Summary “Three Men in a Boat Excluding a Dog” Jerome
Three friends: George, Harris and Jay (shortened by Jerome) plan to take an amusing boat trip up the Thames. They intend to have a great time, relax from London with its unhealthy climate and merge with nature. Gathering their last much longer than they originally expected, because every time with great effort on the part of young people’s bag is closed, it becomes clear that any required for the upcoming morning detail, such as a toothbrush or a razor, is hopelessly buried in the bowels of the carpetbag, which has to reopen and break all its contents. Finally, on the next Saturday (sleeping for three hours) under the whispering of all the quarterly shopkeepers, three friends and a dog, Jay, the fox terrier of Montmorency, leave the house and first in the cab,
On the thread of the narrative about the journey along the river, the author strings like beads, everyday episodes, anecdotes, funny adventures. So, for example, while sailing past the Hampton-Cortese labyrinth, Harris
The Molesean Gateway and a colorful carpet of variegated attire. to his services travelers remind Jay about the two faded young ladies with whom he once sailed in the same boat, and how they trembled from every drop that fell on their priceless dresses and lacy umbrellas.
When friends swim past the Hampton church and the cemetery that Harris wants to look at, Jay, who does not like this kind of entertainment, reflects on how intrusive the cemetery watchmen are sometimes intrusive, and recalls the case when he had to flee from one of such custodians from all legs, and he certainly wanted to make him look at a pair of skulls, specially reserved for curious tourists.
Harris, dissatisfied with the fact that he was not even
Berthed at Hampton Park to grab a bite, travelers get out of the boat, and after breakfast Harris begins to sing comic couplets as only he knows how to do it. When you have to pull a boat on a tow, Jay, without hiding his indignation, expresses everything he thinks about the waywardness and insidiousness of the string, which, being just stretched, again becomes unthinkably entangled and quarrels all those who, trying to bring it into more or less ordered state, touches it. However, when dealing with the bee, and especially with the young ladies pulling the boat on the tow, it’s impossible to get bored. They manage to wrap it around so that they almost choke themselves, unraveling themselves, rush to the grass and start laughing. Then they get up, pull the boat for a while too quickly and then, stopping, plant it on the strand. True. young people, pulling for a night on a boat canvas, also do not concede to them in originality of execution. So, George and Harris are wrapped in canvas and with faces blackened with choking they wait until Jay releases them from captivity.
After dinner, the character and mood of the travelers change radically. If, as they have already noticed, the river climate influences the general intensification of irritability, then the full stomachs, on the contrary, turn people into benign phlegmatic people. Friends spend the night in a boat, but, oddly enough, even the most lazy of them do not particularly have a prolonged sleep with mounds and nails sticking out of its bottom. They get up at sunrise and continue their journey. The next morning a sharp icy wind blows, and from evening intention of friends to swim before breakfast there is no trace. However, Jay still has to dive for a shirt that fell into the water. All shuddered, he returns to the boat under the merry laughter of George. When it turns out that George’s shirt is soaked, its owner moves with lightning speed from unbridled fun to grim indignation and curses.
Harris undertakes to prepare breakfast, but of six eggs, miraculously still caught in a frying pan, there is one spoon of the burnt mash. For lunch after lunch, friends intend to eat canned pineapple, but it turns out that the can opener is left at home. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to open a jar with an ordinary knife, scissors, the point of the bagra and the mast and the wounds received as a result of these attempts, the annoyed travelers toss the bank, which by that time had become an unimaginable sight, to the middle of the river.
Then they sail and, dreaming off, crash into the punt of three respectable anglers, At Marlo, they leave the boat and spend the night in the hotel “Crown”. In the morning friends go shopping. From each store they go out together with the boy-porter, carrying a basket with food. As a result, when they approach the river, they are followed by a whole crowd of boys with baskets. The boatman is incredibly surprised when he learns that the heroes rented not a steam boat and not a pontoon, but only a four-gravity skiff.
Friends have a real hatred for arrogant boats and their insolent horns. Therefore, in every way they try to hang out as often as possible in front of their noses and deliver them as much trouble and trouble as possible.
The next day young gentlemen clean potatoes, but from their cleaning the potato size decreases to the size of the nut. Montmorency is fighting a boiling kettle. From this struggle the kettle emerges victorious and for a long time inspires Montmorency in relation to itself horror and hatred. After supper, George is going to play a banjo, which he took with him. However, nothing good comes of it. The mournful howl of Montmorency and the game of George does not have a calming effect on nerves.
The next day, you have to go on oars, and Jay in this connection remembers how he first touched the rowing, how he built rafts of stolen boards and how he had to pay for it (with cuffs and slaps). And the first time sailing, he crashed into a muddy shallow bank. Trying to get out of it, broke all the oars and protorchal for three hours in this self-made trap, while some fisherman did not tow his boat to the pier.
Near Reading, George catches the corpse of a drowned woman from the water and blasts the air with a howl of horror. In Streatley, travelers are delayed for two days to give their clothes to the laundry. Before that, under the guidance of George, they had independently attempted to wash it in the Thames, but after this event, the Thames obviously became much cleaner than it was, and the laundress had to not just wash the dirt off their clothes but rake it.
In one of the hotels, friends see in the hall a scarecrow of huge trout. Everyone who enters and finds young people alone, assures them that it was he who caught it. The awkward George breaks the trout, and it turns out that the fish is made of plaster.
After reaching Oxford, friends stop for three days, and then start off on the return journey. The whole day they have to row to the accompaniment of rain. At first they are delighted with this kind of weather, and Jay and Harris tighten the song about the gypsy life. In the evening they play cards and conduct a fascinating conversation about deaths from rheumatism, bronchitis and pneumonia. After that, the heartbreaking melody, performed by George on the banjo, finally deprives the travelers of the presence of the spirit, and Harris begins to sob like a child.
The next day, the lovers of nature can not withstand the ordeal, to send them weather thrown boat Pengborne in the care of the boatman and the evening safely arrive in London, where the excellent dinner in the restaurant brings them to life, and they raise their glasses for a wise last act.
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