IN
John Galen Howard 1864-1931
THE BOOK
OF
JACK LONDON
VOLUME II
1914. JACK LONDON- WAR CORRESPONDENT Just departing for Vera Cruz with General Frederick Funston
THE BOOK
OF
JACK LONDO
BY
CHARMIAN LONDON
ILLUSTKATED WITH PHOTOGBAPHS
NEW Y'1 THE CENT! 19
THE BOOK
OF
JACK LONDON
BY
CHARMIAN LONDON
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
VOLUME II
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1921
Copyright, 1921, by THE CEKTUHY Co,
Add1!
GIFT
d
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXV RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE .... 3
XXVI "SPRAY" CRUISE; GLEN ELLEN FROM NAPA;
HOSPITAL; SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN . . 29
XXVII SECOND MARRIAGE; LECTURE TRIP; BOSTON . 76
XXVIII JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YORK CITY . 96
XXIX CHICAGO ; RETURN TO OAKLAND, GLEN ELLEN ;
EARTHQUAKE 112
XXX "SNARE "VOYAGE 142
XXXI THE * ' SNARK ' ' VOYAGE ; TRAMP COLLIER ' ' TY- MERIC" VOYAGE; ECUADOR; PANAMA;
HOME 162
XXXII RETURN FROM " SNARK" VOYAGE; A DAUGH TER is BORN 179
XXXIII YACHT "ROAMER" 196
XXXIV FOUR-HORSE DRIVING TRIP; NEW YORK CITY 212 XXXV CAPE HORN VOYAGE 238
XXXVI THE BAD YEAR; AGRICULTURE 252
XXXVII NEW YORK; MEXICO; "ROAMER" ... 282
XXXVIII "ROAMER"; RETURN To HAWAII; GLEN
ELLEN; FORTIETH YEAR 304
XXXIX THE WAR; HAWAII 320
XL THE LAST SUMMER 352
XLI APPENDIX 397
v
M842875
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1914. Jack London — War Correspondent . Frontispiece
FACING PAOB
1905. Jack London and His Daughters, Joan and Bess . 16
1905. "The Sea Wolf" 33
1906. Jack London and Alexander Irvine at Yale Uni versity 80
Jack London, Luther Burbank, Professor Edgar Lucien
Larkin 144
1906. Jack on the Way to Luther Burbank 's .... 144 1908. Jack and Charmian London in Solomon Islands . 161
1914. Yawl "Koamer" 208
1907. "Snark" at Pearl Harbor 208
Jack London's Imported English Sire Stallion "Neuadd
Hillside" 225
1915. Jack London at Truckee with "Cotty V Dogs . 225
1910. Jack London on Sonoma Mountains Overlooking the Valley of the Moon .256
1913. Jack London Contemplating His "Beauty Ranch" 273
1915. At Waikiki, Honolulu 288
1913. Aboard the "Roamer" 288
1916. Jack and Charmian London at Waikiki, Honolulu 305
1914. Jack and Charmian London in Vera Cruz, Mexico 305
1916. Jack London, 6 Days Before He Died .... 336
vii
viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAOI
The "Work-Room" Low Table Where He Wrote ... 353 Jack London Two Weeks Before His Death .... 368 Jack London's Grave on Sonoma Mountain , 385
THE BOOK
OF
JACK LONDON
THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
CHAPTER XXV
RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE
Autumn, 1904
ON June 30, 1904, still in the ocean aboard the in coming S.S. Korea, from Yokohama, Jack London was served with papers for "separation and maintenance.'* Moreover, he learned from the inhospitable messenger that an attachment had been levied by the plaintiff upon his personal property, even to his books, "My very tools of trade, " as he designated his library. The attachment spread to whatever funds might be due from his publishers, and covered his balance with The Examiner for the war articles — all of it revenue which in his provident integrity he had sought almost solely for the benefit of his depend ents.
He was generous until taken advantage of, and then — divinely generous still, even to generosity becoming, in the nature of things, a mere duty. When questioned as to a seemingly short-sighted attitude that might work disad vantage to himself, his philosophy dictated the following:
"If should sell off everything I possess, I would
say, ' cheap at the price.' The dollars do not amount to anything to me where human relations are concerned. I think I am the same way with my neck. I would trust it willingly to a friend, a dear friend, and if that friend should chop off my head, my head, rolling on the ground, would say, I am sure, * Cheap at the price.' So I shall let
3
4 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
certain powers remain in So-and-So's hands. If such power is misused, why, what of it? The extent of its misuse would be as nothing to the fact that So-and-So had misused it, and I prefer to give the chance."
To Cloudesley he sent a scribbled note: "Am back, rushed to death, and trying to straighten things out. At present all money tied up (earned and unearned) and don't know where I'm at."
And this was not the worst. A dear and wonderful friend had been ruthlessly named as co-respondent in the separation complaint and of course there ensued all the malodorous notoriety which accompanies such attacks. A hue and cry went up from a hypocritical capitalist press, quite as if Jack London were the first youth who ever re pented of a marital mistake.
The girl's chief reply to the astonishing accusations, as recorded in the Bay dailies, was that the same were "merely vulgar." Jack, grieved to the heart that his be loved friends should be soiled in his unfortunate affairs, declined to comment upon the latter otherwise than: "I refuse to say a word about my separation. ... A man's private affairs are his private affairs." And as might be surmised, the "Herbert Wace" of the "Letters" was wide ly quoted. To the girl herself, Jack wrote, in part:
"I do most earnestly hope that your name will not be linked any more with my troubles. It will soon die away, I believe. And so it goes, I wander through life delivering hurts to all that know me. . . . And so one pays . . . only, it is the woman who always pays.
"Unspoilt in your idealism? And think of me as unsaved in my materialism. . . . However, I am changed. Though a ma terialist when I first knew you, I had the saving grace of enthu siasm. That enthusiasm is the thing that is spoiled, and I have become too sorry a thing for you to remember. "
The original complaint, a lengthy arraignment abounding in curious charges, was eventually withdrawn
RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 5
and another, this time for complete divorce instead of mere separation and maintenance, and on the ground of simple " desertion, " went before the court on August 2, 1904. This was allowed by default, Jack London not appearing. Property interests were adjusted out of court.
Shortening down already insufficient sleep, beating his head with his fist to keep awake, Jack plunged deeper than ever into work. For he must immediately start building the new home for his little girls ; and this home, in addition to his other driven obligations, he personally superintended. As if all this were not enough, the death of Mammy Jennie's husband made it incumbent upon him to take over her affairs.
The events of this summer of 1904 threw Jack into a melancholia that he tried to conceal under a carefree man ner when with the ' ' The Crowd ' ' picnicking in the hills, or rollicking in the Piedmont swimming baths — his main rec reations. A letter to me aired his depression over the minuteness of human generosity and fair play :
"It's sometimes a dreary thing to sit and watch the game played in the small and petty way. One who not only takes a hand in the game, but calmly sits outside as well and watches, usually sees the small and petty way, and is content to face immediate losses, knowing that the ultimate gain is his. It is so small, so pitifully small, that at worst it can produce only a passing glow of anger, and after that, pity only remains, and tolerance without confidence. — Oh, why can't the men and women of this world learn that playing the game in the small way is the losing way? They are always doomed to failure when they play against the one who plays in the large way."
So bleak was his spirit for a while, that more than once he considered, though with a terrible cheerlessness, return ing to the old order, what of love and sorrow for the babies. In a letter: "Believe me, ... it has taken all the resolu tion I could summon to prevent my going back, for the chil dren's sake. I have been sadly shaken during the last
6 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
forty-eight hours — so shaken that it almost seemed easier for me to sacrifice myself for the little ones. They are such joys, such perfect little human creatures. " But in after years he reviewed his state at that time: "If I had gone back, it would have meant suicide or insanity. "
As it was, he was with the children frequently, either in their home or his own.
My people wrote to me, in the east, that he had come to spend a week at Wake Robin Lodge, and his regard for the beautiful mountainside had only extended.
Manyoungi, the brightest Korean in Jack's train with the Japanese First Army, had been brought by him to Cali fornia, for he needed just such a servitor to relieve him of all domestic friction in the little flat. This boy, resourceful and comely, took prideful charge from kitchen to study, and made entertaining an irresponsible pleasure to " Mas ter, ' ' as he continued to designate his employer, to the play ful horror of jeering friends, radical and otherwise. Find ing it useless, Jack gave up trying to dissuade Manyoungi from his long-time custom with European travelers to Korea, and submitted willingly to the ministrations of the perfect servant who assumed entire care of his wardrobe, even to dressing him in the morning. Jack's attitude upon personal service was to the effect that it saved him priceless minutes for work and reading. "Why tie my own shoes when I can have it done by some one whose business it is, while I am improving my mind or entertaining the fellows who drop in ! ' '
And many were the fellows who dropped in, persons from near and far flocking to look upon the face and hang upon the speech of the young writer. Jack, jealously con serving his every moment, saved hours by meeting them at mealtime :
"Manyoungi, there'll be two to dinner this evening — " or a dozen, or six; and the table blossomed forthwith by virtue of a complete set of exquisite Haviland china, with
RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 7
silver and crystal and napery as faultless; to all of which beauty Jack, hospitality in his eye, had treated his longing soul upon taking up bachelor life.
"If I had to be a servant, " he would muse, "I'd be just such an one as Manyoungi. He possesses what I un derstand as 'the spirit of service' to the finest degree."
' ' The spirit of service ' ' — he appeared to love the quality, despite the popular idea of his socialism. Out of his own mouth: "If I were a servant, I'd make myself the finest servant in the world."
"The Faith of Men," another series of Klondike yarns, and ninth volume on the stretching shelf, had been pub lished by Macmillans in the spring, and autumn saw * t The Sea Wolf" beside it. The latter was given especially high acclaim by the reviewers. However, they persisted in pigeonholing it as essentially ' ' a man's book — a book women would not care for;" and it was with loud glee that Jack later on received word that The Ladies' Home Journal had purchased several thousand copies to be used as premiums to subscribers. Meanwhile, he tried his hand at writing a play, based upon his short story "Scorn of Women" — frankly an experiment. This play at various times intrigued the fancy of one and another of "America's foremost ac tresses," but was never performed. Referring to the com ment of one star, Jack wrote me :
", } in suggestion of making a struggle between Freda and
Mrs. E. for Capt. E., violates the eternal art canon of UNITY. It is ANOTHER story.
"I violated all the conventional art-canons, but not one eternal art canon.
"I wrote a play without a hero, without a villain, without a love-motif, and with two leading ladies. ' '
And to Anna Strunsky :
"Am on third and last act of play, adapted from 'Scorn of Women,' to be called 'The Way of Women.* Not a big effort.
8 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
Wouldn't dare a big effort. An experiment merely — lots of horse play, etc., and every character, even Sitka Charley, is belittled. ' '
Then, in another paragraph, concerning his health:
"I have been working hard, and what of my physical af flictions have been a pretty good recluse. . . . Yes, I am thin — seven pounds off weight, and soft, which is equivalent to twelve pounds off weight altogether. My grippe was followed by a nerv ous itch, which heat aggravated, and I was prevented from exer cising for weeks. ' '
The " nervous itch" referred to gave Jack much dis quietude both mental and physical, and to the skin- and nerve-specialists not a little thought and experimentation. Under the most minute scrutiny, the skin revealed nothing that would lead to a diagnosis. Remained only to go into the question of nerves. The patient's dynamic habits of overwork in every department of his intellectual life, and his relentless limitation of repose, afforded good reason; on the other hand, he had pursued this system for many years, with no such warning as the present.
By a process of elimination common to his drastic fash ion, he hit upon an apparently innocent custom indulged for some months past — that of munching salted pecans and almonds while reading in bed. Possibly he had saturated himself with an excess of salt. (Physicians often reduce sodium chloride in the tissues and fluids for remedial pur poses, a method known as dechloridation.) He dropped this saline element from his dietary. The itch disappeared. Resuming the nut-refreshment, the affliction took a new lease of his hypersensitive surfaces, which flamed intoler ably at the slightest exertion. So acute was the disorder, that even the thought of it precipitated an attack.
After convincing himself that salt was the offending factor, Jack went gaily to the specialists with his findings, and they agreed with his conclusion. His diagnosis was verified to his entire satisfaction when in tropic climes re-
EETUBN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 9
lapses followed long exposure to salt air and water; and even under a bright California sky in long periods of mid winter yachting.
But there was no diminishing of his work; rather, he increased the staggering pace. Having reeled off an article entitled "The Yellow Peril" (now in collection " Revolu tion "), in which his sage views on the Asiatic situation were presented, he tackled a short novel. This was c ' The Game, " which might be termed a prizefight idyl — its overarching motif being man's eternal struggle between woman and career. He wrote me :
"Am slowly weaving 'The Game.' You wouldn't think it diffi cult if you read it. Most likely a failure, but it is a splendid exercise for me. I am learning more of my craft. Some day I may master my tools."
He loved the writing of it, for, like Keats, he loved a fair contest between man and man. It was not for the prize nor for brutality's sake, but for the cleanness of a scientific game — Anglo-Saxon sport, square and true, as say against some other national sports like bull-fighting, where as a rule one contestant is doomed through trickery of superior intelligence.
He enjoyed the creating of Genevieve, line for line. "Why, you'd never guess where I got my model for her," he said to me afterward. ' i She was a candy-girl in a poor little sweet-shop in London. I never saw such a skin — sprayed with color like your Duchesse roses out the window there. I used to hunt up a thirst for gallons of soft drinks just for excuse to go and sit at the dingy little counter and look shyly at her face, as a silly boy might. I did not even want to touch her — and she hadn't a thing in her yellow head to talk about. It was just an abandonment to the prettiness and fragility of her English bloom."
"The Game" was serialized in The Metropolitan Maga zine, illustrated by Henry Hutt in water-colors. And Jack
10 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
had been right : it was for the most part a failure, so far as concerned the American public. For readers listened to the uncomprehending words of space-writers who totally missed the big motif, and neither knew nor cared to know aught of "the game" itself. Timely to the subject, I quote entire a letter Jack London wrote on August 18, 1905, to the editor of the New York Times:
"As one interested in the play of life, and in the mental processes of his fellow-creatures, I have been somewhat amused by a certain feature of the criticisms of my prize-fighting story, 'The Game.' This feature is the impeachment of my realism, the chal lenging of the facts of life as put down by me in that story. It is rather hard on a poor devil of a writer, when he has written what he has seen with his own eyes, or experienced in his own body, to have it charged that said sights and experiences are unreal and impossible.
' * But this is no new experience, after all. I remember a review of 'The Sea Wolf by an Atlantic Coast critic who seemed very familiar with the sea. Said critic laughed hugely at me because I sent one of my characters aloft to shift over a gaff-topsail. The critic said that no one ever went aloft to shift over a gaff-topsail, and that he knew what he was talking about because he had seen many gaff-topsails shifted over from the deck. Yet I, on a seven- months' cruise in a topmast schooner, had gone aloft, I suppose, a hundred times, and with my own hands shifted tacks and sheets of gaff-topsails.
"Now to come back to 'The Game.' As reviewed in the New York Saturday Times, fault was found with my realism. I doubt if this reviewer has had as much experience in such matters as I have. I doubt if he knows what it is to be knocked out, or to knock out another man. I have had these experiences, and it was out of these experiences, plus a fairly intimate knowledge of prize-fighting in general, that I wrote 'The Game.'
"I quote from the critic in the Saturday Times:
" 'Still more one gently doubts in this particular case, that a blow delivered by Ponta on the point of Fleming's chin could throw the latter upon the
RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 11
padded canvas floor of the ring with enough force to smash in the whole back of his skull, as Mr. London describes. '
' ' All I can say in reply is, that a young fighter in the very club described in my book, had his head smashed in this manner. Inci dentally, this young fighter worked in a sail-loft and took remark ably good care of his mother, brother and sisters.
"And — oh, one word more. I have just received a letter from Jimmy Britt, light-weight champion of the world, in which he tells me that he particularly enjoyed 'The Game/ 'on account of its trueness to life.'
"Very truly yours,
"Jack London/'
Jack always remained a champion of this book of his, not only in view of its subject but also of his workmanship. When Great Britain received it with intense appreciation, placing "this cameo of the ring" alongside other favorites like "Cashel Byron's Profession," the author was exultant with vindication. And yet, only the other day in fact, I picked up an American newspaper clipping in which ' * The Game" was tossed aside as "that Jack London novel with out an excuse!"
With reference to some tentative and evidently short sighted criticism I had made of the manuscript, he re sponded :
"And, by the way, remember that anybody, by hard work, can achieve precision of language, but that very few can achieve strength of style. What knocks E ? Pre cision. To be precise he has pruned away all strength. What the world wants is strength of utterance, not pre cision of utterance. Remember that about all the precise ways of saying things have already been said ; the person who would be precise is merely an echo of all the precise people who have gone before, and such a person's work is bound to be colorless and insipid. Think it over. Let us talk all these things over."
12 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
I remember, when he referred to a rusty pipe as "a streak of rust," wishing that I had thought of it first!
Ere the ink was dry on the packet that inclosed his manuscript of ' ' The Game ' ' to the editor, he was busy upon memoranda for his next novel in mind, ''White Fang." On December 6, I received a handful of notes by mail, with the following comments :
1 ' Find here, and please return, the motif for my very next book. A companion to "The Call of the Wild.' Beginning at the very opposite end — evolution instead of devolution; civilization instead of decivilization. It is distinctly NOT to be a sequel. Merely same length, dog-story, and companion story. I shall not call it ' Call of the Tame, ' but shall have title quite dissimilar to ' Call of Wild.' There are lots of difficulties in the way, but I believe I can make a cracker jack of it — have quit the play for a day to think about it.
"May go East in January after all for two or three months — lecturing."
By now, I was back from the east and living at Wake Eobin Lodge with my Aunt, putting in hours a day at the piano. Meanwhile my services were offered to Jack in the matter of relieving him of typewriting, a suggestion that met with glad response ; and I was thus brought into closer touch with his work and aims. My remuneration — and that a treasure — was the possession of his handwritten pages. Except for a few short stories and articles, the play " Scorn of Women" was my first typing for him, and by mail we exchanged some lively discussions of its tech nique before final completion. One of his letters contains this lamentation :
"I did 1000 words (dialogue and direction) on the first act of the play to-day. Oh, how it puzzles me and worries me, that play. Sometimes all seems clear (and good) and next it seems all rot and a rotten failure. But I do n't care. Though I never get a cent for it, I'm learning a whole lot about play-writing."
RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 13
Here are the last two 1904 communications to Cloudesley Johns :
"1216 Telegraph Avenue,
"Dec. 8, 1904.
"I had to tell Black Cat that the idea of my story was not original [this was ' A Nose for the King, ' published in The Black Cat for March, 1906, and collected in 'When God Laughs'] having been told me by a Korean. So I don't know whether my chance is spoiled or not.
"Sure, I'll come to stay with you — if I can bring Manyoungi. Only too glad. Expect to be down in first part of January.
' ' I went to look at the Spray to-day. First time since that night we came in from Petaluma. Won't be able to get out on her this year. ' '
I have heard Jack London remark that Miss Mary Shaw, whom he met after a San Francisco performance of "Mrs. Warren's Profession," was the most intellectual actress he had ever talked with. And to Cloudesley:
"Yes— met Miss Shaw — went to dinner. Liked her better than any actress ever met."
Every moment energy incarnate, he rushed and crowded as if to preclude thinking of aught except the work or re creation of the moment. Speed, speed — and he began sav ing for a big red motor-car to mend the general pace. He fell ill — another severe attack of grippe that compelled him to ease up ; but the instant his brain cleared of dizziness, his incredible activities were resumed. And he always made it a religious duty personally to answer every letter re ceived. Often I read the following, at the end of hastily scrawled notes to me : " This is the last of 30 [or 40, or 50] letters I have just reeled off."
And this:
1 ' I never had time to bore myself — Do you know I never have a moment with myself — am always doing something
14 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
when I am alone — I shall work till midnight to-night, then bed, and read myself to sleep."
