Jerome K. Jerome  New Humorist

 87  2015  5  24 

I Jerome K. Jerome (1859 – 1927)



1885

On the Stage- and Off1886

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

1889

Stage Land

1889

Three Men in a Boat

1890

Told after Supper

1891

Diary of a Pilgrimage

1900

Three Men on the Bummel

1902

Paul Klever

1926

My Life and Times II
I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was ahumorist. I never have been sure about it. In the middle ages, I
should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burned orhanged. There was to be “humorous relief”; but the book was to havebeen “The Story of the Thames,” its scenery and history. Somehow itwould not come. I was just back from my honeymoon, and had thefeeling that all the world’s troubles were over. About the “humorousrelief” I had no difficulty. I decided to write the “humorous relief”
first – get it off my chest, so to speak. After which, in sober frame ofmind, I could tackle the scenery and history. I never got there. It
seemed to be all “humorous relief.” By grim determination I
succeeded before the end, in writing a dozen or so slabs of history andworking them in, one to each chapter, and F.W.Robinson, who waspublishing the book serially, in Home Chimes, promptly slung themout, the most of them. From the beginning he had objected to the title
and had insisted upon my thinking of another. And half-way throughI hit upon “Three Men in a Boat,” because nothing else seemed right.

(My Life and Times, Chapter VI)
III
Of course it was damned by the critics. One might have imagined – toread some of them – that the British Empire was in danger. One
Church dignitary went about the country denouncing me. Punch wasespecially indignant, scenting an insidious attempt to introduce “newhumour” into comic literature. For years, “New Humorist” wasshouted after me wherever I wrote. Why in England, of all countries
in the world, humour, even in new clothes, should be mistaken for astranger to be greeted with brickbats, bewildered me.
(My Life and Times, Chapter Chapter VI)
IVI think I may claim to have been, for the first twenty years of mycareer, the best abused author in England. Punch invariably referred
to me as “’Arry K’Arry,” and would then proceed to solemnly lecture
me on the sin of mistaking vulgarity for humour and impertinence
for wit. As for The National Observer, the Jackdaw of Rheims
himself was not more cursed than was I, week in, week out, byW.S.Henley and his superior young men. I ought, of course, to havefelt complimented; but at the time I took it all quite seriously, and it
hurt. Max Beerbohm was always very angry with me. The Standard
spoke of me as a menace to English letters; and The Morning Post as
an example of the sad results to be expected from the over-educationof the lower orders.
(My Life and Times, Chapter IV)
VThe Baron may be wrong, and the humour of this book, which
seems to him to consist in weak imitations of American fun, and inconversations garnished with such phrases as “bally idiot,” “ballytent” “doing a mouch,” “boss the job,” “put a pipe in his mouth, andspread himself over a chair,” “land him with a frying-pan,”“fat-headed chunk,” “who the thunder” and so forth – a style theBaron believes to have been introduced from Yankee-land, andpatented here by the Sporting Times and its imitators, -interspersed with plentiful allusions to whiskey-drinking, may not
be, as it is not, to his particular taste; and yet, for all that, it may be
marvellously funny. So the Baron requested an admirer of this bookto pick out the gems, and read them aloud to him. But even theadmirer was compelled to own that the gems did not sparkle sobrilliantly as he had at first thought. “Yet,” observed the admirer,“it has had a big sale.” “Three Men in a Boat ought to have,” quoth
the Baron, cheerily, and then he called aloud, “Bring me Pickwick!”(Punch, February 1, 1890, p. 57.)
VIbally
The word is used in the same manner as blooming and bloody, i.e.,
as a meaningless intensive expression. Bloody is an adj. used on every
possible occasion by Eng. Workmen, but without meaning. Schoolboys andgrown-up persons of the better classes use bally.
(Olof E. Bosson, Slang and Cant in Jerome K. Jerome’s Works: A Study,
Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons., 1911. p. 39.)
VIITwopence I gave for my sunshade,
A penny I gave for my fan,Threepence I paid for my straw, —forrin made—I’m a Japan-aesthetic young man!
(‘The Cheap Aesthetic Swell’, Punch, July 30, 1881)
VIII
I can’t say as I was partikler pleased the way as they upset my box, as was
