JEROME K. JEROME

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 9, 1 April 1927, Page 3

JEROME K. JEROME

HIS LIFE STORY NOVELIST’S “KNIGHTHOOD” Air. Jerome K. Jerome, author of • Three Men in a Boat” and “The Passing of the Third Floor Back,” was in delightfully reminiscent mood recently, when he visited Walsall, his birthplace, to receive the Freedom of the City. In acknowledging the presentation, he said: “Many of my literary friends are knights and baronets, and one of them will soon be made a lord, while others have received degrees of honour from hands of noble chancellors of universities and heads of Royal societies. But I am the only literary man who has received his honour from the people. This Freedom of the City (or the Borough) —it is the People’s knighthood, and I shall always be proud of my spurs. “ON THE STAGE—AND OFF” “When sufficiently educated,” continued Mr. Jerome, “I went as a clerk on the London and North-Western Railway at 10s a week. But youth is a discontented age. I ran away and went upon the stage. My salary there — when I got it—was often 15s (a rise of 50 per cent, I believe). I might have become a matinee idol, but Fate preserved me. After a year or two I returned to London: this time chiefly

with pawn-tickets in my pocket, and, after searching for my living in various directions, became a. journalist. “Then I drifted into the writing of plays and books; and to that I owe this red-letter day in my life. I am glad my Guardian Angel has led me through literature to the Freedom of the Borough of Walsall. “And so after all my wanderings I rfeturn to you the happy prodigal.”