Punch recenserar "Tre män i en båt"

Fr.v. Carl Hentschel (Harris), George Wingrave (George) och Jerome K. Jerome (J). Hunden Montmorency var uppdiktad.

Tre män i en båt torde vara den bok jag läst flest gånger från pärm till pärm. Bland allt annat som utmärker boken från 1889 är att den inte känns särskilt daterad; detaljer som att de enda motorbåtarna är ångdrivna eller att en cab är hästdragen glöms lätt bort.

Det kan man inte säga om all humor. Som den mest (?) kända brittiska humortidningen Punch, utgiven 1841–1992 (och återupplivad 1996–2002 men det är en annan sak). Den hade jag hört talas om långt innan jag fick det tveksamma nöjet att bläddra i den; man kan gå igenom bra många uppslag innan man så mycket som drar på munnen, och det även i årgångar som är jämnåriga med Three men in a boat.

Humor beror på tider, trender, personligheter och säkert en hel del därtill. Det finns hur många exempel som helst på saker som först lockat få skrattare, därefter desto fler, för att efter ännu ett tag glömmas bort. Därför känns det inte alls märkligt att läsa följande:

To be specific, the reviews ranged from the vitriolic to the merely hostile. The use of slang was condemned as "vulgar" and the book as a whole abused as a shameless appeal to "'Arrys and 'Arriets" – sneering critical terms for working-class Londoners. The magazine Punch dubbed Jerome K Jerome "'Arry K 'Arry".

- Robert McCrum: The 100 best novels: No 25 – Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome (1889), Guardian 10 mars 2014

Men hur var det med den saken, egentligen? En tacksam källa för uppgifterna är JKJ själv, och han var aldrig främmande för att göra en bra historia bättre.

Jag grävde fram recensionen ur Punch. Även om det är en recension så är den helt i tidningens stil. Hur underhållande den är får läsaren bedöma.

"Bring me my books!" said the Baron, not for the first time. But on this occasion the Baron was a prisoner in bed, and likely to remain so for many days. Consequently, he required amusement. He had heard of a book, called Three Men in a Boat, by Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, some of whose observations, in a collection of papers entitled Stage-land, had caused him to laugh several times, and to smile frequently, for the subject had not been so well touched since Gilbert Abbot à Beckett wrote his inimitable Quizzology of the Drama, which for genuine drollery has never been surpassed. Anticipating, then, some side-splitters from Three Men in a Boat, the Baron sent for the work. He opened it with a chuckle, which, instead of developing itself into a guffaw and then into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, gradually subsided altogether, his smile vanished, and an expression of weariness came over the Baron's face, as after heroically plodding through five chapters he laid the book down, and sighed aloud, "Well, I'm hanged if I see where the fun of this is." The Baron may be wrong, and the humour of this book, which seems to him to consist of weak imitations of American fun, and in conversations garnished with such phrases as "bally idiot," "bally tent," "doing a mouch," "boss the job," "put a pipe in his mouth, and spread himself over a chair," "land him with a frying-pan," "fat-headed chunk," "who the thunder" and so forth – a style the Baron believes to have been introduced from Yankee-land, and patented here by the Sporting Times and its imitators, – interspersed with plentiful allusions to whiskey-drinking, may not be, as it is not, to his particular taste; and yet, for all that, it may be marvellously funny. So the Baron requested an admirer of this book to pick out the gems, and read them aloud to him. But even the admirer was compelled to own that the gems did not sparkly so brilliantly as he had at first thought. "Yet," observed the admirer, "is has had a big sale." "Three Men in a Boat ought to have," quoth the Baron, cheerily, and then he called aloud, "Bring me Pickwick!" He commenced at the Review, and the first meeting of Mr. Pickwick with the Wardle family. Within five minutes the Baron was shaking with spasmodic laughter, and Charles Dickens drollery was as irresistible as ever. Of course the Baron does not for one moment mean to be so unfair to the Three Men in a Boat as to institute a comparision between it and the immortal Pickwick, but he has heard some young gentlemen, quite of the modern school, who profess themselves intensely amused by such works as this, and as the two books by the author of Through Green Glasses, and yet allow that they could not find anything to laugh at in Pickwick.

- "Baron de Book-Worms & Co", Punch 1 februari 1890

Denna recensionen är väl inte ens merely hostile, om man inte ska läsa in mer i hur han avfärdar vad han uppfattar som fikande efter arbetarklassens gillande.

Idag förefaller boken tvärtom ganska förfinad. Om det är något som sticker ut så är det de märkliga stycken av purple prose som lätt hoppas över. Men den som tycker att Pickwickklubben är det roligaste som skrivits – jag gör det inte – kan säkert ha sina problem med den. (För övrigt kan det anmärkas rörande Harris dryckesvanor, som baronen också hade problem med, att förebilden Carl tvärtom var den ende nykteristen i gänget.)

Through Green Glasses skrevs av Edmund Downey under pseudonymen F. M. Allen. Jag känner inte till den boken. Dickens Pickwickklubben finns naturligtvis att läsa på Gutenberg, t.ex. baronens favorit Chapter IV. A Field Day and Bivouac, liksom Jeromes Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog).