Three Men in a Boat (29 page)

‘It’s only two days more,’ said Harris, ‘and we are young and strong. We may 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 Pangbourne, and put up there for the night.

‘Another jolly evening!’ murmured George.

We sat and mused on the prospect. We should be in at Pangbourne by five. We should finish our 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-parlour and read the almanac.

‘Why, the Alhambra
³
would be almost more lively,’ said Harris, venturing his head outside the cover for a moment and taking a survey of the sky.

‘With a little supper at the—
*
to follow,’ Iadded, 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.

‘If we
hadn’t
made up our minds to contract our certain deaths in this bally old coffin,’ observed George, casting a glance of intense malevolence over the boat, ‘it might be worth while to mention that there’s a train leaves Pangbourne, 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 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!

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, much battered; mackintosh, 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 the next morning. If, we said –
if
anything unforeseen should happen, preventing our return, we would 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 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 still greater success. Our fine bronzed countenances and picturesque clothes were followed round the place with admiring gaze. We were the cynosure 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 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 odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and 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 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.

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, 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 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.

*
Or rather
were
. The Conservancy
¹
of late seems to have constituted itself into a society for the employment of idiots. A good many of the new lock-keepers, especially in the more crowded portions of the river, are excitable, nervous old men quite unfitted for their post.

*
A capital little out-of-the-way restaurant in the neighbourhood of –, where you can get one of the best-cooked and cheapest little French dinners or suppers that I know of, with an excellent bottle of Beaune for three-and-six; and which I am not going to be idiot enough to advertise.

I am very grateful to my daughter Jemima for her help in compiling these notes
.

THREE MEN IN A BOAT

1
. (p. 6)
Referee
: weekly sporting paper, first published in 1877.

1
. (p. 10)
patriarchal
: the biblical patriarchs included Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

1
. (p. 22)
shilling shocker
: short, popular novel, often of a sensational nature. Arrowsmith originally wanted to publish
Three Men in a Boat
at a shilling (5p), but Jerome insisted on its being priced at 3s 6d (17½p), then the alternative ‘going rate’ for new novels.

1
. (p. 25)
half-a-crown’s worth
: a crown was worth five shillings (25p), and there were four crowns to the pound; half-a-crown was worth 12½p.

2
. (p. 26)
sovereign
: gold coin of the same value as the pound.

3
. (p. 27)
guineas
: a guinea was worth £1.05: smart and expensive items tended to be quoted in guineas.

4
. (p. 27)
eight and sixpence
: 42½p.

5
. (p. 28)
Gladstone
: defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a ‘light portmanteau opening into two equal parts’, it was favoured by doctors and named after the Liberal statesman and Prime Minister, W. E. Gladstone (1809–98).

1
. (p. 35)
Boots
: man-servant employed in hotels and inns to clean customers’ boots and shoes. The best-known fictional boots is Sam Weller in Dickens’s
The Pickwick Papers
.

2
. (p. 38)
Great Coram Street murder
: refers to scandalous murder in London on Christmas Day 1872.

3
. (p. 38)
Stanley
: the Welsh-born adventurer and explorer H. M. Stanley (1841–1904) is best remembered for greeting David Livingstone with the words ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’ after tracking him down on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in 1871.

1
. (p. 41)
crowned there
: several Anglo-Saxon kings were indeed crowned in Kingston-on-Thames: hence its entitlement to be a royal borough.

2
. (p. 41)
sack and mead
: sack was a white wine imported from Spain and the Canary islands; mead an alcoholic brew made from honey: both were traditionally imbibed in the world of Merrie England.

3
. (p. 43)
Sandford and Merton
: Thomas Day (1748–89) was a serious-minded educationalist and admirer of Rousseau. In his influential novel
The History of Sandford and Merton
– published in three volumes between 1783 and the year of his death – he tried to show how men can be made good by instruction and appeals to reason. Tommy Merton (rich and disagreeable)
is set against Harry Sandford (kind and decent, and a farmer’s son): virtue prevails in the end, and Tommy emerges a better and (no doubt) a duller man.

4
. (p. 44)
the great cholera scare of 1871
: given the state of the drains, cholera was one of the hazards of mid-Victorian England. The big cholera scare took place in 1854; during its course, John Snow proved that the disease was water-borne, so leading to improvements in drainage and water supplies.

5
. (p. 45)
‘old blue’… willow-pattern
: both are eighteenth-century china-ware, coloured in blue and white: willow-pattern was introduced in 1780, and incorporates Chinese designs.

6
. (p. 45)
Sarah Janes
: maidservants.

7
. (p. 47)
Hampton Court
: in 1514 the over-mighty Cardinal Wolsey set out to build himself the largest private house in England on the banks of the Thames. Henry VIII forced him to hand it over to him in 1526, and it became the king’s favourite palace. During the reign of Charles II, Christopher Wren added a further quadrangle to the Tudor Palace; all is in red brick.

8
. (p. 47)
maze
: during the reign of William and Mary, formal Dutch gardens were laid out in the grounds of Hampton Court, including the famous maze.

1
. (p. 50)
Moulsey Lock
: One of the busiest and most popular locks on the Thames. Boulter’s Lock was even busier and more fashionable: ‘Boulter’s Lock – Sunday Afternoon’, by Edward John Gregory RA, gives a good idea of what life was like on the river towards the end of the nineteenth century (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight).

2
. (p. 51)
Margate nigger
: Nigger Minstrels originated in the Southern States of America in the 1830s, and were a familiar feature of English piers and music halls by the 1880s. Nigger Minstrels were invariably ‘blacked-up’ white men; like George, they accompanied themselves on the banjo.

3
. (p. 56)
Kensal Green Cemetery
: West London cemetery, opened in 1832; those buried there include W. M. Praed, Sydney Smith, Thomas Hood, Thackeray, Trollope, John Leech, Wilkie Collins and George Cruikshank.

1
. (p. 58)
Kempton Park
: a former seat of royalty, later converted into a race-course.

2
. (p. 61)
Pinafore
:
HMS Pinafore
(1878) and
Trial by Jury
(1875) were among the best-known and most popular of the Savoy Operas, the words of which were written by W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the music by Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). They began their collaboration in 1871, and their joint efforts included
The Pirates of Penzance
,
The Yeomen of the Guard
,
The Mikado
and
Iolanthe
. Gilbert was one of Jerome’s clubbish cronies.

3
. (p. 63)
morceaux
: bits or scraps.

4
. (p. 67)
Bradshaw
: President of the court which condemned Charles I to death in 1649.

5
. (p. 67)
the guide man
: the best-known of all railway timetables,
Bradshaw’s Railway Guide
was first published in 1839 by George Bradshaw: it appeared every month until 1961.

6
. (p. 67)
scold’s bridle
: a ‘scold’ was a nagging wife, the bridle a metal contraption which fitted over the head and prevented her from opening her mouth.

7
. (p. 67)
Cassivelaunus
: hot-tempered leader of the Catuvellauni, a tribe of Ancient Britons based on the north bank of the Thames; he led the opposition to Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 54
BC
.

1
. (p. 75)
Penton Hook
: so named because the Thames nearly doubles back on itself.

2
. (p. 75)
Runnymede
: island on the Thames on which, in June 1215, King John is said to have signed the Magna Carta. Victorian historians liked to represent King John as the wickedest and most despotic of English monarchs, and the Magna Carta was the result of his demands for excessive feudal dues and his attacks on Church privileges. Among its clauses were checks against infringements of feudal custom, extortions by officials and the maladministration of justice, and no freeman could be arrested, imprisoned or punished except by the judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. The Magna Carta was rediscovered and reinterpreted by the parliamentary party during the seventeenth century, and came to be regarded as a seminal
document in the establishment of personal and political freedoms in the English-speaking world.

3
. (p. 78)
Faust
: the opera by Charles Gounod (1818–93) was first performed in London in 1863.

1
. (p. 94)
Barons
’: King John’s opponents were collectively referred to as the ‘Barons’.

2
. (p. 95)
halbert-men
: halberts were combined spears and battleaxes.

3
. (p. 95)
casque
: helmet.

1
. (p. 97)
Anne Boleyn
: she became the second wife of Henry VIII after a spell as his mistress. The mother of the future Queen Elizabeth, she was beheaded in 1536, charged with incest and adultery.