What is the pun in Kipling's poem "The Three-Decker"?

Question

In the poem *The Three-Decker*, by Rudyard Kipling, there is one line where the meter is slightly different from all the other lines. I Googled that line, not expecting to find anything, and Google Books [came up with this](https://books.google.com/books?id=kUUcAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA384&dq=our+titled+berths+we+took+dealer+in+surprises&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizs8rWybTZAhUJU98KHbyoDd0Q6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=our%20titled%20berths%20we%20took%20dealer%20in%20surprises&f=false) from the magazine *The Academy* (1896). > The very last literary device (or vice) which we should expect to find Mr. Kipling using is the pun. Yet he is ever a dealer in surprises, and here in that delightful piece of fancy "The Three-Decker" (one of the four literary ballads in *The Seven Seas*), we came upon this distressing stanza: > By ways no ***Gaze*** could follow, a course unspoiled of ***Cook,*** > Per Fancy, fleetest ***in man,*** our titled berths we took > With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed, > And a Church of England parson, for the Islands of the Blest." > The italics, we admit, are our own. We employ them in the hope > that Mr. Kipling may see his error emphasised, and repent. So that answered my question about the discrepancy in the meter: Kipling did it for the sake of the pun. But what is the pun?

Answer 1

This answer took a bit of research.

In the stanza:

By ways no Gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook,

Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took...*

the humor lies in Kipling’s play on proper names — he hides commercial travel companies and a punning turn of phrase inside seemingly ordinary words.

The pun explained

1. “Gaze” – refers not to eyesight, but to Thomas Cook & Son’s travel rival, Henry Gaze & Sons, one of the earliest British package-tour companies.
2. So “no Gaze could follow” = no Gaze tour company could follow our route.
3. “Cook” – refers to Thomas Cook, the famous travel agent whose company organized tours all over the Empire.
4. “A course unspoiled of Cook” = a voyage untouched by Cook’s conducted tours.
5. “Per Fancy, fleetest in man” – sounds like “per fancy, fleetest steamer,” but also plays on the idea that their ship, named Fancy, is “fleetest in man,” meaning both fastest in imagination and fastest among men. It’s a tongue-twister that slightly stretches the meter for comic effect.

What Kipling is doing

He is mock-romanticizing the escape from everyday Victorian travel — he and his companions will voyage to dream-islands “by ways no Gaze could follow” and “unspoiled of Cook,” i.e., free from mass tourism and travel agents. The “pun” is that Gaze and Cook are both ordinary verbs but also real company names, so the line carries two levels of meaning at once.

Why The Academy objected

Critics in 1896 thought puns beneath a serious poet like Kipling. The Academy reviewer called it “distressing” that Kipling resorted to wordplay. But Kipling deliberately bent the meter to make the pun land — which is why that line feels rhythmically different.

So, the pun is a double commercial joke:

“By ways no Gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook”

means

“We took a route untouched by Henry Gaze or Thomas Cook — free from all tourist itineraries.”