It must be eight years since I last saw Joseph Taboys. How pleasant it would be to meet his jovial face again, to clasp his strong hand, and to hear his cheery laugh once more! He owes me 14 shillings, too.

During these last years Jerome spent more time at his farmhouse in Ewelme near Wallingford. Chilvers: an improbable comedy imagined by Jerome K. While reintroducing the same characters in the setting of a foreign bicycle tour the book was nonetheless unable to capture the life-force and historic roots of its predecessor and it enjoyed only a mild success.

Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an English writer and humorist best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1889).