John Ingerfield and Other Stories

John Ingerfield and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by Jerome K. Jerome, published in 1894. It came out at the height of his fame, after Three Men in a Boat and Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, when readers expected nothing but comic essays and were surprised to find Jerome in a much darker mode.

The title novella is set in eighteenth century London. John Ingerfield is a wealthy young oil refiner in the East End who marries a beautiful but poor young woman, more or less by negotiation. The marriage is loveless. He treats her well materially but neither of them pretends to any deeper feeling. The story turns when a plague breaks out in the warehouses around the docks. Ingerfield, against everyone’s advice, stays in the East End to do what he can for his workers. His wife, who has been living in a country house away from him, comes back of her own accord to help. The conclusion of the story is one of the most affecting things Jerome ever wrote, and readers who only know him through the comic books often find the ending unbearable.

The shorter stories in the book vary in mood. Silhouettes is a melancholy piece about a woman remembering a lost suitor. The Man Who Did Not Believe in Luck is a comic moral tale. There are a few sketches in the older Jerome manner about boating and country walks. The mix is uneven but the title story dominates the collection and gives it its real character.

The book is short, about a hundred and fifty pages, and the title novella alone is worth reading. It pairs naturally with The Passing of the Third Floor Back, Jerome’s later play in which a mysterious stranger visits a London boarding house and changes the lives of everyone there. Both works show the serious moral interest that ran underneath all his comic writing and that only sometimes broke surface. For readers who want a different Jerome from the famous one, John Ingerfield is the best place to look.