To which I, tinged with sorrow and foreboding: "You make me sad. You haven't time to live; so what's the use of living?"
One of Jack's relaxations, if the word can apply to the tense interest he took in game and sport, and his unquench able joy in the pard-like beauty of an athlete, was following the monthly boxing bouts at the West Oakland Athletic Club, the scene of the prizefight in "The Game." A char acteristic incident has been offered me by a newspaperman, Mr. Fred Goodcell, who made his acquaintance one day when Jack had, for the first time in years, dropped in to see his old friend Johnny Heinold in the First and Last Chance. I give Mr. GoodcelPs version of one evening that Jack described to me at the time :
"It was some weeks later that I met Jack again. I call him Jack, not because close acquaintanceship would permit, but because I believe all the world thinks of him in that intimate way. He was n't a man to be Mistered.
* ' This second meeting was at the box office of the West Oakland Athletic Club. The bouts were staged in an upstairs hall, far too small for the crowds that came, a fire trap that would make a Hun bomb thrower envious, but sweating, shouting, smoking fight-fans gathered there and cheered the 'ham and egg' boys as they slugged through four rounds, unless a knockout brought earlier surcease.
"Jack was at the box office trying to buy a front seat. There was none to be had. Just then I arrived and with an extra press ticket in my pocket invited Jack to be my guest. He accepted and we occupied ringside seats.
"On the card this night there was one fighter called 'The Rat.' I never knew him by any other name. I knew ' The Rat ' to be an Italian huckster. ... To me he was a fifth-rate fighter, lacking brains to be anything better. But Jack became enthusiastic :
" 'What a beauty,' he remarked.
" 'That's 'The Rat,' I answered.
" 'A beauty,' he resumed, enthusiastically. 'A perfect speci-
EETUEN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 15
men. Can't you see it? Beautifully molded, young, full of life; the cautious tread of an animal and perfect symmetry in every limb."
"As a matter of fact, 'The Rat' possessed a face that became a fighter accustomed to taking the short end of the purse. He was homely — his face was, but Jack London looked and saw beauty in the perfection of his naked body. To me he was ' The Rat ' and he was homely ; to Jack he was 'a beauty. ' He had seen beauty where I had missed it. Perhaps that is one of the secrets of his success — his ability to see more than the rest of us, to pick out the beauty from the drab.
' ' The fight over, I asked Jack to write me a brief account of the show. He agreed, but his 150 or 200 words were about 'The Rat/ His story, signed 'By Jack London,' was published in the Oakland Herald. The one story led to others. London yearned for the ringside seats, not because of any ambition to be ' up in front, ' but because from the ringside he could have an unobstructed view of the ring, could watch every blow, see everything that took place. And so we made a deal, I to supply a ringside seat for each show and London to write a signed story regarding the show, or some feature of it. This continued three cr four months and the Jack London stories became big features, features that are undoubtedly to-day prized by many old-time fighters, too old now to enter the padded arena, but proud that Jack London wrote about them. ' '
In addition to all else, he dashed off requested ' ' stories ' ' for The Examiner, one of which was ' ' The Great Socialist Vote Explained" — a similar article going to Wilshire's Magazine. Many an evening was filled with a reading or a lecture at this club and that. One night he talked at the Home Club of Oakland, on Japan ; on another, he spoke at the Nile Club, in acknowledgment of an honorary member ship; he read to the New Era Club, the men's league of the Methodist Church, from "The People of the Abyss "; "The Call of the Wild" of course was often asked for; and whenever Mr. Bamford sent out invitations to a Ruskin Club dinner, Jack was expected to be on the program. At one dinner he gave them ' ' The Class Struggle, ' ' and again
16 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
"The Scab." Both these papers were later collected in "War of the Classes/' proof-sheets of which in the spring he sent me for correction. In among Jack's correspondence with me is laid away a little handwritten sheet from which he made a statement to the Ruskin Club of his Socialistic position :
1 'I am a socialist, first, because I was born a proletarian and early discovered that for the proletariat socialism was the only way out ; second, ceasing to be a proletarian and becoming a para site (an artist parasite, if you please), I discovered that socialism was the only way out for art and the artist. ' '
The Buskin Club several times mentioned was composed of what might be termed the intellectual aristocracy of the socialists about the Bay. Its father and moving spirit was Professor Frederick Irons Bamford, "the lion-hearted one," Jack lovingly called him, for despite an agonizingly supersensitive nature he was made of the stuff of martyrs. And to Comrade Lyon Jack one evening observed : ' l Bam ford is the only man in the Euskin Club who makes me feel small." The Club would meet here and there, at irregular intervals, say at Piedmont Park Clubhouse, or the Hotel Metropole of "Martin Eden" fame. Notable were these affairs, often in honor of big men in the movement, as well as in honor of men whom the Club strove to convert to its banner.
He would even go out of the Bay region to lecture, per haps to San Jose where, as guest of Professor Henry Meade Bland, he addressed the State Normal; or to Vallejo where ashore from the Spray he had made friends ; once or twice to Stockton, making headquarters with Johannes Eeimers. One of Mr. Eeimers ' sons found himself abruptly unpopular with his teachers because of his father's firebrand socialist guest; a circumstance in which Jack's quick natural regret was tempered by the reflection : 1 1 That young fellow is the stuff that opposition will make a man of!"
EETUEN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 17
Perhaps I have not mentioned that Jack never attended any lectures except his own. "I do not waste my time listening to lectures," he put it. "I'd rather read. I get more for myself, without the personality of the speaker coming between. And I cover more ground." The fol lowing, from another's pen, seems to expess what Jack meant : "To attend a motion picture play is to be primi tive ; to listen to an orator is to be a cave man ; to read is to be civilized!"
In a vast ledger, clipping-book of 1904, pasted by his children's mother and Eliza Shepard, I find several humor ous newspaper squibs upon Jack's being made a member of the Bohemian Club despite his soft-collared silk shirt and other ineradicable preferences. Indeed, this was not the first capitulation of clubdom to his apparel. And the press was often the reverse of reliable, as in the case of a certain affair in Jack's honor given by the ex clusive feminine Ebell Club of Oakland, when, it is to this day firmly believed by newspaper readers, he lectured in a red flannel shirt. I have Jack's word that outside of those brilliant Klondike undergarments, and possibly while stoking a steamship passage, never in his whole existence did he affect scarlet flannel. When he did don woolens at all, as say at sea, it was of navy-blue. Even his trusty sweater, though as described in my Prologue he early wore it in making social calls on his bicycle, never appeared upon the platform. A white, soft shirt, with flowing tie, worn with a black, sack-coated suit, was his evening dress.
Handling the item of Jack London's entrance into the Bohemian Club, one San Francisco sheet, The Wasp, avoided the humorous note to such a virulent extent as ta defeat its ends. Being by all counts the most venomous slam in all the scrapbooks, it is too comical not to quote en tire — especially in view of the fact that at about the date of its publication a portion of "The Call of the Wild" had been incorporated into a text-book on English used in the
18 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
University of California, forerunner of others of his books to be adjudged " classics " by that institution:
"Jack London's 8hirt Vindicated.
1 ' The Bohemian Club has relented toward Jack London 's negli gee shirt and taken the novelist into membership — honorary mem bership at that. Why honorary, I cannot say. Certainly, it is not on the strength of Mr. London's 'The Call of the Wild/ which de serves to take rank as an average Sunday supplement story in a yellow newspaper. Neither can it be his ' Sea Wolf ' that has raised him into a niche in the Bohemian Temple of Honor beside Charles Warren Stoddard, Henry Irving, and Joaquin Miller. The Wasp would be only too glad to help in placing laurels on the brow of Mr. London if he deserved them, but he must furnish better evi dence of his literary quality before this journal will assist in dec orating him. The Wasp decorates as masters no- apprentices whose work is more conspicuous for its blemishes than its finish. I have said that Mr. Jack London's 'Call of the Wild' belongs to the Sunday supplement order. His 'Sea Wolf is better adapted as a serial for the Coast Seamen's Journal and the habitues of the 'Fair Wind' and the 'Blue Anchor' saloons on the city front than for the shelves of libraries or the tables of reading rooms frequented by people of even superficial culture. It lacks every essential of a thoroughly good novel except nice binding, careful printing, and excellent illustrations. The best that can be said of it is that it is a poor and clumsy imitation of the new Russian school of tramp literature, which has given to the world a series of novels dealing with the scum of humanity, with brutal frankness. When one has waded through ' The Sea Wolf ' by a laborious effort the conviction is irresistible that the author shows more fitness for the post of second mate of a whaler than a leader of the great army of imagina tive scribblers."
While on the theme, I might say in passing that Jack London was not at any period a zealous clubman. He be longed to no large club bodies otherwise than the Bohemian ; and the famous rooms in San Francisco saw him little and at prolonged intervals, when he chanced to be in the neigh borhood for some other purpose. After the Great Earth-
RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 19
quake and Fire, the new clubrooms and the Sultan Turkish Baths were rebuilt in close proximity. We often, Jack and I, finished off a theater night at the Baths, but first he would drop in at the Club for poker or pedro or bridge, and I can still hear his drowsy-happy voice over the Baths tele phone from the men's floor, telling me of his luck — for the voice was sure to be happy from his pleasure in the game, be luck good or ill. And whenever feasible, our world-wan derings led homeward in midsummer, that he might spend at least one week of High Jinks at Bohemian Grove, sit uated but a few miles from the Ranch. For he dreaded fore going the marvelous annual Grove Play, words and music, acting and staging, all done by members of the Club only.
January, 1905, was an especially full month. The first week saw Jack in Los Angeles, visiting Cloudesley Johns in the quaint rambling home at 500 North Soto Street, where he reveled in the companionship of his friend's family. The grandmother, Mrs. Rebecca Spring, was Jack's par ticular joy. She was one of California's most remarkable women, friend of Margaret Fuller, Emerson, Holmes, Long fellow; and she subsequently died in dissatisfaction with Life, because Life cheated her by a few short weeks of at taining her centenary.
He also visited the Mathers in Pasadena, for the daughter of the house, Miss Katherine, had been a fel low passenger on the Siberia to Japan. And of course he attended the yearly winter Rose Carnival of her city. This vacation, like his life in Oakland, was without repose of spirit or body — rush, rush from daybreak to even-fall, and for the best hours of the night. While in Los Angeles, he spoke for the Socialists, who rented the Simpson Auditor ium for the occasion. Miss Constance L. Skinner, poet and historian, another member of the Johns' fascinat ing household, who evoked Jack's admiration and regard, ably reported the lecture, which was on the subject of "Rev-
20 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
olution, ' ' for the Los Angeles Examiner. Strangely enough, the radicals of the * l City of Angels, ' ' when publishing their favorite picture of Jack, replaced the sweater by a formal suit and collar, drawn quite to order, beneath which Jack scratched a disgusted comment.
His introduction at that meeting was not to his liking, according to his comrade J. B. Osborne, of Oakland : i l The Chairman introduced him as a ripe scholar, a profound philosopher, a literary genius and the foremost man of let ters in America. . . . When London arose, dressed in good clothes but wearing a soft shirt, he said :
" Comrade Chairman and Fellow Workers: I was not flattered by all the encomiums heaped upon me by the chair man, for the reason that before people had given me any of these titles which the chairman so lavishly credits me, I was working in a cannery, a pickle factory, had my applica tion in with Murray and Ready for common labor, was a sailor before the mast, and worked months at a time looking for work in the ranks of the unemployed ; and it is the pro letarian side of my life that I revere the most and to which I will cling as long as I live."
Once more in his home town, Jack set others than the County of Alameda by the ears by consenting to an oft- repeated request from the President of the University of California, Dr. Benjamin Ide Wheeler (in 1919, Emeritus), to address the students in Harmon Gymnasium. And "choose your own subject — anything at all," Jack was left to consult his fancy. Now was his big chance to let loose a thunderbolt in the sacred groves, and he armed for the fray.
The day was the 20th of January. Humming across the campus from North Berkeley in the morning sunlight, fresh from an hour with my piano teacher, Mrs. Fred Gut- terson, herself pupil of Bauer and Leschetizsky and Car- reno, I turned westerly toward the "Gym" where I had
RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 21
danced so many an evening away. And who should come stepping along with a smile in his eyes but our young friend, who explained that he had come out early in order to think quietly upon what he was going to say and how he was going to say it.
At the entrance we parted, I to become one of the several thousand, students and citizens, who packed the huge elon gated octagon, Jack London to take his seat with the faculty convened upon the platform. President Wheeler presented the speaker, and the speaker went into action without preamble, head high, eyes grave and dark, voice challenging as he rapped out the short crisp sentences :
"I received a letter the other day. It was from a man in Arizona, It began, 'Dear Comrade.' It ended, * Yours for the Revolution.' I replied to the letter, and my letter began, 'Dear Comrade.' It ended 'Yours for the Revolu tion.' "
The house thereupon settled to listen spellbound to the strangest statement of facts and opinions ever enunciated within the college walls. Dr. Wheeler, conventional em bodiment of what by all tradition the head of a great uni versity should be, sat aghast at what he had done. But it must be said that he was game; for when Jack, on the stroke of noon, realizing he was over his time, paused on tiptoe and asked, "Shall I stop?" the President came back hurriedly and with perfect courtesy: "No, go on — go on."
The last words of unequivocal indictment of so ciety's mismanagement of society rang out clear from the upraised young face that had been imperially stern throughout, "The revolution is here, now. Stop it who can!" The audience, from whatever mixture of emotions, resounded in mighty applause. This was followed by a rouse from the Glee Club, composed for the renowned ex- student of the college. Meanwhile the faculty crowded about him, some in protest, some in curiosity, all with keen interest from one motive or another.
22 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
One humorous incident crept in: Jack in the course of his indictment had attacked the antiquated meth ods common to institutions of learning. When he stepped from the rostrum, according to one who stood near, " Pro fessor Charles Mills Gayley greeted him and congratulated him upon his literary success. The author during their con versation reiterated his opinion of the deficiencies in teach ing methods. He said :
" 'Dr. Gayley, permit me to make the criticism that English is not being taught in the right way. You are giving the students for their textbooks such antiquated authors as Macaulay, Emerson and others of the same school. What you need in your course is a few of the more modern types of literature '
"Here Dr. Gayley interrupted with a dry smile:
« < Perhaps you are not aware, Mr. London, that we are using your own "Call of the Wild" as a textbook in the University r "
Jack surrendered, laughing with the others.
The evening papers and their morning associates treated the lecture with unexpected leniency. But when the press in general (Jack meantime repeating the speech at every opportunity) had had time to catch its breath, there was nothing too vicious nor unfair that could be printed of his utterances. There were exceptions, to be sure, the Oakland Tribune being one of those which remained loyal to "our own Jack." But the majority deliberately distorted his words, and robbed of its context the quoted phrase "To Hell with the Constitution " — notorious exclamation made by Sherman Bell, when that capitalistic leader of troops for the employers in Colorado, during the recent scandalous labor war that had raged there, was reproved for riding roughshod over the Constitution. Jack was held up as a dangerous anarchist — the same platitudinous old charge of the capitalist press against the socialist. And carefully editors refrained from embodying in their columns the
EETUEN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 23
statement that the social revolution was, as announced by the speaker, "to be fought, not with bombs, but with votes. " Nor did President Wheeler escape his share of criti cism for having allowed so incendiary a character to sully the choice air of Berkeley. Again he was game, if a little condescending as befitted the dignity of his years and posi tion, and the closing sentence in this excerpt from his letter to The Argonaut held him inviolate as concerned misappre hension of his own views :
"I think you ought to know that we never stipulate or inquire concerning the subject a speaker is to discuss at such a meeting. We intend to ask only such to speak as have by achievement earned the personal right to be heard. We seek the man and not the sub ject. I conceive it to be of highest value for students to meet and hear men who have honorably wrought and done in various fields. I introduce them to the students, and rarely, if ever, mention any subject. Jack London is a former student of the university, and has surely won an honorable distinction in the field of letters. And, after all, is it best for us to start an Index of tabooed subjects? One way to deal with a hard boiling tea-kettle is to take off the lid."
One paper, however, noted that Jack London, socialist, affected illustrious company, naming amongst others, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw.
Some of the students of the old Oakland High wanted Jack to lecture, but promptly went up against the bars shut by Superintendent of Schools McClymonds and Principal Pond. Also, was he not a divorced man, inimical to the sanctity of hearth and home? How pitifully trivial and pettish all this hullabaloo of little editors' squeaks amidst the slashing, smashing events following the World War!
On the 29th of January Jack read "The Tramp "— an other "War of the Classes" article, at Socialist Headquar ters in Oakland. And a few weeks afterward I wrote him :
* * Probably you already know it, but I '11 repeat it anyway — that following your lecture at the University a few of the students
24 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
organized a socialist club. This was announced at the Ruskin Club dinner last Friday evening. I know it will please you — I remem ber what you said to me the day of your lecture : that you would be satisfied if perhaps only a half dozen of the students were im pressed.''
This club was the nucleus of the subsequent Intercol legiate Socialist Society, of which Jack London was elected the first President.
Near the end of January, he went one evening to see Blanche Bates at the Macdonough Theatre in Oakland, in ' ' The Darling of the Gods. ' ' Turning over in his mind the suitability of Miss Bates to the character of Freda Moloof in his own play " Scorn of Women, " he attended three con secutive performances from front-row vantage, the eager- eyed boy studying the young star carefully to this end. And naturally, by the time he had schemed an introduction, called upon her at the Hotel Metropole, and given a dinner in her honor, the papers had blazoned their plighted troth — the vigorous denials of both parties rendering new head lines in the next issues, and causing no end of mirth to the pair as well as the public.
It was not until the first week in February, 1905, that Jack and Cloudesley got the Spray up-river. Just be fore sailing from Oakland City Wharf, Jack accepted the socialist nomination for Mayor of Oakland. On the same ticket were Austin Lewis for City Attorney, with J. B. Osborne councilman for third ward. And who should be nominee for Mayor on the Independent Ticket, but John London's old friend John L. Davie? On the morning of election, one local sheet had it: "All the nominees for Mayor, with the exception of Jack London, socialist can didate, were conspicuous about the polls. ' ' And Jack polled 981 votes at that. Knowing how personally distasteful the holding of public office would be to him, I once asked:
RETURN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 25
"What would you do if you should accidentally be elected to some of these political positions you let yourself in for?"
" There 's not the least chance, my dear," he replied; then realizing he had not answered my question, he laughed, "I wouldn't let my name be used if I thought there was the slightest possibility of winning. If I did by chance get elected, I guess I'd run away to sea or somewhere with you!"
Meantime, I had taken to my room with an abscess in the left ear, made doubly torturing by neuralgia. For it is a nipping winter one may experience on Sonoma Mountain. The trouble was assumably due to long hours swimming and diving in the Oakland baths on cold days, and more especially a certain oft-repeated, twenty-two-foot jump in which Jack had coached me. Such an anomaly as un- health on the part of "the Cheery One," as he liked to call me, was sufficient to make Jack desert the sloop somewhere along Petaluma Creek, leaving his friend and Manyoungi aboard, and footing it to the nearest railway for Glen Ellen. Reaching Wake Robin Lodge after nightfall, he stood for long contemplative minutes at the low casement of the red- wooded living room, gazing in at the unwonted spectacle of said Cheery One supine upon a couch, her head swathed in warm bandages.
Two days he remained, reading aloud to me by the hour ; and I can vouch that no one ever knew tenderer nurse. So improved was I that on the second evening I rose hungry for the first time in weeks, and joined my nurse in a stealthy raid upon Auntie's sweet-smelling pantry. Re turning to the big fireplace with our spoils of honey and biscuits and sun-dried figs, we feasted and giggled like truant schoolfellows. Truly, in our long years together, so few are the memories of irresponsible tranquil hiatuses in Jack's driven habit, that they stand forth in relief ap parently out of all proportion to their importance. Not so, however; they showed him capable of the purest en-
26 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
joyment of that sheer nonsense which relaxes a brain ordi narily over-conscious.
