity to enjoy an uninterrupted fight of his own
with an equally willing Yorkshire tyke. Anyone who knows canine
nature need hardly be told that by this time all

(09:37):
the other dogs in the place were fighting, as if
their hearts and homes depended on the fray. The big
dogs fought each other indiscriminately, and the little dogs fought
among themselves and filled up their spare time by biting
the legs of the big dogs. The whole lobby was
a perfect pandemonium, and the din was terrific. A crowd
assembled outside in the haymarket and asked if it was

(10:00):
a vestry meeting, or if not, who was being murdered
and why. Men came with poles and ropes and tried
to separate the dogs, and the police were sent for.
And in the midst of the riot, that sweet young
lady returned and snatched up that sweet little dog of hers.
He had laid the tight cup for a month and
had on the expression now of a newborn lamb into

(10:23):
her arms and kissed him and asked him if he
was killed, and what those great nasty brutes of dogs
had been doing to him. And he nestled up against
her and gazed up into her face with a look
that seemed to say, Oh, I'm so glad you've come
to take me away from this disgraceful scene. She said
that the people at the stores had no right to

(10:45):
allow great savage things like those other dogs to be
put with respectable people's dogs, and that she had a
great mind to summon somebody such is the nature of
fox terriers and Therefore I did not blame my Morency
for his tendency to row with cats, but he wished
he had not given way to it. That morning, we were,

(11:07):
as I have said, returning from a dip, and halfway
up the high street. A cat darted out from one
of the houses in front of us and began to
trot across the road. Mount Moreency gave a cry of joy,
the cry of a stern warrior who seized his enemy
given over to his hands, the sort of cry Cromwell
might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill

(11:29):
and flew after his prey. His victim was a large
black tom. I never saw a larger cat, nor a
more disreputable looking cat. It had lost half its tail,
one of its ears, and a fairly appreciable portion of
its nose. It was a long, sinewy looking animal. It
had a calm, contented air about it. Mount Moreency went

(11:53):
for that poor cat at the rate of twenty miles
an hour. But the cat did not hurry up, did
not seem to have grasped the idea that its life
was in danger. It trotted quietly on until it would
be assassin. Was within a yard of it, and then
turned round and sat down in the middle of the
road and looked at Montmorency with a gentle, inquiring expression
that said, yes you want me. Mont Moreency does not

(12:19):
lack pluck, but there was something about the look of
that cat that might have chilled the heart of the
boldest dog. He stopped abruptly and looked back at Tom.
Neither spoke, but the conversation that one could imagine was
clearly as follows. The cat, can I do anything for you? Montmorency, No, no, thanks,

(12:43):
the cat. Don't you mind speaking? If you really want anything?
You know? Mont Moreency backing down the high street. Oh no,
not at all, certainly, don't be trouble. I'm afraid I'm
made mistake. I sorry I disturbed you. The cat not

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at all, quite a pleasure. Sure you don't want anything now,
mont Morency, still backing, Not at all, thanks, note at all,
very kind of you. Good morning the cat. Good morning.
Then the cat rose and continued his trot, and Montmorency,

(13:25):
fitting what he calls his tail carefully into its groove,
came back to us and took up an unimportant position
in the rear. To this day, if you say the
word cats to Montmorency. He will visibly shrink and look
up piteously at you, as if to say, please don't.
We did our marketing after breakfast and revictualed the boat

(13:48):
for three days. George said, well, you ought to take vegetables,
that it was unhealthy not to eat vegetables. He said
they were easy enough to cook, and that he would
see to that. So we got ten pounds of potatoes,
a bushel of peas, and a few cabbages. We got
a beef steak pie, a couple of gooseberry tarts, and
a leg of mutton from the hotel, and fruit and cakes,

(14:10):
and bread and butter and jam and bacon and eggs
and other things. We forage drowned about the town for
our departure from Marlowe. I regard as one of our
greatest successes. It was dignified and impressive, without being ostentatious.
We had insisted at all the shops we had been
to that the things should be sent with us then

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and there none of your yes, sir, I will send
them off at once. The boy will be down there
before you are, sir. And then fooling about on the
landing stage and going back to the shop twice to
have a row about them. For us, we waited while
the basket was packed, and took the boy with us.
We went to a good many shops, adopting this principle

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at each one, and the consequence was that by the
time we had finished, we had as fine a collection
of boys with baskets following us around his heart could desire,
and our final march down the middle of High Street
to the river must have been as imposing a spectacle
as Marlowe has seen for many a long day. The
order of the procession was as follows. Montmorency carrying a stick,

(15:17):
two disreputable looking curs friends of Montmorency's George carrying coats
and rugs and smoking a short pipe. Harris trying to
walk with easy grace while carrying a bulged out gladstone
bag in one hand and a bottle of lime juice
in the other. Greengrocer's boy and baker's boy with baskets,

