No plain sailing for humourist Jerome
Walsall's most famous son was born 150 years ago today - and a new exhibition reveals some little-known facts about the life of the great author. Cathy Spencer reports.
Jerome K Jerome, born in Walsall 150 years ago today, became one of Britain's favourite writers.
His best-known book, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published 120 years ago, has never been out of print.
He was born into poverty and orphaned in his teens - yet he became the toast of Victorian England and a celebrity in the United States.
An exhibition giving an insight into Jerome's unusual life is taking place at Walsall Local History Centre on Essex Street to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth.
However, the show casts some light on a few of the secrets behind the literary genius.
It reveals that his wife Georgina was a widow when they met, she outlived her husband by 10 years and that he never intended Three Men in a Boat to be a funny book.
Jerome explained the creation of the story, which was the most famous of his 48 books and plays, by saying the joy of being newly-married took over his writing.
"I was just back from my honeymoon and had the feeling that all the world's troubles were over," Jerome wrote at the end of his life in 1927.
"I did not intend to write a funny book at first. I did not know I was a humourist."
Yet Three Men in a Boat was a success with readers across the world laughing at Jerome, George, Harris and Montmorency the dog bobbing along in their wooden skiff.
Local studies librarian Cath Yates says: "Jerome knew all the famous literary people of that day including Rudyard Kipling and JM Barrie who wrote Peter Pan.
"The Jerome collection was put together 50 years ago and we have some photos and letters he wrote.
"He was too old to fight in the First World War so instead he became a driver for the French Red Cross."
Jerome was born at Belsize House, Bradford Place, on the corner of Caldmore Road, on May 2, 1859.
His father had settled in Walsall in 1855, and for a short time was a partner in the Birchills Ironworks, before investing the family's money in two coal mines at Norton Canes, which proved a financial disaster.
In 1861, the family moved to Stourbridge, and then to London, where Jerome was educated, leaving school at 14.
"Jerome's parents died when he was a teenager and he was left practically by himself," says Cath.
"He experienced bitter poverty for a while, sleeping rough in church porches and on park benches but it wasn't long before he got work as a clerk with the London & North Western Railway at Euston."
Jerome tried a number of jobs including actor, newspaper reporter, assistant school master, secretary to a builder and a solicitors clerk.
"It was while working at the solicitors that he met his lifelong friends George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel who later became immortalised as the central characters in Three Men in a Boat," says Cath.
"In 1888 he married Georgina Stanley, daughter of a Spanish Army Lieutenant, and his first book On the Stage and Off was published.
"Three Men in a Boat appeared shortly after and proved even more successful.
"In America more than a million copies were sold, though slack copyright laws at the time meant that Jerome didn't receive a penny from the sales."
Jerome was honoured with the Freedom of the Borough of Walsall, on February 17, 1927 but then died from a stroke in June that year.
In a letter written to the people of Walsall thanking them for their hospitality in 1927 Jerome wrote: "You were there waiting for me in your streets - on your doorsteps so to speak - with hands outstretched.
"There was more than welcome in your eyes.
"You gave me the feeling that behind your formal greetings, there was genuine affection for me - that all these years you had remembered me and had been looking forward to my coming back.
"I felt I was the guest of all of you, there were no class distinctions.
"Your quiet undemonstrative men, your placid, smiling women, your grave faced little children who clamoured to be lifted up that they might wave their hands to me - you were all so evidently pleased to have me among you - you gave me the freedom of your hearts."