I recall an uproarious afternoon a few months later, when we two spent hours in a hammock under the laurels, doing nothing more profitable than manufacturing the most absurdly banal of limericks. Again, years afterward, I see in memory the twain of us, replete with picnic luncheon and good nature, prone upon the green outer declivity of a fern-lined crater in Hawaii euphoniously styled Puuhuu- luhulu. We peered over-edge into the giddy emerald cup and planned, in very extravagance of lazy foolishness, all the details of a country home in the pit, even to an adjust able glass roof against tropic showers !
Pain and house-confinement were happily mitigated by Jack's sympathy, both during his visit and thereafter, when such notes as these drifted to me from the Spray's pleasant course up the Sacramento river :
"Rio Vista, Feb. 10, 1905.
"I think continually of you, lying there through the long days and longer nights, and I look forward almost as keenly as you, I am sure, for the blessed time when you will be up and around and your old self again.
"Got here last night. The river is booming. Flood tide is not felt at all. Current runs down all the time. Expect to go to Walnut Grove and then down through Georgiana Slough to the San Joaquin and up to Stockton."
"Rio Vista, Feb. 11, 1905.
"Your short note just received. I am haunted right along by seeing you lying there, the bandage around your head and the cloth over your eyes. I do so look for improvement, and yet the north wind is blowing to-day which is bad for you. Do let me know every bit of improvement as soon as it comes.
"I have nothing to write in the way of news. Am working hard. Did 1000 words to-day. We have been here two days now, and I have not yet been ashore, though the town is interested in my existence. Have already 3 invitations to dinner, etc., and a
EETUEN FROM KOREA; DIVORCE 27
launch is expected off in a few minutes with admirers ( !). Also, Brown came aboard with a bunch of violets in his collar, sent, so Cloudesley avers, by the prettiest girl in California. "Guess 111 take up one dinner invite to-night."
This mention of Brown calls to mind that Jack had become unexpectedly possessed of "twa dogs," one, a valu able lost Chow who presented himself at the front door, and tarried entirely at home for some weeks, when his rightful owner was discovered. The other was an Alaskan wolf- dog, a true " husky," brown-and-white of furry coat and fine of brush, with slant, watchful eyes and pointed ears, and a limp in the off hind-leg that was eloquent of sled and trail. His master, an old Klondiker, had lately died; and though strangers to Jack London, the relatives asked him if he would accept " Brown." Jack was willing, but the animal had other views, and sought every loophole to escape from the little yard at the rear of the flat (which sometimes was the ring for spirited bouts with the gloves), or from the front door when he was entertained within, to return to his loved one's house. Jack, after trying every cajolement to win him over, and going himself or sending his nephew or Manyoungi countless times to re trieve the estray, swore roundly that when Brown again ran away he could stay. But the dog had been making his own adjustment, and the next fruitless pilgrimage to the old home was his last. From the second story window Jack saw him cantering cheerfully back, and bounded downstairs to welcome him right comradely. Thenceforth Brown at tached himself with the mute adoration of a soul dis illusioned of all else in the world. Mute? Why, that dear lonely dog-fellow of our first married year was never heard to bark except upon two occasions when he thought Jack imperilled by a fractious horse. One day in the summer I asked :
28 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
"Now, what do you suppose Brown Wolf would do, if his old master should suddenly pop up beside you?"
"A story right there — don't breathe another word for a minute, ' ' Jack flashed at me, scribbling like mad on a note pad, his deep mouth-corners turned up pleasedly with the scent of a new motif. The tale "Brown Wolf," in collection "Love of Life," was the sequel of the incident. That pleased expression recalls that always when lost in his morning's work, no matter how reluctantly begun, there was a half -smile lurking about his lips the while he bent concentrated over the broad tablet upon which the inky-wet characters sprawled and sprawled.
CHAPTER XXVI
"SPRAY" CBTJISE; GLEN ELLEN FROM NAPA; HOSPITAL; SUMMER
AT GLEN ELLEN
1905
THE Spray's ramblings were to lead aside into Napa River to the pretty city of the same name that lies in the next inland valley to Sonoma. Here Jack was to visit the Winships, friends made on the voyage to Japan; and he sent me word that he would ride across the hills to spend several days with us at Wake Robin Lodge. He ar rived on February 12, a showery Sunday, astride a harass ing livery hack, both horse and horseman much the worse for the twenty miles. Jack wore a nerve-racked look, and my Aunt and I were solicitous, although we avoided adver tising the same. The boy was in veritable distress, never quiet for a moment. His great-pupiled eyes were haunted with a hopeless weariness, and glassy as from fever. He talked very hard, as if against time, or in fear of silence. In the evening, as we clustered about the fireplace, my Aunt asked :
"Jack, my dear, why don't you get out of the city for a while, bring your work, and Manyoungi to look after your wants, take a little cottage here and rest and work far away from excitement and people ! ' 7
The eyes he raised to her face were as of some creature hunted. He shifted uneasily, almost as if embarrassed, and the corners of his mouth drooped like a child's on the verge of tears. Yet when he replied it was with a tinge of im patience, though a pitiful tiredness lay under the tone :
29
30 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
" Oh, Mother Mine — thank you. . . You're kind. . But. . . but I think that the very quiet would drive me crazy. "
It was a wail to be left alone in his impotence, and no further reference was made to the matter until the night before he departed.
The only recurrence of the temperamental joyance that was a large part of his nature was when he related the Spray's experience. For no sadness of soul could ever rob Jack London of his native delight in a boat. In relation to this very trip, I am tempted to quote from "Small-Boat Sailing" (in "The Human Drift"):
11 After all, the mishaps are almost the best part of small-boat sailing. Looking back, they prove to be punctuations of joy. There are enough surprises and mishaps in a three-days' cruise in a small boat to supply a great ship on the ocean for a full year. I remember taking out a little thirty-footer I had bought. In six days we had two stiff blows, and, in addition, one proper south- wester and one ripsnorting southeaster. The slight intervals be tween these blows were dead calms. Also, in the six days, we were aground three times. Then, too, we tied up to a bank on the Sacramento river, and, grounding by an accident on the steep slope of a falling tide, nearly turned a side somersault down the bank. In a stark calm and a heavy tide in the Carquinez Straits, where anchors skate on the channel-scoured bottom, we were sucked against a big dock and smashed and bumped down a quarter of a mile of its length before we could get clear. Two hours afterward, on San Pablo Bay, the wind was piping up and we were reefing down. It is no fun to pick up a skiff adrift in a heavy sea and gale. That was our next task, for our skiff, swamping, parted both tow ing painters we had bent on. Before we recovered it we had nearly killed ourselves with exhaustion, and certainly had strained the sloop in every part from keelson to truck. And to cap it all, com ing into our home port, beating up the narrowest part of the San Antonio Estuary, we had a shave of inches from collision with a big ship in tow of a tug."
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 31
Once, during his five-days ' stay, I prevailed upon him to walk up the tree-embowered mountain road that skirts Graham Creek; but, to my hidden sorrow, he appeared to have grown blind to the beauty he had so loved. His tongue ran on and on incessantly — we were discussing the English poets. It was an exquisite sunset that bathed us in its waves of colored light, and upon a green eminence I halted Jack and his speech and stretched my arm toward the valley to the east, welling to its rosy wall-summits with a purple tide of shadow from the mountain on which we stood. To an earnest query if the loveliness of the world meant nothing to him any more, he stilled for a moment, then let fall very sadly:
"I don't seem to care for anything — I'm sick, my dear. It's Nietzsche's 'Long Sickness' that is mine, I fear. This doesn't seem to be what I want. I don't know what I want. Oh, I'm sorry — I am, I am; it hurts me to hurt you so. But there 's nothing for me to do but go back to the city. I don 't know what the end of it will be."
During my late convalescence at Wake Eobin, slowly working at the typing and word-counting of his play, ' ' Scorn of Women, " and brooding not a little over his mental condi tion, I had received from Jack several of Nietzsche 's books, of which he had written me :
' ' Have been getting hold of some of Nietzsche. I'll turn you loose first on his ' Genealogy of Morals ' — and after that, something you'll like — 'Thus Spake Zarathustra.' "
But I liked them all — "ate them up," as he said; and after digging through "Genealogy of Morals," "The Case of Wagner," "The Antichrist," and others, I polished off with "Zarathustra," which just happened to fill a need and accomplished more than any tonic to clear my own sur charged mental atmosphere and set my feet on the road to recovery. Here is a favorite bit I quoted to Jack: "At the foot of my height I dwell. How high my summits are?
32 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
How high, no one hath yet told me. But well I know my valleys. ' '
At Jack's side upon the grassy promontory with the west-wind in onr hair, I called attention to the wholesome philosophy of Zarathustra. In return I was reminded by Jack of Nietzsche's ultimate fate. Oh, no — he was not "playing to the gallery," nor inviting sympathy to his spiritual dole. That was not his custom ; he was but frankly, soul to soul, letting me know what was true of him at the time, and vouchsafing a glimpse at the worst symptom — his own uncaring attitude concerning it.
On the eve of parting I played my last stake — recurred to my Aunt's suggestion, picturing the sweetness of the spring and summer he might pass there among the redwoods by the brook that once had soothed, and the work we could accomplish. But the warning unrest leaped into his eyes and voice and he implored:
"No, no; it doesn't seem that I can. I could not stand the quiet, I tell you. I could not. It would make me mad. ' '
"Very well, then," I gave up, with my best cheer; "the thing for you is to do what you feel you must, of course. — And we won't say any more about it."
He started, flushed, turned and looked at me. Beaching for my hand, in a hushed, changed tone that meant volumes, he breathed:
"Why — why — you're a woman in a million!"
That night he slept an unbroken eight hours, un precedented repose for Jack at any time, and for many weeks he had been working on but three or four hours night ly — sufficient alone to account for his sorry plight.
In the morning I offered to pilot him a different way from the one he had come. It was up through Nunn's Can yon, a lovely defile out of Sonoma Valley to the east. Jack appeared pleased ; in fact presented a much brighter aspect for his long night of rest, and I hoped vainly that he would
if.
1905. "THE SEA WOLF1
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 33
have reconsidered the matter of coming to Wake Eobin for the season.
Away we rode together, he and I, one of us with a heavy heart, no inkling of which was allowed to pass eyes and lips. For I felt this was the last of Jack, that he was slipping irrecoverably from us who loved and would have helped him; and, what was more grave, slipping away from him self. Flesh and blood and brain could not support much longer this race he was waging against the sum of his mental and physical vitality.
But a charm was working in him, although I think he did not know it. The morning was one of California 's most blessed, a great broken blue-and-white sky showering pris matic jewels and sungold alternately. Even the jaded livery hack responded to the brightness as he vied with my golden Belle over the blossoming floor of that bird-singing vale and up the successive rises of narrow Nunn's Canyon, where, on its rustic bridges, we crossed and recrossed the serpentine torrent a dozen times.
As we forged skyward on the ancient road that lies now against one bank, now another, the fanning ferns sprinkling our faces with rain and dew, wild-flowers nodding in the cool flaws of wind, I could see my dear man quicken and sparkle as if in spite of himself and the powers of dark ness. The response to my own mood in the earth's en chantment, which had been so lamentably absent from him in the few days gone by, kept mounting and bubbling and presently was overflowing in the full measure I knew so gloriously of him. Truly, as the summit drew near, I do believe he still did not know that the crisis had been reached and passed in his Long Sickness for which the mad German philosopher had given him a name, and that he had staved off despair and death itself for many a splendid, fruitful year to come.
And now, could I credit my ears ? — he was talking quite naturally with his old engaging enthusiasm, as if pursuing
34 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
an uninterrupted conversation upon his intention to spend the year at Wake Eobin; he would rearrange the interior of the tiny shingled cabin under the laurels and oaks, and ship up this and that piece of f runiture, and such and such books, dwelling upon certain of these he wanted to read to me. What fun Manyoungi would have getting settled and keeping house ; and could he, Jack, dictate his damned correspondence to me? "And say, can you, do you suppose, find me a good horse? All the riding IVe ever done was what my mare Belle taught me in Manchuria, and I know I'd love riding if I had another horse as good. IVe got $350.00 for the Black Cat story — could you get me a horse for that? . . . How I wish I'd had that mare sent me from Korea ! ' ' and he launched into reminiscence of her virtues.
Not by word nor look did I treat his reviving humor as if it had not been the same throughout his visit. Now was the thing — he had come over and out by some sweet miracle, I cared not what, from his valley of the shadow. Far be it from me to disturb the ferment of the magic. Out of a pleasant, sunny silence as we climbed the grade, Jack suddenly reined in and laid his hand upon my shoulder. It was one of the supreme moments of my life. I met a look deeper than thankfulness, and in my heart for ay will abide his voice from the mouth that was like a child's surprised in emotion:
"You did it all, my Mate Woman. You've pulled me out. You've rested me so. And rest was what I needed — you were right. Something wonderful has happened to me. I am all right now. Dear My Woman, you need not be afraid for me any more."
My face must have answered, for I know I said no word. Solemnly at the green height of the pass, we clasped hands and kissed good-by, solemnly, joyfully, all in one. And there was that in his eyes which brought tears to mine. But it was the happy rain of a new day, for me, for him, and my heart for one ached with the joy of it. Loath to part,
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 35
Jack broke out: "Why not come on the rest of the way1? No, never mind that you're not fixed up — the Winships are good sports and will welcome you with open arms."
Long we waved and waved until a descending bend into the hinterland buried him from sight, and I turned and re traced the royal road we had come together, hardly able to contain myself. Years thence, the Winships and Cloudeslev told me that another man than the Jack who had left them five days, rode in that afternoon on the same dispirited steed. But Cloudesley knew; once they were aboard the Spray he was told of the miracle.
Winding up his voyage mid-March in Oakland, Jack discovered through Dr. Nicholson that he was suffering from a tumor consequent upon an old injury he had thought of little moment, and which should be removed as soon as he could be put in proper condition. The red-cheeked physician had him to bed at the flat, on a diet, and "no cigarettes, young man, for a week." The "young man" compromised, of course — or was it the practitioner who compromised?
I bought a rose-pink lawn frock for his pleasure, and went daily to help a very gay patient with his piled up cor respondence, dictated from high pillows. After the operation, when I called at the hospital, Jack told me he was greatly relieved by the report that his tumor had been pronounced non-malignant, and the assurance there would be no relapse — an opinion that time corroborated. "I won der," the bedridden philosopher speculated with a half- abashed grin, "how much of my intellectual 'Long Sick ness ' could have been traceable to this damned thing drain ing my system?" Then suddenly grave, he rejoined: "No, my dear — I won't belittle the real diagnosis. I know, and you know, that when the sudden healing of that malady took place, it was before I even knew I had a physical ail ment. . . . My dear, my dear."
Back at the little flat, he resumed his dictations, and
36 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
our readings progressed. During these days Jack made the better acquaintance of Tennyson, and, for the first time, "Idylls of the King,*' never ceasing to mourn that he had not "grown up with them" and their pure glamour of poesy. "And I never knew the gnomes and fairies as you did, either, to my loss," he regretted.
With boyish raptures he looked forward to summer at Wake Robin, and once interrupted himself in the middle of a sentence to say: "Oh, for the days when you can play, play for me!" One warm late afternoon, listening for the end of a pause in his dictation, something caused me to raise my eyes to Jack's face. His thread of thought lost, he had forgotten all else in the world but the wonder of loving :
"I'm quite mad for you, my dear, my dear," he repeated in the rare golden voice that returned in shaken moments. "Indeed, quite mad — with all the old madness of before the Long Sickness. And so we poor humans, weak and falli ble, and prone to error, condemn ourselves liars, for I would not have believed I could be so mad twice!"
Then and then only, was I quite assured that he was saved to himself. But perhaps, when all is said, the best influence I had for him was the repose he said I brought — a repose that otherwise life seemed to have denied. Often I was reminded by him of the first story in which he employed any portion of his many-sided love for me. It was i l Negore the Coward," last of the "Love of Life" collection, and will be found at the ending in one of Jack London's masterly depictions of death :
"And as even the memories dimmed and died in the darkness that fell upon him, he knew in her arms the ful filment of all the ease and rest she had promised him. And as black night wrapped around him, his head upon her breast, he felt a great peace steal about him, and he was aware of the hush of many twilights and the mystery of silence."
I have before me the letter of the editor to whom the
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN
37
author first submitted this manuscript. And he comments with surprise and delight upon the intangible "new touch " in Jack's work.
In the fly-leaf of "Love of Life" stands his inscription, of date November 23, 1909 :
"Dear Mate- Woman: —
"There is within these pages a story you wot of well, wherein, ng ago, I told of my love for you, and, more and better, of all ,t you and your love meant, and mean, to me."
My friend recovered rapidly — so rapidly that the sur- eon was horrified to hear from the irrepressible 'a smiling- y-rebellious, smoke-wreathed lips that he intended to ide his new horse as soon as ever he got to Glen Ellen, hich would be on the 18th of April. The first time he left 3 house, was to walk around the comer to look over the autiful animal which I brought for him to see. For I d bought the horse — Washoe Ban, blue-blooded Thor- ghbred, his veins of fire throbbing through a skin of surest chestnut-gold. He was owned by Dr. H. N. Miner of Berkeley, and I had ridden him a number of times in the >ast. Two hundred and fifty dollars of Jack's Black Cat >rize went for Ban, and I rode him from Berkeley to Oak- and, thence by ferry to San Francisco, river steamer to etaluma, where I slept, and next day sat the incomparable, austless creature the twenty-two undulating green miles
38 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
* * What 's yours going to be ? ' ' And I : "I haven 't thought it out yet. What's yours ?" "A cooperative common wealth!'7 he grinned. "I'd like to speak up with 'Just lov ing,' " I laughed. "Great!" shouted Jack, "couldn't be bet ter. Tell you what: I'll trade with you." "Done," said I. And at the banquet, upon the heels of Anna Strunsky's "Happiness is adjustment," my borrowed witticism raised the expected applause. "And yours?" Mr. Bamford called upon Jack London :
"Just loving" that wicked person breathed softly, his long-lashed eyelids demurely drooped.
A blank silence was broken by a smothered "Just WHAT?" from Mrs. A. A. Dennison, and Jack, raising his eyes, looked calmly about the company with a charming "What-are-you-going-to-do-about-it" expression as he re peated, "Just loving."
In passing, I want to relate, as nearly as possible in his own words, an occurrence that crystallized Jack London in certain personal habits more than any other self-argument. He put it something this way:
"You remember Dr. Nicholson! He was a magnificent specimen of a man, you will agree? Tall, straight, with the beauty of the athlete — girl's complexion and all that; not a vicious habit — drink, nor tobacco — not an injurious leaning. And he warned me that this and that vice of mine would ruin my health in a short time. Well, listen : Only a few short months after he talked so seriously to me, he died in screaming agony — rheumatism of the heart or some such horribly excruciating thing. Probably he had exposed himself in his practice ; I don't know. But what I do know, is, that there are all sorts of bad habits in this world, and he must have landed on one of them peculiar to his way of life, or it landed on him. Cigarettes, or overwork — I tell yon it's all one; one's as bad as the other; and I'll bet you 'even' money that cigarettes don't kill me!"
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 39
A man's argument, verily, and one that supersedes man's finest logic.
Washoe Ban and my Belle were housed amicably in a little shack-barn on a small property across the road from Wake Eobin Lodge. This was the Caroline Kohler Ranch, familiarly known as the Fish Ranch because it had once been the scene of an ambitious failure in fish-hatchery. Jack had painstakingly considered the type of my Australian saddle, but decided upon a McClellan tree that we found in San Francisco, which had been fitted with a horn. Ultimately, however, he adopted my model. And he was almost as good as his challenge to Dr. Nicholson, for it was but a few days after his arrival on the 18th that he actually mounted and took his first lesson in Ban's easy, rocking-horse stride. I had yet to learn the man's giant recuperative power, and was fully as apprehensive as the man of medicine, but made no protest.
