One of my diametrical divergencies from Jerome is in the love of cats. I cannot respect a cat. To me it is a beast of prey, a sort of middle-class tiger, operating in a small way, but at heart a murderer of the Asiatic jungle. Jerome loves them, and makes dogs of them: he used to fill the _Idler_ with Louis Wain’s human deductions from cats. He has a telephone to their brains. I agree with Lord Roberts, who knows by instinct when there is a cat in the room, though it may be wholly concealed, and cannot enjoy himself until it is removed.
Like most real humorists whom I have known, and I have known many from Mark Twain and Bill Nye downwards, Jerome is not a “funny man” in ordinary life. He is, on the contrary, except when he is on his legs, before an audience, or taking his pen in his hand, apt to be a very serious man, though his conversation is always illuminated by flashes of wit. He is much more apt to air strong opinions about serious questions. The Jerome you see in _Paul Kelvin_ and _The Third Floor Back_ is the real Jerome. He is the loyalest friend and most tender-hearted man imaginable. His kindness and hospitality are unbounded. You cannot stay with Jerome in his own house without being inspired by the deepest respect and affection for him. He is an ideal husband and father, a friend of the struggling, a just and generous master. Like Conan Doyle, though he has never shone in first-class cricket or golf, Jerome is very athletic in his tastes. In spite of his glasses, he is a fine tennis-player and croquet-player; he is a fine skater also, and devoted to the river and horses. It was partly a horse accident in which he and Norma Lorimer were involved, and both showed extraordinary courage, which made me feel for him as I do.
He is essentially an open-air man, whose thoughts are all outside directly he has got through his statutory amount of work with his secretary.
But though the serious man weighs down the humorist in Jerome, you would not guess it from his personal appearance. When he rises to speak, his bright eye, the smile playing round his mouth, his cool confident bearing, the very way in which he arranges his hair, which has not yet a particle of grey about it, is more suggestive of the humorist, the man who is accustomed to making hundreds roar with laughter at his speeches, and scores of thousands with the flashes of his pen.