Three Men in a Boat - Chapter 15

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter fifteen 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 fifteen. Household Duties,
love of work, the old riverhead, what he does and

(00:23):
what he tells you he has done. Skepticism of the
new generation, early voting, recollections, rafting, George does the thing
in style. The old boatman, his method so calm, so
full of peace, the beginner punting a sad accident, Pleasures

(00:46):
of friendship, sailing my first experience, possible reason why we
were not drowned. We woke late the next morning and,
at Harris's earnest desire, partook of a plain breakfast with
non dainties. Then we cleaned up and put everything straight

(01:07):
a continual laborer, which was beginning to afford me a
pretty clear insight into a question that had often posed me, namely,
how a woman with the work of only one house
on her hands manages to pass away her time. And
at about ten set out on what we had determined
should be a good day's journey. We agreed that we

(01:28):
would pull this morning as a change from towing, and
Harris thought the best arrangement would be that George and
I should skull and he steer. I did not chime
in with this idea at all, I said. I thought
Harris would have been showing a more proper spirit if
he had suggested that he and George should work and
let me rest a bit. It seemed to me that

(01:51):
I was doing more than my fair share of the
work on this trip, and I was beginning to feel
strongly on the subject. It always does seem to me
that I am doing more work than I should do.
It is not that I object to the work, mind you.
I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and
look at it for hours. I love to keep it

(02:12):
by me. The idea of getting rid of it nearly
breaks my heart. You cannot give me too much work
to accumulate. Work has almost become a passion with me.
My study is so full of it now that there
is hardly an inch of room for any more. I
shall have to throw out a wing soon. And I

(02:32):
am careful of my work too. Why some of the
work that I have by me now has been in
my possession for years and years, and there isn't a
finger mark on it. I take a great pride in
my work. I take it down now and then indust it.
No man keeps his work in a better state of
preservation than I do. But though I crave for work,

(02:53):
I still like to be fair. I do not ask
for more than my proper share, but I get it
without any asking for it, at least so it appears
to me, and this worries me. George says he does
not think I need trouble myself on the subject. He
thinks it is only my overscrupulous nature that makes me
fear I am having more than my doing, and that

(03:15):
as a matter of fact, I don't have half as
much as I ought. But I expect he only says
this to comfort me. In a boat, I have always
noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member
of the crew that he is doing everything. Harris's notion
was that it was he alone who had been working,
and that both George and I had been imposing upon him. George,

(03:38):
on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of Harris as
having done anything more than eat and sleep, and had
a cast iron opinion that it was he, George himself,
who had done all the labor worth speaking of he
said he had never been out with such a couple
of lazily skulks as Harris and I That amused Harris.

(03:59):
Fancy all well, George talking about work, he laughed, why
about half an hour of it would kill him? Have
you ever seen George work? He added, turning to me,
I agreed with Harris that I never had, most certainly
not since we had started on this trip. Well, I
don't see how you can know much about it, one

(04:20):
way or the other, George retorted on Harris. For I'm
blessed if you haven't been asleep half the time. Have
you ever seen Harris fully awake except that meal time?
Asked George, addressing me, truth compelled me to support George.
Harris had been very little good in the boat as
far as helping was concerned from the beginning. Well, hang

(04:42):
it all, I've done more than old Jay anyhow, rejoined Harris.
Well you couldn't very well have done less, added George.
I suppose Jay he thinks he is the passenger, continued Harris.
And that was their gratitude to me for having brought
them and their wretched old boat all the way up
from Kingston and for having superintended and managed everything for them,

(05:07):
and taken care of them and slaved for them. It
is the way of the world. We settled the present
difficulty by arranging that Harris and George should skull up
past Reading, and that I should tow the boat on
from there. Pulling a heavy boat against a strong stream
has few attractions for me. Now. There was a time
long ago when I used to clamor for the hard work.

