Сюрприз мистера Милберри и другие новеллы

УДК 
372.8-821.111-93

ББК 
81.2 Англ-93

 
Д40

ISBN 978-5-9925-1064-5

 
Джером, Джером Клапка.

Д40 
Сюрприз мистера Милберри и другие новел
лы : книга для чтения на английском языке. — 
Санкт-Петербург : КАРО, 2015. — 224 с. — 
(Classical Literature).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1064-5.

В данное издание включены новеллы из различных 

сборников и романов знаменитого британского писателя 
Дж. К. Джерома (1859–1927), по уровню писательского мастерства не уступающие самой известной его книге — роману «Трое в лодке, не считая собаки».

Неадаптированный текст на языке оригинала снабжен 

постраничными комментариями и словарем.

УДК 372.8-821.111-93

ББК 81.2 Англ-93

© КАРО, 2015

[There Is No Such Thing 

As Bad Weather]1

(From Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1886)

T

hings do go so contrary-like with me.2 I wanted 
to hit upon an especially novel, out-of-the-way 

subject for one of these articles. “I will write one 
paper about something altogether new,” I said to 
myself; “something that nobody else has ever written 
or talked about before; and then I can have it all my 
own way.” And I went about for days, trying to think 
of something of this kind; and I couldn’t. And Mrs. 
Cutting, our charwoman, came yesterday — I don’t 
mind mentioning her name, because I know she will 
not see this book. She would not look at such a 
frivolous publication. She never reads anything but 
the Bible and Lloyd’s Weekly News. All other literature 
she considers unnecessary and sinful.

She said: “Lor’, sir, you do look worried.”

1 Названия, не являющиеся авторскими, заключены 

в квадратные скобки.

2 Things do go so contrary-like with me. — (разг.) 

Вечно у меня все наоборот.

Jerome K. Jerome. novels

4

I said: “Mrs. Cutting, I am trying to think of a 

subject the discussion of which will come upon the 
world in the nature of a startler — some subject 
upon which no previous human being has ever said 
a word — some subject that will attract by its novelty, 
invigorate by its surprising freshness.”

She laughed and said I was a funny gentleman.
That’s my luck again. When I make serious 

observations people chuckle; when I attempt a joke 
nobody sees it. I had a beautiful one last week. 
I thought it so good, and I worked it up and brought 
it in artfully at a dinner-party. I forget how exactly, 
but we had been talking about the attitude of 
Shakespeare toward the Reformation, and I said 
something and immediately added, “Ah, that 
reminds me; such a funny thing happened the other 
day in Whitechapel.” “Oh,” said they, “what was 
that?” “Oh, ’twas awfully funny,” I replied, beginning 
to giggle myself; “it will make you roar;” and I told 
it them.

There was dead silence when I finished — it was 

one of those long jokes, too — and then, at last, 
somebody said: “And that was the joke?”

I assured them that it was, and they were very 

polite and took my word for it1. All but one old 

1  took my word for it — (разг.) поверили мне на 

слово

[There Is no such ThIng As BAd WeATher] 

5

gentleman at the other end of the table, who wanted 
to know which was the joke — what he said to her 
or what she said to him; and we argued it out.

Some people are too much the other way. I knew 

a fellow once whose natural tendency to laugh at 
everything was so strong that if you wanted to talk 
seriously to him, you had to explain beforehand that 
what you were going to say would not be amusing. 
Unless you got him to clearly understand this, he 
would go off into fits of merriment over every word 
you uttered. I have known him on being asked the 
time stop short in the middle of the road, slap his 
leg, and burst into a roar of laughter. One never 
dared say anything really funny to that man. A good 
joke would have killed him on the spot.

In the present instance I vehemently repudiated 

the accusation of frivolity, and pressed Mrs. Cutting 
for practical ideas. She then became thoughtful and 
hazarded “samplers;” saying that she never heard 
them spoken much of now, but that they used to be 
all the rage1 when she was a girl.

I declined samplers and begged her to think 

again. She pondered a long while, with a tea-tray in 
her hands, and at last suggested the weather, which 
she was sure had been most trying of late.

1 used to be all the rage — (разг.) были популярны

Jerome K. Jerome. novels

6

And ever since that idiotic suggestion I have been 

unable to get the weather out of my thoughts or 
anything else in.

It certainly is most wretched weather. At all 

events it is so now at the time I am writing, and if 
it isn’t particularly unpleasant when I come to be 
read it soon will be.

It always is wretched weather according to us. 

The weather is like the government — always in the 
wrong1. In summer-time we say it is stifling; in 
winter that it is killing; in spring and autumn we 
find fault with it for being neither one thing nor the 
other and wish it would make up its mind. If it is 
fine we say the country is being ruined for want of 
rain; if it does rain we pray for fine weather. If 
December passes without snow, we indignantly 
demand to know what has become of our good oldfashioned winters, and talk as if we had been cheated 
out of something we had bought and paid for; and 
when it does snow, our language is a disgrace to a 
Christian nation. We shall never be content until 
each man makes his own weather and keeps it to 
himself.

