Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome [12]
14. The embattled hero of H. G. Wells’s The History of Mr Polly (1910): he was, in fact, a shop assistant, but has much in common with the perkier kind of late-Victorian and Edwardian clerk.
15. Mr Pooter’s disrespectful son; he too works as a clerk, but unlike his father he refuses to be got down by life or by the grandeur of those set above him.
16. J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) is best-known as the creator of Peter Pan; his other plays included The Admirable Crichton (1902) and Dear Brutus (1917).
17. See ‘The Tin-Openers’ in Complete Essays by V. S. Pritchett (Chatto & Windus, 1991).
18. W. W. Jacobs (1863–1943) was born and grew up in Wapping, and many of his short stories are set in the East End docks.
Further Reading
Carey, John
‘A Victorian Clerk’s Tale’ in Original Copy (Faber, London, 1987)
Carey, John
The Intellectuals and the Masses: Pride and Prejudice among the Literary Intelligentsia 1880–1939 (Faber, London, 1992)
Connolly, Joseph
Jerome K. Jerome: A Critical Biography (Orbis, London, 1982)
Jerome, Jerome K.
Paul Kelver (Hutchinson, London, 1902)
Jerome, Jerome K.
My Life and Times (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1926)
Moss, Alfred
Jerome K. Jerome: His Life and Work (Selwyn & Blount, London, 1929)
Pritchett, V. S.
‘The Tin-Openers’ in The Complete Essays (Chatto & Windus, London, 1991)
Wilson, D. G.
The Victorian Thames (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1991)
THREE MEN IN A BOAT
Preface to the First Edition
The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style, or in the extent and usefulness of the information it conveys, as in its simple truthfulness. Its pages form the record of events that really happened. All that has been done is to colour them; and, for this, no extra charge has been made. George and Harris and Montmorency are not poetic ideals, but things of flesh and blood – especially George, who weighs about twelve stone. Other works may excel this in depth of thought and knowledge of human nature: other books may rival it in originality and size; but, for hopeless and incurable veracity, nothing yet discovered can surpass it. This, more than all its other charms, will, it is felt, make the volume precious in the eye of the earnest reader; and will lend additional weight to the lesson that the story teaches.
London,
August 1889
Chapter 1
Three Invalids – Sufferings of George and Harris – A victim to one hundred and seven fatal maladies – Useful prescriptions – Cure for liver complaint in children – We agree that we are overworked, and need rest– A week on the rolling deep? – George suggests the river – Montmorency lodges an objection – Original motion carried by majority of three to one.
There were four of us – George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we were – bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.
We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said that he had fits of giddiness too, and hardly knew what he was doing. With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with, in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum