Three Men in a Boat

Three Men in a Boat 

Jerome K. Jerome 1889

Over several months whenever Madeleine came home to visit she would read this aloud.  It had us in stitches!  We first read an excerpt from it (My Uncle Podger) and I had to track down the entire thing.  (And it had to be the copy with the Ronald Searle cover).

The premise is three gentlemen (circa 1889), Harris, George, and the author Jerome decide to travel down the river Thames.  Montmorency, Jerome's dog comes along for added comic effect.  Each chapter is a vignette of hilarious adventure.

Jerome writes of himself as the classic hypochondriac (prompting the proposal of a journey for their health):

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 the various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order.  I had them all.  

It's 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.

And this is how he describes his rascally dog:

To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in the shape of a small fox-terrier.  There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.

When first he came to live at my expense, I never thought I should be able to get him to stop long.  I used to sit down and look at him, as he sat on the rug and looked up at me, and think:  "Oh, that dog will never live.  He will be snatched up to the bright skies in a chariot, that is what will happen to him."

But, when I had paid for about a dozen chickens that he had killed; and had dragged him, growling and kicking, by the scruff of his neck, out of a hundred and fourteen street fights; and had had a dead cat brought round for my inspection by an irate female, who called me a murderer; and had been summoned by the man next door but one for having a ferocious dog at large, that had kept him pinned in his own tool-shed, afraid to venture his nose outside the door for over two hours on a cold night; and had learned that the gardener, unknown to myself, had won thirty shillings by backing him to kill rats against time, then I began to think that maybe they'd let him remain on earth for a bit longer.

To hang about a stable, and collect a gang of the most disreputable dogs to be found in the town, and lead them out to march round the slums to fight other disreputable dogs, is Montmorency's idea of "life"...

The humor often reminded me of the Patrick McManus books (A Fine and Pleasant Misery), written in a very unassuming, matter of fact kind of way.  In the midst of all the silliness though, Jerome can be found to wax quite poetical and there are some beautiful passages describing the  English Countryside and history.