(05:30):
Now I like to give the youngsters a chance. I
noticed that most of the old river hands are similarly retiring.
Whenever there is any stiff pulling to be done. You
can always tell the old river hand by the way
in which he stretches himself out upon the cushions at
the bottom of the boat and encourages the rowers by
telling the manecdotes about the marvelous feats he performed last season.

(05:54):
Call what you're doing hard work, He draws between his
contented whiffs, addressing the two perspiring novices who have been
grinding away steadily upstream for the last hour and a half.
Why Jim Biffles and Jack and I last season pulled
up from Marlow to Goring in one afternoon, Never stopped once.

(06:18):
Do you remember that Jack, Jack, who has made himself
a bed up in the prow of all the rugs
and coats he can collect, and who has been lying
there asleep for the last two hours, partially wakes up
on being thus appealed to and recollects all about the matter,
and also remembers that there was an unusually strong stream
against them all the way, likewise, a stiff wind for

(06:42):
about thirty four miles. I suppose it must have been,
adds the first speaker, reaching down another cushion to put
under his head. No, no, don't exaggerate, Tom murmurs Jack,
reprovingly thirty three at the outside, and Jack and Tom,

(07:02):
quite exhausted by this conversational effort, drop off to sleep
once more, And the two simple minded youngsters at the
skulls feel quite proud of being allowed to row such
wonderful oarsmen as Jack and Tom, and strain away harder
than ever. When I was a young man, I used
to listen to these tales from my elders and take

(07:23):
them in and swallow them and digest every word of them,
and then come up for more. But the new generation
did not seem to have the simple faith of the
old times. We George Harris and myself took a run
up with us last season, and we plied him with
the customary stretchers about the wonderful things we had done

(07:45):
all the way up. We gave him all the regular ones,
the time honored lies that have done duty up the
river with every boating men for years past, and added
seven entirely original ones that we had invented for ourselves,
including a really quite likely story founded to a certain
extent on an all but true episode which had actually

(08:09):
happened in a modified degree some years ago. The two
friends of ours a story that a mere child could
have believed without injuring himself much, and that young man
mocked at the mall and wanted us to repeat the
feats then and there, and to bet us ten to
one that we didn't. We got to chatting about our

(08:31):
rowing experiences this morning, and to recounting stories of our
first efforts in the art of oarsmanship. My own earliest
voting recollection is of five of us contributing threepence each
and taking out a curiously constructed craft on the Regent's
Park Lake, drying ourselves subsequently in the park keeper's lodge.

(08:54):
After that, having acquired a taste for the water, I
did a good deal of rafting in various suburbs in brickfields,
an exercise providing more interest and excitement than might be imagined,
especially when you are in the middle of the pond
and the proprietor of the materials of which the raft
is constructed suddenly appears on the bank with a big

(09:15):
stick in his hand. Your first sensation on seeing this
gentleman is that somehow or other you don't feel equal
to company and conversation, and that, if you could do
so without appearing rude, you would rather avoid meeting him.
And your object is therefore to get off on the
opposite side of the pond to which he is, and

(09:36):
to go home quietly and quickly, pretending not to see him. He,
on the contrary, is yearning to take you by the
hand and talk to you. It appears that he knows
your father and is intimately acquainted with yourself, but this
does not draw you towards him. He says he'll teach
you to take his boards and make a raft of them,

(09:57):
But seeing that you know how to do this pretty
well already, the offer though doubtless kindly meant, seems a
superfluous one on his part, and you are reluctant to
put him to any trouble by accepting it. His anxiety
to meet you, however, is proof against all your coolness,
and the energetic manner in which he dodges up and

(10:18):
down the pond so as to be on the spot
to greet you when you land is really quite flattering.
If he be of a stout and short winded build,
you can easily avoid his advances. But when he is
of the youthful and long legged type, a meeting is inevitable.
The interview is, however, extremely brief, most of the conversation

