Трое в лодке, не считая собаки

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2Англ
     Д 40

ISBN 978-5-9925-0332-6
© КАРО, 2004

Джером К. Джером
Д 40
Трое в лодке, не считая собаки: Книга для чтения на английском языке. — СПб.: КАРО, 2013. —
256 с. — (Серия «Classical Literature»).

ISBN 9785992503326.

В книгу включены избранные главы из повести известного английского писателяюмориста  Джерома
Клапки Джерома «Трое в лодке, не считая собаки».
Неадаптированный текст снабжён комментариями и
кратким словарём. Словарь содержит толкования некоторых слов, которые обычно не входят в активный
словарный запас учащихся. Комментарии облегчают
понимание лексикограмматических трудностей, а также поясняют реалии исторического, культурнобытового и отчасти географического характера. Вопросы направлены на проверку понимания прочитанного и развитие навыков устной речи. Книга предназначена для
учащихся 9–11 классов школ с углублённым изучением
английского языка и для студентов неязыковых вузов.

УДК 372.8
ББК 81.2Англ

Дорогой читатель!

Вы держите в руках книгу, герои которой вам, несомненно, уже известны, — это неунывающие путешественники Джей, Гаррис, Джордж и их верный спутник, фокстерьер Монморанси. Вместе с ними вы совершите увлекательное путешествие по Темзе и побываете в небольших английских городах, с которыми
связаны знаменательные события в истории Англии.
Удивительно колоритное, наполненное мягким
юмором повествование замечательного английского писателя Джерома Клапки Джерома (1859–1927)
не оставит равнодушными настоящих любителей английской литературы. За забавными описаниями курьезных происшествий скрываются тонкие наблюдения, сделанные автором в процессе размышлений
над разнообразными свойствами человеческой натуры. В персонажах, встречающихся на страницах этой
книги, часто можно узнать когото из своих близких
и даже… самого себя!
В книгу включен оригинальный текст избранных
глав повести Дж. К. Джерома «Трое в лодке, не считая
собаки» с комментариями, разъясняющими языковые
трудности и реалии исторического, культурнобытового и отчасти географического характера. После каждой главы приводятся вопросы, направленные на проверку понимания прочитанного и развитие навыков
устной речи. В конце книги помещен краткий словарь, содержащий толкования некоторых слов, перевод которых может представлять сложность для изучающих английский язык.

THREE MEN IN A BOA

THERE were four of us — George, and William
Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We
were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about
how bad we were — bad from a medical point of
view I mean, of course.
We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting
quite nervous about it. Harris said he felt such
extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him at
times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and
then George said that he had fits of giddiness too, and
hardly knew what he was doing. With me, it was my
liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that
was out of order, because I had just been reading a

Three invalids. — Sufferings of George and
Harris. — A victim to one hundred and seven fatal
maladies. — Useful prescriptions. — Cure for
liver complaint in children. — We agree that we
are overworked, and need rest. — A week on the
rolling deep? — George suggests the river. —
Montmorency lodges an objection. — Original
motion carried by majority of three to one.

CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE

Three Men in a Boat

(TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG)

CHAPTER ONE

patent liverpill circular, in which were detailed the
various symptoms by which a man could tell when
his liver was out of order. I had them all.
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read
a patent medicine advertisement without being
impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from
the particular disease therein dealt with in its most
virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case
to correspond exactly with all the sensations that
I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum* one
day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment
of which I had a touch — hay fever, I fancy it was.
I got down the book, and read all I came to read;
and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned
the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases,
generally. I forget which was the first distemper
I plunged into — some fearful, devastating scourge,
I know — and, before I had glanced half down the
list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon
me that I had fairly got it 1.
I sat for a while, frozen with horror; and then,
in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over
the pages. I came to typhoid fever — read the
symptoms — discovered that I had typhoid fever,

1 it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it
it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it
it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it
it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it
it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it – стало
совершенно ясно, что эта болезнь сидит во мне

THREE MEN IN A BOA

must have had it for months without knowing it —
wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s
Dance 1 — found, as I expected, that I had that
too, — began to get interested in my case, and
determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started
alphabetically — read up ague, and learnt that I was
sickening for it, and that the acute stage would
commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s
disease 2, I was relieved to find, I had only in a
modified form, and, so far as that was concerned,
I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe
complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have
been born with. I plodded conscientiously through
the twentysix letters, and the only malady I could
conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee 3.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed
somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got
housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation?
After a while, however, less grasping feelings
prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known
malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish,

