Diary of a Pilgrimage: Enriched edition. A Humorous Pilgrimage to Oberammergau: Victorian Wit and Satire in Travel Memoir

by Jerome K. Jerome

"Diary of a Pilgrimage" is a novel by Jerome K. Jerome, published in 1891. The novel is based on real events and reflects a trip undertaken by Jerome and his friend "B" to see the Oberammergau Passion Play in Germany. The novel can also be described as a fictional Victorian-era travelogue, thanks to the abundance of places protagonists visit and picturesque descriptions of exciting places.

Genres: Humor, Classics, Travel, Fiction, Audiobook, Adventure, Germany

63 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1891

About the author

Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1889). Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat; and several other novels. Jerome was born in Walsall, England, and, although he was able to attend grammar school, his family suffered from poverty at times, as did he as a young man trying to earn a living in various occupations. In his twenties, he was able to publish some work, and success followed. He married in 1888, and the honeymoon was spent on a boat on the River Thames; he published Three Men in a Boat soon afterwards. He continued to write fiction, non-fiction and plays over the next few decades, though never with the same level of success.

Reviews

[Mihaela Abrudan · Rating 3 out of 5]

După ce a călătorit cu barca și bicicleta pentru noua aventură autorul călătorește cu trenul din Anglia către Germania. Umorul tipc englezesc nu lipsește nici de această dată, iar încurcăturile dacă nu apar din greșală și le creează singur.

[MihaElla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Good that it's finished. I have posted quotes almost from the entire book. As if I re-wrote it. But I am not Jerome K Jerome. Nor can I be. But I think I would have loved it. He seems quite an agreeable Englishman, from this distance perspective. Before I started reading this little book, I read a bit of his biography, it was short enough, just 3 pages, and even with big spaces between the lines. I found it very airy, unsophisticated and unhappy. Well, it left me saddened that on the year of his death, retired from public life, he died almost in aloneness or loneliness… For a man who wrote so much about laughable works, this sounds very strange, paradoxical. He seemed to have acted as an actor, a playwriter, a newspaper man, a teacher, public clerk.
The Diary of a Pilgrimage gave me waves of laughter, uncontrolled and freely expressed. It is lots of fun the way he talks about this train travelling experience to Germany, to assist to a Passion Play at a theater, in a village somewhere in Ober-Ammergau. The whole trip to and back home was as a matter of fact an experience similar to a “passion play” but this time the characters are not Jesus and his disciples, and all the other historical figures, but two men friends, young and eager to enjoy an adventure in the spirit of cultural instruction.
The narrator – Jerome K Jerome himself – speaks a lot about Germany, German people, about their customs and behaviours, about German cities, all kinds of details regarding trains, beds, musical bands, restaurants, food stuff, etc. I am sorry to say but I have not experience in meeting Germans (or, if I had had so far, I have totally forgotten about it...), just a very brief encounter at work, but this doesn’t count because it is very limited, and not engaging with regard to life, personal experiences, etc. I have some information based on what I read myself or what others have experienced, including members of my family, that travelled to Germany and had connections in a deeper sense with the Germans. I guess that by the time JKJ wrote his little book things were as such as described hereinafter. But since the end of the 19th century so many things have changed that it is difficult to grasp the same atmosphere nowadays as it was back then.
As regards railways, I have myself enjoyed a lot the train journeys when in my childhood and youth. It was the only mode of affordable transportation that I could take to go to my grandparents, as during those times the/ a car was not an asset in my family. And I have taken far too many trips to even count them. Sometimes I would go once a week, sometimes once a month, depending if I was attending school or work. The trains didn’t change too much. I travelled last summer by train to the local Romanian seaside coast. It was like going back in time, same atmosphere, same train model, but with air conditioning, and faster speed. It was real fun. I enjoyed it tremendously. Of course, sitting in a train for 2-3 hours allows you to get into contact with the strangers around you. Not that you invited them into any discussion, just there is a vibe and suddenly you see the person looks at you, smiles and then says something very common, to which you normally feel to respond back also very commonly. And from here a long conversation flows ahead. Nothing unusual. But sometimes one just feels to enjoy quiet, silence, reading a book. For this case, I recall I have invited my sister do the whole talk. But I couldn’t concentrate anymore on my book. They were laughing too much and too often. I couldn’t resist the temptation, so I fell for it. It was overall an enjoyable journey. Most of my train trips were very agreeable. The best of them were when I travelled to Moscow, and to Petersburg, two times by train. I like to think that I could even write a book like JKJ recounting all those unforgettable moments, so many cherished memories. Good that they have not faded away. They count more in value than some gold amount.
I wish the Passion Play was given more interpretation and commentaries by the two protagonists that attended the show at the theater in Ober-Ammergau. I felt it would have been worth while to see how JKJ thought about it in a more detailed, argumentative manner. But he refrains or feels restrained. I don’t know why. He seemed to let everything go open to discussion. Especially about German- related stuff. Anyway, I feel I need to go back to Nikos Kazantzakis and re-read two most loved of his novels, Christ Recrucified, and The Last Temptation of Christ. That way I could re-fresh my memory and sentiments on this very sensitive subject, well as far as religion is concerned.
Overall, a very enjoyable and delightful read. I laughed so much that eventually I felt it’s tears outpouring. The good thing is that they didn’t harm or cause me any injury, just the opposite considering that I have this sensation of dry eyes quite often. The tears were out of joy, not out of grief or sadness. So, I will read some more of JKJ. Thinking next about “Idle thoughts of an Idle Fellow”…

[Margarita Garova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ако не знам какво ми се чете, винаги опирам до добрия стар Джером, никога не разочарова

[Bill on GR Sabbatical · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't surprised that this fictional account of a journey of two friends from London to Oberammergau, Germany to see its famed Passion Play features the same whimsical, Wodehousian humor that I'd enjoyed in Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, his best-known work. I was a little surprised that the tone changed from that bumbling superciliousness to straightforward admiration both of the play's recounting of Christ's passion and of the performance of the villagers who are the actors. A little research revealed that Jerome's father was a preacher and that Jerome thought a great deal about Christianity throughout his life, writing at length about his faith in the concluding chapter of his autobiography, My Life and Times. Interesting.

[Ahtims · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was fabulous. I had really read, reread and enjoyed other books by JKJ such as three men in a boat and three men in the bummel, mostly fiction. This book by the way, is non-fiction, mainly ruminating on life in general and Germany in specific, while the author was travelling with his friend B. in Germany to witness a religious play held once a decade or so. It was funny, scathingly sarcastic, but deeply thought provoking, and actually intense and serious if you chaff through all the humor coating. I just LOVED the book and may read it again in my dottage.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just what I expected: a very silly book about the travails of international travel. It’s much more about the luckless journey and the endurance of national stereotypes than it is about the Passion Play the travelers see once they get to Germany. It was amusing to see the ways in which some things have hardly changed in 125 years.

[Janelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very typically Jerome K Jerome as he and a friend bumble their way through Europe to see the Passion play at Oberammergau. Although the apparent purpose of the trip was to see the play, there isn't a great deal said about it. Jerome states at one point in the book that there has already been enough said about Oberammergau by other more capable authors. So most of the book is devoted to their travels, at least some of which I'm sure is fictionalised.

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read. I recently started reading JKJ and wondered how I had missed his writing for so long. This work describes a trip with his friend to the Oberammergau Passion Play. They seem to have covered most of Germany in trying to get there from England. He commented on both their travel frustrations and the cultural differences he noticed on their journey. There is little description of the Play itself since others have written so much better about it. An enjoyable read that will send me back to JKJ again and again.

[Wkwv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerome K. Jerome has a special place in my reading life. I read "Three Men in a Boat" as a child, a teen, and again as an adult. I read it aloud to my kids. Back in the card catalog days, I couldn't find anything else that Jerome had written. Thanks to Project Gutenberg I have been able to find this little travelog. The humor is mock blustery, middle class, and Victorian male. The Pilgrimage in question is to well known German Passion Play and focuses more on the journey than the destination.

[JackieB · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. I think I preferred it to Three Men in a Boat which sometimes seems to try to hard to be funny. It might be because I was in holiday in Austria when I was reading it on my way to the Oberammergau passion play (which was the aim of the Pilgrimage in the book).

[Damayanti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Много забавна книга! За перото на автора няма нужда да обяснявам! Удоволствие беше 😊

[Conchita Matson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful

[Niki Karagyozov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Богат език, чудесен хумор, но и доста стойностни разсъждения. Плюс готини илюстрации :)

"Да, кого го е грижа какво точно ще кажа? И какво казват всички за каквото и да било? Никой не забелязва, слава богу. Тази мисъл вероятно е голяма утеха за редактори и критици. Съвестният чоеек, ако чувства, че думите му имат тежест и оказват влияние, въобще не би дръзнал да отвори уста. Само ако си сигурен, че на никого не му пука какво казваш, можеш да се научиш на красноречие, позитивност и плам."

[Bianca Manea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love english 19 century humor, but unfortunately this book hasn’t been as enjoyable i would have wanted mainly because it does not have a story per se, instead it has many distinct anecdotes which one must consider separately. I have to agree with the author when he recommends:

“[...] when you get
tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this up for half
an hour. It will be a change.”

[Kl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Jerome K. Jerome. If you can't afford to go on vacation for yourself this is the next best thing. It was also a lot of fun to read prior to my own vacation. He goes through a lot of the same chaos on a train that I went through on a bus, but he did it with wit?

[Cliff Watt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally love JKJ and thoroughly enjoyed diary of a pilgrimage. Full of cracking one liners as well as some poignant moments.

Also lovely to read his thoughts and impressions of late C19th Germany, both his description of the people, the places and, the beds!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do love Jerome!

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I laughed my way through most of it. Reminds me of Twain's travels. Perhaps a bit of Bryson thrown in. Nothing like a couple of Brit's set loose in Europe

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerome's follow-up to Three Men in a Boat , the book that made his name and fortune, was another travel story, this fictionalized account of a trip to see the Oberammergau passion play - presumably in 1890, since it's performed in years ending in 0 and the book was published in 1891. It offers an Englishman's view of Germany, nearly a decade and a half before the First World War (which event, I would imagine, reduced the demand for this book and Three Men on the Bummel , the story of a cycling trip to Germany with his former companions from the boating trip). As well as the travelogue itself, it's scattered with obviously exaggerated comic incidents in which everyone, certainly including Jerome himself, looks like idiots. It's the same "dealing with frustrating but not really dangerous obstacles" comic genre that the later American writer Patrick F. McManus does so well.

For my taste, most of the comic and landscape-related set-pieces would have been improved if they were cut by ten to fifteen percent, and the occasional philosophical ones if they were cut by fifty to a hundred percent. But that's me. I did like the description of the play itself, even if it ran a little long; in an era when British law still prevented any member of the Trinity from being represented on the stage, Jerome's musings on how seeing the life of Jesus portrayed by actors touched him in ways that a book or a sermon could not were subversive as well as devout.

The narrator of this audiobook edition is excellent, and really adds to the experience. It's not just a reading of the book; it's a performance, with asides delivered in an undertone, and strong accent work for the various characters encountered on the journey.

[this_eel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jerome K Jerome can never at all quit joking and sometimes his jokes are so good and sometimes you’re like bro just five seconds of silence for god’s sake. Five seconds. Then he gets Victorian on you and you wish for the jokes back. The absurdity of a train schedule is still true 130 years later so congrats on that particular timelessness but holy smokes mr class clown you can be exhausting. And DONT think I forgot you sent Oscar wilde to gay jail.

Meanwhile. Book was Published 1891, reprinted in my copy in 1919 and ending with the words: “A visit to Germany is a tonic to an Englishman. We English are always sneering at ourselves, and patriotism in England is regarded as a stamp of vulgarity. The Germans, on the other hand, believe in themselves, and respect themselves. The world for them is not played out. Their country to them is still the “Fatherland.” They look straight before them like a people who see a great future in front of them, and are not afraid to go forward to fulfil it.”

WELL, THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

[Anton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pleasant discovery! Wonderful and hilarious travelogue to Bavaria. Unexpectedly delightful 😃

[Pete Dorey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've awarded 4*, but really, it should be 3.5. It's a very enjoyable and well-written tale, but effectively Three Men in a Boat MkII, albeit this time a train journey to Germany, rather than a boat-trip on the Thames.

[Lucia Vlas · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

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THE DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE, AND SIX ESSAYS
............
............

Diary of a Pilgrimage
............

This one promises, at the outset, to be a true blue Jerome K. Jerome work of the sort familiar to most readers. It fits in neatly with the Three Men books.
............

"Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: “Well now, why don’t you write a sensible book? I should like to see you make people think.”

"“Do you believe it can be done, then?” I asked.

"“Well, try,” he replied.

"Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want you to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book I tell you all about Germany—at all events, all I know about Germany—and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to lead you gradually. When you have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you some more. I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to the exercise. I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous. I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are being instructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or an exceptionally useful work. I want to do them good without their knowing it. I want to do you all good—to improve your minds and to make you think, if I can.

"What you will think after you have read the book, I do not want to know; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on the gross sales.

"London, March, 1891."
............


"Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her great object is to encourage brain. The man who merely works by his muscles she regards as very little superior to the horse or the ox, and provides for him just a little better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and from the labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise his wages.

"Of course hers is a very imperfect method of encouraging thought. She is of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly well; and every year she grows in judgment.

"One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man according to his deserts.

"But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time."
............

"If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone fore. It was much fresher there, and I should have been much happier there altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-class and then ride third—that was not business. No, I would stick to the swagger part of the ship, and feel aristocratic and sick.

"A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of people—I could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was—came up to me as I was leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought of the ship. He said she was a new boat, and that this was her first voyage.

"I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.

"He replied: “Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night.”

"What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to lie down and go to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at getting out of the water altogether."
............

"Five minutes before the train started, the rightful owners of the carriage came up and crowded in. They seemed surprised at finding only five vacant seats available between seven of them, and commenced to quarrel vigorously among themselves.

"B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to calm them, but passion ran too high at first for the voice of Reason to be heard. Each combination of five, possible among them, accused each remaining two of endeavouring to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted that the other six were liars.

"What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English. They all had languages of their own,—there were four Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a German,—but no language was good enough for them to insult each other in but English.

"Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their ever agreeing among themselves, they appealed to us. We unhesitatingly decided in favour of the five thinnest, who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as finally settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.

"These two stout ones, however—the German and one of the Belgians—seemed inclined to dispute the award, and called up the station-master.

"The station-master did not wait to listen to what they had to say, but at once began abusing them for being in the carriage at all. He told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves for forcing their way into a compartment that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the people already there.

"He also used English to explain this to them, and they got out on the platform and answered him back in English.

"English seems to be the popular language for quarrelling in, among foreigners. I suppose they find it more expressive.

"We all watched the group from the window. We were amused and interested. In the middle of the argument an early gendarme arrived on the scene. The gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One man in uniform always supports another man in uniform, no matter what the row is about, or who may be in the right—that does not trouble him. It is a fixed tenet of belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no wrong. If burglars wore uniform, the police would be instructed to render them every assistance in their power, and to take into custody any householder attempting to interfere with them in the execution of their business. The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the two stout passengers, and he also abused them in English. It was not good English in any sense of the word. The man would probably have been able to give his feelings much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but that was not his object. His ambition, like every other foreigner’s, was to become an accomplished English quarreller, and this was practice for him.

"A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the babel. He took the part of the passengers, and abused the station-master and the gendarme, and he abused them in English.

"B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from our native shores, in the land of the stranger, to come across a little homely English row like this."
............

"Whenever a German railway-guard feels lonesome, and does not know what else to do with himself, he takes a walk round the train, and gets the passengers to show him their tickets, after which he returns to his box cheered and refreshed. Some people rave about sunsets and mountains and old masters; but to the German railway-guard the world can show nothing more satisfying, more inspiring, than the sight of a railway-ticket.

"Nearly all the German railway officials have this same craving for tickets. If only they get somebody to show them a railway-ticket, they are happy. It seemed a harmless weakness of theirs, and B. and I decided that it would be only kind to humour them in it during our stay.

"Accordingly, whenever we saw a German railway official standing about, looking sad and weary, we went up to him and showed him our tickets. The sight was like a ray of sunshine to him; and all his care was immediately forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we went and bought one. A mere single third to the next station would gladden him sufficiently in most cases; but if the poor fellow appeared very woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than ordinary cheering up, we got him a second-class return.

"For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each carried with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class tickets between different towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles; and one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official, a cloak-room keeper, who they told us had lately lost his aunt, and who looked exceptionally dejected, I proposed to B. that we should take this man into a quiet corner, and both of us show him all our tickets at once—the whole twenty or twenty-four of them—and let him take them in his hand and look at them for as long as he liked. I wanted to comfort him.

"B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if it did not turn the man’s head (and it was more than probable that it would), so much jealousy would be created against him among the other railway people throughout Germany, that his life would be made a misery to him.

"So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station but one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow’s face brighten up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from which it had so long been absent.

"But at times, one wishes that the German railway official would control his passion for tickets—or, at least, keep it within due bounds.

"Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of showing his ticket all day and night long, and the middle of a wearisome journey is not the proper time for a man to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see your “billet.”

"You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where your ticket is. You are not quite sure that you have got a ticket; or if you ever had one, somebody has taken it away from you. You have put it by very carefully, thinking that it would not be wanted for hours, and have forgotten where.

"There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on, and five more in the overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is in one of those pockets. If not, it is possibly in one of the bags—somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you only knew where that was, or your purse."
............

"To pass away the time, we strolled about the city. Munich is a fine, handsome, open town, full of noble streets and splendid buildings; but in spite of this and of its hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, an atmosphere of quiet and provincialism hovers over it. There is but little traffic on ordinary occasions along its broad ways, and customers in its well-stocked shops are few and far between. This day being Sunday, it was busier than usual, and its promenades were thronged with citizens and country folk in holiday attire, among whom the Southern peasants, wearing their quaint, centuries-old costume, stood out in picturesque relief. Fashion, in its world-wide crusade against variety and its bitter contest with form and colour, has recoiled, defeated for the present from the mountain fastnesses of Bavaria."

"Munich and the country round about it make a great exchange of peoples every Sunday. In the morning, trainload after trainload of villagers and mountaineers pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood and valley, and upon lake and mountain-side."
...........

"I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that the information will prove exciting to the reader, but because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in Germany, against undue indulgence in Liptauer cheese.

"I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese department of the bill of fare, and came across “liptauer garnit,” an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined to sample it.

"It was not a tempting-looking cheese. It was an unhealthy, sad-looking cheese. It looked like a cheese that had seen trouble. In appearance it resembled putty more than anything else. It even tasted like putty—at least, like I should imagine putty would taste. To this hour I am not positive that it was not putty. The garnishing was even more remarkable than the cheese. All the way round the plate were piled articles that I had never before seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there again."

"I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done in my life that I should not have done recurred to me with painful vividness. (There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.) I thought of all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the injustice that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things that had been said and done to me. I thought of all the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses. I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it is, and how full of sorrow. I mused upon the wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness of all things.

"I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our time, gadding about Europe in this silly way. What earthly enjoyment was there in travelling—being jolted about in stuffy trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?

"B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the beginning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Strasse, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued. He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.

"B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not want to smoke. Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money. As I said to B.:

"“In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us. Of what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-day?”

"B. said: “Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a cigar in your mouth I shan’t get quite so much of your chatty conversation. Take one, for my sake.”

"To humour him, I lit up.

"I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

............
............

THE DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE, AND SIX ESSAYS
............
............

Diary of a Pilgrimage
............

This one promises, at the outset, to be a true blue Jerome K. Jerome work of the sort familiar to most readers. It fits in neatly with the Three Men books.
............

"Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: “Well now, why don’t you write a sensible book? I should like to see you make people think.”

"“Do you believe it can be done, then?” I asked.

"“Well, try,” he replied.

"Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want you to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book I tell you all about Germany—at all events, all I know about Germany—and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to lead you gradually. When you have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you some more. I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to the exercise. I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous. I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are being instructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or an exceptionally useful work. I want to do them good without their knowing it. I want to do you all good—to improve your minds and to make you think, if I can.

"What you will think after you have read the book, I do not want to know; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on the gross sales.

"London, March, 1891."
............


"Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her great object is to encourage brain. The man who merely works by his muscles she regards as very little superior to the horse or the ox, and provides for him just a little better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and from the labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise his wages.

"Of course hers is a very imperfect method of encouraging thought. She is of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly well; and every year she grows in judgment.

"One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man according to his deserts.

"But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time."
............

