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Home -> Jerome K. Jerome -> Three Men on the Bummel -> Chapter 3

Three Men on the Bummel - Chapter 3

1. Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14







CHAPTER III



Harris's one fault--Harris and the Angel--A patent bicycle lamp--
The ideal saddle--The "Overhauler"--His eagle eye--His method--His
cheery confidence--His simple and inexpensive tastes--His
appearance--How to get rid of him--George as prophet--The gentle
art of making oneself disagreeable in a foreign tongue--George as a
student of human nature--He proposes an experiment--His Prudence--
Harris's support secured, upon conditions.

On Monday afternoon Harris came round; he had a cycling paper in
his hand.

I said: "If you take my advice, you will leave it alone."

Harris said: "Leave what alone?"

I said: "That brand-new, patent, revolution in cycling, record-
breaking, Tomfoolishness, whatever it may be, the advertisement of
which you have there in your hand."

He said: "Well, I don't know; there will be some steep hills for
us to negotiate; I guess we shall want a good brake."

I said: "We shall want a brake, I agree; what we shall not want is
a mechanical surprise that we don't understand, and that never acts
when it is wanted."

"This thing," he said, "acts automatically."

"You needn't tell me," I said. "I know exactly what it will do, by
instinct. Going uphill it will jamb the wheel so effectively that
we shall have to carry the machine bodily. The air at the top of
the hill will do it good, and it will suddenly come right again.
Going downhill it will start reflecting what a nuisance it has
been. This will lead to remorse, and finally to despair. It will
say to itself: 'I'm not fit to be a brake. I don't help these
fellows; I only hinder them. I'm a curse, that's what I am;' and,
without a word of warning, it will 'chuck' the whole business.
That is what that brake will do. Leave it alone. You are a good
fellow," I continued, "but you have one fault."

"What?" he asked, indignantly.

"You have too much faith," I answered. "If you read an
advertisement, you go away and believe it. Every experiment that
every fool has thought of in connection with cycling you have
tried. Your guardian angel appears to be a capable and
conscientious spirit, and hitherto she has seen you through; take
my advice and don't try her too far. She must have had a busy time
since you started cycling. Don't go on till you make her mad."

He said: "If every man talked like that there would be no
advancement made in any department of life. If nobody ever tried a
new thing the world would come to a standstill. It is by--"

"I know all that can be said on that side of the argument," I
interrupted. "I agree in trying new experiments up to thirty-five;
AFTER thirty-five I consider a man is entitled to think of himself.
You and I have done our duty in this direction, you especially.
You have been blown up by a patent gas lamp--"

He said: "I really think, you know, that was my fault; I think I
must have screwed it up too tight."

I said: "I am quite willing to believe that if there was a wrong
way of handling the thing that is the way you handle it. You
should take that tendency of yours into consideration; it bears
upon the argument. Myself, I did not notice what you did; I only
know we were riding peacefully and pleasantly along the Whitby
Road, discussing the Thirty Years' War, when your lamp went off
like a pistol-shot. The start sent me into the ditch; and your
wife's face, when I told her there was nothing the matter and that
she was not to worry, because the two men would carry you upstairs,
and the doctor would be round in a minute bringing the nurse with
him, still lingers in my memory."

He said: "I wish you had thought to pick up the lamp. I should
like to have found out what was the cause of its going off like
that."

I said: "There was not time to pick up the lamp. I calculate it
would have taken two hours to have collected it. As to its 'going
off,' the mere fact of its being advertised as the safest lamp ever
invented would of itself, to anyone but you, have suggested
accident. Then there was that electric lamp," I continued.

"Well, that really did give a fine light," he replied; "you said so
yourself."

I said: "It gave a brilliant light in the King's Road, Brighton,
and frightened a horse. The moment we got into the dark beyond
Kemp Town it went out, and you were summoned for riding without a
light. You may remember that on sunny afternoons you used to ride
about with that lamp shining for all it was worth. When lighting-
up time came it was naturally tired, and wanted a rest."

"It was a bit irritating, that lamp," he murmured; "I remember it."

I said: "It irritated me; it must have been worse for you. Then
there are saddles," I went on--I wished to get this lesson home to
him. "Can you think of any saddle ever advertised that you have
NOT tried?"

He said: "It has been an idea of mine that the right saddle is to
be found."

I said: "You give up that idea; this is an imperfect world of joy
and sorrow mingled. 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."

He said: "Medically speaking, it was right."

"Possibly," I said, "for a man who rode in nothing but his bones.
I only know that I tried it myself, and that to a man who wore
flesh it was agony. Every time you went over a stone or a rut it
nipped you; it was like riding on an irritable lobster. You rode
that for a month."

"I thought it only right to give it a fair trial," he answered.