Not long afterward, at a request from Oakland, he bought a mare and surrey for his children and their mother. The animal later developed an incorrigible balk, and the family tiring of this kind of recreation, Jack brought the whole outfit up-country, where the mare came eventually to do light work and to negotiate the mountain trails under saddle. I am minded of the day she inconveniently lay down and rolled with her rider, none other than Johannes Reimers, in a pestiferous hornet-nest in the grass, as a means of escape from the stinging.
Jack's abrupt relinquishment of the city occasioned considerable press comment, with which I was connected, but even The Examiner failed to command any statement from either of us relating to matrimonial intentions. Jack informed the paper's representatives that when lie had anything to say in the matter, he would give them the " scoop," and with this they had to be content.
40 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
As for his new choice of residence he said to reporters : "I have forsaken the cities forever; winter and summer I shall live at Glen Ellen. "
Would to heaven-upon-earth that every mating pair of men and women could know the privilege of the illuminat ing sort of experience which was Jack's and mine this six months before marriage. In the course of strenuous work and play of whatsoever nature, by our wedding date in November there was little of which we did not have a fair inkling as concerned each other's temperament and idiosyn crasies.
For the most part the study was smooth sailing, though at times beset by snags. Once, I shall never forget, it came to light that I had been accused by friends of Jack's, whom I had believed my own, of disloyalty and unveracity. With his invincible courage in seeking and gaging truth, he put even his Love impartially on the stand. To be other than sanely judicial even in so intimate a situation was contrary to his nature and method. True to what he called his " damned arithmetic," he undertook to thresh out the difficulty. Oh, he staked his love and his proudest judgment upon my guiltlessness ; and, having satisfied him self, he set his every faculty to demonstrating to my de tractors, if he perished in the attempt, that they were wrong on every count. All this not so much for personal gratification as for the pleasure of confounding them with my innocence and his faith. To be sure, he had taken the chance in a million that I prove false to his firm idea of my integrity. I met his infinitely sincere eyes on that, and laid at his disposal all that I had, and was. Amongst other expedients at my hand, a little pocket diary routed the most important charge that had been preferred. Well, indeed; but better still, when Jack, excitedly fishing up his own notebook for the same year, found it tallied with mine. Other evidence dove-tailed to his entire enlightenment of
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 41
heart and brain, and I stood unassailable to our mutual joy, and the vindication of his " damned arithmetic."
"If you only knew — you can't possibly know — " he burst out one day near the end of the discussion by mail, "what it means to me to have some one fighting with me shoulder to shoulder, fighting my own fight, in my own way!"
When it was all over and certain apologies demanded by him had been written me by the unhappy complainants :
"Let me tell you something," he said. "This matter was broached to me sometime ago, before I went on the Spray trip. I want to show you a bit of my philosophy, in general as regards mankind, in particular as concerns you alone and in relation to me :
"When friends, ostensibly for my own good, came to me with a tale about you, I told them, first, that it was a pity they should soil their hands in gutter politics; and then I earnestly tried to help them know me a little better, as a matter of pride if you will, by telling them that even were these absurd things true — and I would stake my best judgment and my soul that they were not — they would make no possible difference to me. I said to them: 'I love Ghanaian, not for anything she may or may not have done, but for what I find her, for what she is to me. I know human beings pretty well — I make my living through my understanding of them — and I know Charmian better than to credit these calumnies. But the point is: Charmian might have murdered her father and mother, and subsisted solely upon little roast orphans — it is what I know of her, now, what she now is, that counts with me.' "
"And really," he once confessed in our married years, "I could almost have wished you'd had a past like my own, or worse, if you'd been just the same as when I knew I loved you. It would have made you seem almost greater to me — I mean, if you could have come up through degrad ing experiences that did not degrade but left you as I have always seen you ! ' '
42 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
Since there was no way of actually manifesting how he would have regarded me in this suppositions premise, the question remained a moot one.
He always pleaded not guilty to the passion of jealousy, despising and deriding it as a low, bestial trait. With an exceptional capacity for tolerance toward almost every human weakness save disloyalty, he could not harbor any sympathy with that calamity of the ages, sheer animal jealousy. " Should you turn from me to another man, if I could not make you happy, I'd give that man to you on a silver platter my dear," he would declare, "and say * Bless you, my children/ — But I don't believe / could send you on a silver platter to a man — quite !"
What better place than this, further to interpret Jack London's relation toward the element feminine? I, who have known the clasp of his soul, known him at his highest, can yet withdraw from that passionate fellowship and re gard his masculinity as a whole. Asking my reader to bear in mind earlier manifestations of his philosophy and emo tions toward the little woman of his adolescence, I shall enlarge upon his attitude.
He was not prone to allow women to interfere with the business of life and adventure. He liked to think of himself as in Augustus's class — that women could not make nor mar. In short, he was not a man who lost his head easily. "God's own mad lover dying on a kiss" was an appealing line to his sense of poesy; but Jack preferred to live, rather than die, on that kiss ! Love, in brief, should be a warm and normal passion that made for fuller living. At one period, after soaking himself in the vast accumulation of erotic literature, pro and con, he told me, with a shake of his fine shoulders, that he felt himself lucky to have been born so rightly-balanced, that no abnormalities of his early rough days, nor contact with decadences of super- civilization, had touched him to his hurt. The alienists in-
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 43
terested him intellectually, but he was nicely avert to per version of any stripe.
I had supposed that there would be little of the pro prietary in the regard of so broad-minded an individualist. One of my most vital surprises was to find that Jack was as delightfully medieval as many another lover in this world when it came, say, to matters financial. Having been myself independent, and believing that he would take this into consideration, I looked for him to make no matter of a separate bank account, or at least the " allowance " loved of wives, that I might not suffer a sense of bondage. But no — like the bulk of men his was the pleasure of spend ing his own money upon the "one small woman." Any other arrangement was frowned upon — at the suggestion a frost seemed to spread over his face. And, seeing that it was he, I found the bondage sweet.
Jack charmed women of all classes ; and while he held a reserved opinion as to the intellectuality of the average female brain, he could not abide a stupid woman. His adventurous mentality had made him pursue women in curiosity, and learn them too well for his own good. He was of two distinct minds about them, and swung from one to the other: their innate goodness and staunchness com manded his worship, while their pitiable frailty and small- ness wrung his spirit. "Pussy! Pussy!'* I can hear him purr in the ear of any backbiting among his friends. Women, weighed by his biological judgment, represented the Eternal Enemy, and he liked the line :
"Her narrow feet are rooted in the ground/'
from Arthur Symons's "The Dance of the Daughters of Herodias." Yet this very concept, not always voiced with out contempt, must have given rise to his pronouncement in "John Barleycorn ": "Women are the true conservators of the race."
He has been heard to speak of woman as "the immodest
44 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
sex." And "Men are far more modest than women!" he would step into the heated air of argument, bringing down storms upon his unrepentant head. But he considered that he had several blazoned names to bear him out, among them Jean Paul, who said: "Love increases man's delicacy, and lessens woman V and Bernard Shaw: "If women were as fastidious as men, morally and physically, there would be an end of the race ! ' '
I must admit that I have seen him play down, not always up, to women and their vanity ; but to his credit and theirs, he never left them long deceived. And he would not try to deceive those who spoke his own language, though he made it extremely difficult for them to understand his.
He had struggled against misogyny, winning out be cause he had had experience enough with exceptional women of conscience and brain to keep him healthy in viewpoint. Besides, in the last extremity, he was a one-woman man, glorying in the discovery of this. In my copy of "Before Adam," in 1907 he wrote: "I have read Schopenhauer and Weininger, and all the German misogynists, and still I love you. Such is my chemism — our chemism, rather." He showed an actual reverence for the woman who "in formed" her beauty, or, better, her lack of beauty, who waged incessant warfare upon her imperfections, who wrought excellently with the material at her hand.
Jack owned to annoyance that the public denied he could write convincingly about women. "And yet," he would say, l ' I know them too well to write too well about them ! I'd never get past the editor and the censor!"
Despite that he would often merely appear to take women at their own valuation and act as if he gave them credit for logic, he was possessed of a fine sense of chivalry. As instance: Once, bound to a foreign country, war-corres ponding, a girl friend, who had received a similar commis sion, informed him that they would be sailing on the same boat. Jack was in despair because he knew, from knowledge
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 45
of her want of practicality, that she would be on his already full hands. "What would you have done?" I asked him once. He reflected, working those brows that were like a sea-bird's wings: "I'd have had to marry her before I got through with it, I suppose!" "But," I expostulated, "but you loved another woman!" "Surely," he rejoined; ' * but what is a man to do ? Her reputation would have been shattered — so I say, what can a man do in such circum stances, but marry the girl!"
Women have loved Jack London, aye, and died for love of him. And I can imagine, had he been situated so that it would have been possible, that his chivalry and sweet- heartedness could have led him into marrying such, for their own happiness.
Once, I asked him how he had behaved himself toward the girls of yesterday, as he passed beyond them into the world that he was making his — the Lizzie Connollys, the Haydees. ' * I saw them occasionally, ' ' he said. * ' One must be kind, you know."
Little of love had he bought in his life, except in the course of laying his curiosity. A passion, with him, must be mutual, else worthless.
And so I became conversant with that "swarm of vibrat ing atoms" which men knew as Jack London, the youthful literary craftsman who had, as one critic put it, "Lived with storms and spaces and sunlight like a kinsman." — That was it ; the dominant note of him was spaciousness, for the inflowing and out-giving of all available knowledge and feeling — the blood of adventure, physical and mental, scorching through life's channels.
"Visualization is everything for the teacher," he said, "and I love to teach, to transmit to others the ideas and impressions in my own consciousness."
It always seemed to me, observing, that while others were merely scratching the surface of events, Jack was get-
46 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
ting underneath them, deeper and deeper into their sig nificances.
Beligion, as the average man knows religion, had no part in him. Spiritualism had been the belief in his childhood homes, a thing of magic and f earsomeness ; but his expand ing perceptions could not countenance that belief. His hope for bettering human conditions had filled depths of being which might have responded to divine philosophy. Again his norm : ' ' Somehow, we must ever build upon the concrete/' Again his oft-repeated criticism rings in the ears of memory: "Will it work — will you trust your life to it!"
In a little book of Ernest Untermann's, " Science and Eevolution, ' 9 which Jack gave me to read at that time, I come upon a sentence underscored for my benefit: "My method of investigation is that of historical materialism. ' '
It is also to be said that I unlearned much of my man thp.t had been told and impressed upon me in the past, even by persons who should have known better or who did know better and cruelly misrepresented him. In fact, Jack forever claimed to nurse a small grievance that I should ever have been misled, no matter by whom, from my direct early conclusions upon him. I recall, however, in the old Piedmont days, that while reserving certain few un complimentary opinions, so ready was I to stand up to any one who made unjust remarks in his disfavor, that more than once I was accused of taking undue interest in the young celebrity.
To the exclusion of all else, I devoted myself to mastering the open book that he tried to render himself to me. Even the piano was silent except when I played for Jack, and the trips to Berkeley with my music roll be came less frequent and eventually ceased, I will say to his unqualified disapproval. (He never could entertain the idea, in the long years of our brimming life, why I could not give more time to music, since he too loved it so.) I
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 47
learned the eloquence of his tongue; the fine arrogance of his certitudes; convictions I came to respect for their broad wisdom; and I knew, too, and richly, the eloquence of his silences in the starry moments that come to those who loved as we loved, and, loving, understand mutely. More than once, Jack has broken a comprehending pause, or even interrupted speech to say to me the dearest and finest of all his salutations in my thrilling ears :
"My kin — my very own Twin Brother!"
One thing, in that earlier association with Jack, was almost uncanny: he never seemed to fail of my high ex pectation. Tremulous, I all but looked for him to fail of making good, to my ideal, in this or that small, fine par ticular. But in vain : usually he surpassed the tentative de mand I made upon his quality. His own failings he had, to be sure; but they were not those ordinarily suspected of lesser men.
The frankness which we continued to practise and exalt, made of our mate ship, through thick and thin, a gorgeous achievement.
So I walked softly that spring and summer and fall, dedicated to discern with my own soul's best all of him that was possible, that I might enlarge and fix this kinship for ever and forever. Upon one star I was intent: Never must our love and its expression sink into commonplace, but it must be kept from out "the ruck of casual and transi tory things. " And this was Jack's answer:
' i Commonplaceness shall have no part with us unless I myself should become commonplace ; and I think that can never be."
And Jack London learned his woman, playing her game as she tried to play his. With his broad sympathies, to his own peculiar interests he subjoined mine; and I, in return, widened my focus to include hobbies for which I had theretofore had no caring, thus creating fresh in terests for my own sphere. Jack, for example, loved keenly
48 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
a good card game. I had little use for cards ; but I applied myself, to the end that before long I could play a fair game of whist, or cribbage, or pinochle. And when Jack found that certain stern methods of instruction distressed and stood in the way of quick absorption on my part, in all gentleness he went right-about in his lifelong tactics, ex hibiting due appreciation of the harmony that had come to prevail in his life. He had until then rather prided himself upon an ability to shake knowledge into others, and I credited him with altering his way to favor me. He told me of how he had once, in half an hour, taught a rather moronic young girl to tell time by the clock — all others hav ing failed. ' l But that 's no reason, ' ' I laughingly contended, "that you can teach me whist by the same rules !"
With regard to our hard work together, and making toward a co-existing love and comradeship, I said: "We can't fail, because everything we do is compensatory life and living. His reply was: "So try to enjoy the fight for its own sake ! ' '
Critics then as now were prone to dispatch the subject of Jack London 's personality with words like i ' primitive, ' ' 1 i uncouth, ' ' " brutal. ' ' He saw the primitiveness in all life, in himself — as he saw everything else, and made all things come under the empery of his thought and written lan guage; but he did not live primitiveness, inasmuch as he was delicate, complex, withal simple in the final analyses of him. The chastity of the last analysis is like the chastity of his art that so often showed the last least perfection of chiseling. Kobustness of body and mind offset, almost con tradicted, the sensitiveness to impressions, that reaction to beauty of every sort — though particularly intellectual beauty — and to sympathy from others in his mood, his aims ; and his shrinking from hurt, although only from the very, very few. Yet in himself, in his actions, in his work, there existed a regnant overtone, a cogency. Again I say: there was no paradox in him. Beleaguered ever with the
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 49
thousand-thousand connotations, factors, in the chaos he did not falter, but somehow achieved unity, and a great rhythm. He knew himself; and it was a day of rejoicing when one departed guest, Everett Lloyd, sent him Wein- inger's "Sex and Character, " with the author's definition of a genius : "A genius is he who is conscious of most, and of that most acutely. ' '
Jack's writing, his thousand words a day, was done in a little "work-room" established in the two-room cottage, quite without any of that work-fever often necessary to writers. And whensoever art conflicted with substance, he invariably maintained :
1 * I will sacrifice form every time, when it boils down to a final question of choice between form and matter. The thought is the thing. "
As some one has said, "He cared little for writing and a great deal for what he was writing about. "
Here is further expression of his unrelenting realism, " brass-tack " reality — although it seems to me, all having been said, that his materialism incarnated his idealism, and his idealism consecrated and transfigured his material ism:
"I no more believe in Art for Art's sake theory than I believe that a human and humane motive justifies the inartistic telling of a story. I believe there are saints in slime as well as saints in heaven, and it depends how the slime saints are treated — upon their environment — as to whether they will ever leave the slime or not. People find fault with me for my 'disgusting realism.' Life is full of disgusting realism. I know men and women as they are — millions of them yet in the slime state. But I am an evolutionist, therefore a broad optimist, hence my love for the human (in the slime though he be) comes from my knowing him as he is and seeing the divine possibilities ahead of him. That's the whole motive of my 'White Fang.' Every atom of organic life is plastic. The finest specimens now in existence were once all pulpy infants capable of being molded this way or that. Let the pressure be one way and we have atavism — the reversion to the wild ; the other the
50 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
domestication, civilization. I have always been impressed with the awful plasticity of life and I feel that I can never lay enough stress upon the marvelous power and influence of environment.
"No work in the world is so absorbing to me as the people of the world. I care more for personalities than for work or art."
And he always stuck to it that Herbert Spencer's "Phil osophy of Style" helped him more in his youth, than any other book — save Ouida's "Signa," his initial impetus — to success in literature. "It taught me," he said, "the subtle and manifold operations necessary to transmute thought, beauty, sensation and emotion into black symbols on white paper; which symbols through the reader's eye, were taken into his brain, and by his brain transmuted into thought, beauty, sensation and emotion that fairly cor responded with mine. Among other things, this taught me to know the brain of my reader, in order to select the sym bols that would compel his brain to realize my thought, or vision, or emotion. Also, I learned that the right symbols were the ones that would require the expenditure of the minimum of my reader's brain energy, leaving the maxi mum of his brain energy to realize and enjoy the content of my mind, as conveyed to his mind." But "In my grown up years, ' ' he surveyed, ' ' the writers who have influenced me most are Karl Marx in a particular, and Spencer in a general, way."
So never was I able to wring from him any worship of art for art's sake, although he strove for art with every well-selected instrument of his chosen calling; attained art, high art at times; and, being a potential Teacher, he could explain the means of it — this because he knew so exactly how he produced his effects.
"You're the genius of us two," he flabbergasted me one day when I, who never knew how I did the very few things I did well, had excelled perhaps in a dive, or a passage in music, or the revamping of some sentence that had eluded his own skill. "You don't know at all how you do things,
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 51
you see," he went on, "You just do them. And sometimes you fall down and cannot do them again. Now that's genius, or of the nature of genius. Take George Sterling; hand him a problem of almost any sort, something he had prob ably never thought of before, certainly never studied. And ten to one in a short time he will have given a masterly solution. That's genius — big genius. No, there's no genius in mine — unless it's the Weininger kind. I'm too practical —that's why I'm a good teacher. Now you, my dear," in candidness he offset some of his praise, "make a, rotten teacher ! For instance, that riding lesson to-day, — you ride as if you had ridden into the world in the first place, — but I'm damned if you can show me how to 'post' on a trot as you do!"
The pleasurable course of our companionship had its normal interruptions. I had to become familiar with his man humors. But he never moped, and seldom was taci turn. And his immoderate smoking was a trial; but after once broaching the subject and finding it a tender one with him, I dropped all reference to the matter. Although he admired frankness, courage, the pettish side that women know of the biggest men where their personal comforts are in question, prevented my courage from demanding what I had confidently hoped for. I should have known better; but then, I was learning. At no time did I ever hear him advise against smoking ; yet he promised his nephew, Irving Shepard, a thousand dollars if he would refrain from smoking until he was twenty-one. From our conversation on smoking, I gathered that his habit was a rather negligible detail in comparison with the thousand and one larger issues that occupied his mind. How shall I say? . . . that this one habit, a mere habit, which required none of his conscious attention, should not be too seriously considered by him or others. Also, Jack seemed of a mind that the nerve-strain of refraining offset any advantage that might be derived from abstinence from cigarettes.
52 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
Long hot afternoons of typewriter dictation under the trees sometimes got on our mutual touchy nerves, and we became cognizant of still more of each other 's caprices. Or suddenly, not yet versed in his " brass-tack " reasoning, his " arithmetic, ' ' I might unwittingly start disputes in which I had no chance against the assault of his logic, and would struggle with nerves that urged me to weep in sheer feminine bafflement, hating myself the more heartily. But always before me rose an honest warning with which Jack had forearmed us both previously to his coming:
' ' One thing I want to tell you for your own good and our happi ness together. I do not think you are a hysterical woman. But donrt ever have hysterics with me. You may think I'm hard. Maybe I am; but very earliest in my environment, in the very molding of the tender thing I was, I came to recoil from hysteria — all the bestiality of uncontrol and its phenomena. In my man hood I have seen tears and hysteria, and false fainting spells, all the unlovely futility of that sort of thing that gets a woman less than nothing from me. So never, never, I pray, if you love me, show yourself hysterical. I promise you I shall be cold, hard, even curious. And I will admit, in your case, that I should be hurt as well. But remember, always, this coldness is not deliberate of me : it's become second nature — a warp. I cannot help shrinking from tantrums as from unf or gotten blows. . . . Once, when I was about three (and this is burned into me with a hot iron), flower in hand for a gift, I was brushed aside, kicked over, by an angry, rebellious woman striding on her ego-maniacal way. Well, I made an un happy mouth and went on my own puzzled, dazed path, dimly wounded, non-understanding. And that woman I believed the most wonderful woman in the world, for she had said so herself. So, this and other hysterical scenes have seared me, and I cannot help myself."