"If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone fore. It was much fresher there, and I should have been much happier there altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-class and then ride third—that was not business. No, I would stick to the swagger part of the ship, and feel aristocratic and sick.

"A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of people—I could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was—came up to me as I was leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought of the ship. He said she was a new boat, and that this was her first voyage.

"I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.

"He replied: “Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night.”

"What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to lie down and go to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at getting out of the water altogether."
............

"Five minutes before the train started, the rightful owners of the carriage came up and crowded in. They seemed surprised at finding only five vacant seats available between seven of them, and commenced to quarrel vigorously among themselves.

"B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to calm them, but passion ran too high at first for the voice of Reason to be heard. Each combination of five, possible among them, accused each remaining two of endeavouring to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted that the other six were liars.

"What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English. They all had languages of their own,—there were four Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a German,—but no language was good enough for them to insult each other in but English.

"Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their ever agreeing among themselves, they appealed to us. We unhesitatingly decided in favour of the five thinnest, who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as finally settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.

"These two stout ones, however—the German and one of the Belgians—seemed inclined to dispute the award, and called up the station-master.

"The station-master did not wait to listen to what they had to say, but at once began abusing them for being in the carriage at all. He told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves for forcing their way into a compartment that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the people already there.

"He also used English to explain this to them, and they got out on the platform and answered him back in English.

"English seems to be the popular language for quarrelling in, among foreigners. I suppose they find it more expressive.

"We all watched the group from the window. We were amused and interested. In the middle of the argument an early gendarme arrived on the scene. The gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One man in uniform always supports another man in uniform, no matter what the row is about, or who may be in the right—that does not trouble him. It is a fixed tenet of belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no wrong. If burglars wore uniform, the police would be instructed to render them every assistance in their power, and to take into custody any householder attempting to interfere with them in the execution of their business. The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the two stout passengers, and he also abused them in English. It was not good English in any sense of the word. The man would probably have been able to give his feelings much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but that was not his object. His ambition, like every other foreigner’s, was to become an accomplished English quarreller, and this was practice for him.

"A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the babel. He took the part of the passengers, and abused the station-master and the gendarme, and he abused them in English.

"B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from our native shores, in the land of the stranger, to come across a little homely English row like this."
............

"Whenever a German railway-guard feels lonesome, and does not know what else to do with himself, he takes a walk round the train, and gets the passengers to show him their tickets, after which he returns to his box cheered and refreshed. Some people rave about sunsets and mountains and old masters; but to the German railway-guard the world can show nothing more satisfying, more inspiring, than the sight of a railway-ticket.

"Nearly all the German railway officials have this same craving for tickets. If only they get somebody to show them a railway-ticket, they are happy. It seemed a harmless weakness of theirs, and B. and I decided that it would be only kind to humour them in it during our stay.

"Accordingly, whenever we saw a German railway official standing about, looking sad and weary, we went up to him and showed him our tickets. The sight was like a ray of sunshine to him; and all his care was immediately forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we went and bought one. A mere single third to the next station would gladden him sufficiently in most cases; but if the poor fellow appeared very woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than ordinary cheering up, we got him a second-class return.

"For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each carried with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class tickets between different towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles; and one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official, a cloak-room keeper, who they told us had lately lost his aunt, and who looked exceptionally dejected, I proposed to B. that we should take this man into a quiet corner, and both of us show him all our tickets at once—the whole twenty or twenty-four of them—and let him take them in his hand and look at them for as long as he liked. I wanted to comfort him.

"B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if it did not turn the man’s head (and it was more than probable that it would), so much jealousy would be created against him among the other railway people throughout Germany, that his life would be made a misery to him.

"So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station but one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow’s face brighten up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from which it had so long been absent.

"But at times, one wishes that the German railway official would control his passion for tickets—or, at least, keep it within due bounds.

"Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of showing his ticket all day and night long, and the middle of a wearisome journey is not the proper time for a man to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see your “billet.”

"You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where your ticket is. You are not quite sure that you have got a ticket; or if you ever had one, somebody has taken it away from you. You have put it by very carefully, thinking that it would not be wanted for hours, and have forgotten where.

"There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on, and five more in the overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is in one of those pockets. If not, it is possibly in one of the bags—somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you only knew where that was, or your purse."
............

"To pass away the time, we strolled about the city. Munich is a fine, handsome, open town, full of noble streets and splendid buildings; but in spite of this and of its hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, an atmosphere of quiet and provincialism hovers over it. There is but little traffic on ordinary occasions along its broad ways, and customers in its well-stocked shops are few and far between. This day being Sunday, it was busier than usual, and its promenades were thronged with citizens and country folk in holiday attire, among whom the Southern peasants, wearing their quaint, centuries-old costume, stood out in picturesque relief. Fashion, in its world-wide crusade against variety and its bitter contest with form and colour, has recoiled, defeated for the present from the mountain fastnesses of Bavaria."

"Munich and the country round about it make a great exchange of peoples every Sunday. In the morning, trainload after trainload of villagers and mountaineers pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood and valley, and upon lake and mountain-side."
............

"I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that the information will prove exciting to the reader, but because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in Germany, against undue indulgence in Liptauer cheese.

"I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese department of the bill of fare, and came across “liptauer garnit,” an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined to sample it.

"It was not a tempting-looking cheese. It was an unhealthy, sad-looking cheese. It looked like a cheese that had seen trouble. In appearance it resembled putty more than anything else. It even tasted like putty—at least, like I should imagine putty would taste. To this hour I am not positive that it was not putty. The garnishing was even more remarkable than the cheese. All the way round the plate were piled articles that I had never before seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there again."

"I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done in my life that I should not have done recurred to me with painful vividness. (There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.) I thought of all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the injustice that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things that had been said and done to me. I thought of all the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses. I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it is, and how full of sorrow. I mused upon the wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness of all things.

"I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our time, gadding about Europe in this silly way. What earthly enjoyment was there in travelling—being jolted about in stuffy trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?

"B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the beginning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Strasse, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued. He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.

"B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not want to smoke. Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money. As I said to B.:

"“In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us. Of what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-day?”

"B. said: “Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a cigar in your mouth I shan’t get quite so much of your chatty conversation. Take one, for my sake.”

"To humour him, I lit up.

"I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

............
............

THE DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE, AND SIX ESSAYS
............
............

Diary of a Pilgrimage
............

This one promises, at the outset, to be a true blue Jerome K. Jerome work of the sort familiar to most readers. It fits in neatly with the Three Men books.
............

"Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: “Well now, why don’t you write a sensible book? I should like to see you make people think.”

"“Do you believe it can be done, then?” I asked.

"“Well, try,” he replied.

"Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want you to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book I tell you all about Germany—at all events, all I know about Germany—and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to lead you gradually. When you have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you some more. I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to the exercise. I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous. I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are being instructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or an exceptionally useful work. I want to do them good without their knowing it. I want to do you all good—to improve your minds and to make you think, if I can.

