Three Men in a Boat - Chapter 19

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter nineteen 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 nineteen, Oxford,
Montmorency's idea of heaven. The hired up river boat, its

(00:23):
beauties and advantages, the pride of the Thames. The weather
changes the river under different aspects. Not a cheerful evening
yearnings for the unattainable. The cheery chat goes round. George

(00:44):
performs upon the banjo a mournful melody. Another wet day, flight,
a little supper and a toast. We spent two very
pleasant days at Oxford. There are plenty of dogs in
the town of Oxford. Montmorency had eleven fights on the

(01:06):
first day and fourteen on the second, and evidently thought
he had gone to heaven. Among folk two constitutionally weak
or too constitutionally lazy, whichever it may be, to relish
upstream work. It is a common practice to get a
boat at Oxford and row down. For the energetic. However,
the upstream journey is certainly to be preferred. It does

(01:28):
not seem good to be always going with the current.
There is more satisfaction in squaring one's back and fighting
against it, and winning one's way forward in spite of it.
At least so I feel. When Harris and George are
sculling and I am steering to those who do contemplate
making Oxford their starting place, I would say, take your

(01:49):
own boat, unless, of course, you can take someone else's
without any possible danger of being found out. The boats that,
as a rule are let for hire on the Thames
above are very good boats. They are fairly water tight,
and so long as they are handled with care, they
rarely come to pieces or sink. There are places in

(02:10):
them to sit down on, and they are complete with
all the necessary arrangements, or are nearly all, to enable
you to row them and steer them. But they are
not ornamental. The boat you hire up the river above
Marlow is not the sort of boat in which you
can flash about and give yourself airs. The hired up
river boat very soon puts a stop to any nonsense

(02:33):
of that sort on the part of its occupants. That
is its chief. One may say, it's only recommendation. The
man in the hired upriver boat is modest and retiring.
He likes to keep on the shady side, underneath the trees,
and to do most of his traveling early in the
morning or late at night, when there are not many

(02:54):
people on the river to look at him. When the
man in the hired upriver boat sees anyone knows, he
gets out on the bank and hides behind a tree.
I was one of a party who hired an upriver
boat one summer for a few days trip. We had
none of us ever seen the hired upriver boat before,
and we did not know what it was when we

(03:15):
did see it. We had ridden for a boat, a
double sculling skiff, and when we went down with our
bags to the yard and gave our names, the man said, oh, yes,
you're the party that wrote for the double sculling skiff.
It's all right, Jim, fetch round the Pride of the Thames.
The boy went reappeared five minutes afterwards, struggling with an

(03:38):
anted Alluvian chunk of wood that looked as though it
had been recently dug out of somewhere, and dug out
carelessly so as to have been unnecessarily damaged in the process.
My own idea on first catching side of the object
was that it was a Roman relic of some sort,
relic of what I do not know, possibly of a coffin.

(04:01):
The neighborhood of the Upper Thames is rich in Roman relics,
and my surmise seemed to me a very probable one.
But our serious young man, who is a bit of
a geologist, pooh poohed my Roman relic theory and said
it was clear to the meanest intellect in which category
he seemed to be grieved that he could not conscientiously

(04:22):
include mine, that the thing the boy had found was
the fossil of a whale, and he pointed out to
us various evidences proving that it must have belonged to
the preglacial period. To settle the dispute, we appealed to
the boy. We told him not to be afraid, but
to speak of plain truth. Was it the fossil of

(04:43):
a preadamite, weal, or was it an early Roman coffin?
The boy said it was the pride of the Thames.
We thought this a very humorous answer on the part
of the boy at first, and somebody gave him twopence
as a reward for his ready wit. But when he
persisted in keeping up the joke as we thought too long,

(05:04):
we got vexed with him. Come, Come, my lad, said
our captain, sharply, don't let us have any nonsense. You
take your mother's washing tub home again and bring us
a boat. The boat builder himself came up then and
assured us, on his word as a practical man, that
the thing really was a boat, was in fact the