It is a privilege to serve under a great captain ; and I sat at his feet and endeavored with all my womanhood to come up to his fine, sane standard of companionship, the thing he had missed even with men, it would seem. His free
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 53
confidence and his Grand Passion were my guerdon. And there blossomed in him a new and wonderful patience that his older friends could hardly credit — patience in the little things that, handled rightly, or ignored, make for the day's harmony. And I hastened to discount his harshness in argument, in order to partake of the kernel, realizing that when he called a spade a spade, it was a battle against arti ficiality, toward soundness of thought and speech upon vital truths — or vital lies.
A woman whom he greatly admired had acquired Chris tian Science and wanted to argue upon it with Jack. With her enunciated premise, I saw Jack's blood begin to rise: "Can no-being be?" she shot at him, and sat back waiting his verdict. Although they had it hammer and tongs for hours, they actually never got beyond the premise. Jack refused to consider such a posit — his scientific mind revolted from it and the two failed to come together on even the definition of words, without which there could be no rea soning. For days he went about muttering, "Can no- being be! Can no-being be! — "What do you think of it!"
But inasmuch as his arguing was impersonal, I think the following letter to Blanche Partington, written in 1911, after a warm discussion upon Christian Science generally and Christ's Temptation in the Wilderness in particular, is of value as an illustration :
" Dear Blanche :•—
"Bless you for taking me just as I am, and for not implying one iota more to me than what I stand for.
"I am, as you must have divined ere this, a fool truthseeker with a nerve of logic exposed and raw and screaming. Perhaps, it is my particular form of insanity.
"I grope in the mud of common facts. I fight like a wolf and a hyena. And I don't mean a bit more, or less, than I say. That is, I am wholly concerned with the problem I am wildly discussing for the moment.
"The problem of the 'language of the tribe/ I fear me, is more
54 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
profound than you apprehend — also more disconcerting than you may imagine for the ones who attempt to talk in the lingo of two different worlds at one and the same time.
"Affectionately thine,
"Jack London/'
Sometimes, when he had been shockingly literal in lan guage of interpretation in one field or another, with blaz ing unrepentant eyes he would lash out :
"Am I right? You don't answer! Am I right? If not, show me where I am wrong. I must be shown ! ' '
The intense effort required to "show" where I thought him wrong would keep poor me on tiptoe morning, noon and night — more especially since I nearly always had to own to myself and finally to him that he was right. Slowly I commenced to lean upon his judgment, for time and again I found he could not fail me. In the beginning I have in sheer exhaustion been guilty, though very rarely, of the unworthy ruse of giving in when I was not convinced. But let him suspect the attempted deceit, and the dawning light in his face fell into dark disapprobation. So I came to face every issue with him squarely, no matter what the price in time, inconvenience, nerves, everything.
As if in reassurance, he indited in my copy of "War of the Classes":
"Dear Mate:
"Just to tell you that you are more Mate than ever, and that the years to come are bound to see us very happy.
"Mate."
This is not a wail — oh, quite the opposite. The educa tion to me was an inestimable treasure. It insured a teem ing intellectual life for all my days on earth. Jack so loved, and avowedly, to jar people out of their narrow ruts and their preconceived notions about themselves. The insincere shrinking of smug souls from the onset of argument was sustenance to his missionary mind. He would make
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 55
them uncomfortable to sleep with their niggling little petty viewpoints, he would. I can see the flags of battle in his eyes, hark again to the old war-note strike in his fresh young voice. And when he had reduced them to powder without a spark left in it, he was delicious, irresistible, in his expression of contrition :
" Don't mind my harshness,'7 he would plead. "I al ways raise my voice and talk with my hands; I can't help it. — But don't you see! Don't you see," more often than not he would come back. "Tell me, am I right or wrong? I beg you to show me where I am wrong. ' ' It was his in trepid way of expressing the abounding life and thought that were in him. On sentry-go at the gates of observation and conscience, he was the Apostle of the Truth if ever there was one.
Luckless was the victim who could not benefit by the brusk tonic of his argument; and indeed, it was a tonic to himself, until the years when he grew too weary with the hopelessness of leavening the inert mass of humanity. H. G. "Wells 's definition of the average mind — "A projec tion of inherent imperfections" — would have suited Jack.
He was an undisappointing wonder to us all. Despite his boredom with small minds, one would see him completely possessed, enthralled, by the simple goodness of some one in the humblest walk of life. There were in the neigh borhood certain characters who had fallen into ways of hopelessness; and Jack's manly tenderness, always aug mented by an unostentatious hand in his pocket, was a speechless pleasure to me, one to emulate for his sweet sake. Then there would be his unbounded appreciation of some tiny farm where perhaps a by-gone workman of Jack's with wife and child, lived happily with one cow, one horse, a few chickens. Delight shone all over him if he detected an idea of his own which had been incorporated into the other's agricultural equipment.
56 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
One shining example of that manly kindness I shall never forget: Once, at sea on a great square-rigger, the skipper, probably from illness that rendered him otherwise than his usual self, issued an order that all but piled us upon a famous " graveyard of ships. " But Jack, jealous of a good seaman's reputation, protected the captain's blunder from the eyes of the world.
He cared almost not at all, except as it might affect his market, or his authority, for public opinion of himself or his books. But I came to find him simply, touchingly sen sitive to approval from the exceeding few whom he loved, and another exceeding few whose discrimination he revered.
It is beyond hand of mine to draw with strong and supple strokes a convincing picture of this protean man-boy. To me he stands out simple enough in all his complexity ; yet I can scarcely hope to leave this impression with the reader — so numberless were the factors in the sum of his person ality. The greatest, perhaps, of all ingredients in his make up, was the surpassing lovableness that made his very defi ciencies appear loveworthy. No matter what the irri tability of mental stress from whatsoever source, appeal to him with love and desire of understanding, and the world was yours could he give it to you.
Needing immediate cash, Jack delayed beginning "White Fang," and the young master of the short story went to work spilling upon tales like " Brown Wolf" the warmth and color of rural California that had got into his pound ing blood; ' ' Planchette " — the material for this last was founded upon an incident that had once come under my observation, and I passed it on to him; and presently, re quiring the frozen spaces once more for scenes of other motifs, he wrote "The Sun Dog Trail," "A Day's Lodg ing," "Love of Life," and "The Unexpected"— all these to be found in "Moon Face" and "Love of Life" collections. In a letter to me during absence in the city, answering my
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 57
query if his description of death were founded upon his own late bout with chloroform, he wrote :
"Yes — the death lines of 'All Gold Canyon* came from my experience with the ' little death in life,' 'the drunken dark/ 'the sweet thick mystery of chloroform/ — you re member Henley's 'Hospital Sketches.' "
Meantime "The Sea Wolf" held sway among the "best sellers," and was much discussed. Reviewers especially girded at the details of Humphrey van Weyden 's lovemak- ing to Maud. "I don't think it's silly," Jack considered. "I think it is very natural and sweet. It's the way I make love, and I don't think I am silly!" As for the main motif, I find this :
' ' I want to make a tale so plain that he who runs may read, and then there is the underlying psychological motif. In 'The Sea Wolf there was, of course, the superficial descriptive story, while the underlying tendency was to prove that the superman cannot be successful in modern life. The superman is anti-social in his tendencies, and in these days of our complex society and sociology he cannot be successful in his hostile aloofness. Hence the unpop ularity of the financial supermen like Rockefeller; he acts like an irritant in the social body."
"Tales of the Fish Patrol" was appearing serially in Youths' Companion, and the critics worried over wha,t they dared commit themselves to about "The War of the Classes" group of articles. Mostly, of course, it was se verely slated for its radicalism, as the young evangel of economics had naturally forecast.
Better than all other accomplishment, the boy was so happy, gone the Long Sickness, and now living a new man ner of life. It was the first time he had ever "let himself go for long," to relax and rest in the assurance of an at mosphere of eager comprehension. He came to realize the value and practice of the little thing that offsets the strain
58 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
of the big thing-. To saddle his horse leisurely, to direct its lesser intelligence ; to play with Brown Wolf and delve into that reticent comrade's brain-processes; to see that a hammock was properly swung down the mossy stream- side under the maples and alders — oh, no, he did not hang it himself, but "bossed" while Manyoungi did the work. Aside from learning to saddle and harness horses, he was in the main faithful in his vow never again to work with his hands. The only exception I recall was when he be came interested in cultivating French mushrooms. Spawn was ordered from the east, and he made the bed down by the Graham Creek near where he had once written on "The Sea Wolf, ' ' planted and tended and reaped, to the astonish ment of all who knew him.
One peculiarity I never could fathom. Despite the small- ness of his hands, the taper fingers and delicacy of their touch, he was all thumbs when it came to manipulating small objects — say rigging up fishing gear, buttoning or hooking a garment, tending his stylographic ink-pencils. He might easily have been the original model of the hu morists' exasperated husband playing maid to his wife's back-buttoned raiment. He did it willingly enough when no one else was about, but with much unsaintly verbiage of which he gave due heralding. Yet with this clumsiness which was a fount of speculation to Jack, he was able to pride himself that he never destroyed anything — this all the more remarkable when taking into account that he invariably "talked with his hands." Once, waving his arms at table, I saw him sweep a "student" lamp clear, which he caught before it could reach the floor ; but he never broke a dish.
Here he gives me proof of my guerdon, written in the fly-leaf of "The Game," which came to Glen Ellen in June:
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 59
"Dear Mate:
"Whose voice and touch are quick to soothe, and who, with a firm hand, has helped me to emerge from my 'long sickness7 so that I might look upon the world again clear-eyed.
"From your Mate."
And in "John Barleycorn, " eight years later:
"Dear Mate-Woman:
"You know. You have helped me bury the Long Sickness and the White Logic.
"Your Mate-Man, "Jack London."
We rode all over the Valley, and explored the sylvan mazes of its embracing ranges and the intricacies of little hills with their little vales, that to the north divide the valley proper. And we visited the hot-springs resorts southerly in the valley, Agua Caliente and Boyes, for the tepid swimming tanks. Once or twice we met Captain H. E. Boyes and Mrs. Boyes, who asked us into their quaint English cottage ; and I remember that the Captain showed Jack a letter received from Eudyard Kipling, asking if he had run across Jack London around Sonoma, and in closing a copy of "Mainly About People " containing a flattering criticism of Jack's work.
We boxed, we swam, we did everything under the sun except walk. Jack never walked any distance save when there was no other way to progress. I was in entire accord with this, as with a thousand and one other mutual preferences. I have seen him deprive himself of a pleasure, if walking was the means of getting at it. "You're the only woman I ever walked far to keep an engagement with," he told me; then spoiled the pretty compliment by adding mischievously, "but I rode most of the way on my bicycle — that night, you remember? when I got arrested for speeding inside Oakland's city limits!"
60 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
Those who regarded Jack London as physically power ful were quite right; but they would be astonished to find that his big, shapely muscles of arm and shoulder and leg, equal to any emergency whether from momentary call or of endurance, were not of the stone-hard variety, even under tension. Why, I, "small, tender woman, " as he liked to say, could flex a firmer bicep than Jack's, to his eternal amusement. But we were as alike as some twins in many characteristics — particularly our supersensitive flesh. I had always been ashamed that in spite of years of horse back riding, let me be away from the saddle for a month or even less, and the first ride would lame my muscles. To my surprise Jack, who became an enthusiastic and excellent horseman, showed the identical weakness to the end of his life.
As the weeks warmed into summer, campers flocked to Wake Robin, and the swimming pool in Sonoma Creek, be low the Fish Ranch's banks, was a place of wild romping every afternoon. Jack taught the young folk to swim and dive, and to live without breathing during exciting tourna ments of under- water tag, or searching for hidden objects. Certain shiny white door-knobs and iron rings that were never retrieved, must still be implanted in the bottom of the almost unrecognizable old pool beneath the willows, or else long since have traveled down the valley to the Bay.
There were madder frolics on the sandy beach at the northern edge of the bathing hole, and no child so boister ous or enthusiastic or resourceful as Jack, "joyously noisy with life's arrogance." He trained them to box and to wrestle, and all, instructor and pupils, took on their vary ing gilds of sun-bronze from the ardent California sky that tanned the whole land to warm russet.
I am suddenly aware of the fact that much as Jack shared his afternoons in sport with the vacation troops of campers, many as were the health-giving things of flesh
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 61
and spirit which he taught them, not one learned from him in the sport of killing. Nor can I remember him ever going out hunting in this period. The only times I saw firearms in his hands were at intervals when we all prac tised shooting with rifle and revolver at a target tacked against the end of an ancient ruined dam across the Sonoma, Once, years afterward, in southwesern Oregon, Jack was taken bear-hunting in the mountains. When he returned to the ranch-house he said :
"Mate, these good men don't know what to make of me. They offered me what the average hunting man would give a year of his life to have — the chance of getting a bear. As it happened, we did not see any bear ; but coming into a clearing, there stood the most gorgeous antlered buck you ever want to see, on a little ridge, silhouetted against the sunset. The men whispered to me that now was my chance. They were fairly trembling with anxiety for fear I might miss such a perfect shot. And I didn't even raise my gun. I just couldn't shoot that great, glorious wild thing that had no show against the long arm of my rifle."
So the children at Wake Robin — how little a child will miss — resurrected the old ditty of two summers gone, about "The kindest friend the rabbits ever knew," and loved their big-hearted play-friend the more.
One small Oakland shaver, badly out of sorts with his maternal parent, one afternoon began "shying" pebbles at all and sundry. After every one else had gone to supper, Jack excepted, the little fellow sullenly turned his jaundiced attention to the one live mark remaining — friend or foe it mattered not. Jack admonished him to stop, but instead he selected larger missiles and went on firing them. Furi ous because Jack laughingly dodged them all, the mite jumped up and down in baffled wrath and shrieked: "You hoodlum ! You hoodlum ! ' '
"Now, I wonder," Jack reflected through a cloud of
62 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
cigarette smoke after supper, 1 1 Where he heard me called a hoodlum?"
Again recurring to Jack's alleged brutality, I smile to think how considerate he usually was. In all the rough- and-tumble play with the children and often young folk of maturer growth, any one who was hurt by him quickly smothered the involuntary "ouch" because all knew it was unintentional.
With the girls and women — I speak from long ex perience. Yes, I have been hurt — one does not box for cool relaxation, but for the zest of rousing the good red blood and setting it free to race through sluggish veins to clear lungs and brain and give one a new lease on life. To Jack, who loved gameness above all virtues, it was his proudest boast that on two or three occasions gore had been drawn from one or the other of our respective features; but it was of his own undoing he was vainest, because "the Kid- woman squared her valiant little shoulders and stood up with her eyes wide open and unafraid and delivered and took a good straight left."
The point I am leading to is this: I never was even jarred in any part of my feminine anatomy that Jack knew was taboo. Allowing that a woman's head, neck and shoulders are about all it is permissible for her opponent to assail, Jack, with greater surface to cover from her quick gloves, worked out and benefi tted immeasurably by a system of defense that was my despair and that few men could win through.
About the water hole, not one playfellow but would gladly drop the strenuous fun to listen to Jack read aloud ; and sometimes at special urging from the charmed ring, he would with secret gratification respond to a request for some story of his own making. Joshua Slocum's "Voyage of the Spray" came in for its turn, and suddenly, one day, Jack laid down the book and said to Uncle Eoscoe Eames :
"If Slocum could do it alone in a thirty-five-foot sloop,
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 63
with an old tin clock for chronometer, why couldn't we do it in a ten-foot-longer boat with better equipment and more company!"
Uncle Eoscoe, devoted yachtsman all his life, and to all appearance as devoted as ever at nearly sixty, beamed with interest. The two fell with vim to comparing models of craft, their audience open-mouthed at the proposition. All at once Jack turned to me, and I am sure there was no mis giving in his heart :
" What do you say, Charmian? — suppose five years from now, after we're married and have built our house some where, we start on a voyage around the world in a forty- five foot yacht. It'll take a good while to build her, and we've got a lot of other things to do besides."
"I'm with you, every foot of the way," I coincided, ' ' but why wait five years f Why not begin construction in the spring and let the house wait? No use putting up a home and running right away and leaving it ! I love a boat, you love a boat; let's call the boat our house until we get ready to stay a little while in one place. We'll never be any younger, nor want to go any more keenly than right now. — You know," I struck home, "you're always remind ing me that we are dying, cell by cell, every minute of our lives!"
"Hoist by my own petard," Jack growled facetiously, but inwardly approving.
This was the inception of the SnarJc voyage idea, most wonderful of all our glittering rosary of adventurings.
Aside from the campers, who did not invade his sanc tuary, Jack saw almost no visitors. "One," he told a reporter, "was a Eussian Eevolutionist ; the other I avoided!" We were swinging in his hammock at the far end of "Jack's House" from the road, when we glimpsed the latter unannounced and unwelcome figure on the path way from my Aunt's home. Undetected, we slipped from the hammock, and kept still invisible as we soft-padded
64 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
around the cottage, always keeping on the opposite side from the searching caller, who shortly went away. "I'm going to put up two signs on my entrances, " Jack giggled. 4 'On the front door will be read:
NO ADMISSION EXCEPT ON BUSINESS; NO BUSINESS TRANSACTED HERE.
On the back:
PLEASE DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT KNOCKING. PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK. "
He was as good as his word. I lettered the legends, and Manyoungi nailed them up, to the scandal of the neigh bors. But this summer was the one and only period of in- hospitality of any length in Jack's whole life — an instance when he really wanted to be let alone — a necessity in his development at that phase. A few months later, in Bos ton, he gave this out to one of the papers :
"No, I do not care for society — much. I haven 't the time. And besides, society and I disagree as to how I should dress, and as to how I should do a great many other things. I haven't time for pink teas, nor for pink souls. I find that I can get along now less vexatiously and more happily without very much personal dealing with what I may call general humanity. Yet I am not a hermit ; I have simply reduced my visiting list. ' '
Society always had him at bay about his clothing. Once he wrote : "I have been real, and did not cheat reality any step of the way, even in so microscopically small, and comically ludicrous, a detail as the wearing of a starched collar when it would have hurt my neck had I worn it." How he would have bidden to his heart that "Shaw of Tailors," H. Dennis Bradley of London Town, who wishes, amidst other current post-bellum reconstruction, a revolu tion in the matter of starch: "If starch is a food," he
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 65
adjures, "for goodness' sake eat it; do not plaster it on your bosom and bend it round your neck. The war has taught the value of soft silken shirts and collars; and we shall not return to the Prussianism and the Militarism of the blind, unreasoning 'boiled' shirt without a murmur. "
Now and again Jack tore himself from his happy valley, to lend his voice to the Cause. One of these occasions was on May 22, when he lectured at Maple Hall, at Fourteenth and Webster Streets, Oakland. In the same month we two rode one day to Santa Eosa, to call upon Luther Burbank, who was an old friend of my family. On August 22, to gether he and I traveled to San Francisco to see the presen tation of a one-act play done by Miss Lee Bascom, "The Great Interrogation, " based upon Jack's "Story of Jees Uck," from Faith of Men collection .
Jack, as collaborator, was ferreted out from where we had made ourselves as small as possible in the Alcazar's gallery, and appeared before the curtain with Miss Bascom, to whom he gallantly attributed whatever excellence the pleasing drama possessed.
About this time a dramatization of "The Sea Wolf," which was unintentionally farcical in the extreme, was put on at an Oakland playhouse. Catering to the finicky thea ter-goer, the playwright had introduced a chaperone, who evidently called for company in the shape of an ingenue. This young person was portrayed by no other than the win some Ola Humphrey, of Oakland, whom later we were to know in Sydney, Australia, as a leading woman, and still in the future as the Princess Ibrahim Hassan.