(10:40):
being on his part, your remarks being mostly of an
exclamatory and monosyllabic order, And as soon as you can
tear yourself away, you do so. I devoted some three
months to rafting, and being then as proficient as there was,
and he need to be at that branch of the
art German to go in for rowing proper, and joined

(11:03):
one of the Lee boating clubs. Being out on a
boat on the River Lee, especially on Saturday afternoons, soon
makes you smart at handling a craft. And spry at
escaping being run down by ruffs or swamped by barges.
And it also affords plenty of opportunity for requiring the

(11:23):
most prompt and graceful method of lying down flat at
the bottom of the boat so as to avoid being
chucked out into the river by passing tow lines. But
it does not give you style. It was not till
I came to the Thames that I got style. My
style of rowing is very much admired now people say

(11:45):
it is so quaint. George never went near the water
until he was sixteen. Then he and eight other gentlemen
of about the same age went down in a body
to queue one Saturday, with the idea of hiring a
boat there and pulling to Richmond and back. One of
their number, a shock headed youth named Joskins, who had

(12:07):
once or twice taken out a boat on the Serpentine,
told them it was jolly fund boating. The tide was
running out pretty rapidly when they reached the landing stage,
and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the river,
but this did not trouble them at all, and they
proceeded to select their boat there was an eight or
racing outrigger drawn up on the stage. That was the

(12:30):
one that took their fancy. They said they'd have that
one please. The boatman was away and only his boy
was in charge. The boy tried to damp their ardor
for the outrigger, and showed them two or three very
comfortable looking boats of the family party build, but those
would not do at all. The outrigger was the boat

(12:51):
they thought they would look best in. So the boy
launched it and they took off their coats and prepared
to take their seats. He always suggested that George, who
even in those days was always the heavy man of
any party, should be number four. George said he should
be happy to be number four, and promptly stepped into
Bow's place and sat down with his back to the string.

(13:15):
They got him into his proper position at last, and
then the others followed. A particularly nervous boy was appointed Cox,
and the steering principle explained to him by Joskins. Joskins
himself took stroke. He told the others that it was
simple enough. All they had to do was follow him.

(13:36):
They said they were ready, and the boy on the
landing stage took a boat hook and shoved him off.
What then followed George is unable to describe in detail.
He has a confused recollection of having, immediately on starting
received a violent blow in the small of the back
from the butt end of Number five skull, at the

(13:57):
same time that his own seat seemed to disappear from
under him by magic and leave him sitting on the boards.
He also noticed, as a curious circumstance, that Number two
was at the same instant lying on his back at
the bottom of the boat with his legs in the air,
apparently in a fit. They passed under Cubebridge broadside at

(14:20):
the rate of eight miles an hour. Joskins, being the
only one who was rowing. George, unrecovering his seat, tried
to help him, but on dipping his oar into the water,
it immediately, to his intense surprise, disappeared under the boat
and nearly took him with it, And then Cox threw
both rudder lines overboard and burst into tears. How they

(14:43):
got back, George never knew, but it took them just
forty minutes. A dense crowd watched the entertainment from Cubebridge
with much interest, and everybody shouted out to them different directions.
Three times they managed to get the boat back through
the arch, and three times they were carried under it again.
And every time Cox looked up and saw the bridge

(15:04):
above him, he broke out into renewed sobs. George said
he little thought that afternoon that he should ever come
to really like boating. Harris is more accustomed to sea
rowing than to riverwork, and says that as an exercise
he prefers it. I don't I remember taking a small

(15:24):
boat out at Eastbourne last summer. I used to do
a good deal of sea rowing years ago, and I
thought I should be all right, But I found I
had forgotten the art entirely. When one skull was deep
down underneath the water, the other would be flourishing wildly
about in the air. To get a grip of the
water with both at the same time, I had to
stand up. The parade was crowded with nobility and gentry,