1 St. Vitus’s Dance
St. Vitus’s Dance
St. Vitus’s Dance
St. Vitus’s Dance
St. Vitus’s Dance – Пляска Святого Витта, нервное заболевание, то же, что хорея. Название связано с преданием,
что у часовни Св. Витта в Цаберне (Эльзас) излечивались
больные, страдающие судорогами, напоминающими движения танца
2 Bright’s disease 
Bright’s disease 
Bright’s disease 
Bright’s disease 
Bright’s disease – Брайтова болезнь
3 housemaid’s knee
housemaid’s knee
housemaid’s knee
housemaid’s knee
housemaid’s knee – (мед.) воспаление и опухоль коленной чашечки, вызванные постоянным коленопреклонением, раньше считалось чисто женским заболеванием: горничные натирали полы, стоя на коленях

CHAPTER ONE

and determined to do without housemaid’s knee.
Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear,
had seized me without my being aware of it; and
zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from
boyhood. There were no more diseases after
zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the
matter with me.
I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting
case I must be from a medical point of view, what
an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would
have no need to “walk the hospitals,” if they had me.
I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would
be to walk round me, and, after that, take their
diploma.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried
to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at
first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it
seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed
it. I made it a hundred and fortyseven to the
minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my
heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been
induced to come to the opinion that it must have
been there all the time, and must have been
beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted
myself all over my front, from what I call my waist
up to my head, and I went a bit round each side,
and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or
hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck

THREE MEN IN A BOA

it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye,
and tried to examine it with the other. I could
only see the tip, and the only thing that I could
gain from that was to feel more certain than
before that I had scarlet fever.
I had walked into that readingroom a happy,
healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.
I went to my medical man. He is an old chum
of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my
tongue, and talks about the weather, all for
nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would
do him a good turn by going to him now. “What
a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have
me. He will get more practice out of me than
out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary,
commonplace patients, with only one or two
diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him,
and he said:
“Well, what’s the matter with you?”
I said:
“I will not take up your time, dear boy, with
telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief,
and you might pass away before I had finished. But
I will tell you what is not the matter with me. I have
not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got
housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact
remains that I have not got it. Everything else,
however, I have got.”

CHAPTER ONE

And I told him how I came to discover it all.
Then he opened me and looked down me, and
clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over
the chest when I wasn’t expecting it — a cowardly
thing to do, I call it — and immediately afterwards
butted me with the side of his head. After that, he
sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded
it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and
went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest
chemist’s, and handed it in. The man read it, and
then handed it back.
He said he didn’t keep it.
I said:
“You are a chemist?”
He said:
“I am a chemist. If I was a cooperative stores
and family hotel combined, I might be able to
oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me.”
I read the prescription. It ran:
“1 lb. 1 beefsteak, with
 1 pt. 2 bitter beer
every 6 hours.
1 tenmile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.

1 lb.
lb.
lb.
lb.
lb. (от лат. libra
libra
libra
libra
libra) – фунт, читается pound
pound
pound
pound
pound
2 pt.
pt.
pt.
pt.
pt. (от pint
pint
pint
pint
pint) – пинта

THREE MEN IN A BOA

And don’t stuff up your head with things you
don’t understand.”
I followed the directions, with the happy result —
speaking for myself — that my life was preserved, and
is still going on.
In the present instance, going back to the liverpill circular, I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake 1,
the chief among them being “a general disinclination
to work of any kind.”
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell.
From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to
it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a
day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver.
Medical science was in a far less advanced state
than now, and they used to put it down to
laziness.
“Why, you skulking little devil, you,” they would
say, “get up and do something for your living, can’t
you?” — not knowing, of course, that I was ill.
And they didn’t give me pills; they gave me
clumps 2 on the side of the head. And, strange as it
may appear those clumps on the head often cured
me — for the time being. I have known one clump
on the head have more effect upon my liver, and
make me feel more anxious to go straight away

1 beyond all mistake 
beyond all mistake 
beyond all mistake 
beyond all mistake 
beyond all mistake – в этом нельзя было ошибиться
2 they gave me clumps
they gave me clumps
they gave me clumps
they gave me clumps
they gave me clumps – мне давали подзатыльники