Question

short summary of chapter 4,5 and 6 from novel three man in a boat

Answer 1

Chapter 4

Continuing to plan, the friends discuss what they will need for cooking. Although paraffin oil stoves are more common, they decide to bring a methylated spirit stove, remembering how the paraffin oil had oozed everywhere on a previous boat trip.

For breakfast and lunch, they choose food that is easy to cook - but not cheese, because of its strong smell. J. launches into a long digression about when his friend Tom once asked him to transport some cheese on a train journey. Everyone sitting in J.’s car left because the smell was too strong. When J. delivered the cheese to Tom and his wife, Tom’s wife refused to stay in the house until the cheese was eaten. They could not escape the cheese's stench until they buried it miles away at the seaside.

Back at his house, J. volunteers to pack the clothes, believing himself an exceptionally efficient packer. However, he keeps forgetting items, and then has to unpack in order to fit them in. To the reader, he expounds briefly on his habit of losing his toothbrush when traveling.

Harris and George watch J. pack with great amusement, and volunteer to pack the food when J. finally finishes. They are no better at it – they constantly forget items, and Harris steps in the butter. Throughout it all, they keep tripping over Montmorency. After some bickering, they finish, and assign George to wake them up at 6:30 the next morning.

Chapter 5

However, they oversleep, only waking when Mrs. Poppets comes in at nine. Harris and J. are greatly irritated with George, and their mood grows worse when they learn that the day’s weather forecast is poor. J. digresses to complain about how often weather forecasts are inaccurate. He also concocts a hypothetical story about staying inside when the forecasts predict rain and missing a beautiful day, and then believing the forecast of sun the next day, but ending up wet.

When they finally depart, the greengrocer’s errand-boy mocks them for their immense amount of luggage. As the men wait for a taxi, passers-by speculate about where they are going. Eventually, they hail a taxi to the train station, but none of the conductors there know which train they should take. When one conductor tells them that nobody knows where the trains are supposed to go, they give him a half-crown bribe and luckily end up heading towards Kingston, disembarking when they reach the river.

Chapter 6

As the men row through Kingston, J. provides some background on the area. (Although Kingston is now a suburb and part of Greater London, it would have been an independent town when Jerome wrote Three Men in a Boat in 1889.) J. describes how many of the pubs in this area claim that Queen Elizabeth dined there. He also tells about a shop that boasts a beautiful carved oak staircase, which the present owner has covered in blue wallpaper.

J. uses this as an occasion to meditate on how people always want what they cannot have, and do not want the things they do have. He recalls a former classmate named Stivvings, who was dedicated to his studies but was often too sick to complete his work. Meanwhile, the other boys hoped to get sick to avoid schoolwork, and became sick only when vacation came around. Returning to the subject of the oak staircase, J. writes at length about how people in the future will consider quotidian objects like dinner-plates and cheap figurines as priceless works of art, much as his contemporaries consider the day-to-day objects of prior civilizations to be priceless.

In the boat, Harris and Montmorency accidentally spill the contents of the food hamper. As they row past Hampton Court, J. initially marvels at the building’s beauty, but then decides that it would be too dark and depressing to live in all the time.

Harris tells his friends about the time he attempted the hedge maze at Hampton Court. The map, given out in advance, seemed quite simple, so that Harris was confident he could easily best the maze. His confidence attracted a mob of 20 people who were lost in the maze, and they turned on him when he realized the maze was more complicated than he thought it was. They wandered for a long time, until a young groundskeeper came to fetch them, and got lost himself. An older groundskeeper eventually guided them out.

The men agree to send George through the maze on their return trip.