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boat the double sculling skiff selected to take us on
our trip down the river. We grumbled a good deal.
We thought he might at least have had it whitewashed
or tarred, had something done to it to distinguish it
from a bit of a wreck. But he could not
see any fault in it. He even seemed defended at

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our remarks. He said he had picked us out the
best boat in all his stock, and he thought we
might have been more grateful. He said it the Pride
of the Thames had been in use just as it
now stood, or rather as now hung together, for the
last forty years to his knowledge, and nobody had complained
of it before, and he did not see why we

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should be the first to begin. We argued no more.
We fastened the so called boat together with some pieces
of string, got a bit of wallpaper and pasted over
the shabbier places, set our prayers and stepped on board.
They charged us thirty five shillings for the loan of

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the remnant for six days, and we could have bought
the thing out and out for four and sixpence at
any sale of driftwood round the coast. The weather changed
on the third day. Oh, I am talking about our
present trip now, And we started from Oxford upon our
homeward journey, in the midst of a steady drizzle. The

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river with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold,
the gray green beech trunks glinting through the dark, cool
wood paths, chasing shadows or the shallows, flinging diamonds from
the mill wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with
the weirs, white waters, silvering moss grown walls and bridges,

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brightening every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow,
lying tangled in the rushes, peeping laughing from each inlet,
gleaming gay on many a far sail making soft. The
air with glory is a golden fairy stream, but the

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river chill and weary, with the ceaseless raindrops falling on
its brown and sluggish waters, with a sound as of
a woman weeping low in some dark chamber, while the woods,
all dark and silent, shrouded in their mists of vapor,
stand like ghosts upon the margin, silent ghosts with eyes reproachful,

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like the ghosts of evil actions, like the ghosts of friends.
Neglected is a spirit haunted water through the land of
vain regrets. Sunlight is the lifeblood of nature. Mother Earth
looks at us with such dull, soulless eyes when the
sunlight has died away from out of her. It makes

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us sad to be with her. Then she does not
seem to know us or to care for us. She
is as a widow who has lost the husband she loved,
and her children touch her hand and look up into
her eyes, but gain no smile from her. We rode
on all that day, through the rain and very melancholy work.

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It was. We pretended at first that we enjoyed it.
We said it was a change, and that we liked
to see the river under all its different aspects. We
said we could not expect to have it all sunshine,
nor should we wish it We told each other that
nature was beautiful even in her tears. Indeed, Harris and

(09:00):
I were quite enthusiastic about the business for the first
few hours, and we sang a song about a gypsy's life,
and how delightful a gypsy's existence was, free to storm
and sunshine and to every wind that blew, and how
he enjoyed the rain, and what a lot of good
it did him, and how we laughed at people who

(09:21):
didn't like it. George took the fun more soberly and
stuck to the umbrella. We hoisted the cover before we
had lunch, and kept it up all the afternoon, just
leaving a little space in the bow from which one
of us could paddle and keep a lookout. In this way,
we made nine miles and pulled up for the night

(09:42):
a little below day's lock. I cannot honestly say that
we had a merry evening. The rain poured down with
quiet persistency. Everything in the boat was damp, and clammy
supper was not a success. Cold veal pie, when you
don't feel hungry, is apt to cloy. I felt I

(10:04):
wanted white bait and a cutlet. Harris babbled of souls
and white sauce, and passed the remains of his pie
to Montmorency, who declined it and, apparently insulted by the offer,
went and sat over at the other end of the
boat by himself. George requested that we would not talk

(10:24):
about these things at all events until he had finished
his cold boiled beef without mustard. We played penny nap
after supper. We played for about an hour and a half,
by the end of which time George had won fourpence
George always as lucky at cards, and Harris and I
had lost exactly twopence each. We thought we would give