the Custom ‘Ouse, and all thro’ me not a-rememberin’ as clay meant key, andthought it was somethink as they thought I were a-smugglin’
So I says, “Bless the man, I ain’t got no clay,” and kep’ a-shakin’ my‘ead, a-sayin’, “Nong!” till Brown come back, and says,“This all comes of you’re a-blowin’ about your French, and ‘ere you
are floored over a key.”(Arthur Sketchley, Mrs. Brown at the Paris Exhibition, 1878)
IX
Jerome was consciously wooing a new readership: the perky clerks and shop
assistants, the Mr Pollys and Lupin Pooters, whose stripy blazers andhalf-starved features still gaze triumphantly from a thousand sepia photos.
The genteel highbrows of the next generation – Forster, Virginia Woolf, Eliot– were to sneer at this whole breed.
(John Carey, ‘A Victorian Clerk’s Tale’, Original Copy, p. 138.)
XMarlow is one of the pleasantest river centres I know of. It is a bustling,
lively little town; not very picturesque on the whole, it is true, but there aremany quaint nooks and corners to be found in it, nevertheless – standing
arches in the shattered bridge of Time, over which our fancy travels back to
the days when Marlow Manor owned Saxon Algar for its lord, ere conquering
William seized it to give to Queen Matilda, ere it passed to the Earls of
Warwick or to worldly-wise Lord Paget, the councilor of four successive
sovereigns.
(Three Men in a Boat, Chapter XIII)
XIIt must have been much like this when that foolish boy Henry VIII was
courting his little Anne. People in Buckinghamshire would have come uponthem unexpectedly when they were mooning round Windsor and Wraysbury,and have exclaimed, ‘Oh! You here!’ and Henry would have blushed and said,‘Yes; he’d just come over to see a man;’ and Anne would have said, ‘Oh, I’m soglad to see you! Isn’t it funny? I’ve just met Mr Henry VIII in the lane, andhe’s going the same way I am.’
Then those people would have gone away and said to themselves:‘Oh! we'd better get out of here while this billing and cooing is on. We’ll godown to Kent.’
And they would go to Kent, and the first thing they would see inKent, when they got there, would be Henry and Anne fooling round HeverCastle.
‘Oh, drat this!’ they would have said. ‘Here, let’s go away. I can’tstand any more of it. Let’s go to St Albans – nice quiet place, St Albans.’
And when they reached St Albans, there would be that wretchedcouple, kissing under the Abbey walls. Then these folks would go and be
pirates until the marriage was over.
(Three Men in a Boat, Chapter XII)XII
I started with the idea of giving you a rapid but glowing and eloquent
word-picture of the valley of the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence. For
background, I thought I would sketch in the historical and legendary events
connected with the district, and against this, for a foreground, I would draw,
in vivid colours, the modern aspect of the scene, with remarks andobservations thereon.
Here are my rough notes, made for the purpose:-Mems. for Chapter on Rhine: “Constantine the Great used to comehere – so did Agrippa. (N.B. – Try and find out something about Agrippa.)
Caesar had a good deal to do with the Rhine – also Nero’s mother.
(Diary of a Pilgrimage, End of Saturday, 24th and Beginning of Sunday, 25th-- continued )Works CitedBosson, Olof, E., Slang and Cant in Jerome K. Jerome’s Works (Cambridge:W. Heffer & Sons., Ltd. 1911)‘The Cheap Aesthetic Swell’, Punch (July 30, 1881)
Doyle, Richard, The Foreign Tour of Messrs Brown, Jones and Robinson:

Being the History of What They Saw and Did in Belgium, Germany,
Switzerland and Italy (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1854)
The Baron’s Review in Punch (February 1, 1890), 57
Carey, John, ‘A Victorian Clerk’s Tale’, in Original Copy

(London: Faber,1987)
Ibitson, David, ‘”A Burlesque of Art”: Three Men in a Boat, Music Hall andthe Imperial Mimicry of the Victorian Urban Explorer’, in Rachel Carroll andAdam Hansen, eds., Litpop: Writing and Popular Music (London: Ashgate
Publishing, 2014), pp. 35 – 47.
Jerome, Jerome K, Diary of a Pilgrimage (and Six Essays) (Bristol:J.W.Arrowsmith, n.d.)
Jerome, Jerome K, My Life and Times (London: John Murray, 1926)
Jerome, Jerome K., Three Men in a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel, ed. byGeoffrey Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)
Sketchely, Arthur, Mrs. Brown at the Paris Exhibition (London and New
York: George Routlege and Sons, 1878)

Jerome K. Jerome  New Humorist ()Fun, December 7, 1892

Jerome K. Jerome  New Humorist ()Punch, March 10, 1894