I said: "You gave your family a fair trial also; if you will allow
me the use of slang. Your wife told me that never in the whole
course of your married life had she known you so bad tempered, so
un-Christian like, as you were that month. Then you remember that
other saddle, the one with the spring under it."

He said: "You mean 'the Spiral.'"

I said: "I mean the one that jerked you up and down like a Jack-
in-the-box; sometimes you came down again in the right place, and
sometimes you didn't. I am not referring to these matters merely
to recall painful memories, but I want to impress you with the
folly of trying experiments at your time of life."

He said. "I wish you wouldn't harp so much on my age. A man at
thirty-four--"

"A man at what?"

He said: "If you don't want the thing, don't have it. If your
machine runs away with you down a mountain, and you and George get
flung through a church roof, don't blame me."

"I cannot promise for George," I said; "a little thing will
sometimes irritate him, as you know. If such an accident as you
suggest happen, he may be cross, but I will undertake to explain to
him that it was not your fault."

"Is the thing all right?" he asked.

"The tandem," I replied, "is well."

He said: "Have you overhauled it?"

I said: "I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it. The
thing is now in working order, and it is going to remain in working
order till we start."

I have had experience of this "overhauling." There was a man at
Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees. He proposed one
evening we should go for a long bicycle ride together on the
following day, and I agreed. I got up early, for me; I made an
effort, and was pleased with myself. He came half an hour late: I
was waiting for him in the garden. It was a lovely day. He said:-

"That's a good-looking machine of yours. How does it run?"

"Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning;
goes a little stiffly after lunch."

He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it
violently.

I said: "Don't do that; you'll hurt it."

I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to
him. Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to
shake it. I felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.

He said: "This front wheel wobbles."

I said: "It doesn't if you don't wobble it." It didn't wobble, as
a matter of fact--nothing worth calling a wobble.

He said: "This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?"

I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did
know something about the business. I went to the tool shed to see
what I could find. When I came back he was sitting on the ground
with the front wheel between his legs. He was playing with it,
twiddling it round between his fingers; the remnant of the machine
was lying on the gravel path beside him.

He said: "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours."

"It looks like it, doesn't it?" I answered. But he was the sort of
man that never understands satire.

He said: "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong."

I said: "Don't you trouble about it any more; you will make
yourself tired. Let us put it back and get off."

He said: "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is
out." He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.

Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and
out rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.

"Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em! We mustn't lose any of them."
He was quite excited about them.

We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen. He said he
hoped we had got them all, because, if not, it would make a serious
difference to the machine. He said there was nothing you should be
more careful about in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing you
did not lose any of the balls. He explained that you ought to
count them as you took them out, and see that exactly the same
number went back in each place. I promised, if ever I took a
bicycle to pieces I would remember his advice.

I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the
doorstep. It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit. As a matter
of fact, it was a silly thing to do. I am not as a rule addle-
headed; his influence must have affected me.

He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain
for me, and at once began taking off the gear-case. I did try to
persuade him from that. I told him what an experienced friend of
mine once said to me solemnly:-

"If anything goes wrong with your gear-case, sell the machine and
buy a new one; it comes cheaper."

He said: "People talk like that who understand nothing about
machines. Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case."

I had to confess he was right. In less than five minutes he had
the gear-case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling
for screws. He said it was always a mystery to him the way screws
disappeared.

We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out.
She seemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had
started hours ago.

He said: "We shan't be long now. I'm just helping your husband to
overhaul this machine of his. It's a good machine; but they all
want going over occasionally."

Ethelbertha said: "If you want to wash yourselves when you have
done you might go into the back kitchen, if you don't mind; the
girls have just finished the bedrooms."

She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail;
but that in any case she would be back to lunch. I would have
given a sovereign to be going with her. I was getting heartily
sick of standing about watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.

Common sense continued to whisper to me: "Stop him, before he does
any more mischief. You have a right to protect your own property
from the ravages of a lunatic. Take him by the scruff of the neck,
and kick him out of the gate!"

But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people's feelings, and
I let him muddle on.

He gave up looking for the rest of the screws. He said screws had
a knack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now he
would see to the chain. He tightened it till it would not move;
next he loosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before.
Then he said we had better think about getting the front wheel back
into its place again.

I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel. At the end of
ten minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should
handle the wheel; and we changed places. At the end of his first
minute he dropped the machine, and took a short walk round the
croquet lawn, with his hands pressed together between his thighs.
He explained as he walked that the thing to be careful about was to
avoid getting your fingers pinched between the forks and the spokes
of the wheel. I replied I was convinced, from my own experience,
that there was much truth in what he said. He wrapped himself up
in a couple of dusters, and we commenced again. At length we did
get the thing into position; and the moment it was in position he
burst out laughing.

I said: "What's the joke?"

He said: "Well, I am an ass!"

It was the first thing he had said that made me respect him. I
asked him what had led him to the discovery.

