Carl Hentschel

Friendship with Jerome K. Jerome

Hentschel met Jerome K. Jerome and Jerome's friend George Wingrave at the theatre. They were two of the original members of the literary circle set up by poet Philip Bourke Marston around 1883, which went on to become the Vagabonds Club. Jerome based "Harris" in Three Men in a Boat on Hentschel.

Jerome wrote:

Hentschel himself said of the trips which became Three Men in a Boat,

Although Harris is shown as frequently drinking alcohol, in real life Hentschel was the only one of the three friends who didn't drink.

Personal life and interests

Hentschel's Times obituary reports that "He married, in 1889, Bertha, a daughter of Mr. David Posener, and he used to say that this was the cleverest thing he ever did, for her help and sympathy alone enabled him to come through his early struggles."

The newspaper editor GB Burgin described him as "the indefatigable Carl Hentschel ... possessed of more persuasive and pervasive dynamic force than any man I have ever met". He was one of the founders of the Playgoers' Club in 1883. His wife, Bertha Hentschel, was active in the suffrage movement, and in 1910 proposed that a new Women's Suffrage Society was formed. Hentschel wrote to The Times in 1908 protesting against the treatment of women suffragists.