(15:48):
and I had to pull past them in this ridiculous fashion.
I landed halfway down the beach and secured the services
of an old boatman to take me back. I like
to old boatman rowing, especially one who has been hired
by the hour. There is something so beautifully calm and
RESTful about his method. It is so free from that

(16:10):
fretful haste, that behemance driving that is every day becoming
more and more the bane of nineteenth century life. He
is not forever straining himself to pass all the other boats.
If another boat overtakes him and passes him, it does
not annoy him. As a matter of fact, they all
do overtake him and pass him, all those that are

(16:31):
going his way. This would trouble and irritate some people.
The sublime equanimity of the hired boatman under the ordeal
affords us a beautiful lesson against ambition and uppishness. Plain
practical rowing of the get the boat along order is
not a very difficult art to acquire, But it takes

(16:52):
a good deal of practice before a man feels comfortable
when rowing past girls. It is the time that worries
a ho. It's jolly funny, he says, as for the
twentieth time within five minutes he disentangles his skulls from yours.
I can get on all right when I'm by myself.
To see two novices try to keep time with one

(17:14):
another is very amusing. Boo finds it impossible to keep
pace with Stroke because Stroke rose in such an extraordinary fashion.
Stroke is intensely indignant at this, and explains that what
he has been endeavoring to do for the last ten
minutes is to adapt his method to Bow's limited capacity. Bow,

(17:35):
in turn, then becomes insulted and requests Stroke not to
trouble his head about him, Boo, but to devote his
mind to setting a sensible stroke. Or shall I take stroke?
He adds, with the evident idea that that would at
once put the whole matter right. They splash along for
another one hundred yards with still moderate success, and then

(17:57):
the whole secret of their trouble bursts upon Stroke like
a flash of inspiration. I'll tell you what it is.
You've got my skulls, he cries, turning to Bow, pass
yours over. Well, do you know I've been wondering how
it was I couldn't get on with these answers Bow,
quite brightening up, and most willingly assisting in the exchange.

(18:20):
Now we shall be all right, but they are not not.
Even then Stroke has to stretch his arms nearly out
of their sockets to reach his skulls now wild bow's
pair at each recovery hit him a violent blow in
the chest. So they change back again and come to
the conclusion that the man has given them the wrong

(18:40):
set altogether, and over their mutual abuse of this man
they become quite friendly and sympathetic. George said he had
often longed to take to punting for a change. Punting
is not as easy as it looks as in rowing.
You soon learn how to get along and handle the craft,
but it takes long practice before you can do this

(19:00):
with dignity and without getting the water all up your sleeve.
One young man I knew had a very sad accident
happened to him the first time he went punting. He
had been getting on so well that he had grown
quite cheeky over the business, and was walking up and
down the punt, working his pole with a careless grace
that was quite fascinating to watch. Up he would march

(19:22):
to the head of the punt, plant his pole, and
then run along right to the other end, just like
an old punter. Oh, it was grand, and it would
all have gone on being grand if he had not. Unfortunately,
while looking around to enjoy the scenery, taken just one
step more than there was any necessity for, and walked
off the punt altogether. The pole was firmly fixed in

(19:45):
the mud, and he was left clean to it while
the punt drifted away. It was an undignified position for him.
A rude boy on the bank immediately yelled out to
a lagging chum to hurry up and see a real
monkey on a stick. I could not go to his assistance, because,
as ill luck would have it, we had not taken
a proper precaution to bring out a spare pole with us.

(20:09):
I could only sit and look at him his expression
as the pole slowly sank with him. I shall never
forget there was so much thought in it. I watched
him gently let down into the water, and saw him
scramble out, sad and wet. I could not help laughing.
He looked such a ridiculous figure. I continued to chuckle

(20:30):
to myself about it for some time, and then it
was suddenly forced in upon me that really I had
got very little to laugh at. When I came to
think of it. Here was I alone in a punt
without a pole, drifting helplessly down midstream, possibly towards a weir.
I began to feel very indignant with my friend for

(20:50):
having stepped overboard and gone off in that way. He might,
at all events have left me the pole. I drifted
on for about a quarter of a mile, and then
I came in sight of a fishing punt moored in midstream,
in which sat two old fishermen. They saw me bearing
down upon them, and they called out to me to
keep out of their way. I can't, I shouted back.