"What you will think after you have read the book, I do not want to know; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on the gross sales.

"London, March, 1891."
............


"Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her great object is to encourage brain. The man who merely works by his muscles she regards as very little superior to the horse or the ox, and provides for him just a little better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and from the labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise his wages.

"Of course hers is a very imperfect method of encouraging thought. She is of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly well; and every year she grows in judgment.

"One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man according to his deserts.

"But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time."
............

"If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone fore. It was much fresher there, and I should have been much happier there altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-class and then ride third—that was not business. No, I would stick to the swagger part of the ship, and feel aristocratic and sick.

"A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of people—I could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was—came up to me as I was leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought of the ship. He said she was a new boat, and that this was her first voyage.

"I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.

"He replied: “Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night.”

"What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to lie down and go to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at getting out of the water altogether."
............

"Five minutes before the train started, the rightful owners of the carriage came up and crowded in. They seemed surprised at finding only five vacant seats available between seven of them, and commenced to quarrel vigorously among themselves.

"B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to calm them, but passion ran too high at first for the voice of Reason to be heard. Each combination of five, possible among them, accused each remaining two of endeavouring to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted that the other six were liars.

"What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English. They all had languages of their own,—there were four Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a German,—but no language was good enough for them to insult each other in but English.

"Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their ever agreeing among themselves, they appealed to us. We unhesitatingly decided in favour of the five thinnest, who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as finally settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.

"These two stout ones, however—the German and one of the Belgians—seemed inclined to dispute the award, and called up the station-master.

"The station-master did not wait to listen to what they had to say, but at once began abusing them for being in the carriage at all. He told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves for forcing their way into a compartment that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the people already there.

"He also used English to explain this to them, and they got out on the platform and answered him back in English.

"English seems to be the popular language for quarrelling in, among foreigners. I suppose they find it more expressive.

"We all watched the group from the window. We were amused and interested. In the middle of the argument an early gendarme arrived on the scene. The gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One man in uniform always supports another man in uniform, no matter what the row is about, or who may be in the right—that does not trouble him. It is a fixed tenet of belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no wrong. If burglars wore uniform, the police would be instructed to render them every assistance in their power, and to take into custody any householder attempting to interfere with them in the execution of their business. The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the two stout passengers, and he also abused them in English. It was not good English in any sense of the word. The man would probably have been able to give his feelings much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but that was not his object. His ambition, like every other foreigner’s, was to become an accomplished English quarreller, and this was practice for him.

"A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the babel. He took the part of the passengers, and abused the station-master and the gendarme, and he abused them in English.

"B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from our native shores, in the land of the stranger, to come across a little homely English row like this."
............

"Whenever a German railway-guard feels lonesome, and does not know what else to do with himself, he takes a walk round the train, and gets the passengers to show him their tickets, after which he returns to his box cheered and refreshed. Some people rave about sunsets and mountains and old masters; but to the German railway-guard the world can show nothing more satisfying, more inspiring, than the sight of a railway-ticket.

"Nearly all the German railway officials have this same craving for tickets. If only they get somebody to show them a railway-ticket, they are happy. It seemed a harmless weakness of theirs, and B. and I decided that it would be only kind to humour them in it during our stay.

"Accordingly, whenever we saw a German railway official standing about, looking sad and weary, we went up to him and showed him our tickets. The sight was like a ray of sunshine to him; and all his care was immediately forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we went and bought one. A mere single third to the next station would gladden him sufficiently in most cases; but if the poor fellow appeared very woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than ordinary cheering up, we got him a second-class return.

"For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each carried with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class tickets between different towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles; and one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official, a cloak-room keeper, who they told us had lately lost his aunt, and who looked exceptionally dejected, I proposed to B. that we should take this man into a quiet corner, and both of us show him all our tickets at once—the whole twenty or twenty-four of them—and let him take them in his hand and look at them for as long as he liked. I wanted to comfort him.

"B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if it did not turn the man’s head (and it was more than probable that it would), so much jealousy would be created against him among the other railway people throughout Germany, that his life would be made a misery to him.

"So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station but one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow’s face brighten up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from which it had so long been absent.

"But at times, one wishes that the German railway official would control his passion for tickets—or, at least, keep it within due bounds.

"Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of showing his ticket all day and night long, and the middle of a wearisome journey is not the proper time for a man to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see your “billet.”

"You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where your ticket is. You are not quite sure that you have got a ticket; or if you ever had one, somebody has taken it away from you. You have put it by very carefully, thinking that it would not be wanted for hours, and have forgotten where.

"There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on, and five more in the overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is in one of those pockets. If not, it is possibly in one of the bags—somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you only knew where that was, or your purse."
............

"To pass away the time, we strolled about the city. Munich is a fine, handsome, open town, full of noble streets and splendid buildings; but in spite of this and of its hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, an atmosphere of quiet and provincialism hovers over it. There is but little traffic on ordinary occasions along its broad ways, and customers in its well-stocked shops are few and far between. This day being Sunday, it was busier than usual, and its promenades were thronged with citizens and country folk in holiday attire, among whom the Southern peasants, wearing their quaint, centuries-old costume, stood out in picturesque relief. Fashion, in its world-wide crusade against variety and its bitter contest with form and colour, has recoiled, defeated for the present from the mountain fastnesses of Bavaria."

"Munich and the country round about it make a great exchange of peoples every Sunday. In the morning, trainload after trainload of villagers and mountaineers pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood and valley, and upon lake and mountain-side."
............

"I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that the information will prove exciting to the reader, but because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in Germany, against undue indulgence in Liptauer cheese.

"I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese department of the bill of fare, and came across “liptauer garnit,” an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined to sample it.

"It was not a tempting-looking cheese. It was an unhealthy, sad-looking cheese. It looked like a cheese that had seen trouble. In appearance it resembled putty more than anything else. It even tasted like putty—at least, like I should imagine putty would taste. To this hour I am not positive that it was not putty. The garnishing was even more remarkable than the cheese. All the way round the plate were piled articles that I had never before seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there again."

"I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done in my life that I should not have done recurred to me with painful vividness. (There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.) I thought of all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the injustice that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things that had been said and done to me. I thought of all the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses. I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it is, and how full of sorrow. I mused upon the wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness of all things.

"I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our time, gadding about Europe in this silly way. What earthly enjoyment was there in travelling—being jolted about in stuffy trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?

"B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the beginning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Strasse, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued. He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.

"B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not want to smoke. Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money. As I said to B.:

"“In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us. Of what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-day?”

"B. said: “Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a cigar in your mouth I shan’t get quite so much of your chatty conversation. Take one, for my sake.”

"To humour him, I lit up.

"I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

............
............

THE DIARY OF A PILGRIMAGE, AND SIX ESSAYS
............
............

Diary of a Pilgrimage
............

This one promises, at the outset, to be a true blue Jerome K. Jerome work of the sort familiar to most readers. It fits in neatly with the Three Men books.
............

"Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: “Well now, why don’t you write a sensible book? I should like to see you make people think.”