He said: "We've forgotten the balls!"

I looked for my hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the
path, and Ethelbertha's favourite hound was swallowing the balls as
fast as he could pick them up.

"He will kill himself," said Ebbson--I have never met him since
that day, thank the Lord; but I think his name was Ebbson--"they
are solid steel."

I said: "I am not troubling about the dog. He has had a bootlace
and a packet of needles already this week. Nature's the best
guide; puppies seem to require this kind of stimulant. What I am
thinking about is my bicycle."

He was of a cheerful disposition. He said: "Well, we must put
back all we can find, and trust to Providence."

We found eleven. We fixed six on one side and five on the other,
and half an hour later the wheel was in its place again. It need
hardly be added that it really did wobble now; a child might have
noticed it. Ebbson said it would do for the present. He appeared
to be getting a bit tired himself. If I had let him, he would, I
believe, at this point have gone home. I was determined now,
however, that he should stop and finish; I had abandoned all
thoughts of a ride. My pride in the machine he had killed. My
only interest lay now in seeing him scratch and bump and pinch
himself. I revived his drooping spirits with a glass of beer and
some judicious praise. I said:

"Watching you do this is of real use to me. It is not only your
skill and dexterity that fascinates me, it is your cheery
confidence in yourself, your inexplicable hopefulness, that does me
good."

Thus encouraged, he set to work to refix the gear-case. He stood
the bicycle against the house, and worked from the off side. Then
he stood it against a tree, and worked from the near side. Then I
held it for him, while he lay on the ground with his head between
the wheels, and worked at it from below, and dropped oil upon
himself. Then he took it away from me, and doubled himself across
it like a pack-saddle, till he lost his balance and slid over on to
his head. Three times he said:

"Thank Heaven, that's right at last!"

And twice he said:

"No, I'm damned if it is after all!"

What he said the third time I try to forget.

Then he lost his temper and tried bullying the thing. The bicycle,
I was glad to see, showed spirit; and the subsequent proceedings
degenerated into little else than a rough-and-tumble fight between
him and the machine. One moment the bicycle would be on the gravel
path, and he on top of it; the next, the position would be
reversed--he on the gravel path, the bicycle on him. Now he would
be standing flushed with victory, the bicycle firmly fixed between
his legs. But his triumph would be short-lived. By a sudden,
quick movement it would free itself, and, turning upon him, hit him
sharply over the head with one of its handles.

At a quarter to one, dirty and dishevelled, cut and breeding, he
said: "I think that will do;" and rose and wiped his brow.

The bicycle looked as if it also had had enough of it. Which had
received most punishment it would have been difficult to say. I
took him into the back kitchen, where, so far as was possible
without soda and proper tools, he cleaned himself, and sent him
home.

The bicycle I put into a cab and took round to the nearest
repairing shop. The foreman of the works came up and looked at it.

"What do you want me to do with that?" said he.

"I want you," I said, "so far as is possible, to restore it."

"It's a bit far gone," said he; "but I'll do my best."

He did his best, which came to two pounds ten. But it was never
the same machine again; and at the end of the season I left it in
an agent's hands to sell. I wished to deceive nobody; I instructed
the man to advertise it as a last year's machine. The agent
advised me not to mention any date. He said:

"In this business it isn't a question of what is true and what
isn't; it's a question of what you can get people to believe. Now,
between you and me, it don't look like a last year's machine; so
far as looks are concerned, it might be a ten-year old. We'll say
nothing about date; we'll just get what we can."

I left the matter to him, and he got me five pounds, which he said
was more than he had expected.

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can
"overhaul" it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure
that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the
best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the
wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-
hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down
upon, and he is happy for the day. He has to put up with certain
disadvantages, of course; there is no joy without alloy. He
himself always looks like a tinker, and his machine always suggests
the idea that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguise it; but
as he rarely gets beyond the first milestone with it, this,
perhaps, does not much matter. The mistake some people make is in
thinking they can get both forms of sport out of the same machine.
This is impossible; no machine will stand the double strain. You
must make up your mind whether you are going to be an "overhauler"
or a rider. Personally, I prefer to ride, therefore I take care to
have near me nothing that can tempt me to overhaul. When anything
happens to my machine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop. If
I am too far from the town or village to walk, I sit by the
roadside and wait till a cart comes along. My chief danger, I
always find, is from the wandering overhauler. The sight of a
broken-down machine is to the overhauler as a wayside corpse to a
crow; he swoops down upon it with a friendly yell of triumph. At
first I used to try politeness. I would say:

"It is nothing; don't you trouble. You ride on, and enjoy
yourself, I beg it of you as a favour; please go away."

Experience has taught me, however, that courtesy is of no use in
such an extremity. Now I say:

"You go away and leave the thing alone, or I will knock your silly
head off."

