I'm not sure why exactly I decided to pick up this 1889 book a few months ago (probably it was the recommendation of Polly Shulman), but having finally gotten around to reading it, I'm so glad I did. It's ridiculously funny. Originally commissioned as a travel book for people who liked to take boating trips on the Thames, it morphed into an account of the holiday taken by three young hypochondriacs with the goal of alleviating their imaginary ailments.
A little of the humor has dated (about how turn-of-the-century people posed for photographs, for example), but most of it has aged remarkably well. It's pretty classic stuff -- misadventures in putting up a tent, getting lost in a hedge maze, lying fisherman -- but perfectly executed. (I don't like fisherman jokes, but the one about the guy who resolved to exaggerate his catch by 25 percent but then ran into trouble because he never caught more than three fish was pretty good.) Some of the best parts are about Montmorency, the dog brought along on the trip, a fox terrier, who like most terriers regards the water with deep misgivings. The subtitle of Three Men in a Boat was used by Connie Willis as the title for her 1997 novel, To Say Nothing of the Dog.
Montmorency is what can only be called a Bad Dog, but fairly typical of the terriers I have known:
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;" and so, as I before observed, he gave to the suggestion of inns, and pubs., and hotels his most emphatic approbation....
Montmorency's ambition in life, is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted.
To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable.
He came and sat down on things, just when they were wanted to be packed; and he laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris or George reached out their hand for anything, it was his cold, damp nose that they wanted. He put his leg into the jam, and he worried the teaspoons, and he pretended that the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan.
Harris said I encouraged him. I didn't encourage him. A dog like that don't want any encouragement. It's the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that.
...
We went downstairs to breakfast. Montmorency had invited two other dogs to come and see him off, and they were whiling away the time by fighting on the doorstep. We calmed them with an umbrella, and sat down to chops and cold beef.
...
Throughout the trip, he had manifested great curiosity concerning the kettle. He would sit and watch it, as it boiled, with a puzzled expression, and would try and rouse it every now and then by growling at it. When it began to splutter and steam, he regarded it as a challenge, and would want to fight it, only, at that precise moment, some one would always dash up and bear off his prey before he could get at it.
To-day he determined he would be beforehand. At the first sound the kettle made, he rose, growling, and advanced towards it in a threatening attitude. It was only a little kettle, but it was full of pluck, and it up and spit at him.
"Ah! would ye!" growled Montmorency, showing his teeth; "I'll teach ye to cheek a hard-working, respectable dog; ye miserable, long-nosed, dirty-looking scoundrel, ye. Come on!"
And he rushed at that poor little kettle, and seized it by the spout.
Then, across the evening stillness, broke a blood-curdling yelp, and Montmorency left the boat, and did a constitutional three times round the island at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour, stopping every now and then to bury his nose in a bit of cool mud.
From that day Montmorency regarded the kettle with a mixture of awe, suspicion, and hate. Whenever he saw it he would growl and back at a rapid rate, with his tail shut down, and the moment it was put upon the stove he would promptly climb out of the boat, and sit on the bank, till the whole tea business was over.
I actually just read this book, and I wholeheartedly agree that Montemorency had some of the best moments in the book.
Also, it is worth noting the flashback to the other fox terrier, in which the owner leaves the terrier in a vet (I believe it is a vet) and he proceeds to cause mayhem. When she returns, she curses the staff about how they keep such a poor establishment, picks up her poor dog, and leaves.
Posted by: Brandon Wobo | Thursday, July 07, 2011 at 02:14 PM