"“Do you believe it can be done, then?” I asked.

"“Well, try,” he replied.

"Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want you to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book I tell you all about Germany—at all events, all I know about Germany—and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to lead you gradually. When you have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you some more. I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to the exercise. I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous. I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are being instructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or an exceptionally useful work. I want to do them good without their knowing it. I want to do you all good—to improve your minds and to make you think, if I can.

"What you will think after you have read the book, I do not want to know; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on the gross sales.

"London, March, 1891."
............


"Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her great object is to encourage brain. The man who merely works by his muscles she regards as very little superior to the horse or the ox, and provides for him just a little better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and from the labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise his wages.

"Of course hers is a very imperfect method of encouraging thought. She is of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly well; and every year she grows in judgment.

"One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man according to his deserts.

"But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time."
............

"If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone fore. It was much fresher there, and I should have been much happier there altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-class and then ride third—that was not business. No, I would stick to the swagger part of the ship, and feel aristocratic and sick.

"A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of people—I could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was—came up to me as I was leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought of the ship. He said she was a new boat, and that this was her first voyage.

"I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.

"He replied: “Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night.”

"What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to lie down and go to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at getting out of the water altogether."
............

"Five minutes before the train started, the rightful owners of the carriage came up and crowded in. They seemed surprised at finding only five vacant seats available between seven of them, and commenced to quarrel vigorously among themselves.

"B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to calm them, but passion ran too high at first for the voice of Reason to be heard. Each combination of five, possible among them, accused each remaining two of endeavouring to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted that the other six were liars.

"What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English. They all had languages of their own,—there were four Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a German,—but no language was good enough for them to insult each other in but English.

"Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their ever agreeing among themselves, they appealed to us. We unhesitatingly decided in favour of the five thinnest, who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as finally settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.

"These two stout ones, however—the German and one of the Belgians—seemed inclined to dispute the award, and called up the station-master.

"The station-master did not wait to listen to what they had to say, but at once began abusing them for being in the carriage at all. He told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves for forcing their way into a compartment that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the people already there.

"He also used English to explain this to them, and they got out on the platform and answered him back in English.

"English seems to be the popular language for quarrelling in, among foreigners. I suppose they find it more expressive.

"We all watched the group from the window. We were amused and interested. In the middle of the argument an early gendarme arrived on the scene. The gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One man in uniform always supports another man in uniform, no matter what the row is about, or who may be in the right—that does not trouble him. It is a fixed tenet of belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no wrong. If burglars wore uniform, the police would be instructed to render them every assistance in their power, and to take into custody any householder attempting to interfere with them in the execution of their business. The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the two stout passengers, and he also abused them in English. It was not good English in any sense of the word. The man would probably have been able to give his feelings much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but that was not his object. His ambition, like every other foreigner’s, was to become an accomplished English quarreller, and this was practice for him.

"A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the babel. He took the part of the passengers, and abused the station-master and the gendarme, and he abused them in English.

"B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from our native shores, in the land of the stranger, to come across a little homely English row like this."
............

"Whenever a German railway-guard feels lonesome, and does not know what else to do with himself, he takes a walk round the train, and gets the passengers to show him their tickets, after which he returns to his box cheered and refreshed. Some people rave about sunsets and mountains and old masters; but to the German railway-guard the world can show nothing more satisfying, more inspiring, than the sight of a railway-ticket.

"Nearly all the German railway officials have this same craving for tickets. If only they get somebody to show them a railway-ticket, they are happy. It seemed a harmless weakness of theirs, and B. and I decided that it would be only kind to humour them in it during our stay.

"Accordingly, whenever we saw a German railway official standing about, looking sad and weary, we went up to him and showed him our tickets. The sight was like a ray of sunshine to him; and all his care was immediately forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we went and bought one. A mere single third to the next station would gladden him sufficiently in most cases; but if the poor fellow appeared very woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than ordinary cheering up, we got him a second-class return.

"For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each carried with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class tickets between different towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles; and one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official, a cloak-room keeper, who they told us had lately lost his aunt, and who looked exceptionally dejected, I proposed to B. that we should take this man into a quiet corner, and both of us show him all our tickets at once—the whole twenty or twenty-four of them—and let him take them in his hand and look at them for as long as he liked. I wanted to comfort him.

"B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if it did not turn the man’s head (and it was more than probable that it would), so much jealousy would be created against him among the other railway people throughout Germany, that his life would be made a misery to him.

"So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station but one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow’s face brighten up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from which it had so long been absent.

"But at times, one wishes that the German railway official would control his passion for tickets—or, at least, keep it within due bounds.

"Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of showing his ticket all day and night long, and the middle of a wearisome journey is not the proper time for a man to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see your “billet.”

"You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where your ticket is. You are not quite sure that you have got a ticket; or if you ever had one, somebody has taken it away from you. You have put it by very carefully, thinking that it would not be wanted for hours, and have forgotten where.

"There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on, and five more in the overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is in one of those pockets. If not, it is possibly in one of the bags—somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you only knew where that was, or your purse."
............

"To pass away the time, we strolled about the city. Munich is a fine, handsome, open town, full of noble streets and splendid buildings; but in spite of this and of its hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, an atmosphere of quiet and provincialism hovers over it. There is but little traffic on ordinary occasions along its broad ways, and customers in its well-stocked shops are few and far between. This day being Sunday, it was busier than usual, and its promenades were thronged with citizens and country folk in holiday attire, among whom the Southern peasants, wearing their quaint, centuries-old costume, stood out in picturesque relief. Fashion, in its world-wide crusade against variety and its bitter contest with form and colour, has recoiled, defeated for the present from the mountain fastnesses of Bavaria."

"Munich and the country round about it make a great exchange of peoples every Sunday. In the morning, trainload after trainload of villagers and mountaineers pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood and valley, and upon lake and mountain-side."
............

"I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that the information will prove exciting to the reader, but because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in Germany, against undue indulgence in Liptauer cheese.

"I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese department of the bill of fare, and came across “liptauer garnit,” an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined to sample it.

"It was not a tempting-looking cheese. It was an unhealthy, sad-looking cheese. It looked like a cheese that had seen trouble. In appearance it resembled putty more than anything else. It even tasted like putty—at least, like I should imagine putty would taste. To this hour I am not positive that it was not putty. The garnishing was even more remarkable than the cheese. All the way round the plate were piled articles that I had never before seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there again."

"I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done in my life that I should not have done recurred to me with painful vividness. (There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.) I thought of all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the injustice that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things that had been said and done to me. I thought of all the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses. I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it is, and how full of sorrow. I mused upon the wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness of all things.

"I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our time, gadding about Europe in this silly way. What earthly enjoyment was there in travelling—being jolted about in stuffy trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?

"B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the beginning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Strasse, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued. He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.

"B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not want to smoke. Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money. As I said to B.:

"“In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us. Of what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-day?”

"B. said: “Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a cigar in your mouth I shan’t get quite so much of your chatty conversation. Take one, for my sake.”

