Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (507 page)

The question answered, King Edward touched another medal. “And that?” he inquired, to add, on receiving particulars: “You have a very gallant war record, and I am very glad to see you. Good morning” — and with characteristic graciousness, the King shook hands with the old soldier.

“Thank you very much, sir,” said the latter. Then, anxious to do to a comrade such a good turn, as the chance to do would never come again, he added hurriedly: “And please Your Majesty, may I introduce my friend, Mr. Jones? He’s an old soldier, too.”

The Gentleman-in-Waiting, standing just behind the King, looked, I am told, not a little scandalized at such breach of the etiquette with which Royalty was, in those days, supposed to be hedged around. Not so King Edward. Laughing jovially, he replied: “I’m very pleased to meet Mr. Jones, an old soldier,” and shaking hands with that worthy also, walked off, his beard still wagging at the informality and unconventionality of the “introduction”. My Introduction shall also be on unconventional lines. My readers will not expect from me anything in the shape of comments, critical or otherwise, on Mr. Moss’s work. They and the reviewers will form their own opinion, and would resent any attempt on the part of an outsider to pre-judge the issue. On one point, at least, I may, however, be allowed to speak. It is that, as Cecil said of Raleigh, Mr. Moss can “toil terribly”. His pride in Walsall, Jerome’s, as well as his own birthplace, is so great that one feels that the writing of the book has been to the author a labour of love, for he has spared himself nothing in making the work both accurate and exhaustive. Here is a case in point. Mr. Moss must not complain if some critic remark, and rightly, that my name appears too often in his pages. It does, but for that unfortunate fact, neither Mr. Moss nor I can be altogether blamed, as Jerome and myself were already friends in the days when Philip Marston, the blind poet to whom both Rosetti and Swinburne addressed a sonnet, had gathered around him the little group of writers and artists known as “The Vagabonds”. On my recollections of those days, Mr. Moss has been compelled, as only two or three of us are now alive, to draw, as well as to quote, with like frequency, letters from Jerome to myself. Now for my instance of Mr. Moss’s painstakingness. It so happens that my sister Mary, also a contributor to
The Idler,
and an intimate friend of Jerome and his wife (who is held in reverence and affection by everyone privileged to know her) and I have been in the habit of dashing off, from time to time — my sister, original and delightful Nonsense Verse; and I, Commonplace doggerel — in celebration of any unusual happening in our own or a friend’s family. When the present volume was in preparation, Mr. Moss wrote, asking permission to quote some verses of mine, the subject of which was one of Jerome’s plays. I replied that he was mistaken in crediting, or, rather, discrediting, me with the doggerel in question, as I had no recollection of ever having written anything of the sort. Mr. Moss promptly countered by giving name and date of issue of some long-defunct periodical, in which the lines in question — wholly forgotten by me — had appeared under my signature. He seems, indeed, to have searched the files of any and every print known to him, in which Jerome’s name was likely to be found; to have ransacked libraries, and to have written letters to every living person who could supply information of any sort concerning Jerome. Realizing all that Mr. Moss has unearthed about his subject, I breathe a sigh of relief to think that I am too unimportant a person for him to think, after my demise, of writing a biography. With such a sleuth-hound on one’s trail, one trembles to think what dark and guilty secret might not be dragged into the light of day.

IV

My first meeting with Jerome came about in this wise. He had seen, and been interested in, something I had contributed to the magazine already mentioned, and had said as much to a friend of mine, Tom Wingrave, now risen to eminence in the medical profession, and the brother of “George” (Wingrave) of “Three Men in a Boat”.

“Why, Kernahan is an old friend of mine,” said Wingrave, “I should like you and him to meet.”

Then Jerome wrote, asking me to dine with him on a specified date in his rooms at Tavistock Place. I happened to be engaged that evening, but replied, asking Jerome to dine with me at the table of my dear and honoured father, with whom (I was a bachelor in those days) I was then living. He accepted, and as I chanced to be at the window when he arrived, I did not wait for a maid to open the door, but opened it myself.

“How are you, Kernahan, delighted to meet you,” he said, “dropping the mistery” — the phrase is not mine, but my friend A. Percival Grave’s, author of “Father O’Flynn”, who wrote: “May we not drop the mistery?” soon after we came to know each other — at sight.

“How are you, Jerome? It is equally good to meet you,” I replied; and so began a friendship that continued while he was in this world, and that I hope and believe will be renewed in the next.

We had differences of opinion on many matters, but never a “difference” to the end, for the very last letter he wrote me — hearing he was ill we had invited him and Mrs. Jerome to stay awhile at our little home in health-giving Hastings — was couched in all the old and affectionate terms. In saying that he and I “differed” in opinion, I word the situation mildly, for he detested certain views of mine, no less heartily than I detested certain views of his. But when, as in Jerome’s case, a man has a heart of gold, who cares greatly about his views? When he and I met on the occasion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s second marriage, and Jerome asked me, “What are you writing now, old man?” to receive the reply: “Nothing at present, as I’m working in support of Lord Roberts’s National Defence Campaign, and, moreover, have been living in Barracks for Instruction and Training as a Company Commander in the Territorial Army,” Jerome did not attempt to conceal his amazed amusement.

“What!” he exclaimed, almost shouted, “you, YOU, and in your fiftieth year, are playing at soldiers, marking time, forming fours, and such silliness! But what, in Heaven’s name for? Don’t you know that Lord Roberts, and those who support him, are making themselves ridiculous in the eyes of all thinking and far-seeing men and women? You are all a hundred years behind the times, for there’s never going to be another war — unless with savages. War is a thing of the past — the advance of Civilization, the International Movement in all countries, the Humanitarian Movement, and the Brotherhood Movement, will see to that!”

But though he poured scorn on me for holding (though I abhor war no less than he) that the time is not yet come when we can safely abolish our Defensive Forces, any more than, while crime exists, we can abolish Police Courts and a Police Force; though something of a Socialist himself, he was contemptuous of my Conservatism as out of date, undemocratic, and a policy merely of class-interests and vested-interests — though he did this and more, I remember with gratitude his fine forbearance and consideration on another subject.

Incidentally, two of the best Christians I have ever known would not be so designated in the sense in which the Christian faith and creeds are held by the Churches. I refer to Jerome K. Jerome and Arthur Conan Doyle. Here I write only of the former, and give one out of many instances of his practical Christianity. A certain author, known to him and me, was dying, and in money difficulties. Jerome wrote to a few of us, only half a dozen in all, asking for a contribution which he limited to £5, for, though open-handed himself, he was close-fisted for others, and hated to “squeeze” friends to whom, he knew, charitable appeals often came. The fivers were cheerfully sent, and that the dying author should not suspect whence the money came, Jerome with characteristic sensitiveness, fell back upon a ruse. A dramatic agent was instructed to write to the author saying that a client of his was convinced that a certain short story (really wholly unsuited for dramatization) by the author in question would make a capital one-act play, and offering a named sum for the dramatic rights. As the sum in question, so I heard afterwards, but not from Jerome, ran into three figures, Jerome must have paid the remainder, some seventy pounds, himself. The offer was gladly but unsuspectingly accepted, and the dying author’s closing days eased and relieved, at least, on the score of ways and means.

On National Defence, on questions of policy, national or international, Capitalism and Labour, Social Reform and the like, Jerome spoke his mind to me unsparingly. My views, antiquated, reactionary, even silly, as he thought them, annoyed and irritated him, and he “let out” at them and me mercilessly. He knew that I should take the vehemency of his onslaught in good part, enjoyed it, in fact, for there was “give and take” on both sides, and I did not hesitate to hit back.

But he knew that one subject there was which was sacred to me, and on that he was silent. He knew that my faith in Christianity differed in little from that of my father, and my father’s father, and is, indeed, in these days, somewhat old-fashioned. Jerome, though in heart, in character, but most of all in practice, a far better “Christian” that I, and though holding the Person, the life, and the teachings of our Lord in the most profound and wondering reverence as the highest revelation of the Divine in man, that the world has ever known, went no farther. I go infinitely farther, as Jerome was aware, and though, in his opinion, my beliefs were super-credulous, if not something of a superstition — on that subject at least, never once in the course of our long friendship did he say or write to me one word which could give me pain.