(21:14):
But you don't try, they answered. I explained the matter
to them when I got nearer, and they caught me
and lent me a pall. The weir was just fifty
yards below. I am glad they happened to be there.
The first time I went punting, was in company with
three other fellows. They were going to show me how
to do it. We could not all start together, so

(21:36):
I said I would go down first and get out
the punt, and then I could potter about and practice
a bit until they came. I could not get a
punt out that afternoon. They were all engaged, so I
had nothing else to do but to sit down on
the bank, watching the river and waiting for my friends.
I had not been sitting there long before my attention

(21:56):
became attracted to a man in a punt who I know,
with some surprise, wore a jacket and cap exactly like mine.
He was evidently a novice at punting, and his performance
was most interesting. You never knew what was going to
happen when he put the pole in. He evidently did
not know himself. Sometimes he shot upstream, sometimes he shot downstream,

(22:21):
and at other times he simply spun round and came
up the other side of the pole. And with every
result he seemed equally surprised and annoyed. The people about
the river began to get quite absorbed in him after
a while, and to make bets with one another as
to what would be the outcome of his next push.
In the course of time, my friends arrived on the

(22:43):
opposite bank, and they stopped and watched him too. His
back was towards them, and they only saw his jacket
and cap. From this, they immediately jumped to the conclusion
that it was I, their beloved companion, who was making
an exhibition of himself, and their delight knew no bad ones.
They commenced to chap him. Unmercifully. I did not grasp

(23:06):
their mistake at first, and I thought, how rude of
them to go on like that with a perfect stranger too.
But before I could call out and reprove them, the
explanation of the matter occurred to me, and I withdrew
behind a tree. Oh how they enjoyed themselves ridiculing that
young man for five good minutes. They stood there shouting

(23:29):
ribaldry at him, deriding him, mocking him, jeering at him.
They peppered him with stale jokes. They even made a
few new ones and threw at him. They hurled at
him all the private family jokes belonging to our set,
and which must have been perfectly unintelligible to him. And then,
unable to stand their brutal jibs any longer, he turned

(23:52):
round on them and they saw his face. I was
glad to notice that they had sufficient decency left in
them to look very fa foolish. They explained to him
that they had thought he was someone they knew. They said,
they hoped he would not deem them capable of so
insulting anyone except a personal friend of their own. Of course,

(24:13):
their having mistaken him for a friend excused it. I
remember Harris telling me once of a bathing experience he
had at Bologne. He was swimming about there near the
beach when he felt himself suddenly seized by the neck
from behind and forcibly plunged under water. He struggled violently,
but whoever had got hold of him seemed to be
a perfect hercules and strength, and all his efforts to

(24:36):
escape were unavailing. He had given up kicking and was
trying to turn his thoughts upon solemn things. When his
captor released him. He regained his feet and looked round
for his would be murderer. The assassin was standing close
by him, laughing heartily, but the moment he caught sight
of Harris's face as it emerged from the water, he

(24:57):
started back and seemed quite concerned. I really beg your pardon,
he stammered, confusedly. But I took you for a friend
of mine. Harris thought it was lucky for him the
man had not mistaken him for a relation, or he
would probably have been drowned outright. Sailing is a thing
that wants knowledge and practice too, though as a boy

(25:19):
I did not think so. I had an idea. It
came natural to a body, like rounders and touch. I
knew another boy who held this view likewise, and so
one windy day we thought we would try the sport.
We were stopping down at Yarmouth, and we decided we
would go for a trip up the yard. We hired
a sailing boat at the yard by the bridge and

