Three Men in a Boat (1956 film) is happy to get away from his job at the bank. Harris is glad to get away from Mrs. Willis who is pressing him to marry her daughter Clara; and 'J' is more than anxious to take a holiday from his wife, Ethelbertha. George meets three girls, Sophie Clutterhouse and sisters Bluebell and Primrose Porterhouse, who are also taking a ride up the river, and he hopes to see them again. The travellers get into all kinds of complications with the weather, the river, the boat, food, the Hampton Court Maze, tents, rain and locks. They do connect with the
Three Men on the Bummel the book, and apart from his book, it has not received any widespread use in English. (The first American edition, published by Dodd Mead in 1900, was entitled "Three Men on Wheels".) One of the characters in the book asks, "how would you translate [bummel]," to which the narrator replies, in the very final paragraph of the book: The general style and manner of the book are similar to its predecessor. It is a series of humorous vignettes, each of which builds slowly, through accumulation of layer on layer of detail, through several pages. Jeremy Nicholas calls these "set pieces."