I Read Books: A House-Boat On The Styx

 

A Houseboat On The Styx

Charon is initially unhappy to discover that a houseboat is floating on the Styx. However he is invited aboard and learns that it is an exclusive club for prominent dead men and they have a position for him. It’s as the janitor.

There follow several chapters in which characters from history and mythology are pushed together and complain about each other, the state of the mortal world, how they are remembered and how the club is run. An ongoing joke is that Shakespeare’s plays were written by someone else, and that he might in fact not be a real person, something he strenuously denies. The smoking room is an interesting innovation in which the tobacco is burned in a furnace and piped into hoods, where they are charged by the foot of smoke; sadly I think this would be impractical even if they smoked like chimneys.

This is very mannered, very nineteenth century. All the characters are Victorian gentlemen in their club, lightly overlaid with their historical characteristics. Gentlemen? They discuss a ladies day but it never occurs, until the final chapter when the ladies take centre stage… only for disaster to strike. Women, am I right?

Read This: Some good Victorian literary and historical jokes
Don’t Read This: The premise of every notable from history being together is wasted on them sitting about and bickering
Out Of Copyright: And available online