Jerome K. Jerome

In June 1888, Jerome K. Jerome married Georgina Elizabeth Henrietta Stanley Marris. The daughter of a Spanish soldier, she was known by her pet name Ettie. At the time of their meeting, she was married with a five-year old daughter named Elsie.

Jerome was very fond of her stepdaughter and was devastated when she died in 1921. They had another daughter, Rowena. Born in 1898, she survived both her parents.

Towards the end of his life, he spent more time at his farmhouse, Gould's Grove, located southeast of Ewelme near Wallingford. However, they also had a home in London.

Jerome Klapka Jerome was born on 2 May 1859 in Caldmore, now a part of the industrial town of Walsall in Staffordshire. At birth, he was registered as Jerome Clapp Jerome; but later Clapp was changed into Klapka after the exiled Hungarian general and family friend, György Klapka.

His father, Jerome Clapp, was a nonconformist preacher, and owned a coalmine on Cannock Chase. Before that, he had tried farming and stone quarrying in Devonshire.

Jerome’s mother, Marguerite Jones, was the daughter of a prosperous Swansea solicitor. She had brought in considerable dowry, which his father had invested in the coal mine. Coming from heroic Welsh nonconformist stock, she never lost her faith in spite of repeated failures in family fortune.

Jerome Jr. was born at Belsize House, located on the corner of Bradford Street and Caldmore Road. He was his parents’ fourth child, having two elder sisters named Paulina Deodata and Blandina Dominica, and one elder brother named, Milton Melanchthon, who died at the age of six.

Initially, they were quite well off. But on the night of Jerome’s first birthday, his father gently woke up his mother to say that his coalmine had been flooded and that he was now a ruined man with just a few hundred pounds left.

As per his mother’s diary, Jerome K Jerome began his career at the London and North Western Railway on 12 January 1874, at the age fourteen. Being posted at Euston Station, his first job was to collect coals that fell along the railway, but very soon, he was promoted to the post of a clerk.

His mother died sometime in the middle of 1875. By then his sisters had left home and living alone in dingy lodgings in London and working as a clerk, Jerome entered the bleakest period of his life. In spite of that, he did not give up hope.

Sometime now, he joined an amateur theatre group, acting in small roles in his spare time. Finally in 1877, he left his job to join a repertory troupe, which produced plays on a shoestring budget, with actors buying the costumes and props with their own resources.

He remained with the troupe for three years, may be for the excitement of traveling around. Sleeping in the dressing rooms or church porches he played various parts, doubling or even trebling roles. Sometime he had to look at his costumes to remind himself which part he was playing.

Finally at the age of 21, he had enough of acting and returned to London, literally penniless. Subsequently, sleeping in dosshouses, he was discovered by an old friend, who managed to get him a short-lived job of a journalist, requiring him to cover police stations and coroners.

Jerome tasted his first success, when inspired by Longfellow’s poems from ‘By the Fireside', he wrote a series of comic sketches on his experiences as an actor. Initially published in a journal called ‘The Play’, they were collected in a book form in 1885 and published as ‘On the Stage—and Off’.

His next book, ‘Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow’, was also a collection of humorous essays previously published in Home Chimes. Published in book form in 1886, it established him as a writer. He dedicated the book to his tobacco pipe, his friend and companion.

By 1888, he was sufficiently established to be able to get married and spend his honeymoon in a little boat on Thames. On his return, he wrote ‘Three Men in a Boat’, his most famous work. Initially serialized in Home Chimes, it was published in book form in August 1889.

The book was not well received by the critics. While some were lukewarm, others were downright hostile, finding the book suitable only for working class Londoners, whom they called 'Arrys and 'Arriets’ (Harrys and Harriets). Punch magazine went one step further, calling Jerome 'Arry K. 'Arry’.

In spite of bad reviews, ‘Three Men in a Boat’ sold in such a huge number that the publisher famously quipped, “I often think the public must eat them”. The royalty he received from the sale made him financially secure and he could now devote his time entirely to writing.