The advantages of birth and breeding are not to be denied in the making of what is called “a gentleman”, but Jerome was more than that. He was a “great gentleman”, with an exquisite consideration for the feelings of others, loyal in friendship, the soul of honour in himself, and as incapable of anything in the way of snobbery, as he was incapable of a meanness or a falsehood. In one of the most “human documents” ever penned, his “My Life and Times”, Jerome writes frankly, and with manly self-respect, of a time of hardship and privation, when as a young and unknown man, he made friends who were, comparatively speaking, humbly placed in life. When he came to fame, and — again, comparatively speaking, for he was too generous ever to become a rich man — to fortune, those humble friends were not, as sometimes happens, dropped, but were always welcomed to his home as honoured guests. And lastly, though his views on what is called patriotism were not mine, I believe him to have been, in the highest and truest sense of the word, a patriot, and that but for the strain he put upon a weakened heart in the Christlike task of bringing in the wounded during the War, he might have been alive to-day.

V

In conversation Jerome had a dry way of saying things, and a ready wit. Discussing humour one night, someone defined it as “a surprise”, to which Jerome, with a queer, twisted smile on his face, replied: “If you came across a strange man with his arm around your sweetheart’s waist, it might come as a surprise to you, and you would probably have a surprise in store for him, but where would be the humour?” After the laughter had subsided, someone else, I think Clement Shorter, remarked: “I agree with Mr. Jerome. The essence of humour is not a surprise, but something incongruous.”

“It is,” said Jerome, slyly, “but suppose some editor had asked you to write an article for him. And suppose you expected thirty guineas for it, and he sent you only three. You might feel that here was something incongruous, but you’d fail to find any humour.”

When he and I were chatting, in the early days of our friendship, he mentioned that he had once been a schoolmaster.

“That’s news to me — that you were once a schoolmaster,” I said. “How did you get on?”

“Not at all, old man! — nor did the boys,” was his laconic reply.

Jerome’s and my good friend, G. B. Burgin, was so good as to dedicate his novel, “Dickie Dilver” to me, and did so in a set of five verses. As there is a reference to “The Vagabonds”, of which Jerome and I were original members, and a reference to myself as “one of Jerome K’s young men.”

(I was a contributor to
The Idler,
and a member of the Idlers’ Club), a friend showed Jerome the lines, remarking “Burgin pays Kernahan a compliment, I see”.

The dedication begins chaffingly, thus:

“Lord of weird and mystic booklets, with a range from God to ants, Lord of military bearing, with a D’Orsay taste in ‘pants’.

Just a moment doff your helmet, take your hand from off your sword, Sit within this Fleet Street window, for a reminiscent word”, and runs as follows in the third verse:

“You have stood on lecture platforms, one of Jerome K’s young men, You have ‘basted critic earthworms’, at ‘The Vags’ cried out ‘Say when!’

You have wandered thro’ wide cities, have pervaded deserts wild, But the God Who giveth all things, leaves you still a little child.”

My friend told me that Jerome read the lines to the end and gravely handing back the book, adjusted his glasses, and then remarked: “You call that a compliment, do you? — Burgin telling his readers they needn’t mind anything Kernahan says, for he is only a bally kid!”

In a volume of Recollections, which shall be nameless, I have told many anecdotes about J. K. J. Here is one not hitherto recorded: I was to dine with the Lord Mayor, and Jerome asked me to look in afterward, for a last chat and smoke, at Chelsea Gardens Mansions, where he was then living. His was the topmost flat of all, and the Mansions are very high buildings, which then had no lift. Climbing countess stone steps, after attending a Lord Mayor’s Banquet, is apt to make one puff — I do not mean at the excellent cigar with which the Lord Mayor had supplied his guests, and was still within my lips, as I had driven straight to Chelsea in a hansom. So when Jerome opened the door, I quoted, gaspingly, the beginning of a well-known hymn, “Oh, for a mansion in the skies!”

“Till then you elect,” I added, “for an eyry on earth. It’s an awful climb up those stairs of yours, after banqueting with the Lord Mayor.”

“You’ll have to climb higher and harder if ever you are to get to those ‘mansions in the skies’ you were talking about. Come in.”