(10:46):
up gambling men, as Harris said, it breeds an unhealthy
excitement when carried too far. George offered to go on
and give us our revenge, but Harris and I decided
not to battle any further against fate. After that, we
mixed ourselves some toddy and sat round and talked. George
told us about a man he had known who had

(11:08):
come up the river two years ago, and who had
slept out in a damp boat on just such another
night as that was, and it had given him rheumatic fever,
and nothing was able to save him, and he had
died in great agony ten days afterwards. George said he
was quite a young man and was engaged to be married.
He said it was one of the saddest things he

(11:30):
had ever known, and that put Harris in mine of
a friend of his who had been in the volunteers,
and who had slept out under canvas one wet night
down at Aldershot, and just such another night as this,
said Harris, and he had woke up in the morning
a crippled for life. Harris said he would introduce us
both to the men when we got back to town.

(11:52):
It would make our hearts bleed to see him. This
naturally led to some pleasant chat about siatia, fevers, chills,
lung diseases, and bronchitis, and Harris said, how very awkward
it would be if one of us were taken seriously
ill in the night, Seeing how far away we were

(12:13):
from a doctor. There seemed to be a desire for
something frolicsome to follow upon this conversation, and in a
weak moment, I suggested that George should get out his
banjo and see if he could not give us a
comic song. I will say for George that he did
not want any pressing. There was no nonsense about having
left his music at home or anything of that sort.

(12:36):
He at once fished out his instrument and commenced to
play two Lovely Black Eyes. I had always regarded two
Lovely Black Eyes as rather a commonplace tune until that evening.
The rich vein of sadness that George extracted from it
quite surprised me. The desire that grew upon Harris and

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myself as the mournful strains progressed was to fall upon
each other's necks and weep. But by great effort we
kept back the rising tears and listened to the wild
yearnful melody in silence. When the chorus came, we even
made a desperate effort to be merry. We refilled our
glasses and joined in. Harris, in a voice trembling with emotion, leading,

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and George and I following a few words behind, Two Lovely.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Has wresting the man we long too.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
There we broke down the unutterable pathos of George's accompaniment
to that too. We were in our then state of depression,
unable to bear. Harris sobbed like a little child, and
the dog howled till I thought his heart or his
jaw must surely break. George wanted to go on with

(13:59):
another verse. He thought that when we had got a
little more into the tune, and could throw more abandon
as it were, into the rendering, it might not seem
so sad. The feeling of the majority, however, was opposed
to the experiment. There being nothing else to do, we
went to bed. That is, we undressed ourselves and tossed

(14:20):
about at the bottom of the boat for some three
or four hours, after which we managed to get some
fitful slumber until five a m. When we all got
up and had breakfast. The second day was exactly like
the first. The rain continued to pour down, and we
sat wrapped up in our macintoshes underneath the canvas and

(14:40):
drifted slowly down. One of us I forget which one now,
but I rather think it was myself, made a few
feeble attempts during the course of the morning to work
up the old gipsy foolishness about being children of nature
and enjoying the wet. But it did not go down
well at all. That I care not for the rain.

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Not I was so painfully evident as expressing the sentiments
of each of us that to sing it seemed unnecessary.
On one point we were all agreed, and that was that,
come what might, we would go through with this job
to the bitter end. We had come out for a
fortnight's enjoyment on the river, and a fortnight's enjoyment on

(15:24):
the river we meant to have. If it killed us, well,
that would be a sad thing for our friends and relations.
But it could not be helped. We felt that to
give into the weather and a climate such as ours
would be a most disastrous precedent. It's only two days, more,
said Harris, and we are young and strong. We may

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get over it all right, after all. At about four
o'clock we began to discuss our arrangements for the evening.
We were a little past goring then, and we decided
to paddle on to Pangborn and put up there for
the night. Another murmured George. We sat and mused on
the prospect we should be in Pangborn by five. We