As in the Alcazar, Jack chose the most inconspicuous position from which to view what had been done to theme of his. On the present occasion he remained undiscov ered, and was able to shed his tears of mirth on either shoulder he desired, Sterling's or mine, when the shrieking melodrama became too much for his control. "0 Gawd! 0 Gawd!" he mimicked the Ghost's cook, Muggridge; and
66 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
"If they should hunt me out and get me on the stage, what could I say but '0 Gawd! 0 Gawd!' " The unfortunate Van Weyden, if I remember aright, chose to wear, from rise to fall of curtain, a well polished pair of tan shoes for which the rigors of the salt sea had no terrors.
On September 9, Jack went to Colma, as one of a con stellation of The Examiner's star writers, to do the Britt-Nelson prizefight. It was in the course of this write- up he coined another catch-phrase that went into the lan guage of the country, as "the call of the wild," "the white silence, " and even "the game" had become almost house hold words. This time it was "the abysmal brute," to which certain pugilists took exception until they came to realize the author's meaning — the life that refuses to quit and lie down even after consciousness has ceased.
"By * abysmal brute,' " Jack would extemporize, "I mean the basic life deeper than the brain and the intellect in living things. Intelligence rests upon it; and when intel ligence goes, it still remains. The abysmal brute life," he illustrated, "that causes the heart of a gutted dog-fish to beat in one's hand — you've seen them do that when we were fishing off the Key Route pier," I was reminded. "Or the beak of a slain turtle to close and bite off a man's finger ; it's the life force that makes a fighter go on fighting even though he is past all direction from his intelligence. ' ' So enamored was he of his own phrase that eight years afterward he used it for title of another prize-fight novel.
In addition to his regular work, Jack would find time to review a book, as for instance "The Long Day," which critique occupied a page in an October Examiner; or to contribute an article, like "The Walking Delegate," in the May 28th issue of the same paper.
It was in August of this year that he sent to Collier's Weekly the article entitled "Revolution," based upon the lecture. He had already sent it to The Cosmopolitan, but owing to some disagreement upon the price had with-
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 67
drawn the manuscript. This article was published in Lon don in the Contemporary Review. Jack's letter to the Editor of Collier's I give below:
* * I am sending you herewith an article that may strike you as a regular firebrand ; but I ask you to carry into the reading of it one idea, namely, that the whole article is a statement of fact. There is no theory about it. I state the facts and the figures of the revo lution. I state how many revolutionists there are, why they are revolutionists, and their views — all of which are facts.
"It seems to me that this article would be especially apposite just now, following upon the wholesale exposures of graft and rottenness in the high places, which have of late filled all the maga zines and newspapers. It is the other side of the shield. It is another way of looking at the question, and half a million of voters are looking at it in this way in the United States. And it might be interesting to the capitalists to see thus depicted this great antagonistic force which they, by their present graft and rotten ness, are not doing anything to fend off. But rather are they encouraging the growth of this antagonistic force by their own culpable mismanagement of society.
"Of course, should you find it in your way to publish this article, it would be very well to preface it with an editorial note to the effect that it is a statement of the situation by an avowed and militant socialist; and of course you would be quite welcome to criticize the whole article in any way you saw fit."
All those bright, vitalizing months, there was growing in his bosom a seed sown two years earlier when he had come to love Sonoma Valley. "The Valley of the Moon," he called it, having nnearthed the fact that Sonoma stood for "moon" in the early Indian tongue of the locality. I have since heard Sonoma defined as "seven moons," be cause, driving in the crescent of the valley, one may see seven risings of the orb behind the waving contours of the summits.
His eyes roved over the forested mountainside, and yearning heightened to make some part of it his own, for
68 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
home when we should be man and wife — his very own while life should last. But it appeared not to be for sale. One prospect above all others filled our eyes whenever we rode side by side up a certain old private road — three inexpress ibly romantic knolls crowned with fir and redwood, rosy- limbed, blossom-perfumed madrono, and scented tapers of the buckeye — wooded islets rising out of a deep, tossing sea of tree-tops. And one day a neighbor said :
"Why, those knolls there belong to a section of over a hundred acres owned by Robert P. Hill down at Eldridge, yonder, the next station below Glen Ellen. Go and see him, and I bet he'll sell it to you. I'm sure I heard it could be bought. "
In no time at all, Jack was possessor of one hundred and twenty-nine acres of the most idyllic spot we were ever to behold — later to be glorified in his novel i ' Burning Day light." Its irregular diamond-shape was bounded by the magnificently wooded gorge of old Asbury Creek to the southeast, and the whole sweet domain was wilderness of every sort of Californian timber and shrubbery, save some forty acres of cleared land that had once yielded wine- grapes and now waved with grain.
Jack paid $7000.00 for the property, which turned out to be a portion of the original grant of some two hundred square miles from the Mexican Government to General Vallejo. Mr. and Mrs. Hill declare to this day that they fear Jack could probably have beaten their figure if he had stood out. But there is another aspect to the happening. Jack, alas, had no chance; he accused me of precluding any such move on his side, by any unthinking ravings over the land in question. And I meekly refrained from pro testing when he excluded me from all business sessions thereafter.
Mrs. Hill, who was President of the California Wo man's Federation of Clubs, amongst other engaging cus toms displayed the one of welcoming a guest with both her
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 69
hands clasping the other's one. And after a little acquain tance with our new friends, I noticed that Jack adopted the gracious habit with his own guests — quite unknowingly, I am sure, for he was not addicted to copying manners. This reminds me that when I first met Jack London, it was with surprise I noted that he shook hands rather limply. It must have been a reminiscence of childhood diffidence; it could not be coldness, for he radiated warmth and sin cerity from head to foot. Later, I had dared tell him of my be-puzzlement, and found that he had no idea his clasp was not a hearty one. He set about remedying the lack of firm ness. Looking through his 1905 clipping book, I come upon this from an interviewer in an Iowa town where Jack had lectured :
"The words and hearty clasp were with boy-like frank ness, a boy's greeting to another boy."
We called it our Land of Dear Delight, but, to the world, simply The Eanch. What Jack thought of it, and his enthusiasm, taking the place of his old unrest, in all the simplest details of his new farm, is indicated in his letters to George Sterling and Cloudesley Johns. To George he wrote :
' ' I have long since given over my automobile scheme ; it was too damned expensive on the face of it, and I have long since decided to buy land in the woods, somewhere, and build. . . . For over a year, I have been planning this home proposition, and now I am just beginning to see my way clear to it. I am really going to throw out an anchor so big and so heavy that all hell could never get it up again. In fact, it's going to be a prodigious, ponderous
sort of an anchor/'
i
What the neighbors thought of the transaction, he words in "The Iron Heel :"
1 ' Once a writer friend of mine had owned the ranch. . . . He had bought the ranch for beauty, and paid a round price for it, much to the disgust of the local farmers. He used to tell with
70 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
great glee how they were wont to shake their heads mournfully at the price, to accomplish ponderously a bit of mental arithmetic, and then to say, ' But you can 't make six per cent on it. ' ' '
"Jack London,
"Glen Ellen, "Sonoma Co., Cal.,
"June 7, 1905. "Dear Cloudesley:
"Yea, verily, gorgeous plans. I have just blown myself for 129 acres of land. I '11 not attempt to describe. It 's beyond me.
"Also, I have just bought several horses, a colt, a cow, a calf, a plow, harrow, wagon, buggy, etc., to say nothing of chickens, turkeys, pigeons, etc., etc. All this last part was unexpected, and has left me flat broke. ... I've taken all the money I could get from Macmillan to pay for the land, and haven't any now even to build a barn with, much less a house.
"Haven't started * White Fang' yet. Am writing some short stories in order to get hold of some immediate cash."
And this fragment from his next, dated July 6, 1905:
"As regards the ranch — I figure the vegetables, firewood, milk, eg-gs, chickens, etc., procured by the hired man will come pretty close to paying the hired man's wages. The 40 acres of cleared ground (hay) I can always have farmed on shares. The other fellow furnishes all the work, seed, and care, while I furnish the land. He gets % of crop of hay. I get % — about 25 or 30 tons for my share.
"I'm going swimming. I take a book along, and read and swim, turn and turn about, until 6 P.M. It is now 1 P.M.
"Wolf."
"August 30, 1905. "Dear Cloudesley:
". . . By the way, Collier's has accepted * Revolution.' What d'ye think o' that? Robert J. Collier wrote the letter of acceptance himself, saying : That he was going to publish my fire-brand as a piece of literature, even if it did lose him several hundred thousand
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 71
of his capitalistic subscribers. Also, wanting to know how much I asked for the article, he said, * Don't penalize me too heavily for my nerve in publishing it.'
"I am racing along with ' White Fang.' Have got about 45,000 words done, and hope to finish it inside the next four weeks, when I pull East on the lecturing-trip.
"Have you read Jimmy Britt's review of 'The Game'? It is all right !
"Say, read 'The Divine Fire,' by May Sinclair, and then get down in the dust at her feet. She is a master.
Of all books of fiction we read at this period, "The Divine Fire" and Eden Phillpotts 's "The Secret Woman" made the deepest mark upon us both.
When laying foundation for a novel, Jack would isolate himself for the forenoon, in a hilly manzanita grove adjoin ing the Wake Eobin acres — the "wine-wooded manzanita" he named it in " All Gold Canyon. ' ' But for all short work he made his notes at a table in the redwood-paneled room where he worked and slept. He liked music while he com posed, and was never so content as when open windows brought my practising to him from the other house.
One day, returning from San Francisco, he said: "We've got to have a phonograph!" "Awful!" I coun tered. ' ' You don 't know what you 're saying, ' ' he reproved in sparkling tone. "Pve been listening for hours to the most wonderful records, and there's a man down in Glen Ellen who has an agency, and we 're to come down to-night and hear the thing. No — don't say a word — you'll go per fectly crazy over it!"
I did; and a Victor came to stay at Wake Eobin, sub sequently sailing with us to the South Seas with one hundred and fifty records presented by the manufacturers. This music Jack also liked while he worked, so long as he could not distinguish the words of songs, which would distract his attention from the words he was juggling with.
At that time he cared far more for orchestral than for
72 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
vocal harmonies, especially the Wagnerian operas. In the latter, as well as in qnite a repertory of other operatic work, he had been well coached by his friend Blanche Part- ington, musical and dramatic critic on the San Francisco Call for seven years, who had taken him with her to many performances. I, on the other hand, favored the voice records above the instrumental. After several years, as one manifestation of his searching into the human, Jack leaned more and more to the voice, until he seldom put on the orchestral disks.
"Sept. 4, 1905. "Dear Cloudesley:
* ' So you 're going to begin writing for money ! Forgive me for rubbing it in. YouVe changed since several years ago when you place ART first and dollars afterward. You didn 't quite sym pathize with me in those days.
"After all, there's nothing like life; and I, for one, have always stood, and shall always stand, for the exalting of the life that is in me over Art, or any other extraneous thing.
"Wolf."
George Serling had affectionately dubbed him "The Wolf, " or " The Fierce Wolf, " or ' ' The Shaggy Wolf. ' ' In the last month of Jack London 's life, he gave me an exqui site tiny wrist-watch. "And what shall I have engraved on it!" I asked. "Oh, 'Mate from Wolf/ I guess, " he re plied. And I: "The same as when we exchanged engage ment watches !" "Why, yes, if you don't mind," he ad mitted. "I have sometimes wished you would call me * Wolf 'more of ten."
"I wish I had called you 'Wolf,' then," I said remorse fully, "since you would have liked it. But it seemed pre ciously George's name for you, and that is why I seldom used it. ' ' The wee Swiss timepiece was lettered according ly, this after his light had gone out forever, for I had not been again in town.
Jack was generous about helping his friends out in
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 73
time of need, but the following, to one of them in October, shows how closely he was running, and again mentions his intended lecturing trip :
"To buy the ranch and build barn, I had to get heavy advances from my publishers. I had already overdrawn so heavily, that they asked me, and in common decency I agreed, to pay interest on these new advances made.
"At present moment my check book shows $207.83 to my credit at the bank. It is the first of the month and I have no end of bills awaiting me, prominent among which are: (Here follows list of payments to his own mother, his children's mother, his rent, tools for the Ranch, and some smaller bills.)
"Now, I have to pay my own expenses East. Lecture Bureau afterward reimburses me. I haven't a cent coming to me from any source, and must borrow this money in Oakland. Also, in November I must meet between seven and eight hundred dollars insurance. My mother wants me to increase her monthly allow ance. So does B. I have just paid hospital bills of over $100.00 for one of my sisters. Another member of the family, whom I can not refuse, has warned me that as soon as I arrive in Oakland he wants to make a proposition to me. I know what that means.
"And I have promised $30.00 to pay printing of appeal to Supreme Court of Joe King, a poor devil in Co. Jail with 50 yrs. sentence hanging over him and who is being railroaded.
"And so on, and so on, and so on — Oh, and a bill for over $45.00 to the hay press. So you see that I am not only sailing close to the wind but that I am dead into it and my sails flapping. ' '
"Fm always in debt," Jack said to Ashton Stevens, who interviewed him for The Examiner. "Look at that hand! See where the light comes through the fingers? That hand leaks. It was explained to me by the Korean boy that took me through Manchuria. All I'd like to do is to be able to get enough money ahead to loaf for a year — that's my little dream. "
"And buy some dress shirts and evening clothes?'* Mr. Stevens slyly baited.
1 1 Oh, I have them, ' ' Jack grinned ; ' ' I've got them. But
74 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
I'm willing to put 'em on only when I can't get in without them. I loathe the things, but if the worst comes to the worst I've got 'em; I insist I've got 'em."
"Then your dream of rest realized wouldn't be all purple teas?"
"Indeed it would not. At Glen Ellen I've got a farm, and I'm going to build a house and a lot of things; it'll take me about two years to make improvements and settle down. And then I'm going to build a forty-foot sea-going yacht and with two or three others cruise around the world. We '11 be our own crew and cook and everything else, and the first port will be twenty-one hundred miles from San Francisco — Honolulu. Thence on and on. Maybe I'll realize on that trip some of my dream of rest. ' '
In the months before he came to Glen Ellen that year, he would ask musical friends for ' ' The Garden of Sleep, ' ' a song by Clement Scott and Isidore de Lara, and for "Sing Me to Sleep," by Clifton Bingham and Edwin Green. As time went on, he called upon me less and less for these rest ful melodies. When they had at length served his need, in characteristic manner of not looking backward, he was through with the songs.
Concerning the world voyage, he wrote to Anna Strun- sky:
"You remember the Spray in which you sailed with me one day? Well, this new boat will be six or seven feet longer than the Spray, and I am going to sail her around the world, writing as I go. Expect to be gone on trip four or five years — around the Horn, Cape of Good Hope, Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Aus tralia, and everywhere else. ' '
Jack's "dream of rest" had more than once, in my hear ing, been associated with death itself. Never was he so happy, he who at the same time so exalted life, that he could not descant upon the repose of death. One of my earliest memories of him is such a remark as this :
SUMMER AT GLEN ELLEN 75
"To me the idea of death is sweet. Think of it — to lie down and go into the dark out of all the struggle and pain of living — to go to sleep and rest, always to be resting. Oh, I do not want to die now — I'd fight like the devil to keep alive. . . . But when I come to die, it will be smiling at death, I promise you."
Early in our married life I entreated :
u Don't, don't plan so many great things that you will always have to slave for the means. Make your money and ' loaf ' for a while. ' ' But in all the years we were together, the day of living rest fled before him. His vast plannings widened as widened his fund of knowledge — there was no horizon at any point of his compass. So I came to give up, and cooperate with him wherever his ambition chose to express itself.
Yes, Jack was always in debt ; but never to the point of failing to see his way out. Which, after all, is merely good business. He was aware of his augmenting earning power ; but timid ones lacking his vision refrained from depending upon him because their prognosis was that he would fail through poor judgment. And yet, after his death, as many as depended upon him in lifetime are still cared for by his foresight — even more than those. Any one who gave voice to the opinion that Jack London was a poor business man was a source of irritation to him, such was his realization his own efficiency.
CHAPTER XXVH
SECOND MAEKIAGE ; LECTURE TRIP ; BOSTON 1905-1906
II is of record, in the files of every American newspaper, that the final decree in the Jack London divorce was granted on November 18, 1905 — this after a separation of two and a half years between the parties thereto. Jack had once said to me :
" If a divorce had not been allowed me, I would not have given you up — that would be unthinkable. We would have gone somewhere, if you would, and I think you would — on the other side of the world, and dignifiedly lived out our lives, ' on the square, like a true married pair. ' ' '
But this was thought of by him only as an extreme. For, as in most considerations, Jack supported law, holding that society rested upon monogamy; though that all-round mind of his as firmly stood behind his biology with regard to man's polygamous place in the animal king dom. "And anyway, our love and mateship is of the stamp that bonds cannot tire, thank God, ' ' he would rejoin. Then, in a note : "We will respect the world and the way of the world. "
Once, out of a spell of despondency before he came to Glen Ellen, Jack wrote me a letter which I give below, so that all may have access to the solid foundation upon which reason stood, upholding romantic love :
1 ' Dear, dear Woman :
"Somehow, you have been very much in my thoughts these last few days, and in inexpressible ways you are dearer to me.
76
SECOND MAEEIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 77
"I will not speak of the mind-qualities, the soul-qualities — for somehow, in these, in ways beyond my speech and thought, you have suddenly loomed colossal in comparison with the ruck of women.
"Oh, believe me, in these last several days I have been doing some thinking, some comparing — and I have been made aware, not merely of pride, and greater pride, in you, but of delight in you. Dear, dear Woman, Wednesday night, how I delighted in you, for instance ! Of course, I liked the look of you ; but outside of that, I delighted — and not so much in what you said or did, as in what you did not say or do. You, just you — with strength and surety, and power to hold me to you for that old peace and rest which you have always had for me. I am more confident now than a year ago that we shall be happy together. I am rationally confident.
"God! and you have grit! I love you for it. You are my comrade for it. And I mean the grit of the soul.
"And the lesser grit — you have it, too. I think of you swim ming, and jumping, and diving, and my arms go out to the dear, sensitive, gritty body of yours, as my arms go out to the gritty soul of you within that body.
"'My first thought in the morning is of you, my last thought at night. My arms are about you, and I kiss you with my soul.
"Your Own Man. "
But he was also the mad lover, gloriously, boundlessly so. As witness this, written three weeks before our wed ding, after he had gone East :
"Blessed Mate:
"I do not think that I have yet parted with you, so full am I, heart and soul, with the vision of you.
"Standards are nothing, judgments are nothing; I need not reason about you except in the simplest way, and that way is that you mean everything to me and are more to me than any woman I have ever known.
"Your own man,
"The Wolf."
Editors have repeatedly approached me on the subject of publishing Jack London 's letters to myself. All argu-
78 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
ments were barren of result, save one: that Jack London 's love nature is little known or reckoned with in the aver age estimate of him ; or, worse, misunderstood. This slant of argument of course had not been unthought of by ine. And because no just study of the man can otherwise be made, I present, throughout this book, the letters I have chosen from the uncounted ones in my possession. Below I quote the very first in which he mentions his regard, some thing that had theretofore been undreamed of by me. We had been discussing something about my own make-up which he said had always eluded him — and I had gathered that it was not especially complimentary. My curiosity being aroused, I wrote and asked him if he could not defi nitely word his feeling. Here is the reply :
''I see that what I spoke of worries you. It would worry me equally, I am sure, did it come from a friend. But the very point of it was that I did not know what it was. If I had, I should not have brought it up. If you will recollect, it was one of the lesser puzzles of your make-up to which I merely casually referred. None of your guesses hits it : I have seen and measured your ' in ordinate fondness' for pretty things and for the correct thing. These are logical and consistent in you, and the fact that they are arouses nothing but satisfaction in me. I referred to something I did not know, something I felt as I felt the vision of you crying in the grass. Perhaps I used the word 'conventionality' for lack of adequate expression, for the same reason that I spoke from lack of comprehension. A something felt of something no more than potential in you and of which I had seen no evidences. If you fail to follow me I am indeed lost, for I have strained to give definite utterance to a thing remote and obscure.
