Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (511 page)

Her love had sheltered him through all their privations, so that in after life he knew but little of the poverty which they as a family had suffered; indeed, he looked back upon his childhood as a happy one.

Although, as a boy, he saw the funny side of things, he certainly at the same time looked upon life seriously. He has stated, more than once, that as a boy he heard the world’s cry of pain, and that he meant to help. He had seen enough poverty, suffering and sorrow to make him intensely serious. The cry of pain sounded in his ears all through life, and his early resolution, “I mean to help”, was never departed from.

CHAPTER IV. FACING LIFE

“Just draw on your grit, it’s dead easy to quit!

It’s the keeping-your-chin-up that’s hard.”

 — R. W. SERVICE.

AT school Jerome had learned to play well, and his father had trained him in the principles of playing well the greater game of life. He possessed those typical youthful attributes, self-confidence, enthusiasm and strength. He had common sense enough to know that if he was to be the architect of his own career, he would have to take the rough with the smooth; that he would have to stand on his own feet and face the grim facts of life cheerfully, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

Although he had left school he continued to learn. His teachers were books, people, animals, sorrows, failures; indeed, everything around him. Probably he learned more from his failures than from anything else. For in after-life he realized that the foundation of any success he achieved was laid upon the strata of defeat.

His father had gone; his aunt, who had certainly been a good friend to him, had also gone, and he was left with his mother and two sisters, one of whom was married. His mother’s devotion to him was almost pathetic. She poured her love into his young heart, and fed his mind with her transparently sincere and simple Puritan faith. He had great affection for his mother, but as time went on he had misgivings about her faith. He found some difficulty in reconciling it with his conscience and his daily experiences. It sometimes happens that a mother of great charm and strong principles is not altogether good for the formation of a boy’s character if he is constrained to live a religious life merely to please her. If this can be regarded as a fault on the part of Mrs. Jerome, then, in the words of the poet:

“Her very faults enshrined in so much good Lend winsome witchery to her womanhood.”

 — ARTHUR BROCKHURST.

A mother would probably give her boy a better start in life if she trained him to do without her, and made herself unnecessary to him. He would then become self-reliant and would the sooner learn to play the game of life off his own bat. This may be a hard task for a mother; but motherhood is full of hard tasks, and this is probably the hardest of all, but the boy will be better equipped to face the realities of life.

The youth of to-day is not suffering from the repression that was common in Jerome’s boyhood. It is, therefore, more natural. The young are more self-assertive, and demand more from life than formerly; and these are signs of vitality and progress. They are the same loveable, exasperating creatures they always were, and, providing the pendulum does not swing from the one extreme of rigid repression to the other of licence, they will probably be better fitted to take up the torches dropped from the hands of the torch-bearers of the past.

Jerome commenced the real battle of life as a clerk under the L.N.W. Railway Company at Euston, at a salary of £26 a year. In busy times he was allowed to work overtime, which enabled him to increase his income somewhat, but the drudgery of office routine was distasteful to a mind working in the direction of the drama and literature. Indeed, it tormented him to be perched upon a stool from morning till night.

His taste for the theatre began to take possession of him. This troubled his mother greatly. At that time among religious people the theatre was regarded as the “gate of hell”. Yet she gave consent, no doubt reluctantly, for him and his sister to go occasionally. She remained at home and prayed for them while they were away; but after hearing the earnest and stirring account they gave on their return, she smilingly said that perhaps some day she might go with them herself. But the sweet inoffensive lady was to die soon, and she never made the adventure. She wrote in her diary that their path remained “very cloudy and full of sorrow”. She told the melancholy story that “coals have been eight shillings a ton. It is a fearful prospect. I have asked the Lord to remove it.” Still hoping that coals would go down in price, and that “their ship would come in”, this beautiful soul entered into rest.

Jerome was fifteen years old when his mother died. This was the greatest grief of his life. When the end came, his sister Blandina was away in the North, and he was alone in the house. The spectre of loneliness now stared him in the face. At this early age he had experienced more than a grown man’s share of sorrow and tribulation. He had lost his father, mother and aunt, and his only brother had died in childhood, and now he had to face the bufferings of life alone. He lived alone, thought alone, felt alone.

Fortunately his health was good and was in no way undermined by his troubles. He had an optimistic temperament and knew that the blue sky always lies behind the cloud. He had a profound purpose in life and an indomitable perseverance. He was, as the Americans would say, a hard-boiled youngster, and to him there was no such word as “impossible”.

He felt his loneliness very keenly. He was naturally sensitive and shy, and these qualities were intensified by his poverty. He had friends and relations who would gladly have helped him; in fact they sent him invitations, but in one he suspected patronage, in another compassion, and he declined them. He showed the same spirit as was shown by Dr. Johnson at Oxford. A wealthy fellow-student, noticing that Johnson was going about the muddy streets in worn-out boots, with a kindly intention placed a new pair outside his room door. Johnson picked them up and threw them away. Jerome, no doubt, felt as Johnson did:

“The glorious privilege

Of being independent.”

In his loneliness he moved about from one lodging-house to another, and was thrown into all sorts of company; and in after-life he took a delight in telling his under-world experiences. In one place a man hanged himself in one of the back rooms. In another his landlord was a retired engine-driver and belonged to the Strict Baptists, who had a little chapel near. One night the first-floor lodger brought home some friends who became hilarious — there was much jollification and drinking. Jerome, who occupied the top floor, heard the landlord shouting in stentorious voice that if first-floor’s rubbishy friends were not sent packing, and there wasn’t immediate quiet, first-floor was going to be shot out into the street and all his belongings thrown after him. Mr. Jerome wrote later: “Our landlord was a sturdy fellow, apt in moments of excitement to be a retired engine-driver first, and a Strict Baptist afterwards.” The first-floor lodger was named Eugene Sandow, and when the landlord learned that he was the celebrated strong man he changed his mind about throwing him into the street.

At this period Jerome’s mind was continually turned towards literature. He had tasted the joys of revelling in the “penny dreadful” of the “Jack Sheppard” type, and had, no doubt, often flattened his youthful nose against the paper-shop windows. He now spent a good deal of his spare time in the British Museum. He read not only books, but men, and chiefly himself.

All the time stories and plays were shaping themselves in his mind. He knew that if literature was to be his goal he would have a desperate struggle owing to his poverty, but he also knew that the story of literary achievement abounds with the names of men who, in spite of poverty, have reached the highest pinnacles of fame. At this juncture he probably did not realize that poverty has its uses; but later in life he knew that it brought out his best qualities. Just as many a poor man has worked his passage across the ocean to a land where a larger life awaited him, so was he stimulated to work his passage through to ultimate success. Though poor, he was rich in courage and self-confidence, he possessed a controlled imagination, and generally thought and acted in his best interests.

Realizing that a tough fight was in store for him, it does not seem inappropriate that he should learn the art of boxing. A few years later Mr. Jerome, referring to his youth, wrote in a magazine as follows:

Boxing I practised pretty regularly for a little while, but I kept getting black eyes, and having to explain how I got them; people, however, didn’t believe my explanations. “Hulloa, old man,” some stupid ass would remark, “you’ve been enjoying yourself.”

“Oh, boxing, you know,” I would airily reply.

“Boxing? Ah!” would be the rejoinder. “With a policeman, wasn’t it?” Then they would laugh in their common vulgar way, go off, and tell the others.

Jerome followed the example of a companion and tried his luck on the stage. He still kept his post in the office at Euston and did all his theatrical work in his spare time. This enabled him to increase his income at first by about 10s a week. He took part in plays that were popular at that time, “Dolly Varden”, “Little Nell”, “Lost in London”, and others. He doubled and trebled parts. He played the part of a soldier, a shepherd, and a priest on the same evening. At times he had to look at his clothes to make sure which he was. His company had a successful run and his salary was raised to 30s a week.