And if you look determined, and have a good stout cudgel in your
hand, you can generally drive him off.

George came in later in the day. He said:

"Well, do you think everything will be ready?"

I said: "Everything will be ready by Wednesday, except, perhaps,
you and Harris."

He said: "Is the tandem all right?"

"The tandem," I said, "is well."

He said: "You don't think it wants overhauling?"

I replied: "Age and experience have taught me that there are few
matters concerning which a man does well to be positive.
Consequently, there remain to me now but a limited number of
questions upon which I feel any degree of certainty. Among such
still-unshaken beliefs, however, is the conviction that that tandem
does not want overhauling. I also feel a presentiment that,
provided my life is spared, no human being between now and
Wednesday morning is going to overhaul it."

George said: "I should not show temper over the matter, if I were
you. There will come a day, perhaps not far distant, when that
bicycle, with a couple of mountains between it and the nearest
repairing shop, will, in spite of your chronic desire for rest,
HAVE to be overhauled. Then you will clamour for people to tell
you where you put the oil-can, and what you have done with the
screw-hammer. Then, while you exert yourself holding the thing
steady against a tree, you will suggest that somebody else should
clean the chain and pump the back wheel."

I felt there was justice in George's rebuke--also a certain amount
of prophetic wisdom. I said:

"Forgive me if I seemed unresponsive. The truth is, Harris was
round here this morning--"

George said: "Say no more; I understand. Besides, what I came to
talk to you about was another matter. Look at that."

He handed me a small book bound in red cloth. It was a guide to
English conversation for the use of German travellers. It
commenced "On a Steam-boat," and terminated "At the Doctor's"; its
longest chapter being devoted to conversation in a railway
carriage, among, apparently, a compartment load of quarrelsome and
ill-mannered lunatics: "Can you not get further away from me,
sir?"--"It is impossible, madam; my neighbour, here, is very
stout"--"Shall we not endeavour to arrange our legs?"--"Please have
the goodness to keep your elbows down"--"Pray do not inconvenience
yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any accommodation to you,"
whether intended to be said sarcastically or not, there was nothing
to indicate--"I really must request you to move a little, madam, I
can hardly breathe," the author's idea being, presumably, that by
this time the whole party was mixed up together on the floor. The
chapter concluded with the phrase, "Here we are at our destination,
God be thanked! (Gott sei dank!)" a pious exclamation, which under
the circumstances must have taken the form of a chorus.

At the end of the book was an appendix, giving the German traveller
hints concerning the preservation of his health and comfort during
his sojourn in English towns, chief among such hints being advice
to him to always travel with a supply of disinfectant powder, to
always lock his bedroom door at night, and to always carefully
count his small change.

"It is not a brilliant publication," I remarked, handing the book
back to George; "it is not a book that personally I would recommend
to any German about to visit England; I think it would get him
disliked. But I have read books published in London for the use of
English travellers abroad every whit as foolish. Some educated
idiot, misunderstanding seven languages, would appear to go about
writing these books for the misinformation and false guidance of
modern Europe."

"You cannot deny," said George, "that these books are in large
request. They are bought by the thousand, I know. In every town
in Europe there must be people going about talking this sort of
thing."

"Maybe," I replied; "but fortunately nobody understands them. I
have noticed, myself, men standing on railway platforms and at
street corners reading aloud from such books. Nobody knows what
language they are speaking; nobody has the slightest knowledge of
what they are saying. This is, perhaps, as well; were they
understood they would probably be assaulted."

George said: "Maybe you are right; my idea is to see what would
happen if they were understood. My proposal is to get to London
early on Wednesday morning, and spend an hour or two going about
and shopping with the aid of this book. There are one or two
little things I want--a hat and a pair of bedroom slippers, among
other articles. Our boat does not leave Tilbury till twelve, and
that just gives us time. I want to try this sort of talk where I
can properly judge of its effect. I want to see how the foreigner
feels when he is talked to in this way."

It struck me as a sporting idea. In my enthusiasm I offered to
accompany him, and wait outside the shop. I said I thought that
Harris would like to be in it, too--or rather outside.

George said that was not quite his scheme. His proposal was that
Harris and I should accompany him into the shop. With Harris, who
looks formidable, to support him, and myself at the door to call
the police if necessary, he said he was willing to adventure the
thing.

We walked round to Harris's, and put the proposal before him. He
examined the book, especially the chapters dealing with the
purchase of shoes and hats. He said:

"If George talks to any bootmaker or any hatter the things that are
put down here, it is not support he will want; it is carrying to
the hospital that he will need."

That made George angry.

"You talk," said George, "as though I were a foolhardy boy without
any sense. I shall select from the more polite and less irritating
speeches; the grosser insults I shall avoid."

This being clearly understood, Harris gave in his adhesion; and our
start was fixed for early Wednesday morning.




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