"To humour him, I lit up.

"I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diary of a Pilgrimage
............

This one promises, at the outset, to be a true blue Jerome K. Jerome work of the sort familiar to most readers. It fits in neatly with the Three Men books.
............

"Said a friend of mine to me some months ago: “Well now, why don’t you write a sensible book? I should like to see you make people think.”

"“Do you believe it can be done, then?” I asked.

"“Well, try,” he replied.

"Accordingly, I have tried. This is a sensible book. I want you to understand that. This is a book to improve your mind. In this book I tell you all about Germany—at all events, all I know about Germany—and the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play. I also tell you about other things. I do not tell you all I know about all these other things, because I do not want to swamp you with knowledge. I wish to lead you gradually. When you have learnt this book, you can come again, and I will tell you some more. I should only be defeating my own object did I, by making you think too much at first, give you a perhaps, lasting dislike to the exercise. I have purposely put the matter in a light and attractive form, so that I may secure the attention of the young and the frivolous. I do not want them to notice, as they go on, that they are being instructed; and I have, therefore, endeavoured to disguise from them, so far as is practicable, that this is either an exceptionally clever or an exceptionally useful work. I want to do them good without their knowing it. I want to do you all good—to improve your minds and to make you think, if I can.

"What you will think after you have read the book, I do not want to know; indeed, I would rather not know. It will be sufficient reward for me to feel that I have done my duty, and to receive a percentage on the gross sales.

"London, March, 1891."
............

"Society has no notion of paying all men equally. Her great object is to encourage brain. The man who merely works by his muscles she regards as very little superior to the horse or the ox, and provides for him just a little better. But the moment he begins to use his head, and from the labourer rises to the artisan, she begins to raise his wages.

"Of course hers is a very imperfect method of encouraging thought. She is of the world, and takes a worldly standard of cleverness. To the shallow, showy writer, I fear, she generally pays far more than to the deep and brilliant thinker; and clever roguery seems often more to her liking than honest worth. But her scheme is a right and sound one; her aims and intentions are clear; her methods, on the whole, work fairly well; and every year she grows in judgment.

"One day she will arrive at perfect wisdom, and will pay each man according to his deserts.

"But do not be alarmed. This will not happen in our time."
............

"If it had not been that I had paid for saloon, I should have gone fore. It was much fresher there, and I should have been much happier there altogether. But I was not going to pay for first-class and then ride third—that was not business. No, I would stick to the swagger part of the ship, and feel aristocratic and sick.

"A mate, or a boatswain, or an admiral, or one of those sort of people—I could not be sure, in the darkness, which it was—came up to me as I was leaning with my head against the paddle-box, and asked me what I thought of the ship. He said she was a new boat, and that this was her first voyage.

"I said I hoped she would get a bit steadier as she grew older.

"He replied: “Yes, she is a bit skittish to-night.”

"What it seemed to me was, that the ship would try to lie down and go to sleep on her right side; and then, before she had given that position a fair trial, would suddenly change her mind, and think she could do it better on her left. At the moment the man came up to me she was trying to stand on her head; and before he had finished speaking she had given up this attempt, in which, however, she had very nearly succeeded, and had, apparently, decided to now play at getting out of the water altogether."
............

"Five minutes before the train started, the rightful owners of the carriage came up and crowded in. They seemed surprised at finding only five vacant seats available between seven of them, and commenced to quarrel vigorously among themselves.

"B. and I and the unjust man in the corner tried to calm them, but passion ran too high at first for the voice of Reason to be heard. Each combination of five, possible among them, accused each remaining two of endeavouring to obtain seats by fraud, and each one more than hinted that the other six were liars.

"What annoyed me was that they quarrelled in English. They all had languages of their own,—there were four Belgians, two Frenchmen, and a German,—but no language was good enough for them to insult each other in but English.

"Finding that there seemed to be no chance of their ever agreeing among themselves, they appealed to us. We unhesitatingly decided in favour of the five thinnest, who, thereupon, evidently regarding the matter as finally settled, sat down, and told the other two to get out.

"These two stout ones, however—the German and one of the Belgians—seemed inclined to dispute the award, and called up the station-master.

"The station-master did not wait to listen to what they had to say, but at once began abusing them for being in the carriage at all. He told them they ought to be ashamed of themselves for forcing their way into a compartment that was already more than full, and inconveniencing the people already there.

"He also used English to explain this to them, and they got out on the platform and answered him back in English.

"English seems to be the popular language for quarrelling in, among foreigners. I suppose they find it more expressive.

"We all watched the group from the window. We were amused and interested. In the middle of the argument an early gendarme arrived on the scene. The gendarme naturally supported the station-master. One man in uniform always supports another man in uniform, no matter what the row is about, or who may be in the right—that does not trouble him. It is a fixed tenet of belief among uniform circles that a uniform can do no wrong. If burglars wore uniform, the police would be instructed to render them every assistance in their power, and to take into custody any householder attempting to interfere with them in the execution of their business. The gendarme assisted the station-master to abuse the two stout passengers, and he also abused them in English. It was not good English in any sense of the word. The man would probably have been able to give his feelings much greater variety and play in French or Flemish, but that was not his object. His ambition, like every other foreigner’s, was to become an accomplished English quarreller, and this was practice for him.

"A Customs House clerk came out and joined in the babel. He took the part of the passengers, and abused the station-master and the gendarme, and he abused them in English.

"B. said he thought it very pleasant here, far from our native shores, in the land of the stranger, to come across a little homely English row like this."
............

"Whenever a German railway-guard feels lonesome, and does not know what else to do with himself, he takes a walk round the train, and gets the passengers to show him their tickets, after which he returns to his box cheered and refreshed. Some people rave about sunsets and mountains and old masters; but to the German railway-guard the world can show nothing more satisfying, more inspiring, than the sight of a railway-ticket.

"Nearly all the German railway officials have this same craving for tickets. If only they get somebody to show them a railway-ticket, they are happy. It seemed a harmless weakness of theirs, and B. and I decided that it would be only kind to humour them in it during our stay.

"Accordingly, whenever we saw a German railway official standing about, looking sad and weary, we went up to him and showed him our tickets. The sight was like a ray of sunshine to him; and all his care was immediately forgotten. If we had not a ticket with us at the time, we went and bought one. A mere single third to the next station would gladden him sufficiently in most cases; but if the poor fellow appeared very woe-begone, and as if he wanted more than ordinary cheering up, we got him a second-class return.

"For the purpose of our journey to Ober-Ammergau and back, we each carried with us a folio containing some ten or twelve first-class tickets between different towns, covering in all a distance of some thousand miles; and one afternoon, at Munich, seeing a railway official, a cloak-room keeper, who they told us had lately lost his aunt, and who looked exceptionally dejected, I proposed to B. that we should take this man into a quiet corner, and both of us show him all our tickets at once—the whole twenty or twenty-four of them—and let him take them in his hand and look at them for as long as he liked. I wanted to comfort him.