"You speak of frankness. I passionately desire it, but have come to shrink from the pain of intimacies which bring the greater frankness forth. Superficial frankness is comparatively easy, bu one must pay for stripping off the dry husks of clothing, the self- conventions which masque the soul, and for standing out naked in> the eyes of one who sees. I have paid, and like a child who has been burned by fire, I shrink from paying too often. You surely
SECOND MAEBIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 79
have known such franknesses and the penalties you paid. When I found heart's desire speaking clamorously to you, I turned my eyes away and strove to go on with my superficial self, talking, I know not what. And I did it consciously — partly so, perhaps — • and I did it automatically, instinctively. Memories of old pains, incoherent hurts, a welter of remembrances, compelled me to close the mouth whereby my inner self was shouting at you a summons bound to give hurt and to bring hurt in return.
"I wonder if I make you understand. You see, in the objective facts of my life I have always been frankness personified. That I tramped or begged or festered in jail or slum meant nothing by the telling. But over the lips of my inner self I had long since put a seal — a seal indeed rarely broken, in moments when one caught fleeting glimpses of the hermit who lived inside. How can I begin to explain? . . . My child life was uncongenial. There was little responsive around me. I learned reticence, an inner reticence. I went into the world early, and I adventured among different classes. A newcomer in any class, I naturally was reticent con cerning my real self, which such a class could not understand, while I was superficially loquacious in order to make my entry into such a class popular and successful. And so it went, from class to class, from clique to clique. No intimacies, a continuous hardening, a superficial loquacity so clever, and an inner reticence so secret, that the one was taken for the real, and the other never dreamed of.
"Ask people who know me to-day, what I am. A rough, savage fellow, they will say, who likes prizefights and brutalities, who has a clever turn of pen, a charlatan's smattering of art, and the inevitable deficiencies of the untrained, unrefined, self-made man which he strives with a fair measure of success to hide beneath an attitude of roughness and unconventionality. Do I endeavor to unconvince them? It's so much easier to leave their convictions alone.
"And now the threads of my tangled discourse draw together. I have experienced the greater frankness, several times, under provocation, with a man or two, and a woman or two, and the oc casions have been great joy-givers, as they have also been great sorrow-givers. I do not wish they had never happened, but I re coil unconsciously from their happening again. It is so much easier
80 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all, but still, between prizefights and kites and one thing and another I manage to fool my inner self pretty well. Poor inner self! I wonder if it will atrophy, dry up some day and blow away.
" This is the first serious talk I have had about myself for a weary while. I hope my flood of speech has not bored you.
"When may I see you?"
When, so shortly afterward, we had discovered, almost as with love-at-first-sight, the great glory that was rising in us, this was his next message — a burst of sunshine after dark days :
1 1 1 am dumb this morning. I do not think. I do not think at all. Talk of analysis! I should have to get a year or so between me and the last of you in order to generalize, in order to answer the everlasting query: 'What is it all aloutf
"What IS it all about? I do not know. I know only that I am off my feet and drifting with the tide; drifting and singing, but it is a flood tide and the song a psean.
"Younger? I am twenty years younger. So young that I am too lazy to work. I am lying here in the hammock thinking dreamily of you. No, I am not lazy at all. I am doing no work because I am incapable of doing it. Wherever I look I see you. I close my eyes and hear you, and still see you. I try to gather my thoughts together and I think — You. But it is not a thought — it is a picture of you, a vision — a something as objective and real as when I used to see you crying in the grass.
"An hour has passed since I wrote the last word. I am still in the hammock, and what I have written is the history of that hour, as it is of all the other hours.
1 ' Well, they are good hours. Though I never saw you again, the memory of them would be sweet. To have lived them, here in the hammock, is to have lived well and high.' '
And again: "This I know — that you will come to me, some time, some where. It is inevitable. The hour is already too big to become anything less than the biggest. We cannot fail, diminish, fall back into night with the dawn thus in our eyes.
190G. JACK LONDON AND ALEXANDER IRVINE AT YALE UNIVERSITY
SECOND MARRIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 81
For it is no false dawn. Our eyes are dazzled with it, and our souls. We know not what, and yet WE KNOW. The life that is in us knows. It is crying out, and we cannot close our ears to its cry. It is reaching out yearning arms that know the truth and secret of living as we, apart from it and striving to reason it, do not know. 0 my dear, we give and live, we withhold and die.
"You may laugh and protest, but you ARE big. A thousand things prove it to me — to me who never needed the proof. I knew — knew from the first. I, who have felt and sounded my way through life like some mariner on a fog-bound coast, have never felt nor sounded when with you. I knew you from the first, knew you and accepted you. This is why, when the time for speech came, there was no need for speech.
"I do not know if I shall see you to-night, and, such is the certitude of our tangled destiny, I hardly think I care. Did I doubt, it would be different. But it must be so, I know, not sooner or later, but soon. It is the will of your life and mine that it shall be so, and we are not so weak that we cannot keep faith with the truth and the best that is in us.
"You are more kin to me than any woman I have ever known. "
The next letter gives a deathless picturing of Jack Lon don's loneliness of old and his new-found happiness :
* ' Do you know a happy moment you have given me — a wonder ful moment ? When you sat looking into my eyes and repeated to me : * You are more kin to me than any woman I have ever known. ' That those words should have shaped to you the one really great thought in the letter, the thought most vital to me and to my love for you, stamped our kinship irrevocably. Surely we are very One, you and I !
"Shall I tell you a dream of my boyhood and manhood? — a dream which in my rashness I thought had dreamed itself out and beyond all chance of realization? Let me. I do not know, now, what my other loves have been, how much of depth and worth there were in them; but this I know, and knew then, and know always — that there was a something greater I yearned after, a some thing that beat upon my imagination with a great glowing light and made those woman-loves wan things and pale, oh so pitiably wan and pale !
82 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
"I have held a woman in my arms who loved me and whom I loved, and in that love-moment have told her, as one will tell a dead dream, of this great thing I had looked for, looked for vainly, and the quest of which I had at last abandoned. And the woman grew passionately angry, and I should have wondered had I not known how pale and weak it made all of her that she could ever give me.
"For I had dreamed of the great Man-Comrade. I, who have been comrades with many men, and a good comrade I believe, have never had a comrade at all, and in the deeper significance of it have never been able to be the comrade I was capable of being. Always it was here this one failed, and there that one failed until all failed. And then, one day, like Omar, ' clear-eyed I looked, and laughed, and sought no more. ' It was plain that it was not possible. I could never hope to find that comradeship, that closeness, that sympathy and understanding, whereby the man and I might merge and become one in understanding and sympathy for love and life.
"How can I say what I mean? This man should be so much one with me that we could never misunderstand. He should love the flesh, as he should the spirit, honoring and loving each and giving each its due. There should be in him both fact and fancy. He should be practical insofar as the mechanics of life were con cerned; and fanciful, imaginative, sentimental where the thrill of life was concerned. He should be delicate and tender, brave and game ; sensitive as he pleased in the soul of him, and in the body of him unfearing and unwitting of pain. He should be warm with the glow of great adventure, unafraid of the harshnesses of life and its evils, and knowing all its harshness and evil.
"Do you see, my dear one, the man I am trying to picture for you! — an all-around man, who could weep over a strain of music, a bit of verse, and who could grapple with the fiercest life and fight good-naturedly or like a fiend as the case might be. ... the man who could live at the same time in the realms of fancy and of fact ; who, knowing the frailties and weaknesses of life, could look with frank fearless eyes upon them ; a man who had no small- nesses or meannesses, who could sin greatly, perhaps, but who could as greatly forgive.
"I spend myself in verbiage, trying to express in a moment or two, on a sheet of paper, what I have been years and years a- dreaming.
SECOND MAEEIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 83
"As I say, I abandoned the dream of the great Man-Comrade who was to live Youth with me, perpetual Youth with me, down to the grave. And then You came, after your trip abroad, into my life. Before that I had met you quite perfunctorily, a couple of times, and liked you. But after that we met in fellowship, though somewhat distant and not so very frequently, and I liked you more and more. It was not long before I began to find in you the some thing all-around that I had failed to find in any man; began to grow aware of that kinship that was comradeship, and to wish you were a man. And there was a loneliness about you that appealed to me. This, perhaps, by some unconscious cerebration, may have given rise to my vision of you in the grass.
"And then, by the time I was convinced of the possibility of a great comradeship between us, and of the futility of attempting to realize it, something else began to creep in — the woman in you twining around my heart. It was inevitable. But the wonder of it is that in a woman I should find, not only the comradeship and kinship I had sought in men alone, but the great woman-love as well; and this woman is YOU, YOU!"
Let himself say what Love meant to him :
"Once you strove to write me a love letter — with tolerable suc cess. But you have now written me a love letter. When it came this morning, and I read it, I was mad — mad with sheer joy and desire. The bonds tighten, my love; we grow closer and closer. Ah, God. You are so close to me now, so dear, so dear. You are in my thought all the time. I am swimming, and as I poise for a dive, I ^ause a fleeting second to think of you. No matter what I do, no,;, I make the little pause and think of you. I do it when I am working, when I am reading, when people are talking to me. At all times it is you, you, you.
"Love? I thought I was capable of a great love, as one will think, you know. But I never dreamed so great a love as this. I have stood on my own feet all the years of my life, was independent, self-sufficient. Men and women were pleasant, of course, but they were not necessary. I could get along without them. I could not conceive a time when I could not get along without them. But the time has come. Without you I am nowhere, nothing, You
84 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
are the breath of life in my nostrils. Without you, and without hope of having you, I should surely die. Oh, woman, woman, how I do love you.
"I have no doubt, now, of your love for me. You do love me, must love, or life is false as hell and there is no sanity in anything. But I do not measure your love thus. I just know you love me.
' * I write this while people wait ; and I kiss you thus, and thus, on the lips, and hair, and brow — thus, and thus. ' '
Before even dreaming of coming into the country to live, Jack had pledged himself to lecture in the east and mid dle west. He had never really enjoyed public speaking, but was bent upon hunting a protracted session of it — a first and last tour. Moreover, and very important, here was op portunity to spread propaganda for the Cause, and it was stipulated with the Lyceum Bureau that he should be at liberty to expound Socialism wherever and whenever it did not conflict with his regular dates.
As our Indian Summer drew on, however, more and more he fretted that he must pull up stakes and tear him self from the happy camp that had wrought so marvelously upon him. But the third week in October saw him on his strenuous way, having demanded expenses for two, that Manyoungi might relieve him of all distracting personal details. My face laughed into his from the inside cover of that thin gold watch I had given him ; and one unf orgot- ten item of luggage was an exquisite miniature of his two little girls which he had had painted by Miss Wishaar months before.
Shortly after his departure, I, too, did some packing — of a simple trousseau in the pretty bureau-trunk Jack had presented me. This trunk was the result of one of his ad vertisement-answering hazards, as was one of the early models of wardrobe-trunk. The latter was so tall that, after expending more than its original cost in excess-length charges, he had the thing cut down to regulation sige.
In Newton, Iowa, I visited my friend Mrs. Will Me-
SECOND MAEEIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 85
Murray, for a November 25 lecture had been scheduled for the college town of Grinnell, but a short distance from New ton; and it was our intention to be married at the Mc- Murrays' and spend with them an idle week occurring in the tour. But the lecturer, fulfilling an engagement with the People's Institute in Elyria, Ohio, upon receiving a tele gram from California that he was entirely free, decided on the spur of the moment not to delay until the Grinnell date.
On the eve of the 19th, I had his wire in hand for me to be in Chicago the next night, since he was to pass through on the way to lecture in Wisconsin. Being Sunday, he was obliged to arrange a special license with the County Clerk of Cook County. And when in obedience to his summons I stepped off my train in the Windy City at nine of the eve ning, three hours behind-time, a very weary but happily patient bridegroom elect was pacing the station pavement. In his pocket was the license, in mine my mother's wedding- ring ; and at the curb waited two hansom cabs, one contain ing an interested and beaming Manyoungi, who wanted to see an American wedding.
The informal suddenness and speed of this termination to our courtship savored of the age of chivalry, when knight- errant with doughty right arm slung his lady love across the saddle bow on a foaming black charger. Let none say that ours was less romantic. What mattered it that our vows were spoken in a civil ceremony! After Notary Public J. J. Grant had made us one, we drove to the old Victoria Hotel where Jack interlined 'Mrs. Jack London" between his and Manyoungi *s signatures registered the previous day. I meanwhile, by another entrance, slipped upstairs.
No one connected intimately with this "most advertised writer in America" could hope to escape the more or less notorious consequences. By me it had to be regarded as part of the game, if I were to observe my responsibilities. Therefore my philosophy of life had fortified me against
86 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
the worst. Before Jack could procure his key, he was way laid by three newspapermen — but they chanced to be merely in search of items about his trip and his books. But a fourth had discovered the hardly-dry interpolation on the register, and hovered anxiously about the quartette to learn if he was the only sleuth who had made the find. Jack sensed the situation, and presently excused himself and ran upstairs. In three minutes the four reporters were at our door, imploring an interview. Eeenforcements began to ar rive, and into the small hours besieged by knocks, notes, telegrams, cards, telephone calls from the hotel office — streams of entreaties in every guise flowing under the door and over wire and transom. To all of which my husband remained deaf and dumb, for he must scrupulously redeem his promise made months before, to give the Hearst papers the " scoop " in return for their discretion. This he had done on Saturday, and the Chicago American city editor, Mr. Harstone, was instrumental in obtaining the special li cense; also, with a reporter, Mr. Harstone had served as witness to the ceremony.
The appeal which came nearest to stirring Jack was the whispered and written : i i Come on through with the news, old man — be merciful; we've got to get it. You're a news paperman yourself, you know. Come across and help us out."
When the Chicago American had appeared Monday morning with the heavily leaded item, the disappointed dailies sent representatives to call upon the bride and groom; and I must take occasion to congratulate those gentlemen upon the good-natured courtesy which cloaked their chagrin. Nevertheless, the end was not yet. Vengeance was theirs. On Tuesday morning, coming back into Chi cago from Geneva Falls, Wisconsin, on the business-men's train, we had slipped into a rearmost seat. What was our horror to behold, upthrust before the greedy eyes of "commuters" the entire length of the car, full-page photo-
SECOND MARRIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 87
graphs of ourselves with large headlines announcing Jack London's marriage "Invalid."
"What the hell!" spluttered Jack, laughing in spite of himself. "The other sheets are getting even. We're in for it!" and thereupon delivered himself: "A fellow's got to pay through the nose for being loyal to his own crowd!" They won't stop to consider that I'd have done the same for them, if most of my newspaper work had been for them!"
The "other sheets" had merely endeavored to tangle the divorce laws of California and Illinois; but a noted Judge pronounced all straight. The Chicago American gave due space to the refutation, and we went on our path rejoic ing. But for weeks we could not pick up a paper, great or small, that did not contain publicity of one sort or another concerning the most advertised writer in America — whether reviews of his books, of our marriage, of the lectures, the round-the-world yacht voyage, the Ranch, and what not.
Jack maintained to all interviewers, ' ' If my marriage is not legal in Illinois, I shall re-marry my wife in every state in the Union ! ' '
A comical thing happened in California, when one of Jack's little-girl swimming pupils hurriedly scanned the title, * ' Jack London 's Marriage Invalid. ' ' Hastening to her mother, in accents of distress she cried:
"Oh, mama, mama, how awful! Mr. London did not marry Miss Kittredge after all! This paper says he's married an invalid!"
One day, from Lynette McMurray's parlor, there issued Jack's irrepressible snicker, increasing to a wild call for me:
"Oh, I've got you now, Mate Woman! You can never look me in the face again after you hear this!" And pro ceeded to read aloud a libelous squib from a Washington, Iowa, weekly paper. It was to the effect that the "ugly- faced girl from California, so ugly that the children on the streets of Newton ran screaming to their mothers when-
88 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
ever she passed by, had married Jack London. That it was reported the pair were soon to go to sea in a small boat, to be gone for years. That it would be a mercy to everybody if they were drowned at sea and never came back. ' '
"Yon think I'm making it up, don't you!" Jack read my scornful face. "But here — look at it! — why, the old sour-ball — the wretched old slob! I wonder what he'd had for breakfast!"
But it was I who first happened upon a reference to Jack London as being possessed of a ' ' bilaterally asymetrical countenance," and it may correctly be assumed that I pressed the same home with all dispatch.
"I'm NOT bilaterally asymetrical, though," indignantly he defended; "and anyway, I don't know what bilaterally asymetrical means. Take a look at me," studying himself in my hand-mirror. "I'd say my features are fairly straight . . . The man that said bilaterally asymetrical was looking for a chance to work off the expression!"
The time Jack was really sorry for his wife was in 1909, in Hobart, Tasmania, when another reporter with something funny to work off, wrote: "Jack London's speech is as that of an American with an Oxford education ; but as for Mrs. London, hers is Americanese, undefiled, and unfiled." What irritated Jack in this instance was: "But you didn't open your head; and the man scarcely saw you, there in the dark of the carriage ! ' '
From November 26 until December 7, on which latter day Jack spoke at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, we shared the journey, and a unique one it was for me. Seldom was I so tired from travel that I missed a lecture, whether upon Socialism, or his experiences as tramp, Klondiker, War Correspondent, Sailor, or Writer. I never wearied of seeing Jack step out upon stage or platform, with that modest-seeming, almost bashful boyishness which so charmed his audiences, and yet which so quickly, when he
SECOND MARRIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 89
raised his splendid head and launched into any serious theme, changed to the imperiousness of certitude. Once, well appreciative though I was of his beauty in this one of his myriad phases, I remonstrated :
"I wonder if you realize how forbidding you look when you walk out of the wings. Your expression is positively haughty! — as if you considered your audience mere dust under your feet!"
He laughed outright.
" Why, I don't feel that way at all, of course. Don't for get — I'm making up my mind what I'm going to say, and really not thinking of my hearers — busy with my thought. And then, too, ' ' he figured it out, ' * it may be a left-over of the system by which I first overcame stage-fright. It was something like this: I've got something to say. I've got to say it. I'm going to say it the best way I can, even if it 's not oratory. If I try to make a good speech and fail — well, I shall have failed, that's all. I very soon had de cided not to take too seriously any failure to speak gracious ly. What of it ! I said. I won't be the only one ; others have fallen down and why should I be proud! And anyway, diffidence arises from conceit, I don't care who disagrees with me ... So remember, Mate, when I assume what you are pleased to call my imperial pose, it is done quite un consciously, being an outgrowth of my early search after a shield for backwardness. I am not consciously thinking of myself at all ; I am busy with my thought and the imminent business of putting my thought in the best way possible."
At the next lecture, when he moved out upon the boards he looked over at my box, his face breaking into that un studied morning smile that wrought lovers out of enemies, and a little rustle passed through the house as if wings were ruffling and stretching. But in a flash the smile had fled behind the lordly mask of his concentration, and I knew I had ceased to exist for him.
But never, in any presentment of himself, was he so
90 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
splendid, so noble, as when, with starry eyes, he flamed out the vision of his conversion to the only religion he was ever to know: "All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism and effort, and my days were sunshine and star- shine, all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and\ blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's Own Grail, the warm, human, long-suffering and maltreated but to be rescued and saved at the last. ' '
Jack swore he was getting enough train-travel to last all his life, and loathed it ever after. But very merrily, whether in Pullman or jerky day-coach, we put in .hours that might otherwise have been irksome, reading aloud, playing casino and cribbage, writing letters, and altogether enjoy ing our companionship. Moreover, and blessed assurance of its continuance undimmed, we respected each other's solitude and independence — Jack at intervals spending hours in the smoker, listening profitably to the conversa tion of his own sex, or napping to make up for broken nights of travel. The all-around ' ' good time ' ' we invariably found together is best pointed by an incident several years later, when we were returning home from South America by way of the Gulf and New Orleans. As usual, we were bound up in each other and the interest of our occupations, at cards, sharing in books, the scenery, or in speculation upon the passengers. During one of Jack's absences, I was resting with closed eyes, when a beautiful matron in the section ahead, whom we had noticed with two younger women, came and sat beside me :
"I hope you'll not think me too rude," she opened, "but I want to ask a very personal question. Are you really Mrs. Jack London?"