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boots from the hotel carrying hamper, confectioner's boy with basket,
grocer's boy with basket, long haired dog, cheesemonger's boy with basket,
odd Man carrying a bag, bosom companion of odd man
with his hands in his pockets, smoking a short clay

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Fruder's boy with basket, myself carrying three hats and a
pair of boots, and trying to look as if I
didn't know it. Six small boys and four stray dogs.
When we got down to the landing stage, the boatman said,
let me see, sir, was a steam launch or a

(16:25):
houseboat on our informing him it was a double sculling skiff.
He seemed surprised. We had a good deal of trouble
with steam launches that morning. It was just before the
Henley Week, and they were going up in large numbers,
some by themselves, some towing houseboats. I do hate steam launches,

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I suppose every rowing man does. I never see a
steam launch, but I feel I should like to lure
it to a lonely part of the river, and there,
in the silence and the solitude, strangle it. There is
a blatant bumptiousness about a steam launch that has the
knack of rousing every evil instinct in my nature. And

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I yearned for the good old days when you could
go about and tell people what you thought of them
with a hatchet and a bow and arrows. The expression
on the face of the man who, with his hands
in his pockets, stands by the stern smoking a cigar
is sufficient to excuse a breach of the piece by itself,
and the lordly whistle for you to get out of

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the way. Would I am confident ensure a verdict of
justifiable homicide from any jury of rivermen they used to
have to whistle for us to get out of their way,
If I may do so without appearing boastful, I think
I can honestly say that our one small boat during
that week caused more annoyance and delay and aggravation to

(17:50):
the steam launches that we came across than all the
other craft on the river put together. Steam launch coming,
one of us would cry out, sighting the enemy in
the distance, and in an instant everything was got ready
to receive her. I would take the lines, and Harris
and George would sit down beside me, all of us

(18:10):
with our backs to the launch, and the boat would
drift out quietly into midstream. On would come the launch whistling,
and on we would go, drifting at about one hundred
yards off. She would start whistling like mad, and the
people would come and lean over the side and roar
at us, but we never heard them. Harris would be

(18:31):
telling us an anecdote about his mother and George and
I would not have missed a word of it for worlds.
Then that launch would give one final shriek of a
whistle that would nearly burst the boiler, and she would
reverse her engines and blow off steam and swing round
and get a ground. Everyone on board of it would

(18:51):
rush to the bow and yell at us, and the
people on the bank would stand and shout to us,
and all the other passing boats would stop and join in,
till the whole river from miles up and down was
in the state of frantic commotion. And then Harris would
break off in the most interesting part of his narrative
and look up with mild surprise and say to George,

(19:13):
why George, bless me if here is in a steam launch?
And George would answer, well, do you know I thought
I heard something upon which we would get nervous and
confused and not know how to get the boat out
of the way, and the people in the launch would
crowd round us and instruct us pull your right you

(19:35):
you're idiot back with your left No, not you, the
other one. Leave the lines alone. Can't you now pull together?
Not that way, oh you. Then they would lower a
boat and come to our assistance, and after a quarter
of an hour's effort, would get us clean out of
their way so that they could go on, and we

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would thank them so much. I asked them to give
us a tow, but they never would. Another good way
we discovered of irritating the aristocratic type of steam launch
was to mistake them for a bean feast and ask
them if they were Messrs Cubit's Lot or the Bermansey
good Templars, and could they lend us a saucepan. Old

(20:20):
ladies not accustomed to the river are always intensely nervous
of steam launches. I remember going up once from stains
to windsor a stretch of water peculiarly rich in these
mechanical monstrosities, with a party containing three ladies of this description.
It was very exciting. At the first glimpse of every

(20:40):
steam launch that came in view, they insisted on landing
and sitting down on the bank until it was out
of sight again. They said they were very sorry, but
that they owed it to their families not to be foolhardy.
We found ourselves short of water at Hambledon lock, so
we took our jar and went up to the lock
keeper's house to beg for some. George was our spokesman.

(21:03):
He put on a winning smile and said, oh please,
could you spare us a little water? Certainly, replied the
old gentleman. Take as much as you want and leave
the rest. Thank you so much, murmured George, looking about him.
Where where do you keep it? It's always in the

(21:24):
same place, my boy, was the stolid reply. Just behind you.
I don't see it, said George, turning round. Why bless us,
where's your eyes? Was the man's comment, as he twisted
George round to point it up and down the stream.
There's enough of it to see, ain't there, oh, exclaimed George,

(21:46):
grasping the idea. But we can't drink the river, you know, no.
But you can drink some of it, replied the old fellow.
It's what I've drunk for the last fifteen years. George
told him that his appearance after the course did not
seem a sufficiently good advertisement for the brand, and that

(22:08):
he would prefer it out of a pump. We got
some from a cottage a little higher up. I dare
say that was only river water if we had known,
but we did not know, so it was all right.
What the eye does not see, the stomach does not
get upset over. We tried river water once later on
in the season, but it was not a success. We

(22:31):
were coming down stream and had pulled up to have
tea in a backwater near Windsor. Our jar was empty
and it was a case of going without the tea
or taking water from the river. Harris was for chancing it.
He said it must be all right if we boiled
the water. He said that the various germs or poison
present in the water would be killed by the boiling.