(25:41):
started off. It's rather a rough day, said the man
to us, as we put off. Better take in a
reef and left sharp when you get round the bend.
We said we would make a point of it, and
left him with a cheery good morning, wondering to ourselves
how you luffed, and where we were to get a

(26:01):
reef from, and what we were to do with it
when we had got it. We rode until we were
out of sight of the town, and then, with a
wide stretch of water in front of us, and the
wind blowing a perfect hurricane across it, we felt that
the time had come to commence operations. Hector, I think
that was his name, went on pulling while I unrolled

(26:24):
the sail. It seemed a complicated job, but I accomplished
it at length, and then came the question, which was
the top end. By a sort of natural instinct, we
of course eventually decided that the bottom was the top
and set to work to fix it upside down, but
it was a long time before we could get it up,

(26:45):
either that way or any other way. The impression on
the mind of the sale seemed to be that we
were playing at funerals, and that I was the corpse
and itself was the winding sheet. When it found that
this was not the idea, it hit me over the
head with the boom and refused to do anything. Wet it, said, Hector,

(27:07):
drop it over and get it wet, he said, People
and ships always wetted the sails before they put them up.
So I wetted it, but that only made matters worse
than they were before. A dry sail cling to your
legs and wrapping itself around your head is not pleasant,
but when the sail is sopping wet, it becomes quite vexing.

(27:28):
We did get the thing up at last, the two
of us together. We fixed it, not exactly upside down,
more sideways like, and we tied it up to the
mast with the painter, which we cut off for the purpose.
That the boat did not upset. I simply state as
a fact why it did not upset. I am unable

(27:49):
to offer any reason. I have often thought about the
matter since, but I have never succeeded in riving at
any satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. Possibly the result may
have been brought about by the natural obstinacy of all
things in this world. The boat may possibly have come
to the conclusion, judging from a cursory view of our behavior,

(28:12):
that we had come out for a morning suicide, and
had thereupon determined to disappoint us. That is the only
suggestion I can offer. By clinging like grim death to
the gunwale, we just managed to keep inside the boat,
but it was exhausting work. Hector said that pirates and
other seafaring people generally lashed the rudder to something or

(28:35):
other and hauled in the main top jib during severe squalls,
and thought we ought to try to do something of
the kind. But I was for letting her have her
head to the wind. As my advice was by far
the easiest to follow. We ended by adopting it, and
contrived to embrace the gunwale and give her her head.
The boat traveled upstream for about a mile at a

(28:57):
pace I have never sailed that since and don't want
to again. Then, at a bend she healed over till
half her sail was underwater. Then she righted herself by
a miracle and flew for a long, low bank of
soft mud. That mud bank saved us. The boat plowed

(29:17):
its way into the middle of it and then stuck.
Finding that we were once more able to move according
to our ideas, instead of being pitched and thrown about
like peas in a bladder, we crept forward and cut
down the sail. We had had enough sailing. We did
not want to overdo the thing and get a surfeit
of it. We had had a sail, a good, all round, exciting,

(29:41):
interesting sail, and now we thought we would have a row,
just for a change. Like we took the skulls and
tried to push the boat off the mud, and in
doing so we broke one of the skulls. After that
we proceeded with great caution, but they were a wretched
old pair, and the second one cracked almost easier than
the first, and left us helpless. The mud stretched out

(30:05):
for about one hundred yards in front of us, and
behind us was the water. The only thing to be
done was to sit and wait until someone came by.
It was not the sort of day to attract people
out on the river, and it was three hours before
our soul came in sight. It was an old fisherman who,
with immense difficulty, at last rescued us, and we were

(30:27):
towed back in an ignominious fashion to the boatyard. What
between tipping the man who had brought us home and
paying for the broken skulls and for having been out
four hours and a half, it costs us a pretty
considerable number of weeks pocket money that sale. But we
learned experience, and they say that is always cheap at

(30:49):
any price. End of chapter fifteen.