Three Men on the Bummel

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**Title** **Three Men on the Bummel**
Author	Jerome K. Jerome
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Comedy novel
Publisher	J. W. Arrowsmith
Released	1900
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	NA
Preceded by	Three Men in a Boat

Three Men on the Bummel is a humorous novel by Jerome K. Jerome. It was published in 1900, eleven years after his most famous work, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).

The sequel brings back the three companions who figured in Three Men in a Boat, this time on a bicycle tour through the German Black Forest. D. C. Browning's introduction to the 1937 Everyman's edition says "Like most sequels, it has been compared unfavourably with its parent story, but it was only a little less celebrated than Three Men in a Boat and was for long used as a school book in Germany."^[1]. Jeremy Nicholas of the Jerome K. Jerome society regards it as a "comic masterpiece" containing "set pieces" as funny or funnier than those in its predecessor, but, taken as a whole, not as satisfying due to the lack of as strong a unifying thread.^[2]

1 The word 'Bummel'
2 Cycling
3 Germany
4 Comparison with Three Men in a Boat
5 Notes
6 Online text

[edit] The word 'Bummel'

D. C. Browning writes "The title must be puzzling to many readers, for 'bummel' will not be found in English dictionaries."^[3]^[4] It is, as Jerome does not explain until the end of the book, a German word, and apart from his book, it has not received any widespread use in English. (The first American edition, published by Dodd Mead in 1900, was entitled Three Men on Wheels.)^[5]

When asked by one of the characters in the book "how would you translate [bummel]," the narrator replies:

"A 'Bummel'," I explained, "I should describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started. Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever on the running of the sand. We nod and smile to many as we pass; with some we stop and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way. We have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when it's over."

The general style and manner of the book are similar to its predecessor. It is a series of humorous vignettes, each of which builds slowly, through accumulation of layer on layer of detail, through several pages. Jeremy Nicholas calls these "set pieces." Most of them concern either bicycling, genial (if shallow) commentary on German culture from the point of view of a British tourist, or situation-comedy-like depictions of interpersonal interactions between the characters.

[edit] Cycling

The novel was written near the end of the Victorian-era bicycle craze, launched by the development of the two-wheeled safety bicycle. It depicts an era when bicycles had just become a familiar piece of middle-class recreational equipment. The references to brand competition, advertising, and enthusiasts' attitudes toward their equipment resonate with modern readers.

The novel invites comparison with H. G. Wells's 1896 humorous cycling novel, The Wheels of Chance.

Many of the comments on cycling are relevant—and funny—today. Those who have purchased ergonomic bicycle saddles intended to relieve pressure on the perineal nerves may not know that these are not a new invention:

I said "...There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made out of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard. There was that saddle you bought in Birmingham; it was divided in the middle, and looked like a pair of kidneys."

He said: "You mean that one constructed on anatomical principles."

"Very likely," I replied. "The box you bought it in had a picture on the cover, representing a sitting skeleton--or rather that part of a skeleton which does sit."

He said: "It was quite correct; it showed you the true position of the--"

I said: "We will not go into details; the picture always seemed to me indelicate."

[edit] Germany

Jerome's comic stereotypes of Germany and the German character have aged less well, yet provide some picture of the time near the end of the Kaiser's Germany:

In Germany one breathes in love of order with the air, in Germany the babies beat time with their rattles, and the German bird has come to prefer the box, and to regard with contempt the few uncivilised outcasts who continue to build their nests in trees and hedges. In course of time every German bird, one is confident, will have his proper place in a full chorus. This promiscuous and desultory warbling of his must, one feels, be irritating to the precise German mind; there is no method in it. The music-loving German will organise him.

Jerome would have been aware of Mark Twain's humorous travelogue, A Tramp Abroad (1880), based on a walking tour through similar parts of Germany, with extensive comments on the language and culture. Three Men on the Bummel follows in this vein.

[edit] Comparison with Three Men in a Boat

Jeremy Nicholas says that the book is "unfairly chastised as being an ineffectual afterthought" to Three Men in a Boat, and that "the set pieces (the boot shop, Harris and his wife on the tandem, Harris confronting the hose-pipe, the animal riot in the hill-top restaurant) are as polished and funny (funnier, some would say) as anything in the earlier book." His analysis is that

The trump card that Bummel lacks, and which makes Three Men in a Boat what it is, is the River Thames.... It provides the framework for Jerome's discursive narrative. He can stray from the present adventure as much as he likes...but the river holds the whole thing together and gives the book its satisfying unity. The best television situation comedies rely on this same device, a world with clearly-defined parameters. A ramble through Germany and the Black Forest does not provide that."^[6]

[edit] Notes

^ D. C. Browning, 1937; introduction to Three Men and a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel; Everyman; J. M. Dent and Sons
^ Jeremy Nicholas: Three Men in a Boat and on the Bummel—The story behind Jerome's two comic masterpieces
^ ibid.
^ American Heritage, 4th edition, does not have it. Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002[7] does not have it in Jerome's sense; it defines "bummel" as "chiefly Scotland, bumble," which in turn is defined as a humming sound, buzz, or rumble.

Both The Chambers Dictionary and the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary do list 'bummel' in precisely Jerome's sense (a stroll or leisurely journey). Both also give the German Bummel (noun) or bummeln (verb) as the origin of the word 'bum' in all its chiefly American senses. Chambers does have the Scottish variant of 'bumble' (as in bumblebee), but spells it 'bummle'.