Jerome K. Jerome was a popular turn-of-the century humorist. He was born storyteller, and his works often began as anecdotes that he developed into short stories, plays, essays, or novels.

Jerome K. Jerome

(1859-1927)

Jerome K. Jerome was a popular turn-of-the century humorist. He was born storyteller, and his works often began as anecdotes that he developed into short stories, plays, essays, or novels.

Jerome was mainly regarded as a «new humorist», and his best-known work, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (1889), remains the standard by which he is judged. He also wrote serious works, but contemporary reviewers often criticized him because his fiction was not always humorous; sometimes it turned sentimental or moralistic. Jerome was also an editor for the Idler (1892-1897) and To-day (1893-1897), monthly and weekly journals, respectively, furnishing entertaining articles, fiction, and specially features on books, theater, and politics. Two collections of his short stories, John Ingerfield and Other Stories (1894) and Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green (1897), are drawn from pieces that he published in these two magazines. Aside from a few ghost stories collected in anthologies from 1960 to 1990 by several editors, including Alfred Hitchcock and Red Skelton, Jerome’s short fiction is hardly read today.

Jerome was born in Walsall, Staffordshire, on 2 may 1859, the year of the publication of Charkes Darwin’s On The Origin of Species, an ironic fact since Jerome was raised as a Dissenter. Jerome was caught between the new age and the old, and, although he never lost his faith in Christ, he came to a new understanding for which his religious upbringing did not prepare him.

Jerome was forced to abandon the country at an early age when his father, Jerome Clapp Jerome, lost the family fortune on mining speculations. Bankpurt, the family soon moved to the East End of London, where Jerome learned the hard lessons of cockney street life. Despite the hardships of perhaps because of them, Jerome always remained faithful to his lower-class London background. Almost all of his stories are set in large cities, usually London; many of his stories deal with young men who manage to rise above their humble city origins because of their talents as actors or journalist, No matter how well his characters thrive, they never fully renounce the values they found in their poor urban backgrounds. This feature of Jerome’s origins probably explains his sentimentality and the comparison that is often made between him and Charles Dickens.

Jerome’s career as a writer was encouraged by his family. Although he was studying to become a solicitor when he married Georgina Henrietta Stanley an 1888, she supported his decision to devote himself to writing Jerome and his wife had one child, Rowena.

Jerome became popular for his humor, and his continued renown rests firmly on his humorous books and stories especially Three Men in a Boat. But Jerome was also severely criticized by some reviewers, who used the term New Humor to belittle his achievement. Perhaps in reaction against this estimation, Jerome claimed to be a pensive man. In the preface to John Ingerfield and Other Stories he begs his readers to accept him as a writer of serious fiction. «I wish distictly», he stresses, «to state that «John Ingerfield», “The Woman of the Saeter”, and «Silhouettes» (short stories) are not intended to be amusing». In fact, Jerome insisted that he was basically a melancholy person.

Some on Jerome’s best stories show the intersection of different classes in his depection of the «smart» social set. Probably the best collection of his fiction, and the least recognized in its day, is The Observations of Henry. This work was generally neglected by reviewers, perhaps because Three Men on the Bummel (1900) had only recently come out. This sequel to Three Men in a Boat caused considerable attention, no less than eight reviews appeared, many of them written in 1901 when The Observations of Henry was published. The New York Times (20 April 1901) did give the collection high praise, calling Jerome «a master merry-maker» and his satires «perfectly natural». The change from one condition of life to another is a persistent theme with Jerome and can be explained by the drastic turns in his own life.

The interest in theosophy and spiritual matters during this period also found its way into Jerome’s work, not only in the shape of ghost stories (Told After Supper, 1891) but also in a lively interest in the effects of potions («The Philosopher’s Joke» and «The Soul of Nicholas Snyders» in The Passing of Third Floor Back) and of fairies with magical powers (the title story of Malvina of Brittany, 1916).

In addition, Jerome reflects his time by making the new demands of women on men and their age a common theme in many of his stories. Two stories from “The Probation of James Wrench” and «The Wooing of Tom Beight`s Wife» both depict women caught in marriages in which the husbands take the wives for granted – and get a proper reward for doing so. In «The Probation of James Wrench» a waiter comes into a fortune and convinces himself that he is better than his cockney background. He begins to believe that his wife, Susan, is keeping him back in his efforts to shine in smart society.

Wrench finally asks his wife to leave him. She does and buys a cheap hotel, makes it a success, and then sells it for a profit. She buys even better hotels and continues the cycle of her prospering management. Unfortunately, Wrench fails to find his place in high society, thus probing Herry`s and Jerome’s position that «men and women are just like water; sooner or later they get back to the level from which they started». When Wrench thinks about returning to Susan, he finds her running a small hotel in Brighton. She is not interested in picking up the old way and treats him coldly. Now that she has the upper hand, she decides to test him. She gives him a chance to deform himself, but under her conditions:

«It`s going to be my experiment this time, not yours. Eleven years ago I didn’t give you satisfaction, so you turned me out of doors… I went because there wasn’t room for two of us; you know that… Now I’m going to see whether you suit me».

Susan offers him the job of bootblack, which he reluctantly takes. He remains in this position until he is asked to be a waiter. He continues to advance as he obediently does what his wife requests of him. When she asks if he would like to come with her to start anew in a hotel in Dover, Wrench agrees and buys a partnership in the business with money he has saved from working for his wife. Susan relents and accepts him as her husband. The story thus combiners two themes: movement from one class to another and the unexpected assertiveness of a spouse.

There is critical debate about whether Jerome developed as a writer of short fiction. Some think that his stories improved the years went by, but most believe that he continued to be a mediocre storyteller throughout his career. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between these two critical positions. Certainly Jerome could write some rather middling pieces, both early and late, but the stories in «The Observations of Henry» are classics in their way. And even though the stories in later collections are uneven, there are some that reveal literature merit.

Because of his successes in short fiction, and because of his enormous output in other genres – chiefly the humorous essay, the novel, and the drama – Jerome established himself firmly as a writer of note at the turn of the century.

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