There was suclj entire absence of offense in her eager, frank address that I could only laugh delightedly while assuring her this bliss had been mine for four years. But again she pressed:
"Are you really she?" and before I could protest in sur-
SECOND MARRIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 91
prise, she hurried on, l ' My daughters and I have been dis cussing you two with the greatest curiosity, and said we were sure there must be some mistake — the thing is in credible; married people don't act as you do. Never have we seen a married couple, except possibly on their honey moon, have such a good time together 1"
All I could do, in return, was to assure her that we were on our honeymoon.
From Brunswick, where Jack averred to President Hyde that if his college days could come again he would attend Bowdoin, we filled another lecture-blank week with my father's people in Ellsworth and Mt. Desert Island, Maine. A day here, a day there, in the dear homesteads that had once been my homes for a long free year, we spent with this and that aunt or cousin — solid hearts of the very granite of old "State o' Maine," with their own glow and sparkle that renders them instantly aware of sham of any kind. One and all they pronounced the captivating boy I had wedded, with his irradiation of sweetness and sympa thy and the open boyish face and heart of him, "Just one of us!" and called him their own forever and ever. Jack in turn dubbed them "salt of the earth," and gave them of his best.
Around Bar Harbor ("Somesville"), West Eden and Northeast Harbor, in an ideal "Down East" winter, we drove over the snow-packed, glinting roads that skirt the toothed coast of this isle of seafarers. Oddly enough to those who think of Jack London in terms of icy Alaska with its white ways of transportation, Jack had never be fore driven in a sleigh. So varied had been his adventures, that it was a prize of life for me to participate with him in an unknown one. Smothered to the ears in a borrowed coon-coat, head and hands snug in sealskin cap and gloves he had bought in Boston, he took keen interest in manag ing a span of spirited blacks harnessed to a smart " cutter, "
92 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
their red-flaring nostrils tossing white plumes of steam in the crackling, sun-gilt air.
Again in Boston, we became the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Merritt Sheldon, in their handsome colonial home at Newton — with whom I had gone to Europe. Jack's ad vent must, have been an illuminating if not disturbing one to them, for many and ofttimes weird characters found their way up the driveway to the pillared portico of the lofty white house on a hillock. And of course newspapermen came and went. One of those my husband hoped to meet again some time, preferably in a dark alley where a nose might be tweaked unseen by the police ; for, in reply to this man's question as to how it seemed to be the wife of a celebrity, he had made me deliver the ecstatic cry, "It's just grand ! ' '
It was nothing unusual for some inebriated derelict to press the button upon the stroke of midnight ; and once an indubitably insane crank perturbed the early hours and the housemaid. But our host and hostess were ideal, spar ing no pains to place their home and themselves at their guests' disposal in every finest sense and detail, and ap parently enjoying it all thoroughly.
Jack was driven nearly to the limit of endurance in the week before the twenty-seventh, when, with a holiday month in store, we sailed for Jamaica. Boston cameras pic tured him hollow-eyed; but be he driven or not driven, I came to learn that he was wont to look other than his fresh, virile self whenever cities laid clutch upon him. Never did he thrive in a great metropolis.
In Tremont Temple, and in historic Faneuil Hall, under the noted Gilbert Stuart of the Father of His Country, to packed audiences Jack London sent forth his voice for the Cause. In the latter auditorium, that sweet and unvan- quished fighter, "Mother Jones," marched up the central aisle to the rostrum, and greeted the young protagonist
SECOND MAEBIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 93
of her holy mission with a sounding kiss on either cheek. He spoke also at Socialist Headquarters.
The Intercollegiate Socialist Society had been organized for a month or two, and the Harvard members got together and saw to it that the first President, Jack London, should be heard in Harvard Union.
Aside from Mrs. Sheldon, myself, and one or two others, there were no women present in Harvard Union that night. We sat with Frank Sheldon and Gelett Burgess in a tiny gallery hung upon the rear wall of the high hall. A thrill ing sight it was, that throng of collegians, not only those crowded both seated and standing on the floor below, but the scores hanging by their eyebrows to window case ments, welcoming Jack with round upon round of ringing shouts and cheers — an ovation, the papers did not hesitate to call it.
He gave them, unsparingly, all and more than they had bargained for, straight from the shoulder, jolting " Revolu tion" into them. Once, when a statement of starvation facts, concerning the Chicago slums, was so awful as to strike a number of the chesty young bloods as a bit melo dramatic, a laugh started. Jack's face set like a vise, and he hung over the edge of the platform, a challenge to their better part flaming from black-blue eyes and ready, merci less tongue. Be it said that the response was instantaneous and whole-hearted, the house rising as one man and echoing to the applause until I, for one onlooker, choked and filled with emotion at the human fellowship of it. At the close of the lecture, Jack and Mr. Sheldon were carried off to the fraternity houses and royally entertained the rest of the night.
One afternoon, at the request of the Boston Anverican, Jack attended and wrote up a performance of the Holy Jumpers, whose breezy antics, I dare opine, he did not re gard as any more outlandish than certain metaphysical
94 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
gymnastics he wotted of — and thought them far more whole somely cheerful.
Still another afternoon, we put in three breathless hours in Thomas W. Lawson's private office at Young's Hotel, entirely absorbed (in a room peopled with replicas of elephants of every size, breed, and composition), in that brilliant and energetic gentleman's proposed "cure" for the ills and shams of modern society. Be it known, that the assertive and vehement conversationalist Jack Lon don was also a prince of listeners. His was the perfection of attention to any speaker who was worth while. True, he seldom squandered precious time upon one who was not, but would proceed to harry unrelentingly until he had routed the other; after which he would try to make up in various ways for his aggressiveness.
One of our most interesting acquaintances in Boston was Dr. George W. Galvin, staunch Socialist and clever surgeon ; and one day he arranged to take us through the Massachus etts General Hospital. Once inside, would we care to see an operation! Dr. Eichardson was in the theater and about to remove an appendix. While my lips formed Yes, swiftly I roved my adventurously promising career beside the bright comet I had taken unto myself for better or worse, a future wherein I might be required to reckon with singu lar emergencies in war or travel by sea and land. I must never fail my man who despised a coward beneath all things under the sun. Here was chance for a certain kind of prepa ration. Nerves I confessed in abundance : had I nerve also ?
And so, curious concomitant of a honeymoon, I wit nessed the masterly elimination of an appendix from a patient who bore startling facial resemblance to my own husband; thence to a second operating theater where we were present at the sanguinary trepanning, for tumor of the brain, of a woman's skull — "a Sea-Wolf operation, eh!" Dr. Galvin chuckled.
Through all of which, placing myself in a rigidly scien-
SECOND MARRIAGE; LECTURE TRIP 95
tific frame of mind, I emerged with flying colors, to Jack's congratulation. Two months later, never having viewed a corpse in my life, except when too young to remember, I was introduced to such for the first time — when they ushered me into the dissecting chamber of the University of Chicago, where some dozen or so cadavers stiffly bade greeting to my unaccustomed gaze. These two trials, trials in a number of senses, reenforced by a day among the bleeding horrors of the stockyards in the same City, grad uated Jack London's wife forever out of apprehension as to similar tests that might overtake her.
CHAPTER XXVIII
JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YORK CITY 30th Year
THE Admiral Farragut, in ballast, rode high and rolled prodigiously. Our cabin, well aft, suffered the full wallowing effect of the vessel's "sitting down in the sea- hollows, " and I, for the first time in adult life, fell violently sick. Great mortification was mine, before a sailor hus band, who eyed me with surprise and some misgiving, look ing to our aqueous future. But on the third day out, he sat him down in the stateroom and regarded me, , with eyes in which there was the pleasure of a discovery:
"I've been learning something about myself, and I may say about you, ' ' he launched forth. ' ' I never thought I had it in me to feel any accession of tenderness toward a sea sick woman ! But somehow, I seem to love you more than ever before — I don't know why, unless because each new en vironment, whatever it may be, seems to make you still dearer to me."
Inside the month, crossing in a dirty little Spanish steamer from Jamaica to Cuba, to our mutual astonishment, Jack himself went to pieces. A slight shock precipitated the attack. Only one steamer chair being visible, we had appropriated it ; and in a heavy surge the flimsy thing col lapsed. A moment's pause, and Jack picked himself up and walked aft without a word. He did not return. In quisitive, I went to investigate, and halted petrified to be hold my hardened tar, hanging, green-pallid and audible, over the stern-rail, thoroughly seasick for the initial time
96
JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YOEK CITY 97
in his nautical history. And in the years to come, he ac cepted a recurrence as a matter of course in rough weather. He likened the phenomenon of mal de mer to our native poison-oak — catch it just once, and immunity is a lost bless ing. In passing, I must state that Jack continued immune to that irritating .scourge of California, poison-oak.
The Admiral Farragut docked at Port Antonio, Jamaica, on New Year's morning, 1906. In the harbor was anchored the Howard Gould yacht, and at' the Hotel Titchfield we made the acquaintance of Ella Wheeler Wilcox (whom Jack had championed so valiantly of old to the Lily Maid), and her husband, Robert.
In the afternoon I had my first revel in milk-warm, tropical waters, coral-girt, and we made sport for our party by diving for coins and practising life-saving as we had done in Wake Robin pool. The next day was spent in the saddle. Our mounts were spindly, blood-bay race-horses, and Jack's never for a moment let out of our minds the fact that he had been first under the wire in the previous day's races. But we saw the more, by our involuntary speed, of the British-neat island paradise, exploring the town itself, a pineapple plantation, and the romantic hill-stronghold of Moortown, still inhabited by the maroons — descendants of Spanish slaves.
The sharpest impressions carried away of that journey, in our first foreign clime together, were of the buxom, broad-smiling, .broad-hipped negro wenches, basket-on- head, met on the dustless mountain roads that were in reality fern-hedged boulevards; the spiritual featured Hindoo women, weighed with their family wealth of silver adornment, specimens of which we purchased; the foolish luncheon out of queer, tempting tins, accompanied by Eng lish "biscuits," consumed while we dangled blissful heels from the counter of a little wayside store with a superb sea-view leagues below, the ebony proprietor and his indo lent friends loafing genially about. But clearest of all re-
98 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
mained the raffish spectacle, at Moortown, of a home-made merry-go-round. It was weather-grayed, witchy, rickety, and ridden by grinning black natives to a rhythmic chant from their own throats that affected us strangely — as if by some potent incantation dragging into the sunlight of civili zation the most abysmal of racial reticences. It bestirred that mental unease which sometimes overtakes one who listens over-long to the primitive, disturbing call of modern ' ' jazz ' ' orchestration.
Leaving Port Antonio on the third day, by train for Buff Bay, we were there met by a dusky guide with horses, we having chosen this route across the green, fern-forested mountains to Kingston. It was all * i unspeakably beautiful, ' ' I read in a pocket diary. We lunched and siesta 'd at Cedarhurst, an English plantation, where Barbara Francis brewed incomparable coffee from beans which, by a true lady of the land, are roasted to a crisp for each meal. Three large cupfuls, black and strong, I, Jack's "insom- niast," dared to tuck away; and three long hours after wards, I, the insomniast, slumbered peacefully. "Why, our coffee cures insomnia," crooned Barbara Francis, as she snuggled me into a downy four-poster from ' ' Home. " i i It 's the way we roast it and percolate it, I fancy — besides being the best coffee in the world to begin with ! ' '
Her husband led us about the plantation before we swung again into our saddles for the next lap, and Jack, irresistibly enthusiastic, made it very plain to me how coffee must be served on the Eanch when we should go to housekeeping.
Out we fared into a sunset of tropically crude blue and copper and rose, slipping through swift twilight into starlit blue dark. Trustingly behind the mellow-throated guide our sure-footed little beasts dropped steeply down a frag rant trail, lighted fitfully by darting fireflies, into Chester Vale. Here, at Sedgwick's, the very picture of an ancient, rambling English country home, we spent the night. ' You
JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YORK CITY 99
couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile," Jack quoted, com ing beside me where I was examining my first Broadwood pianoforte. "Try it, do." But the stately relic answered back in tones probably such as Kipling's Broadwood might have rendered up had it been "packed" to the humid river region he rimed with "mile."
In the dewy, singing morning, it was boots and saddles over the Blue Ridge Range — through Hardware Gap, Silver Hill Gap, Greenwich, Newcastle Barracks, Gordontown, sometimes in lanes and driveways made especially beautiful by tree-ferns and crimson hibiscus blossoming tree-high, and into Kingston by the sea. Here at the Park Lodge Hotel, our first caller was Ben Tillett, M. P. and labor leader, he and Jack of course being known to each other.
Ah, it was so softly exciting, so wondrous, seeing the world together, all the glamorousness enhanced by that lovely old hostelry with its long French windows that let in the scented tropic air. My husband, who had pleasured exceedingly in my wintry Boston shopping for "flimsies" to be donned in the warmer latitudes, now had the satisfac tion of seeing the light apparel in use — then, as always in the future, appreciative and critical of every detail of my wardrobe. Nothing would do but he must take me curio-seeking in quaint shops, more particularly for a be- jeweled, flexible silver girdle of Hindoo origin, and snaky bracelets to match.
Only one incident arose to mar the holiday perfection. It was on the very night of arrival that I came abruptly upon the stone wall of one of Jack's self-styled "disgusts." In review, I cannot place the cause — perhaps it was some hitch on Manyoungi's part regarding the luggage, or Jack's dinner-clothes ; at least, I saw no large concern back of his silent anger, unless . . . unless, indeed, some trifle had connected his memory with some unhappy occurrence in his past. But it was black, that mood, from whatever deeps it rose ; and ruthlessly he sent me, alone, to the viny bower
100 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
that was the hotel's dining-hall, in a court of flowers that screened the musicians, to keep an engagement we both had made with a fellow traveler from Boston.
Puzzled and hurt I was, but held my peace, and made smooth wifely excuses for a severe headache that was not altogether an untruth. In the morning Jack woke his sun niest, save for a wordless penitence that looked out of eyes which went so darkly-blue under a generous emotion.
It was ages before the matter ever came up between us. But although we spoke of it, I never made sure of the under lying impulsion that had sent him agley. It was not the only instance of its kind, but I came timely to sense the causes, and avert them wherever in my power. Yet I hasten to undo any impression I may have given that in our lives such ' i spells ' ' were the order of the day. On the contrary, months and years might elapse during which no trace of the old blues intervened; and, in this connection, I am re minded of the gradual disappearance, after our marriage, of certain terrible headaches to which he had been subject. This was, I think, largely due to his seeking more adequate sleep.
The Spanish steamer aforementioned, the Oteri, landed us in Santiago de Cuba on the 6th, where, from the Hotel del Alba, we drove about the city and to San Juan Hill, and strolled lace-hunting in cool little shops. And Jack bought some lovely fans to gratify my slight Spanish streak, which I called up to play its part in its own congenial habitat. A dinner which we enjoyed in the Cafe Venus, guests of a charming gentleman who was living out what of life was still vouchsafed by one remaining lung, was always a colorful memory to Jack, who incorporated it somewhere in his fiction. I, in a soft rosy gown, swaying languidly my spangled, pearl-handled fan to the lilt of a plaza band in the lazy warm airs under the palms, wondered if anything
JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YORK CITY 101
to come in our wanderings could approach the romance that was here.
After the final act at a theater, when the pretty victoria had left us at the hotel, we ascended to our vaulted chamber and drifted out upon a balcony railed in fretted gilt iron, and lounged a restful hour, shamelessly gazing into luxuri ous Spanish interiors and balconies across the narrow street, where senoras and senoritas entertained in their courtly manner. I am certain that Jack reveled in that night ; but more certain am I that some seven-eighths of his* content was vested in that of his bride, to whom every mo ment was as a pearl of price and as such abides.
Jack, his manhood revolting at the brazen falsity of a cab-driver who delivered us at the railroad station, became the nucleus of a gesticulating and to all appearances not harmless mob. As the moment of departure neared, he called to me to go aboard with Manyoungi. Only the fact that Jack had tickets and money in his possession restrained him from going to jail at the last instant rather than abase his Anglo-Saxon pride before the impudent half-breeds. As it was, mad as a hatter, he paid for an extra passenger who existed solely in the crafty imagination of the cab-man, and boarded the train after it was in motion. There was some consolation, however, when in Havana the same ruse was tried, and the American Consul, himself a Span iard, to whom Jack appealed, in short order sent to the right-about a much-cowed coachman who had sworn by the Virgin to two extra fares !
The rich country across which we sped that golden day, and an Egyptian sunset athwart little hills for all the world so like pyramids that one 's eyes went questing through the rose and yellow and lilac for a Sphinx, all wrought upon Jack's creative faculties. He withdrew into himself at in tervals, to make notes for a novel which I now realize never was written— "The Flight of the Duchess. "
102 THE BOOK OF JACK LONDON
In the Spanish city of Havana, with its dream-tinted palaces, instead of putting up at a hotel, we found cool gray rooms in a flower-girt patio at Consolado and Neptune Streets. Of course, we did and saw everything there was to do and see in so short a sojourn: a launch trip around the twisted wreck of the Maine; visits to Moro Castle and Cabanas Fort, and to the swimming baths of hewn coral; and we drowned our souls in the fairy coloring of the isle and the waters of the Gulf. Notable amid our entertain ment was a sportive evening watching the Basque game of Jai Alai, followed by a gorgeous banquet in the famous Hotel Miramar, originally built by a rich American for the pleasure of his guests.
A book in itself would be required to relate an after noon we spent in the lazar-house — an experience that for all time interested us in the tragedy of the leper.
"We hated to leave Havana, " says my red booklet, "but all the world's before us!"
The steamer Halifax set us down at Key West, where we transferred to the ShinnecocJc for Miami. Jack, who from his omniverous reading knew considerable about al most everything under the sky, was curious to hook a few of the six hundred-odd varieties of fish reputed to swim in Miami waters. "Just think, Mate," he said to me, "one- fifth of the entire fauna of the American Continent, north of Panama, inhabit this part of the coast." Boating, angling for edible fish and hooking outlandish finny shapes, driving in the Everglades, calling at the alligator and crocodile farm, and shopping for curios and snake- skins, filled the Miami visit. Next we stopped at Daytona Beach, where from the Hotel Clarendon we branched out on automobile trips over the beautiful stretches of sand, fished off the long pier, and took a day's launch-exploration up the tropical Tomoka Kiver.
Jack had been drooping, dull and listless, for a day or
JAMAICA, CUBA, FLORIDA, NEW YORK CITY 103
two. On the return cruise he became rapidly worse, so that I was up all night with him, and in the morning sent numer ous telegrams delaying New York appointments.
No doctor would he let me summon, " Because I simply can't be laid up long, with New York and the rest of the lecture schedule to be lived up to," he demurred. "Be sides, it's only grippe — I know the symptoms; and I also know myself and my recuperative abilities better than any doctor.''
I sat by his bedside reading aloud and running to the window whenever a racing car whizzed past, while the pa tient grumbled and groaned with splitting head: "And I came to this damned place mainly to see those cars at practice ; and now look at me ! "
The next I knew, glancing up from a totally unemotional page of Shaw's "The Irrational Knot," was that Jack was weeping copiously, the tears coursing down his hot cheeks. Much perturbed, I yet failed to wring from him any ex planation. But I was to learn through painful experience that very night, for I was struck down by the identical malady and myself fell emotional to a degree upon the mildest provocation.
Manyoungi, fortunately, remained untouched by the sickness, and nobly nursed the pair of us, sending further telegrams that moved ever ahead our New York arrival. Crawling in to Jack from my room, he received me with feeble arms and trembling voice :
"Mate Woman, I know I shall love you always!" and we both cried sumptuously over the