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So we filled our kettle with Thames backwater and boiled it,
and very careful we were to see that it did boil.
We had made the tea were just settling down comfortably
to drink it when George, with his cup halfway to
his lips, paused and exclaimed, what's that? What's what? Asked
Harris and I Why that, said George? Looking westward. Harris

(23:16):
and I followed his gaze and saw coming down towards
us on the sluggish current a dog. It was one
of the quietest and peacefulest dogs I have ever seen.
I never met a dog who seemed more contented, more
easy in its mind. It was floating dreamily on its back,
with its four legs stuck up straight into the air.
It was what I should call a full bodied dog

(23:39):
with a well developed chest on. He came serene, dignified,
and calm until he was abreast of our boat, and
there among the rushes he eased up and settled down
cozily for the evening. George said he didn't want any
tea and emptied his cup into the water. Harris did
not feel thirsty either, and followed suit. I had drunk

(24:01):
half mine, but I wish I had not. I asked
George if he thought I was likely to have typhoid.
He said, oh, no, he thought I had a very
good chance indeed of escaping it. Anyhow, I should know
in about a fortnight whether I had or had not.
We went up the backwater to Wargrave. It is a

(24:24):
shortcut leading out of the right hand bank about half
a mile above Marshlock, and is well worth taking, being
a pretty shady little piece of stream. Besides saving nearly
half a mile of distance, of course, its entrances, studded
with posts and chains, and surrounded with notice boards, menacing
all kinds of torture, imprisonment, and death to everyone who

(24:49):
dares set skull upon its waters. I wonder some of
these Riparian boors don't claim the air of the river
and threatened everyone with forty shillings. Fine who eaves it,
But the posts and chains a little skill will easily avoid.
And as for the boards, you might, if you have
five minutes to spare and there is nobody about, take

(25:11):
one or two of them down and throw them into
the river. Halfway up the backwater, we got out and lunched,
and it was during this lunch that George and I
received rather a trying shock. Harris received a shock too,
But I do not think Harris's shock could have been
anything like so bad as the shock that George and
I had over the business. You see, it was in

(25:35):
this way. We were sitting in a meadow about ten
yards from the water's edge, and we had just settled
down comfortably to feed. Harris had the beefsteak pie between
his knees and was carving it, and George and I
were waiting with our plates. Ready. Have you got a
spoon there? Says Harris. I want a spoon to help.

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The gravy with the hamper was close behind us, and
George and I both turned around to reach one out.
We were not five seconds getting it. When we looked
round again, Harris and the pie were gone. It was
a wide open field. There was not a tree or
a bit of a hedge for hundreds of yards. He
could not have tumbled into the river because we were

(26:17):
on the water side of him, and he would have
had to climb over us to do it. George and
I gazed about. Then we gazed at each other. Has
he been snatched up to Heaven? I queried? They hardly
have taken a pie too, said George. There seemed some
weight in this objection, and we discarded the heavenly theory.

(26:40):
I suppose the truth of the matter is, suggested George,
descending to the commonplace and practicable, that there has been
an earthquake. And then he added, with a touch of
sadness in his voice, I wish it hadn't been carving
that pie. With a sigh, we turned our eyes once
more towards the spot where Harris and the pie had

(27:01):
last been seen on earth. And there, as our blood
froze in our veins and our hair stood up on end,
we saw Harris's head, and nothing but his head sticking
bolt upright among the tall grass, a face very red
and bearing upon it an expression of great indignation. George
was the first to recover speak. He cried, now tell

(27:24):
us whether you are alive or dead? And where was
the rest of you? Oh, don't be a stupid ass,
said Harris's head. I believe you didn't our purpose? Did what?
Exclaimed George? And I why put me to sit here?
Don silly trick? Here? Catch hold of the pie, and

(27:46):
out of the middle of the earth, as it seemed
to us, rose the pie, very much mixed up and damaged,
And after it scrambled, Harris tumbled, grubby and wet. He
had been sitting without knowing it, on the veryverge of
a small gully, the long grass hiding it from view,
and in leaning a little back, he had shot over
pie and all. He said, he had never felt so

(28:10):
surprised in all his life as when he first felt
himself going without being able to conjecture in the slightest
what had happened. He thought at first that the end
of the world had come. Harris believes to this day
that George and I planned it all beforehand. Thus does
unjust suspicion follow even the most blameless, For, as the

(28:31):
poet says, who shall escape calumny? Who? Indeed? End of
Chapter thirteen.