JEROME K. JEROME, HUMOURIST AND DRAMATIST, DIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18182, 15 June 1927, Page 7

JEROME K. JEROME, HUMOURIST AND DRAMATIST, DIES.

HAD BEEN ACTOR, CLERK AND JOURNALIST, AND KNEW DIRE POVERTY. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. A.P.A. and Sydney “ Sun ” Cables. (Received June 15, 10 a.m.) LONDON, June 14. The death is announced of the fa mous author, Jerome K. Jerome, aged sixty-seven. Jerome Iv. Jerome, the English humourist and dramatist, was born at Walsall in May, 1859. His father lost bis money and the family went to live in the East End of London, where the boy had a rather poverty-stricken and depressing childhood. After his father’s death he got a railway clerkship at Euston at the age of fourteen, at a salary of £26 a year, with an annual rise of £lO. While still a clerk he began to act in small companies in London, with the result that, though he was by this time earning £7O a year at Euston, he resigned and joined a touring -company, remaining on the stage for three years, chiefly in the provinces. The pay was so poor that the actors often slept out in the summer or bribed the hall-keeper in the winter to let them spend the night in the hall. Jerome got plenty of experience. He played every part in “Hamlet” except Ophelia and doubled the roles of Martin Chuzzlewit and Sairey Gamp on the same evening. On returning to London he slept in dosshouses. but an acquaintance put him in the way of earning money by police court and inquest reporting, so that he made as much as 10s a week. He then took up shorthand, used his gift for humour in his reports, and began to increase his income, but his earnings were very precarious and he gave up free-lancing for teaching. A term of this was enough. His sister’s prejudices prevented him from becoming secretary to Herbert Spencer. Instead he took a post with an illiterate builder and then became in turn buyer to a commission agent and clerk to a parliamentary agent and to a solicitor. All this time he had been writing stories, plays and essays, but it was years before anything came of it. In 1885 his first work came out in serial form in “The Play,” and in book form in 1888. Next year appeared “The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow” and “Three Men in a Boat.” They were all popular, and the “Three Men,” with its mixture of humour and sentiment, was a tremendous success. Had it been written six years later it would have brought the author a fortune, but English books were not then copyright in America. Jerome’s works were described as the “new humour,” and for twenty years he was consistently and bitterly attacked by the critics. As a matter of fact, “Three Men in a Boat” was to have been “The Story of the Thames.” its history and scenery, but he sat down to write the comic relief first and never got to the guide-book portion. “Stageland,” unsigned sketches, appeared in “The Playgoer,” and papers that had been denouncing him and all his works as an insult to English literature hastened to appropriate them. In the. same vein as “Three Men in a Boat” were “Three Men on the Hummel” (in Germany), which was officially adopted in the Fatherland as a school reading book, and “The Story of a Pilgrimage,” a visit to the Oberammergau Passion Play. His first play, “Barbara,” still done by amateurs, was produced in 1886. It was followed by “Woodbarrow Farm,” in which E. H. Sothern played in the American production, “The Prude’s Progress,” “Dick Hal ward,” “New Lamps for Old,” “The Macllaggis” (with Phillpotts), “Esther Castways,” “Miss Hobbs,” “Sylvia of the Letters,” “The Great Gamble,” “Fanny and the Servant Problem,” translated and played all over Europe, and “Cook.” His greatest play, “The Passing of the Third Floor Back,” was developed from a short story of his. It was to have been staged by Belasco in America, but he was afraid of it, and meanwhile ' Forbes-Robertson had expressed a de- , sire to produce it. The conception of “The Stranger” in the play come to i Jerome through following a stooping figure passing down a foggy street. “I ■ did not see his face. It was his clothes that worried me. I could not get him cut of my mind, wandering about the winter streets, and gradually he grew out of those curious.clothes of his.” In this drama the writer’s - religious and sentimental side comes out. He also wrote an excellent serious novel, “Paul Kelver,” about himself and the people he had known and loved. This changed his luck with the critics, who praised it. In 1923 he issued another novel, j “Anthony John.” Jerome was also a great editor. In 1892 with Robert Barr he started “The Idler,” an illustrated monthly magazine, and in 1893 the weekly paper “Today.” He had a genius for unearthing new talent, with the result that he gathered round him a brilliant group of contributors, both writers and artists: R. L. Stevenson, H. G. Wells, W. W. Jacobs, Barry Pain, Le Gallienne, Anthony Hope, Zangwill, Eden Phillpotts, Phil May, Beardsley, Dudley Hardy, Pegram, Baumer and others. Thanks to an inconclusive libel action based on an article by his city editor, which involved him in £9OOO costs, he had to sell out his holdings in his papers, thus bringing to an untimely end a remarkably successful career as j an editor. After that he lived a good deal ! abroad and he made three lecturing f tours in America, of which he has much to say in his reminiscences, both in praise and blame. He makes a ve- : hement protest against the treatment of the negro in the Southern States, notably the lynchings and torturings, adding that “American justice is not colour-blind.” During the war Jerome I was a motor-driver in the French Red Cross, and used to bring wounded from f the front near Verdun. He married j the daughter of a Spanish officer. I