It Really Isn’t About the Bike

Jerome Squared’s Three Men on Wheels really is not about the bike.  Instead, he focuses on the travel itself, creating a broad, satiric travelogue that seems to capture perfectly the British, height of Empire, self-effacing, gently condescending tone.  All of this is done in a narrative that completely lacks any sort of coherent direction since any “plot” is utterly destroyed by Jerome’s frequent–and very funny–digressions.  Here is a typical chapter:  The narrator starts to describe how he and Harris make their plans for departure, and they decide George will stay overnight at the Harris home.  Before the plans can be finalized, the narrator begins a long, involved, tortuous story about a time he stayed with the Harrises and how the Harris children kept him up all night.  Finally, after pages of this gently mocking account, he gets back to his point.

In another chapter, the narrator tries to persuade Harris that the three friends most definitely do not want to go on a boating holiday (which is why the bikes finally come in).  This sets him off on a long story about hiring a boat and running into problems with the reluctant skipper, who feels that there really is no safe time to leave the harbor, so it’s best to stay put.

Once the friends arrive in Europe the digressions take off.  The narrator explains that he is not going to describe things he sees, since that is ultimately very boring writing.  Instead, he provides long, rambling discourses on the inhabitants of the country and their habits.  Since the journey is through the Black Forest, the Germans are in for a lot of amateur sociological analysis at the hands of the narrator, though even the British themselves take a hit.

In one train station, the narrator sees what every sophisticated travelers dreads seeing: the Britisher.  The Britisher is a caricature of the British traveler, a loud, old-fashioned, obtuse, linguistically challenged, buffoon.  Here is his description of father and daughter:

They were not content with appearance; they acted the thing to the letter.  They walked gaping round them at every step.  The gentleman had an open Baedeker in his hand, and the lady carried a phrase-book.  They talked French that nobody could understand, and German that they could not translate themselves.  The man poked at officials with his alpenstock to attract their attention, and the lady, her eye catching sight of an advertisement of someone’s cocoa, said, “Shocking!” and turned the other way.

The continental ads for cocoa, the narrator goes on to explain, feature illustrations of a woman who dispenses with the “yard or so of art muslin” that clothes the models in the English ads.  Shocking, indeed.  And still true today.

But the Germans are the source of most of Jerome’s jokes.  They are, of course, industrious people, but they are also, of course, bound by rules.  Harris one day exits a public garden after stepping over a sign commanding “DURCHGANG VERBOTEN,” or, as the narrator helpfully translates, “going through forbidden.”  A policeman sees Harris’s misdemeanor, and orders him to return to the garden and exit the proper way.  When Harris points out that doing so would mean that he would again go through the forbidden area if he were to do so, the policeman quickly sees his point.  Therefore, the policeman tells him, he must enter the garden through the correct gate and then turn around and exit immediately, thus making sure he would have exited properly.  Harris, the pragmatic Englishman, refuses.

And so on.  The caricatures of Germans and German traits are broad and not really all that different from the stereotypical view that non-Germans still have of Germans.  However, what is interesting to me is the obviously apparent affection Jerome and his narrator have for Germany.  Their greatest crime seems to be that they are not quite up to English standards, but then again, only English can hope to reach those standards, and then not all English can do so.  Jerome sits on his comfortable English gentleman’s seat, content with the world and the Empire’s place in it, judging others, but not too harshly.