"B., however, advised against the suggestion. He said that even if it did not turn the man’s head (and it was more than probable that it would), so much jealousy would be created against him among the other railway people throughout Germany, that his life would be made a misery to him.

"So we bought and showed him a first-class return to the next station but one; and it was quite pathetic to watch the poor fellow’s face brighten up at the sight, and to see the faint smile creep back to the lips from which it had so long been absent.

"But at times, one wishes that the German railway official would control his passion for tickets—or, at least, keep it within due bounds.

"Even the most kindly-hearted man grows tired of showing his ticket all day and night long, and the middle of a wearisome journey is not the proper time for a man to come to the carriage-window and clamour to see your “billet.”

"You are weary and sleepy. You do not know where your ticket is. You are not quite sure that you have got a ticket; or if you ever had one, somebody has taken it away from you. You have put it by very carefully, thinking that it would not be wanted for hours, and have forgotten where.

"There are eleven pockets in the suit you have on, and five more in the overcoat on the rack. Maybe, it is in one of those pockets. If not, it is possibly in one of the bags—somewhere, or in your pocket-book, if you only knew where that was, or your purse."
............

"To pass away the time, we strolled about the city. Munich is a fine, handsome, open town, full of noble streets and splendid buildings; but in spite of this and of its hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants, an atmosphere of quiet and provincialism hovers over it. There is but little traffic on ordinary occasions along its broad ways, and customers in its well-stocked shops are few and far between. This day being Sunday, it was busier than usual, and its promenades were thronged with citizens and country folk in holiday attire, among whom the Southern peasants, wearing their quaint, centuries-old costume, stood out in picturesque relief. Fashion, in its world-wide crusade against variety and its bitter contest with form and colour, has recoiled, defeated for the present from the mountain fastnesses of Bavaria."

"Munich and the country round about it make a great exchange of peoples every Sunday. In the morning, trainload after trainload of villagers and mountaineers pour into the town, and trainload after trainload of good and other citizens steam out to spend the day in wood and valley, and upon lake and mountain-side."
............

"I mention that we had dinner, not because I think that the information will prove exciting to the reader, but because I wish to warn my countrymen, travelling in Germany, against undue indulgence in Liptauer cheese.

"I am fond of cheese, and of trying new varieties of cheese; so that when I looked down the cheese department of the bill of fare, and came across “liptauer garnit,” an article of diet I had never before heard of, I determined to sample it.

"It was not a tempting-looking cheese. It was an unhealthy, sad-looking cheese. It looked like a cheese that had seen trouble. In appearance it resembled putty more than anything else. It even tasted like putty—at least, like I should imagine putty would taste. To this hour I am not positive that it was not putty. The garnishing was even more remarkable than the cheese. All the way round the plate were piled articles that I had never before seen at a dinner, and that I do not ever want to see there again."

"I felt very sad after dinner. All the things I have done in my life that I should not have done recurred to me with painful vividness. (There seemed to be a goodish number of them, too.) I thought of all the disappointments and reverses I had experienced during my career; of all the injustice that I had suffered, and of all the unkind things that had been said and done to me. I thought of all the people I had known who were now dead, and whom I should never see again, of all the girls that I had loved, who were now married to other fellows, while I did not even know their present addresses. I pondered upon our earthly existence, upon how hollow, false, and transient it is, and how full of sorrow. I mused upon the wickedness of the world and of everybody in it, and the general cussedness of all things.

"I thought how foolish it was for B. and myself to be wasting our time, gadding about Europe in this silly way. What earthly enjoyment was there in travelling—being jolted about in stuffy trains, and overcharged at uncomfortable hotels?

"B. was cheerful and frivolously inclined at the beginning of our walk (we were strolling down the Maximilian Strasse, after dinner); but as I talked to him, I was glad to notice that he gradually grew more serious and subdued. He is not really bad, you know, only thoughtless.

"B. bought some cigars and offered me one. I did not want to smoke. Smoking seemed to me, just then, a foolish waste of time and money. As I said to B.:

"“In a few more years, perhaps before this very month is gone, we shall be lying in the silent tomb, with the worms feeding on us. Of what advantage will it be to us then that we smoked these cigars to-day?”

"B. said: “Well, the advantage it will be to me now is, that if you have a cigar in your mouth I shan’t get quite so much of your chatty conversation. Take one, for my sake.”

"To humour him, I lit up.

"I do not admire the German cigar. B. says that when you consider they only cost a penny, you cannot grumble. But what I say is, that when you consider they are dear at six a half-penny, you can grumble. Well boiled, they might serve for greens; but as smoking material they are not worth the match with which you light them, especially not if the match be a German one. The German match is quite a high art work. ....

[Bimbo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kot zmeren ljubitelj humorja spretnega pisca iz neke minule dobe in nekega specifičnega naroda sem tudi to Jeromovo knjigo prebral brez zatikanja. Vendar me ponavljajoče preigravanje določenih klišejev, poigravanje z popolnimi absurdi in podobne vragolije niso niti pol toliko zabavale kot ob prvem branju njegove knjige (Trije možje se klatijo). Vsaka stvar mora biti ravno prav odmerjena in stric JKJ je kot staro vino: dober v pravih trenutkih in zmernih odmerkih. Prevod se mi zdi dober in pisan z zanosom, zato je končno oceno potegnil navzgor na štiri.
Založbi velja posebna hvala za (Sizifov?) trud z izdajo humorističnih del. Sizifov zato, ker jim očitno v štirih letih od izida knjige, ki se je zgodil še v času konjunkture, ni uspelo prodati deklarirane naklade 400 izvodov. Pa kaj je z nami Slovenci?! Po drugi strani pa to niti ni čudno, saj takšno literarno blago res ne potrebuje čvrstih platnic z dodatnim ovitkom, ki ga krasi uradna cena 19,90 evra (potem ko snameš Modrijanovo knjigokupno s številko 4,99). A odnos med ceno knjig in njih prodajo sodi med ostale slovenske legende, npr. o jari kači in steklem polžu, ptiču in jajcu...
Druga zamera pa gre seznamu peščice knjig iz te zbirke. Očitno bi jo lahko poimenovali kar zbirka Branka Gradišnika in njemu ljubih (davno pokojnih) anglofonskih avtorjev. Obžalovanja vredna realnost našega "knjižnega trga".

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in January 2001.

The passion play at Oberammergau is unique, and to many people a journey to see it would be something of a pilgrimage. Such a journey is the subject of this comic novel, very much in the style of Jerome's big success, Three Men in a Boat. The journey is made by rail, and the humour is on such subjects as the obscurity of railway timetables.

It is interesting to compare Diary of a Pilgrimage to Jerome's later Three Men on the Bummel, which is also about a German holiday. The later novel is much more anti-German and intolerant, while Diary of a Pilgrimage is easy going. Neither novel is as funny as Three Men in a Boat; both are more interesting from a social history point of view - answering questions like, how have the things that people find funny changed in the last hundred years, how did the attitude of the British to Germany change in the years leading up to the First World War - than they are humorous today.