Three Men in a Boat Read Online Free Page B

vindictiveness of inanimate objects, with tow-lines, metal hoops and the tin of pineapple chunks doing their worst to frustrate his heroes. And he makes effective use of bathos, embarking on long and heartfelt passages of lush, Pre-Raphaelite prose, only to have them cut short by one of Harris’s commonplace observations, or by the oarsmen ramming into a punt on which three elderly gentlemen are peacefully fishing the evening away. Harris’s doomed attempts to sing extracts fromGilbert and Sullivan before an audience of old ladies provides the book with its comic climacteric, but overall a sublime contentment reigns: ‘We lit our pipes, and sat, looking out on the quiet night, and talked.’
    Jerome’s new publisher, Arrowsmith – whose other bestsellers included
The Diary of a Nobody
and Anthony Hope’s
The Prisoner of Zenda
– was very taken with
Three Men in a Boat
: he told its author that it ‘ought to do well in the holiday months’, and suggested cutting up some of the longer passages in case they alarmed potential readers. The book’s success on both sides of the Atlantic made Jerome’s a name to conjure with, and when the proprietor of a new monthly magazine decided to pick a popular name as its editor, he chose Jerome in preference to Kipling. The first issue of
The Idler
appeared in February 1892, and included contributions from Mark Twain, Bret Harte and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Although he sometimes put in sixteen hours a day on the magazine, scrupulously sifting through the ‘slush pile’ in search of new authors – W. W. Jacobs among them – Jerome still maintained the pose of idleness, contributing a regular column called ‘The Idlers’ Club’ and holding regular ‘Idler at Homes’ in Arundel Street off the Strand, attended by cronies like H. G. Wells, Barrie and Conan Doyle. A year later he added to his load by taking on the editorship of a weekly magazine,
Today
, serializing Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Ebb Tide’ and publishing work by Hardy, Kipling, Conan Doyle, Anthony Hope and even Aubrey Beardsley. He was a popular and convivial figure at the Fleet Street end of the London literary spectrum; overworked as he was, he still found time for bluff, all-male gatherings of writers, politicians and theatrical folk, preferring informal and often short-lived dining-clubs like the Vagabonds or the Omar Khayyam to grander, more snobbish West End clubs.
    Jerome’s career as an editor came to an end in 1897, when he was sued for libel over some footling matter by a Leeds company promoter. The plaintiff was awarded a farthing in damages, but both sides were ordered to pay their own costs.
The Idler
and
Today
closed down, and Jerome – who had recently become a father – was once again a freelance writer. Although he was to return to Londonafter World War I, he decided to move to the country, and bought a house on the Thames, at Wallingford in Oxfordshire.
    Although he received no royalties from the pirated American edition, earnings from
Three Men in a Boat
and his other books and plays were enough to keep the family afloat. Before long, Jerome decided to send the Three Men on their adventures again. Not surprisingly, George, Harris and J. have become stouter and more settled in the ten years since they took to the river: in Pritchett’s opinion, ‘they have lost the happy, impartial rudeness of unattached young men’. George weighs over twelve stone, has risen (like his original) to the rank of bank manager, and is still a bachelor. Harris and J. are respectable family men, with several children apiece and such trappings of worldly success as paddocks and cucumber frames. J. is making his way as a writer, and is bruised by snobbish and dismissive critics (‘You’ve been reading those criticisms again,’ Mrs J. tells him). Both Harris and J. enjoy playing the parts of henpecked husbands, and both are – by modern standards – unrepentantly old-fashioned in their views on marriage