Jerome and “The Story of the Thames”

K. S. VENKATARAMAN

The river Thames was a favourite resort of Jerome K. Jerome, a London-based railway clerk. And he loved “messing about in boats” during week-ends and holidays. He had considerable literary talent; he was also a good actor. And so he supplemented his meagre pay as a clerk by spare time writing and acting. Not surprisingly, therefore, his experiences in the Thames river provided him with material for his most famous book.

He intended his book, which he called “The Story of the Thames”, to be a “historical and topographical account of the river.” And in order to relieve the possible monotony of the account he added descriptions of the adventures of himself and two friends and a pet dog, as they journeyed up the river in a row-boat. There are also in it many amusing digressions, not having any direct connection with the main story, but so cleverly woven into the narrative, that the resulting work is an extremely agreeable meandering yarn, suitable for relaxation rather than for gaining historical and geographical knowledge of the Thames.

When the book was first serialised in a magazine called Home Chimes, the humorous passages at once became so popular that the editor “ruthlessly cut out the chunks of history.” The result was that “The Story of the Thames” was transformed into Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog).

And when it was published in book form in 1889, it was such a tremendous success, and the copies were sold so fast, that the publisher thought “the public must eat them,” in America too a million copies were sold, but unfortunately for the author, these sales did not bring him any material advantage, in consequence of the American edition having been published before the Copyright Convention.

Jerome was, however, generous enough to say that “the fame and popularity it has won for me among the American public is an asset not to be despised.” He got so many appreciative letters from all parts of the world, that he said, “Had these letters been the only result I should feel glad that I had written the book.”

Jerome K. Jerome was in his own right a trend-setter in humorous writing. His humour consists in acts of irrationality on the part of his characters, which invariably land them in ludicrous situations. It is absolutely free from cynicism, sarcasm, ribald facetiousness and meretricious display of cleverness. There is in it an amused sympathy towards human frailty.

About the characters and incidents in the book Jerome says, “Its pages form the record of events that really happened. All that has been done is to colour them; and for this, no extra charge is made. George and Harris and Montmorency are not poetic ideals, but things of flesh and blood – especially George, who weighs about twelve stone.”

There are occasional flashes of poetic fancy in Jerome’s writing, which show him to be a man of deep sensitivity. And as D. C. Browning says, “...behind the author’s ironical comments there is always a vein of sound of whimsical philosophy which gives his most extravagant flights of fancy a value all their own.”

Born on 2nd May, 1859, at Walsall in Staffordshire, where his father was a lay preacher, Jerome K. Jerome could not take part in active service in the First World War because of old age. He therefore joined the French Red Cross as an ambulance driver. The horror of the scenes he witnessed there was so painful to a person of his sensitivity, that it decidedly shortened his life. He died on 14th June, 1927.

One year after the publication of Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome published a sequel to it called Three Men on the Bummel. The same characters (minus the dog) appear in this book, which describes a cycling tour through the Black Forest in Germany. This book is as amusing as the earlier one, though it did not become as popular.

In addition to the above two books, on which his fame chiefly rests, Jerome K. Jerome has written many novels and plays. Of his novels Paul Kelver is considered to be the best, while among his plays the most famous is The Passing of the Third Floor Back, which is a morality play with characters named Cheat, Slut, Rogue and Cad. But these works are at present of only academic interest to scholars.

From the point of view of the modern general reader the most enjoyable of Jerome’s books are Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel, with illustrations which appeared in the first edition. So the next time you happen to visit a second-hand book-shop, it may not be a bad idea to search for vintage editions of these books, with lovely illustrations by A. Frederica and L. Raven Hill.

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