Many enduring human achievements are ventures which did not turn out
as planned and literature is no exception. A newly-married, not very
established author, spending his honeymoon boating on the Thames,
started to write a serious travel guide but ended up with a comic novel
due to his matchless ability for rib-tickling presentation of everyday
events and people (including relatives). It may not have been the
genre's first but is the most enduring, having never gone out of print
or popularity for over 125 years while flagging off a glorious parade of
English authors skilled at evoking humour out of the commonplace.
Jerome
K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)" (1889) is
his account of a boating trip from Kingston to Oxford. The author, who
appears as J. the narrator, however replaced his wife with two real-life
friends "George" or George Wingrave (then a junior bank employee) and
"Harris" or Carl Hentschel (who ran a printing business). Fox-terrier
"Montmorency" was fictional but included on the belief that the inner
consciousness of a typical Englishman of the time included a dog.
Though
it has quite a bit of sentimental, even tragic, parts verging on purple
prose, they are however overshadowed by the humorous set pieces which
start right from the first paragraph where the three protagonists
complain of their imagined medical maladies and the need for a relaxing
holiday.
This over-the-top display of hypochondria, especially
the morbid self-diagnosis of the author, who "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" sets the stage for some of the most uproariously funny
passages ever seen in English literature.
His purpose is aided by
skillful and adroit employment of a whole array of literary devices
including outrageous hyperbole, vivid metaphors, comic exaggeration -
but in an understated, self-deprecating, deadpan way (the hallmark of
what is thought as British humour).
Different readers may have
their own favourites - and have a wide selection to choose from - but
some that will definitely figure are the trip's planning which leads to
the recollection of an uncle famed for raising a fuss for the simplest
chore (immortalised in countless anthologies as "Uncle Podger Hangs a
Picture"), the inescapable aroma of ripe cheese, the unreliability of
weather forecasts, Harris' adventures in a maze, his skill (or lack
thereof) in singing comic songs, the German music professor's
performance, the two drunken men who slide into the same bed in the
dark, the difficulties while learning to play bagpipes, the many claims
for a particular fine specimen of trout (also much anthologised as "A
Fishy Tale") and many more.
Jerome also went on to write a
sequel, which sees the friends (save the still unmarried George)
contrive to leave spouses and children for a relaxing cycling trip
through the Black Forest in then Imperial Germany and parts of the
contiguous Austro-Hungarian Empire.
"Three Men on the Bummel"
(1900), though lesser-known and starting slowly, is however as good as
its predecessor and maintains most of its freshness, even in the comic
stereotyping of the German character (particularly their fetish for
order, discipline and cleanliness) and the practice of cycling.
Its
high points include George's experiment with a book of tourist phrases
- "its longest chapter being devoted to conversation in a railway
carriage, among, apparently, a compartment load of quarrelsome and
ill-mannered lunatics" and what happens when they are used at a
bootmaker's, at a hat shop and with a carriage driver.
Then there
is the adventure of Harris and his wife on the tandem, Harris
confronting the hose-pipe, the animal riot in the hill-top restaurant
and the plan in Prague to wean George of the local beer. And, yes, Uncle
Podger appears twice - to share his advice on packing and then among
employees leaving their suburban homes for their offices.
"Three
Men on the Boat" at first did not meet a favourable critical reception
when it first appeared (sneered as vulgar for using slang), but it went
on to sell in huge numbers - a million copies worldwide in the first 20
years - and the astonished publisher told a friend: "I cannot imagine
what becomes of all the copies of that book I issue. I often think the
public must eat them." (Jerome's afterward in a later edition). And
pirated copies sold another million in the US!
Whats more, both
works went on to serve as English textbooks - in Russia and Germany
respectively, while some selections serve as models of prose in
textbooks around the English-speaking world. As an example of English's
capability for humour, both are unsurpassed!
(01.03.2015 - Vikas
Datta is an Associate Editor at IANS. The views expressed are personal.
He can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in )