He then gave up his situation at Euston and, joining a touring company, went North and South through the provinces. Occasionally he got into the clutches of a bogus manager. So long as money was being made the manager paid his company their salaries, but when the takings were small the manager would disappear, takings as well, leaving his company to do as best they could. Sometimes they had to beg their way along the roads.

After giving the stage a trial for three years he returned to London with little else in his pockets but pawn-tickets. He had become accustomed to “roughing it”, having slept in church porches and in the dressing-rooms of theatres and shared hayricks with tramps. Now, in London, when he could dodge the police, he would sleep out in the open air. When he could find ninepence he would go to a doss-house. There he would sleep with everything belonging to him, even leaky boots, underneath his pillow, and mice would creep about the floor.

He next learned shorthand and entered the portals of journalism as a reporter. He went to coroners’ inquests, police-courts, raced after fire-engines, and attended public meetings. On Sundays he took down sermons. He was present at Spurgeon’s Tabernacle on Sunday morning when the great preacher began his sermon by saying: “As I came into the Tabernacle I overheard a young man outside make a remark which I intend to take as my text, merely adding two words.” He then mopped his brow, and dramatically imitated the young man—” It’s damned hot (a long pause) in hell.” He preached a powerful sermon on that text.

After gaining some experience in reporting, he became an assistant school-master, but only for a short time. He could have become secretary to Herbert Spencer, but to please his sisters he declined it and became, instead, secretary to a builder in North London. He next found employment with a firm of commission agents; after that with a parliamentary agent. His last situation before settling down to his life’s work was that of clerk to a solicitor who had offices in Essex Street, the Strand.

In trying to reconstruct Jerome’s early career, one is forced to the conclusion that he went through these varied experiences as much from choice as from necessity. His ambition was in the direction of the drama and literature; for, all along, he had been trying his hand at writing plays and stories. He was educating himself under the sternest of all teachers. Some men study books and take University degrees to prepare themselves for their vocation, but Jerome graduated in the greater university of life. He saw the seamy side of the world; its shams and hollowness, its low-mindedness, its impurity and meanness, its shame and dishonour; but wherever there is evil there is always for the intelligent mind some compensatory good. Jerome, therefore, saw with equal clearness the world’s love and pity, its honour and nobleness, its unselfishness and chivalry, which existed in abundance side by side with depravity.

He meant to help, and if he was to give any real assistance to suffering humanity he must himself feel the pangs of an aching back and a breaking heart. To be the poor man’s friend, he must himself experience nights of sleepless hunger. To understand poverty he must himself taste it. Such experiences would not only nerve him to live up to his ideals, but they would also purify the divine flame in him and reveal the deeper mysteries of Art.

CHAPTER V. JEROME K. JEROME AS A JOURNALIST

“This is true liberty, when free-born men, Having to advise the public, may speak free.”

 — EURIPIDES.

WHEN acting as a clerk to a firm of solicitors, Jerome lived in a front room at No. 36, Newman Street, W. In a back room of the same building lived also Mr. George Wingrave, a bank clerk. For a considerable time the two young men used to pass each other without speaking. The property changed hands, and the landlady then suggested that it would be more economical for them both if they lived together. This they did, occupying the same sitting-room and sleeping in the same bedroom. This was the beginning of an intimate and lifelong friendship. They were both poor, and Jerome never claimed to have over-much business aptitude, but Wingrave had keen business instincts, and, no doubt, often saved Jerome from being imposed upon.

In his spare time Jerome wrote articles for theatrical journals and was a dramatic critic; but his criticisms became too outspoken and he lost his post. Wingrave helped him to get reasonable remuneration for his work. They addressed each other familiarly as “George” and “J”. Each lived his own life; George being devoted to business, Jerome being a more or less solitary man.