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should finish dinner at say half past six. After that
we could walk about the village in the pouring rain
until bedtime, or we could sit in a dimly lit
bar parlor and read the almanac. Why the old hambro
would be almost more lively, said Harris, venturing his head
outside the cover for a moment and taking a survey

(16:31):
of the sky. With a little supper at the tavern
to follow, I added, half unconsciously. Yes, it's almost a pity.
We've made up our minds to stick to this boat,
answered Harris, And then there was silence for a while.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
If we hadn't made up our minds to contract our
certain depths in his bally old.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Coffin observed George casting a glance of intense malevolence over
the boat.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
It might be worth while to mention that there's a
train leaves Pangborne, I know, soon after five, which would
just land us in town in comfortable time to get
a chop and then go on to the place you mentioned.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Afterwards, nobody spoke. We looked at one another, and each
one seemed to see his own mean and guilty thoughts
reflected in the faces of the others. In silence, we
dragged out and overhauled the gladstone. We looked up the
river and down the river. Not a soul was in sight.

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Twenty minutes later, three figures, followed by a shamed looking
dog might have been seen creeping stealthily from the boat
house at the Swan towards the railway station, dressed in
the following neither neat nor gaudy costume. Black leather shoes,
dirty suit of boating flannels, very dirty brown felt hat,

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much battered macintosh, very wet umbrella. We had deceived the
boatman at Pangbourne. We had not had the face to
tell him that we were running away from the rain.
We had left the boat and all it contained in
his charge, with instructions that it was to be ready
for us at nine and next morning if we said,

(18:18):
if anything unforeseen should happen preventing our return, we should
write to him. We reached Paddington at seven and drove
direct to the restaurant I have before described, where we
partook of a light meal, left Montmorency together with suggestions
for a supper to be ready at half past ten,
and then continued our way to Leicester Square. We attracted

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a good deal of attention at the Alhambra. On our
presenting ourselves at the pay box. We were gruffly directed
to go round to Castle Street and were informed that
we were half an hour behind our time We convinced
the man with some difficulty that we were not the
world renowned contortionists from the Himalaya mountains, and he took
our money and let us pass inside. We were a

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still greater success. Our fine bronze countenances and picturesque clothes
were followed round the place with admiring gaze. We were
the sinosure of every eye. It was a proud moment
for us all. We adjourned soon after the first ballet
and wended our way back to the restaurant, where supper

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was already awaiting us. I must confess to enjoying that supper.
For about ten days, we seemed to have been living
more or less on nothing but cold meat, cake and
bread and jam. It had been a simple, a nutritious diet,
but there had been nothing exciting about it. And the
odor of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and

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the sight of clean napkins and long loaves knocked as
a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man.
We pegged and quaffed away in silence for a while,
until the time came when, instead of sitting bolt upright
and grasping the knife and fork firmly. We leant back

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in our chairs and worked slowly and carelessly. When we
stretched out our legs beneath the table let, our napkins
fall unheeded to the floor, and found time to more
critically examine the smoky ceiling than we had hitherto been
able to do. When we rested our glasses at arm's
length upon the table, and felt good and thoughtful and forgiving.

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Then Harris, who was sitting next to the window, drew
aside the curtain and looked out upon the street. It
glistened darkly in the wet The dim lamps flickered with
each gust. The rain splashed steadily into the puddles and
trickled down the water spouts into the running gutters. A
few soaked wayfarers hurried past, crouching beneath their dripping umbrellas,

(21:01):
the women holding up their skirts. Well, said Harris, reaching
his hand out for his glass. We have had a
pleasant trip, and my hearty thanks for it to old
father Thames. But I think we did well to chuck
it when we did. Here's to three men well out

(21:21):
of a boat, and Montmorency standing on his hind legs
before the window. Peering out into the night, gave a
short bark of decided concurrence with the toast end of
chapter nineteen recording by Nick Bolk, end of three men

(21:44):
in a boat, to say nothing of the dog by
Jerome K. Jerome