If that cannot be arranged, we would rather do 

without it altogether.

1 always in the wrong — (разг.) всегда виновата

[There Is no such ThIng As BAd WeATher] 

7

Yet I think it is only to us in cities that all weather 

is so unwelcome. In her own home, the country, 
Nature is sweet in all her moods. What can be more 
beautiful than the snow, falling big with mystery in 
silent softness, decking the fields and trees with 
white as if for a fairy wedding! And how delightful 
is a walk when the frozen ground rings beneath our 
swinging tread — when our blood tingles in the rare 
keen air, and the sheep-dogs’ distant bark and 
children’s laughter peals faintly clear like Alpine bells 
across the open hills! And then skating! scudding 
with wings of steel across the swaying ice, making 
whirring music as we fly. And oh, how dainty is 
spring — Nature at sweet eighteen!

When the little hopeful leaves peep out so fresh 

and green, so pure and bright, like young lives 
pushing shyly out into the bustling world; when the 
fruit-tree blossoms, pink and white, like village 
maidens in their Sunday frocks, hide each whitewashed cottage in a cloud of fragile splendour; and 
the cuckoo’s note upon the breeze is wafted through 
the woods! And summer, with its deep dark green 
and drowsy hum — when the rain-drops whisper 
solemn secrets to the listening leaves and the twilight 
lingers in the lanes! And autumn! ah, how sadly fair, 
with its golden glow and the dying grandeur of its 
tinted woods — its blood-red sunsets and its ghostly 

Jerome K. Jerome. novels

8

evening mists, with its busy murmur of reapers, and 
its laden orchards, and the calling of the gleaners, 
and the festivals of praise!

The very rain, and sleet, and hail seem only 

Nature’s useful servants when found doing their 
simple duties in the country; and the East Wind 
himself is nothing worse than a boisterous friend 
when we meet him between the hedge-rows.

But in the city where the painted stucco blisters 

under the smoky sun, and the sooty rain brings slush 
and mud, and the snow lies piled in dirty heaps, and 
the chill blasts whistle down dingy streets and shriek 
round flaring gas-lit corners, no face of Nature 
charms us. Weather in towns is like a skylark in a 
counting-house — out of place and in the way1. 
Towns ought to be covered in, warmed by hot-water 
pipes, and lighted by electricity. The weather is a 
country lass and does not appear to advantage in 
town. We liked well enough to flirt with her in the 
hay-field, but she does not seem so fascinating when 
we meet her in Pall Mall. There is too much of her 
there. The frank, free laugh and hearty voice that 
sounded so pleasant in the dairy jars against the 
artificiality of town-bred life, and her ways become 
exceedingly trying.

1 out of place and in the way — (разг.) неуместна и 

всем мешает

[There Is no such ThIng As BAd WeATher] 

9

Just lately she has been favouring us with almost 

incessant rain for about three weeks; and I am a 
damned damp, moist, unpleasant body, as Mr. 
Mantalini1 puts it.

Our next-door neighbour comes out in the back 

garden every now and then and says it’s doing the 
country a world of good — not his coming out into 
the back garden, but the weather. He doesn’t 
understand anything about it, but ever since he 
started a cucumber-frame last summer he has 
regarded himself in the light of an agriculturist, and 
talks in this absurd way with the idea of impressing 
the rest of the terrace with the notion that he is a 
retired farmer. I can only hope that for this once 
he is correct, and that the weather really is doing 
good to something, because it is doing me a 
considerable amount of damage. It is spoiling both 
my clothes and my temper. The latter I can afford, 
as I have a good supply of it, but it wounds me to 
the quick2 to see my dear old hats and trousers 
sinking, prematurely worn and aged, beneath the 
cold world’s blasts and snows.

1  Mr. Mantalini — Манталини, персонаж романа 

Ч. Диккенса «Николас Никлби», малограмотный франт, 
бездельник, строящий из себя светского человека

2  it wounds me to the quick — (разг.) уязвляет меня 

до глубины души

Jerome K. Jerome. novels

10

There is my new spring suit, too. A beautiful suit 

it was, and now it is hanging up so bespattered with 
mud I can’t bear to look at it.

That was Jim’s fault, that was. I should never have 

gone out in it that night if it had not been for him. 
I was just trying it on when he came in. He threw 
up his arms with a wild yell the moment be caught 
sight of it, and exclaimed that he had “got ’em 
again!”

I said: “Does it fit all right behind?”
“Spiffin, old man,” he replied. And then he 

wanted to know if I was coming out.

I said “no” at first, but he overruled me. He said 

that a man with a suit like that bad no right to stop 
indoors. “Every citizen,” said he, “owes a duty to the 
public. Each one should contribute to the general 
happiness as far as lies in his power. Come out and 
give the girls a treat.”

Jim is slangy. I don’t know where he picks it up. 

It certainly is not from me.

I said: “Do you think it will really please ’em?” 

He said it would be like a day in the country to 
them.

That decided me.1 It was a lovely evening and 

I went.

1 That decided me. — (разг.) И я решился.