Jerome K. Jerome: Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891)

Edition: Dent, 1951
Review number: 723

The passion play at Oberammergau is unique, and to many people a journey to see it would be something of a pilgrimage. Such a journey is the subject of this comic novel, very much in the style of Jerome's big success, Three Men in a Boat. The journey is made by rail, and the humour is on such subjects as the obscurity of railway timetables.

It is interesting to compare Diary of a Pilgrimage to Jerome's later Three Men on the Bummel, which is also about a German holiday. The later novel is much more anti-German and intolerant, while Diary of a Pilgrimage is easy going. Neither novel is as funny as Three Men in a Boat; both are more interesting from a social history point of view - answering questions like, how have the things that people find funny changed in the last hundred years, how did the attitude of the British to Germany change in the years leading up to the First World War - than they are humorous today.

Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men on the Bummel (1900)

Edition: Penguin, 1994
Review number: 707

The sequel to Three Men in a Boat was written over a decade later, and Jerome begins with his characters aged an appropriate amount, two of them married with children. "J", George and Harris decide they want a break from London, and so set out on a bicycle tour of the Black Forest. They choose a suitably roundabout route to get there, via Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden, and have several reasonably amusing adventures. (A bummel, by the way, is an aimless pleasurable wandering.)

There are two main targets of the humour, such as it is, in this novel. One is tourists, and particularly ones who do not speak the language. The funniest joke in the book falls into this category. George is trying to buy an embroidered cushion as a present, but asks the girl in the shop for a "kuss" rather than a "kissin". He is rather surprised when she won't sell him one, and insists, so that she eventually gives him the kiss he actually asked for.

The jokes about the German character are not so funny. They are perhaps not particularly offensive, but they are stereotypical, predictable, and what might be expected from a man who was later one of the more enthusiastically pro-war writers in 1914.

Jerome K. Jerome: Three Men in a Boat (1889)

Edition: Wordsworth, 1993
Review number: 690

Three Men in a Boat may be one of the best known classics of English language humour, but bits of it have dated quite seriously. The novel tells the story of a short holiday taken by three bachelors (and a dog), rowing a boat up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford and is part commentary on the ludicrous misadventures which are part of the trip and part parody of Victorian travelogues. It is the second aspect which has dated; modern travel writers tend not to be as rhapsodic as the mid-Victorians, nor are they so determined to improve the minds of their readers. This makes them less easy targets. A parodic element which has dated better is the way in which "J." (the narrator) continually derives silly lessons about how to live life from their experiences.

Apart from these sections, the story has retained its freshness and humour. Much of it is rather predictable, pretty much what one would expect of a group of bachelors on a camping holiday (though missing the sexual joking which would probably fill much of any modern equivalent). There are problems with camping equipment, an inability to cook, and arguments about the distribution of work. This last inspires what it probably the most famous quotation from the novel: "Work fascinates me. I could sit and look at it for hours."

The best part of the novel is the beginning, when the three of them are deciding to go for a holiday. One of the main reasons for this decision is "J."'s hypochondria, which convinces him that he is suffering from every complaint in a medical dictionary except for housemaid's knee. (This is typical of the jokes throughout the novel.)