THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL

Author: Jerome K Jerome
Year: 1900
Publisher: Bernhard Tauchnitz
Language: English

Sequels are a bit like the second cup of tea from the same tea bag: you recognise the flavour but miss the intensity.  

After the tremendous commercial fortunes of his “Three Men in a Boat”(see my review from October 2021), which marked the pinnacle of his fame, Jerome K Jerome’s star power faded relentlessly.  He wrote a few more books, typically based on his observations during one or another journey, but he was unable to repeat the success of his previous blockbuster. Eventually he returned to his most successful creations in the hope of being able to squeeze some more value out of them. In 1898, “Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow” was published as a sequel to his comparatively successful “Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow”, and two years later he returned to his boating heroes J, George, and Harris in “Three Men on the Bummel”.

This time around, our merry adventurers set off on a train-/bicycle ride across Germany. The tone of the novel is very similar to that of its predecessor. The travel party is just as inept and ill-prepared, the story line is frequently interrupted by more or less loosely connected anecdotes and tangents, and slapstick comedy based on awkwardness and absurdity abounds. The very decision process leading up to the trip offers the first laughs as the three gentlemen go to great lengths to ensure that their wives, who they assume will be devastated by grief and longing in their absence, will not demand to join them on their trip lest they perish from heart-ache and pining. Their disappointment upon discovering that the wives could not be happier about the chaps’ giving them some space and a bit of time to themselves, is priceless.   

Well under way, J, George, and Harris encounter a string of events and situations that allows Jerome to ponder on the cultural differences between the Brits and Germans and how their respective societies are organised. This is of particular interest as the book was written a decade and a half before the First World War and in the nearing end of the age of empires. Germany at the time was on the rise and had only recently caught up with the industrialisation level of France and Britain and seriously begun to challenge them as a colonial power. The novel was unambiguously intended for British readers and the narrator mixes humorous observations about the Germans and the British alike, but exclusively from an insular perspective. It is slightly amusing that many of the traits and characteristics that he ascribed to the Germans 120 years ago would still be recognised by a modern Briton as typical for a “Kraut” to this day.

Despite the jocularities, pranks, and antics, the British image of, or indeed prejudice to, Germany and the German people is palpable but unfailingly in a good-humoured and, as I read it, essentially respectful way. Jerome could hardly have penned a book like “Three Men on the Bummel” without having spent considerable amounts of time in Germany and gotten to at least superficially know German customs, language, architecture, cuisine, and geography. There is no doubt that Jerome during his travels around Germany took a liking to the country and its people.

A word on the history of my personal copy since it looks like it was flushed down the toilet before being retrieved from the water purification plant and subsequently dried over Mount Doom in Mordor. As a matter of fact this is the first 1900-edition which was owned by my great-grandfather, Emil, presumably through his English-born wife Magdalene who must have taken it with her to Poland and incorporated it into her husband’s library at the family estate in the early 1910s. It went on to survive two world wars and Stalinist oppression which banned Western culture and artwork, before being handed down to me by my grandfather before he passed away.   

Although this novel is less famous than “Three Men in a Boat”, as a leisurely read it is surprisingly charming for a sequel. The jokes are a little further apart and the sections of purple writing and half-baked musings a bit more tedious, but all in all, much like its predecessor, it is too a silly book.