# The Past Speaking to Us: Cool Quote from "Three Men in a Boat" **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 17, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953 "2015-02-17T21:26:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/1 "2015-02-17T21:26:02Z")
I just read Jerome K. Jerome’s _Three Men in a Boat_, a comic English novel published in 1889. I enjoyed the way the following passage spoke directly to, well…us. Check it out: [QUOTE=Three Men In A Boat] To go back to the carved-oak question, they must have had very fair notions of the artistic and the beautiful, our great-great-grandfathers. Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? China dogThat china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her. But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was. We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios. [/QUOTE] Anyone else find that cool, that this breezy passage was written all that time ago, and now here we are, in “the years 2000 and odd” and we are the exact people he was speculating about? Ever come across something similar in an old book? ---
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/2 "2015-02-17T22:09:37Z")
A sequel, _Three Men on the Bummel_, about a bicycle trip through Germany, was published in 1900, and contains this eerie (in retrospect) observation: “Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be exceptionally well governed; if this continues, it will go well with him. When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes wrong with the governing machine.” ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/3 "2015-02-17T22:30:44Z")
> [@cjepson](#): > > A sequel, _Three Men on the Bummel_, about a bicycle trip through Germany, was published in 1900, and contains this eerie (in retrospect) observation: > > “Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be exceptionally well governed; if this continues, it will go well with him. When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes wrong with the governing machine.” Wow - cool. Jerome really had quite a modern sensibility, and apparently a very far-sighted one as well. Did you like _Three Men on the Bummel_? I really enjoyed _Three Men in a Boat_ but the reviews of the sequel are very mixed and I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/4 "2015-02-17T22:34:54Z")
There’s actually a prequel, too - _The Man In The Boat_. Unfortunately, it ran afoul of Victorian porn laws and was destroyed in press. Rubbed out, you could say. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/5 "2015-02-17T23:12:49Z")
Three Men in a Boat is one of my favorite books ever. Found out about it here if I recall correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/6 "2015-02-17T23:21:52Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > There’s actually a prequel, too - _The Man In The Boat_. Unfortunately, it ran afoul of Victorian porn laws and was destroyed in press. Rubbed out, you could say. I could feel that one just about to whoosh over my head, but with the help of Urban Dictionary I figured it out. Nice. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2015, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/7 "2015-02-17T23:55:13Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > Three Men in a Boat is one of my favorite books ever. > Found out about it here if I recall correctly. I’ve read it, but I’m embarrassed to say that I did not like it. ---
**Author:** ![carlotta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@carlotta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carlotta)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/8 "2015-02-18T00:59:32Z")
> [@cjepson](#): > > A sequel, _Three Men on the Bummel_, about a bicycle trip through Germany, was published in 1900, and contains this eerie (in retrospect) observation: > > “Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be exceptionally well governed; if this continues, it will go well with him. When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes wrong with the governing machine.” ah, you beat me. This was exactly what I was going to post. I think both books are hilarious and do speak very directly to me here in the 2000 odds. Have you read Connie Willis’ “To Say Nothing Of the Dog?” Lighthearted time travel fantasy with many nods to Jerome K. Jerome, in fact, he makes a cameo. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/9 "2015-02-18T02:08:20Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > Ever come across something similar in an old book? Yeah. Barbara Tuchman’s _A Distant Mirror_, not itself old, quotes a monk, Brother John Clyn, reaching out to anyone at all, from one of history’s darkest hours: 1347, as the Black Death, cause unknown, appeared to be consuming all human life. > [@](#): > > In enclosed places such as monasteries and prisons, the infection of one person usually meant that of all, as happened in the Franciscan convents of Carcassonne and Marseille, where every inmate without exception died. Of the 140 Dominicans at Montpellier only seven survived. Petrarch’s brother Gherardo, member of a Carthusian monastery, buried the prior and 34 fellow monks one by one, sometimes three a day, until he was left alone with his dog and fled to look for a place that would take him in. Watching every comrade die, men in such places could not but wonder whether the strange peril that filled the air had not been sent to exterminate the human race. In Kilkenny, Ireland, Brother John Clyn of the Friars Minor, another monk left alone among dead men, kept a record of what had happened lest “things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who come after us.” Sensing “the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One,” and waiting for death to visit him too, he wrote, “I leave parchment to continue this work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun.” Brother John, as noted by another hand, died of the pestilence, but he foiled oblivion. ---
**Author:** ![cjepson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a9adbd/32.png) [@cjepson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cjepson)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/10 "2015-02-18T02:39:09Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > Did you like _Three Men on the Bummel_? I really enjoyed _Three Men in a Boat_ but the reviews of the sequel are very mixed and I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. I liked both, but thought _Three Men in a Boat_ was better. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/11 "2015-02-18T12:36:01Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > Wow - cool. Jerome really had quite a modern sensibility, and apparently a very far-sighted one as well. > > Did you like _Three Men on the Bummel_? I really enjoyed _Three Men in a Boat_ but the reviews of the sequel are very mixed and I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. > [@cjepson](#): > > I liked both, but thought _Three Men in a Boat_ was better. I think they’re both excellent books, but to me _Boat_ has a freshness and a feeling of youth about it that _Bummel_ somehow lacks, even if the latter is a better constructed book in some ways. Perhaps this also reflects the different age at which I first read the books - _Boat_ made me helpless with laughter on nearly every page when I was a teenager, while _Bummel_ didn’t do that nearly as often when I read it in my early 20s. _Bummel_ is definitely worth reading, and some parts of it are absolutely hilarious, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it feels, in a strange way, a little more stilted. Jerome’s age might also have has something to do with it; _Bummel_ was written 11 years after _Boat_, at the age of 41 rather than 30, and maybe that reflects part of the difference between the two books. ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2015, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/12 "2015-02-18T23:11:10Z")
Three men on the Bummel is not as good as good as Boat (IMO) - my favourite parts of Boat are the fantasy/historical dreamlike digressions, which are missing from Bummel. Interestingly, the most enjoyable parts of Bummel are the pre-trip planning and organisation - once they actually get to Germany, it is far less joyous. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/13 "2015-02-19T01:06:59Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > Yeah. Barbara Tuchman’s _A Distant Mirror_, not itself old, quotes a monk, Brother John Clyn, reaching out to anyone at all, from one of history’s darkest hours: 1347, as the Black Death, cause unknown, appeared to be consuming all human life. Yeesh, that is pretty haunting. I have heard such good things about that book - I’m going to have to add it to my list. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/14 "2015-02-19T01:16:20Z")
> [@Dervorin](#): > > I think they’re both excellent books, but to me _Boat_ has a freshness and a feeling of youth about it that _Bummel_ somehow lacks, even if the latter is a better constructed book in some ways. Perhaps this also reflects the different age at which I first read the books - _Boat_ made me helpless with laughter on nearly every page when I was a teenager, while _Bummel_ didn’t do that nearly as often when I read it in my early 20s. _Bummel_ is definitely worth reading, and some parts of it are absolutely hilarious, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it feels, in a strange way, a little more stilted. > > Jerome’s age might also have has something to do with it; _Bummel_ was written 11 years after _Boat_, at the age of 41 rather than 30, and maybe that reflects part of the difference between the two books. > [@Wallaby](#): > > Three men on the Bummel is not as good as good as Boat (IMO) - my favourite parts of Boat are the fantasy/historical dreamlike digressions, which are missing from Bummel. > > Interestingly, the most enjoyable parts of Bummel are the pre-trip planning and organisation - once they actually get to Germany, it is far less joyous. > [@cjepson](#): > > I liked both, but thought _Three Men in a Boat_ was better. Thanks. I must say, I’m impressed by how many people on these boards have read the relatively obscure _Three Men in a Boat_, not to mention the even more obscure sequel! In any event ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/15 "2015-02-19T01:34:12Z")
Ha, I just read it (for the second time) a couple weeks ago. A very fun book. I like how he’s going along, writing this light, fun stuff, and then he’ll dive into a piece of sentimentality that only a Victorian could write. Here is a literary triangle for you. In Heinlein’s _Have Spaceship, Will Travel_, Kip’s dad is reading _Three Men in a Boat_ and mentions what a great book it is. This convinced a young Connie Willis to read said book, and when she grew up she wrote _To Say Nothing of the Dog_, a time-travel comedy set in 1889 that riffs on Jerome’s book (and others), which she dedicated to Heinlein. ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/16 "2015-02-19T15:34:32Z")
> [@dangermom](#): > > I like how he’s going along, writing this light, fun stuff, and then he’ll dive into a piece of sentimentality that only a Victorian could write. I would often be a couple of paragraphs into one of those poetic pieces before I realized he wasn’t building up to a joke. I agree that \*Bummel \*isn’t as good as _Boat_, but it does have the hilarious bit where Harris’s wife jumps off the back of the tandem bicycle and he doesn’t realize it: “Meanwhile, Harris continued his ride with much enjoyment. It seemed to him that he had suddenly become a stronger, and in every way a more capable cyclist. Said he to what he thought was Mrs. Harris: ‘I haven’t felt this machine so light for months. It’s this air, I think; it’s doing me good.’” ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/17 "2015-02-19T20:23:35Z")
_Bummel_ has one or two inspired passages, such as the boot-buying episode, and the children waking J. up in the morning. But we learn too much about the Germans, and not enough about George, Harris and J. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/18 "2015-02-19T20:35:16Z")
> [@Mk\_VII](#): > > _Bummel_ has one or two inspired passages, such as the boot-buying episode, and the children waking J. up in the morning. But we learn too much about the Germans, and not enough about George, Harris and J. I really loved both books in spite of ( or maybe because of ) their differences. In 3 Men on the Bummel, one of the wives is named Ethelbertha which strikes me as the ultimate old lady name but I found myself wondering if maybe it was the early twentieth century equivalent of a stripper name. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2015, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/19 "2015-02-19T22:44:26Z")
Three Men In A Boat is one of my favourites too - I particularly like the way that although the author scathingly criticises his companions, he makes it subtly clear than he (the narrator) is too a complete idiot - and how he often describes some particular trait as a terrible character flaw in his friends, but the same trait as a virtue in himself. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2015, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953/20 "2015-02-20T02:20:53Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > Thanks. I must say, I’m impressed by how many people on these boards have read the relatively obscure _Three Men in a Boat_, not to mention the even more obscure sequel! In any event This was before computer games. I didn’t have any friends or activities. Laughed out load when I read _in a Boat_ as a teenager, and that was unusual: I’m normally slow to smile. It is, actually, slow, boring, and a product of it’s time, which makes the successful humour all the more impressive. Didn’t laugh out loud at _on the Bummel_, but I’ve quoted it here, on SDMB, because some of the humour, ideas and images have stuck with me for the past 40 years. And yes, the picture of pre-WWI Germany is striking, and can be read as a comment on the Nuremberg trials. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-past-speaking-to-us-cool-quote-from-three-men-in-a-boat/712953.md?page=2)